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The WordThird Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), January 23, 200
A Life Unfolds

What is this? A new teaching with authority!

Books
Jan 15, 2000 issue
Tortured Romantic
J. Robert Barth
It is difficult to imagine a more complex and challenging literary life for a biographer than that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge After completing a brief critical biography of Coleridge some 25 years ago as a quot trial run quot for a full-length life Walter Jackson Bate concluded ruefully quot I
Books
Jan 15, 2000 issue
The Economics and Politics of Aging
William J. Byron
If this book sold only 535 copies and each found its way into the hands of a member of the U S Senate and House of Representatives it would be a great publishing success Bookstore browsers may be deterred by the rather ambitious subtitle quot How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform Americaand th
It's All in the Family
What happens across the kitchen table has a far greater influence on whether American adolescents smoke pot or snort cocaine than what happens across the Mexican border. America’s best hope for a drug-free society is in the kitchen, the living room, the classroom and the church pew, not in the
The Hidden Holocaust: An Interview With Bishop Macram Max Gassis of Sudan
Over two million people have lost their lives and over four million have been displaced in the war waged by the government of Sudan against its own people in the south. It is arguably the greatest humanitarian catastrophe in the world, dwarfingat least in terms of casualtiesthe recent crises in Koso
Immigrants in Detention
"End detention as we know it": This was the goal presented at the beginning of the third annual Detention Watch Network conference on Nov. 25-28 in Baltimore, Md. Using the phrase in satiric imitation of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign promise to restructure welfare, James Haggerty, an
Timeless Either-Ors
In my last column, on "millennial moralists" (which yielded a few friendly complaints and started a few arguments, I’m told), I promised a prognostication of 10 ethical challenges for the next thousand years. It didn’t take long to realize how foolhardy such a proposal might be
Culture
Images of the Millennial Pope
With a little bit of luck we can trace a certain recent huffing and puffing to a distinguished corps of papal observers desperately striving to keep abreast since 1995 of the spate of lengthy and weighty biographies of Pope John Paul II. More than one Vaticanist has taken great and vicarious pleasur
News
Signs of the Times
Cuban Bishops Say Parental Rights Should Decide Boy’s CaseThe Cuban Catholic bishops say the custody battle over a 6-year-old Cuban boy should be resolved in favor of parental rights. The boy, Elian Gonzalez, has been living with relatives in Florida since he survived an attempt to reach the U
Letters
Letters

Time Has Come

Congratulations on the issue that focused on women in the church (11/27). The contributors provided an excellent overview of both the contributions of women to the life of the church and an exploration of issues that remain unresolved. It was interesting to read in the editorial your comment that the restoration of the diaconate for women is a possible first step in responding to the call of women for greater participation. In 1977, following the 1976 Vatican Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, the National Council of Catholic Women responded with a statement declaring itself in harmony with the teaching church, yet calling for an examination of the feasibility of establishing the diaconate for women, a question the Declaration’ left open. Perhaps after more than 20 years this is an idea whose time has come.

Annette Kane

Executive Director, N.C.C.W.

Washington, D.C.

All May Find a Home

I appreciate the fact that you devoted a recent issue (11/27) to the vitally important topic of women in the church. Certainly there are myriad women’s issues that require ongoing dialogue and pastoral sensitivity.

I think it is apt to say that the church needs the full and active participation of women. I think the problem arisesas it does in the case of liturgyfrom different perspectives as to what full and active participation really means. If the term means equal access to all the various functions in the life of the church, which seems to be an impoverished interpretation not in keeping with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, then the issue is simply one of power and asserting one’s rights.

I’d propose that a lay person most fully enters the sacred liturgy not by usurping the priest’s role, but by offering his or her own gifts as a lay person (Rom. 12:1). Similarly, a woman most fully serves the church by being fully a woman. How a woman is to strive for holiness in today’s changing world raises many important questions, and America is right in asking them. However, without going into great detail, a downplay of woman’s maternal rolewhich is neither paternal nor at all limited to physically bearing childrenseems counterproductive.

In this vein, I note Professor Cahill’s insistence that discussion of women’s morality issues should not be monopolized by reproductive and family issues. That much is true. However, Professor Cahill dissents from several church teachings on reproductive and family issues. If these teachings are misunderstood or rejected, won’t our views concerning human anthropology, church authority and morality in general also be flawed?

In addition, there was some mention about the restoration of the diaconate for women. This advocacy raises false expectations, inasmuch as [t]he Church confers the sacrament of Holy Orders only on baptized men (viri)(Catechism