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1. Patricia Fresen can claim whatever she likes. At the end of the day, she is not a Priest or Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church now, and she never will be.
   Our Lord told John of the attacks that will be made against His Church, to the point where Satan will sit in the Seat of Peter. Protestants and others use these revelations to John as a means to demonise and blame the Catholic Church for being evil and that the Pope is the Anti-Christ.
   These people need to consider why Satan is not interested in their religions. The fact is they were all born out of Heresy and will fall by the wayside during the days of Great Tribulation.
   Only the One True Faith, the Roman Catholic Church, will survive. This has been promised by God Himself.
   And yes Patricia Fresen is so right about one thing.
   There is great change coming our way and we need to be prepared for it!
   

   Posted By: Peter

2. It's odd, isn't it, how ready we are to look at systems like apartheid and self-righteously rush to condemn, but then never consider the many qualitative apartheids we actually support, consciously or not. or simply those very systems of apartheid which calls themself by another and more respectable name.
   Some will tortuously argue for either ontological gender differences, spurious claims of infallibility (without distinguishing between the types) or point ahistorically to Jesus 'ordaining' men, (all the while utterly undermining the depths of Incarnation), or even blasphemously claim some insight into the intentions of God (so God-like have some become); but then fail to explain why women then must suffer structural inferiority. Why should the charism of priesthood then become translated into structural inequality?
   Inherent injustice and mere authoritarianism have nothing to do with that Kingdom which even now has overtaken many.

   Posted By: MJ

3. This must be the first time I have agreed with public statements made by Archbisgop Pell.
   This is a cheap publicity sunt by the NSW Green MLC.
   As parishioners are the people who build up the finances of local parishes and have ni control over activities - the archibishop is Sole Corporate and the parish priest runs the finances of the parish without even bothering to consult with parishioners. This move would penalise the parishioners, who are "victims twice over" - through being victims of the physical abuses as well as their lack of control of parish finances.

   Posted By: nick agocs

4. The anonymous bishop who 'ordained' this woman doesn't exist. Do journalists believe everything they are told?

   Posted By: David Kennedy

5. I love the way newspapers manipulate language. She is described as a bishop. No she's not. She is a 'bishop'.

   Posted By: Phillip Turnbull

6. Sister Pat is just a cranky old nun. If I might play around with the Hans Kung slogan, let there be: More Jesus, Less Pat.

   Posted By: DRC

7. MJ: Even a cursory at Anglican and protestant churches that have women clergy will give you some indication of the future for the Catholic Church were she to ordain woman as 'priests'.
   You do realise, don't you, that these communities are in terminal decline?
   Please, go and spend some time with them. You may just be a bit shocked at what is going on - and what is believed - or not believed and how things are done. Please go an experience an Anglican Synod. There just might be some chance you might walk away asking yourself, ‘Where the hell was God in all that’?
   If you want to see at first hand The Babylonian Captivity of the Church by A Constitution and Lawyers - get thee to an Anglican Synod!
   You might also find that there are plenty of woman clergy as authoritarian and hectoring as any of the men in the Catholic church you find unsatisfactory.
   Having been an Anglican priest myself, I find Catholics - especially the liberal ones - as much in a ghetto and with little or no awareness of what is happening outside their circle and especially outside the Catholic church - than conditions were in the 1950's.
   Liberal Protestantism and liberal Anglicanism is in its death throes. Go and have a look. Patricia Fresen and her fellow travellers differ in only one respect - these people sing worse hymns.
   

   Posted By: Phillip Turnbull

8. Why do people keep attacking the teachings of the Catholic Church but still want to be part of it?
   If we join a club we cannot dispute the rules, if we are employed somewhere we are expected to uphold the values of our employer's company. So what is it with these people?
   Women are capable of doing much work for the Church and the common good. We don't need to be ordained to do that. That has been proven over and over. The first Australian Saint is was not a priest nor a man!
   The Christian denominations that do have women ministers are falling apart miserably, but they could probably use your help, Patricia.

   Posted By: Michelle

9. Just thinking of the book by M.T. Winter: Out of the depth. (Crossroads Publ.)

   Posted By: Theo verbeek.

10. Well said, MJ! I could not agree with you more.
    

    Posted By: Charles

11. Patricia Fresen appears to be in the vanguard of the revolution. What a revoluntionary moment for her. It is probably the beginning of a new era/dimension to the next 50 years, when most of us will be dead and the church hopefully continues to grow or perhaps metamorphises into something embedded in the future and not the past.

    Posted By: M Bowen

12. Michelle: The church is not a club; it is far more than that.
    If I wanted to join a club I would, but no, I am baptised into this church, into the life of Christ in which we all (not some) share, and the values on which our church is based are being brutalised by those who see it as a club, an empire and an exclusive society.
    Would Jesus recognise our church as one that follows his teaching? In many cases, he would be deeply saddened, I suspect.

