The international Catholic news weekly The Tablet thought the appointment of the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Church presented a ripe opportunity for the Catholic Church to re-examine the issue of women’s ordination to the priesthood.
In a short article consisting chiefly of an interview with Irish Jesuit theologian Father Gerry O’Hanlon, he does not hide his frustration with the current state of the question within Catholicism and states bluntly his wish that the Church “stopped beating about the bush and undertook a fair and open re-examination of current teaching.”
It is clear from his remarks that he thinks the current teaching of the Church rests on flawed theological groundings. This leads him to conclude that the non-ordination of women is as great a scandal for the Church as was its previous tolerance for slavery.
He then cites the theological conclusions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the 1970s and the opinion of the famed theologian Karl Rahner on the matter. The Tablet summarizes his thoughts:
Highlighting how the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the 1970s found that there was no Scriptural warranty for the Church’s position on excluding women from ordained ministry, he noted that theologian Karl Rahner, in the late 1970s, argued that the burden of proof should be with the Church to show this. ‘This burden has not been discharged,’ Fr O’Hanlon said.
By itself, this short article is unremarkable and is just one among many others that have appeared over the years in largely liberal Catholic publications. But what it does illustrate is that, in the minds of many Catholics — perhaps even a majority of Catholics in Western culture, if polls are to be believed — the issue is still an open one.
Continue reading at National Catholic Register
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