Hey, Bishop!
Morton, Bridget Balthrop
sale of ballistic missiles strictly curtailed. Antiballistic missile systems must adhere to the ABM Treaty until reduced nuclear stockpiles are at such levels that the systems would...
...The guiding principles should be global cooperation based on the primacy of international law...
...But as one parishioner remarked to me, they have "such grace on the altar...
...Before the service started, the priest came out and asked if there was an altar boy present...
...weaponry in the Gulf War--a war that compellingly demonstrated the danger of such arms sales...
...In fact, we are so tired we won't be able to do anything, and that includes phone calls, vestments, flowers, doughnuts, lectoring, cleaning, workshops, raffle tickets, teaching, singing in the choir, balancing the books, visiting the sick, or parish administration...
...to steady herself, she grabbed at him and inadvertently pulled off the gold chain he was wearing...
...Seeing them has been a source of grace for me, an outward sign of growth in the church, in its acceptance of women...
...Recall, this all happened long before the Second Vatican Council...
...Must women be invisible there...
...should abandon its first-use policy and join Gorbachev's call for halting the production of all fissionable materials for weapons...
...Not noticing his loss, the mugger ran off...
...But I would gladly have donned cassock and surplice to replace my brothers on the altar, and I knew the Latin prayers by heart...
...It tells the story of"Tamara Pristin's friend from abroad" who, while visiting New York, was confronted by a mugger...
...BRIDGET BALTHROP MORTON Bridget Balthrop Morton is a poet, free-lance writer, and mother of three...
...Antiballistic missile systems must adhere to the ABM Treaty until reduced nuclear stockpiles are at such levels that the systems would actually diminish the threat of nuclear exchange...
...But I am not patient...
...In the sacristy, I found to my dismay that there were only two cassocks...
...HEY, BISHOP...
...All went well until the priest finished reading the Epistle, on the right side of the altar, and moved to the center to pray...
...Then I wobbled down the steps, turned, and genuflected...
...But that would not have solved my problem...
...What is still needed is a new way of thinking and acting that sharply departs from the policy and pursuits of the last forty years...
...Her "Daniel: Beloved by God and by Me" appeared in Commonweal (October 20, 1989...
...The report noted that these are likely to increase because of the success of U.S...
...So I was delighted when my Ellen, six years old, asked not if she could serve on the altar, but when...
...NO ALTAR GIRLS...
...I put on the larger...
...At home, day in and day out, I prepare meals for my family...
...I take hope in the knowledge that not all American bishops agree with Bishop Dorsey...
...That politicians and moralists--for decades-----could have threatened global Armageddon to save "our part" of the world may have seemed a necessary evil, but their arguments and legitimations have eroded our sense of moral limits...
...Furthermore, our vast economy of nuclear enterprises, technicians, and personnel, able to test and develop such weapons, remains intact...
...But we have seen that immense steps are possible and that a few more are needed...
...Perhaps because I was short and fat, the smaller one looked uncomfortably like a black tutu...
...The Department of Energy currently wants to build a new reactor to produce tritium...
...The missal and stand were incredibly heavy...
...Not since the end of World War II has there been such an opportunity for progress in disarmament...
...We continue to bring our skills and our gifts back to our church because the need is there, because our faith teaches us the law of love and its expression in service...
...Congress has rightly challenged the rationale for both expenditures...
...In the fifties and sixties, admitting such thoughts aloud would have earned me a sermon on the role of holy women in the church...
...Next day the visitor consulted a jeweler and learned that her new chain was 18-karat gold...
...His reason: The faithful must align themselves more fully with the teachings of Rome...
...EXPLAIN IT TO ELLEN GRACE nly one of my children has ever wanted to serve on God's altar, my daughter, Ellen Grace, who has not even received her First Communion...
...By rolling up the sleeves and then gathering six inches or so of excess length in one hand, I managed with the other to get the candles lit and the altar prepared...
...Furthermore, the funds expended have siphoned offresources from other essential undertakings...
...After a number of frantic taps, I found the edge...
...We' re not going on retreat--we' re simply retreating...
...But now, the new bishop of Orlando, Norbert Dorsey, has told the pastors that female servers are no longer welcome on the altar...
...To underscore the need of a universal test ban treaty, the U.S...
...The gentle Jesus of the Gospels did not ask women to set up and clean up invisibly...
...I loved then, as I do now, mystery and ritual and being close to the center of the liturgical enactment...
...One looked as if it were intended for a dignified midget, the other for someone who might play power forward for the Celtics...
...And since my bishop still disagrees, I wish he would come and explain why to my daughter himself...
...As if from habit, in his September 27 speech Bush called for additional funding for both the B-2 Stealth bomber and SDI...
...Designing foreign and domestic policies in keeping with such a formula will be a major challenge...
...If, as Thomas Aquinas wrote, the purpose of the Eucharist is to celebrate Christ in anticipation of his kingdom, then we must consider carefully the implications of that kingdom...
...The only way I could manage when ! picked them up was to lock my elbows at my sides and lean backward...
...they advise me to be patient...
...Last year, according to a report of the Congressional Research Service, $41.3 billion in arms sales were made to third-world countries, with the U.S...
...The bishops know, as we all do, that the American Catholic church depends on women to do the greater and the lesser work of the faithful...
...Bishop Charles E. Herzig of Tyler, Texas, has pointed out in Catholic East Texas (May 11, 1990) that although the 1980 "Instruction" of the Sacred Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship disallowed women as altar servers, the 1983 revised Code of Canon Law dropped a 1917 canon restricting ministry at the altar to males...
...The altar had not yet been turned around...
...abandonment of our first-use policy, U.S...
...In his September speech, President Bush made no reference to America's most deadly and least-vulnerable, first-strike force, the Trident submarine fleet...
...selling a record $18.5 billion...
...defense policy still includes its acceptance...
...If you can do the greater, you can do the lesser," he notes...
...The celebrant still had his back to the congregation the whole time...
...I was volunteered...
...the cost: $5-$10 billion...
...I set and clear the table...
...But as a Christian, I cannot retreat...
...My friends, many of them women, remind me that the church 8 November 1991:629 must necessarily move slowly...
...Ever since, they have served responsibly and well...
...He concludes that women routinely lector and serve as eucharistic ministers in our parishes...
...Then, followed by a train that could have graced the court of Elizabeth, I led the celebrant out...
...Then I shuffled cautiously toward the top step, peering out of the corner of my eye even as I felt with my toe...
...he wants us to join hands around his table, without distinctions between Gentile or Jew, slave or free, woman or man...
...I think I knew even before I stood up that it was all over, but with a fatalism that would have done Hemingway credit, I played the cards as they had been dealt...
...defense policies predicated on truly defensive rather than offensive war-fighting capabilities...
...and limitations on conventional weapons...
...This simple service helps me approach the Paschal meal with, I think, fuller understanding...
...Several years ago, when our parish did not have enough boys willing to serve on the altar, our pastor began training girls...
...The iconoclast in me, the Southern girl who would be pope, would have wondered as I wonder now: Suppose Catholic women announce one Friday that if a bishop doesn't want our daughters on the altar, we're just too worn out to argue...
...He invited the Samaritan woman to serve 630: Commonweal him openly at the well...
...Further nuclear reductions should be coordinated and verified, and the ET CETERA HE SHOULD MAYBE SUE The "Metropolitan Diary" column, appearing Wednesdays in the New York Times, sometimes tempts us to larceny, this time (October 2) irresistibly...
...As the recent Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty demonstrates, it is now possible to have more defense with fewer arms and at less cost...
...We are lectors and eucharistic ministers, we feed the hungry and visit the sick, and most of us do this work in addition to housework and employment outside the home...
...When Bishop Dorsey made his pronouncement, our parish had twenty-two boys and eighteen girls serving regularly at Mass...
...The female servers are young, still in grammar school...
...Growing up Roman Catholic in northern Florida, I don't remember ever wanting to be a priest (a bishop, perhaps, and certainly the pope...
...The first step was all right...
...Tim Unsworth writes in U.S...
...At this time his server was supposed to pick up the missal and its heavy stand, descend the three altar steps, turn, genuflect, and then mount to the other side, there to set the book on the altar so the priest could read the Gospel...
...He opened his arms to outcasts, lepers, tax collectors, and women...
...In order to be sure the cassock was out of the way, I began with several preparatory kicks...
...I preside over my family's nourishment and pleasure...
...Parish (October 1990), that unless the local bishop specifically forbids female altar services, approximately one-half of Catholic parishes seem to use girl servers...
...Her old one was costume jewelry...
...Forbidding girls on the altar seems an act of hostility toward women, a backward step that pushes me away from the Body of Christ...
...THE GONG SHOW DANGER, BOYS AT WORK DISGRACE UNDER PRESSURE nce when I was eight or nine years old my mother and I went to Mass in a newly constructed church...
...One first step in dealing with this massive and dangerous trade is to take up a recent UN recommendation to register all arms transfers with the UN...
...should join the USSR and put an end to all nuclear testing...
...Now, however, I find myself perplexed and angry: What do I tell her...
...Finally, the peace-keeping forces of the UN and the role of international law must be enhanced as arbiters of international disputes...
...He simultaneously grabbed for her gold chain and gave her a push...
...To add further momentum to nuclear disarmament, the U.S...
...Most people seem to understand," Bishop Herzig writes, "that their [altar girls'] attendance at the altar is simply a service, and certainly is not one of the official ministries in which the girls have been installed officially by the church...
...a ban on nuclear and biological-chemical weapons...
Vol. 118 • November 1991 • No. 19
