'On the Ordination of Women': An Exchange of Views
an exchange o l views 'On the Ordination o| Women' I I [ Portage, Mich. To the Editors: Michael Novak's observations "On The Ordination of Women" [July 8] have greatly clarified the women's...
...Power is not the distinctive axis along which to understand the originality of Christ's teaching...
...Reasons for faith are not always swift to the lips...
...To be specific, the elevation of women to serve as priests (or rabbis) in the past would have represented an intrusion of a new and completely alien factor into religious life, since those ages were male-dominated...
...Extending Novak's think•ng one might cling to St...
...If that were all that is at stake, we could capitulate anew, and follow now our avant-garde...
...Better arguments may be being made...
...In the 1975 production of Measure jot Measure, for example, Kathleen Widdoes played Mariana...
...A discussion of a general attitude has no bearing on the rightness, or validity, of a specific action...
...Novak's article clouds the issues rather than clarifies them...
...Sister Teresa A. McGreavey defines "the real issue," the denial of fundamental Christian rights to women...
...You have not chosen me...
...This she does most of all by her healing and elevating impact on the dignity of the person, by the way in which she strengthens the seams of human society and imbues the everyday activity of men with a deeper meaning and importance...
...To the Editors: It was sadly amusing to me to read, in the same issue of Commonweal [July 8], Margu Hammond's article on Archbishop Lefebvre's religion, "a religion of rigid tradition that refuses to accept the changing world," and Michael Novak's less than profound argument for denying .ordination to women...
...Not by conventional academic teaching are we saved...
...gnostics would do so in spite of sexual differentiation...
...But these letters have not shaken the main lines of my argument, which goes as follows: The priesthood is a grace, not a right...
...In this vein, I must then turn Mr...
...A glance at box office figures shows that attendance has grown steadily from that first summer with occasional lapses...
...ROBERT GORDIS Professor of Bible, and Rapaport Professor in the Philosophies of Religion, Jewish Theological Seminary of America Savannah, Ga...
...Although questions of power do not touch the central issue, I still find it to be a strong motive for examining the other arguments...
...On this point, an Episcopal priest might have shed needed light, since his own church is on the brink of schism about the matter...
...Not everything we darkly understand through real assent is at first expressible in notional assents...
...If so, perhaps my two articles will at least have provided a small service...
...If it is of the former, I embrace it...
...Why is is that Wordsworth, in his later years, grew stale---so much so that his later poems are hardly ever read...
...What if our "advance" is moving in an errant direction...
...It is not...
...At one point Novak comes very close to revealing the curious kind of psychology that operates, I believe, all throughout his article...
...I will not address the difficulties in his statements at length but recommend a better understanding of the priestly role can be gained f r ~ a Commonweal: 557 the Gospels and the Decree on the Ministry and Life o~ Priests...
...Luke 2:34...
...and that bread and wine became his body and blood...
...It is unfortunate that t h e author cannot assure himself that women seeking ordination are "impelled by a desire for Christian holiness...
...Novak finds that the strong traditions arguing for the ordination of women as deacons do not apply to arguing for their ordination as priests...
...No wonder that feelings run high, interpretations wild...
...GARDINER H. SHA~rUCK, JR...
...It is easy enough to see that women well known to all are superior models of the gospels (Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and indeed many women whose writings have graced these pages...
...c) That women, at last, are the equals of men...
...If God has in fact called women priests, they will prevail...
...Henry Adams points out how women dominated every major throne in Europe for a century, dominating literature and sensibility as well...
...My two daughters, young though they be, inspire me with hope in their own future leadership...
...That women have not been selected priests suggests that God was trying to give a special sort of signal, through sexual differentiation, about the functions distributed among his people...
...on gift...
...for ours is an open Church and, seeing only-poorly, we need to~ test the spirit as best we can through sustained argument...
...The Greeks (and others) cherished female goddesses...
...Rather (since "what is not assumed, is not redeemed") it stems from a desire to make visible that by the incarnation women too are saved...
...My readers grasp this principle well...
...There is no denial of sexuality, the flesh, or sexual differentiation in a vision of priesthood that is open to both women and men...
...none represents my own views...
...One tries to discern the signs...
...Again, to portray Christianity as a religion of egalitarian power is not, I think, fundamentally different from preaching it as a blessing upon hierarchical power...
...The implication that women seek ordination because they are thirsty for power is perhaps a projection of the author's outrage that women should dare to seek justice, thereby threatening the male dominated superstructure of the institutional Church...
...Jesus did not walk in the footsteps of the priests of his times...
...Novak would do well to step aside, and get out of the way of the Holy Spirit...
...Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven etc . . . . " So the question of the ordination of women is a 'mission' question and not a 'message' question and the scripture has nothing either for or against the ordination of women, which is in itself irrelevant because this is not a message question...
...I may be...
...The Western Church had much to learn from Eastern mysticism and from even Protestantism itself, which was brought out by the Vatican Council...
...If of the latter, would not we all reject it...
...Does Rev...
...Are we to so blithely ignore the con2 September 1977:560 clusion of the Bishop's Study Committee on the Permanent Diaconate that deacons, priests, and bishops form a collegial body and share the same state as clerics...
