Manchester, Monday, 22 May 2017, 10.30 p.m.

With the appointment of a ‘Commission of Study on the Diaconate of Women’ by Pope Francis there might be a temptation to suspend the debate on the issue until they publish a report. However as Vatican commissions tend to be very long running affairs it is necessary and good that the debate continues in all local churches.
Judith Valence writing in America Magazine gives a very interesting account of how the issue is perceived in Chicago.
“Maureen Garvey often serves alongside her husband, Deacon Kevin Garvey at their parish ……. ‘We had the exact same training, two nights a week, one weekend a month, summer internships,” she says of her husband’s formation studies. “I wrote every paper he wrote. The only thing that was different was on the day of ordination, I had tears in my eyes when all the guys were called up [to the altar] and they left their wives sitting in the pews’ “

Kevin Hayes offer some wisdom to Archbishop Brown, Papal Nuncio; as he says “At seventy-seven I feel entitled to lecture even Papal Nuncios!”
“I still have warm regard and concern for our Christian people, in Irish, Pobal Dé. I use that term rather than Church. I am not a great admirer of the institutional Catholic church. I believe the institution has become more important than the Christian message, the Word of God. The institution has become more important than the individual person and so many times its interests have been placed before the good of the person.”