www.womenpriests.org have launched a new initiative about which they say,

"Since the Second Vatican Council a small but powerful group in the Catholic Church has taken control of governance. Continuing a trend that had started from the beginning of the 20th century, this group, headed by conservative Popes, has abused, and is still abusing, spiritual authority in order to block attempts at 'modernising' the Church. The abuse lies at the root of the refusal to change attitudes regarding the conscientious use of contraception, homosexuality, married priests and the ordination of women.

We speak of a real abuse because

• their measures go against the real intentions of Jesus Christ to whom they ultimately owe their authority;

• their actions contravene the clear principles of reform endorsed by the Second Vatican Council (1963-1965), the most authoritative body of vision and legislation in recent times."

Voice of the Faithful reports:

In some parts of the world we are seeing the leaves change just enough to remind us a new season is on the way. In Ireland, for example, organizers of the Association of Catholic Priests expected perhaps 50 -70 priests to attend their inaugural meeting. Instead, more than 300 priests showed up to discuss the issues emerging in the church and in society, including an evaluation of women’s roles, the rights of accused priests, restructured church governance, and the new Roman missal translation:

“We believe the new translation, which is to come into effect next year, is over-complicated and over-Latinized. There has been very little consultation about it, but nobody seems to want it –it’s another example of the church trying to fix things that don’t need to be fixed and not fixing the things that need fixing.” — Fr. Brendan Hoban, Association of Catholic Priests, Inaugural meeting

Following the showing of the film, "Conspiracy of Silence", and the debate on the necessity of celibacy for the ministerial priesthood, Simon Bryden-Brook writes:

It is one of the more shocking things in the Church today that there is a deliberate policy of promoting ‘creeping infallibility’.  The truth is that the last two infallible statements were in 1854 and 1950, and yet there is a cynical attempt by the powers that be to persuade Catholics that to question current papal teaching is not only disloyal but contrary to the Faith. This is dishonest and results in the infantilisation of the mass of the baptised.

Rome’s current teaching on the priesthood is one which requires examination as it contains three errors:

1. It is wrong to confuse the presbyterate (ordained or ministerial priesthood) with the High Priesthood of Jesus shared by all the baptised (common priesthood). [Lumen Gentium 10]

2. It is wrong to insist that celibacy is essential for the ministerial priesthood or that an ordained man more perfectly images Jesus than the rest of the baptised can.

3. It is wrong to suggest that women are not fully made in the image of God and cannot therefore image Jesus at the altar as ordained priests.

These issues need to be discussed openly by theologians, in fidelity to Tradition, rather than being left to one dominant party within the Church to dictate to the rest of us.

Fr Thomas Doyle, the American priest who played such an important role in the exposure of clerical sexual abuse in the USA and hierarchical complicity in attempts to conceal the crimes, has written of the “heretical teaching that clerics are somehow superior to lay people.” [The Tablet, 24 July 2010, p6]

A clear statement of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on priesthood is to be found in a small book by Canon Michael Richards, [A People of Priests – the Ministry of the Catholic Church, DLT, 1998] which contains a Foreword by Cardinal Hume who says of the ‘continuing uncertainty over the character of Christian priesthood’ there:

Only a clear vision and understanding of the mind of the Church expressed in her inspired Scriptures and in her writings and records can help us out of our present uncertainty.

The current confusion is not assisted by Rome and those who have a vested interest in promoting what is essentially a distorted clerical version of priesthood.  An introduction to the debate will be found in the essays in the following two publications:

Giles Hibbert OP ed, Renewing Priesthood (London: Catholics for a Changing Church, 2008) contains essays by Eamon Duffy, John Wijngaards, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Josephine Armour OP and Simon Bryden-Brook.

Joseph Fitzpatrick and Simon Bryden-Brook, Getting Priesthood Right (London: Catholics for a Changing Church, 2007)

See also:

Michael Richards, A People of Priests – the Ministry of the Catholic Church, [London: DLT, 1998]

Pictures of Catholic Women's Ordination at Lambeth Palace on Friday, 17 September 2010