'Ecclesia semper reformanda': A further exchange of views
"ECCLESIA SEMPER REFORMANDA" A FURTHER EXCHANGE OF VIEWS The following letters respond to an exchange of views published October J u s t i c e comes first Yorktown Heights, N.Y. To the...
...Of course female altar servers, women priests, marlied clergy are not the ultimate answers to the problems of our world and our church...
...JOSEPH P. ANNESE Collegeville, Minn...
...speech, there is scant attention given to the community of faith's role in Eucharist...
...Steinfels can use her Godgiven gifts, but the members of CORPUS have been thwarted from using their Godgiven gifts by means of a man-made law which, according to Rome, has become more important than the Eucharist...
...What we wanted was a vintage Steinfels talk about church, Eucharist, ministry, small-group strategies, adult religious education--the hopeful whirofthe Spirit's wings...
...His response pictures the faith community as receiver of Eucharist supplied solely through the conduit of ordained priests...
...scholarship is needed to preserve the meaning of the text...
...FRANK WEBSTER Give t a l k a chance Washington, D.C...
...She asked only that CORPUS members do it pursuant to conditions they freely accepted...
...The crisis is pervasive in the church, and it rises out of our failure as a church to identify with the poor and underprivileged...
...Do we not face a crisis posed by a dwindling, overburdened, and increasingly geriatric clergy...
...ROBERT L. CHARPENTIER The writer is vice-president of CORPUS...
...I hope to see McCabe back in the pulpit some day, but I trust he'll bring an improved sense of the masses...
...Now to resigned priests saying Mass...
...A friend came back from a tour of Germany and said that Mass was being said facing the people...
...The civil rights movement was a rebellion against the systematic deprivation and enslavement of an entire race...
...We could have worn proudly our red CoRPus buttons and our name tags...
...To limit discussion to questions of worship: John Paul II continues to proclaim (Continued on page 731) "'And l'm not very optimistic about the Middle East peace talks either...
...I think many Catholics have too protective, too narrow a vision of our Eucharist...
...This was a thesis of Cardinal John Henry Newman...
...The Weeks between 1942 and 1968 were co-sponsored by the Conference and a local Catholic diocese...
...CORPUS tries to confront not a moral issue, as McCabe believes, but a political one...
...REV...
...GERARD SLOYAN 6 December 1991:729 we really want to bring the gospel to a world that needs to hear it, we must have justice and equality within the church...
...I said, "It is against the law," but found myself a few years later initiating the change before Rome had made the move...
...By basing his argument for a married priesthood so largely on the contention that "it is immoral to allow priestless Sundays," McCabe rests his case on quantity, not quality...
...The community of faith is a necessary foundation for Eucharist...
...To the Editors: As a member of CORPUS let me state strongly that Margaret O'Brien Steinfels is right and Thomas McCabe is wrong...
...Married and women priests are needed because they too are people of God, purveyors of the Spirit, vessels of knowledge, wisdom, and compassion that an all-anything priesthood cannot by nature supply...
...Think wider Stamford, Conn...
...We men did a double take...
...My wife and I were at the CORPUS conference, and we stayed away from the Fifth Avenue prayer service and the Mass...
...Some reforms--no matter how long overdue---can't be rushed...
...In both cases what I have translated "the Thing" is represented in the Greek by the neuter definite article followed by a participle...
...The writer is executive secretary of the Liturgical Commission, Archdiocese of New York...
...These times call for a certain self-abnegation, the recognition that we are not the last or most important generation of the church...
...JANET BAXENDALE, S.C...
...to be gracious...
...Rather, because many did not examine the latitude the laws allowed, nor cared to learn about it...
...Mass at St...
...To the Editors: When priests petition the church for laicization, release from the promise of celibacy, and approval to enter the sacrament of marriage, it has been the practice of most dioceses to elicit specific promises of postlaicization behavior as a precondition to processing the petition...
...He agreed that if I had a "problem in conscience," then I should withdraw...
...I have studied and taught history, and the Second Vatican Council has been an important part of my agenda for much of my adult life...
...No one can tell the people it is cheap grace...
...I expected more openness from one identified with the party of change...
...Similarly, in Matthew 1:20, the angel says to Joseph, "The Thing begotten in her [Mary] is of the Holy Spirit...
...Give civility and dialogue a chance...
...To the Editors: The issues raised by Margaret Steinfels in her address to CORPUS have long needed airing by a spokesperson with sound credentials and the courage to take a stand...
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...730: Commonweal the centrality of the Eucharist, yet blandly denies the need to provide presiders...
