Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—October 23,1975
Status Of Divorced-Remarried
Catholics Topic Of Discussion
MASS FOR THE SICK -- Pope Paul celebrates a personally anointing 50 with holy oil. It was the first
Holy Year Mass for sick and elderly persons in St. time the pontiff administered Anointing of the Sick.
Peter’s Square. He later walked among them, (NC Photo)
Oliver Plunkett Canonized:
Pope Asks Reconciliation
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Oliver
Plunkett, the last recognized martyr to
die for the faith on London’s Tyburn
gallows, was canonized here Oct. 12 by
Pope Paul VI.
St. Oliver Plunkett becomes the first
Irish person to be canonized in more
than 600 years. He is also the first Irish
saint to be canonized at St. Peter’s
Basilica and the fourth archbishop of
Armagh and primate of Ireland to be
canonized.
His predecessors were St, Patrick,
Patron of Ireland, St. Malachy and St.
Laurence O’Toole.
In his address, Pope Paul did not refer
directly to present violence in Ireland
but spoke of St. Oliver’s life and
teaching as an opponent of all violence
and hatred:
“In his pastoral activities, his
exhortation had been one of pardon and
peace. With men of violence he was
indeed the advocate of justice and the
friend of the oppressed. But he would
not compromise with truth or condone
violence. He would not substitute
another Gospel for the Gospel of
peace.”
He declared: “O, what a model of
reconciliation, a sure guide for our
day.”
The Pope concluded: “Let this then
be an occasion on which the message of
peace and reconciliation in truth and
justice, and above all the message of
love for one’s neighbor, will be
emblazoned in the minds and hearts of
all the beloved Irish people - this
message signed and sealed with a
martyr’s blood, in imitation of his
master.
“May love be always in your hearts
and may St. Oliver Plunkett be an
inspiration to you all.”
Mrs. Giovanna Martiriggiano, whose
miraculous cure in a Naples clinic in
1958 was attributed to St. Oliver’s
intercession, was in the offertory
procession. The members of the
procession brought forward the
traditional gifts of two large candles,
two bouquets of flowers, two doves and
two small casks of wine.
In addition to the traditional gifts
were ones representing the four
provinces of Ireland, including
Waterford glass, Connemara Mass
vestments and a reproduction of the
Book of Kells.
About 175 of the new saint’s
descendant relatives were at his
canonization, along with dignitaries of
Church and state.
More than 200,000 persons packed
into the square in front of the basilica
and 85 bands played from long before
the ceremony began to long after it
ended. Pope Paul made reference to the
music that enlivened the occasion.
There were some 12,000 persons
from Ireland, England and the United
States. Irish-born Cardinal Timothy
Manning of Los Angeles led a group of
350 from his diocese.
There were also tens of thousands,
many in colorful national costumes,
from Poland, Yugoslavia and a dozen
Latin American and northern European
countries, as well as from every part of
Italy.
Pope Paul concelebrated the
canonization Mass with six Irish
bishops: Cardinal William Conway,
Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of
Ireland; Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan of
Dublin, Archbishop Thomas Morris of
Cashel, Archbishop Joseph Cunnane of
Tuam, Bishop Donald Herlihy of Ferns
and Bishop John McCormack of Meath,
St. Oliver’s native county.
Ireland was officially represented by
Premier Liam Cosgrave, who was
accompanied by the ministers for local
government and for agriculture and
fisheries.
Of the 175 descendant relatives of
the new saint present, about half were
Catholic and half Protestant. Among
them were Lord Fingall, the Plunkett
family head and a Catholic, and Lady
Fingall. Among the Protestants were
Lord and Lady Dunsany and Lord and
Lady Louth.
Kathleen Countess Plunkett, whose
husband, a papal count, had represented
the family at his beatification in 1920,
was also present.
Rain fell steadily until a half-hour
before the ceremony and the sun shone
out of a blue sky as the canonization
began. But the wind was strong
throughout, rattling the plastic
panoplies of the stands and ruffling the
Pope’s robes. A sudden gust blew
Archbishop Ryan’s skullcap off during
the procession and another, during the
Litany of the Saints, blew the cross off
the papal altar.
Nearly all the cardinals of the
Church’s central administration were
present. Cardinal John J. Wright, prefect
of the Vatican Congregation for the
Clergy, was kept away by a severe cold.
Lamspring, in Germany, to which the
saint’s relics were taken from London’s
Newgate Prison in 1721, and Downside
Abbey in England, where Oliver
Plunkett’s body now lies, were heavily
represented.