...Novak listed in his article three "aspects of the women's movement that deserve special theological inquiry," two of which do not deserve, at least in as much as Novak discusses them, serious consideration: the "antinomianism" of the women's movement, which Novak implies is almost anarchistic in its "enormous contempt" for "laws and structures, forms and boundaries...
...Obviously (according to Novak) women should not be allowed ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood because: 1) they really don't like being women and are looking for a way out by becoming sexless, spiritualized clerics...
...Oh, calamity{ Those who predict same are loathed with special loathing...
...Why does Michael Novak oppose the ordination of women at this time...
...He writes: "One faces here a basic watershed...
...To the Editors: Michael Novak's article "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8] is totally mistitled...
...Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe...
...At the time of Jesus, traditions of priestesses abounded...
...It has also become accepted practice throughout the world for the Church to ordain oriental men and black men to the priesthood and to recognize these men as Bishops and Cardinals...
...So it is for the Church guided by tis Magisterium to make the decision as to how the ordination of women would serve the Mission of the Church...
...As at least a human society, the church is also a political entity, and on this level it is propern necessary, evennto speak in terms of access to decision-making and to ad2 September 1977:556 ministrative or jurisdictional power...
...But I believe she too easily reduces the role of the Catholic priest to the ministerial roles of some other Christian churches...
...Surely Novak cannot be serious in suggesting that males in drag are an adequate expression of the complex relationship between Christ and culture or a useful countercultural symbol...
...In the witness of females, such values lack the scandalizing quality they acquire in the witness of males...
...The best that I can wish for y o u - - dear Novak--is several years as a working woman...
...MICHAEL NOVAK SUCCESS AT STRATFOBD 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE STAGE When the Stratford Festival Theatre was founded twenty-five years ago, 68,000 people saw Alec Guinness and Irene Worth play the leading roles in Richard III and Ali's Well That Ends Well...
...Paul and the 1950s...
...The message is just the 'word' but the mission is 'word' within the context of charismatic sacramental power and grace...
...nor a "humanity" both male and female...
...That signal may be worth hearing...
...In Judaism, yes...
...If the person is a Christian, then there is another dimension which he seeks to express, to live...
...The Church does not follow the spirit of the world...
...Obscurely, many persons sense some weight in those reasons, quite independent of sexism...
...Secondly, am I wrong in believing that the selection of women as priests would not have "represented an intrusion of a new and completely alien factor in religious life" everywhere in the Mediterranean basin of the first century...
...Such condescension does abound among many of our up-to-date contemporaries, however...
...At this time in history when women are seeking a "healing and elevating impact" on their dignity, will the Church community turn away...
...The gospel would have had a very different symbolism, embodied in a woman...
...And the point about the choice of males as exactly apt symbols of Christ is that this involves not merely "humanity," but the scandal of male flesh...
...This year, for example, Maggie Smith, who was also a member of the company last summer, is appearing in Richard III, a Midsummer Night's Dream, ~ As You Like It, Molnar's The Guardsman, and Coward's Hay Fever...
...I am an Episcopal priest...
...Yet, is that what God is now asking of his Church...
...The most obvious and superficial of these is that there are a~ways at least a couple of actors of the stature and reputation of Alec Guinness and Irene Worth...
...Novak has stooped to the level of mudslinging...
...Mrs...
...In other words, just at a time when ordination is held in the lowest esteem it has been held in many generations, some women ardently desire it...
...If a male priest can be a "sign of contradiction" to a "poweroriented female," why can't a female priest be a "sign of contradiction" to a "power-oriented" male...
...why else would they try to tell me what my motives really are...
...This sign does not concern sin, failings, and weaknesses but, rather, why God chose the culture of males rather than the culture of females...
...it had more appropriately been titled "on the motives of some who support ordination for women...
...There is, to be fair, much theological work yet to be done on the possibility of women priests...
...I did not, by the way, judge what motivates actual women in desiring to become priests...
...I am grateful to Rev...
...JACK DICK Director of Educational Research and Program Development St...
...Now that liberals dominate discussion, it seems wise to pay them the compliment of special skepticism...
...But Jesus did not assume the flesh of a female...
...They share a mother/son relationship in Ali's Well and Ibsen's Ghosts, and Miss Tyzack has the role of the virago Queen Margaret in Richard IH while Pennell is Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet...
...To east her in such a minor role seemed wasteful until she appeared...
...In has its own spirit...
...Hutchison should recognize, as well, that to win a reputation for continuing brilliance in his eyes, all I would have to do is write what he continues to agree with...
...It is commonly accepted for a white male to seek this dimension on the highest level, that is ordination to the priesthood...
...FRANCXNE CARDMAN Church History Wesley Theological Seminary Gray, Me...
...Go you therefore and make disciples in all nations," is quite different from just imparting messages...
...We did not, perhaps, give sufficient attention to pollution...
...His arguments are absurd and sexist...
...and his points about "charism" and "essence" are confused...
...Does a woman acting as a priest signify nothing at all...
...National Coalition of American Nuns Executive Board Member Washington, D.C...
...BETSY MITCHELL Frederick, Md...
...He did many other things far more shocking, without hesitation...
...Gnosticism is "fundamentally" the drive to achieve salvation through esoteric knowledge (gnosis) and the denial of sexual differentation is aneilliary to this...
