Allow women priests ‘or the Church may die’ – Minister
Minister who ‘led prayers’ after Mass no-show says Catholics should welcome female priests
CULTURE Minister Josepha Madigan has called on the Catholic Church to appoint female priests by asking if God would discriminate based on gender.
The pointed comments were made in a speech to the We Are Church Forum last night – an address which was delayed amid complaints about the Minister by conservative religious groups.
Mrs Madigan’s speech last night called for wider acceptance in the Catholic Church on a range of issues including homosexuality, single parents and female ministries. She asked: ‘What is the Church afraid of?’
She told the audience at the Talbot Hotel in Dublin: ‘In my view, as a Catholic, it should not come a source of surprise to see a woman on the altar including in the priesthood itself.
‘But what happens if the person receiving the calling to the priesthood is a woman? Do we really believe that God would discriminate against her [assuming she fulfils all the other criteria] as the Catholic Church does purely based on her gender?’
The Fine Gael minister was originally scheduled to deliver the same speech at the Mercy International Centre last month, but the event was cancelled following threatened protests by hardline Catholic groups.
The Mercy Sisters, who own the venue, said they were inundated with representations made against the Minister, warning of ‘busloads of protesters’ if her speech were to go ahead.
It followed an incident in June last year, in which Mrs Madigan stepped in to lead the prayers – along with two other women – at her local church after it emerged that no priest was available.
Addressing that controversy last night, she said: ‘I felt it was important that those who had chosen to attend the church for Mass that evening could partake in prayers as a faith community, even if it was not in the way that they had expected. I believe the other two ladies were of the same view. What I did not expect, was the ensuing headlines, media comment, and reaction, to what was perceived in some quarters to be a controversial act.
‘It was claimed that I had crossed a line. It was joked, or erroneously noted, that I had “said Mass”. This is of course, not the case at all.’
She went on to attack the Church’s men-only policy for priests and ministries, noting that women are active at other levels, and could address the current shortages facing parishes all over the country, and indeed across the world.
‘What kind of example is this to our young girls?’ she asked. ‘We want to tell them that the world values who they are but we don’t even do this in their own parish.
‘Yes, we say to our daughters you can be an altar girl but don’t get too ahead of yourself, you will never be a priest,’ she said. ‘Even if you feel that God has called you, you are forbidden. That vocation is only for a man.
‘You are not welcome here. You are not welcome here because you are female. We value you but only in certain roles. Oh, we do still want you to keep the faith alive for future generations.’
She added: ‘How long will it take for the Catholic Church to realise that their prohibition on women priests is not just at best brazen discrimination but at worst could lead to the slow death of their beloved Church in its entirety?’
The Dublin Rathdown TD claimed that ‘hearts and minds have to change’ if they are to ‘build a Church fit for our daughters’, and called for wider acceptance on a range of other issues.
‘Catholics come in all shapes and sizes – there is no one size fits all. I think any church worth its salt should be big enough to provide a shared pew for the gay couple, the Opus Dei man, the divorced and the newly married couple, the single parent and the large traditional family,’ she said. ‘We are all the many faces of Catholicism as it is lived, rather than imagined.’
Closing her speech, Mrs Madigan asked: ‘Should women be priests? Should women around the world be properly recognised for holding parish life and religious family and community life together? I firmly believe that the answer is yes.’
‘It was claimed I had crossed a line’ ‘There is no one size fits all’