Apropos of the recent blog entry on the Cincinnati priests who wrote an open letter demanding reconsideration of celibacy and priestesses to make up for the priest shortage, Bettnet commenter Rich Leonardi recently wrote an op-ed for the Cincinnati Enquirer on this very topic. He rejects these recycled old “reform” attempts that surfaced back in the 70s as meaningless. Instead, we need a return to dynamic orthodoxy, committed prayer for vocations, effective seminaries, and heroic role models among the current generation of priests. After all, you don’t see priests in diocese like Lincoln and Denver complaining about declining number of priests, because they ordain more men each year than a dozen “progressive” dioceses combined. So what do they know that the others don’t? That more vocations doesn’t mean abandoning Church teaching, but embracing it.
