women priests

Will the Synod Approve Women’s Ordination?

Proponents of women’s ordination—to both the priesthood and to the diaconate—are hoping that the upcoming Synod on Synodality will support their cause. Is this wishful thinking on their part? Can the Synod even do such a thing?

The Mother Church: Turning God Trans

Current rumblings about the introduction of deaconesses into the Catholic faith as a potential prelude to the ordination of female priests are as nothing compared to the latest gender-crazy news from the Church of England.

A Woman’s Case against Women-Priests

In order for women to embrace our proper role in sanctifying the priesthood, we must be willing to abandon the adversarial position we often place ourselves in with men. Great damage has been done in the dynamic between men and women, thanks to radical forms of feminism that seek to pit men and women against … Read more

Flight of the Lady-Bishops

In mid-January, it was made public that His Excellency Bishop Barry Knestout (my local ordinary) had made arrangements with the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia to allow an invalid consecration of a female “bishop” at St. Bede’s Catholic Church in Williamsburg. The public outcry was so intense that the Episcopalians chose to move the event … Read more

No Parish for Real Men

There’s a crisis of manhood in the American Church. You know it; I know it. But if our bishops are anything other than totally oblivious, they’re playing it cool. In July of 2017, I attended a USCCB convocation in Orlando, Florida. Its stated goal was finding new ways to spread the joy of the Gospel … Read more

Correcting the Synods of Surprises

During the heady days of Vatican II, while spirited disputes over the schema raged on, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre proposed that the governing structure of the episcopal conferences undergirding the Council was “a new kind of collectivism invading the Church.” Lefebvre wasn’t fearmongering when he told the missionary-journalist Fr. Ralph Wiltgen that a handful of bishops … Read more

Practicing Christians Who Don’t Believe

Most of us have probably wondered why people who clearly do not believe in Catholicism choose to remain within the Church, actively working to undermine its doctrines, structures, and practices. I have thought of more and more such reasons as time has gone on, some of whose validity has recently been confirmed by my reading … Read more

The Gnostic Feminism of Phyllis Zagano

One of the most high-ranking feminists in the Catholic Church is Phyllis Zagano, the well-known advocate for the ordination of women to the diaconate. A member of the papal commission to examine the historical precedents of deaconesses, Zagano has researched the subject extensively and is the author of many learned articles and several books. Phyllis … Read more

Not a Tame Lion: The “Deplorable” C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis was not Catholic, much less a theologian who teaches with an authority Catholics are obliged to recognize. As an eloquent proponent of natural law and the close colleague of important Catholic writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and Elizabeth Anscombe, however, the Anglican Lewis is surely someone whose significance we must acknowledge. Unfortunately, among some … Read more

More Reasons to Support a Celibate Priesthood

Usually I don’t bother with pieces about “the first (y) (x),” where y = special interest group and x = profession. They always drip with a smugness that I, who looked up to the Jafar character as a child, find nauseating. The bien pensant journalist always seems pleasantly surprised their pet minorities have risen to … Read more

Deaconesses and the Dangers of Antiquarianism

“Huge news: The female diaconate is not only an idea whose time has come, but a reality recovered from history.” ∼ Father James Martin, SJ With one “tweet” celebrating the new commission appointed by Pope Francis to study the possibility of the ordination of women to the diaconate, Father James Martin, SJ managed to perfectly encapsulate … Read more

When Dialogue is a Distraction

Pope Francis has announced a commission to study the female diaconate, following through on a suggestion he made to a group of women religious a few months ago. The announcement has been met with all manner of speculation and punditry, and not a little confusion. The confusion flows from the fact that the topic was … Read more

In Lieu of Female Deacons, a Proposal

On October 6, 2015, Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau, Canada surprised Catholic Synod observers when he called for more study on the possibility of women deacons. In the course of his allotted three-minute address to the assembled bishops at the Synod on the Family, the Archbishop suggested that admitting women to the permanent diaconate could … Read more

Anglican Ordination of Women Bishops Ends Reunion Prospects

It was, of course inevitable, having ordained women to its “priesthood” that the Church of England, mother Church of the Anglican Communion, would in the end ordain women to its “episcopate” (I place the key-words in inverted commas, not to be insulting but to indicate simply that most Anglicans use the words to describe something … Read more

Anglicans Choose Egalitarianism Over Christian Unity

On 14 July, the General Synod of the Church of England voted in favor of allowing women to become bishops. The measure had previously been rejected in 2012 by the Synod, the Church of England’s deliberative and legislative body composed of “houses” of bishops, clergy and laity, when it failed to gain the requisite two-thirds … Read more

How Mormons Respond to Theological Dissent

The LDS church recently excommunicated Kate Kelly, a feminist whose organization, Ordain Women, had been aggressively lobbying for women to be admitted to the Mormon priesthood. The aftermath has been interesting, and might offer Catholics some valuable food for thought concerning the logic of heresy and excommunication. I’m not interested in adjudicating the issues over … Read more

The Liberal Protestant Future of Catholic Dissent

One of the many memorable scenes in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago features Zhivago’s family fleeing the ugliness and brutality of Moscow after the Bolshevik Revolution for the tranquility of the family’s country estate in Varykino.  Upon reaching the estate after an arduous journey, Zhivago’s father-in-law, Alexander Gromeko, finds the main house boarded up, with a … Read more

We Ignore Sex at Our Peril

Sex is too central to human life to avoid as an issue or to stand outside and describe objectively, and it touches us too closely for people to discuss calmly. Those qualities make it an ideal issue to settle through authoritative traditions. Functional societies do so and life goes on. If such traditions are lacking, … Read more

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