DR N C MACGREGOR-FAIRLIE, Feb 25m has resorted to an arid one-dimensional argument in denouncing your Editorial, Feb. 11, by alleging you have "no sympathy for not understanding of the women who feel deeply hurt because the Church will not allow them to use gifts and capacities in the service of the Lord and of His people. You think women should be silent and store up wisdom...."
I presume by all this that the doctor's dilemma involves having an overt bash at the no-women-priests trendy (rather than religious) question.
However, your Editorial, quoting a Poor Clare Convent chaplain, recalled that Our Lady "went through every day with wide open eyes and an open mind.
'She kept things in her mind and pondered over them . . the real qualification for wisdom is to be teachable. That was her humility .. . we shall be most like Our Lady if we are humble and preserve our sense of wonder. We shall grow most like her not by self assertion, not by saying 'there's nothing you can each me',
but by imitating her docility, humility and obedience'. "
Surely, true enlightenment stems back to apostle St Paul's basic observation: "Seek (Truth) and ye shall find", coupled with our most profound Christian prayer "Our Father Who art in Heaven."
Continuing the theme, it is, to me, the natural instinctive spiritual order of things that Confession must be to a man priest (essentially representing Our Father). Yet, I have found it equally natural, as a woman, to take a children's Catechism class for many years; to teach the same boys and girls ballroom dancing so they might learn to mix well together in the nicest way; and eventually, after deep thought and personal observation, to write my children's instruction in the Faith book My Way to god (it wa.s honoured with the Papal logo for Pope John Paul's visit to Great Britain last year).
Does not all this service to endorse the spiritual supporting role of women as exampled in the classic sense of devotion Our Lady showed as Mother of the Son of God?
Gladys Parkin Kent