RETIRED BISHOP CROWLEY: A SERIOUS CONSIDERATION OF WOMEN PRIESTS IS WARRANTED

A retired Bishop has come out in support of the Ordination of women Priests and says he has felt this way since his own Ordination 53 years ago.

In a letter to international Catholic weekly, The Tablet, Bishop John Crowley said that "as far back as 1965, I had sensed on a purely instinctive, subjective level, that whether someone was married or single, male or female, should not be determinative in admitting someone to the priesthood."

However he said it was made clear to him at the time that he should not express his personal views publicly but, now that he is retired with no public teaching role in the church, he feels able to do so.

Bishop Crowley, formerly Bishop of Middlesbrough but now retired and living in London, also said the time is ripe for further Church examination on “the key theological premises regarding the exclusion of women from the Priesthood”. 

He wrote: “Though there might yet be a shift in the Church’s insistence on compulsory celibacy for her Priests, on the question of women’s Ordination the full weight of the Church’s long teaching and tradition sits firmly tight on opening up that possibility”.

He said “a growing number of theologians” and “a number of Bishops … would want this burning issue to be at least looked at again in a calm, open and public discussion within the Church” in a debate which “is already manifestly happening around the world among many lay people and some Priests.”

Bishop Crowley questions why the Vatican is so determined to quash calls for women Priests even if it means sowing the seeds of the Church's extinction? 

Recently, the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland (ACP) issued the following stark warning:  'If priests disappear, then Masses will disappear and if Masses disappear, the Church will disappear." 

Members of the ACP know the reality of the Priest shortage first-hand. The ACP, which represents over 1,000 Irish Priests, most of whom are over 65, has been highlighting for years that priests in Ireland are having to work longer hours, do more work, and retire later due to the decline in their numbers. With so few Priests under 40, the future looks bleak, but not only in Ireland but around the world.

Bishop Crowley rightly notes that this issue has not been aired and debated in the manner it needs to be because of the stricture imposed by Saint Pope John Paul II in his 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which forbids Catholics even discussing the issue of women Priests. 

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI elevated the 'crime' of Ordaining women to ministry as one of the most serious, putting it on a par with paedophilia. Those who defy this edict are liable to be excommunicated, those who question it, if they are Priests or Religious, are liable to be censured by the Vatican and removed from ministry, while lay people working for church organizations are liable to lose their jobs. 

That had been a sufficiently strong deterrent to ensure very few Catholics give the issue of women's Ordination any thought. 

Lately, Bishop Crowley observes, there are signs of a hardening of attitudes even on the issue of women Deacons.

While completing my studies in Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome, one of my Professors made this wise observation and predicition.  He stated:  “Vatican II was all about Bishops.  Vatican III will be all about the Priesthood.  Vatican IV will finally be about the Laity”.

That Professor’s wisdom is being validated with every passing day.

Even a Pope’s terse and threatening “NO” in response to any consideration of the Ordination of women no longer suffices as the future of the Church is in peril with fewer and fewer men presenting themselves for Ordination to an exclusively male and celibate Priesthood.

Only the solemnity of an Ecumenical Council, the highest teaching authority of the Church, will resolve the question that is continually being asked:  why only celibate male Priests?

Would that the Holy Father would be as pre-occupied with the future of the Church as he appears to be with climate change.

A bit more shepherding of the flock and a little less tree-hugging would seem to be in order.