How to Witness for Women's Equality in Your Diocese (a primer)

Gather People Together

1. Start with people you know who really care about this issue, love the church, and are known to be active in parish and diocesan activities. Invite them over for coffee to talk about what can realistically be done in a way that both advocates for women ministers yet is clearly loving and respectful of the institutional Church. Make sure the group includes both men and women since this issue needs both perspectives if we are to grow into the inclusive community first envisioned by Jesus. Read and discuss materials from the packet. Use this flyer to generate ideas about what might be possible in your area.

2. Invite pastoral ministers, and others studying for ministry to a focus session. Listen to the current pastoral situation for women/lay ministers in your diocese. Together, strategize ways of working to advance visibility and fairness for all church ministers. Hold a second focus session and invite concerned priests and deacons to join you (unless of course it is a concerned priest who first convened the session!).

Simple Educational Things You Can Do That Are Pastoral, Prophetic and Painless (well, relatively).

1. Begin a "Woman and the Word" reflection column in your parish bulletin. Invite prepared women leaders in your parish to take turns writing short reflections on the Sunday Scripture readings. This will provide an opportunity for women's perspectives on the Scriptures to be heard. It can also educate parishioners about the patriarchal context of most biblical stories, and how liberating Jesus' message was (and is) in that context.

2. Using materials from this packet, write an op-ed piece for your diocesan paper, and the women's or religion section of your local newspaper. Feature scripture stories that highlight Jesus'refusal to accede to the patriarchal norms of his day (ie women taken in adultery, the prodigal son, the women who traveled with Jesus etc. ). Other articles could be about women ministers in the earliest churches, Catholic women who changed the world, women in the Hebrew scriptures, etc.

3. For the Lenten/Advent series in your parish, focus on the inclusive practice of Jesus as seen in the Gospels, or the women disciples in the earliest churches. Invite biblical scholars from nearby Catholic colleges or universities to give the program, and open it up to the whole diocese.

4. Start an annual liturgical celebration of the feast of Mary Magdalen on July 22. Invite a local religious educator to present recent Biblical scholarship about Magdalene (ie she wasn't a prostitute, was a preeminent apostolic leader in the infant church etc.).

5. Have a partnership ministry training program for all diocesan priests, lay ministers, parish council members, and interested parishioners. (See"Partnership in Ministry" brochure or call us at FutureChurch)

6. Encourage your diocesan women's commission or diocesan paper to invite nominations for "Women of Witness" in your diocese. Publicize their stories. In this way female disciples of Jesus become more visible.

More Painful and More Powerful (probably):

Analyze Your Parish:

1. Is your pastoral minister:
* Involved in decision-making about parish matters?
* Present in a visible role at liturgy?
* Permitted to preach on appropriate occasions?
* Being paid a just wage?
* Named with priest ministers in parish publications and announcements?
* Blessed with a parish welcome and farewell celebration when s/he arrives or leaves?
* Meeting twice a year with the Bishop to discuss concerns ?

2. Advocate for greater latitude in allowing prepared women pastoral ministers to preach on a regular basis in your parish/diocese . If your diocese does not have a preaching institute to prepare lay preachers,encourage the formation of one. (See enclosed brochure: "What's the Good Word on Lay Preaching"?)

3.Send for the four model parish surveys analyzing lay ministry; women and men's leadership in parish life, and the attitudes of parishioners about them. (Available from the Bishops' Strengthening the Bonds of Peace parish resource packet from the NCCB Office on Women Laity and Youth (1-800-235-8722)

Analyze Your Diocese:

1. Do you have a women's commission or office on women? Often women's issues go unnoticed simply because there is no one to advocate. Presently, an estimated twenty U.S.dioceses have such a commission, though only one or two have an office. (Resource: Send for the 1992 handbook on how to establish a women's office, available from NCCB Secretariat on Women 202-541-3040).
a) If you don't have such a commission or office, ask your Bishop to begin one. Get other people in the diocese to advocate too. Make sure the office has an advisory board of both men and women.
b) If you do have such a commission, ask how they listen and respond to the concerns of women, and what you can do to advance women's participation in diocesan ministry and decision making.

2. Find out how many qualified women serve in senior administrative positions in your diocese, and what kinds of positions woman hold in the chancery. Compare thi s with the Benchmarks study. How many of the lay ecclesial ministers in your diocese are women?

3. Are woman equally represented on all diocesan and parish boards, including the finance committee?

4. Is the education of women/lay ministers subsidized in your diocese at the same level as that of seminarians? If not, explore with local diocesan educational institutions what can be done to educate lay ministers.

5. Does your diocese have a ceremony commissioning women/lay ministers, and is the ceremony covered in the diocesan paper?

6. Does your diocese have personnel policies that encourage competent women to serve in the diocese and parishes? These include: just compensation; position descriptions; clear procedures for hiring, evaluation, and terminating personnel; and settling grievances. Where appropriate, do these policies apply to the priest ministers as well as to the lay ministers? (Great Resource: National Association of Church Personnel Administrators, 513-421-3134)

7. Does your diocese have a recognized grievance procedure for Church employees? How often is it used? (Resource: Canon Law Society of America 202-269-3491 http://www.clsa.org)

8. Does your bishop include a description of the progress your diocese has made promoting the participation of women in ministry and decision making in his quinquennial report to Rome?

9. Call or write your diocesan leadership and/or the members of the NCCB Committee on women, and ask for the opening of the permanent diaconate to women. (See enclosed flyer "Why the Church Should Ordain Women to the Permanent Diaconate").

If All Else Fails

There are rare instances in which some parishioners have found themselves at odds with a new and very conservative pastor. The new pastor has arbitrarily and unilaterally fired their favorite pastoral minister or musician because s/he uses inclusive language or some such reason. These good Catholic parishioners, having exhausted all other alternatives, successfully resolved this difficult situation by placing parish contributions into a tax deductible escrow account until Church officials came to see the light. If you would like specifics about how this process works (to be used only as a last resort..it can be very divisive), call us at FutureChurch and we can put you in touch with people for whom this was the only way to continue to have an appropriate Vatican II voice in their Church.