John J. Shea, OSA: Letter to Pope Francis, Epiphany 2023

Epiphany 2023

Dear Pope Francis,

I write to you yet one more time. I hope you are well. I keep praying for you. Your concern for injustice, migrants, the poor, the environment, reform of the Vatican, and synodality is quite exceptional. Enclosed are a letter to each member of your Council of Cardinals and a letter for background mailed to each of the U.S. ordinaries in 2014.

John J Shea, OSA

In the beginning of your papacy, you addressed the need for honest dialogue in the church. Back then it was quite encouraging. You used to say: ‘dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.’ You even said: ‘dialogue fearlessly.’

On the ordination of women, however, there was only silence. You urged no dialogue at all — let alone anything synodal or gender inclusive. You are our Supreme Bridgebuilder. When will you call for the reform most critical for the church’s oneness and its leavening in the world?

“How can our church be whole if every women in it is ‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’? Why the image Dei of women ignored, disparaged, and nullified by you and the Vatican? What is it that keeps women from fully imaging our Three-in-One God? Will your signature ‘integral human development’ ever include the integral development of women?”

— John J Shea, OSA

How can our church be whole if every women in it is ‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’? Why the image Dei of women ignored, disparaged, and nullified by you and the Vatican? What is it that keeps women from fully imaging our Three-in-One God? Will your signature ‘integral human development’ ever include the integral development of women?

Will an intelligent view of gender ever dawn on a tragically uninformed, indolent, sleep walking, sheep-droved magisterium? Will today’s Vatican misogyny — sinful, robust, centuries encrusted, puerile and deadly — thwart the Spirit’s animation of the Church now and for ages to come?

Pope Francis, if the clericalism you rail against is a symptom, will you decry the underlying disease? Will you liberate servant ministry from patriarchal conceit? Will you insist on being a Patriarchal Pontiff who honors male gonadal difference but fails to honor the obvious body-and-soul integrity of the millions and millions of women in your care?

How long this confounding injustice in our Church? How long this confounding disrespect? How long this confounding contradiction?

Sincerely,

John J. Shea, OSA

Copy: Each member of the Council of Cardinals

John J. Shea, OSA: Letter to Bishops of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales - Ephiphany 2023

“ How can the church talk about the dignity and worth of women when it also sees women—much as in other traditional cultures—as inferior to men, as ‘‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’’?”

— John J Shea, OSA

Epiphany, 2023

Dear Bishops of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,

I hope you are well. In this time of synodality, I write to each of you again as head of diocese concerning the status of women in the church. Please allow me to share three stories that will help intro­duce a current letter to Pope Francis and one to his Council of Cardinals.

(1) In 1991, I was invited to India to speak at a conference honor­ing the life and work of Father D. S. Amalor­pavadass. After the con­ference, I offered a workshop on pastoral counsel­ling. At one point, a priest from a neigh­boring country said: “Can I ask you a prac­tical question?” I said: “Of course.” He told me that his most difficult pastoral problem was that mothers were killing their baby girls. Families were too poor to provide a dowry, and it was too difficult to keep them.

Later, as I reflected on the utter horror of mothers killing their own daughters, I kept asking myself: How can the church respond to this? Finally, it came to me: How can the church talk about the dignity and worth of women when it also sees women—much as in other traditional cultures—as inferior to men, as ‘‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’’?

(2) In the 1994 letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II says: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” This declaration was exceptionally effective. For almost thirty years, the global church has lived in a dialogue vacuum on this issue—a vacuum that unfortunately has impacted accounta­bility, authority, trust, transparency, teaching, loyalty, self-preservation, and timely research. In this vacuum, two of the con­cerns most neglected continue to be: (a) a credible, informed grasp of sexuality and gender; and (b) what it means for all of us to develop as full human beings.

Not only has this Vatican silencing occasioned seriously truncated, pre-synodal thinking and kept the human sciences at bay, but it has also brought intimidation, ignorance, denial, anger, fear, and division. Now, as a global church can we unite enough to courage­ous­ly interface reality? Are there institutions—Catholic and otherwise—in Australia, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and else­where with scholarly programs in the human sciences that may be able to help us recover from our truncation? Can we finally move past a fear-siloed, security-spent, feckless, pre-Vatican II fundamentalism in theology? In the spirit of Pope John XXIII, can our church once again open its windows to the world with­­out invoking gloom and doom, without pining for the “glory days” of patriarchy?

