I receive Joan Chittister's emails, and own several of her books. I have met her more than once at the Washington National Cathedral when she was invited to give talks, or a homily. The Bishop of the Washington Diocese, Maryann Budde, is a big fan of Sister Joan. At one talk, given after the liturgy in which she gave the homily, a woman stood up and said "I am a Catholc woman. Why do I have to go to an Episcopal church to hear Sister Joan speak or give a homily". The reaction rippled through the congregation- it was clear that she was only one of many Catholic (or formerly Catholic) women in the congregation. There was applause. This article is from Sister Joan's email today.
The sexist church I love
When the church has little time for women’s presence, when the church takes little notice of women’s questions, when the church holds little respect for women’s insights, when the church devotes itself to preaching the gospel of equality for women but preserves a male theology and a male system, staying in the church demands a purpose far beyond ourselves.
I stay in the church a restless pilgrim not because I don’t believe what the church has taught me, but precisely because I do. I believed when they taught us that God made us equal and that Jesus came for us all. I believed in the Jesus they showed me: the Jesus who listened to women and taught theology to them, the Jesus who sent women to teach theology and raised women from the dead. So today I believe that the church–if it is ever to be true to that same gospel–must someday do the same: It must commission women as Jesus did the Samaritan woman, listen to women as Jesus did the Canaanite women, raise women to new life as Jesus did the daughter of Jairus.
I stay in the church because I have the support from other women, from feminist men, from a woman’s community that enables me to worship with human dignity and a sense of theological inclusion. Otherwise, I do not know how it would be possible to stay. At the same time–because I know my own need for the strength of a conscious and understanding community–I have come to understand and honor those who, lacking that kind of support, choose to leave the church. For many, church-going has become more an experience of systemic devaluation than spiritual growth. After years of waiting for change, then, they have chosen to try to find God by themselves rather than being excluded by the community from the common search. These are the women in whom beats a Catholic heart but, like many another abused or belittled woman, they get to the point where, for their mental health, they say with pain and still with love, “I will not divorce you but until this changes, I cannot live under the same roof.”
Finally, I stay in the church because the sexist church I love needs women for its own salvation. We are sanctifying one another, this church and the women who refuse to be silent, refuse to be suppressed. What each of us sets out to convert will, in the end, convert us as well. Women will call the church to truth. The church will call women to faith. Together, God willing, we will persist–women despite the madness of authoritarianism, and the church despite the irritation of unrelenting challenge. We will endure together. We will propel ourselves to the edges of our potentials for holiness.
“Why does a woman like you stay in the church?” a woman asked me from
the depths of a dark audience years ago. “Because,” I answered, “every
time I thought about leaving, I found myself thin
king
of oysters.” “Oysters?” she said. “What do oysters have to do with it?”
“Well,” I answered her in the darkness of the huge auditorium, “I
realized that an oyster is an organism that defends itself by excreting a
substance to protect itself against the sand of its spawning bed. The
more sand in the oyster, the more chemical the oyster produces until
finally, after layer upon layer of gel, the sand turns into a pearl. And
the oyster itself becomes more valuable in the process. At that
moment,” I said, “I discovered the ministry of irritation.”
I stay in the church with all my challenge and despite its resistance, knowing that before this is over, both it and I will have become what we have the capacity to be: followers of the Christ who listened to women, taught them theology and raised them from the dead.
—from “Why I Stay,” an essay by Joan Chittister included in from the Writings of Joan Chittister: On Women
A few years ago SisterJoan was scheduled to speak at the Benedictine monastery and retreat house near us (I believe she is also a Benedictine) but they had to cancel because they got so much flack from the Lincoln Diocese over it. The Lincoln Diocese is just across the river. It was under a different bishop then, but I never understood why they felt she was such a threat.