...EDWARD M. CORBETT The p e o p l e , No Chicago, Ill...
...Only then can we tackle the issue of a male-celibate clergy...
...Patrick's Cathedral...
...When they refuse to speak, lay people and parish priests can hope to start dialogue by acting on their own...
...to "do good to those who disagree with us...
...Much tension and controversy did result over the years, but not because laws were broken...
...My colleagues at Commonweal urged me to speak my mind...
...Such a sacramental theology neatly furthers CORPUS's political agenda of reinstatement of resigned priests at the expense of the community of faith's indispensable and substantive role in celebrating the Eucharist...
...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 706) translated literally, "Therefore, the Thing being carried [in Mary's womb] shall be called Holy, Son of God...
...In the vast majority of cases, our families, our brother priests, and the bishops and religious superiors who facilitated our dispensations were more tolerant than we deserved...
...The pall had covered the chalice to keep the flies out...
...Readers of the Gospels can a~ee that the Thing in Mary's womb threatened to make the parents' lives miserable...
...Editor Steinfels knows about using the media...
...presbyters standing around the altar and communicating but not concelebrating until its approval at law...
...Most parishes can use leaders with solid backgrounds in theology, Scripture, and liturgy to run adult discussions and RCIA, train liturgical ministers, serve on parish councils, organize social justice ministry...
...As is common (and distinctly unsinister) practice, the talk was embargoed (not "blockaded") until the scheduled hour of my speech...
...The faith of the people is too deep to keep them from a reconciliation service that often moves them to tears...
...P. DAVID FINKS This is martyrdom...
...To the Editors: Your Steinfels-McCabe exchange is quite timely...
...We have good marriages and make good money...
...If we enlarge our vision, we will be able to see the Eucharist in all things...
...DOUG FISHER We burn, Rome d i d d l e s Commerce, Tex...
...In June, I, a married priest, celebrated the Eucharist at the CORPUS gathering...
...The faith of the church is in the church, meaning the people...
...They respected the faith of the people...
...I am not a martyr...
...She had the chance to withdraw...
...The pastors refused...
...The basic facts are undeniable, yet we act as if they have no bearing on our problems...
...They need her advice on special interest groups, the kind that CORPUS seems to have become...
...If LITURGICAL CONFERENCE PLAYED BY THE RULES...
...I believe it is absolutely essential that the "party of resistance" and the "party of change" begin to talk with one another again, rather than simply among themselves...
...And John Paul II will probably outlive many of us who are card-carrying members of CORPUS...
...the practice spread quickly...
...Subterfuge...
...they are seen as the only gateways for communities of faith to be eucharistic...
...I pulled back my head and blinked, and then put the bread in her hand...
...Pastors are not caving in...
...Steinfels's identification of the American "I want it yesterday" attitude as a significant element in the strident movements of today is, I think, highly valid...
...I celebrated that liturgy because I love and believe in our church as a community that conveys the gospel...
...Deepen Commitment Through Life-long Learning Participate with us in a dynamic community of faith and learning at Weston School of Theology, a national Jesuit theological center We invite the collaborative participation of lay and religious men and women, in the process of developing and enhancing their intellectual and practical skills in the service of today's Church...
...Lay people do need to see the picture from the wider perspective of bishops and popes...
...In a rural diocese the new bishop told pastors they were to go back to the practice of first confession before first Communion...
...Bishops are under the gun to fund the research...
...Ten minutes was enough time to scold us about dumb tactics...
...Because bishops are custodians of liturgical and other church law, and out of the board's own conviction, the Conference took pains in its planning sessions and the execution of the Weeks to do nothing contrary to then current liturgical law...
...I suggest that the crisis of too few voca732: Commonweal tions cannot be solved by opening the doors to other classes of ordination candidates...
...We also need to challenge, to be inclusive, to listen to the theologians (not to silence them), and to open ourselves to the Spirit always mov6 December 1991:731 ing in the church...
...Rational discourse, respectful listening, mutual refinement of ideas are all elements of the long, hard process of the development of ideas----elements that must be fostered if any inroads are to be made in the sad polarization of today...
...In spite of instant communication, the human psyche still requires time to absorb, integrate, respond to change--and the long-term goals of the council are not likely to be achieved in our lifetimes...
...Too often I have found myself confronted with manipulations of Eucharist which make of our most sacred action a tool of confrontation, as well as with knee-jerk assumptions by individuals on both ends of the spectrum of confrontation...
...By his own account, Robert Charpentier knew about my "misgivings" before the meeting...
...Louis, in English and facing the congregation in August 1964...