(3) In 1974, I was blessed to get an M.A. in Pastoral Counselling at St. Paul University in Ottawa. In 1980, I got a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Psychology of Religion) at the University of Ottawa. My interest was in human and religious growth and development coming together in actual practice as well as in theory. In 1981, the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Edu­cation of Fordham University hired me to teach six courses each year covering psychology and religion, pastoral counseling and care, and human and religious development. Each one of these areas was emerging in a way that informed pastoral practice; each was very helpful in bringing aspects of the Second Vatican Council to life.

Delighted and privileged as I was to teach in all of these areas, perhaps most chal­lenging and rewarding was human and religious development. I thoroughly enjoyed preparing for Life Cycle I each fall and Life Cycle II each spring. In 2005, Finding God Again: Spirituality for Adults was published. In 2018, Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human: A Mosaic of Peace was published. I am presently working on: “The Missing Fully Human: Adult Jesus and Followers, Adult Reality and the Parables, Adult Ritual and the Eucharist.” It is important for me to see caring as furthering Christian growth in search of wisdom.

In many years of study, teaching, research, and therapeutic practice (with some excellent supervisors), I have never come across a single thinker on the requisites of human and religious development—includ­ing our Incarnate God advanced “in wisdom, age, and grace”—who thinks that women are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus.”

Sincerely,

John J. Shea, O.S.A., Ph.D., MSW (Fordham University, 1981-2002; Boston College, 2003-2012; former Fellow, American Association of Pastoral Counselors)

John J Shea, OSA

John J. Shea, OSA: Letter to Cardinal Dolan, Season of Lent 2021

Season of Lent, 2021           

Dear Cardinal Dolan,

Salubrious Lent! I hope you are well. Nine years ago, I believe, I began writing to each one of the U.S. ordinaries about women’s body-and-soul status that is seen as an impediment to priestly ordination.

John J. Shea, OSA

Last year, I recounted an incident that, as you might expect, has stayed with me. In 1991, I was invited to India to speak at a conference honor­ing the life and work of Father D. S. Amalor­pavadass. After the con­ference, I offered a workshop on “Listening Skills in Pastoral Counsel­ling.” As I was describ­ing these skills, a priest from a neigh­boring country said: “Can I ask you a prac­tical question?” I said: “Of course.”

Mothers killing their baby girls was his most pressing pastoral problem. Families were too poor to provide a dowry, and it was too difficult to keep them. Later, reflecting on the horror of mothers killing their own daughters, I kept asking myself: “How can the church respond to this?” Then it came to me: “How can the church talk about the dignity and worth of women when it too sees women as inferior to men and as “‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’?”

While happily teaching that women are not fully in the likeness of Jesus, you and your dutiful priests and silo theologians remain com­pletely silent on women’s ontological-theological status in the church.

• This silence begs the question: “What is it in the likeness of Jesus that women lack?” Do you and your confreres think that Jesus—leavening the culture with amazing respect and care for women and men alike—concurs with your obvious hierarchal honoring of the sexes based on gonadal difference”? In imaging Jesus as priest, prophet, and ruler, are you content to ape the culture, to embrace doctrinally Freud’s notion that “biology is destiny”?

• This silence leaves women unrecog­nized, un­called, voiceless, misbegotten males, a sub-human or extra-human species.

• This silence makes it impos­sible for the church here and around the world to adequately pro­vide pastoral care and Eucharist.

• This silence writes off an ever-growing con­gregation—women and men alike—for whom the church is a sexist, sclerotic, deaf-dumb-and-blind, hope­lessly archaic, dehu­man­­­­izing institution—the binary opposite of caring, trustworthy, and prophetic.

If the U.S. bishops have had a challenging time speaking about women intelligently, is it time to allow women to speak for themselves? With serious inquiry, listening, and in­formed discus­sion—position, power, and privilege discounted enough—might a picture of women’s integral body-and-soul develop­ment emerge—a non-Freudian, non-sexist, present-day picture any normal person would easily recognize?