...Names of this sort will always draw an audience, and undoubtedly that has been one of their chief functions ever since Guinness and Worth performed in a tent in 1953...
...In many jurisdictions hidebound liberals have proved to be every bit as narrow and authoritarian as conservatives ever were...
...I favor the ordination of women to the priesthood in my church and in the Roman Catholic church...
...And the Church was given both the authority and power to act on earth in Christ's name...
...The charge of antinomianism is a red herring...
...hardly by name-calling...
...This is of course already implicit in the fact that women are baptized...
...The fundamental drive of gnosticism," he says, "is to deny sexual differentiation and the ordinary, obvious demands of human flesh, in favor of a spiritualized, sexually undifferentiated view of human nature...
...The cultic priesthood with its fringe benefits of automatic and unearned status, respect, power, wisdom, is not the ministerial priesthood of Jesus that women seek...
...Rosemari G. Sullivan comes closest to reflecting the spirit one seeks...
...There are, of course, arguments from scripture and tradition which could be produced to oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood...
...It may mean that certain aspects of current feminism are incompatible with Christianity, as some theologians of feminism have concluded...
...The point of my remark about some women ardently desiring the priesthood just now is that it may not be the priesthood they are desiring, but something else, like little children (his analogy is insulting, so I apologize for turning it against him) desiring what they cannot have and, once having it, declaring that they did not really mean that...
...Having already decided that a male priesthood is a "bulwark against gnosticism" (defined as denying sexual differentiation), Mr...
...rather, he finds them "poweroriented...
...at least there are, if the Spirit of God lies behind our present turbulence...
...The scrutiny regarding gnosticism, antinomianism and moral fixation that the author would bring against the women's movement might better be brought to bear on the College of Cardinals, the USCCB, and Diocesan Chanceries who categorically discriminate against women under the guise of "fundamentally unalterable" tradition...
...Sacramental ministry is not magic, however, nor does it exist in a vacuum, somehow magically removed from the forces that shape human institutions...
...That women are saved, baptism asserts...
...Margaret Tyzack, in her first season at Stratford, is well known to watchers of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS for her roles in The Forsyte Saga and Cousin Bette, and Nicholas Pennell, in his sixth season, is similarly familiar to Forsyte Saga viewers...
...The radically changing conditions of modern life, however, make the ordination of women at least a debatable question, with significant pros and cons on both sides...
...Nor does she persuade me (b) that the definition given "priesthood by his daily life and ministry, his death and resurrection" was intended by Jesus for the women of the gospels, or ever...
...These would he fit topics for discussion in your pages...
...MRS...
...The difficulty for those who hold the latter position is that, for the most part, they can 'feel' the importance of their position, but find it difficult to find conclusive arguments for it...
...The question of the ordination of women to the priesthood is a highly sensitive and emotion-laden concern for Catholics, surely outside the competence of nonCatholics to discuss...
...This I thought was the great contradiction of the priesthood...
...Novak's most recent article, "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8], is particularly upsetting, not so much because the mediocrity of the thought is an insult to a once respectable theologian, but because it deals with an issue which may l~come critical during future ecumenical discussion...
...What could be more gnostic than the radically dualistic distinction Novak draws between sacramental ordination and administrative power...
...Upon reading this passage I was reminded of small children who, as soon as they see someone pick up something they have just thrown away, instantly demand it back and guard it jealously for days afterward...
...Worldly power is irrelevant, not to the world, but to one's standing in the sight of God...
...He believes that the male priesthood is "a sign of contradiction...
...The efficacy of women as spiritual leaders in the past would therefore have been gravely compromised by the fact that this area would have been isolated from the context of life in general...
...The smoke screen issues raised by Mr...
...I remember plowing through Be2 September 1977:558 lie~ and Unbelie/, and then, later, The Experience of Nothingness, thoroughly enjoying myself, thinking that Novak's insight, scholarly expertise, and intellectual honesty would be invaluable to a struggling American theology...
...but so it can manifest that female flesh is not subhuman flesh, the "piece of meat" so many men (and women) think it is, but the flesh that is redeemed in Christ and that "fills up what is lacking in his suffering" for the redemption of others...
...The virtues and values preached would have had a very different ring had they been preached by a woman...
...But what if I myself am wrong...
...He makes ostentatious references to gnosticism and antinomianism, but his real reasons for opposing female priests are based on personal considerations...
...Even the gnostic tendencies that arose in the Church as a pretension to greater enlightenment, from the very origin of the word itself in the early Church, have disproven themselves by history itself...
...To be a male is to be a different soft of sign, symbol, and representative than to be a female...
...the scandal--the flesh only of a male...
...One of these is that women culturally and biologically constitute a different sort of sign and symbol than men do...
...It is the people of Christ, who make up his body the church, that continue to carry this sign through history and not that small fraction of its members who are priests...
...But miracles, events which fly in the face of nature, can also do the same to human tradition...
...There are solid claims that women abbesses shared a form of priestly power, virtually equivalent to that of bishops...
...To tell us that you must be convinced that the "signs of Christian holiness" are the moving forces behind the desire of some women to be ordained is really just too much...
...Those who favor a change in current practice, whether in this area or others, are not compeUed to "assert their own moral superiority" over earlier generations...
