Subject: Women and the Catholic Church in Australia

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 EVIDENCE TO THE AUSTRALIAN BISHOPS HEARINGS ON THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH

Adelaide Hearings: Wednesday June 18 - Friday June 20, 1997

Evidence from Moira Deslandes: 18 June 9.00am

This paper is my own views and not written to represent anyone other than myself. I was allowed 20 minutes to give my presentation, after which the panel were invited to ask questions. Those assembled to listen were not able to question, clarify or debate the issues. The hearings were based on the Senate model of public hearings from the Australian Parliament. The panellists representing the Australian Bishops were: Archbishop of Adelaide Leonard Faulkner, Australian Catholic University Dr Marie MacDonald, Executive Secretary of the Australian Bishops Committee for Justice, Development and Peace Dr Michael Costigan and representing the Australian Congregational Religious Leaders Institute, Patricia O'Donnell OP. By December 1996, the project commissioned by the Australian Bishops, had received over 2500 written submissions and the hearings being conducted around the country are adding to this evidence. The research will culminate into a report to the Australian Bishops Conference in 1998. The project asked people to respond to four questions:1. What are the various ways in which women participate in the Catholic Church in Australia ?

2. What assistance and support are currently offered to women to participate in the Church ?

3. What are the barriers to women's participation in the Church ?

4. What are some ways in which women's participation in the Church can be increased ? The diagrams and the quote from Denis Edwards and Joan Chittister were presented on overhead, as were my 10 point plan.

Introduction

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to give evidence to these hearings.

I would like to preface my evidence by saying that I affirm and appreciate the life of the Church I experience as a woman in this Diocese and in my parish of Noarlunga Downs as part of the Seaford community. I enjoy considerable personal support and friendship from many in the organised church. The opportunities I have had are rare are not often true for women in other dioceses in Australia. As this is the Australian Bishops hearing and not just our own Diocese I therefore feel it is important to speak on some fundamental issues. Principles of Practice

I intend to make my points based on a few principles from Jesus and feminism.

 The Jesus principles I want to base my comments on are these:

· inclusion

· compassion

· communion

Jesus was a good man and a good Jew and in his life, death actions and prayers he:

· rejected the blood taboo

· raised a young woman from the dead

· talking with women Gentiles in public places

· taught women

· asked them to be disciples and evangelists

· used feminine images of God

· prayed to a maternal and paternal God

· offered his body and blood as a sign and sacrament of his God

· placed women at the centre of his message

· modelled leadership with men

· openly declared his love for his male and female friends equally

· he put the poor, the meek, the bereaved, the oppressed, the ones who speak out for justice as the citizens in his kin(g)dom

The feminist principles applied in my methodology to speak to you today are that:

· women's experience is valid for what it is and needs no further justification, experience is central to any analysis

· transformative action is the result of research and analysis

And the feminist values on which these are based are:

· women are oppressed

· the personal is political

· feminism and feminist experience requires a shift to feminist centrality

Gospel centrality and feminist centrality - means approaching life from the perspective of the poor and ensuring those who are in this category include women and the types of people Jesus stood with - and there is no doubting in each of these circumstances the poor include women as the single most identified group. Personal background and bias

As the personal is political: I would like to say a few things about myself. These are the biases I will bring and the life experiences which are my evidence, and inform my evidence.· I was born the day Pius XII died and have grown up a Catholic in a post Vatican 2 church· I have been married since I was 19 and therefore am limited to a single experience of intimate personal relations· I am a white woman who has four children and had experienced the loss of a child through miscarriage, the agony and the ecstasy of child birth and child raising with a committed and loving husband and father

· I am active in a number of social and political movements

· I have had the privilege of an education and have three degrees

· I belong to the Seaford Catholic Community (6 years) and two women's spirituality groups - one ecumenically based (for 3 years) and the other solely with Catholic women (for 10 years)

· I have been an employee of the welfare and planning parts of the church bureaucracy and served on a number of Diocesan bodies

· I am the managing director of a workers cooperative which specialises in social policy development, training and evaluations

· I have worked with many community and church groups, individuals and families

· as a social worker I have heard thousands of hours of personal pain inflicted on women and children by men of indescribable violence and abuse, I have sat with women - across all ages, ethnic groups and beliefs who have made choices they felt were not really choices and grieved with them when they have chosen life over death and grieved with them when they have chosen death over life

· I have experienced the corruption of our church first hand and its inability to manage diversity and its rigidity to rules, lack of pastoral care and cruelty

· I have experienced the generosity of our church first hand and its ability to reach out in compassion and embrace justice with pastoral care and inclusion

All in all; the fact is that I am a feminist precisely because I am a Catholic - not as a reaction to what is wrong with the church but as a response to what is right about the Church (Chittister 1987:18)

What do I mean by Church ?

The last foundation stone to define is what I mean by "church". This is the hardest one of all!

Here are some of my understanding of what I mean by church:

· if we accept the family is the domestic church - then I experience church in my family - however this experience is not confined to the private sphere it is also in the public domain and cannot be contained within the home the church is also the universal family of believers - and I experience church in my ecumenical encounters

· the church as the gathering of the faithful around the Eucharist as the source and summit of our lives - I experience church in my Sunday worshiping community and in other communities and small groups I belong to

The mission I am on as a woman participating in the Australian church is grounded in renewal. Adelaide theologian, Denis Edwards has argued the renewal of the church depends on two positions:

1. The world is the place where God is acting to save and liberate, the place where God's kingdom is already breaking in upon life

2. The church is called to be the sign and the instrument of God's liberating activity in the world. The task of the baptised believer is called to this task of being a sign and instruments of God's salvation.(Called to be Church in Australia, p 77)

The areas of renewal I would like to identify relate directly to my life and come out of the baptismal rite and the subsequent rights and responsibilities.

