No Greater Love Read Online Free PDF

“Well, yes, she. You know that no woman can be a priest. So, no woman can be a seminarian. So, no woman will be allowed to preach. So, there’s no reason for women to learn how to preach.”
    Koesler, clearly taken aback, sat bolt upright. “Is that the way it is everywhere? In all seminaries?”
    â€œNo. It’s actually about fifty-fifty. But it doesn’t really matter. Whether a woman can go for a Master of Divinity degree or not, the bottom line is, women can’t be priests. No matter how good or bad a preacher a woman would be, she is not going to preach. In a way, not offering women the opportunity to earn an M.Div degree is maybe more … more honest.”
    â€œMore honest!”
    â€œYes! It tells her right up front how it’s going to be in her ministry. It doesn’t give her any reason to expect that things will change. The Pope said it: Women can’t be priests. So why teach them how to do something they’re never going to do?”
    Koesler shook his head. “With policies like this, there can’t be many women here as students.”
    â€œYou’re wrong, Bob. Want me to give you a breakdown?”
    Koesler sat back and nodded.
    McNiff wondered why the space between them seemed to be widening. He hadn’t adverted to Koesler’s gradually distancing himself.
    â€œSee, there are approximately three hundred and twenty students in St. Joe’s Seminary. That’s for four years of college and four years of theology. Of that number about seventy are seminarians. Which leaves about two hundred and fifty non-MDivs—roughly a hundred men and a hundred and fifty women. The only way you can come up with more men than women is if you add the M.Div males to the nonseminarian men. That way, you get one hundred and seventy men and one hundred and fifty women.”
    â€œFrankly, Pat, I don’t get it. Why would so many women sign up—freely—at an institution that discriminates against them?”
    â€œDiscrimination is a powerful word, Bob. We could argue about that—and we probably will before the evening’s over. But there’s a likely reason for their being here—all these women, I mean. I had a problem understanding this at first. But now it makes sense.”
    â€œHelp me.”
    â€œAs far as we’re able to tell, not all the women who enroll here want to be priests—not by a long shot. The aim for many of them is to become catechists or directors of religious education … or some of the other degree positions we offer.”
    â€œBut by your own admission, Pat, some of these women students do want to be priests.”
    McNiff nodded.
    Koesler raised his hands in a gesture of incomprehension. “Why?”
    McNiff shrugged. “Hope against hope. Hoping the Church will change its position.”
    Koesler thought for a few moments. “You have how many studying for the priesthood?”
    â€œSeventy.”
    â€œAny idea how many seminarians we had here in this place’s heyday?”
    It didn’t require any research on McNiff’s part. Those figures haunted him and anyone else who was concerned with the seminary’s future. “That’d be in the mid-sixties. There were seven hundred in high school. Of course we don’t have a high school anymore. Then there were about two hundred and forty in college and approximately another two hundred and fifty at St. John’s.”
    â€œSo,” Koesler summed up, “there were almost eleven hundred seminarians then to our seventy now. That right—counting the high schoolers of that time, I mean?”
    McNiff nodded slowly.
    Koesler turned his gaze to the window. But his focus was inward, not on the nondescript view of another brick wall. After a few minutes, without returning his gaze to McNiff, Koesler said, “I guess I’d have to put my money on the women who are looking for ordination. The Catholic