ROME -- Today's ceremony raising Baltimore Archbishop William H. Keeler to the rank of cardinal will be a reminder that women are not yet full partners in the work of the Roman Catholic Church, a leading Catholic sister said yesterday.
"As a woman, I have great love for my church," said Sister Rosemarie Nassif, president of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. "However, as we all know, the position of the church now is to limit the role of women."
She said she believes that the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood will be possible someday, "but not in my lifetime."
Speaking of the Consistory in which Pope John Paul II will place a red cardinal's hat on the heads of 30 churchmen, including Archbishop Keeler, Sister Rosemarie said:
"It will be very much a male ceremony. It will be a moving and meaningful experience for Catholics, both men and women, but in a sense I'll feel that something is missing."
Sister Rosemarie, who read scriptures during a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Keeler Thursday, remarked that merely a few decades ago, "my reading in that setting would have been unheard of."
Even so, such progress in the recognition of churchwomen "doesn't eliminate our responsibility to edge the church into that place where God is calling us today," she said.
Efforts in some official circles to "lessen the visibility of women in the church" will not stop them from seeking full participation, she said. And it will not prevent them from being enriched spiritually by such reminders of centuries of Christian history as today's ceremonies.