Francis X. Clooney SJ

Reading Jesuit Francis X. Clooney's defense of Mary Hunt and her article, The Trouble With Francis: Three Things That Worry Me.

I haven't been visiting America magazine so much lately but i almost always liked the articles/posts there by Fr. Clooney. Some that I especially liked: 30 Years a Priest: Gratitude, Joy, and a Quiet Lament (2008) ... The Silenc/ing of Roger Haight, SJ (2009) ... Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Art of Staying Catholic (2010) ... Dominus Iesus 10 Years Later: Part III (2010) ... 700 Years Later: Marguerite Porete, Burnt at the Stake, but Unforgotten 92010) ... Holy Thursday 2010: Foot-washing without Hierarchies (2010)

Here's a bit of 30 Years a Priest: Gratitude, Joy, and a Quiet Lament, which dwells on women's ordination ...

[...] This issue -- does God call women as well as men to ordination? -- seems likely to remain one of the great divides in the Church of the 21st century, and we all, men as well as women, are, or should be, suffering through the experience. That the Vatican has definitively ended the discussion does not make it less likely that many will continue to have hearts rent by the issue. I am sure God hears many a prayer, many a day, on the topic. But no matter what we think, there is room for quiet lament, and particularly those of us who are ordained should feel this sadness mingled with the joy appropriate to anniversaries of ordination. The priesthood is, as I have said, a great gift, and I know how very sad it would be to have been barred from it, from the start or along the way. I can only try to imagine the sentiments of a woman who has experienced, with humility and conviction, this calling, faced as she is with the prospect of the Church’s insistence that it is incapable of ordaining women -- as if to say: "Even if God calls, the Church cannot." It is clear that some women have moved on, and do not want Roman Catholic ordination any more; others never did; many more have found ways of living out their vocations fruitfully in Church and world. Nevertheless, some still grieve, many who know them and their gifts still grieve, and it is with them all, at my 30th anniversary of ordination, that I lament. It is mindful of them, and for them, that I shall be celebrating the Eucharist on June 10. I think it most appropriate that every priest celebrating an ordination anniversary, most often around this time of the year, take the occasion to pray with, mindful of, women who have discerned that God is calling them to ordination in the Church.