Women as priests would help the church and the world

One is deeply moved by and stands in awe at the devotion of the Rev. Frank Almade to his priestly office (“A Sense of Calling, Always on Call,” Feb. 12). A reader’s bones ache in sympathy at the recitation of his long days in service to other human beings. “So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

That the ranks of the priesthood are thinning is an undeniable and disturbing fact that the overcrowded daily schedule of Father Almade calls attention to, but there would seem to be a solution in sight: Let women be priests and there would be a great surge in priestly numbers, a new birth of spirit in the church.

The Catholic Church would do well to consider the words of Warren Buffett in the recent HBO documentary about him. He says that he has been distressed all his life at the waste of talent and intelligence as women have been relegated to inferior status in every endeavor, but he is also hopeful that the best is yet to be if we enlist women and put them in the leadership positions that they have the same rights to and qualifications for as men do. He says the world has gotten where it is by using only 50 percent of its available talent and that tremendous things may yet result if it brings women in and thereby uses 100 percent.

So it would be for the Catholic Church especially, I am sure. To bar women from the priesthood is both sinful and stupid. Pope Francis has gained the reputation of a reformer, but he is only engaged in window-dressing, nibbling away at the margins of the problem until he opens up the priesthood to women. He owes the world such a gesture because it needs the church as a refuge, a resource and an example in this time of raw power run amok. WILLIAM GUY

Squirrel Hill