Roman Catholic women priests? [View all]

[rug]

Posted at 07:01 PM ET, 10/12/2012
TheWashingtonPost
By Phyllis Zagano

From the outside looking in, it seems the Vatican would be just as happy to throw all its women ministers under the bus.

First, Rome ordered an investigation of all U.S.-based institutes of Catholic women religious, the sisters most people call “nuns.” Then Rome forced what amounts to a hostile takeover of their largest leadership group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Then there is the ongoing debate over whether women can be ordained.

The Vatican initiatives toward the sisters—the investigation and the takeover—seem to have met quiet resolves, at least for now. The investigative reports are in the proper Curia office, and the cardinal who called for the study has long retired. LCWR gently rejected a takeover at its August 2012 meeting, and the group’s leaders pledged to start working with the bishop-overseers by explaining what, exactly, it means to be a woman religious. They will meet again this autumn.

An underlying theme of both events echoed the request of a former LCWR president, Mercy Sister Theresa Kane, who in 1979 publicly asked Pope John Paul II to include women in “all ministries” of the church. The code became the coda: ordination of women as priests.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/roman-catholic-women-priests/2012/10/12/fada01aa-14bd-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_blog.html