From: stabosz@chopin.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz)
Subject: Re: Altar girls and millstones update
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 01:41:05 GMT

In article <9210082105.AA23272@nhgs> "Patrick S. Golden" <pgolden@NHGS.VAK12ED.EDU> writes:
>According to Marty Helgesen:
>> >Seems strange to me that Jesus would allow a women to dry his
>> >feet with her hair, but, accoding to the above, a woman cannot
>> >dry a priest's hands with a cloth.
>>
>> Leaving that fact aside and assuming for the moment that the altar
>> boy does dry the priest's hands your comment still does not make
>> sense.  There is no connection between the incident described in the
>> Gospels and the act of serving Mass except the superficial fact that
>> both involve drying something.
>>
>> Marty Helgesen
>>
>My point is that Jesus allowed women to serve him physically,
>go with him to his cross, and be the first to tell of his
>resurection.  I see no sense in priests restricting a woman's
>ability to serve at mass.
>
>Without conducting a survey, I feel fairly confident that this
>type of restriction is what Catholics, male and female, have in
>mind when they complain about the Church's archaic and outmoded
>rules.
>
>Pax
>Patrick
******

I've gone back and forth on the issue of women priests for the last
few years.  Now I find myself fairly squarely on the side which says
that the Church will not and should not change its position.

Precisely _because_ Jesus allowed women to serve him physically,
to go with him to his cross, to be the first to witness the
Resurrection, I think we can't easily dismiss the Church's teaching
that God calls men to the ministerial priesthood, and not women.
The burden of proof is on those who would have the Church change
her stand, a stand she has not shown any signs of changing for
2000 years.  

I cannot accept that this is a matter of justice.  Men and women
have been struggling for centuries to work out issues of gender,
and they continue to struggle.  In the social structures of 
so many cultures and nations, women have been admitted by law to 
the highest offices.  These cultures and nations have been populated
by Catholics in many cases, Catholic men and women.  Yet the Church
itself has not changed its law or made any significant move in the
direction of changing that.

I cannot believe that this is due SOLELY to the sexism of the
men who make up the hierarchy.  I cannot believe that their sexism
is of a more thorough and consistent degree than that of those in
the secular world.  If the Holy Spirit is active among these men,
and if they are not totally deaf, and if the teaching and governing
authority of the Church rests in the Magisterium (does it?  That's
the question, right?) then I cannot believe that they would hold
out in the face of all twentieth-century claims and opinions about
the nature and meaning of gender.  I cannot believe that the Second
Vatican Council would have been so steeped in sexism that it would
have not listened to see if the Holy Spirit was speaking for change.
(I know, I know, the Holy Spirit has to work with Vatican politics
too but surely He is somewhere to be found!)  

I believe that just as women (and I am one such creature) have been
misunderstood, misjudged, discriminated against (and worse) due 
solely to their gender, so too is the hierarchy being dismissed,
misunderstood, misjudged and ignored as a group, by many Catholics,
SOLELY BECAUSE THEY ARE AN ALL-MALE GROUP.  

I think Catholic men and women need to come to some sort of an
understanding of the existing situation, and consider it carefully
in the light of all they know of the faith God has passed down to
them in the teachings of the Catholic Church, before they clamor
so vigorously for something which very well might be a passing
understanding of gender.  We have only lived in the twentieth
century, those of us reading this newsgroup.  Are we so sure of
our understanding of gender that we are willing to pass judgment
on so many centuries of alternate thought?  Is that not something
dangerous -- century-ism -- the belief that our century is the best, the
most-englightened one?

Rae