Last March, the saint’s tomb was
opened. A major relic was sent to
Ireland, to a shrine at his birthplace of
Oldcastle. Other relics were taken to
Rome, and Cardinal Manning is taking
one relic back to Los Angeles.
BY MICHAEL NEWMAN
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (NC) - The
indissolubility of marriage and the
reception of the sacraments by divorced
and remarried Catholics are “separable”
issues, according to Jesuit Father
Richard A. McCormick.
In his address to the convention of
the American Canon Law Society here,
the former president of the Catholic
Theological Society said that “a
practicable public policy of admission
of some divorced-remarried persons to
the sacraments need not constitute a
challenge to the teaching on
indissolubility of marriage, and thereby
weaken the Church’s unity in faith and
discipline.”
Father McCormick said he used the
word “separable” by design. “At
present at the popular level and in the
public mind they are possibly not
separate issues,” he added.
Past Church teaching on
indissolubility “has had the effect of
inculcating a mentality that views
indissolubility as capable of but one
pastoral policy where the
divorced-remarried are concerned.”
He said that to revoke the teaching or
change the policy will “harm the
common good of the Church by
seeming to deny or weaken one of its
substantial teachings.”
Father McCormick, who is professor
of Christian ethics at the Kennedy
Institute, Georgetown University,
Washington, D.C., gave a 45-minute
paper on “Indissolubility and the Right
to the Eucharist - Separate Issues or
One?” in which he traced the history
and theological background to this
“many sided and complex issue.”
The issue, as he described it,
examined whether those in second
canonically irregular marriages
which cannot be regularized - should be
excluded from receiving Communion.
“Can the Church maintain the
doctrine of indissolubility and still
BY MARTY HARRISON
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. (NC) - The
decade-long decline in Religious
vocations for the Church in the United
States may be ending.
At least there are indications to this
affect, in the opinion of Archbishop
John R. Roach of St. Paul-Minneapolis.
Archbishop Roach, chairman of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops’ Committee on Vocations and
chairman of the board of the National
Center for Church Vocations, attended
the recent National Conference of
Diocesan Vocation Directors held here.
He told Today’s Catholic, San
Antonio archdiocesan newspaper: “I
cannot substantiate my optimistic view
on a rise in vocations with any
documentary evidence. But, from
talking to many vocation directors, I
feel there is informal evidence, in several
dioceses at least, that the diminution in
numbers of religious vocations has in
fact turned around this year.”
The archbishop was enthusiastic
about the San Antonio convention. He
administer the Eucharist to those whose
life-status represents a violation of this
teaching?” he asked.
He admitted that the answer “at the
level of practice” varies, which he
regretted, but he said the quest is to
find out how we got there.
“It is just as theologically -- and
canonically -- irresponsible to be
warm-hearted but wrong-headed as it is
humanly irresponsible to be
cold-hearted and right-headed,” he said.
“A healthy pastoral policy can exist
only if a warm heart is guided by a right
head -- one that does not betray the
Lord’s teaching.”
He examined the “state of sin”
aspects, the symbolization effects on
the Church and the scandal
repercussions. In this connection, he
said, the argument runs that if the
divorced-remarried are allowed to
receive the Eucharist, others will
conclude that it is not wrong to marry
after divorce, and that the Church is
changing its teaching on divorce.
Under these circumstances the issues
were neither “separate” nor
“separable,” he said. A change in the
traditional pastoral policy “will
necessarily affect corrosively the
teaching on indissolubility,” he added.
He dealt with the position of those
whose “second union is stable,
characterized by mutual respect and
profound affection, often supported by
deep Christian attitudes in all other
spheres of life.” To stigmatize this as a
“state of sin” he said, is to “speak in a
language with little or no resonance in
the couples’ experience.”
“The official policy which sees
second marriage as a state of sin also
sees this state of sin dissolved by a
brother-sister relationship,” said Father
McCormick. “But this has its own
serious problems - the grave disorders
that can arise from a couple and their
children from an intimate life together
without any sexual expression.” He said
called it “extremely meaningfull” for all
who attended and said: “I found a very
positive attitude on the part of diocesan
vocation directors.”
The archbishop then turned to
matters discussed by the Bishops’
Committee for Vocations, which met at
the same convention.
“We are proposing for consideration
by the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops a very ambitious and major
study to be done on the whole question
of theology of ministry and of call,” he
said.
