Fr. Hunwicke’s Unboring Take on the Boring Subject of Women’s Ordination

The Venerable Fr. John Hunwicke, like many, is bored beyond tears and then some by the subject of Women’s Ordination.  But with rumblings of a push within the Church of Rome for WO, he has reluctantly but colorfully provided the service of what may be in store as only he can.  His observations from long experience certainly apply to other jurisdictions that may have to deal with the issue.  Some highlights:

(3) …if you with strategic good sense start off instead with deacons [as was the case in the Church of England and elsewhere], you can get the laity used to seeing vested females buzzing around the Sanctuary and having "The Reverend" attached to their names. And such ladies will not be as divisive as women priests because the validity of no Sacrament depends upon the diaconate. Then you can move on to women priests, starting off by placing them carefully in churches where they will be 'pastorally acceptable'. Only when you have successfully completed that phase will you move in for the final kill. You see how the trick is worked. Rather Bergoglian, really, in its 'gradualism'. But it is a fundamentally dishonest trick. Crooks, the lot of them!

(4) It will be suggested that those opposing WO are people who "'have problems" with female sexuality or just with women anyway. I remember actually once being told that I must have a phobia of menstrual blood. Quite a conversation-stopper ... 

I can imagine it was.  But Fr. Hunwicke advises to get used to it:

In other words, if you choose to fight this battle within the Catholic Church, you will need to be ready to have some immensely vile personal attacks made upon you. Our opponents, generally speaking, possess neither decency nor shame. Feminists of either sex are rarely Gentlemen! You will need a very thick skin.

He said it.  I didn’t. . . .   But he could have gone further actually.   In addition to being bored to death, those who do not recognize women’s ordination will be not only be vilified, but risk being ghettoized.  See the Philip North affair.

By his own admission, Fr. Hunwicke’s post is practical, not theological.  But it is the practical, namely seeing women’s ordination in practice, that has turned me from a tolerant agnostic on the question into a wary opponent.