News & Views
EWS & VIEWS Newsless Wonders Msgr. Salvatore Adamo's remarks about the newsless wonders of the Catholic Press [Commonweal, 3/18/77] upset a number of diocesan editors. The fact that he...
...Maybe non-moviegoers like myself can get an idea from the comments of one hard-nosed movie reviewer: ",[In Nasty Habits] convent life is turned into an ugly, unfunny travesty . . . . Yet what is particularly offensive is the transposition of the Nixon gang into a Roman Catholic convent...
...One nun suggests the courts, on what amounts to a classaction libel suit seeking damages for sisters' having been made "the butt of ridicule" Sister Ann Gillen, SHJC, of the executive board of the National Coalition of American Nuns, is urging religious congregations of women in the U.S...
...Louis...
...He's taken his campaign to forestall the practice in the U.S...
...Some stories have happy endings...
...This time he's denying Confirmation to Catholic children attending state schools...
...Philbin, who opposes "integrated education," says the children aren't properly prepared for it...
...to the right-wing Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, asking prayers there that the bishops will vote down the anticipated Communion-in-thehand motion...
...Obviously the protest was "news...
...to join in a legal action against the film's producers, the ad agencies and movie reviewer Rex Reed...
...One reason, I suppose, is that Catholics lack the vigilante organizations that other minorities --blacks, Jews, women--so vociferously enjoy...
...But where to from there without getting into an old Legion of Decency-type censorship hassle...
...In Boston, for instance, the story appeared on page 13...
...The parents see the action as another demonstration of Philbin's feudal concepts of how a Church is to be run, and so picketed Philbin recently when he was in Nowtownards for a confirmation ceremony...
...Similarly, Rockville Centre was ruminating on the fact that while it ordained five priests in 1976, it lost 29 through retirement, sickness, leaves of absence and death...
...But if a thousand women publicly say No, that is not news...
...Papers of four major archdioceses--Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York and Washington-did not mention the news...
...all the letters were negative...
...In any case, he concludes, in not presenting a faithful mirror of what is happening, "ostrich editors and publishers who are not part of the solution will continue to be part of a very troubling problem...
...More than 40 national hierarchies have already approved the practice...
...Three papers which did not run news reports on the protest did allow it to be mentioned in letters to the editor...
...Bishop Mario Conti wrote Hastings: "I know of no good reason why priests of your evident integrity should not be made welcome . . . . " JOHN DEEDY 29 April 1977:258...
...The reviewer...
...And in Superior, Wis., the diocesan paper was reporting that, compared to 1961, the diocese had nine additional parishes without resident pastors, six more closed missions, 26 percent fewer priests, 56 percent fewer priests under age 35, and 89 percent fewer seminarians (down from 101 to 11...
...One of his first actions was to lift the ban imposed on Father Adrian Hastings by the interim vicar [News & Views, 4/15/77...
...Reed wrote that "the Catholic Church has gone up in smoke over Nasty Habits, _9 . . but in the light of daily headlines, we all know nuns are doing all sorts of unsavory things in real life, so the protest seems a bit unjustified...
...John Simon in the March 28 New York magazine_9 P h i l b i n ' s F o l l y As if Northern Ireland didn't have enough problems, Bishop William Philbin of Down and Connor continues to heap coals on the fires of religious tentsion...
...But nuns are a safe target...
...Syracuse, as an example, was announcing that no priests would be ordained there in 1979, the first year in 50 that this will have been the case...
...H a b i t s H a b i t s ' There is considerable upset, particularly among sisters' groups, over the film Nasty Habits_9 They've succeeded in getting major newspapers to run less offensive advertising...
...Zirkel cited the coverage as a sad sample of how the dogbites-man principle works in the Catholic Press: "If a bishop says Yes to a declaration from Rome, that's news, no matter how often it happens...
...Zirkel checked 50 diocesan papers to see how they had handled the "demure" nationwide prayer vigil-demonstration conducted Feb...
...What is the relevance, desirability, or justification for this...
...Sister Gillen suggests that each congregation of nuns sue for $100,000 or more, with the total settlement sum being used to "finance charitable works for women across the nation," particularly "abused" women_9 Their legal grounds would be the "incalculable damage [done] to the image of credibility of religious women, a value which is the result of centuries of sacrifice and service...
...No one will be ordained there in the ,next two years...
...27 by women in reaction to the earlier Vatican declaration barring ordination for females...
...The paradox did not escape Zirkel that several diocesan papers which did not mention the non-ordination of women were imparting significant information about the non-ordination of men...
...Aberdeen, Scotland, got a new bishop the other day...
...in Chicago, on page 23...
...Odds and Ends - - If the American bishops approve Communion-in-thehand at their May meeting, it's going to be over the energies of Cardinal John Carberry of St...
...It was the first time in the 2000-year history of the Church that such a large number of women rejected a decision about them by the exclusively-male decisionmaking process," observed Zirkel...
...However, of the 50 papers studied, only 17 printed the story, and some buried it so deep that it was difficult to find...
...And judging by the less than steady but more than sporadic laughter I heard at the screening i attended, there may be a sufficiency of such prejudiced, vulgar, infantile, or stupid people to constitute an audience for this muck...
...And if you are prejudiced, vulgar, infantile, or stupid enough, you can always get a cheap laugh out of nuns using fourletter words, tumbling in the hay with priests, or even just munching a pizza on a bus...
...Can you imagine what would happen if Hasidic Jews, for instance, or Black Muslims were represented on screen in this manner...
...Philbin was in the news 1975 for giving his priests instructions on how to vote in school-committee elections...
...What's the legitimacy of the sisters' complaint...
...Implicit in Zirkel's survey is the idea that the ordination of women, if not a matter of theological justice to half the human race, is one of survival for the Church as institution...
...The fact that he was more accurate than unfair is pointed up in a survey made since by Don Zirkel of the Brooklyn Tablet...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 9
