Maureen Dowd’s Opinion piece in the New York Times is a plea for Catholic liberalism. She thinks that if the Roman Church were only more open to ordaining women then everything would fall into place. She wants to protect the nuns, which are a dwindling group in the catholic community. She argues that the Catholic Church has betrayed nuns and if something does not change immediately they will become extinct (the average age of a Catholic nun is 70). Nuns are, according to one writer, “the rare jewels of the Church.” Dowd argues that if nuns became feminist nuns, then pedophilia would not have happened. Liberal policies are always the answer to these pseudo-religious-journalists.
Dowd condemns Pope Benedict’s strictness when it comes to Catholic tradition, and she berates the Church’s acceptance of disgruntled Anglicans coming to Catholicism. In Dowd’s perception these Anglicans will only accentuate that rabid conservatism in the Church, and thus causing her liberal allies to “dwindle in number.”Anglicans are coming in mass to Rome in search of a tradition that will not waver on their commitment to ordaining only men to the priesthood. Anglicans are also fleeing the growing pressure to ordain homosexuals. Rome seems to be the safest haven for these refugees.
There are simpler answers to these questions. Anglicans could abandon their mainline gospel-denying traditions and come back to Geneva. We, Calvinists, will accept them with open arms! Rome can end once and for all the imprisonment of men in the priesthood. She can allow them to embrace their calling as married man. This is the first answer to the pedophilia travesty.
