The theme for International Women’s Day this March was ‘More Powerful Together’. UN Women has a number of focus areas but the one that should concern us as Catholics, women and men, is ‘Women’s Leadership and Political Participation’.
Executive director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has said we need the full and equal participation of women if we are to find solutions to our world’s most pressing challenges – that is, the ending of poverty, the reduction of inequality, work towards sustainable peace and combatting climate change. Just 22.7% of members of Parliament worldwide are women, while in our backyard (the Pacific) that figure falls to 16%. Four of the five countries in the world that have no women in Parliament are in the Pacific. And while our neighbour New Zealand seems comfortable with a woman Prime Minister, Australia’s one attempt seemed to cause all sorts of alarm.
Numerous studies have shown businesses benefit from the inclusion of women in the decision-making ranks. Women bring different viewpoints, different styles of communication and management, but more tangibly, businesses’ often have improved profits, with less risk.
So, the benefits of having greater gender diversity in business and governments is clear but is it really necessary for the Catholic church? After all, we’ve managed fine for the past couple of millennia.
And the answer to that as everyone has become painfully aware, is we haven’t managed fine.
INVISIBILITY
It’s quite a trick played on Catholic women. Despite being highly visible in our pews, in pastoral outreach and other work, when it comes to decision-making in the higher echelons we’re invisible – silenced. The insidiousness of the trick is that we often don’t notice it. Individually we feel heard, supported, have agency in the work we do for the church, both volunteer and paid. It’s just somewhere along the way, that individual agency is lost. Yet there is plenty of evidence that having women involved in decision-making benefits the church.
Towards the end of last year, The Australian Catholic Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council urged the use of a quota mechanism to give women decision-making roles at all levels of the church. This came after evidence that gender played a role in diverse sexual abuse rates across the country. The Royal Commission found the Australian Catholic diocese with one of the lowest child sexual abuse rates over six decades was Adelaide, which had pioneered the appointment of lay women and nuns as episcopal vicars with authority over priests.
VOICES OF FAITH
There are organisations working to make women’s voices heard. One of those is Voices of Faith. At the Vatican, women make up less than 3% of the leadership. No woman has ever been appointed to the most senior levels of the Roman Curia, despite these positions being open to women. Voices of Faith aims to bring together leaders in the Vatican with the global Catholic community, so they can recognise that women have the expertise, skills and gifts to play a full leadership role in the Church.
It asks why does the Church continue to deny women that right based purely on gender? It amplifies the capability of women in education and programs of social transformation, especially in areas of marginalisation and extreme poverty. And, above all it showcases the enormous and under-utilised potential of women to exercise leadership at all levels of the Catholic Church.
The organisation has three measurable goals to end the silence of women’s voices in the Catholic Church. The three goals are:
- Women have voting rights in future synods.In October 2019, the Synod on Amazonia is planned. Voices of Faith wants to ensure that religious sisters can cast their votes at this synod, for the very first time.
- Women begin assuming Vatican leadership roles. Voices of Faith continues to lobby for transparent hiring practices and work with faithful Catholic women who have skills and expertise to lead at the highest levels of the Church.
- An official process of change to bring women to leadership roles at all levels in the Catholic Church.What could an open, consultative process for women in the Church look like? We must begin to discuss this now.
LAITY HAS AGENCY
The theme of Being More Powerful Together should not stop with the inclusion of more women in church decision making. It resonates for all of us – women and men. We all need to find our voices. The laity do have agency in the church, according Dominican and co-founder and executive director of the Lay Mission Project, Michael Sweeney. In Commonweal, Sweeney says we tend to disenfranchise ourselves when we identify the church with the hierarchy. That the laity have no agency in the church is not magisterial teaching; it is not, in fact, true, Sweeney said. Rather than limiting our imagination to personal piety, we Catholics should become co-responsible in our participation in the one priesthood of Christ.
Lent is a time when are invited to go into the desert with Jesus, to feel something of our own weaknesses and temptations. Perhaps our temptations are those of despair or disgruntlement – ‘what can I do, what can I change’. As the Chinese proverb says a ‘journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ – what steps can we take on our journey to more inclusion? And as we undertake the journey to being more powerful together, remember Psalm 90(91):1-2, 10-15 – a song full of confidence in the power of God to help us endure the difficulties of life.
Adapted from a talk at Mass given to celebrate International Women’s Day.