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t eanc 0' VOL. 36, NO. 50
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Friday, December 18, 1992
Archbishop Weakland
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Women could be "new GalilJo" NEW YORK (CNS) - Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, warning that women's issues could be the church's "new Galileo," has urged putting women in top Vatican posts and allowing dialogue on ordaining women priests. Pope John Paul II in Nov~mber acknowledged that the church erred when it condemned 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei for maintaining tht the earth revolved around the sun. "It is not enough to say women should be members of local parish and diocesan councils, as recent Vatican documents suggest. Women must be integrated at the Vatican itself," said Archbishop Weakland, in an op-ed piece published earlier this month in The New York Times. Noting that the top three positions in 21 Vatican offices - positions of prefect, secretary and undersecretary - are filled by cardinals, archbishops and monsignors, t·he Milwaukee archbishop said "women must be given places in those ranks." While currently Vatican diplomats, also known known as papal nuncios, are archbishops and their
aides, monsignors, "there is no reason why women could not serve in these capacities," said Archbishop Weakland, a former Benedictine abbot. He called openness to the insights and perceptions of women theologians imperative. Archbishop Weakland, in the op-ed piece, said that "for much of its history" the Catholic Church "has assumed that women are inferior to men. "This attitude will not disappear
ABP. WEAKLAND
Cardinal 0 'Connor
"I
di~agree without
NEW YORK (CNS) - New York Cardinal John J. O'Connor has disputed several statements made in a recent New York Times op-ed article by Archbishop Weakland. "I disagree with him without malice," the cardinal said in a column published in the Dec. 10 issue of Catholic New York, archdiocesan newspaper. But he said he had to be "forthrightly confrontational" about some of Archbishop Weakland's points. Catholic teaching must not change for the sake of numbers, Cardinal O'Connor said. "Numbers have never been the measure of 'success' of the church and her mission. The church does what it believes is in accordance with the teaching of Christ himself," he said. "Can we seriously believe that ordaining women would keep people in the church?" he asked. "Will ordaining women really strengthen the Church of England, or cause division and departures?" Cardinal O'Connor said he knows of no "single responsible study" to prove that the church considers women inferior. "Some churchmen, some theologians" have considered women the "weaker sex" and "maltreated" them, he acknowledged. But exclusion from the priesthood, the car-
malice'!
dinal added, does not imply that women are inferior. "I do not consider my mother or my sisters 'or the young woman attorney who works by my side every day or my secretary or MotherTeresa or Dorothy Day or Maura O'Kelly, who keeps my house, or Catherine Hickey, who runs our archdiocesan schools, or Sister Joan Curtin, who runs religious education, or my editor Anne Buckley or Mona Morton, who makes my lunch, inferior to any priest I know," Cardinal O'Connor said. "They are excluded from the
priesthood because they are women, not because they are inferior." Cardinal O'Connor said, "The I more we support the ~uge number of Catholic women wro, I personally believe, want nothing more than to be respected as women, neither as sex symbols nor as frustrated would-be priests, the happier such women will be'with us, as bishops, with the dhurch, with I themselves:" He added, "I fear that cominuing emphasis on' the ordination of women in preparingl for the day that another people w1ill'see things differently' is simpl~ to create a revolution of rising -f- and unfulfillable - expectations." Cardinal O'Conn~r also took issue with Archbishop Weakland's call that the Vatican place women in the Roman Curia a'nd the diplomatic corps. The situation as it exists does so because "the church i~ unapologetically a hierarchical qrganization. hierarchical because apostolic:," he said, which is "a tough reality to deal with." I The church's hierarchical structure, which is "at wOl'k in nu nciatures and delegations as it is in the Roman Curia, " Car inal O'Connor said, "is not to be treated as an evolutionary accident."
CARD. O'CONNOR
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BISHOP SEAN O'MALLEY, from top, reopens Our Lady's Chapel, New Bedford, at solemn pontifical Mass; stands with Marian Medal recipients from the five diocesan deaneries: from left, Mrs. Prudence Smith, Taunton; William Mulcahy, Cape and Islands; Mrs. Evelyn Silvia, Fall River; James·Walsh, Attleboro; Mrs. Mary Worden, New Bedford; greets area Sisters at annual dinner hosted by Father Francis L. Mahoney at Holy Name parish, Fall River. Additional pictures on page 6, (Hickey, Studio D and Gaudette photos) ALL ARE WELCOME to attend 2 p.m. Mass Saturday, Dec. 19, at St. Lawrence Church, New Bedford, when Bishop Sean O'Malley will welcome the Missionaries of Charity to the diocese. Four sisters will minister in New Bedford, temporarily residing at the former Kempton Street convent of the Guadalupana Sisters. Following Mass, Bishop O'Malley will accompany the sisters to Kempton Street and place the Blessed Sacrament in the convent chapel. Sister Mary Dolores, provincial superior of the community, will accompany the four sisters to New Bedford for Saturday's ceremonies. The local superio.r will be Sister Mary Concepta. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is the mother general of the Missionaries of Charity, founding the order in 1950 in the Indian city. Today it numbers some 4,000 members worldwide. Ministries the sisters have undertaken in the United States include soup kitchens, emergency shelters, homes for the dying and various children's programs. In New Bedford, as is their custom, the sisters will study the community to determine where they are most needed, then will decide on a permanent convent.
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