Women’s ordination: Can we be public?

July 14, 2015: Read the full article by Sr. Jeannine Gramick on the NCR’s Global Sisters Report 

In mid-April of this year, I was one of 38 Catholic leaders from 22 different Catholic reform organizations that met in Limerick, Ireland, in a four-day conference to discuss the state of the church. Hosted by the Irish Association of Catholic Priests, the conference brought together groups from four continents and 10 nations: Austria, Australia, England, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United States.

We spoke about the need to revitalize the church and the issue of authority as key in that revitalization. We spoke about the need of the Vatican to decentralize in favor of strengthening the local churches.

The “wisdom and experience of the faithful at the base of the church is not coming to the top,” said Fr. Helmut Schüller, founder the Austrian Priests’ Initiative and organizer of the first international meeting of priest associations and lay reform groups held in Bregenz, Austria, in November 2013.

We spoke about the forthcoming Synod on the Family and called for the participation of Catholics who are LGBT, divorced and re-married, members of inter-faith families, and other marginalized people. We called for the church to pay particular attention to women who are living in situations of poverty, oppression and violence.

We spoke about, and called for, many changes that would make our church look more like the early Christian communities, but it was the issue of women’s role in the church that showed our differences and produced the most angst.

The unfolding events began when I asked the priest leading the prayer committee if a woman could co-preside with one of the male priests at our shared Eucharist. It would surely be a sign of unity and our shared work together. As the priest did not reply, I discussed the idea with several of the women attendees. Fr. Tony Flannery, the conference organizer, advised us to bring the request to the whole group.

The next morning, Kate McElwee, a co-director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, asked the question of the entire group. For the entire morning we listened to reasons about whether or not people wished to have male and female co-presiders.

….. Read the full article on the NCR’s Global Sisters Report