    Posted By: Alison Conlan

13. Phillip Turnbull: Are you saying that the Spirit inspired breadth and depth of Catholic Tradition, and what it points to, all rests upon the gender of the priest?
    And that women priests would necessarily mean a transformation of Catholicism into your variation of liberal Protestantism?
    You will need to take me through the many steps needed to get to the scenario you have thrown up.
    Do you really find Catholicism so readily transformable?

    Posted By: MJ

14. MJ, what I am saying as my starting point is that there is a divine order in creation.

    Posted By: Phillip Turnbull

15. As I wrote in another post for those who try to uphold infallibility, women's priesthood and nods to Fr Kung: For Fr Kung, the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood is now - according to the Church's understanding of infallibility - an "irrevocable" and "infallible" doctrine demanding "final assent" from all Catholics. Rome, he says, has acted according to the system (of infallible declarations), "no matter how much Catholic theologians may wriggle and interptreters of dogma twist and turn". (Suddeutsche Zeitung 2/3.12.95). Kung gets it. (Liberals go all gooey when you mention Hans Kung, but watch the blood drain from their faces when you quote him on this.) So: to those upholding women's priesthood AND infallibility (MJ, seemingly?), Fr Kung bids you take the dance floor.

    Posted By: HH

16. I wonder how many of the people who have commented on Bishop Patricia Fresen (mostly not game to give their full names!) have actually met her and heard her speak. I attended the conference of WATAC (Women and the Australian Church) and heard Patricia speak. She was ordained to serve the People of God by a Catholic Bishop who, like me, sees that the Church will have a future only if women are allowed to be ordained just like men. There are now about one hundred validly (although illicitly as Church laws stand at the moment) ordained women priests. We should all be working towards the recognition that "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus". (Galatians 3:28)

    Posted By: Rob Brian

17. Phillip Turnbull, well you cant leave me in suspense: what is this "divine order"; you refer to, how is priesthood related to it, and what has this divine order got to do with your actual point of Catholicism devolving into your understanding of liberal protestantism?

    Posted By: MJ

18. HH, always be wary of presumption. I'm not at all enamoured of Fr Kung - and that for many reasons. That aside, could you explain what you understand by infallible and under what sense of its use the issue of women's ordination falls?

    Posted By: MJ

19. MJ - Space here does not allow for a full response to your request. Can suggest you read 'Women in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption' by Manfred Hauke (Ignatius Press 1988) On a personal note. I used to agree with women's ordination to the priesthood. As a former Anglican priest I took part in womens' ordinations. I hadn't really studied the issue - I just went along with it and accepted the popular opinions and justifications. Then, due to a change in my ministerial activities I found myself in the classroom teaching senior students The Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke. Because of those studies I had to research, amongst other things, the place of women in the Gospels and the topic of women's ordination. A detailed and serious - and I believe - open minded study of the issues brought me to the very clear conclusion that my support for women's ordination was based on a complete misreading and misunderstanding of the Gospels and very shallow theological foundations. My conscience - whose purpose is not to tell me what the truth is - but to locate the truth - led me to repent of my former opinions and brought me eventually into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Locating the truth can be uncomfortable and costly as I discovered. Its not easy to admit to yourself and to your friends that you have been mistaken.

    Posted By: Phillip Turnbull

20. Dear Phillip, thankyou for such personal testimony. I can appreciate the imperative of conscience; but outside of that imperative is that field from which we select those narratives which inform conscience. It is these which I am interested in. I can truthfully assure you that I am aware of the biblical arguments and metaphysical ones against women's priesthood - they are deeply flawed: metaphysically both because of the failure of the metaphysician to look closely from that position from which they ontologise (always pretending that they ontologise from a neutral space) and because of the category errors so usually made (an ontology of gender?); biblically because of the multi-layered inability to locate texts and the actual reading back onto the text fixed ideas that are later developments. Also, and for me most importantly, the usual failure to reflect deeply about Incarnation, and how theologically crippled emphasis upon male priesthood, in light of the Incarnation, is. Instead what we are really left with under the attempted fig leaves is a very static and institutionally contorted notion of tradition; one of routine, Roman order, and conformity for its own sake. A victory of system builders over and against Revelation. However, I would still like to know your actual reasons for choosing against women's ordination - what narratives have informed conscience?

    Posted By: MJ

21. MJ - as I said, this forum is neither the place nor does it provide the space and for me to do what you so kindly request. I can only ask you - Have you read Manfred Hauke's book?

    Posted By: Phillip Turnbull

22. Thank God. It's started.

    Posted By: vivien arnold

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