The Fairer Sex
In Boston as well as the rest of the country, women are trying to increase their role within the Church. There is even considerable pressure now to ordain women, notes Father Thomas F. Powers, director of campus ministries for the archdiocese.
Women are currently forbidden to conduct Mass, listen to confessions or perform other duties traditionally associated with the ordained ministry.
Pope John Paul II has shown no signs of wavering from this long-held stand, and Law has not dissented publicly from the Church's view on the matter.
But Powers says that Law made an effort to bring women into the administration of his previous diocese, giving them responsibility for important church programs.
Powers anticipates that Law will do the same for Boston and adds that he sees the new archbishop as a mediator between the reformist American school of thought and the traditional Vatican view on the matter.
Law has been bishop of the diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in Missouri for the past 10 years.
While at Harvard, Law majored in medieval history and was vice president of the Catholic Club.