I sympathise with Michael Walsh’s view that the ordination of women deacons would “simply add one more set of people to the clerical caste” (Letters, 21 May). I suspect we could get on quite well without the offices of priest and deacon in their present forms. But many women feel called to a renewed and revitalised priesthood, and, despite the panicking hierarchical denials, the diaconate could prove to be a step in this direction.

As has often been said before, if a woman cannot act “in persona Christi”, then let us stop baptising women, because it is by virtue of our baptism that we all, women and men, are called to bring Christ to the world.

Ruth Wood
Chepstow, Monmouthshire