“That’s an important consideration,”
he said. “There is a changing kind of
rhetoric going on - the word ‘ministry’
is being used and interpreted to mean
many things by many groups. It is our
feeling that we need better theological
base than is currently available for a
discussion of ministry and for a
discussion of the theology of call.”
Continuing, Archbishop Roach said:
“We are also proposing a set of
self-evaluation guidelines be established
for the operation of vocation offices
throughout the United States. Directors
of vocations are zealous, hard-working
Vatican Council ll’s constitution on the
Church and the Modem World
recognized this in its reference to the
intimacy of married life.
He also said his view is in conflict with
the Church’s stand that intimacy is “so
essential to marriage that marriage is not
consummated without it.”
The theologian said it is “fair to say
that most recent writing favors a policy
of ‘cautious’ readmission of ‘some’
divorced-remarried to the sacraments.
“It is true to say that contemporary
theological writing moves in the
direction that indissolubility and
reception of the Eucharist are separate
issues, at least in some cases,” he said.
He said the theological justification
came from two possibilities: an adjusted
understanding of the meaning of
indissolubility, and the principle of the
lesser evil.
He said, however, that indissolubility
should be thought of as an absolute
moral concept, a “moral ought” in the
marriage union, and a serious obligation
on the couple to support and strengthen
the marriage.
“Then when a marriage irretrivably
breaks down,” he said, “it can be said
that at least one of the partners has
failed to live up to the precept of
indissolubility. A serious disvalue both
personal and social, has occurred.”
He explained that “it may be quite
possible to conceive of the permanence
of marriage in a way compatible with
Christ’s command without viewing it in
terms of a continuing moral and legal
vinculum (bond). And if this ‘vinculum’
is not present, then the basic reason
preventing reception of the sacraments
disappears.”
“To circumvent inconsistency, the
Church would have to abandon her
teaching that every true marriage
between the baptized is thereby a
sacrament.”
Be Ending’
people. And while they do have some
means of communication with one
another, in no one place has there been
assembled a series of guidelines which
would enable them to evaluate the
effectiveness of their own programs.”
In the guidelines, the archbishop said,
“we are really talking about a plan of
action for vocation efforts that would
be a cooperative effort of the three
conferences responsible for vocations in
this country - the diocesan vocation
directors and the vocation directors of
Religious men and Religious women.”
The committee is suggesting, he went
on to say, initiation of guidelines which
would incorporate such things as the
evolving definition of what a vocation
director is, and the relationship of a
vocation director to the many publics to
whom he or she must relate.”
Elaborating, Archbishop Roach
added: “We would hope to establish
some models of good team efforts at the
diocesan level of vocation offices. We
would try to assemble a rather complete
list of vocation projects and programs
which are, in fact, successful around the
nation.”
ARCHBISHOP ROACH-
‘Vocations Decline May
U.S. Catholic Women’s Groups Respond To Ordination Statement
WASHINGTON (NC) - Responses of
various Catholic women’s groups to the
reaffirmation of the Church’s ban on
women priests by the head of the U.S.
bishops’ conference range from
acceptance of his statement as one voice
in debate on the issue to outright
rejection of it.
Sister Dorothy Donnelley, a Sister of
St. Joseph, president of the National
Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN),
called the statement by Archbishop
Joseph L. Bemardin of Cincinnati,
president of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops (NCCB), “nothing but
a canonization of history.”
She added: “Two thousand years
worth of not doing something is to my
mind a narrow view of Tradition.” She
described Tradition as “the living action
of the Holy Spirit in history” and as
something now going on.
“If the Holy Spirit seems to be calling
and giving gifts for ordination to
women, what reason do we have to
restrict the action of the Holy Spirit?”
Sister Donnelly asked.
Archbishop Bemardin’s statement,
authorized by the NCCB Administrative
Committee, cited a report on the
ordina >n of women issued in 1972 by
the NCCB Committee on Pastoral
l t
Research and Practices, which noted
that Revelation is made known by
Tradition as well as Scripture.
The Church’s constant practice and
tradition has excluded women from the
episcopal and priestly office, the report
pointed out, adding that until modem
times, theologians and canonists were
unanimous in considering this exclusion
as absolute and of divine origin.
Though not formally defined, the
report said, the exclusion of women
from the priesthood is Catholic doctrine
and will continue to be “unless and
until a contrary theological
development takes place, leading
ultimately to a clarifying statement
from the magisterium (the Church’s
official teaching authority).”
