Cardinal Šeper had a difficult job at the helm of the former Holy Office -- he had to try his best to balance the demands of Pope Paul VI and the wild waves of dissent which ravaged the Church in the most terrible of decades for orthodoxy in modern times, the 1970s.
Questions which would never have even been considered as admissible were asked, and the Holy See was forced to answer them, if only for ecumenical purposes. And, in October 1976, the Church of Rome had to make clear the only possible position regarding the possibility of the priestly ordination of women:
Questions which would never have even been considered as admissible were asked, and the Holy See was forced to answer them, if only for ecumenical purposes. And, in October 1976, the Church of Rome had to make clear the only possible position regarding the possibility of the priestly ordination of women:
"The Church's tradition in the matter has thus been so firm in the course of the centuries that the Magisterium has not felt the need to intervene in order to formulate a principle which was not attacked, or to defend a law which was not challenged. But each time that this tradition had the occasion to manifest itself, it witnessed to the Church's desire to conform to the model left her by the Lord."
And this model was only one: an all-male priesthood, solemnly confirmed by Pope John Paul II in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.
