My Interview with the BBC on "Women Priests"


Today I was interviewed by the BBC about the “Catholic Church and Women Priests.” I was all set to go with quotes from John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I guess I should not have been surprised when the kind lady doing the interview said, “There have been plenty of polls. We’re living in the twenty-first century. Shouldn’t the Catholic Church get with the times?”

I answered that the Church does not determine her dogma by polling and that modernity rejects much of what the Catholic Church teaches. “Most people don’t believe dead men rise from the dead – but that doesn’t mean the Catholic Church is going to “get with the times” and remove the Resurrection of Christ from the books.

I also tried to explain how the Catholic priesthood his not a vocation of mere function. The priest “loans his voice and body to Christ at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass when he consecrates the bread and wine.”

The interviewer replied, “But these are just symbols. Can’t they be modified?”

To which I answered, “The Catholic Church does not believe that the priest and the Eucharist are mere symbols. The priest is an icon of Christ who literally acts and speaks in persona Christi, and the consecrated Body is the actual substantial Body of Christ.

Hopefully, it comes out well.

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