ReplyDeleteI admire her intellect, her deep spirituality, and her integrity in refusing to violate her conscience. I have several of her books - my favorites are the small volumes of meditations on spirituality, from the desert fathers, scripture etc. I also like her book on aging (The Gift of Years), the Creed, and the Rule of Benedict, among others. Sister Joan is a feminist, and a writer and speaker. She advocates for women both inside and outside the church and was co- chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. She got into trouble with Rome because of her support of women’s ordination. When Father Roy Bourgeois was ordered to recant his belief that women should be ordained and refused, the Maryknolls were ordered by Rome to kick him out and they did. Rome also kicked him out of the priesthood. When Sr Joan also got into hot water for publicly expressing her beliefs, Rome told the head of her Benedictine order to tell her she couldn’t go to a conference in Ireland on women’s ordination. Unlike the Maryknoll priests, the Benedictine nuns refused Rome’s order and stood by Sr Joan. Sr Joan recently celebrated her 90th birthday. She is a remarkable woman.
ReplyDeleteAn AI summary follows
In 2001, the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life ordered Chittister’s religious superior to forbid her from speaking at the first Women's Ordination Worldwide conference in Dublin, Ireland. Despite facing threats of severe penalties—including potential excommunication, interdict, or expulsion from her religious order—Chittister chose to follow her conscience. She traveled to Dublin and delivered the conference's opening address on discipleship.
Key Facts of the 2001 Incident. The Vatican's Mandate: Church officials ordered Chittister's prioress, Sister Christine Vladimiroff, to issue a formal "precept of obedience" to block Chittister from attending, arguing her appearance would cause a scandal.
Monastic Solidarity: In an extraordinary act of unity, Sister Christine refused to deliver the Vatican's order. Furthermore, 127 out of 128 active nuns in their Erie, Pennsylvania Benedictine community signed a letter supporting Chittister's right to attend.
The Outcome: Chittister successfully attended and spoke at the event. Recognizing the massive wave of public support and solidarity from North American monasteries, the Vatican ultimately backed down and chose not to enforce any disciplinary actions against her.
If you want to keep the focus here on Sr Chittister, feel free to ignore this:
ReplyDeleteI might resent the Church if I were a born Catholic and my views about women generally or specifically as clergy were shaped in a very narrow, conservative parish like the one in our town. But women clergy were part of the landscape for the first 45 years of my life.
My belief is that broadening notions of holy tradition in addition to "irritants" like Chittister and practicalities like the priest shortage will eventually lead to women's ordination. But it will happen at the glacial pace that most change happens in the Church.
What I find ironic is that the Church is the repository of thousands of stories about women, many of whom achieved sainthood. Taken together, these stories give the lie to the idea that Christ-like-ness resides in just one sex, career choice, income bracket, temperment, IQ level (or, I suspect, sexual preference or gender identity).
But you're not gonna hear about, say, St Wite, the topic in my Old English group this week, in your parish. That's because most parishes select the holy examples of what is comfortable and familiar to parishioners. Locally, parishioners here get the BVM and Ss Faustina, Mother Teresa, Gianna Molla (and Mary and Martha when the readings about them pop up). Those examples are used to shore up and perpetuate received ideas about what makes a good Catholic woman, mother, or wife.
But info about many other women vital to the Church down the ages is available if Catholics care to look for it. I don't think women will advance in the Church until a fuller understanding of what women have contributed is better known.
Jean, I had to look up St. Wite. Interesting that she is the patron of Dorset and there is still a church in her honor where her remains are undisturbed (unusual in England post reformation).
DeleteThere are a lot of notable saints such as Catherine of Sienna, Margaret of Scotland, and Hildegard, who left their mark on the church and the world.
Unfortunately, hagiography emphasizes martyrdom and asceticism, and many of these stories need fuller context and detail.
DeleteIn life, St Wite was a hermit who took on the important job of maintaining a beacon for ships in Dorset. She prayed for the salvation of the world, and kept sailors safe with her light. Pretty much by herself, perhaps with local authorities delivering wood and oil for the fires periodically.