...The process he identifies in his essay on that subject is, I believe, very much what we are experiencing today...
...Yet there is no suggestion that mother and father ever sought to dispose of the Thing...
...To the Editors: Peggy Steinfels was right...
...DENNIS J. GEANEY, O.S.A...
...To the Editors: I extend my sincerest appreciation to Margaret O'Brien Steinfels for her candid and most sensitive approach in her suggestions to CORPUS...
...About five years later Cardinal Bernardin banned the girls...
...McCabe's analysis fails because what he designates as the left wing is a very small minority, too tiny to locate on the map with which we find the center...
...To the Editors: The same week I received a copy of Commonweal with its cover drawing of Margaret O'Brien Steinfels punching Tom McCabe in the nose, our parish bulletin contained a letter from the pastor announcing that by virtue of an order from Cardinal O'Connor our parish would be discontinuing the ministry of female altar servers...
...The practice is growing...
...Right now we are committing institutional suicide...
...Eucharist must be connected existentially with communities of faith, ritually with the entire assembly of the faithful, and institutionally with the wider church universal...
...To the Editors: As a seminarian I was intrigued by the positions taken by both Thomas McCabe and Margaret Steinfels, but had more sympathy with Steinfels...
...Presumably he knew because as soon as I learned of the planned Mass I told the CORPUS representative who had invited me (Thomas McCabe) that I objected and was thinking about withdrawing...
...For many it is a conversion experience...
...My problem was not my conscience, but CORPUS'S intended action...
...We know the bishops won't take on this pope over married priests...
...My basic thesis is that change starts at the bottom and works its way to the top...
...This received wide publicity and gave priests and parents new insights...
...But they are significant issues...
...There is, he argues, a Catholic left wing that allows for a universal (celebrant) priesthood merely "by virtue of baptism," that the right wing holds to a canon-strictured notion of (celebrant) priesthood, and thus his ecclesiastical disobedience, premised on "respect for the reality of the ordained priesthood," positions him as a Catholic centrist...
...It has been said that in the nineteenth century the church lost the working class in Europe...
...I think we would be well advised to spend the rest of our lives undoing the damage we caused by leaving the active ministry...
...Our church, dominated by male celibates, is suffocating under its need to control, to keep things as they are...
...I sat in the presider's chair waiting for a layman to serve as lector...
...Yet, at least publicly, there has been no response but a barely audible tongueclucking to Archbishop Rembert Weakland's tentative gesture toward a solution...
...A pastor was recently admonished by his bishop to stop using inclusive language in liturgy or he would be suspended by the bishop...
...Imagine being suspended for changing a singular noun, "man," to a plural pronoun, "us...
...The pope and bishops are trying to blot it out...
...Over a decade ago some priests left the word "men" out of the words of consecration...
...In the twentieth century the church will lose women in North America...
...To the Editors: Without entering into the substance of the Steinfels-McCabe exchange, a point of fact: The Liturgical Conference (not movement) sponsored twenty-nine Liturgical Weeks (not conferences) between 1942 and 1977 (the sponsor of the first two, in 1940 and 1941, was the Conference of Benedictine Abbots...
...a church which calls us to give ourselves wholly to the human works of our day, always with an eye to the kingdom that lies beyond...
...This anticipated the agreed-upon first Sunday of Advent "for widespread instructional purposes," as he said in an agreement with the Conference board...
...This is not a radical move, as it would be for the community to ordain...
...Thomas A. McCabe replies with the claim that his movement is at the center...
...The conciliar legislation and the revised ritual books it mandated responded to many of these...
...Over the past decade the confessional has had to be dusted often...
...Cardinal Cody called a local pastor and told him that he had heard people were receiving Communion in the hand...
...Now it is approved by the cardinal...
...STANLEY L. KASUN The pot & t h e k e t t l e Kensington, Calif...
...Media event...
...PETER GILMOUR The writer is assistant professor of pastoral studies at Loyola University, Chicago, and author of The Emerging Pastor (Sheed and Ward, 1986), a study of nonordained people pastoring Catholic parishes...
...if I withdrew, I would be doing what liberals like myself (and conservatives as well) too often do, hold back criticism of one's allies in order not to hurt the cause...
...Steinfels that we need more objective, self-reflective selfcriticism, and much more calm "evaluating of proposals regardless of pedigree...
...Any understanding of Eucharist which ignores any one of these dimensions is incomplete...
...We are part of a long, long procession of people, each of whom has played a part in the building of the church--a church which will not stand or fall on successes, even religiously motivated successes--in this world...
...Victor, when I arrived in 1979...
