Correspondence
KRUSE, ELLA & CUSHING, DAVID & SETZLER, JOSIE & DEHNER, EUGENE & PAGE, BROTHER THOMAS MORE & Hogan, Lawrence D. & RIGA, PETER J. & J., Richard A. McCormick, S. & BURKHART, MARIAN & Komonchak, Joseph A.
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Blaming the pope I respond to your editorial, "Respon-sum dubium" [December 1,1995], in the light of a moving passage from Paul's letter to the Colossians, heard...
...JOSEPH A. KOMONCHAK...
...No more evasions or nuances or other arguments by theologians or reformist Catholics...
...This is what the church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of holy orders, acts in persona Christi capitis (in the person of Christ the head...
...Item: The YCW ("Young Christian Workers") is not present...
...RICHARD A. MCCORMICK, S.J...
...As for where the responsibility lies: I choose "sloppy work," to explain which in these few cases would approach too closely the kind of rationalization with which confessors may rightly be impatient...
...it has been admiration for certain conceptions, which have emerged in one culture and indeed in one school of thought...
...Mea culpa is maxima for the first two and the last one, but remains, if lesser, for the others as well, and I am not comforted that the great majority of my observations receive no censure...
...Is this question really so important to one's faith as to prevent anyone from carrying out with a fullness of spirit a ministry of teaching in Catholic inner-city schools, or of serving those sick and dying with AIDS, or of praying in monasteries and convents, or of doing any of the 9 million other wonderful things carried out under the aegis of our church...
...MARIAN BURKHART New York, N.Y...
...EUGENE DEHNER, O.S.B...
...The isolation of this school has thus been twofold...
...The truth is that God took on flesh to save both me and Michael Novak...
...As for authority or "power" in the church, the day may come when women may serve in many diocesan and Roman curial offices...
...Ordaining Women Is Rational," January 12], when he writes that religion without mysterium tremendum has little to do with real religion...
...The writer is John A. O'Brien Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame...
...I am left to draw one of two conclusions...
...Can anything good come from Notre Dame...
...That is entirely up to the bishop of Rome...
...We women are free to go home, clear our calendars, close our purses, and leave the church to the men...
...It is not up to Common-weal's editors or commentators to set up the parameters of how, when, and in what manner the pope declares himself...
...Ella Kruse Las Cruces, N. Mex...
...We would be happy to reimburse you for postage Please send to Commonweal, 15 Dutch Street, Room 502, New York, NY 10038...
...The writer suggests an answer: "[T]he vision of an open church in an open society, as a new achievement of men [sic] in their pilgrimage through history," a church in which those "who before were pusillanimous are doing great deeds and dreaming great visions," in which "old patterns are dissolving," in which "the Spirit's activity is almost tangible," in which those who are faithful to understanding see possibilities hidden for centuries, and act upon them...
...The adage in law is that only the lawgiver can tell us what he meant when he promulgated the law...
...The primacy of insight In his commentary on the women's ordination question ["Responses to Rome," January 26], Michael Novak claims to be "struck" by appeals from "progressives" to "the spirit of Vatican II," and recalls from his own experience "painstaking arguments over the letter of Vatican II...
...See Saint Paul in Galatians and elsewhere: In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female...
...But that women were not ordained priests in the ancient Middle East is readily explained by human history, by human attitudes and acts...
...LAWRENCE D. HOGAN Fanwood, N.J...
...Out of loyalty to the church we love, the gospel of Jesus, and the great tradition in which we were raised, we will act in accord with our consciences and speak the truth plainly...
...I apologize and will consider whether "supererogation, works of" (p...
...This possibility might seem less unlikely if we spoke of the council's insight rather than its spirit and if we recalled these especially useful observations written at the close of the council's second session: "The characteristic of the closed church of the last several generations has not been attention to insight...
...from its own insights, by focusing attention, instead, on its fixed notions and its system of such notions...
...Is it Commonweal's message that if the wonderful leaders of our wonderful church are too benighted to see the truth on this issue, then many will "Catholicism & Popular Culture," Commonweal's September 22,1995, issue was so popular that we have run out of copies...
...the Son of God became man because the Son of God became man...
...Ask the lawgiver Why is it that I am not surprised by the response of Commonweal's readers to the statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that the church has no power to ordain women to the priesthood...
...Notre Dame, Ind...
...One wall has separated it from appreciation of the insights of other cultures and other schools of thought...
