The following is an excerpt from Father Kevin Murphy’s column in the June 28 bulletin for St. Louis Church in Pittsford:

I know to raise the issue of women and married men to be considered as priests is unacceptable for some among us…not for me…I pray that wherever priests come from that we as God’s family would be open to allow people to serve…if you feel only male celibates should be ordained, fine, encourage and pray for that…wherever the vocations come from, let us just pray and accept them to serve.

My prayer for this Year of the Priest is that all our Church would be open to consider the many fine Deacons who could be ordained to ministerial priesthood…that we should not be afraid to open ourselves to other Married Men becoming candidates…that our Church would use this year to study and examine whether women should be ordained as deacons…that we should consider the possibility that God has planted the vocation to priesthood in women’s lives and we would seriously try to discern that…that even for bishops, we would return to the traditional process where the people had a say in offering candidates…I am sure that these ideas are not part of Pope Benedict’s plan for this year, but as long as we are going to focus on priests, let’s consider all the dimensions of Priesthood and the real need our Church has.

Well, I have said enough for today…

I strongly concur with Father Murphy’s last line.

The only response that is necessary to Father Murphy’s misleading discourse is this:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. ( Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , Pope John Paul II, May 22, 1994)

And this:

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published. ( Responsum ad Dubium , Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, October 28, 1995)