LETTERS

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 17, 1999

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, 115 EAST ARMOUR BOULEVARD, KANSAS CITY, MO 64111. E-MAIL: NCRLETTERS@AOL.COM

Worthy of a doctor

* Your Aug. 27 issue was outstanding. I've read almost every paper since you began in the 1960s. John Allen's "Doubts about dialogue" is a wonderful summary of the issues. Sandra Schneiders' Viewpoint essay is a scripture meditation on Christ's ministry, worthy of a doctor of the church!

JOHN B. LOUNIBOS

Blauvelt, N.Y.

You got it wrong

* I wonder if women are not the big losers when editorials (NCR, Sept. 3) say things like: "for some mystics, celibacy is the highest praise of sexual expression," or "celibacy is a beautiful gift for those capable ..." or that it "allows believers to offer themselves unreservedly to God." Historically this has applied mostly to males fleeing themselves from the seductions and defilement of females, becoming thereby more holy, "mystics" even, gifted with a "beautiful gift," and becoming God's servants "unreservedly." Of course celibacy created for some women a path to independence and community, but for the most part, males benefit. Women -- who stand for sexuality in traditional minds -- suffer.

Your words above have it exactly wrong, I believe. It is sexuality that leads most readily to mysticism. It is interpersonal and embodied love that is the beautiful gift for those capable of its exalted demands. And the majority of God's most generous servants in history have probably been the married lovers.

Your words were well meaning, promoting a married priesthood. But in that process we have to get beyond the misleading half-truths of the past.

BILL CLEARY

Burlington, Vt.

Unsettling Kennedy

* Eugene Kennedy has been a mentor of mine since the mid-'60s. I have learned much from his writings. I was disappointed with his article on capital punishment (NCR, July 2). However, I was more disappointed with his brief response to all the letters (NCR, Aug. 27). He sounded condescending in stating that his intent was "to unsettle us so that we may look again and freshly at all the moments in which, and how, we take, or make greater or less, each other's existence."

Perhaps Kennedy is the one who needs to be unsettled and look freshly at his position. Who is he to say that so many of us who have agonized over this issue have not taken many fresh looks at it and continue to conclude that killing one person because he or she killed another is neither an adequate human or Christian solution?

(Fr.) LOUIS ARCENEAUX, C.M.

Grand Coteau, La.

* I have just finished reading the many excellent letters on the subject of the Catholic church versus capital punishment. It seemed to me as I read the many letters of compassion and mercy advocated for prisoners on death row that the hierarchy is missing something.

When the pope gave the final written word on the subject of women's ordination, rejecting any further discussion on talk of women priests, officially demanding silence, he effectively condemned all Catholic women, even the unborn, to a sort of women's ordination death row.

How peculiar! Capital punishment for women's souls, women who wish to use their God-given talents and creative spirit, and yet compassion for prisoners who may or may not be Roman Catholic.

When the church speaks of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, they really mean one, holy, Catholic and male church.

Something is truly missing here!

VIC FREDERICK

Woodside, Calif.

Gramick and Nugent

* I am continually shocked and amazed at the havoc perpetrated upon the faith community of the Catholic church by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (NCR, July 30). Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent have been doing God's work and should be applauded for their ministry to the gay and lesbian community. We are all God's people, and the church is in great danger of being controlled by a man who is evidently on a power trip.

Let's see ... the term intrinsically evil. "Intrinsic" meaning, inherent, located within and "evil" meaning anything that causes harm, pain, misery, disaster and so on. Seems to me that the congregation and the good cardinal are the ones causing the harm, pain and misery, and it comes from within.

ELIZABETH A. CANEPA

Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.

* Rank and file members of religious communities have been justly upset by recent Vatican decisions prohibiting Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Bob Nugent from their longtime ministry, of bridge building and reconciliation.

I wonder how many have pondered the implication of forbidding Jeannine and Bob from holding elected office in their congregations? That decision affects every School Sister of Notre Dame and Salvatorian. It also sets a precedent that could later affect every, member of every canonical community. The franchise means nothing if those who are not members of a congregation can decide who may or may not be considered for ejected office.

MARY ANNE VINCENT

Corona, Calif.

* I feel a deep personal need to write in response to the articles by Joan Chittister and Sandra Schneiders about the Gramick and Nugent affair in the Aug. 27 issue. This personal need flows out of who I am as a gay Catholic teacher who has been in a monogamous relationship with the same loving person for the past 23 years.