Have any Catholic bishops in Ireland undergone equal-opportunities training? It is a serious question that I have asked before with a depressingly predictable answer. I could have asked the same question about the Pope and the entire Curia and been tolerably sure of the answer....
  The God-ordained equality of women... has never been just a debate between men and women. Rather, it has been a debate between the rigid, conditioning forces of an old world and the challenging, insistent voices of the new emerging world. What is more, the latter, despite the recent chilling retrenchment on the ordination of women and indeed possibly because of it, scent victory not far off.
  The very fact that this Pope has felt it necessary to return frequently in the past few years to the subject of women, tells its own story. His words are not those of a man who believes he is on the comfortable side of a debate. Far from it; they are the words of a man who is slowly realising that the citadel’s defences have been breached and its once staunch defenders are a declining population... today, women talk a language many of these men simply do not understand and have difficulty relating to. It is the language of tomorrow’s world, not the language of yesterday’s seminary.   

(From The Tablet 15/03/’97)