...never a sustained decline...
...Women may be Protestant ministers, but for them to be priests would somehow seriously undermine the "incarnational" view of sexuality which we now possess-somehow the logic of this escapes me...
...Among the holiest and most fitting in our history have been women rather than men...
...Novak has written many articles for Commonweal o v e r the past few years, and each one has advanced some new and silly idea .with which he is enamored at the time (e.g...
...Larose's swift leap to "no law at all," a spiritualist and antinomian move if ever there was one...
...Were we to wait for perfect justice before we recognize law, the wait would be long...
...his recent Fourth of July diatribe against "King Jimmy...
...If Jesus taught three Gods in one...
...In last summer's production of the play (which I did not see) Maggie Smith was cast as Mistress Overdone, a Bawd, an even more minor role...
...The Church must enter into meaningful dialogue and respond to the questions and the needs of women in the Church as well as in other communities...
...Farmington Hills, Mich...
...That the charge of antinomianism is not a red herring is indicated not only by the spirit of the age, but also by Mr...
...I submit that the same "mystical and unnatural" action which transforms men can also transform women, and that Mr...
...Jesus had every opportunity so to define it, but did not...
...It is in baptism that we "put on Christ...
...The only Christian "sign of contradiction" is Jesus Christ himself (cf...
...She does not convince me (a) that ordination as a priest is a right...
...An appropriate manifestation of that contradiction today would be a church in which true human equality could be experienced...
...And I suppose that Anita Bryant is really against homosexuals because gays don't like orange juice...
...Indeed, one of the strongest motivations for denying women the priesthood has been that (to men) women seemed all too fleshly (women Commonweal: 559 menstruate, tempt males to sexual desires, etc...
...Since the faith has come down to us in the form it has, it seems wise to seek the best possible understanding of the reasons behind it, before we alter it...
...In that piece he relegated women to the ludicrous IRurgical role of "playing church" alongside a male priest "playing Christ...
...Brian Bedford appears in three of these, being especially good as the villainous Richard III...
...PAUL LAROSE Albuquerque, N.M...
...Then the urchins in the streets of Italy can not only laugh at the contradiction of men in "skirts" (cassocks) but also at the contradiction of women as priests...
...Novak's case is this: women have never been priests, women are different from men, therefore women should not bepriests now...
...There is nothing inherent in the nature of femaleness that would bar women from the priesthood...
...The first line of argument seemed to be more of an attack on the "women's liberation" movement than a well formed rationale...
...The practice stems as much from simple anti-clericalism as from any perception of symbolic dissonance or any sense that priesthood is a "sign of contradiction...
...The priests can laugh back...
...Indeed, as far as Novak is concerned, there are no arguments at all...
...Novak states that a person may maintain either a) that a male-only priesthood is a culturally conditioned phenomenon, or, b) that "something fundamental and unalterable is at stake...
...Neither baptism nor priesthood is required to show that the female body "is not subhuman flesh...
...This last step...
...And it forgot that this very scientism was itself only a spirit of that particular age...
...Others of this rank in just the past couple of years have been Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy last year and Kathleen Widdoes a season earlier...
...Rather, there is an affirmation of the humanity of male and female and appreciation of the assumption of that humanity in its fullness in the Incarnation...
...Francine Cardman believes it ludicrous to he "playing Christ" or "playing Church," but apart from such powerful roles what others should a Christian cherish...
...This is a misleading statement...
...Questions must be raised...
...To the Editors: This letter may be a classic instance of a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread...
...both are reductions of Christianity to power games...
...Would a female priesthood and rabbinate now be a moral enhancement of Judaism and Christianity7 It may be...
...Ordination is a "mysterical and unnatural" step which confers "sacramental efficacy" on an otherwise ordinary human man...
...Betsy Mitchell thinks of the priesthood as a "career option...
...Would thai readers could assure themselves that Mr...
...2) they don't want to serve in the Church but destroy it, and 3) they are just a bunch of unhappy "sisters" lusting for power...
...e) That feminism Commonweal: 563 has led Christianity to a new depth of self-understanding...
...Women are unworthy too, Mr...
...of men and women as men and women, of sex itself, depends upon whether or not women are ordained...
...Catherine Religious Education Centre Massapequa, N.Y...
...Of all Novak's arguments, I find but one to be convincing: the idea that the admission of women to orders should not be a question of power...
...Hutchison iS plainly wrong about the role of women from "the time of St...
...To b e a priest is to be a sign, to perform a symbolic function, and in particular to represent Jesus Christ incarnate...
...To the Editors: Michael Novak's article "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8] deserves commendation in recognizing the spirit behind the idea of the ordination of women...
...Shattuck quite misunderstands the "sign of contradition" established by a solely male priesthood...
...REV...
...the real contradiction lies much deeper, a result of human nature, not human sexuality...
...She overlooks, it seems, the symbolic dimension of sexuality...
...I certainly do not wish to deal with the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood, but would like to comment on one passage in Michael Novak's article which has implications for all who are concerned with preserving the integrity of tradition on the one hand and moving forward toward needed change on the other...
...Don't you need "signs of Christian holiness" from them too...
...In the document issued by Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), Chapter IV, it is stated that: " . . . the Church not only communicates divine life to men, but in some way casts the reflected light of that life over the entire earth...
...Christ Himself made this patently clear...
...Novak, however, does not seem to believe that these criteria can be applied to a woman who seeks ordination...
...Alphonse J. Gesing for seeing that the basic question is whether the spirit behind the move to ordain women is of the Holy Spirit or of the spirit of the age...
...Or, in other, more relevant, words, why has Michael Novak, who had begun to look like one of America's most brillant young theologians, turned into a slightly better-read version of Fulton J. Sheen...
...To the Editors: Re Novak's "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8]: This article is smug and offensive to intelligent beings...
...Evidence may change that...
...On gnosticism...
...I should like to suggest that the dilemma is not as sharp as Novak makes it out to be...
...the conclusion is a non sequitur, founded in "a religion of rigid tradition that refuses to accept the changing world...
...Most of Mr...
...when she did, the extravagance was justified...
...It seems, according to Novak, that if women are ordained to the priesthood, we will begin to lose sight of the fact that "women are not men, and men not women...
...Rather he defined priesthood by his daily life and ministry, his death and resurrection...
...From the point of view of mission Jesus said...
...Thirdly, our contemporary avant-garde may not be worthy of our faith...
...Recognizing the contempt it might bring (censorship on the left works by withdrawal of credentials), I have tried to put such inarticulate reasons into words, so that they might be argued, pro and con...
...The question of the strictness of Christian tradition on this issue must be faced...
...They may signify far more than mere capitulation to the spirit of their age...
...In other words, a male priest remains human and sinful, yet despite his failings (and even through his failings) he bears witness to divine reality...
...dual-sex eucharists...
...Anyone who can validly be ordained deacon can be validly ordained priest...
...That would be a sacrament for the world, a light to enlighten the nations...
...The "contempt, hostility, and anger" toward laws and structures that Novak attributes to women seeking ordination are much closer to being projections of his own attitudes toward women than descriptions of the reality of women who wish to be ordained...
...Paul to the 1950's...
...Novak establishes himself as the judge of womankind, and decrees that all women who are now seeking ordination have the wrong attitude...
...No great disruption of the symbolic systems of that era would have been required for Jesus to have elected his women followers priests...
...and, secondly, the "question of power," which, as it turns out, is resolved by the fact that "the priesthood should continue to be a sign of contradiction to the poweroriented f e m a l e . . . " The third point of inquiry, and the only one which Novak touches seriously on, involves what he chooses to term "gnosticism...
...His arguments about gnosticism and antinomianism are considerably offtarget, both historically and theologically...
...To the Editors: The article by Professor Novak, "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8], demonstrated a myopic view of the subject...
...Christian theologians have, to date, found nothing in Scripture that militates against the ordination of women...
...Rabbi Robert Gordis blessedly warms me (amid the chill blasts of other letters) by his kind opening words...
...What has made this festival so successful is that these people become part of the ensemble, not just stars superimposed on a summer stock company...
...The Church has amply understood that women can be deacons, not priests, because priesthood adds something special beyond "sharing in the same state as clerics"--including a special identification with Jesus Christ, beyond even that experienced in the other sacraments...
...Of Novak's initial arguments, the third is the most distressing: that the women's movement is "morally fixated on questions of power...
...Rev...
...To the Editors: Michael Novak's article, "On the Ordination of Women" {July 8], is in poor taste, obviously poor judgment and is an insult to women who seek ordination to the ministry...
...It would, in many ways, be a joy to see a woman at the altar, to hear women preach, to confess one's sins to a woman...
...Since that time, many who were then colleagues have left the Church, and some analysts suggest that the net effect of the Council--or perhaps of its flawed follow-throughmhas been decline...
...it concerns the symbolic meanings of being a priest, being a woman, being a man...
...Perhaps next time...
...The festival has been remarkably successful...
...A second overlooked premise is that the reverberations given off by what God actually did are important to understand...
...Novak took the position that it is the women's movement which raised the issue of ordination of women, rather than a serious searching on the part of Catholic women for their possible roles...
...The flip, sarcastic, superficial comments concerning "power-oriented females" are those of a myopic and narrow men-tality, and have no foundation in research or reality...
...Let us listen for the reasons...
...There is always a lot of arrogant pride and gnosticism in its pretensions and its motivation is often more a passion than a purview of good common sense...
...Does the phenomenology of the body mean nothing to one's own psyche, or to the community...
...I have chosen you...
...Before overturning a long, fruitful tradition, let us listen closely to the arguments...
...Somewhere, I suspect, there are women moved by the Spirit, growing in holiness, whose claim that they have been called to the priesthood will move the door of the Church upon.its, cardinals and its pope...
...Why did Hegel, and then Marx, lose the creative vitality of their youth, to turn slowly into the rigid systematizers of their old age...
...Paul Larose's is the most helpful letter...
...They play leading roles, of course, but they also take minor roles...
...Those Catholics who seek the ordination of women do so precisely because of the differentiation of humanity into female and male...
...Does her presence suggest (a) that in this symbol sex doesn't matter...
...And while it is true that Christian tradition is strictly opposed to the ordination of women, it is also true that not until recent years have women even approached having the same rights as men...
...In the media, liberal forces are plainly in the saddle...
