Noonan Calls for Women Priests

Peggy Noonan writes about "How to Save the Catholic Church" in her column today in the Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304510004575186451300061536-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwMzEyNDMyWj.html

Over the years she has been a fairly conservative voice in the Roman Catholic Church, but today she comes out for ordaining women as priests.

"The old Vatican needs new blood," she says today. "They need to let younger generations of priests and nuns rise to positions of authority within a new church. Most especially and most immediately, they need to elevate women. As a nun said to me this week, if a woman had been sitting beside a bishop transferring a priest with a history of abuse, she would have said: 'Hey, wait a minute!'"

Noonan reviews a column she wrote eight years ago in response to sexual abuse by priests in Boston, in which she called for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who attempted to hide the crimes.

She took a lot of criticism for that column. A year later the Cardinal, after being moved to a high-ranking post in Rome, told her: "We don't need friends of the church turning on the church at such a difficult time. We need loyalty...."

Yeah right, she says now.

You need reform. You need a younger generation of priests and nuns in "positions of authority."

I don't see how women would have authority without being at least priests if not bishops, archbishops, and cardinals--so I take it Noonan is in her traditionally mild voice calling for women's ordination.

You go, girl.