Madam, - Your edition of August 12th reports that 15 Roman Catholic women in the US face excommunication after taking up priestly duties.
I congratulate these brave women on standing up to the authorities in Rome, who will not even allow the issue to be discussed.
Women may be priests in many other Christian churches, but Rome continues to bar women from all ordained ministries. The arguments have changed over the centuries. Today Rome no longer claims that women are naturally inferior to men.
For the first 900 years women were ordained as deacons, so there is an established tradition of ordaining women. Women were present at the Last Supper, as is the tradition at Jewish Passover celebrations - but Leonardo Da Vinci's painting has deluded people into thinking that only Jesus and his 12 male apostles were present.
Scripture and tradition provide no reason for excluding women from priesthood - as the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded in 1976. So Rome has blamed God for excluding women, saying the church has no authority to ordain them.
But, like King Canute trying to turn back the tide, Rome is seeing support for women priests continuing to rise. In Ireland over 70 per cent of Catholics support women priests. For decades there have been Roman Catholic women priests here in Ireland, carrying out their ministries quietly and often secretly. And the day is soon coming when - like the Berlin wall coming down - Rome will realise that women and men are equal in the eyes of God.
And then our church will be able to reap the benefits of women and married priests, allowing God to call whoever she wants to serve her. - Yours, etc,
COLM HOLMES, BASIC (Brothers and Sisters in Christ), Avoca Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin.