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PAGE 3-May 1,1975
NC Documentation: Pope Paul on Women
Following is the text of Pope Paul’s
April 18 speech to a committee
studying the Church’s response to the
1975 United Nations-sponsored
International Women’s Year.
Welcome, dear daughters, and with
you, all those who make up this
Committee for the International
Woman’s Year, or who, in your
commission, represent the various
agencies of the Holy See or of other
international organizations.
On Nov. 17, 1973, we had defined
the task confided to the commission for
the study of the role of woman in
society and in the Church: on the level
of documentation and of reflection, on
the level of study for the effective
promotion of the dignity and
responsibility of women. These goals are
certainly before your mind. This work
of promotion requires a progressive
maturation, which does not rush
forward. It is, as a matter of fact, a
question of discerning with wisdom.
The questions are delicate; to speak
of equalization of rights does not
resolve the problem, which is much
more profound: it is necessary to aim at
an effective complementarity, so that
men and women bring their proper
riches and dynamism to the building of
a world, not leveled and uniform, but
harmonious and unified, according to
the design of the Creator, or, to use the
terms of the Holy Year, renewed and
reconciled. Moreover, it is necessary to
act with full knowledge, not to build up
utopian programs, conceived at the
summit by an elite and for an elite, but
to correspond to the real needs of the
people, in order to have the people go
forward together through suitable and
realistic stages.
There is so much to do in this area.
Need we mention th^t there are still
millions of women who do not enjoy
either essential rights or elementary
considerations?
The launching of the commission’s
work of study has coincided happily
with the preparation in the world for
the * International Woman’s Year
proclaimed by the United Nations for
this year 1975.
And we have already said last Nov. 6
how much the Church feels itself in
solidarity with the goals assigned to this
International Woman’s Year. The Holy
See is happy to welcome the invitation
that has been extended to it by the
United Nations to collaborate on its
level, but it is the whole Church which
is concerned; it is in the local
communities that it is necessary to
stimulate a reexamination of life
concerning the way in which the
respective rights and duties of man and
woman are respected and promoted,
and concerning the participation of
women in social life on the one hand
and in the life and mission of the
Church on the other.
Let us speak first of this latter sector,
although it is not necessary to limit
your ambition to it. The two go
together. The Second Vatican Council
recalled solemnly the right and the duty
that all the baptized, men and women,
have to take part as responsible
members of the People of God in the
mission of the Church, and it specified
moreover: “Since in our times women
have an ever more active share in the
whole life of society, it is very
important that they participate more
widely also in the various fields of the
Church’s apostolate.” (Apostolicam
actuositatem, n.9)
Many groups today seek inspiration
for this renewal in the word of God.
How can we not rejoice at this, insofar
as it is interpreted rightly, without
passion, in the living tradition of the
Church? They are pleased to point to
the example of Jesus: the novelty --
indeed the boldness in relation to the
customs of His time -- of His behavior
with regard to women.
If women did not receive the call to
the apostolate of the Twelve and
therefore to the ordained ministries,
they are nevertheless invited to follow
Christ as disciples and co-workers. The
women who had accompanied Jesus
from Galilee are present at the cross
(Luke 23:49); they observe the burial of
Jesus and are there again on the
morning of the Resurrection (Luke
24:1-10). It can be rightly said: if the
witness of the Apostles founds the
Church, the witness of women greatly
contributes to nourish the faith of
Christian communities.
We cannot change the behavior of our
Lord nor His call to women; but we
must recognize and promote the role of
women in the mission of evangelization
and in the life of the Christian
community. This will not be a novelty
in the Church; many traces of it are
found in the primitive communities; and
thereafter in many pages of the history
of the Church through the centuries, in
different ways. But today a more
clear-cut thrust forward takes shape.
Effectively, for several decades, a
great many Christian communities have
benefited from the apostilic
commitment of women, most especially
in the prime area of pastoral work with
families. At present, certain women are
even called to participate in sessions of
pastoral reflection, either on the level of
the dioceses, or on that of parishes and
deaneries. It goes without saying that
these new experiences need to mature.
The Apostolic See, as you know, has
itself called some particularly qualified
women to take places on certain
working groups.
What is most urgent, at present, from
all evidence, is the immense work of
awakening and of promoting woman at
the grass roots, in civil society, as well as
in the Church. It is the task that we
ourselves strongly stressed in an address
to Italian jurists last Dec. 7: to labor
everywhere to have discovered,
respected and protected the rights and
prerogatives of every woman in her life
-- educational, professional, civic, social,
religious - whether single or married.
But the International Year does not
aim only at obtaining for woman
equality of rights; it aims also at
assuring the full integration of women
in the worldwide effort of development
and their growing contribution to
strengthening peace among men, among
peoples. This last goal is very much in
harmony with that of the Holy Year. In
the family, as educators, and in all
sectors of society, Christian women
have an irreplaceable contribution to
make to the peace of the world and to
the building of a more just and fraternal
society. Without this specific
contribution - we are convinced and the
experience of people confirms it --
progress will not be fully human.
Yes, Christian women, the future of
civil society and of the ecclesial
community expects much of your
sensitivity and of your capacity for
understanding, of your sweetness and of
your perseverance, of your generosity
and of your humility. These virtues, so
well in accord with feminine
psychology, and magnificently
developed in the Virgin Mary, are also
the fruits of the Holy Spirit. This Holy
Spirit will guide you surely into the full
development, into the promotion that
you seek, that we all seek.
With our Apostolic Benediction.
Modesty League Planned
BY PAT WESTBERG
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (NC) - An
at-home business specializing in clothes
that “bring out the mystery of a
woman” has blossomed into efforts to
form a nationwide League for Modesty.
“I got a response, I’ll tell you,” said
Betty Sullivan, who last summer began
operating Lady-Like Modes, a firm
specializing in modest dresses, from the
living room of her south Minneapolis
home.
Miss Sullivan said the responses to her
advertising -- which came from nearly
POPE PAUL:
‘Vocation
every state - “were a poll for public
reaction. Now I know better how to
grab the tiger by the tail. There’s a lot
of interest.”
Miss Sullivan, a member of St.
Stephen’s parish, Minneapolis, got the
idea of including the League for
Modesty in her business after reading
about the apparition of the Blessed
Virgin Mary to Sister Mary of the
Immaculate Heart (Lucia dos Santos) at
Fatima in 1917.
Sister Mary later said: “Modesty
would be a good sacrifice to offer Our
Lady, and it would please her. If the
Catholics in your country would make a
league for modesty in dress it would
please Our Lady.”
The league will provide lectures,
seminars, fashion shows, sales of
readymade clothes, sewing patterns and
a quarterly magazine. One-year
memberships in the league are $5, and a
life membership is available for a
donation of $100 or more.
Miss Sullivan, who believes values
begin in the home, plans to emphasize
talks with mothers’ groups.
“I want to encourage women to call
for an authoritative statement on
modesty in behavior and dress from the
whole council of U. S. Catholic
Bishops,” she said.
Commenting on a recent pastoral
letter on modesty issued by Bishop
George H. Speltz of St. Cloud, Miss
Sullivan said “I had felt as if I were in a
tunnel. When I saw that letter I said,
‘Glory to God the light is turning on.’
“It must be that the Lord wants me
to do this work. I know that if he wants
me to do this work, the Holy Ghost will
provide.
“Some people believe that if you
want to be modest, the clothes are drab
and ugly. They’re really lovely. Would
the queen of heaven wear ugly, drab
clothes?”
She said: “Fashion has conned
women into showing off their arms and
legs, while Our Lady is begging us to
conceal and not reveal. Vanity is the
Achilles’ heal that makes us want to
show ourselves off.”
Is Call to Heroism’
BIG JOB -- Reading a scripture
lesson from a large pulpit during
an altar boy recognition ceremony
at the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception is a big
job for a little server, Eric Coram,
14, of St. Gabriel’s parish,
Washington, D. C. He was one of
the 51 outstanding servers from
Washington parishes who
represented all the states and the
District of Columbia at the
paraliturgical event sponsored by
the D. C. Serra Club and Catholic
Youth Organization. Similar
programs were scheduled around
the United States. (NC Photo)
“The call, which had been choice,
becomes dedication, immolation, silent
and unasked-for heroism. It becomes
ecclesial, grafted within a body that is
social, human, organized, juridical,
hierarchical, wonderfully compact and
obedient.”
Pope Paul then appealed to the huge
congregation, in English, French,
German and Spanish, to meditate long
on vocations. In English he said:
“Our call goes out to the entire
Church of God. We appeal for personal
interest and prayerful solidarity on the
part of all, in the matter of vocations. In
particular we ask that young people
everywhere open their hearts to the
promptings of the Holy Spirit, and that
with generous and persevering love they
f " '
Ordination at Opryland
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (NC) » Opryland U.S.A. will be the site May 20 of the
ordination and installation of Msgr. James Niedergeses as the ninth bishop of
Nashville.
Bishop-elect Niedergeses selected Opryland’s 4,000-seat main auditorium for
the ceremony himself. The ceremony will be videotaped for a future telecast on
May 25.
The auditorium has been the scene of many stage performances and radio and
television productions.
Bishop-elect Niedergeses will succeed retiring Bishop Joseph A. Durick.
< , , - — *
VATICAN CITY (NC) - An
authentic religious vocation is a call to
immolation and heroism, Pope Paul VI
told thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s
Basilica during Mass on Vocation
Sunday April 20.
“The call becomes selection, choice,
removal, separation, segregation,” the
Pope said.
“He who is called becomes a
candidate for a special office which has
this primary characteristic, today the
most painful, of imposing a way of life
diverse from the ordinary.”
He noted that human life itself
constitutes a vocation.
Pope Paul added that this diverse way
of life constituting a religious vocation
is “derived from a dedication to prayer
or ministry for the good of others, to
service without reserve for brother
mankind, with preference shown toward
those who had most need of love, of
aid, of consolation.”
He continued:
accept the invitation to sacrifice their
lives with Jesus for their brethem.
“For it is through this generosity and
sacrifice that mankind is led to a sharing
of the paschal mystery of the Lord.
Hear our voice. Listen to our words.
They come to you in the name of Christ
the supreme Shepherd.”
Lady-Like Modes offers some 30
styles of dresses in standard and
made-to-measure sizes for women and
girls. The dresses feature a choice of
seven sleeve lengths, hemlines two
inches below the knees and necklines
about an inch from the base of the
neck.
EMERGENCY COMMANDMENT - Oblate Father Peter Rogers of New
Orleans gets into his car at the rectory where he lives in New Orleans.
Father Rogers, chaplain of the city’s fire and police departments, gets calls
at all hours of the day and night so it is crucial that the driveway be kept
clear. To warn away potential parking violators, he has posted his own
11th commandment - “Thou shalt not park . . . emergency driveway.”
(NC Photo by George Gurtner)
Bicentennial Hot Topic
BY JERRY FILTEAU
WASHINGTON (NC) -- The
half-million-dollar “Liberty and Justice
for All” bicentennial celebration of the
U.S. bishops is rapidly becoming one of
the hottest items of debate among
Catholic commentators and opinion
leaders in this country.
“Perhaps in part because of its very
size and avowed scope,” says Jesuit
Father Donald R. Campion,
editor-in-chief of the national Jesuit
weekly American, ‘“Liberty and Justice
for All’ has drawn more public criticism
from more sources than any other
episcopal initiative since the publication
in 1919 of the ‘socialistic’ U.S. Bishops’
Program of Social Reconstruction.”
The chief focus of the current debate
is a discussion guide distributed
nationally by the National Conference
of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) for use in
parishes throughout the country this fall
and winter. Also under attack are six
regional “hearings” being conducted by
the NCCB Bicentennial Committee
around the country this year.
The hearings and parish discussions
together vie only with the National
Catechetical Directory, also now in
preparation, as the widest consultation
of U.S. Catholics in the history of the
Church in this country.
magazine is devoted to the Catholic
bicentennial program, with articles pro
and con.
- Dale Francis, executive editor of
the news edition of the national weekly
Our Sunday Visitor, has asked in his
nationally syndicated column apropos
of the discussion guide and hearings: “Is
wham Uncle Sam going to be the only
game played at the party?”
- Father Richard McBrien, whose
syndicated column is called “Essays in
Theology,” discussed the bicentennial
celebration, urging that it should be an
occasion to take on not only injustices
in society, but those within the Church
as well.
