No Turning Back:

...At one point, the book lists questions put to Ferraro and Hussey by the order's governing group, among them: "Are you saying that a woman should not be hampered by law from having an abortion...

...It might be different (and the book might require a different reviewer) had the authors answered Elizabeth Bowyer in terms of a coherent moral system distinguishable from the rhetoric of NOW and NARAL...

...To say this is not to end the argument...

...As for Ferraro's analogy, it can be stood on its head...

...They didn't...

...First, that the status of women in society, particularly but not exclusively poor women, is indeed one of relative power-lessness, so that women disproportionately bear the burdens of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, often in circumstances not of their own making that multiply the burdens, to the point of putting health, sanity, life at risk...

...In 1986, Ferraro and Hussey are the only two of the original nun-signers whose "cases" have not been "cleared" by the CRSI...

...Nuclear weapons kill or maim or poison every person within their considerable reach in space and time...

...Largely on the basis of that contention, it asked for open discussion on the issue among Catholics, free of any threat of ecclesiastical sanctions against politicians and church personnel...

...The word "coercive" in this setting raises endlessly arguable intra-ecclesial questions about the import of religious vows and the church's right to require silence or conformity from persons who are seen to speak on its behalf...

...Or, Do you recognize any objective moral norms which would guide her decision...

...If an SND [Sister of Notre Dame de Namur] were making public statements defending nuclear warfare or apartheid, I would feel that we would have a serious responsibility to ask for clarification and to question how these statements fit into our shared mission as SNDs...

...The stance taken here is consistent with the rest of the book...

...To Ferraro, as she says to the archbishop, this does not sound like dialogue...

...But in July 1988, faced with criticism from within their order and from other nuns and apprised of Vatican moves to tighten control over church personnel, they resign, but continue, as lay women, to operate a multif aceted work of service and advocacy on behalf of poor people in West Virginia...

...But the book (published this year) still doesn't answer the questions straightforwardly...

...Not shown...

...They are offered a model, a statement drafted and signed by six Sisters of Loretto which satisfied the CRSI even though, if read closely, it neither retracts the central assertions of the original ad nor makes the affirmation being asked of Ferraro and Hussey...

...whatever its flaws, for example, this book is effective...

...I don't know, Pat, I'm beginning to think that the Notre Dames are so out of touch with the status of women that they are incapable of understanding us...

...The Vatican's response to the Times ad is a case in point: The amount of effort spent and ink spilled in trying to make the signers knuckle under suggests misplaced priorities, greater concern for keeping the troops in line than for the substance of the problem...

...Readers who come to this work for other reasons will learn a lot about the maturation of individual nuns and whole congregations before, during, and after Vatican II...

...Robert G. Hoyt that curtails the legitimate exercise of freedom of religion and conscience or discriminates against poor women...

...Second, that the status of women in the Catholic church is one of virtual exclusion from power, including the power to participate in the formulation of Catholic moral teaching...

...We do not judge apartheid and nuclear warfare evil because they are all but exclusively male inventions, products of a patriarchal system, but because of what they do and are...

...Violent" seems hyperbolic...

...Moreover, the paternalistic, not to say hamhanded, handling of the case will prove counterproductive...

...The battle Hussey and Ferraro fought over the Times ad, though reported with economy, constitutes the core of the book...

...It is important that we talk about this...

...the aim of the book, the reason it was created, was to demonstrate that the Catholic church remains an authoritarian and deeply patriarchal institution...

...The book tells of two bright, strong, committed Catholic women who became nuns, were educated and served as nuns, got in trouble as nuns, and finally quit, under very considerable direct pressure (despite their obscure status) from very lofty circles of the Vatican...

...We may not judge abortion good in itself or ethically neutral because it sometimes, often, functions as a means of escape from privations or sufferings ultimately rooted in patriarchal domination...

...Ferraro's response-of-the-moment is then reported: "How can anyone equate defending women as moral agents and responsible decision-makers with defending apartheid and nuclear war...

...And every induced abortion, properly so called, kills a fetus...

...The material is interesting, even beguiling, and historically valuable...

...They refuse to sign anything, and are given a fortnight to come up with an acceptable statement, on pain of dismissal...

...Moreover, the story rings basically true to my own experience as a one-time religious, as a lay Catholic exposed at times to the threat and reality of church discipline, and as an editor privileged to work, during the con-ciliar years, with movers and shakers of women's religious orders...

...One hopes this debate will not be squelched...

...and, most centrally, that it is wrong about abortion...

...The ad bore ninety-seven signatures, those of two priests, two religious brothers, twenty-six nuns, the rest lay persons...

...Barbara Ferraro and Pat Hussey have a good story to tell, and they do it well...

...At the outset of the story as it is told here, it is 1986...

...The use to which they put the story is another matter...

...it also argued against seeking "legislation NO TURNING BACK Two Nuns' Battle with the Vatican over Women's Right to Choose Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey with Jane O'Reilly Poseidon Press, New York, $19.95, 332 pp...

...The ad headlined the assertion that "A Diversity of Opinions About Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics...

...Finally, though contemporary research tends overall to confirm the fetus's claim to human dignity, some results appear to call for honest debate about the status of the conceptus in the earliest stages of pregnancy...

...They are about to meet with a high-ranking Vatican delegation for what the then papal nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Pio Laghi, says will be a pastoral session, a dialogue, not a juridical meeting nor an inquisition-except that Laghi adds: "But I must insist that after our time together you must put in writing that you support and adhere to the Roman Catholic teaching on abortion...

...What is to be said about it...

...that it is coercive, even violent, in its methods of enforcing its teaching...

...To deny it any real moral weight, on the ground that Tertullian hated women, Augustine hated sex, Thomas Aquinas defined women as malformed males, and the Roman curia is exclusively male, is to be less than serious...

...It's not news that the church is patriarchal and authoritarian...

...Ferraro, then forty-two, and Hussey, thirty-six, both Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, are among the still unrepentant signers of an ad that ran in the New York Times in October 1984, and soon thereafter drew letters of reprimand from the Vatican's Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (CRSI...

...No doubt the skillfulness of the telling owes something to the help of professional writer Jane O'Reilly, but she could not have endowed the authors with the wit and warmth that come through on many pages...

...One has to dig to learn the authors' position...

...Apartheid cruelly oppresses people of color because they are colored...

...But, "wrong about abortion...

...Though Ferraro acknowledges that these are "good questions," the two did not answer at the time, on the ground that they were not given enough time...

...Engaging testimony, unconvincing argument Reading No Turning Back, a sort of two-person auto-biography, teaches me that it's possible to finish such a book admiring its authors and unhappy with their product...

...First, that the Catholic church is also less than serious in its efforts to recognize, much less do something about, the status of women within and outside the church, and to address the other cultural and systemic causes or occasions of abortion...

...One place where it can be found is in the reaction of the two to a letter from a member of the congregation's governing group, Elizabeth Bowyer, expressing a sense that the two dissenters are now defending abortion as such...

...The deadline, and two more years, pass, and the threat is never carried out...

...But all this is context...

...If not coercive, however, the methods used in this instance by Vatican authorities seem to have been clearly disingenuous...

...it was not the substance but the appearance of unity that was sought, and if that required the nuns to say what the Vatican knew they did not believe, that was no problem...

...Not even argued...

...Third, that although these facts about the status of women are ethically relevant, they do not provide an answer to the question of what happens in an abortion...

...Some things have to be added...