Finding our voices
D'Aponte, Mimi
FINDING OUR VOICES GRASSROOTS 1985 FOR MANY American Catholics, 1984 was a year when certain issues loomed particularly large — abortion, the role of religion in the presidential election, the...
...9 August 1985: 435...
...The women I contacted fell into three groups...
...For me the giant issue of 1984 was the question of voice...
...Despite their frustration, those with whom t spoke were not looking for exit signs but avenues for dialogue...
...What I learned in college and what I'm finding in parish work are in direct contradiction...
...Our own Brooklyn group, in reaction to last year's-controver-sies about abortion, politics, and women is the church, has now developed an offshoot, called Another Voice, to address itself, through open membership, information-gathering, invited speakers, and letter writing, to women's concerns in the church...
...As a university speech teacher who had spent twenty-five years helping students find their voices, as a parent educating four children (three of them daughters) as Roman Catholics, I was frightened by the specter of voiceless American Catholic women...
...to be published next December on the twentieth anniversary of the close of Vatican II...
...The voices I heard almost invariably bristled with frustration, often sparkled with independence, but rarely reflected hope...
...They are being heard despite hierarchical preference that they be hushed...
...Prayer and service to the needy are their most common reasons for existence...
...I sought opinions on the threatened expulsion of the twenty-four ad-signers...
...Before my 1985 search for women's voices began filling in some historical gaps, I hadn't realized that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had been formed in 1956...
...OF THESE more than seventy-five responses, there were but six tentative expressions of hope...
...Peace activist in California...
...Women religious whom I knew to be forward-looking about woman's place in the church...
...I asked everyone two obvious questions: "Do you believe you can participate in some manner in the decision-making processes of the Catholic church and, if so, how...
...The experience of a group to which I belong is probably not untypical...
...to meet with other groups...
...So do narrative names: Quixote Center, Catholic Good, Call to Action...
...in religion — and then bail out...
...Women from a wide variety of social and economic backgrounds with whom I had in common a single awesome responsibility: the education of our children as Catholics...
...I sought opinions generally on women's issues in the church...
...City University of New York...
...The question, in fact took a more specific form thanks to the Ferraro-O'Connor clash over abortion, the discussion of the proposed American pastoral on women, the "femini-zation of poverty" described in the economics pastoral, and the Vatican's threat to expel from their orders the women religious signers of the New York Times ad on Catholic pluralism and abortion...
...How do you raise five children in the church, earn a Ph.D...
...Peace and Justice Commissions, the strong involvement of Catholics in freeze and peace groups...
...The psychic pain of dedicated people trying hard to bind up the church again is mind-boggling...
...Hope focused, then, on women's continuing search for a voice in the church...
...Nurse and mother of three, Westchester County, New York...
...FINDING OUR VOICES GRASSROOTS 1985 FOR MANY American Catholics, 1984 was a year when certain issues loomed particularly large — abortion, the role of religion in the presidential election, the bishops' economics pastoral...
...What I find in the church is intellectual aridity...
...The revelation of these conversations came not from the answers per se but from the manner of answer, the rhetoric of response...
...Everyone with whom I spoke wished for'some voice in the affairs of the church...
...to "talk with one's feet...
...her work on Italian ritual , theater has recently been published in Italian...
...Acronyms proliferate: NETWORK, ARf^CC, WATER...
...Charismatic groups have played a part...
...from women returning to high school and to college after having raised their children...
...Finally, members of various ministries — liturgy committees, confirmation classes, commissions on peace and justice, prayer groups...
...Paraphrase of a response from a Connecticut theologian...
...I began a search for women's voices — began it out of personal necessity...
...to educate for justice...
...LIWOC...
...in discussing them, Archbishop Mugavero of Brooklyn noted,' 'Small prayer groups have been very successful in bringing people together...
...Six years prior to the council, this organization of the superiors of women's religious orders in the U.S...
...But when a small number of dedicated individuals attempt to direct voice and action to spiritual growth, peace, or the needs of the disenfranchised, our experience indicates they fairly trip over the sexism implicit in church structures...
...American Catholics may have learned to say, "Yes, Father" in parochial schools...
...In the vocabulary of her own confirmation class, they have received the "sacrament of courage...
