THE LONG AND SUBTLE SERVITUDE
McCarthy, Abigail
THE LONG AND SUBTLE SERVITUDE We have slipped into 1975, International Woman's Year, with surprisingly little fanfare. There are even indications that what women hoped would be a year of...
...There are none now...
...For the woman, the narrow institutions of the past seem more dispensable than ever, because woman has discovered her sister...
...Abigail McCarthy He gives "Catholic-Christian" significance to the development of the current movement: "Not even the prophets of the sixties foresaw how deeply centered in the Christian mystery the movement of equality for women ought to be...
...The unpromising beginning of the year was brightened, however, by the pastoral letter introducing the year on the Feast of the Epiphany by Bishop Carroll T. Dozier of Memphis...
...The time has not come for that," said a callow Johnson man to an earnest questioner at the Women's National Democratic Club...
...These are startling words for a bishop...
...They found employment, however, to be unequal, compensation unfair, hiring practices arbitrary, and advancement uncertain...
...No, lasting progress does not come woman by woman...
...Their mutual embrace reaches around the world...
...In reality, in so many cases, essential human rights were infringed upon in the name of sanctity...
...More and more women came to consider the civil rights they had, but could not enjoy...
...it is feminist, reverential, even ecclesial...
...There were women in the President's cabinet in the Roosevelt and Eisenhower administrations...
...He speaks of religious women: 'The essentials of Sisterhood were believed to be in multi-layered obediences...
...Certainly true...
...Unemployment figures are inflated, and less serious, we are told, because they include large numbers of women and young people —classically they are secondary citizens who really should not be counted...
...He speaks, for example, of working women: who "became career people and a large part of the work force of the country...
...But there seems to me to be a curious dichotomy in this remarkable pastoral...
...We were so slow to see, and many, many, still cannot see that, although woman had in theory the right to civic and economic opportunity, she could not enjoy the right...
...There were none in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations...
...He was very sincere, although a little short on facts...
...The theory that an advance for the individual woman is an advance for all women has been proved false by history...
...There are even indications that what women hoped would be a year of significant forward thrust in achieving equality for their worldwide sisterhood may be, instead, a year of slipping back...
...In addition, our national celebration of the year here in Washington has been planned, month by month, as a series of dinners honoring the exceptional women in this field or that: the women called by dissident feminists "queen bees," those who enter a man's world on man's terms...
...Not even woman herself speculated, at first, on what ought to happen . . . .....women addressed every need,' leaving their own for last.....Woman's coming of age was furthered by other human developments that have unfolded over the past few decades...
...There have been women in the United States Senate since the 1920s...
...It is hard, even for women, to acknowledge that long and subtle servitude...
...This last statement is a marvelously succinct explanation of what the new feminism is about...
...Heedless institutions must inevitably pay the costs of indifference...
...Certainly factual...
...Identity as Religious was soon to be challenged by a more fundamental need, identity as woman...
...The bishop says it flatly: "Twentieth century woman cannot be expected to treasure those institutions that have limited her freedom, growth and opportunity in life...
...woman no longer fits the ecclesial role she inherited...
...He speaks of woman in the church, woman who has developed competence through multiple services to the church as an institution...
...Recent political experience proves that point...
...Bishop Dozier speaks of what is and what should be as if they both obtained...
...And almost every institution of our society put other bars in her way...
...The bishop speaks, as he said he hoped to do, with urgency and sensitivity of the "long and subtle servitude" which must give way to justice...
...She might even be depressed by the realization that no one really cares...
...It is doubtful, for example, whether affirmative action in regard to the employment of women will survive in a disastrously slumping economy...
...They are not the language of pastoral prose, which often seems to be swathed in a woolly cassock of impenetrability...
...But we must share the painful presence of those who seek to relate more maturely in love and service to the whole People of God...
...Entrenched injustice can always tolerate the exception...
...There were psychological and sociological barriers...
...Italics mine...
...True, and consoling from a bishop...
...It is when Bishop Dozier speaks of a worldwide sisterhood of "Christian-Catholic" women that he enters the realm of what should be, but what is still the stuff of dream: "We must not overlook the transcendent dimension, nor the practical idealism that lifts the feminist aspiration above the restrictions of language, culture, or nationalism...
...Woman's awakening is indeed as global as inflation...
...She is not enthusiastic about a condition that has not kept pace with her life's experience...
...No woman is an...
...She has remained faithful to the Church...
Vol. 101 • February 1975 • No. 15
