Tony Flannery

Pope John Paul, followed by Pope Benedict, put the issue of womens’ ordination off the agenda, formally declaring that it cannot even be discussed. During Pope Benedict’s time an effort was made to make this into an infallible teaching.
I have no doubt that the issue of women’s place in the Catholic Church is going to be an increasingly defining question for the Church, and potentially the greatest obstacle to the Church fulfilling its mission of promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I have been full of admiration for Pope Francis during his U.S. trip.  I thought his addresses to Congress, the United Nations and the U.S. bishops were excellent.  But on the way home in the plane, during the press briefing, he addressed the issue of womens ordination.  This is how it was reported by Joshua McElwee of the NCR:

“”Pope Francis has again forcefully rejected the possibility of female priests in the Catholic church, saying simply that his predecessor Pope John Paul II decided “that cannot be done.”

In a homily to hundreds of thousands at an outdoor Mass packing Philadelphia’s iconic Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Francis said that Jesus’ disciples were also afraid of new things — but that Jesus broke down all barriers to allow the Spirit to do its work.

“Jesus encountered hostility from people who did not accept what he said and did,” the pope told the crowds, many of whom had waited for long hours to participate in the last of his three public Masses while in the U.S.