Should Women Be Priests?
Novak, Michael
SHOULD WOMEN BE PRIESTS? MICHAEL NOVAK Ten years ago in Rome, those of us who were in favor of changing the Latin liturgy did not properly perceive that reform could be botched as badly as...
...Holiness is no respecter of sex...
...Although Lorenz states that his fears of genetic decay apply only to "rapidly spreading juvenile criminality but not to the world-wide rebellion of modern youth," just four pages later he notes: "The revolt of modern youth is founded on hatred . . . . " And, further on, he indicates that the older generation, albeit hazily, accurately perceives that the "ostensible protests" of youth are in reality "insults and aggressivity fueled by hatred...
...1-74S, Aransas Pass, Texas 78336...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...We hadn't thought carefully enough about the anthropology behind what we were advocating...
...Latin has the advantage of using both masculine and feminine nouns as the names of God: Caritas, Sapientia, Justitia, Pax, Veritas, and others...
...Donations should be sent to: Sister Maureen, Superior, Carmel Convent, Madhupur S.P.,Bihar, India...
...Books Printed BOOKS PRINTED from well-typed manuscripts...
...Begin in August of 1975...
...His analysis of the present rests both on this image of a better society (the romanticized past) and on a simplistic biologism...
...Lorenz's answers to our contemporary dilemma create a vision of a verdant, rural past in which people grew vegetables, tended animals, lived in villages, ostracized deviants, disciplined 'parasites,' respected their elders, and recognized the "rank order of things...
...Potential to do what...
...Airmail,26c) Commonweal: 221 Give Commonweal this Christmas A gift subscription to Commonweal last Christmas has provided the recipients with such timely features as the following, all through 1974: Women in the Priesthood by Clara Maria Hennings The Vatican by Peter Hebblethwaite The Politics o/Hunger by Richard Neuhaus Divorce and Remarriage by David S. Toolan Energy: End o/an Era...
...Only a short while ago our reformers were telling us, properly, that the priesthood does not concern power or status but ministry...
...MICHAEL NOVAK Ten years ago in Rome, those of us who were in favor of changing the Latin liturgy did not properly perceive that reform could be botched as badly as tradition...
...57c, three times...
...We argued that intelligibility was the determining principle: The use of the vernacular at the Eucharist would allow people to understand each word in their own language...
...In using erotic imagery of God, men do not think of a homosexual relation...
...If you really want to learn Spanish quickly, fluently and correctly, and if you have the courage and stamina for intensive and disciplined study, then come for at least a month to CIDOC in Cuernavaca...
...Classified payable with order...
...In the case of genetic decay, Lorenz sees mankind's "natural" and "mysterious" sense of justice rising up to triumph over decadent tolerance...
...nor was carnality or masculinity involved in St...
...C l a s s i f i e d RATES: 60c a word, one time...
...For complete catalog, write CIDOC, Apdu...
...In taking on human flesh, God accepted the restrictions and the limitations of this bi-sexual concrete world...
...The male and the female bodies evoke differential symbols, There are some civilizations whose inner deal is pitched toward the symbols of womanhood--the Middle Ages were such a period...
...Participation in other CIDOC events $3 weekly...
...Women, it is said, are the (political) equals of men, and so they should have equal status and power in the church...
...Weekly tuition $50...
...10016...
...No doubt the church's administration should more nearly reflect feminine symbols...
...The reconsideration of all the complicated issues involved has been a searing institutional experience...
...Right-to-Reply Laws by Thomas Powers Law, Morals and Abortion by Daniel A. Degnan Protecting the Unborn by Paul Ramsey Feeding the Un/ed by Martin M. McLaughlin Columns by Sisyphus, Michael Novak and Abigail McCarthy Chile: Terror by Computer by Gary MacEoin Solzhenitsyn's Long Cry o/Rage by Saul Maloff The Vaticanizing o/ American Art by Frank Getlein Arms Sales: The Economics o/Death by Douglas Mattern Commonweal's 50th Anniversary Issue Catholics in South Viemam by Jayne Werner This year's Christmas gift subscriptions to Commonweal will bring a year's equally rewarding abundance of good reading to the friends and relatives you designate...
...The two phenomena are additionally linked for the reader as he or she encounters Lorenz's repeated use of highly emotive language ("progressive infantilism and increasing juvenile delinquency . . .", "decay of genetically anchored social behavior...
...Priests are the servants of the people...
...The ordination of women is not a political but a spiritual issue...
...Sic, th?rteen times...
...Paul MJnear are three of the vls~fing professors for the Spring Term, 1975, Department of Theology, Catholic University, Washington, D.C...
...In this reform of the liturgy, of course, not all was loss...
