To the editors:
Just as feminists quickly sidestep the a priori issue of murder and portray abortion as a matter of choice, so too does Robert McClory sidestep the issue of what the Catholic Church is before trying to change it.
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Later, Donna Quinn claims “I am the church! It’s my church!” Begging her pardon, but isn’t it, or shouldn’t it be, Christ’s church? And didn’t Christ appoint Peter his vicar on earth? Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you believe in the apostolic claims of the successor to the throne of Peter, and no point could be more central in differentiating the Catholic Church from other churches no matter how close they are otherwise.
The wonderfully predictable thing about articles pushing for ordination of women is that they resort to the use of polls. Let’s ignore the self-evident point that truth is not determined by popularity and look at these polls. They say that 56 percent of Catholics favor women’s ordination. Just who are these Catholics? Are they pious men and women who accept all of the other teachings of our Holy Father including the unpopular ones reining in sexual license? Are they churchgoing souls who would not think of missing a Holy Day of Obligation? Are we even pretending that they are people who have fulfilled their yearly obligation of going to confession and taking communion at least once during the Easter Season (and I mean real confession, not the popular fraud of “group absolution”)? I would wager that if we polled those who have fulfilled what the church calls its minimum obligation (not those who claim to be members, but those who demonstrably are members) not one in ten would favor women’s ordination. Mostly what these polls tell us is that enormous numbers of people, having no shred of Catholic belief, still call themselves Catholic.
Sister Donna Quinn, head of the ultraliberal National Coalition of American Nuns as well as CCW, was a featured speaker at the 1987 Women-Church Convergence. She and Ruether were both listed on CFFC’s proabortion amicus curiae brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The real issue here is not women’s ordination, rather it is the whole complex of issues involved in allegiance to the Holy Father. Women’s ordination is a Trojan Horse for the secret agenda of Bourgeois Liberalism and Radical Feminism that is antifamily, antilife, and favors sexual excess and deviation. It is no mere coincidence that Father Carolan not only allowed a woman to play at the priesthood, but also “welcomed the gays, the lesbians, the remarried couples . . .” It makes sense that when Sister Weind got the chance to preach she should harangue the congregation about “racism and women’s inequality” as if these sins were more prevalent or destructive than greed or licentiousness or the pervasive hedonism and indifference to human suffering that grip our society. I am sure that the same parishioners who encouraged Father Braxton to ” . . . find some loophole so that she and others could continue to preach,” would also encourage him to find loopholes in humanae vitae so that they could use birth control, or in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis so that they could continue their unbridled consumerism. (Does it strike anyone else as ironic that these dissenters first ask Father Braxton to “find a loophole” and then, when he does not and follows the spirit of Rome’s regulations, they call him “legalistic”?)
R.M. Schultz