...All attest to a grassroots network of Catholics, frequently working in interdenominational settings, concerned about a variety of problems, and determined to give voice to those confronting these problems...
...CHIPS...
...We find ourselves at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid which is the church's present governmental structure and, by virtue of this very fact, have the least to lose...
...All over the country small groups have become vocal groups...
...And, "What do you think of women being ordained priests?'' I asked the members of groups whether women's issues ever took the stage during their meetings...
...Who, if anyone, has a voice in the Roman Catholic church...
...Whose needs is the church answering...
...I grow sour and tired listening to men preach about things they can't know about...
...What if your talent is the gift of the intellect...
...Change from within, although slower, may be more permanent," suggested an Indiana hospital administrator and mother of three...
...Only this year did I learn that besides the Women's Ordination Conference, there also exists an organization, Priests for Equality, whose membership has been drafting a letter entitled "Towards a Full and Equal Sharing...
...But they have also been through the ritual which my third daughter experienced on the Feast of Pentecost this year...
...Women are doing more in the church," said a Brooklyn mother, originally from Peru, now studying for a high school diploma...
...It is a personal, individual way to deepen the awareness of the church, of the meaning of the Spirit.'' Then there are Pax Christi groups...
...For three months last spring I pursued as many opportunities for discussion as possible...
...Can we transform passive reactions of anguish and anger, sometimes harbored quietly since Vatican II, into "the active voice'' ? Not that change isn't already implicit in the hundreds of parishes now administered by women religious or married deacons or lay people.' in the South and West, women are running parishes...
...We are bringing a list of what we warft to the big Hispanic meeting in August in Philadelphia...
...they may have learned that passive resistance was the only practical way to deal with Humanac Vitae...
...I harvested responses from more than seventy-five women from nine states — from urban and suburban housewives as well as from professionals;' from peace activists and women religious...
...Her writing has appeared in Communication Education, Educational Theater Journal, Modern Drama, The Drama Review, and other journals...
...That may explain why, from theology Ph.D...
...There was every evidence of great desire and need to use an active, positive voice about the church and not, as the current vernacular has it...
...First convened as a thirteen-week Ignatia'n home retreat several years ago, eight women elected to continue meeting once a month for prayer and discussion...
...Commonweal: 434 At this point in history, if there is an outstanding, articulate voice among American Catholic women, it is the collective voice of women religious leaders...
...BUT the next step, it seems to me, must be the laity's...
...To my mind, however, a key avenue to voice is the phenomenon of small groups emerging among American Catholics...
...What voice, I was asking myself at the beginning of 1985, do women have in the Catholic church...
...MIMI DAPONTE (Mimi D'Aponte is associate professor of speech and theater at Baruch College...
...New Jersey mother of five and part-time writer...
...Responses came in all sizes and styles, ranging from unqualified expressions of support for the twenty-four ad signers to the half of a high-school equivalency class who thought that women should be presidents but not priests...
...I was reassured...
...A woman religious in Illinois involved in spiritual direction had responded to my questioning with a similar observation: "When people looking for God are called to freedom, the next inevitable step in the pattern becomes concern about women's issues in the church...
...to develop leadership...
...one of my exceptional hopeful respondents noted...
...well before Vatican LI...
...had stated these goals: to articulate a theology of religious life...
...Fordham University graduate student in religion...
...That they never ask what we think is an insult to our intelligence...
...If women's patience and understanding continue to hold the vision, it will finally be achieved...
...to high school equivalency student, no one used evasive language in answering my questions...
...7 was taught that one's talents were gifts of the Holy Spirit...
...Responses came from women who have no time or energy for women's issues, social issues, or any kind of issues, as well as from women whose primary concern is reform within the church...
...BWOC...
...I began speaking to Catholic women not as a theologian or sociologist, but simply as another Catholic concerned about where the church is going...
...The debt owed these women for their generous, gracious leadership over the past quarter century —¦ not only in service for justice and peace, but also in the reform of hierarchical practices within their own communities and in the overcoming of their own voicelessness — is incalculable...
...Can we too find our voices and speak in support of non-authoritarian and non:sexist church structures...
...to study, pray, and act on behalf of women...
Vol. 112 • August 1985 • No. 14
