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PAGE 10 - The Georgia Bulletin, August 23, 1990
LCWR Urges Bishops To Scrap Pastoral On Women
WASHINGTON (CNS) - The Leader
ship Conference of Women Religious has
urged the U.S. bishops to drop their pro
posed pastoral letter on women, saying
the bishops are not ready to do the "kind
of critical analysis" of church policies that
is needed.
Calling the second draft of the pastoral
an improvement over the first, a three-
page statement issued Aug. 9 by LCWR’s
executive committee said, however, that
"a pastoral letter on women should not be
issued by the American bishops at this
time.”
An adequate examination of "patriar
chy" in the proposed pastoral would
require the bishops to "raise serious ques
tions about the manner in which the
church is institutionalized and would be
self-condemnatory," it said.
LCWR is a national organization of
some 800 women who head Catholic
religious communities.
The statement came on the heels of a
report issued in late July by the Washing-
ton-based Center of Concern, an indepen
dent Catholic study center, that urged the
bishops to scrap the document on wom
en’s concerns.
In May Archbishop Rembert G. Weak-
land of Milwaukee, citing what he saw as
credibility problems raised in part by the
draft’s treatment of the issue of women’s
ordination, also suggested that the bishops
CRS Pulls Out Of Liberia
BY KATE PIPKIN
BALTIMORE (CNS) - Catholic Relief
Services pulled out of Liberia after its
acting representative was detained and a
man handcuffed to him was shot dead.
"CRS left after what happened to me,"
Jacques Montouroy told The Catholic
Review, archdiocesan newspaper of Balti
more, where CRS is headquartered. "It’s
become too dangerous to work."
Meanwhile, news reports from Liberia
said that Archbishop Romeo Panciroli,
Vatican pro-nuncio to Liberia, was among
57 foreign nationals evacuated by U.S.
Marines Aug. 13.
Montouroy, whose normal assignment
is Haiti, had been in Liberia three months.
He was evacuated from Liberia Aug. 4.
He was scheduled to return to Haiti Aug.
14.
A few days before being evacuated,
Montouroy was seized by Prince Yormie
Johnson, leader of one of Liberia’s two
rebel factions. He was handcuffed to a
Liberian man he later identified as a
Johnson political adviser. Johnson accused
the man of profiting from rice sales.
After calling the man a traitor Johnson
shot him several times, while still hand
cuffed to Montouroy.
There is "no respect for life" among
either rebel fighters or government sol
diers, Montouroy said. Shooting a human
being, to them, is the same as "shooting a
Pig-"
The CRS representative said that after
the killing, Johnson told him to go tell the
Western ambassadors about it.
Johnson later was reported killed in an
ambush set up by a rival rebel group, but
turned up alive and well at a press confer
ence after the supposed attack.
Montouroy said that the Red Cross and
a group of young physicians working in
Liberia, in addition to Catholic Relief
Services, have left the country.
In the meantime, he said, Liberian
residents were dying by the thousands.
"Food production has stopped, and
there are no imports," said Montouroy.
"The second greatest need is medical
care."
On Aug. 11, doctors evacuated St.
Joseph’s Catholic Hospital in the capital,
Monrovia, after rebel fighters threatened
to seize patients linked with beleaguered
President Samuel Doe. The hospital had
been one of only two left open in the city.
Montouroy said the situation in Liberia
had produced many refugees, and relief
agencies would make them their top
priority when they returned to the coun
try. However, he said there was no time
set for Catholic Relief Services’ return.
"When safety permits, we’ll go in," he
said. "There is no neutrality. Everyone
thinks, ‘If you’re not one of us, you’re
against us.'”
Foreign nationals evacuated by the
Marines expressed similar feelings.
At the Vatican Aug. 14, the press
office had no comment on the report.
LIBERIAN SHOOTING - Jacques Montouroy (right), Catholic Relief
Services’ acting representative in Liberia, stands handcuffed to a man who
has just been shot by Liberian rebel leader Prince Yormie Johnson (left)
Aug. 3 outside Monrovia. Seconds later the man was shot again and killed.
CRS withdrew its employees from the country following the incident. (CNS
photo from Wide World)
refrain from publishing the pastoral letter.
The second draft of the bishops’ pro
posed pastoral letter, titled "One in Christ
Jesus: A Pastoral Response to the Con
cerns of Women for Church and Society,"
defends the church’s stand against the
ordination of women to the priesthood but
“Patriarchy as an embodi
ment of sexism’’ is not “subject
ed to the critique it requires.”
says this stance and others must not be
used to justify oppressing women.