King Alfred the Great, who built the first effective English navy, was a fan of St Wite. Unfortunately, the Vikings were attracted by the beacon one night, came ashore, and murdered her.
But you can't keep a good woman down. Here's a piece about her shrine: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx5d9n4xd7o
I like the story of the Icelandic family, descendants of the long ago Vikings, visiting her shrine "to say sorry." Nobody knows the importance of lighthouses better than an Icelander.
I have always thought that the PTB's reaction to people like Sister Joan and Father Bourgeois was way out of proportion to the threat they perceived. Especially Father Bourgeois, to be kicked out of the priesthood. They didn't even do that to many priests who did much worse. Its not like Father B was denying the divinity of Christ, or something. Right now they are agonizing what to do about the St Pius X society illicitly consecrating bishops ( didn't they already tell them, don't let the door hit you in the back?)
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't have strong feelings about women's ordination. I'd be fine with it if it happened, but we've gotten along for a couple thousand years without it (though there is historic evidence that it actually did happen in some places). Seems like a lot of women saints have done the work they felt called to do anyway.
What I do have strong feelings about is that I feel that men in leadership in the church don't recognize the bodily autonomy of women as being equal to their own. And don't have a clue about pregnancy and childbirth.
The stories about St Wite are interesting. Clearly there isn’t a lot of certainty about the details, but it’s also clear that she must have been a remarkable woman. And Jean is right — she’s one of many holy women ignored by the men who run the church.
DeleteKatherine, the church may have survived for 2000 years without women priests, but those days are long gone. The church in America has closed hundreds of parishes and schools. There are thousands of parishes without a resident priest, many now run by parish administrators, usually women, who serve as pastors, counselors, administrators, who conduct word services and distribute communion left at the parish by circuit riding priests covering multiple, widely separated parishes. .About 1/3 of priests in America now (and in Europe)—I think that’s the number— are imports from poor third world countries, men who don’t understand western culture, much less western women, because they come from still patriarchal, male boss countries. They often speak with such heavy accents that their homilies are not understood. Since these imported priests come mostly from s** countries, even that priest pipeline may be choked off by the current government. While your parish might be ok (and, as I recall, it’s now consolidated with two other parishes) you may not notice that the lack of priests is hurting the church.
The men of the church not only don’t understand that women’s bodily autonomy is equal to their own, they don’t understand that women’s minds aren’t either. The celibates don’t even have wives who can provide course correction to their thinking, and they don’t have children, so only know what marriage and family life is like as distant observers. They talk of complementarity but they don’t mean true complementarity that draws on the strengths of women in equal measure to men. What they mean is that God has deigned that men are the bosses — active, the “leaders” and that women are passive, the receivers of men’s actions (including marital sexuality). JPII was real big on this warped understanding , and so was Benedict. God meant women to be the helpers of men, subservient, and subject to men’s limitations on their roles in life, in marriage, and in the church. So they try to silence uppity women like Sr Joan. Women’s insights on marriage and family life due to pregnancy and childbirth and all the years following are ignored. They ignore proactive women—they ignore most women other than those who willingly assume the role of parish domestic helpers, doing what the men want them to do (need them to do) play the organ, arrange the flowers, teach the children with just a couple of main exceptions—virgin martyrs, and women who start religious orders. Plus Mary, who is held up as a model of obedience and a perpetual virgin, even though a married woman, with the implication that women, including married women, who aren’t virgins are tainted — impure. An unconsummated marriage - Joseph could have gotten an annulment. And these clueless celibate males hold up the Holy Family as a model - no marital sex and only one kid. Yet they try to get Catholics to refrain from using effective birth control (ignored by 95% of American Catholics ) and have lots of kids. They have no idea at all what they are talking about. We no longer live in an era with high infant mortality (and high maternal mortality ) except in the poor countries. Developed countries no longer need lots of kids to help with the family business as free labor (farming, herding, or whatever) and running the home — extracting grain for bread, skinning the animals for food and salting it to for storage, going to the well to collect water, weaving, sewing etc - everything needed by the family in the home, done by hand from scratch.
