Publisher destroys book on Vaticans
order
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
NCR Staff
Liturgical Press of Collegeville, Minn., has destroyed 1,300
copies of a book that promotes ordaining women as Catholic priests. The
publisher was acting on a request from Bishop John F. Kinney of St. Cloud,
Minn., who, in turn, was acting on a directive from the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
The book, Woman at the Altar by Sr. Lavinia Byrne of
Cambridge, England, was published in 1994 by Mowbray in Dorset, England,
shortly before Pope John Paul II insisted that the churchs ban on women
priests be definitively held by all Catholics. Liturgical Press
bought North American rights and began distributing the book in 1995.
Jesuit Fr. Michael Barnes, editor of The Way in London,
said Byrne is under Vatican investigation and has been asked to retract
arguments in the book that violate church teaching.
Byrne, well known in theological circles in England, is a member
of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is a former coeditor of The
Way, a quarterly journal of Christian spirituality, and a regular
contributor to The Tablet of London. Byrne is refusing interviews.
Barnes said she has been considering her position in relation to
the Vatican investigation.
Editors at Liturgical Press said the Vatican congregation for
doctrine, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had received complaints about
the book. Liturgical Press is owned by Benedictine monks at St. Johns
Abbey in Collegeville. Byrnes book remains in distribution in England
because Mowbray, a division of Cassell, is a secular publishing house.
Mark Twohey, managing editor of Liturgical Press, said the company
had acquiesced to Kinneys request because we are one of the
publishers of the church ... not a private business. We agree that the book is
against the stated policy of the church. We want to be in compliance, so we
removed the book from sale, he said.
A spokeswoman at the chancery in St. Cloud said Bishop Kinney was
out of town and unavailable for interviews. No other diocesan officials were
able to discuss the matter, because Kinney had handled it alone, she said.
Although the Vatican has occasionally ordered a book removed from
distribution in recent years, editors and publishers say such direct
interventions in U.S. publishing affairs have been rare. In one prominent case,
Paulist Press of Mahwah, N.J., withdrew its best-selling catechism Christ
Among Us by Anthony Wilhelm from the market in 1984 after the Vatican
demanded that the imprimatur -- the churchs stamp of approval -- be
withdrawn. Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), a secular publisher, took over
publication.
Imprimaturs, given by local bishops, have been removed under
Vatican directive from several other books in recent years, most often books
about sexuality. Since the book-banning began in the 1980s, according to
sources in academia, many scholars do not seek the imprimatur.
Peter Dwyer, marketing director for Liturgical Press, said the
directive to remove books from circulation was a first for his company.
Certainly this is the first book currently in print that weve
withdrawn, he said.
Dwyer said the book had sold only about 100 copies a year for the
past couple of years. If wed felt a strong reason to pursue a
dialogue about this particular book we would have, but this is not a book that
our marketplace indicated we should fight for.
Don Brophy, managing editor of Paulist Press, said the company had
previously published material on womens ordination but would no longer do
so, given the popes adamant stance against it.
Paulist is a church-owned publisher and has to
represent the churchs position, he said. We dont
publish books in some areas because we feel we couldnt handle them the
way we would like to. There are plenty of things we can talk about. We just
focus on those.
Robert Ellsberg, editor-in-chief of Orbis Books in Ossining, N.Y.,
said the company, which is owned by Maryknoll Fathers, has published
controversial books but never one promoting womens ordination. He said
Orbis had never been subjected to direct external intervention but engages in
self-censorship.
We have published books that have met with displeasure in
Rome, and that has been communicated to us, he said, but we have
never been told to remove a book from publication. One of the most
sensitive subjects for Orbis, as far as Vatican officials are concerned, is
interreligious dialogue, he said.
The sense weve had is that we should try to exercise
responsibility to try to avoid books that invite scrutiny, he said.
I assume a certain amount of internal selection in any house subject to
ecclesiastical discipline.
Officials at two independent publishers of Catholic books,
Crossroad and Twenty-Third Publications, said they had so far been free of
outside pressures though many of their books on feminist theology deal with
womens ordination.
We never worry about it, Michael Leach, publisher at
Crossroad said. He described the Vaticans concern over Woman at the
Altar as a tempest in a teapot, drawing attention to a book
that was already at the end of its sales cycle.
Neil Kluepfel, president of Twenty-Third Publications -- named for
Pope John XXIII who called the Second Vatican Council -- said the chill in
publishing is on. Fewer and fewer publishers want to take manuscripts
that stretch the envelope, he said. Nevertheless, he said, his
companys goal is to publish authors who open minds.
We want to make sure that the authors are well qualified on
a subject, then allow them to present their case. If they contradict official
church teaching, they understand they need to offer a reasoned, balanced
argument. Our intention is not to play on the controversy but to open
peoples minds.
National Catholic Reporter, July 31,
1998
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