Archbishop Bemardin added that,
because no individual has a right to
ordination, exclusion from it is not an
injustice.
Sister Patricia Hughes, publicity
coordinator of the Ordination
Conference Task Force, which is
organizing a conference in Southfield,
Mich., near Detroit, in November on the
ordination of women, called Archbishop
Bemardin’s statement “obviously a
significant step in the Church’s
reflection on the ordination of women.”
She added: “Because of his position of
leadership, his words need to be listened
to and studied with all seriousness.”
Jesuit Father William R. Callahan,
national secretary of Priests for
Equality, a newly formed organization
of 450 priests whose charter affirms
that men and women have a right to
equal opportunity for ordination, said
that Archbishop Bemardin’s statement
“has set the stage for a full Roman
Catholic discussion of this issue.”
The quotations in Archbishop
Bemardin’s statement from the report
of the NCCB Committee on Pastoral
Research and Practices, Father Callahan
said, “should be read in the light of the
unmentioned first paragraph of that
same report, which says, ‘There is no
explicit authoritative teaching
concerning the ordination of women
that settles the question.’”
Father Callahan referred to
Archbishop Bemardin’s citation of the
committee statement that the present
exclusion of women from ordination
will continue until a contrary
theological development takes place
leading to a clarifying statement from
the magisterium.
“Neither the committee report nor
Archbishop Bemardin,” he said, “do
more than hint at the positive ‘signs of
the times’ which suggest that just such a
contrary theological development
pointing toward ordination of women is
taking place at this very time.”
Among such signs, Father Callahan
cited:
- “The centuries-old unanimity of
canonists and theologians that exclusion
of women is ‘absolute and of divine
origin’ has crumbled;”
- “Biblical and theological studies are
revealing not only a lack of support for
continued exclusion of women, but are
showing, with new clarity, the liberating
call of Jesus;”
-- “Many caring, highly qualified
women are hearing a call to ordination,
and are thereby calling the
‘Spirit-guided Church,’ to reconsider
past discipline in the light of this higher
call.”
Frances McGillicuddy, press officer
of the U.S. branch of St. Joan’s
International Alliance, a 64-year-old
Catholic women’s rights organization,
said that “the rights being violated are
the rights of the Holy Spirit to blow
where he or she wishes. What the
bishops are saying about the case of a
young woman who feels that she has a
calling to the priesthood is that the
Holy Spirit goofed.”
Sister Margaret Traxler, a School
Sister of Notre Dame and director of
the Institute of Women Today, a
Chicago-based women’s rights
organization, said she is glad the bishops
“have assumed a role in the debate. Had
they been silent, it would mean they
were not willing to enter into debate.”
The bishops’ entry into dialogue on
the issue, Sister Traxler said, means
“they want ongoing discussion.”
Father Eugene Maly, dean of the
school of theology at Mt. St. Mary’s
Seminary of the West in Norwood,
Ohio, the Cincinnati archdiocesan major
seminary, said that Archbishop
Bemardin “makes a big point of
Tradition being a source of Revelation.”
Father Maly, who pointed out that
“the Scriptural basis is not sufficient to
exclude the ordination of women,”
noted that what the archbishop said
“does not seem to preclude the
possibility of future development of
Tradition.”
Dr. Elizabeth Farians, a
Cincinnati-based theologian and
consultant on women’s affairs with the
Association of Feminist Consultants,
said that the NCCB committee report in
1972 “concluded there is no theological
objection to the ordination of women
and Archbishop Bemardin,
spokesperson for the 100 percent male
hierarchy, has himself previously stated
the same.”
She continued: “Therefore one is
forced to wonder if the bishops are not
doing and saying such ridiculous things
because they sense their desperate
position regarding the oncoming revolt
of the women of the Church.”
Sister Ruth McGoldrick, a Sister of
Providence and executive director of the
Sister Formation Conference, an
organization of those concerned with
the training of Sisters, said she was not
surprised by Archbishop Bemardin’s
statement. “Historically,” she added,
“the greatest defense of a long-held
position often comes just before a
breakthrough.”
The Washington-based Liturgical
Conference said the statement
“underlines” the necessity of a faithful
discussion of the problem in the light of
Scripture and Tradition and the signs of
the times.”
Both Sister McGoldrick and the
Liturgical Conference urged the NCCB
to see that it is represented at the
November ordination conference of the
Detroit area.