THE VATICAN has given the answer 'No' to the ordination

of women for the time being, but has set up a Papal Commission to examine the question.
At a meeting of some 200 people including priests and nuns in Rome last week, Archbishop Enrico Bartolettl, President of the Vatican's Commission on the role of women in society and the Church, said "We did give attention to the hypothesis of the ordination of women and we have asked the Holy See to make a clear theological response. What we can hope for is to see why ordination is not, repeat not, being granted to women."
Questions, mainly put by manifestly disappointed American nuns were evaded by the Archbishop who stated "The Church's primary obligation is to promote vocations and do all we can to increase candidates for the priesthood ... and to promote the role of women In the Church within the present possibilities."
Meanwhile in the United States a national organisation was launched on November 30 to promote the ordination of women to the priesthood. Al a meeting in Detroit attended by over 1200 people including nuns and priests, there was overwhelming support for the motion to campaign locally and nationally for women priests.
To mark the close of International Women's Year, the Catholic research institute "Pro Mundi Vita" have published a report entitled "Women, the Women's movement and the future of the Church."
The question it asks the Church is not whether she is for or against the women's movement but rather how she is going to face up to it. The document asks questions about the Church's changing attitudes on sexuality, women priests, the rearing of children, contraception and decision making in church and society.
It admits that there is no longer any theological reason against the ordination of women and challenges the Vatican's authoritarian but evasive policy. It also points out that since women have most influence over children during their formative years, the Church relies on women to bring children up as Christians.
The situation developing in Western Europe is that more and more women can decide for themselves how they live and enjoy relationships of equality with men. This challenges the Church at least for its own sake to change its attitude and structures with regard to women.
"Pro Mundi Vita" quotes the encyclical "Gaudium et Spes" "with regard to the fundamental rights of the person every type of discrimination ... based on sex ... is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent" and asks "has not the application of this principle remained a pious wish?"
The document also suggests that the Catholic Church more than any other institution has remained a bastion of masculine supremacy and feminine repression.
Fair for CAFOD
A parish of 1,500 in Merseyside's dockland, together with the Birkenhead Apostleship of the Sea, has raised E3,200 for CAFOD in a three-day autumn fair organised by Fr George Brown, the parish priest.
"We felt that the needs of the starving were greater than our own," said Fr Brown.