Women in the Catholic Church

One of my favorite consulting clients for the past twenty years has been an order of Catholic nuns. They risk their lives working in desperately poor and war-torn areas of the world to deliver health care, education, trauma counseling, and peace-making services to people in need. They fight for women’s empowerment and against sex trafficking. They are feminists and leaders in the world, yet they are basically unacknowledged and marginalized within their own institution—the Catholic Church. They are frustrated about the church’s refusal to ordain women and to provide open leadership roles within the church to women. I am not Catholic, but I have watched other Christian denominations, as well as some other religions, ordain women as religious leaders and have wondered why the Catholic Church does not. Unfortunately, while Pope Francis has liberalized the church’s position on some important issues, he has rejected outright the possibility of ordaining women as priests in the church. Elisabetta Povoledo, writing in the New York Times, notes that “women make up a notably higher percentage of those devoted to the consecrated life” in the Catholic Church—there are approximately one-third more women than men—yet women play little role in the decision-making of the church. In addition, Frank Bruni of the New York Times explains, “men but not women get to preside over a Mass. Men but never women wear the cassock of a cardinal, the vestments of a pope. Male clergy are called ‘father,’ which connotes authority. Women in religious orders are called ‘sister,’ which doesn’t.” Bruni goes on to describe a generation of young Catholic women who see doors opening for them everywhere but in their church and feel alienated by the patriarchal attitudes and absence of female leaders. It’s been hard for me as an outsider to watch the impact on the religious women I have worked with for so long and admire so deeply. They are frustrated and angry. They wonder how long it will take for the Catholic Church as an institution to value women, and so do I. What do you think it will take for women to become leaders in the church?]]>