Danger, boys at work
Haynes, Donald
must necessarily move slowly; they advise me to be patient. But I am not patient. Forbidding girls on the altar seems an act of hostility toward women, a backward step that pushes me away from...
...All went well until the priest finished reading the Epistle, on the right side of the altar, and moved to the center to pray...
...But as a Christian, I cannot retreat...
...But I would gladly have donned cassock and surplice to replace my brothers on the altar, and I knew the Latin prayers by heart...
...The majestic splendor of Venezuela's tropical forest belies its fragility...
...Of equal concern is the sedimentation caused by soil erosion which threatens to clog up the turbines and other equipment of the Caroni's Guri Dam, the nation's main source of hydroelectric power...
...And since my bishop still disagrees, I wish he would come and explain why to my daughter himself...
...I was mounting the stairs inside the cassock...
...I only recall that the rest of Mass was occasionally punctuated by muffled screams of laughter from the congregation...
...Before the service started, the priest came out and asked if there was an altar boy present...
...Then I shuffled cautiously toward the top step, peering out of the corner of my eye even as I felt with my toe...
...This simple service helps me approach the Paschal meal with, I think, fuller understanding...
...Must women be invisible there...
...Being something of an introvert, I've brooded over this and kindred incidents, trying to suck some marrow of meaning from the hard bones of humiliation...
...Without it, an ecological disaster is likely...
...But that would not have solved my problem...
...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...
...The missal and stand were incredibly heavy...
...If you can do the greater, you can do the lesser," he notes...
...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...
...But try as I may, dignity is not mine...
...Given the large number of foreign and Venezuelan miners who operate without legal authorization, however, optimism regarding enforcement of the measure may be wishful thinking...
...Aristotle's "thought of thought" would be singularly lonesome...
...The only way I could manage when ! picked them up was to lock my elbows at my sides and lean backward...
...I honestly have little memory of what happened after that...
...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...
...Her "Daniel: Beloved by God and by Me" appeared in Commonweal (October 20, 1989...
...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...
...One partial solution has been the beefing up of Venezuelan presence in the border area to check the entry of garimpeiros from Brazil...
...I loved then, as I do now, mystery and ritual and being close to the center of the liturgical enactment...
...The gentle Jesus of the Gospels did not ask women to set up and clean up invisibly...
...I've finally decided that it is simply impossible not to play the fool, now and again...
...Unsafe levels of mercury, up to 3.414 micrograms per kilo, have been detected in the livers of several species of commonly consumed fish, although the contamination content in their muscles is still considered below the danger level...
...In order to be sure the cassock was out of the way, I began with several preparatory kicks...
...He concludes that women routinely lector and serve as eucharistic ministers in our parishes...
...The first step was all right...
...The culprit is gold...
...My chin was violently jerked to my chest and then to my knees...
...Their enactment proscribed the use of mercury in the amalgamation of alluvial gold in the open air and called for government-supervised refinement...
...I preside over my family's nourishment and pleasure...
...REPORT FROM VENEZUELA THE HIGH COST OF GOLD ANOTHER PART OF THE (RAIN) FOREST hile the devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has become a worldwide cause ctlbbre, little attention has as yet focused on the fate of the extensive rain forest in neighboring Venezuela...
...Forbidding girls on the altar seems an act of hostility toward women, a backward step that pushes me away from the Body of Christ...
...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...
...Only later did I realize that at the moment when I let fly with the missal and stand, the priest--a tall man--was still leaning over, his lips an inch or so away from the altar, whispering cabalistically to himself...
...As I placed my foot on the second, it was as if I suddenly had been clubbed on the back of the neck...
...Laughter alone affirms our common humanity...
...An even greater hazard to public health has been the extensive utilization of mercury in the gold amalgamation process...
...We' re not going on retreat--we' re simply retreating...
...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...
...he wants us to join hands around his table, without distinctions between Gentile or Jew, slave or free, woman or man...
