I HEARTILY endorse the views of Colette Douglas Home and Helena Kennedy QC on the need for women priests in the Catholic Church ("Women priests would be boon for Catholic Church", The Herald, November 8).
We hear of the dire shortage of (male) priestly candidates. The reality is a dwindling number of overstretched, drained and heroic individuals spread too thinly and rattling round vast parish houses, while ignored, intelligent, stable, and dedicated women, nuns as well as married women, are out there doing priests’ work, unconsidered and sidelined. I know many of them.
Before you even need to get to the issue of married priests, men or women, the nuns are there and available, having already given their lives over to good works and helping run parishes and chaplaincies.
I am angry on their behalf. It is an insult to their lives and sacrifices. Are the hierarchy going to wait until there are no priests at all before they acknowledge that the resources are plain to see, and that the candidates are there?
For far too long, Catholic women have remained silent and unquestioning. Women make up the vast majority of church gatherings.
As Colette Douglas Home stated, women need to demand reform. And the first to benefit would be the current priests, who would be supported in their lonely task.
Claire Mulholland,
43 Westbourne Gardens,
Glasgow.
While I sympathise with the sentiments of Colette Douglas Home and Helena Kennedy, it won’t happen while the Catholic Church exists as it is.
I would be quite concerned about the mental health development of any child of mine if they thought as the Vatican does about women and sex. Celibacy has to be reversed as a priority for the Church and then equality of the sexes ought to follow on.
Yes, there have been attempts to ease some of the pressure in permitting women eucharistic ministers to help in parish work but there remains a hard core of fossilisation and corruption that cannot be shifted.
People with vision and courage should vote for change with their feet as well as with their voices.
Janet Cunningham,
1 Cedar Avenue,
Stirling.
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