...and the bishop of Rome may speak authoritatively for that body as well as by his own proper authority...
...JOSIE SETZLER Fremont, Ohio Gender matters In Ordinatio sacerdotalis, all the pope is really saying is that, in spite of agreed-upon legal equality, there are still two sexes in the human species, and that this can make a difference, not only biologically, as in child-bearing, but also liturgically, as in who can preside at the Eucharistic celebration...
...I suggest strongly positive PR when Komonchak meets potential buyers of the volume...
...See p. 341 and the article by Michael Waldstein entitled "Comunione e Liberazione...
...The reviewer replies: I should be pleased to have Father McCormick as a confessor if condign penance is all he would impose upon me for the faults he has noted in my review...
...forgive whatever grievances you have against one another...
...CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Blaming the pope I respond to your editorial, "Respon-sum dubium" [December 1,1995], in the light of a moving passage from Paul's letter to the Colossians, heard recently at Mass: "Because you are God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with heartfelt mercy, with kindness, humility, meekness, and patience...
...For loyal Catholics the controversy over women's ordination is ended...
...In this case, unlike the case of Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors, the lawmaker in Ordinatio sacerdotalis has interpreted his own law...
...No rights without duties...
...Item: "Opus Dei is here, but not Communione [sic] e Liberazione...
...But see p. 226 for the entry on Joseph Cardijn, their founder, as well as p. 708 for the piece on the Jocists...
...Or was it just sloppy work...
...And if Christians did not begin immediately to carry that principle to its logical conclusions, they did start the process...
...Bear with one another...
...There is no other choice...
...To which Philip replied, "Come, see for yourself...
...1548) puts it thus: "In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present to his church, as head of his body, shepherd of the flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice, teacher of truth...
...Item: "Among American biblical scholars, John L. McKenzie is in but not Bruce Vawter...
...A second wall has separated it...
...But, ask some Commonweal Catholics, is this teaching really there in Scripture and tradition through the ages...
...What is responsible for these types of glaring boo-boos...
...They now have only two choices: to remain as loyal Catholics or to join another Christian communion more in keeping with their ecclesiology...
...In its beginnings Christ's church made no attempt to end slavery, yet its principle required that slavery ultimately end, and that women enjoy full equality...
...No mystery here I could not agree more with David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Even there, instead of fixing attention on the insights generated by this school of thought, the masters of that school have concentrated on the formulae, the words, the conceptions...
...The Catechism of the Catholic Church (par...
...We are here at the rock bottom question of authority in the church: Who has the right and power to discern and declare this to be so vel non...
...I turn back to the message of Paul, hoping that I speak in its spirit: "Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you...
...The Catholic church says the power resides in the believing people generally but specifically in the college of bishops...
...We will take heart from Elizabeth Johnson, who writes that women are icons of Christ and resemble him "in terms of a common humanity and participation in divine grace...
...Reformist Catholics who say the authority resides in the whole believing people of which the body of bishops is only one part are very close to Protestant ecclesiology...
...I would suggest that mystery is that which is not explicable in human terms-that which is not irrational but supra-rational, about which we cannot say why...
...logically, even understandably, dis-sassociate themselves from this awful church-or stay faithful to it, but only work within its confines with reservations and a growing cynicism...
...Christ's church would never have got off the ground had it gone so counter to the patriarchal assumptions of that time and place-or just about any other time and place until the here and now...
...See p. 194, where Brazil gets twenty-four lines...
...No one questions that Jesus Christ was a male...
...The writer puts it clearly: "To prefer conceptions to insights is to prefer second things to first, the product to its source, the letter to its living spirit...
...The application of the biblical text (I suspect that Father McCormick would not want us to read on to Jn 1:47), with its easy passage from Nazareth to Notre Dame, perhaps confirms the point I tried playfully to make to my friends in South Bend...
...Give thanks to God the Father through him...
...He implies that it is somehow incredible and, worse, unfaithful, to suspect that the spirit of the council may have been betrayed by reliance on "precisely worded documents...
...As mothers and teachers, women have long been principal agents in communicating the faith to new generations...
...If Paul does not demand that Christians free their slaves, he does in the Epistle to Philemon urge a man to treat the runaway slave who is returning to him not as chattel but as a brother in Christ...
...With that in mind, I want to put several hard questions: Is the issue of the ordination of women so central to the practice of the faith as to warrant "a gnawing reservation and a germ of cynicism" in the hearts of those who object to the recent definitive (?) infallible (?) declarations by the pope and Cardinal Ratzinger...
