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PAGE 8 — The Georgia Bulletin, October 8,1987 Synod Hears Bishops Urge Expanding Women's Role BY AGOSTINO BONO ROLE PLAYING — Situations which might arise between pastor and parishioner were acted out during a workshop to help parishes bet ter utilize their volunteers, sponsored by Catholic Social Services at the Catholic Center. In the photograph, Mary Lou Mazure of Holy Trinity parish, Peachtree City, takes role of pastor, left, while Gina Riffey, of St. James parish, McDonough, portrays the volunteer. VATICAN CITY (NC) - Catholic women should be able to teach in seminaries, become members of the Vatican diplomatic corps and hold higher ranking posts in the nearly all-male Roman Curia, several bishops told the world Synod of Bishops Oct. 5. Synod delegates also heard calls for opening up liturgical roles for women ranging from altar girls to lectors. As in previous synod sessions, speakers made clear that their calls excluded the or dination of women to the priesthood. Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee and Bishop Gerhard Schwenzer of Oslo, Norway, asked for more women to be incorporated into the Roman Curia, the church’s central ad ministrative offices. Archbishop Weakland said the church should open to all the laity “decision making and administrative roles on all levels of church life” including major posi tions “in the Curia and the diplomatic corps.” There are no women in the diplomatic corps. The highest-ranking woman in the Curia is School Sister of Notre Dame Mary Linscott, a middle-level official in the Vatican Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes. A priest with the rank of monsignor normally holds such a post. The “insufficient” number of women in ecclesial circles “is more and more seen as a fundamental fault of the church,” Bishop Schwenzer said. “It is important that women themselves can contribute to the necessary changes,” he added. Bishop Schwenzer also said women should be given a greater role in the train ing of priesthood candidates in the seminary. Auxiliary Bishop Gabriel Bullet of Lausanne, Geneva-Fribourg, Switzerland, said the canonical stipulation that women cannot be acolytes is “true discrim ination.” Archbishop Weakland also asked that women be allowed “to function in all liturgical roles that do not demand priestly ordination,” such as altar server, lector and acolyte. A South American bishop, however, voiced concern about women’s femininity. “The promotion of women should not lessen their femininity; to masculinize them subjects them to a new and anti natural slavery,” said Bishop Libardo Ramirez Gomez of Garzon, Colombia. At the same time, the church must work at “removing purely disciplinary limita tions” against women, he added. “Women fulfill many services in the apostolic field, and they have carte blanche to exercise all those pastoral ministries that are not sacerdotal in nature,” said Bishop Ramirez Gomez. In Africa the role of women in the church is well-developed and accepted, said Archbishop Henry Karlen of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. “They are often more active than men; they are lay apostles and often leaders. This contributes to the dignity and ac ceptance of women as important members of the church,” he said. Also on Oct. 5 synod delegates heard a Filipino bishop ask that professional lay people be ordained who would “exercise their priestly ministry on a part-time basis” because of the huge shortage of priests in many parts of the world. There is a “disproportion between a great number of faithful and very few or dained ministers,” yet access to the Eucharist is a “fundamental right for every Christian,” said Archbishop Leonar do Legaspi of Caceres, Philippines. He asked “serious consideration be given to the possibility of acknowledged leaders emerging from basic communities of various types being made eligible for or dination to the presbyteriate.” “These leaders will normally be people exercising a secular profession. If and when they are ordained, they would therefore exercise their ministry on a part- time basis,” he said. Archbishop Legaspi said the idea was first proposed by the Asian bishops in 1977. Other speakers asked for a greater lay role in dialogue with non-Christians, a re emphasis of the laity’s role in secular society, greater attention to the needs of the disabled and greater lay participation in future synods. Among non-Christian religions “it is the laity, not the clerics or the Religious, who are in the front line of interreligious dialogue,” said Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions. “It is important that Moslem or Hindu lay persons should be able to encounter in dialogue Christian lay persons who share with them the usual concerns about family life, education of children and duties as citizens, and who live the Christian faith at a deep and authentic level,” he said. Father Marcello Zago, superior general of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, told the synod delegates that with the growth in numbers of non-Christians in many parts of the world the church has to change some of its missionary thinking regarding the laity. The church must consider missionary activity as including the evangelization of entire cultures and interreligious dialogue, said Father Zago. Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool, England, said that 22 years after the end of the Second Vatican Council “a balance has to be found between sharing in the church’s sanctifying and evangelizing task and the laity’s specific role to renew the secular order.” “We need to examine our consciences about whether there has been so much con centration on the renewal of worship and the structures of the church after the coun cil that lay people have been drawn into new ministries and structures for dialogue and have perhaps overlooked their secular responsibilities,” said Archbishop Worlock. Lay people are needed “to penetrate a society which is either blinded by its af fluence or starved by its poverty,” he said. “The council assumed that lay apostolic organizations would form its members for their role in the secular order and provide spiritual formation. Now in many parts of Europe the emphasis is rather on the spiritual movements,” he added. Father Paul Boyle, an American and head of the Passionist order, asked that the church pay greater attention to the needs of the disabled. Disabled people “speak of the exclusion they have experienced from churches and synagogues and the hurts this exclusion has caused them,” he said. At meetings organized by Passionists “people in wheelchairs spoke of their em barrassment because confessionals ex clude them,” he said. It would be an important gesture “at the eucharistic liturgy if disabled persons were used as readers, acolytes, ministers of the Eucharist and even celebrants of the Mass,” said Father Boyle. The president of the Canadian Con ference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop James Hayes of Halifax, Nova Scotia, ask ed synod delegates to make “a commit ment to broaden the manner of par ticipating in synods so that all the baptized can be more clearly and closely associated with deciding the future paths of the people of God.” Report Shows Pope's 1984 Appeal On Confession Had Mixed Results BY AGOSTINO BONO VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope John Paul II’s 1984 apostolic exhortation on confession, aimed at get ting more Catholics to use the sacrament, has had mixed results among the world’s faithful, said a report to the 1987 world Synod of Bishops. In some countries it has been widely disseminated, pastoral programs have been developed to imple ment it and confessions are on the rise, said the report. In others, “it cannot be said that there has been a true increase in recourse to the sacrament of penance, in spite of the constant en couragement of pastors,” the report added. Among the reasons — “secularization and hedo nism, which in many places have destroyed religious practice and recourse to the sacra ments.” Others are “the loss of the sense of sin, the lack of a proper formation of con science and the profound crisis in moral values ex perienced by contemporary society,” it said. It also cited “the convic tion that pardon for sins can be obtained by turning directly to God, an underestimation of the per sonal dimension of sin as compared to the social dimension, and an exag gerated esteem for the psychological techniques so much in vogue today.” A main reason for in creased use of confession has been “the community penitential celebrations with individual confessions of sin and absolution,” it said. The pope’s document stressed the need for in dividual confessions and reiterated church teach ings that general absolu tion without individual con fession can only be done under limited, extraor dinary circumstances. The pope’s 1984 docu ment, ‘‘Reconciliatio et Paenitentia,” was based on the conclusions of the 1983 world Synod of Bishops on the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. Many bishops at the 1983 synod, especially those from countries with severe priest shortages, had hoped for a relaxing of the regula tions regarding individual confessions. They said it often was impossible for priests to hear the in dividual confessions of everyone seeking absolu tion. The study was prepared by Father Jose Saraiva Martins, chancellor of Rome’s Urban University and special secretary of the 1983 synod. Father Saraiva Martins read the report at the Oct. 2 synod meeting. A summary was released at the Vatican press office. The summary did not name countries or regions of the world. Msgr. Diarmuid Martin, English-language synod press officer, said after ward the study was based on 50 replies from bishops’ conferences, patriarchates and the Roman Curia. He said in some areas, church leaders reported a 10 per cent rise in the number of confessions since the docu ment was published. After the report was read, 21 synod delegates gave spontaneous talks on the issue, Msgr. Martin said. A point made by several delegates was that “priests don’t go to confession often enough,” said Msgr. Mar tin. They said “the pastoral care of priests is a problem” in this area, he added. The study said that in some areas confessions have increased so much that priests do not have enough time to hear them all because of other com mitments. It also asked for better formation programs for priests, beginning in the seminary, so that they are prepared to meet “the challenges of our day” regarding the promotion of the sacrament and being good confessors.
