Since the close of Vatican II, incredible numbers of the church’s professionals–priests and sisters, scholastics and brothers–have left. New vocations can nowhere begin to make up for reduced numbers due to leaving, death, and retirement. Church leaders ineffectively attempt to make up for the losses by ordaining lay deacons, merging parishes, and turning over schooling and administration to lay people. In the end only three options appear promising: ordaining women, ordaining married men and women, allowing lay leaders to consecrate and celebrate the Eucharist. Protestations that we can’t do that simply do not have historical truth behind them.
