By Rita McInerney

“The door has been cracked open. We would desire that the Church open up all ministry to women.”

“We as women do all the little things that have to be done, the things men don’t want to do. They like to do the status things. Women are not allowed to give homilies, they must give reflections.”

“We are fortunate and blessed. Many others are not as blessed and we have a call and a mission to raise them up.”

“Women come up with fruitful ideas but the Church limits their contributions, especially those of black women. The Church should be more open to black gifts.”

These are siftings from the grains of reflections expressed by “Women Listening to Women” Thursday night, Feb. 18 at Holy Spirit Church. The two-house process attended by 75 women was sponsored by the Atlanta Archdiocesan Council of Catholic women and the Atlanta Conference of Sisters.

Response to the sharing was enthusiastic with general agreement that the time was too short. Joan Lucas, president of AACCW, agreed. “People were just beginning to open up.” She said the responses from the women will be compiled by Anita Willoughby and presented to Archbishop Thomas Donnellan.

Sister Carol Patron, C.S.J., called it “an excellent beginning, very much needed. The reactions were very positive and the evaluations show that most of the women want more and more.”

Some of the participants felt that conclusions of the three questions asked in the program and considered by the groups of five or six women were not adequately verbalized in capsule presentations by group recorders to the assembly.

The belief that the Church should open up all ministry to women was expressed in several ways; in group summaries, in group sharing and in follow-up conversations with several participants.

A positive reflection was shared by a Religious with her group. She told of her joy in being asked to celebrate the Liturgy of the Word in her parish while the pastor was away for a week. There was no slackening in attendance that she noticed. In fact, she was pleased when one elderly male parishioner said, “Sister, I’ll vote for you to be a priest any day.”

A group summary that “we would like to see more women in the hierarchy” elicited “More, there’s none,” from the room full of women.

Will women be accepted through attrition? Mary Alice Fields, in a follow-up comment, recalled one woman in her group saying she hoped “the use of women in the Church wasn’t because of the shortage of males.”

On the other hand, Pat Joyce said she and another mother in her group agreed that “we are only valued as persons” who bake the cookies, press the linens, arrange the flowers. For her, a recent experience of not knowing the proper placement of a bowl while setting up the altar for a funeral illustrated a sore point with many women: “If I had been an altar girl I would have known.”

In another group a woman admitted that she couldn’t understand why, during her growing up years, her brother could be an altar server and she couldn’t. In a third group a mother wanted to know how to explain this to a daughter on whom she has tried hard to impress the conviction that “anything is possible” for her.

The same woman, an accountant, rued the tendency to look at women as being on parish councils merely to serve as typists and coffee makers. One group spokeswoman brought out that most in her group were feeling neglected, they were not being given an opportunity to develop their potential. But they felt the challenge was to overcome this negative feeling without being strident. Another sharing expressed the hurt of being put down and becoming angry and frustrated because gifts were not being recognized. This non-recognition is not only in the church, many felt, but pervades society. “But the Church is called to be different.”

Another spokeswoman summed up the contentment of her group another way. “We are fortunate and blessed. Many others are not so blessed and we have a call and a mission to raise them up.”

“We all experienced a positive image growing up, educated within the Church,” Mrs. Fields said. She said she shared with members of her group that “I never knew we were the ‘second sex’ until reading Simone de Beauvoir when I was 30.”

“We hoped that we can be considered as thinking people on policy making, on things of real consequence, not just for cleaning the church,” said Sister Ruth Fagan, O.S.F. Sharing in her group brought out the concern of a veteran black teacher in a Catholic school who feels threatened. “The official Church should look more at the person rather than the degree she has or her financial background. The teacher gave with her heart all those (18) years. Doesn’t that have value? We forget people’s life experiences, they don’t count.”

Most women shared the opinion that the Church and society should allow women to be all they should be in the words of the Army recruiting slogan. Reflecting upon this later, Mrs. Joyce said she felt it was important that women should be made more aware of their gifts as women. Dioceses should offer programs, they should say to the women, “We’re here, we’ll help you find the answers. You have Alcoholics Anonymous, job clubs, altar society. But as far as the development of women to their fullest potential, that ends when school ends.”

One member of a religious order, contacted after the program, reflected that she felt the sharing between laywomen and Religious was helpful. Referring to laywomen she commented, “Most are not aspiring to some kind of ministry. One woman in the group said, ‘I hear what you’re saying, but I’m a mother. The Church is OK for me, I’m content.’ We assured her that was fine, it was good to hear those things.”

“The ministries are in some cases stifled by some of the clergy,” she continued. “Some men don’t know how to deal with a woman. What you can do in one parish, in one diocese, you can’t do in another.” Her group, she added, also agreed on “the unfreedom of the male. Until men are totally free, women won’t be free. They (men) feel threatened.”

In another sharing her group likened the injustices to women to those endured by blacks and stressed that it was a woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the back of the bus and thus became the catalyst for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Sharing between laywomen and religious women was one of the most rewarding aspects of the “Listening” session, several agreed. Mrs. Joyce felt that the relationship “that we are first women, come together in a common bond” was not stressed enough in the capsule reports.

Sister Ruth liked the “spirit between women at the happy, well-run meeting. We should leave the roles at home. When we listen to each other we begin to feel that we have the same experiences. It’s not the role that gives you that, it’s just by being women.”

One group shared the feeling that some personal tragedies are sometimes dealt with in a problem-solving manner rather than by looking at the person as needing understanding. A painful memory was shared by a woman in another group who told of being deserted by her husband 17 years ago, left with three small children. At her Midwest parish there was no compassion or comfort from the priest, only an insistence that she sign a paper promising that she wouldn’t date. Dating wasn’t on her mind, surviving with her children was.

Sister Roberta Schmidt, C.S.J., later mentioned that her group agreed the Church was not reaching out to mature, single people past the age of 25. “You never heard anything in the homilies directed to these people, no programs are being generated.”

Mrs. Fields said that her group observed that the parish men’s and women’s clubs were a holdover from the 19^th century and were being replaced by new groupings; Parish Renewal, Cursillo and Marriage Encounter which promoted a broader outreach.

There were common threads in the needs revealed during the evening. They were, most frequently, the need for equality, to not be weighed down by negatives but rather to use them as incentives, for recognition by both Church and society of women’s strongpoints, for their opinions to be asked for and listened to, for more sharing of power.

The need to support each other and to feel good about involvement in the Church was emphasized at the conclusion of the sharing; coming together, reaching out more in the Church and with women of other denominations is needed. “We must grow in our journey with the Church, not in competition.”