If she had only asked............
By the time I knew Rosemary Ruether, I was in college and had long since given up publication of the Georgetown Herald. The Herald was a our neighborhood newspaper that a bunch of us kids had started in fifth grade. Our first issues were produced with a gel hectograph device and later on a second-hand mimeograph machine that my father found at a fabulous price. Now I’m reading The Public Square of last December’s First Things (it finally arrived - mid-February; same day as the March issue, so I’m digesting this material much like Lucy and Ethel working on the candy assembly line) that radical feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, who prefers to call herself a radical ecofeminist, provides a modicum of refreshment. Her purpose is to revolutionize the Catholic Church and, through it, the world. Many years ago, in response to the question why she remains a Catholic, she answered that that is where the mimeograph machines are. I had a seminar with Dr. Ruether in 1977. I guess it was OK. I don’t remember exactly what the class was about - I must be repressing something. But we had a decent enough working relationship and I would have been more than glad to give her my mimeograph. My parents would have been glad to get it out of the garage and Dr. Ruether would have been free to move on from the Catholic Church.