Correspondence

...Don Timmerman's argument-that to obey church law is sinful for it entails cooperation with the systemic injustice of society-is simple and straightforward-and no different, essentially, from the argument of the many simple covenant communities that have come and gone since the Reformation...

...The personal integrity and self-discipline of Ms...

...It seems the dismantling of the Catholic Worker movement may have begun in Milwaukee...

...Remember how "the faithful" got their name...

...Need we ask who he is hiding from...

...long be fore the Roman See had won its unassail able hegemony, virtually the entire epis copacy of the Eastern church fell prey to the terribly "spiritual" heresy of Arianism...

...For all indications are that in such a church lay influence would long ago have swept aside the many favorite clerical fetishes-from the ban on artificial contraception to the Druidic Order of priests, pure and set aside...

...And tighten, in the sense of rethinking and constricting absolute ordination (which the Council of Chalcedon condemned anyhow...

...An outsider who "has faculties, will preside" is as close to the shepherd hireling Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John as we are likely to find...

...Baldovin rightly stresses the importance of the unity of all the churches, ritualized in the Eucharist...

...The whole de bate over who may preside would be unnecessary if the faithful were to reas sert their truly ancient role as the ultimate standard of Catholic orthodoxy against clerical obscurantism...

...JIM McCREA Orthodoxy & the faithful New York, N.Y...

...Who can deny the action of the Holy Spirit in those communities which, in sheer desperation and desire for a meaningful Eucharist as opposed to the possibility of "Jesus via UPS,'' call out and recognize those individuals who enjoy the charism of presiding, imposing hands on them, and, in effect, ordaining them (often if only for that local community...

...There is a thorny problem with which the Milwaukee group is struggling, at least implicitly...

...How might this tension be resolved...

...In my view, both Timmerman and Zahn are right-and Baldovin adds nothing but fog...

...To the Editors: An element basic to all human ritual seems largely to have been missed by all discussants of the Catholic Worker liturgy issue, ["Dear Friends," September 9...

...While I can easily argue for a woman presider because the group needs to experience in its presidents the full spectrum of its humanity, or because this woman is the member of the group best qualified to preside over its ritual, I cannot do so on the grounds that this person (male or female) has a right to ordination apart from the needs of this community...

...Even given a priest surplus, so long as none is involved in this group's work, how can he (or she, for that matter) authentically preside over its liturgy...

...if the local church (that is, the community of believers) owned the local church (that is, the ecclesiastical property) as was true for much of history (and was almost the case in the U.S...

...Let us even agree that to remain catholic this church must be able to exercise a universal discipline...

...Day kept the Worker on a straight if turbulent course...

...Thrice the length of Zahn and six times that of poor Timmerman (who, after all, began the whole thing), it is written in that tortured clericalese in which distinctions and nuances become smoke screens for the writer to hide behind...

...One way is simultaneously to relax and to tighten the restrictions on ordination...

...However...

...But where does that leave the vast majority of laypeople out here in the basic element of the church, the local assembly...

...Of course the magisterium, the teaching charism of the church, is not, and never was, localized...

...His solution: let's talk-and talk and talk-but on no account act...

...Relax, in the sense of ordaining a presider from and for this group...

...As we approach the third millennium, Catholic unity is obstructed not so much by the proleptic actions of the Don Tim mermans as by the present un-Catholic, anti-Apostolic, a-historical constitution of the ecclesiastical polis, kept in place by an ancien regime but ready to fall at the first gust of fresh air...

...What, for instance, is one to do with a sentence like this: "We often fail to remember that a religious faith that makes the outrageous claim that God saved us by dying does not lend itself to non-dialectical affirmations...

...To the Editors: I was saddened and just plain irked to read of the controversial liturgies at the Catholic Worker founded Casa Maria in Milwaukee ["Dear Friends," September 9...

...Such a presider can only symbolize the abstract unity of all the local groups, not the concrete reality over whose ritual he is presiding...

...It will...

...HEANEY Freedom from constraints Edwardsville, 111...

...It exists in every bishop, in every man and woman honored by the church as "doctor," and in many other men and women who will be so honored in future...

...Don Timmerman and Gordon Zahn were much more helpful...

...To the Editors: Your forum on the question of who may preside at the Eucharist ["Dear Friends," September 9] was intensely interesting, not so much for its (predictable) content as for its form...

