Your views on this subject (Women Priests) are certainly outdated. To merely go by what the Bible says, is to deny how far we as a people have come. The Bible was written in a time when women had no rights or position. It was natural for the authors of the Bible to speak in terms of male priests and disciples. But the world is a different place now.

Additionally, your comments that women are distressed by the dictate that women will never be allowed to be priests merely because that would mean they are discriminated against in one particular "job" is very shallow. Don't you believe that there are women who love Our Lord to the extent that they want to do his work? Not as nuns, but as priests, allowed to celebrate the Mass, allowed to celebrate the mystery of the Holy Eucharist? I see no good reason for a woman who truly has the calling, for after all, the priesthood is not just a job, it is a calling, a vocation, to be denied the opportunity to do the Lord's work.

In Jesus's time, women had little status. Yet a good number of his most faithful followers were women. Anyone He touched and who believed, became a disciple, spreading the good news.

Semantics and rhetoric are not going to change the fact that there are women out there who would be very wonderful priests and should be allowed to do so.

Heidi Mead

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Reply by Patrick Coffin