I was on the Podcast Show, “Vestiges After Dark,” with host Dr. Bryan D. Quellette, SOSM. This show certainly offered a really engaging line of discussion, along with questions coming from the listeners. One such question stated, …”so are women just accepted but not really recognized as Religious teachers?” I replied that unfortunately, women are good enough to be a teacher of the Catholic Religion. Yet, on the other hand, not good enough, to be able to answer their own call from God to be a Priest. It truly is amazing how the Sacrament of Baptism, is supposed to afford equality for any member in the Catholic Church, women or men. Sadly, though in reality, those are only words that never afford any women the opportunity to participate in Sacramental Ordination as a ‘Women Priest.

Bishop Bryan, brought up a very interesting question, “ what is a woman to do if called to the Priesthood?” He also mentioned the thought of, how would the Church reply to a woman called by the Holy Spirit, just as he too was called? This of course for any woman in the Catholic Church is their sad reality. Exactly where or who can they turn to about addressing their own call from God? Their own Church’s radar is oblivious to their present ever real crisis of Spirituality missing in their lives.

Another important point Bishop Bryan brought out was lacking in the discernment of the Holy Spirit.” The spirit is moving through people and discernment is the one that makes your relationship to God work. It is an issue of discernment, it’s not a left or right issue, the spirit is moving through the people and there are people responding to it and the Church is suppressing it, not listening to it, not wanting to listen to it.” Is this really the way that Jesus, we know, would act in His Ministry? Would he have basically looked the other way on an individual’s concern? What gives the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the right to dismiss any Women’s call to Priesthood? Especially since the Pope’s own Pontifical Biblical Commission said, “there is no Biblical reason to prevent women from Ordination.”

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