Jean Krejci
In late June, Jean had offered to help a friend who is choir director in an adjacent diocese. Jean has been singing church music all her adult life. The night before her first Mass, she was called by the choir director. He had received a call from the pastor, who'd been called by the chancery, who'd been called by a woman in the choir.

The choir stands at the front of the church, facing the congregation. But now Jean was told she could only sit in the first bench, facing forward. "It's just the idea. I love to sing. It hit me where I am most vulnerable."

Another area of vulnerability is her highly visible role as an advocate for the Hispanic community. She has worked and studied extensively in Central/South America, and is bi-lingual in Spanish. She helped form the Bishop's Hispanic Advisory Commission, and had worked hard to create support systems and encourage Spanish-speaking kids to enroll in the Catholic high school. When the excommunication deadline arrived, she received a call from the pastor of the Hispanic community. "Don't come to the Commission any more," he told her. Why? "Because of your loyalty to John." Jean's husband John is co-chair of CTA Nebraska. Jean was incensed. "It was bad enough to be excluded. But because of my loyalty to John? It's sexist! It wasn't because of what I had done, but what John had done. I've been involved in CTA as long as John!"

Despite the warning, Jean was invited to one more meeting, where she obbied successfully for an Hispanic representative at the diocesan synod. Then came a letter saying she was no longer welcome.

Jean didn't expect that forming CTA in Nebraska would cause her any pain. "The pain was unexpected. I joined when it was fun. We weren't trying to challenge the church, we just wanted to find some support within it. We wanted to meet with others who saw their faith the way we did."

The pain has its own way of expressing itself. On Fathers' Day, she and John were at Mass in another parish and diocese. Tears ran down her face all during Mass. "I think I was grieving the reality of what it means to work for change. I found myself in a safe place, away from the church I call my home."


Carolee Svoboda
Carolee was educated in Catholic grade and high schools in a town about 50 miles from Lincoln. While in high school, she taught CCD classes. After high school graduation, she found few interesting opportunities for church involvement. So she did volunteer work for the YWCA, baby-sitting the children of low-income families to give their parents respite to go shopping or to relax.

A computer programmer in her forties, Carolee was a regular churchgoer until about two years ago when the pope issued a statement saying that women could not be ordained. Suddenly, everything changed. "I knew within myself there was no just reason for them not to be ordained. Then all the questions I was afraid to ask in school came flooding back to me, all the things that didn't make sense even then." The pivotal question was the place of women in the church. "The hierarchy was saying to women, 'You're good people but we don't want you to do anything.'"

She lost faith in the hierarchy and its teachings. "I knew that the infallible ban on women's ordination was not true, so what else was wrong? I began wondering how the early church came up with its teachings. What role did power play?"

Having lived in Lincoln for 23 years, Carolee had no idea that her diocese was so out of step with the rest of the country in not allowing girl altar servers or women Eucharistic ministers. Reading books on Catholicism and from talking to others, she realized how closed Lincoln is.

In December 1995 she stopped going to Mass in the Catholic church and began attending an Episcopal church. "This was the hardest decision of my life. I am still a Catholic, I just don't go to Mass. But I really enjoy the small faith community that we've started as part of Call To Action. It does more for my spiritual life than Mass among those hundreds of people. It's not the pastors' fault that the churches are so big, but you feel lost in them.

"I just want the church to be more open. The hierarchy closed the door on me, when they should have been opening it. I'd find the church a lot more credible if the authorities said they were searching, too. I'd listen if they admitted they don't have all the answers."

The excommunication edict of March did not affect her greatly, but the word "excommunication" sounded so painful after her Catholic upbringing. Ironically, people talk to her more about religion now. "People I've known for 20 years, who have never mentioned religion, now talk to me about it. They seem to feel safe. And I've found I'm not the only one with doubts."

Carolee might attend an Episcopal church and be excommunicated in the bishop's eyes, but she still carries rosary beads with her. "It's part of my Catholic roots. It gives me a feeling of protection," she says.