In a dialogue on women’s integrity are there ex­periences you can speak to that others would benefit from hearing? Is there wisdom you have gleaned over the years about the meaning of the Incar­nation and the giving of pastoral care? Can women not bring enduring qual­ities to every kind of ministry? Have you the courage to discuss with each other whether there is something essential to Jesus’ likeness that women lack?

Can you embrace a better theology than the literal, anthropomor­phic, “finger and thumb” thinking that so cripples and confounds us? Can a deeper, meta­phorical, and Trinitarian theology be had? If it is not in maleness that Jesus images the Father—if neither Father nor Spirit is biologically male—what do you believe the imaging is about?

In pastoral care, two things are realized as we grow older: one, the whole of lived experience; the other, a voice that takes responsi­bility for that experience. Must promising to uphold the church’s teach­ing mean—iron­ically and impossibly—forfeiting the wisdom that makes teaching and pastoral care possible? Might not the many voices at bishop-sponsored synods in Australia and Germany model a helpful way forward?

If “not fully in the likeness of Jesus”—mindlessly repeated for millennia—is a definition of “the big lie,” will you finally call this lie out? With real leadership, will you affirm that women fully image Father, Son, and Spirit? Will you declare that women will never again—in body or in soul—be denigrated in the church? At long, long, long last will you put an end to our church’s obscene, execrable ecclesiology of misogyny?

Our church suffers a profound, patri­archal, self-inflicted, justice-dissing, festering wound. As a pastoral and teach­ing bishop, will you take—quam primum—the healing of this wound upon yourself?

Sincerely,

John J. Shea, O.S.A.

To Pope Francis from Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ: An Appeal to Fully Respect the Dignity of Women

RIVER OF FIRE: My Spiritual Journey
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ
RANDOM House, New York

Appendix A:
A Letter to Pope Francis
An Appeal for the Catholic Church to Fully Respect the Dignity of Women
Personally delivered to him on January 21, 2016

Dear Pope Francis,

As I pray I feel the Holy Spirit stirring my heart to use the occasion of meeting you to share a deep concern I have for our Church. An ache and sorrow, actually. I rejoice as I watch your stalwart efforts to renew our Church, especially in the area of collegiality and empowerment of the laity. But over my many years of service within the Church (I’m just two years younger than you), I am saddened to encounter over and over a very deep wound at the heart of the Church, a wound which I am convinced infects and weakens every aspect of Church life. That wound, Holy Father, is the way the Church treats women. Except for a few token representatives, women’s voices are not directly heard in plenary synods, commissions, and tribunals. This thwarts the dynamic effect we women could have on dialogue and decision making in the fashioning of church policies and practices.

Women’s absence in these arenas is a huge loss depriving the Church of the practical wisdom women have from faith lived on the ground in daily life and from insights gained in our pondering God’s word in our hearts. Women’s access into Church forums in which we can share these experiences could do much to help our Church become more supple (open to surprises of the Holy Spirit), less cerebral and abstract, less rule bound and authoritarian. In short, more real. Not to mention less patriarchal and less clerical. How can we have a healthy Church that truly embodies the compassionate mind and heart of Christ if our males are deprived of a steady diet of give and take dialogue with women as equals (by ‘equal’ I mean fully empowered by the Holy Spirit)? The truth is Holy Father, in the Church as institution, the baptism of girls and women seems not to be fully empowering us with God’s Holy Spirit as is the baptism of boys and men. Thus, in institutional structures of the Church, women’s ways of ‘imaging’ God is muted. Simply because we are women there are certain opportunities of service from which we are systematically excluded.

If I may use my own life experience as an example: My ministry to awaken citizens on the issue of the death penalty (actually to evangelize them: Jesus and his teaching are at the heart of every talk I give) has brought m to speak to UN commissions, Congress, governors, citizens in civic groups, and religious bodies all over the United States and other countries. In Protestant churches I am allowed to preach, yet in my own Church I am not permitted to preach a homily. in fact, because I am a woman (a member of the laity, actually), I am not even permitted to proclaim the Gospel at mass. Present liturgical rules prohibit me from proclaiming the Gospel. My voice is muted in my own Church whom I love and have served all of my life. It is a wound, a pain, an ache that never goes away not only for me, but for all women. No doubt it is one of the reasons why young women as well as older ones distance themselves from the Catholic Church. They know they will never be admitted to full participation. They feel discounted, disrespected. What a loss of vibrancy to the Body of Christ.

