Editorials
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
EDITORIALS Sacred, more or less The case of Nancy Cruzan, discussed by three authors in the following pages, presents the sad story of a young woman who has existed in a "persistent vegetative...
...I envisage a series of thirty-second spots...
...It was a slow news day...
...This is not some smoke-and-mirrors Mystery religion we're dealing with...
...But I think much of the blame rests on our own shoulders...
...But times change...
...The gift of awareness confers the power to reflect, to feel remorse, to reshape the self...
...The strengths of the present draft are many...
...bishops seem to accept as final...
...Does the earlier definition come too close to the church's reaffirmed exclusion of women from the ordained priesthood, an exclusion the U.S...
...All that is important...
...What about almsgiving...
...Although they indicate that "an incapacity to deal with women as equals" should be considered a "negative indication for fitness to the priesthood," the bishops do not describe how this is to be implemented...
...The politicians, I am afraid, are showing the backbone of a Roman magistrate or a CBS News executive...
...Rolex sundials strapped to their wrists glint in the olive oil light...
...They came highly recommended...
...She said, in effect, "I wanted him to live so he could think about what he did...
...A sea change is taking place in human consciousness, the consequences of which are far greater than those resulting from the fall of the Iron Curtain...
...As a consequence, the church and society are called to repentance...
...PHILIP: Unregenerate pagans, in other words...
...JOHN: Deaf on what...
...We need to speak to people in a language they understand...
...It is this capacity already irreversibly lost by Nancy Cruzan that the state of Missouri wills to destroy in each of its condemned prisoners...
...Our own interest is similarly oblique, but not, we hope, exploitative...
...Besides, an exorcism every now and then never hurt anyone...
...LIFE ON MADISON AVE...
...ANDREW: Perhaps that language is part of the problem...
...JOHN: Living exemplary lives is all very well and good, lads...
...Taking that gift away even from someone who has violently deprived another of the same gift denies the sanctity of human life...
...I've been talking with some public relations people...
...It is self-awareness that makes us capable, unlike other sentient beings, of choice, and therefore of sin and crime and of making new and different choices...
...This is the very spirit of the modern world...
...But there are inherent weaknesses evident throughout the draft pastoral...
...The latest execution took place on January 18, when Gerald Smith, convicted of murder in the first degree, was put to death...
...If we can't convince those already in the basilicas, how can we expect to persuade the unbaptized...
...SURREAL NEWS ITEM: Catholic bishops announce multi-million-dollar anti-abortion public relations and polling effort...
...Yet the draft fails to make the voice of the church a reliable and forthright witness on this critical issue...
...Soon the U.S...
...What is more important is that each of the surviving seventy men and two women is possessed of the one property that most clearly marks us as human beings: consciousness...
...Done a lot of stuff for the Empire...
...Judging from this second draft, their work has just begun...
...Whether or not one agrees, there is something admirable here and something puzzling...
...bishops' pastoral...
...Because at the moment there are seventy-two prisoners living on Death Row in Missouri...
...it argues that this equality is revealed in the Scriptures and reinforced by Christian tradition...
...Missouri's high court explains its decision against permitting Nancy Cruzan to die by citing the state's interest in preserving life and the its duty to honor the sanctity of life, regardless of circumstances...
...JOHN: Spare us the usual masochistic blubbering, Andrew...
...PETER: What do you suppose this will cost us...
...Nothing too Bvzantine...
...The bishops reject all practices that deny this full equality ("Boys and men must be educated to respect the personal integrity of women, to recognize how sinful violence and every form of sexual exploitation really are"), and to offer twenty-five recommendations to foster such equality...
...JOHN: Couple of million, tops...
...Women are no longer to be understood merely in light of their roles and their relationships to men, but in their full, essential, God-given humanity...
...Let me lay it out for you...
...That's on target...
...It declares the equality of women as persons in every aspect of their lives: in the church, in society, in their personal lives...
...Wake up and smell the pillaged cities, lad...
...The bishops write that they are open to a continued search for an adequate explanation of the church's teaching on male priesthood...
...Nor do they call for the study of women's concerns in seminary curricula, the presence of women spiritual directors there, or the feasibility of appointing women as rectors...
...Very necessary, I grant you, and I wouldn't dream of standing in your way, Andrew...
...Something dignified, but eve-catchine...
...JOHN: See...
...JOHN: If the damn Huns wiped every last Christian from the face of the earth, Andrew would tell us we didn't show them enough brotherly love...
...EDITORIALS Sacred, more or less The case of Nancy Cruzan, discussed by three authors in the following pages, presents the sad story of a young woman who has existed in a "persistent vegetative state" for six years following an accident...
...In fact, the bishops write, the sin of sexism has seeped into both social and ecclesial structures...
...It is, finally, the letter of an all-male hierarchy, of a group of bishops that has listened attentively it is true to women's concerns but one that nonetheless speaks to women and about them from a distance...
...ANDREW: Charity and service remain the...
...and it states immediately that these ideals are far from being achieved...
...PHILIP: But how could we justify spending that kind of money on a political campaign...
...Though they urge Rome to consider admitting women to the diaconal office, the bishops safely refrain from throwing their weight behind such a proposal...
...Frankly, it makes me long for the days when Gnosticism was our biggest problem...
...JOHN: That's the beauty of it...
...I've gotten the Knights to pay the bill...
...A group of men in robes and sandals are sitting around a polished table...
...We wonder why, in the second draft, they drop an essential aspect from their definition of sexism, included in the first draft, that sexism is "the inevitable inequality entailed in the assignment of roles to persons on the basis of sex...
...JOHN: No more wheat germ and sprouts for this one, hey boys...
...Andrew: That doesn't make it right...
...ANDREW: This is scandal...
...When the bishops write that they support the theological preparation of women to preach the gospel, for example, they do not declare decisively that women should therefore officially preach the homily...
...What about the separation of church and Empire...
...FOR WANT OF CANDOR One in Christ Jesus, the second draft of the bishops' letter on women, will stand, if approved next November, as the Catholic church's most thorough treatment of sexism...
...PHILIP: We'd get murdered in the press...
...These guys are geniuses...
...JOHN: I think advertising is the way to go...
...Why so...
...JOHN: The Agrippa Group...
...PETER: Whom have you talked with, John...
...It is the long delayed but irresistible appreciation of the full personhood and equality of women...
...ANDREW: Didn't they have Pilate's account...
...The case presents legal and ethical issues so significant that numerous groups with conflicting agendas have filed amicus briefs urging differing resolutions with the result that Nancy Cruzan's immediate problems may well be lost from view...
...I trust we won't be going prime time with any more exorcisms...
...PETER: Go On...
...awareness of self and the world...
...JOHN: What is this guy, a Quaker...
...In their stead, this draft gives greater prominence to recent papal documents on women, some of which were occasioned by the possibility of a U.S...
...JOHN: Oh, go on with ya...
...SURREAL SETTING: A boardroom somewhere in the Mideast a long time ago sort of...
...While this second draft retains a genuinely respectful stance toward women and their concerns, it lacks candor...
...ANDREW: I agree we're adrift...
...A young woman juror, asked recently by an NBC News correspondent why she had voted against the death penalty for a convicted murderer, said nothing about the circumstances of the case or about any qualms she may have felt over deciding the fate of another human being...
...But the current crisis calls for more sophisticated techniques...
...Brows are furrowed, halos askew...
...Supreme Court will decide whether to accept the appeal of her parents from a Missouri Supreme Court decision denying their wish which they contend represents their daughter's to withdraw the artificial nutrition and hydration that sustain her in an unconscious condition that is beyond cure...
...I can see Anna Quindlen's column already: We're deaf on sex and now we've sold our souls to the heathen media merchants...
...PHILIP: What do you have in mind, John...
...We're sort of looking to Rome By way of Holywood, of course.g to Rome By way of Holywood, of course...
...Then why is their observation in the first draft that some Catholics including biblical and theological scholars do not find the arguments put forth by the Vatican excluding women from the priesthood "convincing or persuasive" missing from the second...
...What worked in Syria and other backwaters a century ago isn't going to work today...
...And with some polling groups...
...For our purpose here, we assume that Smith and the others received fair trials, that they were in fact guilty, and that they were condemned to die because they had shown themselves callously indifferent to the lives of others...
...It declines to address the chief impediment to full and equal partnership for women within the church: their exclusion from priestly orders, which prevents their full incorporation into the church's teaching and ruling structure...
...PETER: Correct...
...This draft preserves only a few remnants of the clear, strong, and varied comments of women that gave such a remarkable tone and texture to the first draft (see Commonweal, April 22, 1988...
...This juror, we think, understands something about the sacredness of human life not so clearly grasped by most administrators of justice in this country (not just in Missouri) or by those candidates who vie for office by portraying themselves as tough enough to pull the switch, or by the demonstrators outside a prison on execution night who celebrate the extinction of another person...
...It is based in part on the fuller realization of what it means "to be one in Christ Jesus...
...The bishops write that, "We must respond with imagination and courage to eradicate the injustice that keeps us from the full stature of Christ...
...That oneness remains incomplete in both church and world...
...PETER: These latest figures are very disappointing, gentlemen...
...Clearly the momentum has swung to the other side, to those I choose to call the decadent bourgeoisie...
Vol. 117 • May 1990 • No. 9