...The approach is wrong in my view, for its concern is not the group, but the individual, i.e., the exclusion of this individual or this class of individuals from a role to which they have a putative right...

...BILLMc.TAGGART...

...To the Editors: As can be expected from most theological contributions to Commonweal, the level of John F. Baldovin's ' 'Frustrating and Angering'' [September 9]' was succinct and methodically developed...

...If not, then don't do it...

...Theological hair-splitting aside, are we to go back to the "magical mystery moment" of pre-Vatican II theology regarding the consecration of the elements...

...It is the authentic teaching of the Holy Spirit from the mouths of believers...

...Despite the great quantities of smoke, Baldovin comes out (predictably) on the side of the Zahns...

...Will it be Catholic...

...No movement is so successful that it is immune to "improvement" under the name of righteousness...

...That falls precisely into the error that plagues absolute ordination...

...Is God's gift of Self to the community to be dependent on the procedural idiosyncrasies imposed by a very small element of the People of God on the significantly larger membership...

...THOMAS CAHILL Bringing down the Worker Logansport, Ind...

...The Milwaukee group cannot avoid ritualizing its commitment and its identity in some concrete, if symbolic way...

...Let us agree with Zahn that to break with this teaching (for however heroic and holy a reason) is to cut oneself off from the visible church Catholic...

...Here I must agree with both Zahn and Bal-dovin...

...The clue to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable ravine between Timmerman and Zahn is that queer phrase of Timmerman's (quoted twice by the disconcerted Zahn), "the magisterium in Rome...

...but the laity, living in the world of the flesh, remained faithfulagainst them...

...The only reason for all the words is to assure the Timmermans (and, no doubt the writer himself) that he, too, is stressed by all this-and terribly, terribly concerned...

...It's a necessary condition of Catholic eucharistic liturgy...

...If bishops were elected by their people (as they were in the post-apostolic centuries...

...Gathered in God's name Piedmont, Calif...

...She stated on more than one occasion that if she were ever ordered to stop some action by a duly appointed authority in the church, she would cease and desist...

...Hey, Father Baldovin, why not throw in a fourth negative while you're at it and really obscure things...

...If we as Roman Catholics do belong to a eucharistic community and if that eucharistic emphasis is one of the most striking distinguishing characteristics by which we are singled out from the other Christian communities, what does this say to us when the eucharistic celebration is becoming very different or possibly a rare occasion in many of our assemblies...

...if representative laypeople were voting members of synods and councils, then the Don Timmermans would need have no fear of being excluded from church membership...

...The group must ritualize its specific way of following Christ before it can ritualize its unity with others...

...But not a sufficient one...

...To the Editors: How nice that theologian John F. Baldovin clarified for us [September 9] that theologically we, individually and collectively as a community, have the power and right through baptism to preside at the Eucharist and then to accuse those of us who do it of schism...

...But the last word you have reserved to John Baldovin, S.J., a professional clergyman-and what a word it is...

...When the continuity of ecclesiastical discipline has greater value than celebrating the Eucharist where two or three are gathered together in God's name, then it is my opinion that to continue to adhere to that discipline is tantamount to fracturing community, a much more heinous act...

...When Dorothy Day died, there was conjecture concerning how long the Catholic Worker movement could suirvive without her leadership...

...We have the freedom of Christ who taught us not to be bound by the dumb and self-serving constraints of the institution...

...At best this is incomplete, at worst, ritually ineffective...

...Timmerman defends his group's action in part on justice grounds...

...There should be no question about whether it will be effective liturgy...

...ALBERT McHUGH, Ph.D...

...If you are so empowered by your community, do it...

...Thus we have pro and con, both presented succinctly-and by laymen...

...But will it be Eucharist...

...Gordon Zahn's argument is no less straightforward-that to be authentically Catholic one must subordinate private judgment to "the magis-terium in Rome" (Timmerman's odd phrase...

...And given the ecumenical character of the group, that ritual will have to be ecumenical as well...

...A clear, gradual chippingaway over time at the Vatican's (note that I did not say the church's) intransigence seems to be one of the primary charters of theologians and other "professional" church-workers in this day and age...

...What if the reactionary element continues to prevail and the ordained clergy continues to diminish in number and dedication...

...So, in my view, all three are at least partly right, if sometimes for the wrong reasons...