This saddens me immensely. Somehow over the years, we in the Church have lost the kind of shared ministry Jesus had on the road with his disciples, both women and men, and that Paul shared with women as he established Christian churches far beyond the confines of Palestine. How can we once again recover that vibrancy?

I hope this doesn’t weary your spirit. You have already quickened life in our Church in a way I haven’t witnessed since Vatican II. I rejoice in your boldness and your joy. I love that you’re getting us out of building and rigid rule following and leading us to the hurting ones on the margins of society and even into the suffering of Mother Earth herself. I thank God for sending you to us and I pray for you every time I think of you which is often.

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ

I am in heart and training a religious educator so I can’t help but begin to imagine a three to five year catechetical (educational) pathway whereby the entire Church might be enabled to learn and dialogue and grow together toward a fuller understanding and embodiment of every women and man as full fledged, participating members of the Body of Christ. A huge task. But with the fire of the Holy Spirit and with the trust in each other, surely God will accomplish in us more than we can dream or imagine. One thing I do know, Pope Francis, I TRUST YOU.

Love abounding in Christ,
Love,
Sister Helen P

______________________________

Sister Helen Prejean is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty.  She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s vigorous opposition to all executions.

Born on April 21, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957. After studies in the USA and Canada, she spent the following years teaching high school, and serving as the Religious Education Director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans and the Formation Director for her religious community.

In 1982, she moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in order to live and work with the poor. While there, Sister Helen began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers. Two years later, when Patrick Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair, Sister Helen was there to witness his execution. In the following months, she became spiritual advisor to another death row inmate, Robert Lee Willie, who was to meet the same fate as Sonnier.

After witnessing these executions, Sister Helen realized that this lethal ritual would remain unchallenged unless its secrecy was stripped away, and so she sat down and wrote a book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Dead Man Walking hit the shelves when national support for the death penalty was over 80% and, in Sister Helen’s native Louisiana, closer to 90%. The book ignited a national debate on capital punishment and it inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play and an opera. Sister Helen also embarked on a speaking tour that continues to this day.

Sister Helen works with people of all faiths and those who follow no established faith, but her voice has had a special resonance with her fellow Catholics. Over the decades, Sister Helen has made personal approaches to two popes, John Paul II and Pope Francis, urging them to establish the Catholic Church’s position as unequivocally opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances. After Sister Helen’s urging, under John Paul II the catechism was revised to strengthen the church’s opposition to executions, although it allowed for a very few exceptions. Not long after meeting with Sister Helen in August of 2018, Pope Francis announced new language of the Catholic Catechism which declares that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, with no exceptions. 

Today, although capital punishment is still on the books in 30 states in the USA, it has fallen into disuse in most of those states. Prosecutors and juries alike are turning away from death sentences, with the death penalty becoming increasingly a geographical freak. Sister Helen continues her work, dividing her time between educating the public, campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. Sister Helen’s second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, was published in 2004; and her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, in 2019.

https://www.sisterhelen.org/

Stop Mansplaining Easter! Catholics demand the restoration of women to the Easter story

Just like John Paul II did during his papacy, Pope Francis has recently been moved to apologize for a Church history of male authoritarianism, male domination, the enslavement of women and sexual violence against women.  But the fact remains that acknowledgements and apologies without concrete action for change remain meaningless.

Despite occasional apologies, our Church continues to worship patriarchal power and male domination.  Despite the inclusive leadership modelled by Jesus, it is a Church controlled by men, for men.  The current sexual abuse crisis that has gripped the worldwide Church is a tragic reminder of why this corrupt, patriarchal model must change.

Approaching Easter, we recall the fact that it was women who Jesus chose to witness and preach the Good News of the Resurrection.  Despite this, we will not hear any women preaching the Gospel in any Catholic Church on Easter Sunday anytime soon. The voice of Mary Magdalene has been overpowered by a 'manshow' that is more comfortable with keeping her silent, alone and dismissible. She is barred from the pulpit.

