I suppose it is not surprising, but I had not expected there to be a Movement for the Ordination of Women in the Roman Catholic Church. In fact it has been there since 1975…..while the Movement for the Ordination of Women in the Church of England didn’t start until 1979. They just moved faster!
So this year represented the 50th anniversary celebration of the Roman Catholic Women’s Ordination Conference, and some 200+ people attended the event in Detroit in May, with many expressing their frustration at the slow pace of change.
Keynote speaker, Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Associate Professor of systematic theology at Fordham University in New York, said that the church has been infected by a “masculine Christianity” that casts feminism as “incompatible with the Catholic faith” and pointed the finger at the efforts of Popes Paul VI, Benedict XVI and John Paul II to crush the movement. She welcomed the fact that Pope Leo appears to be continuing in the steps of Pope Francis in appointing women to positions of power in the Vatican, but saw no signs to date of any significant turnaround in terms of ordination.
Another keynote speaker, Teresa Delgado, Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of theology and religious studies at St. John’s University, NY, said the push for women’s ordination was about more than just ordination, but rather a complete rethinking of what ordination and the church’s structure means. “What would it mean to have an apostolicity grounded in mission rather than in maleness?” she asked. “What would it mean to understand ordination not as elevation, but as obligation to a radical stance with those on the margins?”
And addressing wider concerns in the church, she said, “This is not a break from tradition. This is a return to tradition at its deepest roots… it’s about the full humanity and dignity of women in the church and in the world.”
Read the article in the National Catholic Reporter, here.
Pictured above: Angela Berners-Wilson, the first woman to be ordained in the Church of England