CATHOLIC WOMEN IN MINISTRY
CHANGING THE WAY THINGS ARE
Marie-Louise
Ternier-Gommers
© Novalis 2007
www.novalis.ca,
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From the Back Cover of the book:
Welcome to a fascinating portrait of Canadian Catholic women working in various forms of ministry in the contemporary Catholic Church. Through conversations with twenty-four women from a range of backgrounds, Marie-Louise Ternier-Gommers provides a rare insight into the cross-currents, tensions, breakthroughs and accomplishments of lay women who are transforming the way the Catholic church works in Canada.
Marie-Louise speaks her deep inner truth out of loyalty to the Church she loves and challenges. Solidly based on the theology of Vatican II, she addresses both the pain and the potential of Catholic women in ministry. Here is a compassionate voice that deserves to be heard.
Sylvain Lavoie OMI, Archbishop of the diocese of Keewatin-The Pas
This book is the story of Everywoman who has engaged in full-time ministry in the Church in the last forty years. Told through the passionate voices of those who know the 'joys and hopes, the grief and anguish' of this call to serve their sisters and brothers, it offers a powerful, insightful window on this experience of ministry.
Bernadette Gasslein
Editor, Celebrate!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: We just growed!
Chapter Two: To equip the Saints
Chapter Three: Nourishing the Spirit
Chapter Four: Called and Commissioned
Chapter Five: Sacraments and Sacramentality
Chapter Six: Created Male and Female
Chapter Seven: Woman, why are you weeping?
Chapter Eight: Shaking off the Dust
Chapter Nine: Cloud of Witnesses
Epilogue
List of Web Resources for Lay Ecclesial Ministers
Introduction
In 1962, Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council. 2500 Catholic bishops from around the world, along with ecumenical representatives and about fifteen female observers, gathered in Rome for extensive meetings on all aspects of the Church. These meetings continued until 1965 and produced sixteen important documents. In order to understand the huge shifts that this Church Council brought about, we need to go back four hundred years.
The turmoil of the Reformation led by Martin Luther, in the 16th century, had polarizing effects on the Church. The Council of Trent formulated its positions in a massive effort to defend itself against the “errors” of the reformers. Its hard-and-fast positions on liturgy, sacraments, and theology gave us a church which remained virtually unchanged for nearly four centuries. At the Second Vatican Council the Church emerged from this deep-freeze. Finally freed from a defensive approach, the bishops and cardinals at Vatican II revisited the treasures, wisdom and practices of the early church in order to lay the foundations for a comprehensive renewal within the Church today. It should come as no surprise that much of the resulting renewal turned out to address key contentions that the reformers had brought to the discussion table nearly four centuries earlier. Some of the reformers’ “errors” turned out to be necessary corrections to the Church if it wished to continue to be the dynamic presence on earth of the Body of Christ. Given the human nature of the Church, and thus its vulnerability to sin and error, such a body, even in its divine and sacred origins in Christ, is nevertheless always Ecclesia semper reformanda est, the Church in need of reform .
Whether the 16th century Reformation and the resulting splits in Christianity benefited women, remains hotly disputed. On the one hand, Martin Luther himself declared gender equality in marriage and the right to divorce, promoted the education of girls, opposed the veneration of saints, and believed that closing convents released nuns from sexual repression and male clerical domination. On the other hand, the initial good intentions of the reformers did not deliver for most women. In practice, divorced women, unless they were of marriageable age, faced a bleak existence. Few Protestant girls’ schools were established and very few parents sent their daughters to school. Discontinuing the veneration of saints (male and female) deprived women of significant role models. And closing convents eliminated for women an honourable life choice other than marriage and family, a choice that fostered education, community, independence and responsibility, and gave women a semi-clerical status to that of priests. In the Roman Catholic Church, a vocation to religious life has continued to be highly valued and respected for both women and men right up to our day. In fact, Vatican II gave religious orders a new challenge: to reclaim the charism of its founder or foundress and of its prophetic role in the church.
And Vatican II did much more. The Council deliberations and documents reveal a church that changed its self-understanding from a “perfect society” to the pilgrim people of God bringing about the kingdom of God. The liturgy, celebrated in Latin and unchanged for four centuries, became “unstuck” when it began to be celebrated in the language of the people. After an overemphasis on the sacramental and Eucharistic dimensions of liturgy – an emphasis that had served as a way to differentiate and distance the church from its critics at the time of the Reformation – Vatican II advocated and implemented the restoration of the Word of God to its rightful place of prominence. Selections from Scripture proclaimed in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration were expanded. The three-year cycle of biblical readings emphasized the importance of good preaching. The liturgical renewal sparked the creation of new prayers, refreshing thinking on décor and architecture, and new musical repertoires. The baptismal dignity and calling of the laity were rediscovered and reclaimed. New theological and historical thinking contributed to an unprecedented openness and respect toward Christians of all traditions and people of all faiths.