Despite the Bible commemorating the service of Deacon Phoebe (and a recent papal commission on the ordination of women as deacons), there has been no report or significant movement from the Vatican toward the restoration of the ordained women's Diaconate.

Despite the Bible telling us about the Apostle Junia and despite Mary the mother of Jesus being the second most prominent model for sacramental priesthood (the first being her own son), these women would be barred from service in ordained ministry today on account of their lack of their 'missing maleness'.

Charity in the form of kind word or apologies is no substitute for justice withheld.  Depriving our Church of priests just because they happen to be women is an injustice to all Catholics and an insult to Jesus' model of equality and inclusion. The hostage-taking of Christianity by the all male clerical caste is wrong.  Why is Pope Francis allowing this injustice to continue when Jesus reminded us that we are all in his image and that we are all asked to bring his message of love to the world?

Dear Pope Francis, if Jesus chose Mary Magdalene to be the herald of the Good News, why won't we be hearing a woman preaching the Gospel this Easter Sunday?

Your sisters in Christ,

Women’s Ordination Worldwide

JOHN SHEA LETTER TO ARCHBISHOP KURTZ - FEBRUARY 2016

Dear Archbishop Kurtz,

The Beginning of Lent, 2016

I am writing to you and to all the ordinaries in the United States to ask you to discuss at your next assembly a core issue of structural re- form in our church—ecclesia semper reformanda—an issue that contin- ues to disrespect every aspect of our identity and mission: the decision to see women as not worthy of ordination to the priesthood.

Of all the things that Pope Francis has said and done, the way he opened the Synod on the Family in 2014 was perhaps the most extraor- dinary: he asked the bishops to speak “freely,” “boldly,” and “without fear.” On the one hand, this exhortation is incredibly shocking, that he would have to ask his fellow bishops—grown men and the church’s teachers—to speak honestly with each other. On the other hand, given the atmosphere of the Vatican where honest dialogue can have such negative consequences, his exhortation was not only necessary but even a modest sign of hope in our not-very-relational church.

If you believe that the ordination of women to the priesthood is vital for the integrity, mutuality, and viability of our church, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you find there is nothing in Scripture or tradition that is prejudi- cial against women or that precludes their ordination to the priesthood, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you know that the actual history of ordination—of women as well as men—needs to be acknowledged and carefully understood by you and your fellow bishops, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you know that any given woman is as religiously mature and able to provide pastoral care as any given man (please see the enclosed letter), I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If seeing women and men either through a “complementarity” lens or in light of precious “theological symbolism” is not pertinent to women’s ordination, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you believe the letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, arrested dialogue on the ordination of women at a time when it could have been open, intelli- gent, and fruitful, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you see the letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, as an historical expla- nation of ordination rather than a theological explanation (please see the enclosed letter), I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you think the theological explanation declared by the Vatican in the 1970s and 1980s—that women cannot be ordained because they are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus”—would be silly if it were it not so he- retical, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you know that the church’s opposition to the ordination of wom- en is understood—inside and outside the church—as affirming women’s inferiority and as justifying domestic violence and other atrocities against women, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you understand why so many of the adult faithful in this country are leaving the church in droves over the injustice of women barred from priesthood—if you see that a “patriarchal Jesus” is a colossal contradic- tion—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If the church’s current practice seriously undermines our God’s re- lational Three-in-Oneness—if a huge patriarchal plank is stuck in the church’s eye, worshipping the Father as male, the Son as male, and the Holy Spirit as male—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

Archbishop Kurtz, if you want our church—including the domestic church—to walk proudly on two feet instead of imitating patriarchal cul- ture and hobbling around on one and if you know that our church will never be fully in the likeness of Jesus until women are fully in that like- ness, please—honoring the human and the divine—have the courage to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

Sincerely,
John J. Shea, O.S.A.

P.S. Enclosed is a letter I mailed to all the ordinaries in the United States at the beginning of Lent in 2014. 

