New CTA board members bring regional, national vision
Three new members joined the CTA board of directors at the end of 1995.
LENA WOLTERING is the coordinator of the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, which she helped found after attending her first CTA National Conference in 1992. Lena and her husband David have three children, Benjamin, 25, Jacob, 21, and Cate, 16. Lena discovered the need for church reform through modern biblical studies, taking many courses in Scripture at Southern Illinois University and St. Louis University. In a letter to her diocesan newspaper after the Ratzinger "infallible" statement, she recalled the 1976 unanimous report of the Pope's Biblical Commission that nothing in Scripture prohibits ordaining women. "Does the magisterium ignore the study and claim invincible ignorance?" she asked. "Could it be that the habitual sin of sexism is responsible for the erroneous judgment?"
After years as a loyal member of St. Peter's Cathedral parish in Belleville, where her children went to grade school, Lena is now part of "echoing voices of dissent" who prayed CTA's special Ash Wednesday prayers on the cathedral steps (story, page 3). "I'm convinced the Spirit is involved, keeping the women of our church fearless and focused," says Lena.
JOHN AYERS is a coordinator of Iowa CTA. He and his wife Cathie have an adult son Mike, and make their home in Clear Lake, Iowa. John is an attorney who now works as a magistrate in his home town, and as an arbitrator all over the U.S. Since his ordination in 1979, John has exercised a ministry as a permanent deacon in the archdiocese of Dubuque. He coordinates the North Central Iowa AIDS Ministry, and is spiritual life coordinator at a residential employment training facility for 350 men and women with disabilities. He also works as a therapist for survivors of sexual abuse and their families.
John is well known in his part of Iowa as the organizer of many social justice and ecumenical events. His strong faith comes through in the letter he wrote to CTA News last year: "To the degree that the people the church ministers to see the church and not Jesus, the church is not doing its job. As William Stringfellow reminds us, we must be like a window glass so that through us people can see Jesus."
BERNARD COOKE is an internationally known sacramental theologian who taught for many years at Marquette University, the University of Windsor (Ontario), and College of the Holy Cross, from which he retired in 1992. He and his wife, theologian Pauline Turner, and their adult daughter Kelly now make their home in San Antonio, TX. There Bernard and Pauline are very active in Hispanic circles developing small faith communities.
Bernard is the author of a dozen books, and continues to write and lecture widely on the theology that has helped shape more than a generation of Catholics in the spirit of Vatican II. A regular speaker at CTA, in 1991 he addressed a topic on which he has thought deeply -- the relationship of Eucharist and priesthood. "Christ's spirit is abiding with the community as its constant animating principle," he said. In this context, "we are struggling, not to eliminate eucharistic leadership, but to reassess its character, its function, and the source of its power."
Last November Bernard suggested and led a daylong track on strategic planning for the CTA movement entitled, "Call To Action --WHAT Action?"
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