WOMEN FOR FAITH & FAMILY
STATEMENT ON FEMINISM, LANGUAGE AND LITURGY

Women for Faith & Family
Forum of Major Superiors
Consortium Perfectae Caritatis

April 18, 1989

Because we are Catholics who accept and affirm all the teachings of the
Catholic Church, not only as true propositions but as the norms of our thought
and life;

Because we are aware of the influence within the Church and in society of alien
ideologies which attack the fundamental assumptions of Christianity about human
life and of the relationship of human beings with their Creator, and which
effectively undermine the Catholic Church;

Because we are Catholics who accept and affirm all the teachings of the
Catholic Church, not only as true propositions but as the norms of our thought
and life;

Because we are aware of the influence within the Church and in society of alien
ideologies which attack the fundamental assumptions of Christianity about human
life and of the relationship of human beings with their Creator, and which
effectively undermine the Catholic Church;

Because we understand our responsibility as Catholics to witness to the truth
which the Catholic Church teaches and our willing and free acceptance of her
just and true authority vested in the Magisterium of the Church, particularly
in Christ's vicar, the Pope, and Bishops in union with him, we believe it our
duty to make the following statement:

1. As Catholics who have been formed, inspired and sustained by the Sacraments
of the Church through participation in the liturgy, the Church's central action
and principal means of transmission of the Catholic faith, we a deplore
attempts to distort and transform the liturgy and the language of worship to
conform to a particular contemporary ideological agenda at odds with Catholic
belief and practice.

2. We reaffirm our belief in the divine origin of the Church and that the
hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which is often criticized in our time as
insufficiently egalitarian, was intentionally established by Christ, and that
He selected the Apostles and Peter, among them, as head, giving them and their
legitimate successors magisterial authority to guide His Church until He comes
again.

3. We believe that Jesus Christ, the Word of God made man, was limited and
restricted by His culture only in that which, apart from sin, limits man. But
we also believe that He came in a time and to a people chosen by God. Thus His
teaching and action is normative for every culture of every time and place. We
reject the notion that Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, was limited or restricted
in the fulfillment of the Mission entrusted to Him by the Father by the
cultural context of His presence on Earth, His life as a Jew of the first third
of the first century, or by any other factor.

4. We also reaffirm the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that ordained
priesthood is not a "right" accorded to any member of the Church, but a state
of life and a service to which, by Christ's will, only men, not women, may be
called.

5. Following the teachings and example of Christ and the constant tradition of
the Catholic Church, and mindful of its full significance, we consider it a
privilege to call God 'Our Father,' a name which reflects not only the
relationship between human beings and their Creator, but which also provides a
powerful symbolic model for men of the steadfast love, faithfulness, justice,
mercy, wisdom and objectivity which are ideal components of human fatherhood
vital to women, to families and to the social order. Contemporary efforts to
impute a 'feminine' aspect to the Godhead, by retrojection of alien and
anachronistic notions into the body of Sacred Scripture, by forcibly changing
the language used to refer to God, by deliberate reversion to pagan notions of
deity, or by any other means, we regard as dangerously misguided and perverse.

6. Therefore we reject all attempts to impose ideologically motivated
innovations on the liturgy of the Church or in official lectionaries or
sacramentaries or catechisms. We deplore the deliberate manipulation of
liturgical actions, signs and symbols and the politicization of both liturgy
and language which effectively impede both receiving and transmitting the
Catholic faith and harm the unity of the Church.

7. We oppose the systematic elimination from Scripture translations, liturgical
texts, hymns, homilies and general usage of 'man' (and its pronominal forms) as
generic. The claim that the language is "sexist", the Scripture intrinsically
and oppressively "patriarchal", and that changes are required as a sensitive
pastoral response to women is false. We believe that the effect of mandating
such changes in the language and practice of the Catholic Church is negative,
divisive and confusing, effectively underminining both the doctrine of the
Church and the authority of the Church and her hierarchy.

8. We affirm and accept the constant practice of the Church in such liturgical
matters as acolytes or 'altar servers' and homilists, and repudiate the
increasingly frequent practice of women saying parts of the Eucharistic Prayer
with the priest or in his place or performing other liturgical functions
reserved to ordained men. We are convinced that these and other attempts at
"feminization" of the worship of the Church is deliberately intended to subvert
the ordained priesthood and to blur the distinction between the common
priesthood of the laity grounded in baptism and the ordained priesthood.

9. We are grateful for the profound contribution of Pope John Paul II to our
understanding of the meaning of human life and of the fundamental relationship
of human beings with one another and with God through the many theological
works he has given the Church during his pontificate, including his Apostolic
Letters, Christifideles Laici and Mulieris Dignitatem, which help to deepen our
understanding of the role of both laity and, in particular, women in the
Church's evangelical mission.

10. We regard the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its clear formulation of
the doctrine of the Catholic Faith as a sign of hope Constantly seeking the aid
of the Holy Spirit, and in solidarity with the Pope, the Bishops in union with
him, and with the universal Church, we pledge to respond to our Christian
vocation with wisdom and fidelity, with love and responsibility.

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