The fact that these and other changes occurred at all was nothing short of monumental. Pope John XXIII’s summons to “open the windows” of the church and to read the “signs of the times” was realized, both for the outside world and within the Church itself. Even now, well over 40 years after the Council, we are still interpreting and applying the council’s insights and teachings. Church historians remind us that it takes approximately 100 years for a Church council to have its full effect on the church; we have only just begun. We will be appropriating the gifts of the new orientation and perspectives of Vatican II for several generations to come.
One of the fruits of renewal for which the Council Fathers laid the groundwork is the growing diversity of ecclesial ministry. The term “ministry” as employed in this book uses the following definition: “Ministry is a public service grounded in the Gospel and performed on behalf of the Christian community for the promotion of the reign of God.” Alongside the decrease in the number of celibate men in ordained ministry, there is a virtual explosion of non-ordained professional ministry exercised by married men and, most particularly, by women. Like Topsy, these ministries “just growed.” This development has occurred with lightning speed over the course of a mere four decades. The necessary analysis, policy development and theological reflection, whether in official church documents at the local, diocesan and global level or in the literature at large still do not adequately reflect this new pastoral reality. Nor do they afford this “new wine” of ministry its appropriate place of dignity, blessing and meaning. Much work in these areas remains to be done.
This book seeks to apply some of the discoveries of Vatican II to the concrete experiences of a small segment of these new ministers: Catholic women working in a variety of pastoral positions throughout western and northern Canada. Their experiences, self-understandings and insights are placed in the context of some key teachings of Vatican II. Most notably among these are the baptismal dignity and calling of all the baptized, the church as communion and as pilgrim people of God, the inherent goodness of all creation, the renewed appreciation for the sacrament of marriage, the importance of following one’s conscience and standing with the poor and vulnerable, the need for ongoing adult catechesis, and a new emphasis on the importance of pastoral gifts and responsibilities in the Church’s ministers. Each of these teachings will inform the reflection and stories in the chapters that follow.
Some 26 Catholic women have joined me in this book. They have made a generous offering of their stories and insights, their joys and sorrows, their hopes and dreams. We live and minister in British Columbia, Yukon, Alberta, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We work in many fields which, not that long ago, were the domain of clergy: parish life direction and administration; campus ministry; hospital and prison chaplaincy; retreat work and parish missions; native ministry; pastoral assistance in urban and rural parishes; lay formation; adult faith education; diocesan, youth and freelance ministry. We lead faith communities in worship and offer pastoral care. We comfort the mourning and listen to the broken-hearted. We feed the hungry with God’s Word and offer guidance to the seeking. We call forth gifts in the people of God in order to witness in the world to the Good News in Jesus the Christ. We regard our witness of love poured out in ministry as God’s gift to the church; it is a gift received with joy by most, while still viewed with suspicion by some.
An analogy with women in another time comes to mind. During World War II, women were recruited in great numbers to work in factories, to fill jobs previously held by the men who had gone to war. All of a sudden, women found themselves working in factories, in civil service, in professional fields and in defense industries. Once the war was over and the surviving men returned, many women retreated again into the private sphere of their homes. However, something in society had irrevocably changed. Women had discovered a new sense of worth. Besides earning money for what they did, they grew in self-worth and self-reliance, and in solidarity with one another.
In much the same way, many women today initially fill ministry roles due to a shortage of priests. Sheer pastoral need makes us land in positions and spheres of ministry which previously belonged to the ordained. Thus we too feel caught between two worlds, much like our sisters did during World War II. In the process of “filling in,” we, like them, are discovering a new self-worth, a God who calls us, and a new vision for ministry in the future.
Understanding comes in hindsight, and that includes our understanding of God’s hand in the course of history, both personal and communal. Looking back helps to pull the threads of God’s calling activity from the complex twists and turns which life delivers. In retrospective, I discover both newness and tradition in women’s roles in pastoral ministry.
For some of us, our love and desire to serve the church in ministry began as an early, unspecified dream. At first we live out this dream in marriage and parenthood; then it resurfaces in a different form and leads us into church ministry later in life. When Catholic married men desire a more explicit form of church ministry, they might consider the permanent diaconate (if their diocese has reinstated this ordered ministry). Should Catholic married women begin to sense a desire to serve the church more explicitly, there is no automatic direction or place for them. Much depends on the opportunities available. Some women have come to pastoral ministry out of their renewed study and discernment of gifts within their religious orders. Still other women, often younger ones, are now enjoying a new and growing openness to pursue their heart’s desire, so they enroll in theological studies at an earlier age.
