Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE 'Fair' isn't 'free' Montreal, Canada To the Editors: Thank you for publishing Jordan Bishop's excellent analysis of the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States...
...What worries me even more is that after a certain period of time, Canadian corporations will begin to complain that higher taxes in Canada prevent them from competing with American firms and try to convince the government to lower taxes, even though this means reducing support for social programs...
...In "Standing in for Jesus," Garvey waffles both intellectually and theologically on the question of woman as priest...
...My question is whether their origin is necessarily divine...
...None of this detracts from the glory of creation, nor has any orthodox writer urged that idea...
...John baby, it may be a common term to you, but it describes only who it describes to me...
...Although my argument does not please her, it should not be distorted...
...I'd like to answer both articles...
...102), I had such a chat: "Abba Poemen said to Abba Joseph, 'Tell me how to become a monk.' He said,' If you want to find rest here below, and hereafter, in all circumstances say, Who am I? and do not judge anyone.'" For me, that ongoing question of identity has more than once given up the answer "priest...
...I am willing to accept the current Orthodox and Catholic discipline with regard to the ordination of women...
...I can always count on Garvey to be a sexist pig, and am never disappointed with the cute-ass way he has of discrediting women in the church or those who are attempting to become more conscious of sexism...
...I will always be grateful to him for calling my attention back beyond the cross and suffering to the glory of creation, which is where the Incarnation and Resurrection brought us, but we rarely claim it...
...In the December 16 issue-to note the latest example-Garvey calls "The Desert Fathers" the "common term" and uses it because he is too self- righteous to use a consciously non-sexist, inclusive term...
...may decide to regard some of the Canadian social programs as forms of government-sponsored subsidies, hence, as unfair competition, and demand that these programs be discontinued...
...Sexton says that she has felt the call to priesthood, and I do not deny that her feelings are deep and genuine...
...I went on with that November 18 article, in my culturally bound way as woman, giving Garvey a second chance, that there might be something there for me to reconsider...
...IRMALEVESQUE The author replies: Joan Sexton and I are pretty far apart...
...but without redemption we can't participate in that glory, or even see creation, with the freedom and clarity we must struggle to attain...
...CORRESPONDENCE 'Fair' isn't 'free' Montreal, Canada To the Editors: Thank you for publishing Jordan Bishop's excellent analysis of the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States ["Trading Away the Future," December 16, 1988...
...As far as Matthew Fox is concerned, to call foolish writing foolish is not "bashing," it's accurate...
...You need one...
...A reading of the New Testament makes it clear that it really is about redemption, which involves suffering and the cross as an integral part of what, finally, the Resurrection is...
...How can he tell the story of the pagan priest having something to teach the desert fathers and not accept the possibility that a fellow Christian might have something worth hearing, even though he has a different vision...
...One of his coy suggestions is that a woman, should she feel called to priesthood, have a chat with a wise old monk...
...I stand by the attitude of many early Christians, whose practice indicated that the call comes not from God but from the Christian community, each of whose members is called to the fullness of Christian life and service through baptism...
...Matthew Fox is not a heretic...
...I did not say that a woman, if she feels a divine call to priesthood, should have a talk with a monk...
...i.e., fathers are fathers and mothers are mothers...
...Among his fears for the future is that the U.S...
...JOAN sexton Never disappointing New York, N.Y...
...Garvey's most recent piece, "Faithful Conflict" [December 16], set it right up for me...
...Gregory baum McGill University Women in the desert Brooklyn, N.Y...
...Levesque is concerned, I am always happy never to be disappointing...
...I knew I had to protest...
...Before I could get it typed in final form, his next article arrived [December 16] quoting from the same source, different story...
...Our theology of ordination differs, and would, even if the church were to ordain women...
...To the Editors: I had started an answer to John Garvey's November 18 article, "Standing in for Jesus," with a quote from Benedicta Ward's, The Desert Christian...
...How can Garvey so cavalierly claim that the "call" has "nothing to do with divine urging?'' If it has anything to do with my essential identity, it has everything to do with God, with the divine, and my participation in God's will...
...I am (Continued on page 95) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 66) also grateful to him for helping me continue to ask "Who am I?" in more freedom and hope than the Vatican has ever offered me...
...To the Editors: When my issue comes, I always turn immediately to John Gar-vey's column...
...I said that anyone who felt such a call, male or female, should talk with a non-ordained monk or nun...
...the question should also be explored seriously...
...Or, as Fox uses the dysfunctional family to explain Ratzinger's fury, is it always easier to be kinder to the stranger, the outsider, the "pagan," than to the sibling who is excited and committed to a different piece of experience and hope than the rest of the "good" brothers and sisters who remain in the parental tradition...
...I'm not sure what Garvey's expectations are (discouragement or laughter probably), but a few years ago, reading Ward's book (p...
...As far as Ms...
...JOHN GARVEY...
...Doesn't Garvey see that he bashed Fox in just this way...
...But at the end, highlighted with its own special box, was Garvey's arrogant, mean, and cruel dismissal of Matthew Fox and his work...
...In his concluding paragraph, Garvey chose the story about a pagan priest having something important to say to the desert fathers: "Where we allow our allegiance to a tradition to become a club with which we can bash those who disagree, we have reduced the truth to something we hope to wield and manage to our own satisfaction...
...An answer, an insight I am bound to be obedient to, as humbly as I can, trying to sort out what it means, perhaps for the rest of my life...
...I agree with Jordan Bishop that, in the context of the global shift to the economic right, the recent Free Trade Agreement threatens to produce a qualitative difference in Canadian society...
...The lay beginnings of the monastic movement are not irrelevant...
...And I can't believe that an otherwise terrific magazine lets you get away with being such a consistent, chronic sexist...
...Whatever, the wisdom of Abba Joseph-never to stop asking Who am I? and to judge no one-applies to all of us...
...Don't you have an editor...
...Fox's dismissals of the thought of the church fathers (which he seriously misrepresents) and his distortion of Eckhart (which continues in his self-serving New York Times advertisement of December 14) should be pointed out and opposed...
...The Sermon on the Mount makes more mention of hell than Fox is likely to find attractive, and implies the necessity of an asceticism which he doesn't like-= too "dualistic...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 3
