Women Should Be Allowed Into Priesthood

June 14, 2008 The Olympian

Women should be allowed into priesthood
The Olympian reported that three more men have alleged they were sexually abused by a priest at Saint Martin’s High School in the 1950s. This is the second lawsuit filed this year against the priest, who died in 1980.
What is not reported and probably never will be are the names of the church leaders in charge of supervising this alleged sexual predator and allowed him the freedom to keep on abusing. If we go with history, no bishops or abbots have yet to be charged for their cover-up activity.
The same day this report aired, the Vatican announced that, “anyone trying to ordain a woman and any woman who attempts to receive such ordination is automatically excommunicated.”
Isn’t this another form of sexual abuse? It’s sad that the church does not excommunicate clergy guilty of sexual abuse nor will they discipline church leaders guilty of allowing the abuse to continue and yet they will jump on any woman who feels called to ordination!
The vast majority of Catholic theologians are in agreement that there is not a defensible theological argument against ordaining women. When Pope John Paul II asked his Pontifical Biblical Commission to outline the scriptural arguments against women’s ordination, the scripture scholars told him to look elsewhere for reasons because they are not in the Bible.
Sexual abuse of minor boys will always elicit strong reaction but the ongoing sexual abuse of women by our Church is too often ignored or accepted as normal behavior.
Tom Hill, Olympia