Our experiences and emerging insights naturally raise new questions. Are women in ministry a “temporary solution,” until there are once again enough celibate men in the priesthood? Are our gifts and callings valued for their own merit or are they merely poor substitutes for the “real thing”? Is our commitment to pastoral ministry witnessing to a God who is calling us back to the model of the early Church, when a diversity of charisms was bestowed on a variety of people instead of being concentrated in one person? Are we “priests in waiting” until Rome changes its discipline? Or are we a brand new phenomenon of lay ecclesial minister, a vocation and call separate from ordained priesthood but somehow more focused on “intra ecclesia” (i.e. within the church) than on the universal call of all baptized Catholics to bring Christ into the secular world? Such questions emerge from our ongoing witness, but the time for answers may still be far off.
Without settling for quick and simplistic answers, we can argue that, unlike the experience of women during and after World War II, the phenomenon of today’s lay ecclesial ministry is not an invention of the contemporary Church to solve a personnel problem. A close examination of the Church’s beginnings tells us that it is possible that using lay women and men in ministry is more than a stopgap measure. Besides the traditional ordained roles of bishop, priest and deacon, growing diversity of ministries reflects something the Church has done from its very beginnings. The Christian community engages the Gospel with every time, place and culture in history. The dynamic relationship between Scripture, tradition and history necessitates that Christ’s call to discipleship be adaptable to the particular needs and features of those who live in each time and place. Such diversity is faithful to the dynamic relationship between the Christian community, the historical and social conditioning of time and place, the sources of its faith tradition and its central figure, Jesus Christ the Risen One.
History itself attests to the creative ways in which the Church has faced such cultural crossroads and challenges, questions and tensions. We stand in a long tradition of taking the “signs of the times” and letting them shape the life of the faith community. The Church’s commitment to inculturation includes the orientation to let the best of the culture in which she finds herself shape the expression of our faith. One important sign of the times in the twenty-first century is the increasing role of women, something already signaled by Pope John XXIII himself in his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris: women “are gaining an increasing awareness of their natural dignity. Far from being content with a purely passive role or allowing themselves to be regarded as a kind of instrument, they are demanding both in domestic and public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons.”
In allowing the Church’s expression of faith to intersect with the best of the prevailing culture lay ministers give flesh and blood to Paul’s theology of the Body of Christ with its diverse gifts and charisms, as described eloquently in 1 Corinthians 12. In our own time, these new ministries and new ministers respond to a need and to a call. The gifts of all the baptized are needed both in and outside the church. Ordained ministers need, more than at any other time in recent history, serve as pastoral catalysts who invite, empower and order the gifts and contributions of lay people. In a modern culture that is suspicious of traditional authority, it is essential to respond to the cultural challenge by fostering mutuality and collaboration rather than hierarchy and institution – in particular, by including the gifts and insights of women as partners in Church leadership on as many levels as is currently possible.
Even though our ministries are grounded in the Gospel vision of Jesus – a discipleship of equals – many of us shy away from political lobbying for Church reform. This is not always due to fear of losing jobs or credibility. Rather, this hesitation is borne out of a concern that our witness may be misinterpreted as a quest for earthly power and not viewed as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It is easy and understandable to let our impatience fuel anger and bitterness. It is easy to think that we have an inside track on what God is doing in our Church today.
We are acutely aware, however, that our primary call is to be faithful to the ministry entrusted to us. We are not called to insist on being right or to draw premature conclusions. While tending to the daily needs of the people of God in our parishes, schools, hospitals, prisons, and families, we seek to infuse the Church with new energy and inspiration for the future while leaving the rest up to God. As a good friend reminded me recently, we live our lives forward and we will understand them backwards, long after all of us have gone home to God.
My encounters with the 26 Catholic women whose stories infuse the pages of this book – through personal meetings, e-mail and phone – have been a tremendous opportunity for conversation and challenge, inspiration and reflection. I have discovered similarities, differences and new questions. I have found soulmates, colleagues and role models. Except for my own story, the women’s stories and contributions are woven together into profiles that are actually a composite of two or more individuals. At the women’s own request, identities and situations have been altered to respect their privacy and to create a freer relational space in which they can speak what lives in their minds, hearts and souls. While I honour it, their request also saddens me. It is a sober reminder that women still do not feel safe offering the Church the reality of their experiences and insights, both positive and negative, without anonymity.
All 26 women contributed because they strongly believe that what they are living is not an isolated or private matter. While these experiences are deeply personal they reveal facets of our corporate life as the Body of Christ. In a spirit of frank dialogue and deep love for the Church, this book is offered to the pilgrim people of God in their journey toward God’s reign of peace, love and justice, especially those who follow in our footsteps.
No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins. But one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. (NRSV Mark 2:22)
Theology for Ministry, Margaret Lavin, Novalis, 2004
Topsy is the name of a "ragamuffin" young slave girl of unknown origin, a character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852. The phrase "growed like Topsy" (later "grew like Topsy"; now somewhat archaic) passed into the English language, originally with the specific meaning of unplanned growth, later sometimes just meaning enormous growth. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin