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Church Authorities Would Rather Close Parishes Than Give Women a Greater Role, Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, Charges

 

Since the 1990s Vatican authorities systematically have downgraded the role of women in the church, giving the lie to Pope John Paul II’s declarations that women must be accorded equal dignity in the church, says Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, a prominent lecturer and writer from the United States.

 

“In [American] diocese after diocese, where they have served in official capacities for years, women are being removed from every office in the chancery except, perhaps, as vicars for religious,” says Chittister.

 

These events are occurring despite a papal letter to women in 1985, in which Pope John Paul II famously apologized for the church’s historic failure to recognize the equality and value of women. In it, John Paul II wrote, “respect (for women) must first and foremost be won through an effective and intelligent campaign for the promotion of women, concentrating on all areas of women’s life and beginning with a universal recognition of the dignity of women.”

 

Chittister’s remarks were given in Rome during an April 15, 2005 press conference at the Cavour Auditorium near St. Peter’s Square. Her presentation was one of four media presentations sponsored by the International Movement We Are Church (IMWAC), focusing on the problems facing the successor of Pope John Paul II.

 

The question of women is at the heart of the survival of the American church, says Chittister.  In March 2005, the National Leadership Roundtable of Church Management released a study that concluded there has been a long-term decline in the bishops’ authority in the US church, which was compounded by the sex abuse scandal; a rising demand for lay leadership; an expectation of financial accountability; and serious alienation among post-Vatican II Catholics, especially young women.

 

The report shows that the laity are open to more deacons and lay ministers, and are most opposed to closing parishes—which are seen already as too large and impersonal—and not having a priest to visit the sick or perform last rites. By more than a two-thirds majority, American Catholics “think it is a good idea to make celibacy optional, ordain married men, allow the return of married priests to ministry, and ordain women,” Chittister says.

 

Although there is an acute shortage of priests, there is no shortage of women who are prepared for ministry.  By 2002 in the United States alone, there were 34,000 lay ministers who had graduated from Lay Ecclesial Ministry Programs. Two out of three were women; only 3 percent of them were nuns. Women were trained as theologians, canon lawyers, liturgists and parish administrators.

 

In 1965, 549 parishes were without a priest. In 2002, there were 2,929 US parishes without a resident priest. Worldwide, those figures rose from 94,846 priestless parishes in 1980 (the first year in which such data were collected) to 105,530 priestless parishes in 2000. 

 

“One by one, inner-city parishes find themselves done away with for lack of priests or served only by men too old, to tired themselves to do more than say an occasional Mass. But women, even those with degrees in lay ecclesial ministry programs, who ask to be allowed to serve those parishes, get no welcome,” Chittister reports. She concludes the bishops would rather close parishes than give women a role in the operation of the church.

 

Moreover, the document on the liturgy, “Liturgiam Authenticam,” issued in 2001 “completely obliterates female references from the prayers and hymns of the church, even in scriptures clearly addressed to the whole Christian community, let alone in references to the infinite, unknowable and totally spiritual Godhead who has been made completely captive to maleness,” Chittister says. “The door to existence for women, even in the pronouns of the church, has been closed.”

 

She adds, “Philosophers and social psychologists alike know that what is missing in the language is missing in the mind and what is missing the mind will never be embodied in the structures of a people, a culture, an organization, a church…. Language is not a trivial issue. Language is the ultimate delete.”

 

Chittister is a member and past prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, USA. Author of 27 books, she has lectured world wide on spirituality and is a member of the International Peace Council, and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women since its founding in 2002.