Continuesd. As a result of cutting off the insights and lived experiences of women, church teachings are sometimes distorted in ways that sometimes cause actual harm to women. As poor countries develop economically the birth rate goes down, because families have access to reliable birth control, half their babies don’t die by age 5, and women have access to education that enables them to get paid employment outside the home. The church has a cynically utilitarian approach to encouraging big families (in spite of the huge growth in world population that is straining global resources like water) because the church needs more children to fill the pews (and the coffers) in the future. Plus women do 90% of parish work— most without pay. These men have had a good deal going for centuries and now that is changing.
DeleteCorrection - not “. they don’t understand that women’s minds aren’t either. “ The men often don’t understand that women’s minds are the equal of male minds, and recent events suggest that they may actually be superior in many cases— probably not innately superior intelligence, but intelligence due to greater discipline in school, and a type of feminine intelligence that is part of true complementary, much needed in the current era. Hence the whining from the manosphere, encouraged by priests like Barton.
DeleteI believe they will start ordaining married men before they ordain women. They're basically already doing it, with the Anglican Ordinariate, some of the uniate Eastern rite churches, and some Lutheran pastors who convert. That's why I couldn't figure out why they haven't give the green light for ordaining married men in Amazonia.
DeleteOur parish is consolidated with two other parishes. We do have three priests; the pastor is in his 60s, and two younger priests. I have to stick up for our Nigerian priest. He is a good guy, very friendly and dedicated. He spent a year in Omaha before he came here, I think the archdiocese was working with him to help him get acclimated. He speaks good English, but it is accented. He gives good homilies. Always ends them with "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Peace be with you."
Katherine, I agree that if they get desperate enough they might drop mandatory celibacy. Anything to keep the women in their place! I don’t object to foreign priests per se, but it’s symbol of how bad things have gotten, while the male celibates keep their heads deeply buried in the sand. I have heard complaints about heavy accents that aren’t easily understood by many. Impossible to understand for people like me, with a severe hearing loss. The first few months we were home ALL of our caregivers were African. I couldn’t understand them when they were 4’ away in a quiet room. I have also heard complaints about the misogyny that is sometimes even worse with African priests than western priests. One “good” Nigerian priest is an anecdote and doesn’t prove anything. The exception maybe, but not the rule. And it’s disgusting that now that men “allow” women to study theology and even to teach it, they may still only teach the theology approved by men. Women may only do jobs in the church that men want them to do, whether it’s teach theology or arrange the altar flowers. No women are among those who define doctrine as far as I know - not even celibate women religious, who are pathetically grateful for the occasional bone Rome throws them.
DeleteThis isn't even the first time we have had foreign priests. The priest who baptized me and was there during my grade school years was from Ireland. He pronounced Latin with a bit of a brogue. My parents made friends with him. It helps if we make an effort to make the foreign born ones feel accepted. Granted that there isn't the language barrier with someone from Ireland that there is from an African country. The priest in my hometown now is from India. We either accept that we sometimes have missionaries, or we don't have Mass. If the church ordained women, we "might" have a priest from the US. Or we might not.
DeleteIt is possible to experience more misogyny form some American priests than from some of the foreign ones.
Katherine do you think it’s good that the US is now a “ mission country”? Do you think it feasible, or sustainable, to rely on increasing numbers of imported priests over the coming years?
DeleteI think it is hopefully a temporary thing until we can boost our own vocation numbers. The 50s and 60s were in a sense an anomaly. We had the post war baby boom, with more Catholics and also more vocations. Now we are in a different period, that probably is historically more normal.
DeleteOur parish group has about four young men in various stages of formation. There are 23 in the archdiocese in formation. Some of those are in religious orders so we don't know where they'll be serving. But there does seem to be an uptick.
Many foreign priests are serving in the US for a while with the consent of their bishop back home, and will go back at some point. It isn't unusual for the home diocese to be getting some financial aid in return for lending their priests.
