A graduate of Regis Jesuit High School in Denver interviews her former theology teacher on her experiences in and out of the classroom.

Better sexual education can help uphold the dignity of women’s embodied existence and diminish damaging stigmas.

While at the surface the question about women’s ordination has been asked and answered, rarely has it been asked in this new context where women’s full human dignity is unreservedly affirmed and defended.

More pressing than the question of whether women can be ordained to the priesthood is the reality that clericalism and sexism have created and sustained a system in which women are treated as second-class citizens.

There is a long way to go before women’s voices are satisfactorily integrated into the central leadership of the church.

In the July 23, 1966, issue of America, the cover story featured an essay from a prominent female Catholic philosopher, Mary-Angela Harper, on the nature of womanhood and the question of women’s ordination. Below is a curated selection of some of the letters Ms. Harper’s view evoked