WOC in NCR: Grant women’s ordination advocates the respect of encounter
Executive Director, Kate McElwee responds to the suggestion that the Women’s Ordination Conference might impose an “American activist agenda” onto the synodal process.
A hopeless believer in dialogue, I regularly send messages to the Vatican and bishops to inform them of what the Women’s Ordination Conference is up to. These messages are almost always met with silence, prayers for my confused soul, or worse, mansplaining a woman’s place in the church.
So it was quite a surprise when the Vatican’s synod office replied to my request to post Women’s Ordination Conference synod resources on their website with a very normal confirmation that our effort, “Let Her Voice Carry,” was added to their site. I believe it showed courage and openness, and some garden-variety decency women don’t often get shown in the Catholic Church.
That’s why it was such a surprise to me when NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters took a swipe at the Women’s Ordination Conference and New Ways Ministry in his column, inferring we might impose American “activist” agendas onto the synodal process. He urged us, and all synod participants, to be “docile” and “receptive” — where have we heard that before? — and to “make room for the Spirit.” His suggestions were not dissimilar to those in the EWTN-owned National Catholic Register that criticized WOC as “inconsistent with an authentic Catholic spirit,” for our lack of respect for the role of the bishops in synodality. Both pieces had a similar undertone: know your place.
So much for decency.