Category: Ministry of Irritation

The Eternal City calls! It’s true: the Women’s Ordination Conference is going to Rome, and staying awhile! In our effort to change the structures and representation of women in the Roman Catholic Church, we at WOC believe we must be firmly situated within the Italian context to better highlight the global necessity of women’s ordination.…
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Last month, my job got a whole lot more interesting as I found myself participating in my first music video filming.  After the positive reception WOC received at the Call to Action conference for the flash mob to the “Call me Maybe” parody, “Ordain a Lady,” it was decided that a music video ought to…
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Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of being one of the 400 first time attendees at the annual Call To Action conference “Justice Rising.”  Considering there were around 1,600 attendees in total at the conference, I think it speaks wonders about the conference and its outreach that one-fourth of us there were new.  Progressive…
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Women of the Wall, or Nashot Hakotel נשות הכותל in Hebrew, is a group of Jewish women from around the world who strive to achieve the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem, Israel. The Western Wall is Judaism’s most…
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Over 900 Catholic nuns gathered in St. Louis for the much-anticipated annual meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). After four days of discernment, Sr. Pat Farrell, current president of LCWR, announced “open and honest dialogue” would be their next step with Archbishop Sartain who has been appointed to oversee the mandate. She…
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For the past several weeks, I’ve been helping to organize the local Nunjustice vigils in Washington, DC.  I’ve been struck each week at the signs I see here in D.C. and from the pictures across the country depicting nuns.  Sisters have been described as the “backbone” and the “heartbeat” of the Church, “the face” and…
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Over the past decade as a feminist activist, I have made several protest signs – signs for women’s ordination, to support anti-domestic violence legislation, to close the SOA, end the war, support marriage equality, women’s health, immigrants’ rights, and Fr. Roy . . . but if you told me I would need to make signs…
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On the weekend of March 24, 2012 over 40,000 Catholics gathered in Anaheim, CA for the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference.  For the 2nd year in a row Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Call to Action-LA and the local Women’s Ordination Conference group gathered outside the event to call for women’s ordination.  We held banners, passed out…
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Monday April 2nd,  the Women’s Ordination Conference held a vigil outside of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC prior to the annual Chrism Mass, bearing witness to the absence of women in the Roman Catholic Church leadership. With heavy foot-traffic and the throngs of priests and women religious of the Diocese of Washington, our…
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