The 99-page draft encourages women
to participate in all liturgical ministries
that do not require ordination. An amend
ed draft is to be voted on at the bishops’
general meeting in November.
That the proposed pastoral letter de
clares sexism is a sin is one of its "re
deeming features," said the LCWR state
ment.
But "patriarchy as an embodiment of
sexism" is not "subjected to the critique it
requires," it said.
"Obviously, our church represented in
our bishops, is not ready for this kind of
critical analysis. Because that is so, they
will not be able to write a pastoral that is
not intrinsically contradictory," the state
ment said.
It called the "theological anthropology"
developed in Chapter 1 of the second
draft of the pastoral letter "an important
and necessary formulation for a teaching
church in its insistence on the fundamen
tal equality of all persons."
This position on equality, however, the
statement said, is "undermined and con
tradicted in the subsequent development
of the pastoral."
"The problem emerges in the phrase
‘equal in dignity,’ which seems to veil a
distinction and raise questions about
qualifications of equality. For example,
does equality in dignity imply equality in
rights and responsibilities?" the statement
asked.
It said contradiction is no more evident
than in Chapter 3 of the second draft,
where "after a fairly sensitive listing of
the problems of exclusion experienced by
women, the draft... repeats the unsatisfac
tory phrase from ‘Inter Insigniores’ - ‘the
church in fidelity to the example of the
Lord does not consider herself authorized
to admit women to priestly ordination."’
"Inter Insigniores" is the Vatican Con
gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s
1976 declaration on women in the priest
hood.
The LCWR executive committee, in its
statement, applauded "the effort to take
the unique experience and insights of
women seriously."
But women’s concerns on church and
society are as varied as those of men, it
said. "The fundamental assumption that
women’s concerns are primarily those that
might be called ‘women’s issues’ perpetu
ates the separation and exclusion of wom
en from full participation," it said.
"There is actually an implied conde
scension. The concerns around home,
family, children, reproduction, and all of
their ramifications, should be the concern
of all thinking people, and certainly of all
Christian people," said the statement
Trappist Finds Laity Hunger
For Contemplative Prayer
BY STEPHEN KENT
OMAHA, Neb. (CNS) - A growing
interest in contemplative prayer among
the laity comes from a deep hunger for
the spiritual dimension in life, accord
ing to a Trappist monk who founded
the centering prayer movement.
"People are feeling a deeper desire
for prayer and the structure to support
it," said Trappist Father Thomas
Keating in an interview with The
Catholic Voice, newspaper of the
Archdiocese of Omaha.
"Human nature has a dimension that
requires silence," he said.
Father Keating spoke Aug. 13 to
Nebraska Contemplative Outreach, a
program which began about two years
ago, according to Thomas Hall, a
coordinator. Some 90 persons attended
sessions on centering prayer last fall at
Mary Our Queen Parish, Hall said, and
the program will expand this fall with
sessions at two other parishes.
The group, Hall said, provides
instruction in the centering prayer
techniques as well as support through
small groups.
While contemplative prayer is as old
as the church, there is a new-found
interest by laypersons.
"The tendency had been to put
people interested in the contemplative
life in a convent or monastery to
protect them from us -- or us from
them," Father Keating joked.
"Vatican II released a lot of desire
and willingness to engage in contem
plative prayer and it both deserves and
needs to be ministered to," he said.
Centering prayer is based on the
concept that God is not "out there" or
"up above," but present within each
person. The method stresses silence -
both external and internal -- in order to
engage in a relationship with God
within.
Expressed most simply, Father
Keating said, it is "an interview with
Christ."
While centering prayer can yield
peace and tranquility, that is not its
primary purpose, he said.
"Its primary purpose is to create a
deeper relationship with Christ. If trust
in God grows, then another form of
rest will occur. If one develops a deep
trust in God, a good deal of relief from
agitation will come about." he said.
"It is an invitation to rest from the
consequences of original sin," he said.
Some concrete examples of the effects
of original sin in today’s life are
dysfunctional families and co-depend
ency, he said.
"Psychology has a lot to say of the
consequences of original sin. But
modem science must engage in dia
logue with religion," said Father
Keating. Therapy is successful in that
it imitates what God does, he said.
"There is an enormous hunger for
the spiritual dimension which is not
always met through typical parish
structure,” Father Keating said.