On Saturday February 23rd The New York Times Opinion page had this excellent opinion by Alice McDermott, author, novelist and essayist: Why the Priesthood Needs Women.

Of course, I am in total agreement with Ms. McDermott but want to point out to Ms. McDermott and readers that we are already here since 2002 when highly prepared Roman Catholic women were ordained on the Danube river and in 2003 a bishop who is still fully in communion with the RC Church ordained women bishops- for the sake of the church- who have passed down the line of Peter validly although illicitly through the Roman Catholic WomenPriest Movement. This Bishop’s name name will only be revealed upon his death although our bishops know it and have met him. Perhaps the women priests of RCWP International (and ARCWP) are not mentioned as we have broken canon law stating that only men can be ordained. But as St. Augustine noted an unjust law needs to be broken. And it has been so that now there are over 265 ordained RC women in the priesthood throughout the world. Thanks be to God for this start , not only at justice but at creating a priesthood of women and men who live out their Holy Orders in shepherding the people of God, especially those who are sometimes left out by the institutional church- the divorced, the LGBTQ community, and many others on the margins who have not been welcomed to the table of Jesus by the traditional RC church which, a table he has spread for all.