“Group ordains three women as Catholic priests” read the headline from a Sun Journal article on July 21.

I say bravo. However, the Vatican has issued a warning that any women taking part in the ordination will be excommunicated.

We don’t have to look far to see that male priests are an endangered species. Catholic churches are closing or merging because the pope and Vatican officials are too narrow-minded to see male priests are dying a slow death.

While in Australia, Pope Benedict XVI said that it was up to a new generation of Christians to build a world in which “God’s gifts be respected and cherished, not rejected, feared or destroyed.”

Yet this pope is destroying his own church.

Church officials are blinded to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church will not survive unless it welcomes women as equal partners, sharing the same duties as the male priests. As it is, the women do most of the work of the church. Perhaps the women should refuse to donate their time and money until they are recognized as equals.

It is time for Catholic women to stand up and demand that the Vatican be open to a new era, where instead of closing churches, it will be looking forward to building more places to welcome a larger group of people into its community.

Rolande Caron, South Paris