VERSE
IHM, Eleanor Fitzgibbons
dained, we know that the virtue or lack of virtue in the priest does not change the validity of the sacraments. However, I am against the public declaration of one's "sexual orientation," and...
...In the Orthodox Church the Sacrament of Penance is called The Mystery of the Second Baptism...
...Perhaps in order to be One Body once more we need to die, to die to all the fears and judgmentalness and more-saved-than-thou-ness that has kept us apart for so many centuries...
...I don't want to forget that my own spirit may be informed by that Holy Spirit who informs the bread and wine...
...My mother couldn't carry a baby for more than three months and she lost countless babies...
...The Lord be with you...
...I hope we won't let anyof these unanswered questions push us further apart, ~But how to get together...
...However, I am against the public declaration of one's "sexual orientation," and feel ,that this is, indeed, a disqualification...
...But if we allow the world to tear us apart, if we allow internal quarrels to tear us apart, then we are indeed ill...
...The Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her order, the reawakening church in South America (if nothing and no one else) refute that...
...o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ELEANOR FITZGIBBONS, IHM ON T~E llARIDENING OF ARTERIES "How can a man be born again when he is old," Nicodemus parried...
...Another issue over which we're still at odds is abortion...
...Christianity is anything but deed...
...Likewise I'm sure...
...I need to confess my sins, regularly, to a priest, to receive absolution...
...We are often faced with alternatives where there is no right choice, and then the only thing to do is pray that we have, in fact, chosen the lesser of two evils...
...If I need a serious operation and the surgeon feels impelled to declare to me that he is either homo- or heterosexual, I'm going to look for another doctor...
...Perhaps my own experience makes me subjective...
...And the bones that he has broken may rejoice...
...I had better not name names and places in this sorry world, but there have been a number of Roman Catholic settings in which I have been lovingly offered, and received, Holy Communion...
...only people can do it, people who believe not only in the cross but in the Resurrection...
...And vice versa...
...Many in the secular world think of Christianity as terminally ill, if not dead...
...Commonweal:333...
...When, nearly forty, she became pregnant with me, the doctor told her that neither she nor the child could possibly survive the pregnancy, and she should have an immediate therapeutic abortion...
...The Bible as vehicle of God's grace is something over which we have little argument...
...Stories about flawed and foolish people like ourselves, like our friends and neighbors, and who may, if we listen to them carefully, give us a clearer idea of what separates us ~and what does not, and how we can once again become whole and holy...
...i know I gag inordinately over the ugly rhythm of '~And also with you," but I've never known anyone who spoke that way...
...I have long believed that God is quite capable of taking care of his own table, and that he often invites for dinner those from the highways and byways who would be rejected by the hierarchies...
...I cannot say that I think abortion is never permissible...
...Do we have to use the lowest possible common denominator...
...What has been done to the language, in both Roman and Anglo-Catholic translations, is something else again...
...And also with you...
...It's meant to be in the language of the people, but wha.t people...
...Have you forgotten how to love or remember the dying we call winter that begets another spring...
...I believe that union is on its way, and that it is coming from within, not without...
...Amongst other things,i.t is full of wonderful stories...
...I find that what has been done to the shape of the Eucharist, .the telling of the story, is (for me) alive and compelling...
...She lived to be ninety and I'm still here...
...But I think that we of the broken body need to confess together, too...
...The main problem is that it is not read regularly enough by enough people...
...I do think that it is sin (unpopular, unfashionable word) but that sometimes it is the lesser sin...
...And then we will be made to be born into the Kingdom of God, to serve and please him, dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God Through Jesus Christ our Lord...
...to be willing to be killed to our sins...
...Most of the issues before us are basically Catholic issues, and all unresolved ones, despite the fact that in the Episcopal Church(and some other but not all branches of the Anglican Communion) women may be and are being ordained...
...Another controversial issue has been the new translations of the liturgy...
...Hierarchies can't do this for us...
...The priest Juan Carlos Orris in South America uses this baptismal formula: "I kill you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and I make you born into the Kingdom of God to serve and please him...
...It's too late for paper work and red tape...
...So she went to a Roman Catholic doctor (this was in 1918...
...And where language is weak, theology is weak...
...Let alone things heavenly: Spirit and water, the kingdom of God, I want to cry: Old man, what has happened to you...
Vol. 105 • May 1978 • No. 11