...The author r e p l i e s : Secrecy...
...No one showed, so out of the congregation came an attractive young woman who crossed the sanctuary rail and read with poise...
...To the Editors: The Catholic church does not need married priests and women priests solely to address a priest shortage...
...Sacramental celebrations at the Weeks were often inventive and initiatory but never in contravention of the Code of Canon Law of 1918 or various responses to inquiries put to curial congregations...
...My historical instincts tell me that part of our dilemma is that we are still too close to the council...
...CHANGE IN CHURCH STARTS FROM BELOW Calumet City, I11...
...There is no question that there has long been a consensus favoring the practice...
...He ordered the abuse stopped immediately...
...My chief "end" in speaking was to persuade the members of the audience to reconsider taking part in the Mass--a goal that I am sorry I failed to achieve...
...It's time to give self-appointed prophets a sabbatical...
...Both Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's address to CORPUS and Thomas McCabe's response do not seriously consider this reality...
...Better a married priest who does not have the permission of the bishop than a Communion service...
...As a board member of CORPUS I was aware of the preconvention misgivings she had about participating in the event after she learned about the scheduled Mass and prayer vigil...
...i!i...
...What I don't understand is why all the overworked pastors don't put willing married priests to work as lay ministers in the parishes...
...Subsequent events suggest she decided to use the occasion to her own ends, including the blockading of copies of her talk up to one hour before it was scheduled...
...At the liturgy that day, my four-year-old daughter, with her usual impeccable timing, watched the Offertory procession led by two candle-bearers, and asked my wife, "Mommy, when I get big can I do that...
...It should be open to the cORPUS contingent, and, yes, it should acknowledge that women, too, are people of God...
...And, in fact, to the extent that the cause of a person's misery is merely what happens to him or her, apart from the accompanying thoughts and attitudes (faith, for instance, or love), the Thing did cause misery for Joseph and Mary, in the womb and out of it...
...it is in process, but the prompting always comes from below...
...I am pained not by what Steinfels said but how she went about saying it...
...The public talks at the Weeks, by contrast, often asked for changes that most often represented a return to earlier tradition...
...iiiJ You have to b e t h e r e Boulder City, Nev...
...I am embarrassed that CORPUS spokesmen would compare our situation to the sufferings of African-Americans or to the early martyrs...
...Although he writes about "the people's right to the Eucharist and to pastoral care," he does so in a way that creates a passive posture for the community of faith...
...To borrow from the language of the Senate Judiciary Committee farce, we Catholics are indulging in a Kafkaesque orgy of spiritual harassment...
...To the Editors: In giving her speech to CORPUS Steinfels seemed unaware that the tactic she accused CORPUS of using-staging a media event to advance its cause - - i s precisely what she did that day...
...But there is a dimension missing in her life that comes out so clearly in the response by Thomas A. McCabe...
...Bishops quickly petitioned Rome to okay it...
...CORPUS members may be justiffed in considering themselves victims of oppression, but comparing their lot with that of blacks is like comparing a massacre with a mistaken arrest for speeding...
...J. Frank Devine, SJ Director of Admissions Weslon School of Theology 3 Phillips Place, Department C4 Cambridge, MA 02138-3495 Telephone: (617) 492-1960 Fax: (617) 492-5833 c.~oOL o,~, Weston School of Theology A National Jesuit Theological Center in Cambridge, MA 6 December 1991:733...
...McCabe's comparison of the married clergy movement with the struggle for civil rights misstates the issue...
...If we are to retain any sense of relevance, we must accept a broader married priesthood (we already have some married priests...
...Now, some members of CORPUS have determined to act contrary to the promises they freely made to the church, yet criticize the church, members of the hierarchy, and others who don't condone their behavior...
...I did it as a sign of hope--hope in a church that can be inclusive of all people, that can proclaim justice to the world while living that justice within, that can "read the signs of the times" and offer her people a dynamic priesthood of celibate and married people united in service...
...In the fail of '681 was a week-end assistant at a blue-collar Chicago parish...
...It reminds me of the Roman cab driver who in 1968 said that the pope should not have banned the pill...
...His calm, unrelenting, scrupulously honest quest for truth-for himself and for the church--has given me a new perspective on some pretty soulwrenching conundrums...
...It was giving ideas to Italian women...
...To the Editors: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, with admirable directness, expressed her fear that our church's center might not hold, or, at least, hold that well...
...Corpus Christi, Tex...
...Steinfels, as sincere as she is, is not in touch with the pain of many of us in ministry...
...Self-righteous groups like ACT-UP and Operation Rescue have given mass (no pun intended) demonstrations a bad name...
