NEWS & VIEWS
EWS & VIEWS Women Priests Who are those Catholic women who seek ordination to the priesthood? Frustrated, naive little ladies with an identity crisis or driven by a need for power? Not...
...The political consensus that has been achieved is on problems already solved...
...There is no moral opposition...
...This has been a long and gradual process, it is argued, one that began with the downfall of the monarchies two centuries ago...
...The Communist party7 It "is in steady and probably irreversible decline everywhere except in Italy, and in Italy it seems to be turning itself into something that looks a good deal more like a Socialist party than a Communist party...
...The Socialist party...
...For eleven years and four months, I have written this page and shared chores with the house editors...
...Ranier, Md...
...I'm sure they will welcome the findings of the present study as they continue to discuss the issue of women priests in the Catholic Church," Sister Ferder said...
...Whither Europe...
...The dilemma of the moderate European left, argues Pfaff, is success...
...I look forward to the change...
...His thesis: that Europe may have passed a historical watershed, so that it is impossible to think about the political future in old terms...
...It is a very select population...
...Standing as model for the study, and supplying its startling comparisons, is the 1974 study of American priests commissioned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and directed by psychologist Eugene Kennedy...
...The difficulty, explained Kennedy, is with the sample...
...All that we can do now is to understand that the Europe of today is a, Europe we have not clearly seen before," he concludes...
...But the present is in some ways the past...
...What next...
...But there are problems, notes Pfaff...
...The society around it, which it purports to reform, is largely its own creation...
...And the achievement has been imposing, bringing the mass of people into a common pro~ perity as well as into popular representative government...
...Another problem: success leaves dissent without a language...
...said recently that she intended to resign as president of Hunter College in 1980, that 10 years is long enough in the one position...
...It represents women who have a clearly defined, highly articulate interest in being ordained priests...
...It's been a stimulating time, but it is time to move on...
...The Left has won...
...Not even the sponsors of the study claim that...
...Eurocommunism...
...And you can look forward to change here...
...See you...
...They're also strong in their identity as female persons, and, what's more, they show up as psychologically more stable than what is claimed to be a comparable sample of male priests...
...According to a two-year study launched after the first Women's Ordination Conference held in Detroit in 1975, they're people with a deep sense of call strengthened by a desire to serve people and humanize their church...
...There's nothing wrong with speaking for those women, but the study does not represent women in general in the Catholic church...
...She's got a point...
...The time ahead should be an interesting one for Commonweal readers...
...Wanna bet on that...
...In any case, after a decade and a bit at Commonweal I'm taking myself to Massachusetts' North Shore, where I'll count gulls and do independent writing...
...The study was directed by Sister Fran Ferder, FSPA, a clinical psychologist at the Quixote Center in Mt...
...What has happened over 200 years represents-"asrounding change," writes Pfaff...
...While there are differences between the women's ordination study and the priests' study, the following comparisons can be made, according to Sister Ferder: --91 percent of the women studied were healthy personalities as compared to 24 percent of the priests studied...
...No one resists Socialism...
...I am arrticipating it as much as I hope you will...
...In Western Europe, it would seem the great adventure is over...
...They comprise a random sample drawn from a list of 211 women who expressed a desire to be priests at the Detroit meeting...
...He blamed isolation, exeessive demands coupled with a minimum of interpersonal support, and unchosen celibacy...
...Participating were 100 women--72 nuns, 21 single women, seven married women...
...Finis With this issue I join the ranks of Commonweal alumni...
...Turnover in an organization as small as ours inevitably translates to real change, however subtle...
...The study will be gotten into the hands of the bishops...
...But they do suggest," in Sister Ferder's opinion, "that most of the women studied bring a strong and basic psychological health to their ministry...
...one percent of the women were maldeveloped personalities who showed symptoms of psychological illness as compared to 8 percent of the priests...
...Kennedy, you may recall, found that although American priests were as emotionally healthy as American men in general, a high percentage were "underdeveloped persons...
...Agreed...
...eight percent of the women were underdeveloped personalities as compared to 68 percent of the priests...
...Kennedy described an "underdeveloped" priest as one who had not matured as much as he ought, given his age, careful selection and training, and one who showed a special lack of psychological growth in relationships with others...
...Socialism has become banal, like democracy...
...The figures, in other words, would be quite different if it did...
...A modern consensus has been achieved...
...Not on your life...
...What has happened in the past seems now accomplished, and what is about to happen has not begun...
...Europe has reached a point where old and familiar intellectual categories are all but useless in dealing with new and urgent problems in the international economy, in reordering the international division of labor, or in meeting the new problems that develop withm societies...
...But it should be taken for what it is and not be compared to the priests' study...
...It's an excellent study," Kennedy declared, "and it clearly defines for whom it speaks...
...Well not really, says Kennedy...
...It "has predictably proved to be the penultimate stage in the disintegration of Western European Communism--implying the threat of ideological dissolution in Eastern Europe as well...
...Nor do the comparisons, in whatever context, necessarily mean that women would make better priests than men...
...Jacqueline Wexler (remember Sister Grennan...
...Ex-Commonweal editor William Pfaff reflects again on European politics in The New Yorker, this time in terms of the Left...
...Hence the terrorism in Italy and Germany against popular agreement on what life should be...
...JOHN DEEDY 15 September 1978, 578...
...Are the comparisons valid...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 18
