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From Archbishop Donoghue|
Annual Convention of the South Carolina Council
of Catholic Women |
My dear sisters in Christ, I am grateful to God for having the opportunity this evening to be here, to share this meal, and to speak to you for a little while. I have no profound address to deliver this evening - I do not at all want to impair the enjoyable atmosphere which we are all experiencing, by casting upon it a pallor of heavy words. Nevertheless, I do feel that this is an important occasion, and perhaps, with these remarks, I will be able to underline the importance of our gathering, without simultaneously undermining your attention. No matter what I might say this morning, the real significance of this occasion is to be found on a higher plane than what we might actually see or hear. For above all other meanings, this morning is a true sign of the unity of our Church - the formal, ecclesial, unity, certainly, that exists between the Archbishop of Atlanta and the Bishop of Charleston, and between the many Catholics who populate our local Southern Church - and we are all grateful to God that our Church does possess and is conscious of this over-arching unity, a unity protected by the power of the Holy Spirit and confirmed throughout the history of Christendom - but in a way more specific to the affections of our people, my visit today also serves to recognize the obverse of our formal relationship - and by that, I mean to describe the honor that the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and the entire Catholic Church in North Georgia pays to you, the Diocese of Charleston - our mother Diocese in the historical sense - for it was the Bishop of Charleston, John England, who set out to travel and to travail upon the dirt tracks of western South Carolina and eastern Georgia, and who took the word of Jesus Christ and the True Faith of the Catholic Church into Georgia - to Augusta, to Athens, to Washington and Locust Grove - and so, because of this great bishop, and because he was supported and sustained by the people of Charleston, I feel that it is only just and proper to express the gratitude of all Georgia’s Catholics to the Church of Charleston, to the memory of her bishops and of her heroic people, and to the affection which lives today, and which was so well-expressed when you invited me to be with you for this convention. I would also be remiss if I did not also convey my admiration for the beauty and charm of this city of spires - this city where, I have heard it said, the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean. It is a very impressive place, and I am fully aware that the Catholic women of South Carolina have had much to do with preserving what is beautiful here - and not only here, but throughout the state - a work, we recall, that began in the darkest hours of war’s worst devastation, a work that has not ceased since those trying times, and which has produced a bounty of preservation that now draws travelers from all over the United States and the world. Even without the significance of this special occasion for the Church, I can easily say that any visit to Charleston is a special occasion, and I am deeply grateful for this one. I am grateful because it gives me the chance - it gives us the chance - to reconsider the importance of our shared Faith, and to witness to one another - to reaffirm for one another, the truth about women in the Church, and the truth about their importance to the Church. Any consideration of the present role of women in the Church must begin, I believe, with the teaching of our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. Many popes before him have written and taught on the role of women, but none have better expressed the gratitude of the Church for women than John Paul. Many of you have read and studied his 1988 encyclical On the Dignity of Women, and this work has become one of the most considered documents of our time. But I want to begin this part of my remarks by reading to you a passage from a less known communication of John Paul to the women of the Church. You all remember I am sure, last year’s Women’s Conference in Beijing in China, a conference remembered now more for the controversy it aroused than for any coherent statement it attempted to formulate. In preparation for the conference, however, the Holy Father wrote a letter to all the women of the world, a letter that was ignored by most of the world’s press, but which fortunately found its way to my desk, and a little part of which I now would like to share with you. The Pope begins by writing that the church “desires to give thanks to the most holy Trinity for the `mystery of woman’ and for every woman - for all that constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for the `great works of God,’ which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her”. This word of thanks to the Lord for his mysterious plan regarding the vocation and mission of women in the world is at the same time a concrete and direct word of thanks to women, to every woman, for all that they represent in the life of humanity. What follows these introductory sentences I believe to be one of the most beautifully elucidated litanies of thanksgiving ever devised, to describe the gratitude of the Catholic Church, and the gratitude of all Christians for the work of women. Here is what Pope John Paul says: Thank you, women who are mothers! You have sheltered human beings within yourselves in a unique experience of joy and travail. This experience makes you become God’s own smile upon the newborn child, the one who guides your child’s first steps, who helps it to grow and who is the anchor as the child makes its way along the journey of life. Thank you, women who are wives! You irrevocably join your future to that of your husbands in a relationship of mutual giving at the service of love and life. Thank you, women who are daughters and women who are sisters! Into the heart of the family, and then of all society, you bring the richness of your sensitivity, your intuitiveness, your generosity and fidelity. Thank you, women who work! You are present and active in every area of life - social economic, cultural, artistic and political. In this way you make an indispensable contribution to the growth of a culture which unites reason and feeling, to a model of life ever open to the sense of “mystery,” to the establishment of economic and political structures ever more worthy of humanity. Thank you, consecrated women! Following the example of the greatest of women, the mother of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, you open yourselves with obedience and fidelity to the gift of God’s love. You help the church and all mankind to experience a “spousal” relationship to God, one which magnificently expresses the fellowship which God wishes to establish with his creatures. Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world’s understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic. These are beautiful sentiments, and I cannot imagine them being expressed in better words than these of our Holy Father. The only emendation to their content that I would make to mark this occasion would be to add - and I know that Bishop Thompson would join me in this - would be to add our thanks, on behalf of the whole Church, for the work you have contributed to the recent Synod of Charleston - to the formulation of its controlling documents, which have been gathered under the title Our Heritage, Our Hope - and to the implementation of those documents, a work that is going on presently, as evidenced by the theme of this convention, and a work which will continue, because of your dedication, as we all prepare to step into the third millennium of the Christian era. The goals set out by the Charleston Synod can be briefly stated - effective Christian witness, a strong sacramental life in our parishes and in related faith communities, Catholic formation for all ages, service to the poor, and supportive involvement in the community at large - these goals are certainly worthy of the followers of Christ in Charleston, and truly, they are indicative of a greater movement as well - a movement that has been in the air since the Second Vatican Council, and which demands our ongoing involvement, if the ideals of that historic assembly are to be realized. And, my sisters, make no mistake about it - bishops throughout the world are counting on women for just that sort of involvement and passionate dedication - dedication to renewal, to reformation, to reclaiming the vitality which has always characterized Catholicism, and particularly here in the United States, where women have always provided the greatest single source of strength and action, a truth so eloquently expressed and acknowledged by words of our Holy Father that I have quoted. The sentiments of that letter - sentiments that recognize the great gifts of women to the Church are suitably complimented by another passage from an earlier letter - a letter which points out the actions which the Church looks to women to provide. This letter caused some ire among certain groups, for its primary purpose was to reaffirm the practice of the Church to ordain only men. But those who read this letter, On the Ordination of Priests completely, will also find these significant phrases: The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church. . . remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. . . the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission: today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 3). With these words, I believe that the Holy Father has summed up, not only the expectations, but the most heart-felt desire of all people in the Church - that women have the character and the disposition to do these three most important things - to renew and to humanize society, and to reawaken in those who have lost it, trust in the Church and in her mission. Some might object, as many did, that these sentiments are but a high-toned way to suggest that women return to traditional, unliberated roles. But I say that the words of the Pope, and the desires of the Church are no suggestions, but really a heart-felt and a Gospel-based plea - a plea to women in the Church to look beneath the popular expectations of society, and beyond the self-centered dictates of the gurus of self-fulfillment - a plea that comes not from the right or the left, nor from the conservatives or the liberals, but a plea that arises from the heart of the human race - a plea that remains the same generation upon generation - a plea that says, like a confused and frightened child might say to its mother, “I am frightened, I want to go home. Please take me home.” In light of this great need of the world - this great need of people - such notions as personal liberation and self-fulfillment pale quickly. I am reminded of those famous words of Moses in the Book of Numbers. “Is the spirit of God something that one finds for one’s self, and then tightly guards so that no one else may share its goodness? No! Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!” It is with this fundamental teaching about the expansiveness of our Lord’s love and the power of His Holy Spirit in mind, that we consider anew the requests that Pope John Paul, and through his voice, the entire Church, makes of Catholic women today - a request, or even more, an entreaty -
I encourage you, I entreat you, to take these thoughts with you when you leave today - and to carry them back to those places where they will and must do the greatest good - in your homes and in your parishes, certainly - but also in the market place, and in the businesses which you control - in the schools, in clubs, in all public forums of debate. Wherever and whenever despair or disillusionment have found a foothold, and threaten to suffocate that hope which Jesus Christ has brought to us, and which He has insured at the cost of His won death - there it is that I and the whole Church will look to find you, fervent in your labors, and joyfully shouting for the harvest of grace which is ours to bring in together. Bishop Thompson wrote, and I am paraphrasing him just a bit, that “the measure of our success will be the extent to which we are led to a deeper conversion into discipleship. The meaning of our Baptism, the meaning of our whole Christian life, the meaning of all of our collective ministerial efforts, all come down to a simple attempt to be faithful disciples of Jesus whom we recognize as the Christ. If, by concentrating our efforts, we are better able to follow faithfully our Divine Master, then our efforts will have been well spent. If we are better able to love as Jesus did, to live as He lived, and to die as He died, then our efforts will have been successful. There is no other measure by which we ought to judge ourselves.” In closing, I want to return once more to thoughts of Bishop England, a very brave man indeed, but no braver than the many pioneer men and women who headed west, over the Savannah River and into the wilds beyond - and no braver than the dauntless men and women who left England two hundred years earlier, to find the eastern shores of America, and the place to build their dreams - and no braver than the men and women who came to this beautiful place, at the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper, and who built this proud city of spires, this city which twice has survived the siege of embattled spirits, and which has survived until this present day, when we are privileged to be its guardians, its admirers, and its devoted friends. No braver - true. But somehow, all these kindred souls, the men and women of the past, and the men and women who live now - you, your families, your communities - all are captured in the image of this fearless Bishop, the first of our local Bishops, who stood upon these shores, and who saw the vision of a great and potent Church, a Church filled with the love and with energy of Jesus Christ. I close my remarks, by again calling upon the words of Bishop Thompson, who said everything that needs to be said in these closing lines from his letter Our Heritage, Our Hope: One hundred and seventy-five years after Bishop England set out on horseback to visit the territories of his new diocese, we shall embark on a similar journey into an unknown future. Like our first Bishop, we shall face that future with confidence, knowing that we are about God’s work. Like Bishop England, we shall face our future with its challenges and opportunities, certain that God’s Spirit will guide us, strengthen us, and sustain us. Thank you, and may God bless you all. + |