Sometimes you have to wonder where some bishops got their theological education. In one case, he apparently got it with the prize in his box of Cracker Jacks. An auxiliary bishop in Liverpool, England, has suggested that the Church allow women to hear confessions. But of course, he’s not advocating women priests.
Bishop Vincent Malone says that some women may feel uncomfortable going to a male confessor, so female ones would be good. After all we have female doctors for that reason, right?
“Common practice in our society today would expect equal access in many professions to either a man or a woman at the client’s choice. It would be an unusual medical practice that did not have both male and female practitioners. Similarly with a firm of solicitors or a team of counsellors.”
Once again, we have the priesthood reduced to a job, not a vocation.
He justifies his statement by saying that, after all, a priest is not strictly required to marry a couple or baptize someone. That is true, but only because those sacraments existed before Jesus Christ and were raised to the sacraments by him. (That’s an oversimplification, I know, but I don’t time to go into the whole thing.) But absolution is an act of Christ and requires someone who acts in persona Christi, and that someone must be a priest.
It’s amazing that so many bishops feel compelled to bow down and bend over backwards to accommodate feminists, more so than any other group. Why is that?
