VERSE

...I'll make it, make it, maybe, put it in a poem...

...We believe that we may well be on a similar path again, and the effect of aligning priesthood with masculinity may identify the Church as regressive for millions of human beings in the future...

...Despite this recognition, however, the Declaration retards that movement and commits the people of God to abiding and exclusive government by men...

...It is simply a matter of fact that the exclusion of women from priestly ordination in our day does not reinforce "the image of Christ" for a growing number of people, but rather symbolizes sexual discrimination within the Church...

...The emerging consciousness of women's rights is a major moral development of our times, and one which the Declaration positively acknowledged...

...3. The notion of tradition used in the Declaration is that of the inflexible transmission of past practices, regardless of the cultures out of which they came and the needs to which they responded...

...but no one would admit the truth of the basis for his argument today...

...There is a legitimate concern of the Declaration that "the image of Christ" be perceived by the faithful in the priest...

...We do not see how women's ordination would derogate from this...

...The other three citations are basically irrelevant...

...Both the development of doctrine and the vitality of any tradition indicate that what is "handed on" must be translated into the contemporary idiom and respond to the discerned presence of the Spirit of Christ, bringing the evolving Church into a closer fidelity to the Gospel...

...In its decision, the Roman Congregation may well be repeating in its own form and through its insufficient sensitivity to the issues involved, such condemnations as those of the Chinese Rites, of the Copernican understanding of the solar system, and of the early emerging biblical movement at the turn of the century...

...This is the reason that we write to you, Your Excellency...

...4. The sacramental sign necessary to act in persona Christi is to be located within the human person rather than within masculine or feminine sexuality...

...The exclusion of any group of Christians from a life or from a function to which they feel a call is so serious an action by the Church, it should be supported as an obvious demand of the Gospel...

...Roman Congregations have made serious mistakes in the past whose harm to the Church we continue to experience centuries afterwards...

...2. Of the initial five patristic authorities cited, only one (Epiphanius) clearly and directly supports the prohibition of women's ordination, while one other (Tertullian) offers a basis for argument that this should be the case...

...The Declaration offers neither encouragement nor leadership to the growing movement for the rightful evolution of women within the Church...

...This Declaration does not contain such evidence...

...It is our conviction that this Declaration, because of the faulty nature of its argumentation and FELIX STEFANILE DAWN Dawn: .the Word saying .itself once more, like a sign on an awning...

...If the most important and persuasive patristic passages have been referred to by the Declaration, then the patristic a~'gument is too weak to be of any importance...

...We are certainly not confronted with the "unanimous consent of the Fathers" which is generally required for the establishment of a theological position...

...Any evidence should be overwhelming which makes discrimination an imperative...

...Commonweal: 205...

...Of the second series of patristic authorities alleged, only one (Constitutiones Apostolicae) offers some support for the statement for which it is cited...

...To say that we have nevet~ ordained women in the past and therefore, cannot do so now, is to ignore the fact that the issue has never arisen in precisely these contemporary terms and within the new realization of women's place in the world...

...The profound issue of justice does not arise because one woman has been denied presbyteral orders...

...The Declaration correctly maintains that no single person can lay claim to ordination as a personal right...

...The others do not...

...The issue of justice is engaged when an entire class of Catholics is antecedently excluded on principle even from the possibility that Christ might call them to this ministry, so that simply because they are women it is impossible to admit them to this service of word and of sacrament...

...I stand by my window as by an easel, and the hours shape themselves--somebody's pipe, a scampering squirrel, clouds as white as laundry on a line, and the sparrows starting to live it up, to evening, I .think...

...On the contrary, the presence of women as priests, as well as men, could be an abiding sign to the faithful that all Christians "have put on Christ Jesus" and in this identification lies their hope for salvation...