...Thinkers like Henry Adams are not alone in grasping the essential inner difference between the Catholic and the Calvinist age in respect to feminine and masculine symbols...
...BIOGRAPHY PRESS, Rt...
...What, given Lorenz's analysis of the problems, is to be done...
...That, to me, is the scienfist's "deadly sin...
...Society will somehow rid itself of or protect itself from "deviants...
...It is true that language betrays us...
...54c, seven times...
...no one can live up to it...
...m m m m m CHRISTMAS ORDER FORM m m m m m m P l e a s e send t h e s e f r i e n d s m _9 a g i f t subseription a t t h e Name m s p e c i a l Christmas Rates: m 1 Subscription, $ 1 5 ; each Street I m a d d i t i o n a l , $12 (Add $2 for m postage outside U.S...
...The church undertook a massive and courageous effort to fulfill the Socratic ideal of "the examined life...
...If this is so, the sin is a newly discovered one...
...One-time registration fee $100...
...20064...
...I am in favor of the ordination of women...
...The issue is not solely cultural, at least not cultural in a trivial sense...
...There are perhaps elements in the Catholic priesthood whose significance depends upon their embodiment in males, and is falsified by the ordination of females...
...Contact: Fr...
...We need some sound and bracing argument on all sides of this issue, so that we may see more clearly what we are doing...
...Millions did enjoy the new comfort of worshipping in their own language, and the spontaneity encouraged by the patterns of the "folk" mass...
...To atone for the 'sin' of breaking with the past, more authoritarian patterns of bringing up children should be reinstitutionalized, the father must be restored to his rightful place (on top) in the "rank order" of things, and women must return to devoting "full time" to their children...
...The meaning is intended to humble...
...For Lorenz, the "natural sense of justice" seems roughly coterminous with a demand for law and order and an assertion of the primacy of the group...
...For the Catholic people, the ordination of women would be the launching of major--perhaps constructive, perhaps destructive--symbolic currents...
...Bihar IN ONE OF INDIA'S hardest hit regions a Carmelite convent seeks help for the children of the poor Santhal tribes they are feeding, clothing and educating in their primary school They are hard hit by the inflation and food shortages...
...If people and societies are constituted, at least in part, by the beliefs and concepts they adopt, the scientific expert should be extraordinarily responsible in advancing certain propositions because these propositions, once advanced, become a part of the reality they purport to 'describe' or explain...
...But there is also another form of symbolism: not of the body but of the spirit...
...It is not difficult to imagine a woman presiding over the Eucharist, deeply united to the Lord, a humble servant of the people, if the Spirit of God possesses her, if she speaks and acts with the humble authority that comes from the Gospels, we have great need of such priests, masculine or feminine...
...It was, so to speak, an unconscious, unwilled sin...
...We hadn't counted on the use of suburban supermarket English...
...Konrad Lorenz should ask himself: how would a government which adopted my view of 'genetic decay' treat youthful offenders...
...nO| 000 Oee Michael Novak (Cont...
...Teresa's imagery of her "divine Spouse...
...In the inner experience of millions, God is perceived in quite different ways: among some, as an all-mastering voice of conscience, masculine and oppressive...
...hut they were clearly perceived as affronts to then current images of masculine perfection, The courtesy, charity, and compassion of the warlike knights were seen as sweetening modifications of barbarian (Continued on page 221) 29 November 1974:206 murdered grandmother fresh in his mind, the reader easily slides into Lorenz's assertion that modern youth feel a diffuse "hostility" towards their elders...
...Gentleness, patience, humility, kindness and other virtues of the early Christians were androgynous...
...Theology Godfrey Diekmann, O.S.B., Louis Bouyer and Dr...
...The symbol system is already, as Nietzsche saw, heavily weighted on the feminine side...
...Women, then, in asking to be accepted as servants, are not asking for power, status, or prestige...
...among others, as the center of the soul, neither masculine nor feminine, a voice deeper in the self than the self, gentle and also majestic...
...It becomes a matter of simple "logic" for the reader to wind up agreeing with Lorenz that "genetic decay" will usher in "the apocalypse in a particularly horrible form...
...an all-male presence--as on an all-male campus--stifles something in the spirit...
...But on this issue there is no need to proceed by imputing guilt for the past...
...In the latter traditions, impersonal (and thus non-sexual) metaphors are stronger than anthropomorphic images...
...It is possible that women priests conspicuous by their holiness of life will give the entire ministry one of those periodic impulses of renewal which in Catholic history have been so necessary, and so thankfully received...
...it LEARN SPANISH...
...Are women symbolically interchangeable with men-do they signify for the imagination the same realities...
...But cultural symbolism is a respecter of sex...
...on the general watering down of Christian mysteries to the level of "human potential" movements and "sensitivity...
