In recent decades, Popes Paul VI and John Paul II both promulgated solemn decrees reaffirming the church’s age old, unbroken teaching that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. In “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis,” the most recent decree (John Paul II, 1994), it was stated inflexibly that the church “has no authority whatsoever” to do so, and that this judgment is to be “definitively held” by all Catholics.

That teaching was once again very recently “decisively” reiterated by Pope Leo XIV (May 16). In point of fact, despite what its deniers say, the teaching is regarded as infallible and therefore irrevocable in virtue of its having been taught throughout the centuries.

Not that any of that will deter Catholic women desirous of the priesthood from working to have the teaching reversed.

But their persistence is in vain. The outrage that would ensue from such a reversal would deafen the world and would — without a doubt — alienate each and every Orthodox church, arguably irreparably.

To this ex-Catholic atheist, church unity is an illusion, a thing incapable of realization for the very reason that the church was instituted by men, not God — hence the pointless, unrelenting wrangling over doctrine.

William LaRochelle
Lewiston