Inside
NCR
People often express surprise when
they meet Sr. Jeannine Gramick. Perhaps it is natural that they would expect a
strident and fiery fighter. After all, she has tenaciously advocated for a
change in church attitude toward homosexuals and has rigorously upheld the
inviolability of individual conscience. In person, however, she is soft-spoken,
reserved and elegantly precise.
What folks might not know is that she is a mathematician by
training and profession. She is a teacher and one who meticulously attends to
detail. She does not come casually to taking up unpopular causes. But when she
does, she brings all the discipline of her professional and religious life to
the task.
In recent months, Gramick has been thinking a lot about the use of
silencing as a tool against dissenting views. She has thought and researched
and pondered. Abhorring the use of silencing as a disciplinary technique does
not imply that the institutional church cannot make judgments or declare
something invalid or wrong. But refusing to allow the discussion of significant
issues in the modern era, as she states, does little to alleviate confusion or
enforce orthodoxy.
I fully believe that someday Gramick will be celebrated, along
with others, for helping the church to arrive at a new understanding of
homosexuality, an aspect of life to which the church has remained stubbornly
blind for too long. For the moment, however, enjoy some of the results of her
recent pondering in the article on page 23.
While talking about courageous women
in the church, one cannot overlook Benedictine Prioress Sr. Christine
Vladimiroff and the way in which she guided her community through the recent
Vatican interventions regarding Sr. Joan Chittister’s appearance at the
Women’s Ordination Worldwide gathering in Ireland. It is easy to imagine
any number of scenarios -- from panic to anger to fear in receiving the
directive to deliver a “precept of obedience” to a member of the
order. Instead, Vladimiroff took the long, patient way, holding extended
consultations with Chittister and other members of the community (see story
page 5). The result was not only disarming but respectful of the Vatican
process. What seems to have been preserved in this case is the right to discuss
and ponder significant issues. Not a bad model.
NCR’s Vatican
correspondent John L. Allen Jr. recently spent an afternoon with Austrian
Cardinal Franz König at his residence in Vienna, interviewing him for a
forthcoming book on the next conclave. König is the only cardinal alive
who has voted in three conclaves (1963 and the two of 1978). Allen reports that
König, who turns 96 Aug. 3, is healthy and as dedicated to the kind of
Catholic church envisioned by the Second Vatican Council as ever. Here’s a
hearty wish from NCR for a happy birthday for König, and a note of
thanks for almost a century of devoted service.
The monks at the Abbey of Sept-Fons
are depending on contributions from around the world to finance a new monastery
in the Czech Republic. So far, about one-third of the approximately $4 million
needed has been raised. In the United States, tax-deductible contributions for
the construction of the new monastery at Novy Dvur can be sent to Rev. Simon
Sansone, O.C.S.O. Cistercian Abbey of Spencer, Inc., 167 North Spencer Road,
Spencer, MA 01562
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, July 27,
2001
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