Family Life - motherhood and intimacy

Motherhood is rarely valued or honoured as a vocation unless it is linked to Mary Mother of God. This role and vocation of motherhood is sentimentalised rather than held up as the challenging and demanding job it is.

As a woman and a wife I seek fulfilment in my relationship with my husband through intimacy. I think many men in leadership in the church have confused sexuality with intimacy and have therefore misunderstood the gift of sexuality. Women are stereotyped in the church as producers and reproducers - producers of services and reproducers of children.It is not enough o have a home for single mums, or offer counselling or sex education in our schools - we must first and foremost put together a plan for men to take on responsibility for their sexuality, learn about intimacy and offer models of successful manhood.

Public Life - loneliness and support from organised church

It is very lonely to be in the forums and worlds I am in and acknowledge my church connections. Women like myself carry the gospel into the Board rooms and the parliaments, the law courts and industry. The ministry to the union movement and to parliament house has fallen away and needs to be reexamined.

I get much of my support outside of the formal institution of the church and from non-Catholics. I am regularly disappointed by how long it often takes the organised church to speak on matters of injustice - we need more signs of this from the Australian Bishops - in issues which relate to women as victims of domestic violence; women who have been sexually abused, women who are struggling to keep their families together in dire economic and social circumstances.

Ecumenical Life - personal and national

I am confronted though by my inability to fully participate in some activities on my churches behalf and with its blessing. This comes home to me most though when I'm with other women in a spirituality group. I am the only woman in the group that is not empowered by her church to minister. I do not believe I am any less a woman of faith than these women.

Through my involvement in the national ecumenical movement I have been frustrated at times at being a Catholic representative , but not empowered to make a decision on behalf of my church. Bishops, lay and clergy from other denominations understand and are respectful of my situation, however the split between participation and authority has been a constant source of annoyance.

Sacramental life - ministry

If the Eucharist is the source and summit which I believe then we should not be denying it to millions of people around the world - just because a priest is not there- surely the real issue is what is the meaning of Eucharist - not what is the meaning of priesthood - I believe when we deepen our understanding of Eucharist it will not matter who is presiding at the table.

There are many ways women could participate in the sacraments more fully and we are not using what is available to its fullest potential - this would be a good start. Lets take the sacrament of baptism - Women can administer baptism in an emergency, I think we live in a time in our church which is an emergency and maybe we need to extend this privilege to other sacraments as well.

I want nothing more and will settle for nothing less than full participation in this church to which I am a full baptised member and while I am excluded, because of my gender, from the full range of opportunities to participate, the church fails the Jesus principles of inclusion, compassion and communion with our God.

To assist the Bishops I have designed a 10 point plan - five for personal action and ten for collective action.

My 10 point plan for the Australian Bishops:

· each Australian Bishop find ways in their own diocese of sharing power with womenand identify ways in which women can share in the decision making.

· each Australian Bishop to set aside in the next five years a seven day retreat in which he prayerfully reflects on the role and place of women in the Australian church and publishes his reflections as a result of this retreat.

· each Australian Bishop to visit women only groups on each of his pastoral visitations to parishes - women's coffee groups, CWL, WATAC, mothers clubs, women's health centres, women's refuges, women's support groups. That at every second Bishops conferences a half day is set aside for each of the Bishops to compare notes on their experiences of these pastoral visits

· each Australian Bishop write a journal to their father (dead or alive) and search for the meaning on what it means to be a man in this ever changing culture.

· Each Australian Bishop and the Australian Bishops Conference invite a specialist in men's spirituality and some Aboriginal men to work with them on issues of partnership and manhood

· the Australian Bishops Conference conduct an audit of the number of women in leadership in the organised church and actively seek to have positions filled over the next ten years to a 50% quota

· the Australian Bishops Conference appoint women observers to their Conferences and invite the observers to present a reflection on their listening at the end of each Conference

· the Australian Bishops Conference formally commission individual Bishops to attend as listeners only women's events each year (eg WATAC conferences, CWL gatherings, Women in business conferences, National Women's Support services events eg in domestic violence and child abuse)

· the Australian bishops Conference make a policy decision to speak out at every opportunity on the injustices to women's place in society and the economy and formally commission women to act as their spokesperson in these matters

· the Australian Bishops Conference undertake a study into the sacraments and sacramental life of the Australian Church I was asked two questions by the panel:

Marie Mac Donald asked me why I had emphasised the relationship of husband and wife over mother.

I answered saying this is the primary unity of family and therefore the domestic church. It offers a model of partnership between men and women and therefore has something to offer to this conversation. Also I expected they would have heard lots about motherhood and I wanted to add something new.

Archbishop Faulkner wanted to know more about the men's issue;

I recommended he read :Manhood" by Steve Biddulph and I explained to him that it is men who are is crisis - the high male youth suicide rate, the number of men who do not asked responsibility for their families and children by not paying child support, the ones who abuse their children who are perpetrators of domestic violence. As we have a male celibate clergy they have a responsibly to model manhood and should do so through any opportunities they have open to them for intimate relationships eg they could foster children!

References

Chittister, J (1987) Yesterday's Dangerous Vision Sojourners July:18-21

Dorr, D (1991) The Social Justice Agenda Collins-Dove, Melbourne

Edwards, D (1987) Called to Be Church in Australia St Pauls Homebush

ã Moira Deslandes, June 1997

Postscript

I have had an enormous number of requests for this paper and I am happy for it to be circulated with due acknowledgment. I intend to re-work it at some later date for another purpose. I would appreciate being kept informed of how you have found it helpful and it want context you have used the points (eg personal reflection, study, preaching as this will guide my re-writing). I can be contacted at:

Moira DeslandesEmail: