Madam, - Many of your readers seem to be labouring under the unfortunate delusion that the Catholic Church is anti-women merely because it will not allow women to become priests, and that the new Pope is similarly anti-woman for upholding the teaching of the Church.
This rather disingenuous view entirely disregards the fact that priesthood of the Church is quintessentially a spiritual vocation, a vocation to serve God and the people of God unreservedly, and not some sort of power cartel.
The role of women in the Church, although equal to men in dignity, is different to that of men. This dignity is in complementarity, and is constantly reaffirmed in many ecclesiastical documents, notably in the late John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem (1988).
One cannot read the document on male-female collaboration in the Church by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2004), for which Benedict XVI was largely responsible, and maintain that he is anti-woman.
These complaints are yet an other example of the constant endeavours of soi-disant feminists to make women more like men. They think women should be priests, not because women want to be priests, but because they see priesthood as a male role. This regrettable attitude seems to imply, ironically, that unless we are like men, we are inferior - a stark contrast to the more positive attitude of the Church.
Why not celebrate true femininity, a concept entirely different to feminism (proclaimed so vociferously by stereotypically unfeminine females) instead? - Yours, etc,
ANNE DOHERTY, Ballinlough, Co Roscommon.