March 14, 2005
The stories of Susannah in the Old Testament and the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John illustrate the distressing and deeply-rooted disunity between men and women. Pope John Paul II writes about the causes and effects of this disunity with great insight in his “Theology of the Body”.
A somewhat infamous old New York Italian butcher named Luigi is known for regularly telling his mostly female customers, “Ladies, there is just something about you that will annoy a man to no end – you just can’t help it!” There were a number of moments during our participation in the “Beijing + 10” United Nations Conference on the rights of women during the past two weeks that indicated to me that the reverse is equally true!
At “Beijing + 5” I had the opportunity to say to Frances Kissling, one of the leading voices of the angry feminists, that if there was room for forgiveness, the Lord could work more powerfully with them. I am often awestruck as a priest by powerful examples of women freely forgiving men for various forms of abuse or misuse of their manly gifts and responsibilities.
Noting that the “elders” were the guilty ones in the crime against Susannah and the first ones to drop their stones in the Gospel, I would like, as a “young elder” (in Greek = “presbytero”/priest) to extend an apology as far as I am able on behalf of other men for the fact that “all men have sinned” against women in some way.
It is only in Christ that this deep disunity will truly be healed. A woman from Indiana responded in an e-mail last week about her own freedom won by Christ, telling us to “…be encouraged. Thanks to the prayers of faithful Catholics, this former radical feminist, New Ager is now a joyful married Catholic and mother of five. So, I join your choir of prayers and hope that other hearts can be changed like mine was by the faithful, humble witness of caring Catholics.”
Fr. Richard Roemer, CFR
Community Vicar, residing at St. Joseph Friary in Harlem
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