Women priests? Frankly, the Church should be so lucky. I know tens of wonderful Catholic women who would have been brilliant priests. Most of them would be bishops by now; there might even have been a cardinal among them. Instead, they have lived as nuns, ex-nuns, teachers, politicians, aid workers, academics, journalists, psychotherapists. Many have also been mothers and wives.Almost all of these women would have been at least open to the possibility of priesthood in the past. None of them, I am certain, would be remotely interested in it today. Partly that’s because they are older; but it’s also because the possibility of female ordination was closed so firmly, time after time. What that meant was that the Catholic Church did not, as the Church of England did, amass a cohort