
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 31, 1994                   TAG: 9405310064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ROME                                LENGTH: Medium

POPE SAYS WOMEN CAN'T BE PRIESTS

Pope John Paul II told the world's Catholics on Monday to abandon any thought of women being ordained as priests, saying that the issue was not open to debate and that his views must be "definitively held by all the church's faithful."

Although the pope's words fell just short of a formal statement of infallible doctrine, the particularly severe and authoritative tone of his letter to bishops suggested that he was seeking to remove the idea from the Catholic agenda for decades to come.

Coming only three days after the Vatican unveiled the English translation of its new universal catechism - originally submitted with gender-neutral language but altered to refer to "man," for example, instead of "humanity" - the statement seemed certain to reinforce the impression of a papacy wary of feminist intrusion.

"Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force," the letter said.

"Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful," it said.

Archbishop William H. Keeler of Baltimore, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a comment reflecting an awareness that the papal letter might cause turmoil in important segments of the American church. He emphasized that "the Catholic Church affirms the fundamental equality of women and men" in leadership as well as in basic dignity, although leadership of different sorts.

Keeler addressed "all those who might find this further affirmation of the church's authentic teaching difficult to accept." He asked them "to receive it lovingly" and "pray for understanding."

The pope's Apostolic Letter was titled "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone."

The Vatican says that the priesthood should be reserved for men on the scriptural grounds that Jesus Christ chose only male apostles.

"The church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord's way of acting in choosing the 12 men whom he made the foundations of his church," the pope said Monday. He also referred to statements issued by Pope Paul VI that linked Christ's choice of men with the symbolic role of the priest in representing Jesus at the altar.

Women should accept this situation "as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe," the pope said.

An official statement accompanying the papal letter described the teaching excluding women from the priesthood as "certainly true."

by CNB