Letter to Maryknoll Superior regarding threatened Excommunication of Roy Bourgeois, November 24, 2008

November 24, 2008

Superior General, John Sivalon
P.O. Box 303
Maryknoll, NY 10545

Dear Father Sivalon:

I write as Coordinator of the ecumenical network, Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW), with regard to the threatened excommunication of Fr. Roy Bourgeois. Founded in 1996, WOW has representatives from 11 countries, and reaches many others through its international groups.

In 2001, at WOW’s first international conference in Dublin, Vatican pressure forced the keynote speaker, Aruna Gnanadason, of the World Council of Churches, to withdraw. Two other speakers, Sister Joan Chittister OSB and Sister Myra Poole SND, were threatened with serious consequences. Reflecting on the Benedictine tradition of obedience and authority, Chittister’s Prioress, Sister Christine Vladimiroff, wrote, ‘There is a fundamental difference in the understanding of obedience within the monastic tradition and that which is being used by the Vatican to exert power and control and prompt a false sense of unity inspired by fear.’

Member groups of WOW represent a range of opinion on the ‘contra legem’ ordinations. Some women within our movement who feel called to ordination have chosen to wait for change in the Church’s official position. Others, in an act of prophetic obedience to what they experience as a call from God and their communities, have chosen to take the path of valid but illegal ordination. WOW honours the courage and commitment of both groups.

Since the decree of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), Roman Catholic women who feel called to ordained ministry, and those who support them, have been silenced. They have no voice within the Church’s structures to make their views heard.

In this context, the threatened excommunication of Fr. Roy is a penalty that is out of all proportion to his supposed offence. His decision to speak out on women’s ordination is an act of witness to his passion for justice and the Gospel. It is time to call a halt to this bullying of committed Catholics whose concern is to make the Gospel message of love, justice and compassion a reality for the world. What is at stake here is the Church’s integrity as an institution which purports to uphold these Gospel values, and its regard for the teaching of the primacy of conscience.

‘Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before anything else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official church’.
- Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II,
  ed. Vorgrimler, 1968, on Gaudium et Spes, pt.1, ch.1.

‘Criticisms of papal declarations will be possible and necessary to the degree that they do not correspond with Scripture and the Creed, that is, with the belief of the Church. Where there is neither unanimity in the Church nor clear testimony of the sources, then no binding decision is possible; if one is formally made, then its preconditions are lacking and therefore the question of its legitimacy must be raised.’
- Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwuerfe zur Ekklesiologie, p. 144; Patmos 1969 (emphasis added).

In conclusion, I quote from the keynote address by Aruna Gnanadason of the WCC, written for WOW’s first conference in Dublin:

‘We live in a world of exclusion and violence; a world with untold forms of discrimination that threaten the integrity of communities.…. In the life of the church itself, there is evidence of gender-based discrimination and even of sexual abuse of women in pastoral contexts and more recently of the new steps the church has been called to take in the face of increasing evidence of paedophilia. In such a context, what should ordained ministry be about? The Church is called to respond with compassion and pastoral fortitude. At the heart of the commitment to the ordination of women and men must be the concern for the community in which the church is present to serve.’
- Gnanadason 2001, available at www.womenpriests.org/wow/gnanad.asp.

We urge you to support Fr. Roy’s right to speak and act on this issue, and to oppose his excommunication. We assure you of our prayers as you reflect on the matter.

Yours sincerely

Jennifer Stark
Coordinator, Women’s Ordination Worldwide

Member organizations of WOW

Brothers and Sisters in Christ (Ireland)

Catholic Women’s Ordination (Great Britain)

Catholic Network for Women’s Equality (Canada)

Femmes et Hommes en Eglise (France)

Wir Sind Kirche (We are Church) (Germany)

Housetop /www.womenpriests.org (Great Britain)

IKETH (European Federation of Women Theologians)

Maria von Magdala (Germany)

Miriam (Austria)

New Wine (Great Britain)

Ordination of Catholic Women (Australia)

Phoebe (Japan)

Roman Catholic Women Priests (North America)

Roman Catholic Women Priests (Europe-West)

Women’s Ordination Conference (USA)

Letter to Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales re Ludmila Javorova, January 12, 2008

January 12, 2008

Monsignor Andrew Summersgill
General Secretary
Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales
39 Eccleston Square
LONDON, SW1V 1BX

Dear Monsignor Summersgill:

I am writing with regard to the ordination of Ludmila Javarova, a woman priest ordained into the Roman Catholic Czech underground church in 1970 by Bishop Felix Davidek. A letter in support of Ludmila, and asking for her rehabilitation, has been sent by me on behalf of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) to His Holiness Pope Benedict. I enclose a copy here for you.

Women’s Ordination Worldwide is an ecumenical network of national and international groups who work for the inclusion of women in all ordained ministries, particularly at this time within the Roman Catholic Church.

We would be grateful for the bishops’ reflection and prayers on this matter, and would also welcome a response from you on behalf of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

Women’s Ordination Worldwide sends the Bishops’ Conference our prayers for a whole and inclusive priesthood which will affirm and use the rich gifts of women and men together in ministry and mission, for the healing of the Church and the world.

Yours sincerely,

Jennifer Stark
Coordinator, Women’s Ordination Worldwide 

Letter to Pope Benedict XVI Requesting Rehabilitation and Acceptance of Ludmila Javorova's valid ordination to ministerial priesthood, January 12, 2008

Letter to Pope Benedict XVI Requesting Rehabilitation and Acceptance of Ludmila Javorova's valid ordination to ministerial priesthood

January 12, 2008

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City
Europe

Dear Pope Benedict

I write to you on behalf of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW), a network of national and international groups whose primary goal at present is the admission of women to all ordained ministries in the Roman Catholic church. This letter has been written in collaboration with Wir Sind Kirche (Germany).

You have spoken convincingly in your encyclical ‘Deus caritas est’ about God’s love which manifests itself among people. In the spirit of this love we approach you today with a fervent wish, which surely cannot leave you unmoved.

We, Roman Catholic and other Christian women and men of the organisation WOW (Women’s Ordination Worldwide), have supported R. C. women with a vocation to the priesthood and the diaconate for a long time. We therefore express our hope for a change in Canon 1024 of Canon Law.

Our request today is the rehabilitation and acceptance of Ludmila Javorova’s valid ordination to the ministerial priesthood. As you well know, her ordination was a valid act of ordination by Bishop Felix Davidek; it was witnessed by members of the Czech underground church ‘Koinotes’ on December 27th, 1970 and prepared by a synod of the church. Bishop Felix Davidek had long been convinced that the traditional and traditionalist arguments against the ordination of women could no longer be accepted by society in the 20th century. Society was in need of ‘the service of woman as a special instrument for the sanctification of humankind’. The underground church then could survive communist persecution only by ordaining married men and women as priests; alas, the communist state did not recognise them as such.  The courage of these men and women, often fearing for their lives, cannot be esteemed highly enough. The R.C. official church has recognised the ordination of the men and in some cases they continued their priestly ministry, as married men, in another denomination. But the women priests?

 Pope John Paul II sent a message by the then Bishop of Brno to Ludmila Javorova after the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, that she was prohibited in her function as a priest. How can that be? Why do different standards operate here? What happened to Ludmila Javorova’s work in the last twenty years in extremely difficult conditions? She was Bishop Felix Davidek’s Vicar General; all papers, documents, communications of the underground church, a network of small cells of spiritual work, went through her hands. Apart from doing the required administrative work she was active in her pastoral role, she organised secret seminars, was the messenger between the different cells, worked in women’s jails, in particular supporting imprisoned nuns, and accompanied the dying.

She led a life in permanent danger of being found out by the secret police. And for that she is supposed to be humiliated by silence? Just like the ordained men, Ludmila Javorova and the other women, ordained with her, are priests for life.

Pope Benedict, even if one cannot change Canon Law very quickly, you can, by the process of an Indult, recognise the ordination of Ludmila Javorova. To operate such a special permission, frequently invoked because of pastoral necessity, is now quoted as being impossible, simply because it deals with women. Has not Teresa of Avila complained about the same thing, over 400 years ago? How much longer are women supposed to wait until they will be treated justly?

Ludmila Javorova cannot wait. She is 75 years of age and has a severe cardiac illness. Would it not be high time to celebrate her life and work? Everybody who has met her and experienced how she radiated her faith, has felt that Ludmila Javorova is a priest.

