Madam, - I feel I must respond to Anne Doherty's letter of May 2nd in which she bemoans the "constant endeavours of soi-disant feminists" to question the Catholic Church's attitude to women. She criticises them for deluding themselves into thinking "that the Catholic Church is anti-women merely because it will not allow women to be priests" and goes on to challenge this by explaining (to those of us too ignorant to understand) that the "priesthood of the Church is quintessentially a spiritual vocation, a vocation to serve God and the people of God".
I have two questions for Ms Doherty. Are not women also capable of a "spiritual vocation" and of serving "God and the people of God" should they wish to do so? And what on earth are we to understand by her call to "celebrate true femininity, a concept entirely different to feminism"? Of course femininity and feminism are different - how kind of Ms Doherty to point that out to us! But does femininity preclude inclusion in the structure of the Church?
One final question, for I find myself perplexed that any woman, feminine or feminist, can defend the Church on this issue: would Ms Doherty be so kind as to point out where precisely she sees that "the role of women in the Church [ is] equal to men in dignity"?
What dignity is there to be had in a man-made religious structure which insists that woman is single-handedly responsible for original sin and the fall of humanity and in which the only "hands-on" role is in dishing out Communion at Sunday Mass? - Yours, etc,
FIONA McCANN, Paris, France.