...Now, however, all I find by Novak are cautious, uninspired thological tidbits mixed together with say-nothing political sermons (cf...
...So when it says, it will not, then that is final and any further argumentation is no only futile but even fatuous and presumptious of the liberalistic arrogance of our contemporary age...
...One perhaps may wonder, legitimately, I think, how Novak ever came to such a bold conclusion...
...We shall recognize them by the charisms of their presence...
...If I have failed, someone may come closer to the mark...
...After all, according to the logic of his article, our whole view...
...Unfortunately I believe that if Prof...
...To the Editors: Michael Novak's recent article "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8] is even sillier than his previous proposal for a "Dual-Sex Eucharist" [Dec...
...Yet he did not...
...They don't want it, or may not see the value in it, but they'll be damned if someone else is going to have it, just in case it turns out to be of value after all...
...The major motivation of these women is not a quest for power but a desire to bring service to completion in sacrament...
...By coincidence, just last Sunday I heard a sermon by a deacon...
...Thank heaven for the purity of male intentions...
...But favoring the new step need not--and, in my view, does notmrepresent an act of moral condescension to the past...
...Some of these, and others, might be established by argument...
...Novak's argument involves nothing more than an exercise in his personal prejudices and anxieties...
...Yet, if one asked how it is that something fundamental and unalterable is at stake, all we are told is that people who hold such a position " 'feel' the importance of their position . . . but find it difficult to find conclusive arguments for it...
...In recent years liberal thinkers in our midst (I include myself) have erred, expressed clear certainties we had no right to, and disdained inherited wisdom that (it turned out) was wiser than we...
...Bob Hutchison sees my Washington Star column in Tacoma and, though he misread the July 4 piece (whose theological background {is stated at book length in Choosing Our King, well before Jimmy Carter emerged upon the scene), he may also have seen there my column on th~ ordination of women...
...In closing I would add a personal note, I am not a "radical feminist" but I am a Catholic woman...
...I glory in opposition to an unjust structure, specifically, and to a specific law which is unjust and therefore no law at all...
...One wonders why...
...No special "moral inferiority" was therefore involved in reserving positions of spiritual leadership to men alone...
...I would add that those within any Christian community called upon to fulfill the priestly-ministerial functions would have views on their roles very similar to those of the priest in the Roman Catholic Church...
...had Jesus chosen female as well as male priests, the ~everberations sent through Jewish and Christian history would have been quite different...
...and powerful queens, doctors of the church, saints, reformers, and educators assumed quite significant "societal, political or sacramental roles...
...To prepare their way, our present task is to deepen our questioning and our scrutiny...
...The charism has, therefore, in unbroken tradition been perceived as one fitting to males but not to females, not out of any inherent virtue in males, but out of God's good freedom to utter the message he chose to utter...
...In fact, he goes so far as to say that "ordination, qua ordination, is virtually without meaning...
...A concern for the ordination of women does not stem from a denial of the incarnation or its significance (or from power-hunger...
...Until those reasons are articulated and adequately responded to, the foundations of a new position will not be clear of lien...
...The Church needs to ordain women, not (of course not) to "lead us beyond the confines of mere flesh" (did anyone but Mr...
...Per Novak: "Those who argue in terms of 'equality of power' prove their position not to be Christian...
...We believe primarily through living and experiencing...
...In this silver jubilee season (lasting until 15 October) more than half a million people will come to the pleasant Ontario town and will see these same two plays and eight others, six of them by Shakespeare...
...This was made in admiration of the scientific characteristics that Western civilization had given to the Church in the West...
...Females already knew them well...
...One might argue that this tradition (of the non-ordination of women) was 'culturally conditioned.' i.e., due to an inferior state of Christian perception...
...Michael Novak's article, "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8], is a well-reasoned, balanced discussion of the subject, rich in insights for which non-Catholics may well be grateful, since the question confronts contemporary religion as a whole...
...A woman preaching humility, meekness, and service would not have been a scandal to the world...
...Indeed, if we are to believe that sacramental priesthood is basically a charism to exercise more fully a priesthood of all believers, women are priests--we are speaking of charism, not essence...
...His agreement on the issue of power pleases me...
...Those with clear geometric ideas often falsify the denseness of experience...
...Frankly Mr...
...It is true that, today, a woman priest instructing us that "the last shall be first," "be ye humble as little children," etc...
...Nor are these all...
...as we know, for the Roman Catholic Church, in the most recent centuries was taken slowly...
...It was a We'stern boast and was not a Catholic summation or conclusion...
...Novak's article would be a serious discussion on the topic of women's ordination...
...Because he knows no woman who is worthy...
...Novak, i.e., "power-oriented females," "gnosticism," "moral fixation" and the like, cloud the real issue of the denial of fundamental Christian rights to women...
...Protestantism had preserved the idea of the Church as a charismatic mission better than had the Catholic...
...ALPHONSE J . GESINO l Iichael Novak's ReplF It is especially irritating to those on the left when one of their number criticizes their position, because by and large they try so desperately to be moral and good...
...Novak adds a side argument: women are not motivated by Christian holiness but rather by a thirst for power to become priests...
...The gnostic rejection of matter took the form of a spirituality of strict asceticism, not libertinism...
...The "fundamental drive" of gnosticism is surely the effort to attain salvation through some kind of special knowledge...
...Novak obviously chooses the latter position...
...Or has no male priest ever been guilty of such a fauR...
...Novak's rejection of the "gnostic" motive for seeking the ordination of women is flawed by his poor definition/description of gnosticism as a fundamental drive to deny sexual differentiation and the demands of the flesh...
...God will lead his people truly, but we are right to be scrupulously attentive, skeptical, and measured...
...To add insult to injury, Mr...
...his break with Judaism would not have been any more shocking by the designation (say) of his mother, of Mary, of Martha, and of others as priestesses of his new dispensation...
...Mr...
...On this point and many others, I trust our traditions more, at the moment, than I trust our avant-garde...
...d) That women should have every option and right open to men...
...He told us that a miracle was to occur: he, the most unworthy of men, was about to become a priest...
...For centuries, the Church has had an unbroken tradition, so unchallenged that reasons for it have not been articulated...
...The remainder of Novak's arguments wander toward no particular point...
...More than those on the right, we on the left find our reason for being in throwing our weight on the side of advancing justice and righteousness...
...To the Editors: Michael Novak's observations "On The Ordination of Women" [July 8] have greatly clarified the women's ordination issue for the American Church...
...BETSY DARKEN Tacoma, Wash...
...Only in rare instances did a gnostic group exercise the logical (but non-historical) option of antinomianism...
...But is there no reason whatever, except cultural capitulation, no reason deep in the mystery of Judaism and Christian2 September 1977:562 ity, for the conscious, unbroken election of the male to represent God to the community...
...b) That female sexuality adds a new power and dimension to the priesthood...
...Novak's article was taken as the position of the majority it would not only be a blow to the women in the Church but also to our ecumenical efforts...
...I don't believe so...
...As to antinomianism, it has become clear since the discovery of the Coptic Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi in 1947, that gnosticism was a rigorouSly ascetic movement...
...Shattuck feel none of the torment...
...Novak, yours is not a particularly new line: any woman who doesn't know her place can expect to be called "power-oriented...
...The difficulty for those who hold the former position is that they seem to be asserting their own moral superiority over those who have preceded them...
...Those of us who believe in "open Church" still cherish fidelity to the disinterested drive to raise questions, questions about liberal as well as conservative propositions...
...but rather--oh...
...To the Catholic in his exclusive ivory tower 'mission' was a particular idea, a content, whereas it is the Church's whole context and the 'message' as a scientifically developed phenomenon was looked upon as the absolute...
...ANNE PETICOLAS Belmont, Mass...
...Prof...
...He was also at Stratford in 1975 but missed last season while starring in a national tour of Equus which earned him the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for best actor...
...would be a sign of contradiction, but not to the gospels...
...Egalitarianism is the Constantinianism of the present age...
...Novak's 'blessing' on the "prudent and authentically Catholic" decision of the papacy was inspired by his desire for Christian holiness and justice...
...And, as one who believes with the Church in the importance of enhancing human dignity, and defending the right to life, I believe we need to dialogue on the issue of women's roles in the Catholic Community and in the world...
...The Holy Spirit in the Church is not a scientific or ephemeral spirit but His operations are mystical and historical...
...His differentiation between the ministerial roles in Protestant churches and the priestly role in the Catholic Church is surprising...
...To the Editors: I wonder why some men, great creative artists and think ers, dry up as they grow older...
...Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., offers little that is not ad hominem, and while most evil things said about me, even if inaccurate, have analogs in other weaknesses of mine, I am left still inquiring for good reasons why a long and powerful tradition should be broken...
...You will not miss the hatred in these letters...
...The Catholic cultic sense should not be abandoned so cavalierly...
...We may be certain that the next generation will reject our certainties...
...People do not always want what they say they want...
...In recent decades, theologians and churchmen may have erred too far in the reduction of the priesthood to its ministerial roles, just as in earlier decades prevailing wisdom erred too far in the direction of the cultic role...
...had Jesus been born a woman rather than a man...
...The one who exercises the option, however, is the one who calls to priesthood...
...Christianity forces us to be concrete...
...The significance of his ruminations on the present low estate of the priesthood and the paradox that some persons (women) should .seek it at a time when other persons (men) no longer seem to want it--but will nevertheless not share it--remains elusive...
...Women, dear Novak, are human beings who have been stifled and constrained long enough...
...It is an example of "how to find transcendence within the bonds and the limits of the flesh...
...Why would gnostics believe salvation comes through some special spiritual knowledge, rather than through the experience of daily living in the flesh...
...The success of the company is due to many factors, of course...
...It includes a symbolic linkage to the male incarnate Christ, and to that special contradiction to warrior cultures by which males enunciate the central importance of meekness, humility, service, longsuffering, patience, and submission to God's will...
...When conservatives dominated public dialogue to gain some balance, one needed to lean in a liberal direction...
...In addition, priesthood is based neither on law nor on rights, but...
...My correspondents misgauage my views about the ordination of women...
...and that he, a man, was God...
...TERESA A. MCOREEVY, R.S.M...
...In hands such as his, a change of past teaching would not constitute "an act of moral condescension toward the past...
...Betsy Darken omits several premises among those she lists...
...Anne Peticolas fails to grasp the point behind the point of gnosticism...
...The relative social status of women did not change significantly between the time of St...
...Miss Smith and Miss Tyzack have two of these roles, and 2 September 1977:564...
...ROSEMXRI O. SULLIVAN New York, N.Y...
...dialogue must continue, but let us dialogue real issues based on solid research...
...The Church is first a mission...
...Thus, through her individual members and her whole community, the Church believes she can contribute greatly toward making the family of man and its history more human...
...Were they to become priests, willingly would I kneel before them...
...If merit decided, women would have equal claim, and perhaps more than equal claim...
...Novak's question back to him: "Is the ordination of women a Christian, or a worldly demand...
...The arguments I hear (as in this collection of letters) are based on considerations of power and fights, not on arguments of holiness and service...
...The popular idea of the times has been shown in history not to have always been the most illuminating, progressive or even fundamentally just and true...
...I must reply it is a Christian demand, fully in keeping with our ever growing understanding of what it means to be followers of Christ, members of the Church...
...In Athens, Alexandria, and Rome...
...Some fifteen years ago now, in 196165, many of us applauded when Pope John "opened the windows" in order to let "fresh air" into the Church...
...We saw something of that again in the 'Church of the Ivory Tower' where an Hillaire Belloc would utter in pride...
...And they will prevail...
...he misses the point on gnosticism, as did other writers...
...This season's Richard I11 has such a large number of roles that all seem relatively minor except for the title role...
...Had God spoken through matriarchs rather than patriarchs...
...Jack Dick lists three reasons why women should not be priests...
...This may lead to a contempt of "the flesh," but to suggest that the concern for women's ordination arises from similar motivations is just bizarre...
...I am a woman--and I do not need the Novaks of the world to use a mumbo jumbo of an argument that says males should only have priesthood so that we may be saved from the dread dangers of gnosticism...
...The shock came in hearing them preached by a male, for males...
...She lighted up aspects of the role, and therefore of the whole play, of which a lesser actress wouldn't have been aware...
...But it is, in my opinion at least, the last major obstacle...
...We cannot at a time when the dignity of human life, the very right to life, is threatened by some women, ignore the women's movement...
...BOB HUTCHINSON Austin, Texas To the Editors: In his article in the July 8th Commonweal, Michael Novak misrepresents both gnosticism, and feminism in an attempt to maintain that feminists are gnostic...
...I had hoped that Mr...
...Catholicism has maintained a stronger sense of sacrament, sign, and cult than many (but not all) Christian churches...
...9 . .' How so...
...Are males who are interested in your priesthood really so much better motivated...
...Changes in symbols so fundamental affect everything else...
...I must disagree with him that "any further argumentation is not only futile and fatuous and presumptuous...
...On this point, it may be helpful to consider this issue historically appropriate because of our deeper understanding of the innate dignity of man and our consciousness of the need for everyman to express in and through his life the privileges, rights, and responsibilities of his humanity...
...Then he goes on to wonder, quite suspiciously, why women could possibly want something men have lost interest in...
...Further, granted that it is "limpidly clear that women are not men, and men not women," it is not clear in any fashion that one must be a man to be a priest...
...This fact obviously calls for a closer examination of the cultural milieu out of which the prohibition against female ordination arose, a cultural milieu where it was taken for granted that women could not assume any significant societal, political or sacramental roles...
...Novak's work is simply not of the same high quality as the rest of your fine magazine, and it would be wise to use more discretion in accepting material from him...
...Let us listen for them...
...In this piece he carries the symbolic subordination even further and in a random series of unclear arguments "proves" that it is thoroughly Catholic to deny priestly ordination to women...
...The most important point is that such argument involves symbolic realism...
...All in all, I think this sums up the thought processes of the Roman curia, the American episcopacy, and Michael Novak fairly well...
...Novak ever think this...
...Are not all men unworthy...
...If I can be misled (and I often have been), why cannot our current avant-garde...
...Do we not in real life perform the ordinary analogs of precisely such things...
...Paul's advice re hats for women in church and obedience for s l a v e s . . , all in the best of tradition...
...Ordinary humanism knows as much...
...His message, not ours...
...Should that turn out to be God's will for the Church, happily would I accept it...
...Cardman believes that Jesus assumed "humanity in its fullness in the Incarnation," by which she means "precisely . . . the differentiation of humanity into female and male...
...REV...
...Novak delineates the differences between Catholic and Protestant views on ordination, and then proceeds to contradict what he describes as Catholic sacramental theology...
...I do not deny the two premises (I even rejoice in the second...
...Or one can argue that something fundamental and unalterable is at stake...
...But the most puzzling of all is Novak's final observation on the derisive labe/ of "petticoats" which Italians attach to priests...
...No one is worthy of ordination, neither male nor female...
...In this, I was disappointed, for Mr...
...First of all, he points out that nowadays men have lost interest in Holy Orders---an understatement...
...We must have the same career options as men...
...We shall yet, like that deacon, have the miracle of the priesthood bestowed on us...
...It is an office of service, not of Commonweal: 561 worldly power...
...To the Editors: Re: Michael Novak's article, "On the Ordination of Women" [July 8...
...Novak's reasons for not ordaining women would be equally good (or bad) reasons for not baptizing women...
Vol. 104 • September 1977 • No. 18
