The Australian Catholic Students Association has pledged its loyalty to Pope Benedict XVI on women’s ordination, despite calls for discussion of the issue by signatories of a recent petition from Australian Catholics.

Students Association President Camillus O’Kane said Catholic students are disappointed that some groups continue to push for the “ordination” of women, despite it being declared a non-issue for the Church.

“Ever since Christ established the Church over 2000 years ago and assigned His Apostles the task of sanctifying, teaching and governing the faithful, the office of the priesthood has been has been reserved for men only,” Mr O’Kane said.

A
reader sent me a link to the above article from Australia’s Cath News.
I have never been much impressed with the orthodoxy of Cath News and their headline for this story "Catholic students declare silence on women’s ordination " confirms my prejudice. How issuing a statement is declaring silence is beyond me. If you happened to agree with the Church I guess you are being silent on a subject no matter what you say, but if you dissent than you are speaking out.

The petition was organised by former priests Paul Collins a (pictured) and Frank Purcell and promoted on the Catholica Australia website and elsewhere. Its primary intention is to encourage consideration of married clergy in order to preserve Australian Catholics’ access to priests and the sacraments. It also requests discussion of women’s ordination.

Does anybody else find it highly ironic for a former priest speaking out about the problem of the lack of priests? I believe Diogenes also thought this rather ironic.

At least Cath News ends the article with a great quote.

Meanwhile Hugh Henry of the Melbourne-based John XXIII Fellowship condemned the petition and organised a counter-petition.

Mr Henry, who edits Fidelity magazine, said: “No Catholic can support this. The Church has definitively and repeatedly said that an exclusively male priesthood is not an open question that Catholics can debate about.”

He agreed with the petition that the Church is currently experiencing a dearth of priests. But the solution, he said is to “attack the problem at its source by cleaning out all the ageing, locked-in-the-sixties liberal Catholics in institutions that are responsible for this crisis in the first place.”

Amen to that.

SF Author John C. Wright
takes an axe to Phillip Pulman’s recent defense of his trilogy by saying
"If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."
In a grand post he shows how Pulman’s sermon as a story form suffered precisely
for this. He shows the inconsistencies in the story arc and the broken promises
made by story elements throughout.
That whenever the demands of the story conflicted with the message, the message
won out.

One thing I liked about John C. Wright’s books that even though almost
all of them were written when he was still an atheist that the stories never
suffered for this and that storytelling was always the most important thing.

The other day he also had a post
on those who charge religion as being wish-fulfillment.

To those of you who think religion is a self-delusion based on wish-fulfillment,
all I can remark is that this religion does not fulfill my wishes. My wishes,
if we are being honest, would run to polygamy, self-righteousness, vengeance
and violence: a Viking religion would suit me better, or maybe something along
Aztec lines. The Hall of Valhalla, where you feast all night and battle all
day, or the paradise of the Mohammedans, where you have seventy-two dark-eyed
virgins to abuse, fulfills more wishes of base creatures like me than any place
where they neither marry nor are given in marriage. This turn-the-other cheek
jazz might be based any number of psychological appeals or spiritual insights,
but one thing it is not based on is wish-fulfillment.

The charge of wish-fulfillment also seems strange in the face of Jesus calling his disciples to pick up their crosses daily and that they would be persecuted
for following him.
I think it is wish-fulfillment to put off religion by calling it wish-fulfillment.