- Msgr. George Higgins, secretary for
research of the U.S. Catholic
Conference, has also entered the fray in
his nationally syndicated column, “The
Yardstick.” He denied that the
bicentennial program is an unqualified
success and admitted that many of
Father Greeley’s criticisms were “valid
up to a point.” But he charged his
fellow Chicagoan with “polemical
over-kill” and argued that the process so
far is “an important step in the right
direction.”
Msgr. Higgins’ views seem to coincide
with those of most of the officials
involved in the “Liberty and Justice for
All” program.
One of the chief antagonists in the
debate so far has been Father Andrew
Greeley, Chicago priest-sociologist. In
the Feb. 7 issue of the National Catholic
Reporter (NCR) Father Greeley
dropped his first bombshell, charging
that the parish discussion guide and the
whole consultation process was an
exercise in “liberal and radical chic”
dominated by a “rigidly anti-American”
elite of “new social actionists” who find
nothing good in the American
democratic experiment.
Among other contributions to the
debate:
-- The April 19 issue of America
Dr. Francis Butler, whose post as
executive director of the bicentennial
committee staff gives him a key role in
shaping the program, concedes that the
hearings have been less successful than
they could be. He admits that at the
first hearing in Washington, D. C., the
committee tried to schedule too many
witnesses, left too little time for
question-and-answer sessions, and did
not get enough input from the local
community. At the second hearing, in
San Antonio, Tex., the format was
better and the input from the local
community was far better.
The hearings are the only part of the
process really tried out on the public
record yet -- the discussion guide is
published but not generally in use in
parishes yet. The results of a
just-completed pilot program in Detroit
using the guide have not yet been pulled
together.
But it is through the parish
discussions that the bishops hope to get
a real feel of the heartbeat of American
Catholicism. At the San Antonio
hearing Bishop James Rausch, general
secretary of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops and U. S. Catholic
Conference (NCCB-USCC), told NC
News he thought the regional hearing
process is “basically very sound and a
sign of hope to people,” but “we still
have not found a way to get a true
cross-section of opinion.
“This to me proves that the local
hearings, at the parish and diocesan
level, are critical to the success of the
whole undertaking,” he said.
“It also highlights the importance of
receiving written testimony from those
with different perspectives,... In any
one of these regional hearings the record
remains open for 30 days for written
testimony from anybody, from any part
of the country, without restriction.”
Father Greeley told NC News he has
not been invited to participate in the
hearings, and therefore he has not
attended them because “I certainly am
not going to push myself on the
committee.” He said, however, that
from reports he has heard the
Washington hearing was “pretty bad”
but the San Antonio one was
“apparently a substantial
improvement.”
Father Greeley’s chief criticism,
however, has been directed at the parish
discussion guide, which, he said, is so
bad that the best solution would be to
gather up all the copies and bum them.
His contention is that the booklet is
so filled with new-left liberation
theology and “consciousness-raising”
confrontation techniques, that it will
stifle discussion because most Catholics
will be turned off from the start.
Father Greeley declined to respond
to NC News regarding Msgr. Higgins’
attacks on his critique, saying his reply
would appear in his own nationally
syndicated column.
Dale Francis told NC his reaction to
the process so far was mixed, and he
should not be labeled an opponent or
proponent of it. But he said so far he
has felt that there is a “sense of
negativism” in the program that is not
in keeping with the total bicentennial
celebration. Such a celebration should
begin, he said, with “some sense of
gratitude for what has been done in the
past.. . gratitude to those Americans
who have come before us, those men
and women who gave us a precious
heritage.”
So the debate has begun. Father
McBrien sees in the debate itself “a
healthy development.”
“Heretofore,” he wrote in his weekly
column, “the Catholic social action
movement has been subject only to
predictable criticism from the far right.
For the first time, observers of a more
moderately conservative, and even
moderately liberal, point of view are
raising challenging questions about the
presuppositions, methods and range of
certain social activists.”
James Finn, editor of Worldview
magazine and a consultor to the
bishops’ bicentennial committee, in a
Worldview editorial credited Father
Greeley’s criticisms with “spreading the
word and raising the issues” about the
“Liberty and Justice for All” program.
Finn suggested that it is precisely the
debate over Catholic social action that
may be a significant contribution of the
program.
Father Greeley said his widely
publicized criticisms were meant “to
express my own opinions” and not to
start the debate. “But if Mr. Finn’s
evaluation is correct, I’m pleased,” he
said.
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