This is such a wonderful letter, containing so much common sense, that I could not resist putting it up on my own site. If only the Church authorities could engage seriously with the questions John is raising we would all be in a more healthy place in our Church.
The Beginning of Lent, 2014
Dear Cardinal O’Malley,
I am writing to you and to all the ordinaries of the dioceses in the United States to ask you and your fellow bishops in your role as teachers to provide a clear and credible theological explanation of why women are not being ordained to the priesthood in the Catholic Church.
Talk in Enniskerry
My evening in Enniskerry was very interesting. It was part of a series of talks jointly sponsored by the Church of Ireland and Catholic parishes, and I was the second speaker. The first one was a Jesuit, who spoke about Pope Francis, so, since I have tended to talk a good bit about Francis in my presentations on Church reform, I decided to take a very different line this time. The overall theme they were working on was the faith journey.
The Catholic Church in Australia
Tom Roberts has an excellent article on the Australian Catholic Church in the current issue of the National Catholic Reporter. He goes back through the developments of the last century. In the first half of the century, when Archbishop Mannix was head of the Church there, the Catholic Church in Australia had a clear, common culture, which had to do with standing together in the fight against poverty and oppression. Mannix, who in his own way was very far-seeing, put great energy into setting up a Catholic school system.