Constance Zimmer
Constance, or "C.J.," was baptized Catholic as an infant, but she grew up in various foster homes and couldn't always practice her faith. "I was always Catholic in my heart," she says.

Then in 1973 she married her brother's classmate, Edward Zimmer, in Omaha. The priest was the same Fr. Jack McCaslin who would celebrate Mass at the inaugural gathering of CTA Nebraska 23 years later.

Ed grew up in an devout Catholic family. His father went to Mass every day, and was in the first group of deacons ordained in Omaha in 1973. Ed's sister is provincial president of a religious order. A brother spent time in federal prison as a religious conscientious objector against war. C.J. learned her faith from Ed's family.

She and Ed moved to Boston, where they lived for 12 years. "As an adult, I was able to practice my faith as openly and fully as I wanted, and I went to church frequently in Nebraska and at the Paulist Center in Boston."

Then the family returned to Nebraska. "It was like a return to the Dark Ages. I tried my home parish in Lincoln. I would find myself at Mass with my fists clenched. I always felt diminished and empty. I could not see how this was doing my soul any good. " All the laity who had roles to play in the Lincoln Masses were white, middle-class men -- whose children were in parochial schools.

In 1993, one of her sons was hospitalized in Omaha for a month. C.J. needed spiritual nourishment. She decided to try the Omaha church her in-laws kept raving about, where the pastor would say: "Parishes are like credit cards; you can have more than one." Before Mass she sat down in one of the old, burnished wooden pews. "This feeling poured over me like a warm waterfall, and I clearly experienced the Holy Spirit saying, 'You can come home again, you are safe here.'" She registered herself and two of her children.

Everyone is welcome at Sacred Heart. The faith community there is remarkably diverse, culturally and economically. Each Sunday, C.J. and her children make the 120-mile round trip gladly. She compares the journey to the efforts the first prairie Christians made to worship together. "By Thursday or Friday I have a yearning to be at Mass, for communion with the body of God, the people. We are Eucharist for one another."

C.J. has taught CCD classes and is on the RCIA Team, and an usher and Eucharistic minister. She also serves as coordinator of the altar servers, including her 9-year-old daughter Emily. As a woman, she is excluded from all those ministries in Lincoln diocese, as is Emily. In Lincoln, very rarely is a woman even allowed to read Scripture at Mass.

C.J. last went to Mass in Lincoln on Christmas Eve, 1994. A young priest railed at the congregation about how sin-filled they were. "It was all I could do not to shake my fist at him and scream at him, 'This is against God!' and walk out. I didn't because I wanted to continue as Girl Scout leader in Emily's Brownie troop." C.J. had a career as a neo-natal intensive care nurse. Now she is a full-time mother and community volunteer, primarily in mental health and children's advocacy. Her husband Ed is Lincoln's historical preservation planner.

Ed no longer considers himself Catholic, but when the late Bishop Flavin banned girl altar servers, Ed wrote a letter of protest to the newspaper. Since the excommunication, he supports C.J. in her stand. So do the children. Her 12-year-old son Andrew decided at age 7 that he was an atheist, but he is still offended that her church should treat his mother this way. Emily is Catholic with a strong faith. "She has so much confidence in her church family in Omaha that she isn't worried. She seems proud that I stand up for what she believes." Thomas, age 6, has a wonderfully inclusive and loving image of God.

Community support? "Non-Catholics have invited me to their churches. Numerous ministers and cantors have told me I would be welcome in their houses of worship and at their communion table."

Catholics push checks into her hand, made out to CTA Nebraska. People say, "I believe in what you are doing, but my job could be at risk if I spoke out." C.J. feels she has an obligation to stand firm because she is relatively safe from retribution.

Constance Zimmer holds no bitterness. "The bishop seems to be from another century. I don't think he is evil, but he is out of touch with people, especially with women who have many rich gifts to give to the church. I don't consider myself excommunicated. I haven't distanced myself from God, and have received no indication from God that he/she has separated from me."