Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Most recent
Most relevant
Clear filter
Letters
Letters

Powerless

I am writing in response to Professor Mary Jo Bane’s article, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in the Church (6/3). In 1968 I was 29 years old and had six children. I remember exactly where I was when Pope Paul VI spoke from Yankee Stadium and essentially said, Set another place at the table. That was the message of Humanae Vitae. I sat in my kitchen listening to the radio and sobbed. My husband and I had had six children in seven years, and two miscarriages.

Did I experience lay dissatisfaction and anger? No. I think it was desolation, futility and awful resignation. We were two good, educated, Catholic parents; what could we do? We did the only thing possible at the time to preserve our marriage and our family. We exited from the teaching, and that only after prayer, more tears and lots of guilt.

The current scandal, or Catholic Watergate, has also made me cry, and I have incredible anger. I was not so angry in 1968, just more resigned. I have changed; my church has not. They are still in my bedroom!

Sexual abuse of children is not even in the same category with the teaching of Humanae Vitae. It is despicable, sinful and manipulative. Yes, I live in Boston and have been assaulted by all of it for five months, but never in 1968 did I feel as powerless as I do now. My faith is much stronger now; it is who I am; it is the peaceful, powerful part of me. It speaks to me and says, You are mine, I have counted every hair on your head.

If in two years nothing much has changed, if the same dusty, musty mitres and crosiers are still around, I will be so angry at myself for not speaking out. Please don’t anyone compare the encyclical on birth control in 1968 to this mess. I was there. Then it was resignation and personal decisions; now it is rage, and all decisions are completely out of our hands.

Barbara M. Donahue

Editorials
The Charter
The U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse has proposed a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People for consideration by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at their meeting in Dallas on June 13-15. The committee, chaired by Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, of St. Paul-Minn
September 11: A Neighborhood Reflects
After Sept. 11, what is there left to say? As pastor emeritus of a New York City parish, I settle for an embrace, a hug. There is a deep personal quality to our losses on mid-Manhattan’s East Side and throughout our city. Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, lovers, sons and daughters, relations
Books
Jun 17, 2002 issue
Education for Life
Ann Lloyd Breeden
Education has long been one of the pillars for the bridge between Christian faith and the world fostering the development of reason giving meaning and order to human life and facilitating an appreciation of ultimate reality Michael L Peterson Fred Herron and George Dennis O rsquo Brien offer th
News
Signs of the Times
Vatican Reservations Emerging Over U.S. Direction on Sex AbuseRecent statements by two Vatican officials have underscored reservations in Rome over the direction U.S. bishops are taking as they formulate a national policy on clerical sex abuse. In particular, the officials believe it would be wrong
Clericalism and the Sex Abuse Scandal
Clericalism in the Catholic Church is something like the pattern in the wallpaper: it’s been there so long you don’t see it anymore. That may be why, amid all the demands for change in response to the scandal of clergy sex abuse, more has not been heard about clericalism and the need to
The American Church's Sexual Abuse Crisis
The clerical sexual abuse scandals in Boston and elsewhere have brought home how far the Catholic Church still has to go in receiving into its life the Second Vatican Council, nearly 40 years after that council’s close. The council devoted itself, quite deliberately, to the nature and mission
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Revelations over these past few months are enough to dizzy one’s mind. Even more dizzying, though, are the perhaps millions of words that have been penned in the media worldwide. Have we heard enough? Have we heard more than enough? What’s to be done? Shocking...scandalous...disgraceful.
Letters
Letters

In Remembrance

I had to chuckle while reading Elizabeth Ficocelli’s Avoiding Mass Hysteria: Teaching Children to Behave in Church (5/6). She and her young ones would be as discomfited as I was by the children wandering loose at Sunday Mass in the Catholic chapel of the state penitentiary in Tijuana. Some are visiting their fathers; others are in residence with their mothers. None of their motion or commotion, however, seems to distract the prisoners from close attention to the Eucharist or the word, God bless them. As to my own reactions as a priest, I have this poetic meditation, called Suffer the Little Children:

the benches crowded and solemn

Editorials
Zero Tolerance
When the U.S. bishops meet in Dallas, Tex., on June 13-15, the sexual abuse crisis will be at the top of their agenda. The media, the laity and the nation will be watching, ready to pass judgment on the bishops if they do not meet expectations. Two issues have become litmus tests to measure how well