...Strictly, yes...
...Catholics have commonly referred to the ordained priest as an alter Christus, another Christ...
...If you are correct about this, isn't it incumbent on you to admonish with love those Catholics tempted by such attitudes at least as much as you admonish those church leaders to whom you seem to assign sole blame for inflicting wounds on the body of Christ...
...PETER J. RIGA Houston, Tex...
...He explains that "presumably, God had a point in becoming incarnate as a male...
...It takes an appallingly long time for ingrained habits fully to change, but for 2,000 years Christianity, when it has been true to itself, has been the leaven that leads to what frees...
...Atchison, Kans...
...Watch your gender Responding to recent Vatican declarations on women's ordination, Francis X. Murphy, C.SS.R...
...Saint Paul in Ephesians-one of his less revolutionary epistles- may indeed admonish women to obey their husbands, but he also orders men to love their wives and to treat their children gently, as persons, not as property...
...That point: "The fierce warrior-male was humbled and taught instead to be a gentle man...
...The point: Jews are not chosen by birthright in the same way that a person born in the United States is automatically an American citizen...
...If you have extras or can spare your own copy, please return it (them) to us...
...In some places that is already the case...
...Komonchak came but what he saw, and did not see, is breathtaking...
...What then might be the basic insight-the spirit-of Vatican II which occasions today's "increasingly frequent appeals on the part of progressives...
...Election is conditional: To be chosen, a Jew must keep the Covenant holy...
...But now Michael Novak appears to retranslate the familiar words into something strikingly different: "He became male...
...Most Catholics would be greatly surprised to see a woman representing Christ as celebrant at the eucharistic sacrifice, the preeminent function of the priest...
...Washington, D.C...
...It was in 1959 that I as a first-grade schoolgirl first learned that God "be-(Continued on page 29) came man...
...See pp...
...Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree with Carlin that God should have made the Greeks his chosen people, (Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) given their sense of fun...
...What has to be understood simply as God's will...
...May he be condigned Notwithstanding its complimentary assertions, Joseph Komonchak's review [January 26] of The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism reminds me of John's account (1:46) of Nathaniel's introduction to Jesus: "Can anything good come from Nazareth...
...Thank you...
...288-289 for the entry entitled "Catholic Youth Organization...
...Over all these virtues put on love, which binds the rest together and makes them perfect....Whatever you do in speech or in action, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus...
...The implications are tremendous...
...david cushing Waterloo, Iowa Free at last...
...p. 1298 and the thirteen-line entry on Vawter...
...the bread and wine at Mass become the body and blood of Jesus Christ because Christ said they would...
...Novak concludes his argument without any mention of what God had in mind for women in his saving plan...
...Item: "The YMCA and the YWCA have brief entries but not the CYO...
...A two-way choice Re: David R. Carlin, Jr.'s witty and much-appreciated column, it seems appropriate to mention that William Ewer's lines ("How odd/of God/to choose/the Jews") drew a retort from Rabbi Lewis Browne: "But not so odd/as those who choose/a Jewish God/yet spurn the Jews," adding: "It's not so odd/the Jews chose God...
...The observer who wrote those lines was Michael Novak (The Open Church, Macmillan, 1964...
...There should be no further doubt in anyone's mind...
...1231) are not called for...
...In either case a condign penance (the notion of condignity is covered, by the way, on p. 344) is appropriate...
...The pope clarified this issue through a special declaration personally approved by him: When he promulgated Ordinatio sacerdotalis he intended to say that it is irreformable doctrine that the church has received no power from Christ to ordain women to the priesthood...
...January 26], offers the sage counsel that "theologians and polemicists would be well advised to await the arrival of a pontiff as strong-willed and theologically competent as Wojtyla to discover whether 'what a pope can do a pope can undo.'" I would edit that well-worn adage as follows: "What a pope can do she can undo...
...Why is this a failure...
...Item: "Argentina might feel slighted at getting only eight lines, but Brazil gets none...
...But what constitutes mystery...
...BROTHER THOMAS MORE PAGE, C.F.X...
...But I and many women will choose a different response...
...Either women don't need saving or women are saved through their men-their husbands, sons, fathers, and pastors...
...Over the years many holy women and men teachers have led me to understand that when God became man, he became human and took on flesh like mine in order to save me...
...Thus there are three persons in one God because there are three persons in one God...
Vol. 123 • February 1996 • No. 4