You, Pope Benedict, have the power to confirm that the ordination of Ludmila Javorova was valid. In the name of divine love we ask you strongly to recognise the life and work of Ludmila Javorova by an Indult and to effect a reconciliation of her church with her. We ask you to give a sign of God’s love, visible on earth.

Full of hope, we send you our cordial greetings and wish God’s rich blessing on your pontificate.

Jennifer Stark (WOW Coordinator)
On behalf of all women and men in WOW

The Steering Committee of WOW consists of delegates from the following:

Miriam (Austria)

Ordination of Catholic Women (Australia)

Bangladesh (Individual member)

Catholic Network for Women’s Equality (Canada)

Femmes et Hommes en Eglise (France)

Wir Sind Kirche/Germany (Germany)

Maria von Magdala (Germany)

Catholic Women’s Ordination (Great Britain)

New Wine (Great Britain)

Housetop/www.womenpriests.org

IKETH (Inter-religious Conference of European Women Theologians)

Roman Catholic Women Priests - North America

Roman Catholic Women Priests - Europe-West

Brothers and Sisters in Christ (Ireland)

Phoebe (Japan)

Women’s Ordination Conference (USA)

An Open Letter to Pope Benedict from Catholic Organizations on the World Day of Prayer for Women's Ordination, March 14, 2007

AN OPEN LETTER FROM CATHOLIC ORGANIZATIONS TO POPE BENEDICT XVI
ON THE WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR WOMEN’S ORDINATION
MARCH 14, 2007

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Apostolic Palace
VATICAN CITY

Your Holiness,

 Every year on 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Catholics around the world organize events to bring attention to the fact that Catholic women are excluded from ordination. This year will be the 14th annual World Day of Prayer for Women’s Ordination, and we expect that there will be over 25 events around the world.

 In honor of this day, we invite you to lead the way in presenting a fair and equitable model of how women should be treated in our world by taking the necessary steps to open all doors to women within the Roman Catholic Church, including admission to all ordained ministries.  We also ask that you work to renew church structures in order to involve all members in governance.  By acting justly within our own ranks, we, the body of Christ, can affect society.

 On the same day that we celebrate Mary saying ‘yes’ to God, we are saying ‘yes’ to women’s leadership in the Church.  Mary’s decision was conscious and deliberate, and it made her an active partner in bringing about the reign of God.  By praying for women to be priests on this day, we embrace Mary’s spiritual power and her prophetic role in God’s plan of justice for the world.

 Because Mary is a spiritual leader and some even call her a priest, on 25 March we will pray for women’s ordination to a renewed priestly ministry.  We will also pray for the difference that women in church governance would make by addressing the issues of social justice that disproportionately affect women, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS, genocide and more.  

The exclusion of women and lay men from the full decision making and sacramental life of the Church is linked to these issues in that — while the impact has extremely different levels of intensity — the root cause is the same: male domination and sexism.

 As this day of prayer approaches, we urge you to open the discussion on women’s ordination and the need for change in Church structures.  To bring our beloved Church closer to the gospel values that Jesus modeled for us, we need all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in women as well as in men, to be fully integrated into every aspect and ministry of the Church.

Thanking you for your time and consideration,

 Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Ireland

Call to Action, USA

Catholics for a Free Choice, USA

Catholics for a Free Choice, Canada

Catholic Network for Women’s Equality, Canada

Catholic Women’s Ordination, United Kingdom

CORPUS, USA

Dignity, USA

Interreligious Conference of European Women Theologians, Germany

Femmes at Hommes en Eglise, France

Housetop, United Kingdom

National Coalition of American Nuns, USA

New Wine, Great Britain

New Ways Ministry, USA

Phoebe, Japan

Purple Stole Movement of We Are Church, Germany

Quixote Center, USA

Roman Catholic Womenpriests Europe-West, Germany, France, and Switzerland

Roman Catholic Womenpriests North America, USA and Canada

Save Our Sacraments, USA

Sisters Against Sexism, USA

Southeastern Pennsylvania Women's Ordination Conference, USA

Women’s Ordination Conference, USA

Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, USA

CC: 

Most Reverend Pietro Sambi, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States

Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Most Reverend David J. Malloy, General Secretariat, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops