By Rita McInerney

Ministries in the Church were discussed by Suzanne Elsesser, lay minister and free-lance journalist in the Catholic press, at the 30^th annual convention of the Atlanta Archdiocese Council of Catholic Women held Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19 and 20, at the Atlanta Marriott, Gwinnett Place.

“We’re women in the Church in the same boat,” Ms. Elsesser said, “but not the Titanic. I see us in an image of a sailboat,” being tossed about by the winds of change, but following the course and getting to the goal.

The outward ministry of the Church, she said, guided by the Holy Spirit, is linked by the universality of the bishops. The priests complete this traditional ministry now being augmented by the vowed religious, the sisters and brothers, and the emerging ministry of the laity.

Trends being followed today to encourage and strengthen the ministries of the Church, she continued, include the consultative process the bishops are using, asking the laity what they think; boards which advise the bishops and priests in affairs of the diocese and parish councils to advise the pastors.

Continuing education of the clergy, and the experience of women religious in decision-making positions were other examples of current trends today. Some women religious, she added, today “are in some very prophetic places, helping pave the way for us, calling the Church to look at injustices.”

Ms. Elsesser recently completed a study of programs that prepare laity for the ministry in dioceses throughout the United States for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Laity. She was associate director of the NCCB Parish Project where she edited its publication including the journal, Parish Ministry. She was also a principal developer of the RENEW program for the Archdiocese of Newark.

The decline in vocations to the priesthood has prompted an increase in programs that educate lay people to share responsibility, she said. To illustrate the availability of people for full-time professional ministry, she cited the number of inquiries, 4000, received by Maryknoll Missioners in New York state in the last few years from people interested in its training program for the ministry.

“We must keep the vision that we are the Church,” she said, “we can’t sit back and say ‘They should do that.’ We have to listen to the Holy Spirit and participate. We have to say clearly ‘I am equal, I am a first-class citizen, not second class, not subordinate.”

Ms. Elsesser reminded her audience that they must realize some women are feeling pain; those women in one-parent households who must leave their children each day and go to work; wives and mothers who work because a second income is needed to maintain the family; competent women in career situations whose labor is used and whose thinking is devalued.

On Saturday afternoon, in an interview with the Georgia Bulletin, the writer and mother of two adult children and one teenager, had stressed the importance of keeping a balance, as women, between the nurturing, traditional role, and the goal-oriented role.

“We need both,” she said of these special gifts women have, “for those of us who like to do the supportive acts, the cookie baking, and for those of us who want to do the other things, the decision-making.”

“What I say to people in that frustration is 'If you can identify what needs to be done, find the other women who are willing to work on the question, then present it to the pastor. Help provide the solution,’” she said.

Women must hold on to the vision that we’re Church and remember “that the goal is Christ’s mission, not ours.” Then women can, she said, “celebrate that we are participating in the mission of Christ in life.”

In her talk at the banquet concluding the convention, Ms. Elsesser brought greetings from the women of the Diocese of Cheyenne, which includes the entire state of Wyoming. She came to Atlanta Saturday after spending the previous week on a “deanery tour” with Bishop Joseph Hart and the president of the Council of Catholic Women. In her 1,000 mile tour she said she found a “real sense of women doing many different things, and a feeling of being affirmed.”

The same sense of aliveness and of women doing many different things was evident at the convention in Atlanta where workshop topics included: South Africa, older women, witnessing to the faith in the political arena, ministry through vocations, alcoholism and its impact on the family, and the laity in the Church today.

At the late morning workshop on alcoholism, Marchelle Sulivan, a staff member at Ridgeview Institute in Smyrna, shared her story as a recovering alcoholic and the adult child of an alcoholic with women often moved to tears by her experience and the chords they struck in their own memories.

Ms. Sulivan began by asking how many of the women in the crowded room had a family incidence of alcoholism. About half of them raised their hands. She went on to tell of her life as an adopted child, a student and a women who had married three alcoholics. She told the women that had “her bags packed for the convent when she took her first drink.” It was during the 60s, in California. She was 19.

But she was “here to bring a message of hope,” she told an audience whose empathy with the fragile looking young women was a strong current in the room.

Children who grow up in an alcoholic home are at a high risk of becoming alcoholic themselves, she said. Among children of alcoholics there is a high rate, also, of learning disabilities, suicide and overachievers.

Children who become alcoholic imitate their parents in a coping behavior, she said, because of the need to seek approval and to be socially acceptable. Spouses, she went on to say, adapt their lives to cover for their alcoholic partners.

Ms. Sulivan said alcoholics “Don’t trust, don’t feel, don’t share.” They avoid intimacy, are often workaholics, as well, and are prone to multiple affairs. Women alcoholics frequently suffer from ulcers, from neuroses, become addicted to prescription drugs.

Sometimes, she said, a spouse can “freak out” on a recovering alcoholic. “To fix one person causes dysfunction. You have to fix the entire family. If the family is not treated” so that a healthy communication and intimacy results, the marriage can end.

The spiritual journey into recovery begins when you admit you’re powerless” and then make a “decision to turn your will and life over to God. I’m going to try, others have done it. So can I, one day at a time.”

Taking moral inventory and admitting to God, to a priest or to a good friend “what hurts you have inflicted,” humility, brotherly love (making amends), discipline, prayer and meditation, learning to love, care and share, are other steps to spiritual health.

Mrs. Elizabeth Harris, wife of Gov. Joe Frank Harris, in her talk at a luncheon shared with women a poignant account of her faith as nurtured growing up as a “preacher’s kid” in numerous little towns across north Georgia where her father, a Methodist minister, served congregations. This moving about prepared her for life as a “political wife” and taught her that “You take your happiness and joy with you, no matter where you are.”

Just recently, she told her audience, she was strengthened by early-morning hours of prayer and Scripture reading before learning of her father’s heart attack. A passage she read from the fourth chapter of Mark on the parable of the sower was, coincidentally, the reading for the Mass of the day celebrated that morning by Father Anthony Green, of St. Elizabeth Seton in Manchester.

Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan celebrated the Eucharistic Liturgy on Saturday evening with several priests of the archdiocese concelebrating. Monsignor John F. McDonough, AACCW spiritual director, was homilist. The commissioning and blessing of officers was held after the Gospel.

Baby layettes for Crisis Pregnancy and other organizations, and used eyeglasses for the needy were presented with the offertory gifts.

In her report at the closing banquet, Mrs. Marie Doyle, of Sacred Heart Church, outgoing director of the Atlanta Province, announced that the 1988 General Assembly of the National Council of Catholic Women will be held in Atlanta.

John Lucas, of Holy Family parish in Marietta, who is beginning her second year as AACCW president, expressed gratitude to officers and commission chairmen for their hard work and cooperation over the past year.