Sir, - Fr David O'Hanlon (April 17th) gives three reasons why in his opinion women can not be ordained priests: sex; sex; and sex.
Fr O'Hanlon appears quite obsessed with sex, yet nowhere in his letter is the word "love" to be found. One of the reasons he gives why in his opinion a woman can never validly be ordained to the priesthood is because "a man who carries a foetus to term in his abdominal cavity or a man who is hormonally induced to lactate cannot ever be in any true sense a mother". He also states that "it cannot be immaterial, for example, whether a man has sex with another man instead of with a woman or vice versa". What has any of this got to do with vocations to the priesthood? In my opinion nothing at all.
I apologise to the many Protestant churches who have ordained women for the insulting comments from one of the Catholic Church's dinosaurs.
The growing campaign for the ordination of women now has the support of 69 per cent of Catholics in Ireland. Thanks be to the Holy Spirit who is alive and well and acting through all of us that the faith in Christ's message is still strong. It is faith in the institutional Church which has decayed. The sooner the Church is renewed by the Holy Spirit the better for Christ's message of love. - Yours, etc.,
Colm Holmes
Avoca Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin.