Sir, - You reported recently that Women's Ordination Worldwide is to hold an international conference in Dublin in June (The Irish Times, March 27th). But the battle which the organisation is fighting is already lost, and this for two reasons.
The first is that Pope John Paul II, in issuing his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, fulfilled the four conditions set out by the First Vatican Council for the exercise of his prerogative of personal infallability. This means that for the believing Catholics, further discussion of the issue is a waste of time.
The second is that many women who wanted ordination to be a possibility no longer do so. This was made clear in an assembly organised by the Women's Ordination Conference held in Washington DC in November 1995. It was attended by about 1,000 women, mostly nuns. At the request of one member of the assembly, the motion was put: "That this assembly of WOC demands that ordination to the Catholic priesthood be available to qualified women who ask for it."
About half those present voted for the motion, on the ground that this was a demand of natural justice. But the other half rejected it. They were responding to an argument put up by the well-known feminist theologian, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza. She pointed out that if a women is ordained a priest, she becomes a member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But this is a form of the hated system of patriarchy, under which women have suffered for millennia, and it is the task of women to secure the abolition of every form of patriarchy. - Yours, etc.,
G.H. Duggan, S.M., D.D. Marist Community, Marian House, Upper Hutt, New Zealand.