Three responses to CDC Armstrong's letter (The Tablet, 23 August).
He asks Pat Brown, my colleague in Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO), why she wishes to stay in the Church. We have campaigned and prayed for 21 years for women priests in a renewed Church and we do not wish to leave our Church.
Armstrong queries Brown's statement about an influx of misogynist priests from the Church of England coinciding with women's ordination in the Church of England. Their mindset creates further obstacles for CWO and sadly we have examples of misogynistic remarks made by some of these priests and families - unprintable here.
Pope Francis has said the door is closed to women's ordination now. We realise that women priests would be unlikely in the current centralised, male clerical system, and CWO advocates renewal. Pope Francis writes about collegiality and lay people being further encouraged to offer their gifts. Currently it is discretionary whether priests work with lay people. The role of women as leaders, deacons and priests in the Early Church is documented and we are asking for a restoration and renewal of former practice so that women's gifts will be increasingly welcomed in lay ecclesial ministries, governance and ordained ministry. Some of us believe we have a vocation to ordained ministry, which we wish to be tested. Apart from living with potential priestly gifts being rejected and the withering, undermining behaviour levelled against would-be ordained women ministers, we persist. The age demographic of priests in the UK means that already there are patches of sacramental drought. Continuing to keep the door closed means there will soon be sacramental famine.
Pippa Bonner, Catholic Women’s Ordination, Harrogate
When Anglican clergymen were content to remain in a church as doctrinally inchoate as the Church of England and only became Catholics when women were ordained, they do not need to make misogynistic statements; their actions speak louder than words. And many Catholic women, especially younger ones, do not rejoice when they become their pastors; a matter of deep concern to all who care for the Church's future. That three recent popes have rejected women's ordination is not infallibly binding; and there are many examples of ecclesiastical reappraisal of hitherto official positions. The Spirit leads but some are slow to follow.
John Kentleton, Wirral
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