...I respect dignified people...
...I take hope in the knowledge that not all American bishops agree with Bishop Dorsey...
...DONALD HAYNES Donald Haynes, a cultural historian, educational consultant, and writer for dramatic television, lives in the cornfields of New Carlisle, Indiana...
...Tim Unsworth writes in U.S...
...I put on the larger...
...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...
...One looked as if it were intended for a dignified midget, the other for someone who might play power forward for the Celtics...
...After a number of frantic taps, I found the edge...
...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...
...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...
...Ludicrousness ever lurks near at hand...
...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...
...He invited the Samaritan woman to serve 630: Commonweal him openly at the well...
...The heavy book and stand flew from my hands...
...While the gravity of the ecological damage that is being done is widely recognized here, no single criterion exists regarding corrective steps...
...As I lay curled in fetal splendor on the top step of the altar, I was surrounded by a dull, gong-like reverberation...
...In recent years, gold miners began using high-powered pumps connected to suction hoses which spray water from nearby rivers, removing vast amounts of soil in areas which were formerly covered by trees and other forms of vegetation...
...I've reached a couple of conclusions...
...In the fifties and sixties, admitting such thoughts aloud would have earned me a sermon on the role of holy women in the church...
...To be human is to be constantly at risk...
...They have been joined by an equal number of native Venezuelan miners, and by multinational interests...
...At home, day in and day out, I prepare meals for my family...
...The celebrant still had his back to the congregation the whole time...
...Then I wobbled down the steps, turned, and genuflected...
...The book took him just above the back of his knees, driving him forward with such force that the top of his head hit the tabernacle flush on...
...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...
...Growing up Roman Catholic in northern Florida, I don't remember ever wanting to be a priest (a bishop, perhaps, and certainly the pope...
...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...
...With time, the pits created become mud holes which serve as breeding grounds for malaria-infested mosquitoes...
...The altar had not yet been turned around...
...Nor is it for those whom I know the best...
...BRIDGET BALTHROP MORTON Bridget Balthrop Morton is a poet, free-lance writer, and mother of three...
...Given the erosion-prone quality of the soil, deforestation is practically an irreversible process, the end result of which is total barrenness...
...The prospect is forcing the government to reconsider its plans for expanding the complex...
...The other conclusion is more theological...
...The same breed of gold miners who wreaked havoc in northern Brazil, both to the environment and its indigenous Indians, are now doing the same in Venezuela...
...In the sacristy, I found to my dismay that there were only two cassocks...
...Some Catholic missionaries see their presence in 8 November 1991:631...
...The forest there is like a paper tiger," filmmaker and national Congressman Carlos Azpurua recently told me...
...Especially in the church, I'm glad there are so many who are able to carry off the grand gesture...
...I'm glad we've been told of the Trinity...
...I was volunteered...
...Recall, this all happened long before the Second Vatican Council...
...The government's "ecological decrees" last July were hailed as a definitive solution...
...Significant quantities of mercury have been detected near the confluence of the Orinoco and its main tributary, the Caroni River, in the vicinity of beaches and water taps which serve the inhabitants of Puerto Ordaz, the region's largest city...
...Then, followed by a train that could have graced the court of Elizabeth, I led the celebrant out...
...Known as garimpeiros, tens of thousands of them (expelled last year from the Yanomami reservations in Brazil's state of Roraima) "I call it 'Environment.'" have arrived in Venezuela's Orinoco and Amazon River basins...
...Parish (October 1990), that unless the local bishop specifically forbids female altar services, approximately one-half of Catholic parishes seem to use girl servers...
...He opened his arms to outcasts, lepers, tax collectors, and women...
...If we are created in the image and likeness of God and if laughter is somehow the hallmark of genuine human intercourse, then so it must be for God as well...
...I set and clear the table...
...We can't escape...
...Perhaps because I was short and fat, the smaller one looked uncomfortably like a black tutu...
Vol. 118 • November 1991 • No. 19
