The delusion of women's ordination.

Quebec City -- On December 2, 2005, Quebec's Lieutenant-Governor Lise Thibault attended a ceremony to launch a new book, L'Histoire du Quebec a travers ses lieutenant-gouverneurs (The History of Quebec through its Lieutenant-Governors). In a speech before approximately 200 persons, Ms. Thibault said, to great applause, that one day women would be admitted to the priesthood. The Archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, was in the audience. (So much for her diplomacy.)

The local papers, of course, had a field day. The front page headline of Le Soleil (a Quebec City daily) was "L'ordination des femmes est inevitable, affirme Lise Thibault" (Dec. 7, 2005).

This is only one incident among others that feeds the illusion in Canada that the ordination of women is still a possibility. As pointed out in our April edition (C.I., p.17), Quebec Catholic feminists created a public uproar when, in 1994, the Magisterium solemnly ruled that the ordination of priests was reserved to men only. At that time the Quebec bishops remained silent, or gave only evasive answers, thereby encouraging the speculation to continue. This year the demands of the "Quebec nineteen "again included the ordination of women (C.I., April '06). Again there has been Episcopal silence.

In January 2006 the Canadian Religious Conference, too, acted as if it had never heard of the definitive apostolic letter of 1994 closing the debate. It presented the call for the ordination of women as something perfectly reasonable and normal. Yet, only a few months earlier, in the summer of 2005, the Archbishops of Kingston and Ottawa had made it clear that the so-called Women's Ordination on the St. Lawrence river was the action of a heretical group of women who were no longer part of the Catholic Church (see Donna O'Connor-Hunnisett, "Ordination of women priests," C.I., Oct. 2005).

In October 2005, the Bishop of Peterborough suspended Fr. Ed Cachia, who publicly continued to contradict the teaching of the Church on this subject (see C.I., Dec. 2005, pp. 26-27). In March 2006, it was necessary for the bishop to formally excommunicate him. As dissenters continue to push the issue as, for example, in Toronto's Catholic New Times, perhaps the bishops--or if not all of them, at least one or two--could find the courage to tell the Canadian Religious Conference to align itself with the Church, or else close down.