The Tablet: Catholic Church ‘has no future’ without women

The Tablet: Catholic Church ‘has no future’ without women

Women of faith celebrated International Women’s day on Monday with discussions on women’s future in the Catholic Church and by exploring if women have been written out of scripture.

“We are talking about the survival of the Church,” said Joanna Moorhead, The Tablet’s Arts editor, who has written widely on the subject of women in the Church for publications including The GuardianThe Observer and The Times.

Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, and a member of the leadership circle of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, told the webinar that she felt the institutional Church’s “commitment to oppression is extremely devastating”.

She noted the findings of a recent survey by the Women’s Ordination Conference conducted among young Catholic women in the United States, aged 21 to 40, with a master of divinity or similar degrees.

“We asked them questions about their Catholic identity, their professional experience, and their vocational paths. Most of them expressed pain or frustration about the limits placed on them. The third most frequent response about the opportunities for women in the Catholic Church was ‘none’ or ‘inadequate’.”

Read the full article at The Tablet.