WE OF THE BROKEN BODY

...As to whether or not homosexuals should be or26 May 1978:332 dained, we know that the virtue or lack of virtue in the priest does not change the validity of the sacraments...

...However, I am against the public declaration of one's "sexual orientation," and feel ,that this is, indeed, a disqualification...

...The President might then cite the special prosecutor's failure to prosecute as proof of his aide's innocence...

...So she went to a Roman Catholic doctor (this was in 1918...

...I cannot say that I think abortion is never permissible...

...She lived to be ninety and I'm still here...

...Story takes the fragments and "puts it all together" for us...

...Hierarchies can't do this for us...

...But we like proofs...

...But I think that we of the broken body need to confess together, too...

...In the days beforeour last General Convention when I was asked ff I was for or against the ordination of women, I replied, truthfully, .that I was against the ordination of anybody, male or female, until we took a serious look at what a priest is, or should be...

...My topic was purely literaryBthe importance of story in the lives of the students these people teach, and in the lives of the teachers themselves...

...The Lord be with you...

...X about it...

...And wasn't Phoebe the first deacon mentioned in Scripture...

...The political parties would face an equally serious threat...

...Many of the specific topics of discussion today are cloud screens so that we can avoid the real topic...

...But the greatest danger of all may come not from abuse of the prosecutor's power, but from his inability to perform the function which the bill assigns him...

...As James Bradley Thayer cautioned nearly a century ago, "Under no system can the power of courts go far to save a people from...

...I use the word layman advisedly, for I am using the word man generically: God created man...

...That is what we believe, and it is an enormous thing to believe in common...

...Now if you seek the way or manner of this change, it is sufficient to know that it has been accomplished by the Holy Spirit...

...I already knew that Christianity is rapidly becoming taboo in the literary world, replacing sex as the unmentionable...

...MADELEINEL'ENGLE is the author of A Wrinkle in Time, A Circle of Quiet and numerous other books, most recently, The Irrational Season (Seabury Press).Has it really come to that...

...He may be weak, ineffective, or sympathetic with those he is to investigate...

...Nor can it be maintained merely by court proceedings...

...We are often faced with alternatives where there is no right choice, and then the only thing to do is pray that we have, in fact, chosen the lesser of two evils...

...Another controversial issue has been the new translations of the liturgy...

...And to make an issue over calling God Him is to miss the point that the Creator of the Universe is beyond all our sexisms...

...Stories about flawed and foolish people like ourselves, like our friends and neighbors, and who may, if we listen to them carefully, give us a clearer idea of what separates us ~and what does not, and how we can once again become whole and holy...

...I have long believed that God is quite capable of taking care of his own table, and that he often invites for dinner those from the highways and byways who would be rejected by the hierarchies...

...In the Orthodox Church the Sacrament of Penance is called The Mystery of the Second Baptism...

...Stephen as someone who wasn't quite good enough to become a priest...

...The Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her order, the reawakening church in South America (if nothing and no one else) refute that...

...Moreover, Congress has already shown a tendency to give a special prosecutor cases, like that of Lance, where the main question concernedfitness to hold office, a question a prosecutor cannot properly handle...

...Nor would confidence be restored by a bill which would perpetuate the assumption that the President and his highest aides are potential defendants in a criminal case...

...I do think that it is sin (unpopular, unfashionable word) but that sometimes it is the lesser sin...

...Likewise I'm sure...

...It's meant to be in the language of the people, but wha.t people...

...And the bones that he has broken may rejoice...

...The result would be an institutionalized cover-up...

...I began with a Hasidic tale which ends, "God made man because he loves stories...

...We are all a fearsome and wondrous combination of male and female genes, and the mixture is probably richer than we know...

...i know I gag inordinately over the ugly rhythm of '~And also with you," but I've never known anyone who spoke that way...

...These are the symptoms of Watergate, not the cure...

...No reform bill will guarantee the ultimate integrity of our political order...

...I find that what has been done to the shape of the Eucharist, .the telling of the story, is (for me) alive and compelling...

...for any such safeguard would have to be, as the Constitution intends, a poh'tical oneBand the whole conception of a special prosecutor is to free such matters from the restraints of politics...

...He wouldn't understand...

...There cannot be...

...He isn't a Christian...

...If I need a serious operation and the surgeon feels impelled to declare to me that he is either homo- or heterosexual, I'm going to look for another doctor...

...When the sex act is possessive rather than participatory, it can never be Christian, and there are many heterosexual men who use their wives, and vice versa...

...I was shocked in an Evangelical setting to hear someone say, "I couldn't possibly talk to Dr...

...I don't want to forget that my own spirit may be informed by that Holy Spirit who informs the bread and wine...

...Christianity is anything but deed...

...The special prosecutor will be politically isolated...

...Do we have to use the lowest possible common denominator...

...o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ELEANOR FITZGIBBONS, IHM ON T~E llARIDENING OF ARTERIES "How can a man be born again when he is old," Nicodemus parried...

...Do you believe in the Real Presence...

...That is sufficient for me, and it in no way belittles what I believe when I receive Holy Communion, for if the bread and the wine are truly the Body and Blood of my Lord, then I am taking God himself within me, and that cannot be done with impunity: what I do when I leave church is either to help or to hinder the Coming of the Kingdom, and in the Name of God...

...ruin, our chief protection lies elsewhere...

...Apriest holds God in his hands, to give to the people, and that is nobody's right, male or female...

...But it took me by surprise that a charming Hasidic tale should evoke such comment...

...As Henry Ruth, Jaworski's successor, warned the Senate committee, an unscrupulous special prosecutor could ruin a man's political career and reputation without ever filing charges...

...Perhaps in order to be One Body once more we need to die, to die to all the fears and judgmentalness and more-saved-than-thou-ness that has kept us apart for so many centuries...

...9705 would grant vast powers to an isolated and unaccountable official, and would subject the political parties to irresponsible government authority...

...I wish we could go back to the very early days, when a deacon was a separate order, not a steppingstone to the priesthood, left over from the clericalism of the middle ages...

...In my church we discuss at/ infinitum the priesting of women and avoid looking at the nature of the priesthood itself...

...X is Roman Catholic...

...But if we allow the world to tear us apart, if we allow internal quarrels to tear us apart, then we are indeed ill...

...As a partner in a full and long-term marriage it is probably inevitable that I see participatory heterosexual love as the most complete form of physical love offered the human being, but I view this as a matter of grace, and I think we have much to learn about human sexuality...

...When, nearly forty, she became pregnant with me, the doctor told her that neither she nor the child could possibly survive the pregnancy, and she should have an immediate therapeutic abortion...

...The Bible as vehicle of God's grace is something over which we have little argument...

...It is an awesome responsibility, and one I can bear only because I know that any good I may do is God in me, and is not in any way accomplished by my own virtue or morality or strength of character...

...I was asked...

...9705 capable of preventing abuses by the special prosecutor...

...The main problem is that it is not read regularly enough by enough people...

...Commonweal:333...

...And the things that hold us together are basic, whereas that which would pull us apart is peripheral...

...Thirty-two years ago when my husband and I married, my devout Baptist mother-in-law was unhappy that I was a "bachelor-girl" living alone in Greenwich Village, who had published two books and was working in the theater, and--worst of all--was an Episcopalian...

...In a way I can understand the secular rejection and fear of the great Christian story because it makes demands on those who ac= cept it, terrifying demands...

...It lies with a strong public sense of the need for accountability, and with the structure of our institutions, designed to limit all power by political restraints...

...Congress might use it as an excuse not to conduct an investigation of its own...

...I had better not name names and places in this sorry world, but there have been a number of Roman Catholic settings in which I have been lovingly offered, and received, Holy Communion...

...And then we will be made to be born into the Kingdom of God, to serve and please him, dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God Through Jesus Christ our Lord...

...Let alone things heavenly: Spirit and water, the kingdom of God, I want to cry: Old man, what has happened to you...

...Later on at least three teachers told me how brave I was to have dared to mention God...

...For all these reasons, there may easily be the appearance of a thorough and impartial investigation without the reality of one...

...About ten years ago when I first went to speak at Mundelein College in Chicago, I stayed at the convent...

...to be willing to be killed to our sins...

...We live by sacrament and symbol and story, all things which take us beyond the world of provable fact and laboratory experiment, and into the worldof faith--for what can be proved does not need faith...

...I am on the commission in my Church (as a token woman, to start with) which examines those in my diocese seeking ordination, so I speak from this point of view, and as a layman with my own vocation as a story-teller...

...tivities could be used as a devastating weapon against individuals---the very fact that a special prosecutor has been appointed, that an individual has been called before a grand jury, is enough to provoke suspicion...

...While they may trust in the rule of law, their trust in lawyers at this point is extremely low...

...And vice versa...

...WE OFTHEBROKENBODY MADELEINE L'ENGLE Reflections on Anglo-Roman-Orthodox unity This past Thanksgiving week-end, during the annual convention of The National Council of Teachers of English, ,I was the speaker for one of the luncheon meetings...

...The three Sisters in charge of me were as curious about this Anglican visitor as though I had come from Mars --and yet they had read my books, my stories (which was why I was there), and for me story is always involved in Incarnation...

...My mother couldn't carry a baby for more than three months and she lost countless babies...

...What has been done to the language, in both Roman and Anglo-Catholic translations, is something else again...

...Let us not fall into the trap ignored by one group of earnestRoman/AngloCatholic women who seriously translated the first line of one familiar hymn as: Dear Mother-Father of Personkind The present heated discussions of homosexuality are often another smokescreen to keep us from facing our very complex human sexuality...

...I believe that union is on its way, and that it is coming from within, not without...

...Perhaps my own experience makes me subjective...

...Everything else pales beside this...

...The bill is not likely to restore the American people's confidence in government, as its sponsors contend...

...Amongst other things,i.t is full of wonderful stories...

...Many in the secular world think of Christianity as terminally ill, if not dead...

...In addition, H.R...

...John of Damascus said: "The Bread and "the Wine are changed into the real Body and Blood of the Lord...

...But it's largely because to be Anglican is to be Catholic...

...One can hardly think of St...

...Have you forgotten how to love or remember the dying we call winter that begets another spring...

...only people can do it, people who believe not only in the cross but in the Resurrection...

...I hope we won't let anyof these unanswered questions push us further apart, ~But how to get together...

...And also with you...

...Most of the issues before us are basically Catholic issues, and all unresolved ones, despite the fact that in the Episcopal Church(and some other but not all branches of the Anglican Communion) women may be and are being ordained...

...The priest Juan Carlos Orris in South America uses this baptismal formula: "I kill you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and I make you born into the Kingdom of God to serve and please him...

...God in us...

...I need to confess my sins, regularly, to a priest, to receive absolution...

...They would only aggravate the problem...

...Thus in some cases a special prosecutor would effectively have carte blanche to investigate the political parties, with access to all their records, activities and personnel...

...The potential for abuse would be enormous...

...A goodly number of people applying for ordination have genuine vocations to the diaconate, to ministry, but have little or no sense of sacrament, and therefore no calling to priesthood...

...One of the many ways in which Christians have managed to avoid the demands is a way that strikes me as more frightening than the demands themselves: it Commonweah 331 isa willingness to collaborate in the tearing asunder of life by breaking Christendom into warring denominations and communions, a major victory for the Enemy...

...And where language is weak, theology is weak...

...Another issue over which we're still at odds is abortion...

...Story is one of the great healing elements in a world that is broken...

...I prefer Anglican, but this may be a subjective response and at least partly a reaction against some of the things I dislike in the Episcopal Church...

...Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Catholic: in a world where it is no longer safe to mention God in a story told to English teachers, the three Catholic orders of Christendom had better look to what binds us together rather than what rends us asunder...

...But as long as the diaconate is considered not-quite-first class, few will be satisfied with this vocation...

...Yes, I do...

...It's too late for paper work and red tape...

...There are no safeguards in H.R...

...For me, that's part of being Catholic...

...male and female created He him...

...The bill covers presidential campaign chairmen directly and applies to parties through the "conflict of interest" clause...