Ordaining women. (Letters).

FRANCES KISSLING ("WOMEN Ordained: Stepping on the Vatican's Toes," Autumn 2002) raised some questions about how women priests will respond to reproductive health issues. There are many such issues (not just abortion) to which I believe women priests will be better equipped to respond. Women have a better understanding of the complexity of issues around fertility, conception, safe sex and birth. We are also more keenly aware that women too often carry the burden alone--especially when birth is not planned. As a woman who believes in the consistent life ethic, and as a mother, I understand the sacredness of life. I also know there are no easy answers to life that is not planned, and that abortion is not the only alternative. Not only are there no easy answers, but we also know that no matter what decisions are made there are no answers that are free from pain.

I have experienced the pain women feel as a result of a decision to end life years ago, and I have felt the pain of women who have given children up for adoption. I have also witnessed the additional pain women experience as a result of being judged for their decisions. This just may be where the church has caused the most pain in the lives of women. As a priest, I am not in the position of judging others for the decisions they have made or will make that are different from my own. My hope is that my presence as a woman priest will offer an opportunity for healing both from the pain of the past and from the pain of being judged by others.

I consider the work I do with another to be sacred ground, while I can seek to listen and to give spiritual direction, I can never presume to know how God moves in another person's life, nor can I ever judge another. The eyes of God and the eyes of the church are not the same thing, and that my friends is the Good News.

DENISE DONATO
Women's Ordination Conference
Fairpark, New York
Denise Donato will be
ordained to the priesthood
in February 2003.

THE SEVEN WOMEN WHO were ordained on a boat on the Danube were ordained on the terms and Conditions of the prevailing clerical institution. They bowed for the claims of validity and apostolic succession and prostrated themselves, literally. In no way do I doubt the sincerity and integrity of these women. And one can think of good reasons to make the strategic choice for ordination in the struggle to reform our church into a liberating, empowering and loving community of equals.

However, in our Dutch women's synod we tell each other we do not want (half) a piece of the cake--as feminists we want to cook our own cake with our own ingredients. Some two weeks after the ordination I read, after all the commotion, that the ordained women had withdrawn to a secret place where they celebrate the Eucharist in a private group. The ultimate sign of Christian faith, given to us to make as a public assertion of faith, has thus become a private matter.

A theologian friend and pastor in a deprived neighbourhood told me a little story. She was visiting an African family in her parish and was invited to join them for a meal with the words: "Come, let us sit together and eat." I can almost hear Jesus asking: who is acting in my memory?

GISELA HOEVE
8th of May Movement and
secretary-general of the
European Network
`Church-on-the-Move'
Koog ann de Zaan,
The Netherlands

FRANCES KISSLING REMINDED me of the controversy that existed within the civil rights movement in the US. There were people who were upset with Blacks who protested segregation by sitting at lunch counters and using "Whites Only" drinking fountains. They felt these types of protest hurt the cause and that the way to equality was by working with elected officials to change the system.

We all know now that those protests worked. They helped move the fight forward by gaining international attention and the sympathy of the American public including the US Congress.

I feel the same goes for the ordination of women. Dialogue with the bishops alone will not move our cause--action will. So whether or not you think the ordinations of the women in Germany were valid--it was "the right thing to do."

Today, nearly forty years since the Civil Rights Act was passed we are still struggling with the questions of equality, affirmative action and the desegregation of schools. I think we can assume that controversy over women's equality in the Catholic church will continue on for decades even after the hierarchy finally allows the ordination of women.

DENISE RILEY
Hyattsville, MD

FRANCES KISSLING'S CHALLENGES to women priests open a much-needed discussion as the number of Roman Catholic women ordained and/or engaging in ministry grows. Regardless of liturgical garb--"Danskin leotards and gauzy fabric ... or a much classier wardrobe"--the theo-political choices women make will prove whether ordination is really a step forward or just another way to be co-opted.

Women who minister through counseling, spiritual direction and liturgy know that reproductive health choices play a major role in women's lives. Whether one is prochoice or not, the professional expectation is that all who minister will provide women with the resources they need to make and carry out their choices responsibly. For prochoice priests, that means knowing what options exist and connecting women with them. For anti-choice priests, that means knowing what options exist and connecting women with them. Pastoral work is not making moral choices for women, but providing them with the tools to make their own. Anything less is simply not up to par professionally.

My hope is that the public recognition of women's ministries will occasion the improvement of the quality of pastoral responses over what is now so often unhelpful. Thanks to Frances for pushing the agenda.

DIANN L. NEU
WATER, the Women's Alliance
for Theology, Ethics and Ritual
Silver Spring, MD