...JAMES E. O'LEARY Check that map again Birmingham, Ala...
...For sure...
...At the same parish a young woman held out her hand for Communion...
...McCabe's response also stands at some distance from the community of faith...
...No one can fully understand this pain unless that frustrated person is a member of the clergy...
...Creative pastors have put together a reconciliation service that packs the church during the Advent and Easter seasons...
...Why the subterfuge and secrecy...
...KEVIN DOYLE The r e a l f a i l u r e Neligh, Neb...
...I prefer to take my politics from the Democratic party...
...Numerous aspects of eucharistic celebration at the Weeks were well within church law but not widely known to be such (examples: free-standing altars in a large space, as in the Roman basilicas, resulting in the presider's facing some celebrants...
...I am unwilling to allow the definition of what is Eucharist, and, conversely, what is Eucharistless, to rest totally on the presence of an ordained priest...
...McConnell believes that"the mother--and the father, too, has the right to dispose of [the Thing in the Womb] if it would make their lives miserable, and if they both agree on that...
...I served on the Liturgical Conference's board of directors in interrupted terms from 1959 onward and as president 1962-64, the latter the year of the earliest changes in the Roman rite by liturgical law enacted at Vatican II...
...We had the good fortune to receive a free education from the church, leave, and then continue to take part in the life of the church, if we wanted, in a more propitious time in church history...
...REV...
...The one exception to all of the above was the presiding of Joseph Elmer Ritter, Cardinal Archbishop of St...
...The practice spread so quickly that the bishops were embarrassed when they could not get the two-thirds vote to approve it and had to wait another six months to get the vote to petition Rome...
...The clergy were not in touch with the pain of Martin Luther King, Jr., in that Birmingham jail...
...To the Editors: What is missing from many recent discussions about the Eucharist and who may celebrate it is the community of faith...
...We had altar girls at my parish, St...
...She had been doing this regularly at the Newman Center...
...To the Editors: I have been a churchchange watcher for decades...
...Steinfels did not ask CORPUS members to cease "efforts to renew the priesthood and to build the kingdom of God through their work in the world...
...It would have been wonderful if, instead, all 750 of us, priests, wives, and children, had gone quietly to the scheduled 5 P.M...
...We married "priests" now outnumber the priests who stayed and really suffered, not only from celibacy but also from the shortage of priests caused by our leaving...
...Who remembers the pall...
...In Steinfels's LET THE FISH FRY PROCEED--BUT CALMLY New York, N.Y...
...It is not routine...
...ANTOINETTE PAGE Promises, promises Gainesville, Fla...
...She equates Eucharist exclusively both with the ordained and with the authority of the church...
...We need, as in all things, to be wary of the media...
...And why don't bishops call on local married priests to serve on diocesan committees and councils...
...If I gave the talk I had planned, I would be complicit in that action...
...Like Commonweal, CORPUS welcomes dialogue, including differences of opinion...
...The concelebration by the priests at the CORPUS service and the attendant publicity, including the presentation by Margaret Steinfels, expanded the imagination of American Catholics and was a powerful incentive for the bishops to go public on how they really feel about married priests...
...I believe few of us suffer very much...
...I do not argue for or against the position of Steinfels or McCabe in this matter, only recall a little history...
...In the late fifties Bishop Ernest Primeau of Manchester, N.H., was incensed that the priests were not putting the pall on the chalice after the consecration...
...I then informed McCabe in advance that my talk would be critical...
...Thus, each of us, as we took the step of putting aside active ministry, had a difficult yet free decision to make that paralleled the prior decision requesting ordination...
...She chose not to...
...She certainly could have been more candid about her intent...
...I belong to CORPUS because it makes a good support group...
...Our disappointment with Steinfels was that she wasted an opportunity to begin a new dialogue with that friendly audience of 750 committed Catholics...
...And I am convinced with Ms...
...After we make the obvious changes---e.g., from "men" to "men and women"----eliminating sexist language in the liturgy is not simple...
...The reason for distributing copies of my talk was to make sure that people--both those present and others, particularly reporters-would be able to have the full text...
...Her description of the scholarship and serious intellectual questing which were integral parts of the liturgical movement reminded me of Cardinal Newman's insights on the development of Christian doctrine...
...We will not solve the priest shortage by use of extra-ecclesial means but by humbly accepting the obedience Christ demands so that others may be led to intimacy with God...
...Next year I wish the Democrats would invite Steinfels to their convention...
...Why is the response of the hierarchy so anemic...
Vol. 118 • December 1991 • No. 21