...James CorJden, Department of Theology, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, Washington, D.C...
...There is enough to do in thinking through the requirements of a better future...
...Whatever the symbolism and its intention, God became man in Jesus...
...The fundamental issue is not political but symbolic...
...Twelve words minimum...
...It is not her womanness that qualifies her for, or disqualifies her from, the priesthood: it is the grace that abounds, the call, the quality of the spirit...
...As short a time ago as the Second Vatican Council, there was no widespread consciousness, let alone consensus or even coherent demand, that the church had a choice: either ordain women or stand convicted of wilful sinfulness...
...The first and primordial symbol is the human body...
...They are asking, rather, to be bound...
...Contact: RELIGION COORDINATOR, Andalusia, Illinois 61232...
...Most importantly: Lorenz refuses to recognize the policies towards persons his theory implicitly supports...
...and Canada) City, Stase, Zip m New [] Renewal [] m m Name m MY NAME IS i Street i m m City, State, Zip II New [] Renewal [] City, State, Zip 11-29-74 m | COMMONWEAL 1 I 232 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. 10016 1 m mm m m m mm mm m m m m m m m m m m m m 29 November 1974:222 comes as grace in equal abundance to men and women...
...Indeed, some go further: The fact that women have not until now had priestly positions in the church is an inequity, a sin...
...For women as for men, ordination will be a day of dread as well as joy...
...The Christian God works in history through self-emptying, selfhumbling acts...
...Was $2.2S...
...compared to persons in other ages and other cultures, we appear to be among the least sensitive to the power and significance of symbols---even those by which we ourselves are moved...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...479, Cuernavaca, Mexico...
...Perhaps that is where the present system is shortcircuited...
...to undertake solemn obligations and responsibilities...
...It will, in any case, be the only justification for the outcome...
...by Michael Kennedy Pentagon Spies at the White House by Peter J. Ognibene Vietnam: We Must Not Forget by George W. Webber Liberating Portuguese A/rica by Joseph P. Carney George Orwell and the American Character by Katharine Byrne An Interview with Heinrich Boll Walker Percy and the Sel/ by Lewis Jerome Taylor, Jr...
...not even, in a sense, for liberation...
...Still, on the larger question, I wish we knew more about the balance of the masculine and the feminine in the Catholic symbol system...
...On this question, we may have serious doubts...
...40203...
...Women as well as men became one with God, dwelled in by God...
...Holiness in the end will win what tactics may not...
...Lorenz fails this test of responsibility...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 203) genes, psychic input, and social and cultural experiences, What he does with his gift of homosexuality will determine his moral character...
...P o s i t i o n s Open WANTED: TWO Religion Education specialists to coordinate a total family centered program using "Paulist" or a s;milar course...
...I do not at present see what those elements might be...
...As political theorists Charles Taylor and William E. Connolly have pointed out, to accept an explanatory theory is to implicate oneself in a corollary set of normative judgments generated by that theory whether these judgments are made explicit by the theorist or not...
...Men as w~il as women think of God as "the spouse of the soul," "the divine Lover...
...behavior...
...If you prefer, order now and we will bill you after New Year's...
...now $1.25, 2/$2, JOHN O'BRIEN, 1025 Garvin PI., LouisvilLe, Ky...
...Sensitivity to perceive what...
...Often this issue is put in terms of power, in political metaphors...
...A human God could not be everything at once, a member of every race, of every time, of every social class, of both sexes...
...But I am troubled by a sense that more is involved in such matters than a modern, secular education allows us to notice...
...Perhaps the interpretation we are called upon to give to God's choice is that a transformation wrought in the male more sharply revealed the impact of divine life in the actual conditions of history...
...Personal language derived from concrete persons is necessarily either male or female in its fleshly embodiment, even if its intended referent is neither male nor female...
...to be of service...
...There are civilizations whose inner ideal is more nearly pitched toward the symbols of masculinity--the all-mastering, competitive, and aggressive modern spirit has bred such a civilization...
...Documents DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II, 788 pages...
...to preside over sacramental mysteries...
...For box numbers add S0c per insertion...
...about the links between the sense of the sacred and some necessary blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar, as when habitual rituals included "unintelligible" Latin...
...What is at stake is two-in-oneness, for which the unity of man and woman is an imperfect metaphor...
...Lorenz may distinguish, however fuzzily, between "criminality" and "youth rebellion," but many who accept his explanation are likely to make no such distinctions--particularly if they share with Lorenz a view of man as homo homini lupus, man as a predator on his fellows...
...about the symbolic powers we were disturbing...
...We can expect the same ambiguities if we move toward yet another major symbolic reform, the ordination of women...
...It is a humbling act that God took on flesh, and that in the celebration of the divine presence bread should be God's body...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 8