Perhaps there would be less misogyny , whether from American priests or foreign, if the priesthood weren’t exclusively male celibates. Why did Jesus choose Mary Magdalen to be the first to spread the “good news”? There were plenty of men in his entourage he could have chosen. Married men. The church’s ban on married men is a human decision for less than admirable reasons. Just as the ban on women priests is a human decision for less than admirable reasons.
DeleteI don’t know if the subservient position of women in the Church bothers me as much as it bothers women but it definitely bothers me.
ReplyDeleteOff- topic. Alexandra Petri has a review ( of sorts) of Vance’s book about his “ spiritual” journey and becoming Catholic. It’s at The Atlantic site.. She was a satirist at the WaPo until the Bezos takeover.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/06/jd-vance-communion-faith-trump/687571/?gift=kkpyZo6Iz9qinVq1FSu1hp2L4zhJbqDCZlnpm79CMlA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I just read the piece by Alexandra Petri. JD certainly has a way with words (just not a good one!)
DeleteA million years ago, I wrote my own conversion story for Commonweal. It was jeered at in a few conservative Catholic circles, and I got a few "shame on you" emails from anonymous individuals. Maybe rightly so, though a couple of commenters also said that there is probably value in looking at the experience of converts some years after the first flush of reception, which is what I tried to do.
DeleteSo I found Petri's "review" cringe-y. She's mostly cherry picking quotes out of context to make fun of.
God knows I expect Vance's book will offer plenty of political comments that rankle (Elon Musk a sterling immigrant example, ex). But hers is not a very thoughtful review or even a close reading of Vance's conversion in light of his pro-natalism and Christian nationalism.
Jack offered a comment sometime back warning about converts coming from conservative evangelical backgrounds. Vance's book seems like a good venue to explore how evangelical converts, especially high profile ones like Vance and Douthat, influence American Catholicism.
Possibly Commonweal will offer something meatier down the road?
The thing I don't understand is how Vance squares Christian Nationalism with his own family. Aren't some of the things he has said going to hurt his marriage, and his children, when they're old enough to understand?
DeleteWell, she writes satire primarily not serious book reviews. She is now a regular at Atlantic, again writing satire. I was never a big fan when she wrote her column for the Post and didn’t read her much, and don’t usually read her columns at the Atlantic either, which are also satire. . But this was about Vance. To be honest I wasn’t sure when reading it if it was meant as satire or as a serious piece.
Delete“ Jack offered a comment sometime back warning about converts coming from conservative evangelical backgrounds. Vance's book seems like a good venue to explore how evangelical converts, especially high profile ones like Vance and Douthat, influence American Catholicism.”
That would be really interesting. I wonder if they influence it at all or if they are just representative of already conservative Catholics and are writing for the choir. I think of Dreher, his Benedict option, his change to Orthodoxy, his divorce and his move to Hungary and seems to have dropped out of sight. It’s not clear that he influenced anyone at all even at his peak. .
Jack has also dropped out of sight lately. I hope he and Betty are both ok.
Katherine, I imagine there are some difficult conversations but she’s being a loyal wife and even going along with having a 4 th child. In an interview a couple of years ago she had said, essentially, that their family was complete. But now that her husband is pushing for more babies he apparently convinced her.
DeleteJack and Betty are well but we have been busy gardening.
DeleteThe choices of religion, nationality and gender are not like other consumer choices especially since all these “choices” are often a matter of birth. One cannot easily unmake years when, regardless of what one thinks about one’s identity, there were many others who identified oneself as Catholic, American and female. It takes more than even legal documents to effect changes in how others perceive us.
ReplyDeleteAt a conference of the World Values Survey, a German sociologist said, “Both I and my Russian colleague are atheists, but he is an Orthodox atheist, and I am a Lutheran atheist.” As the World Values survey has demonstrated, Germans have been strongly influenced by their historic Lutheran heritage, just as Russians have been strongly influenced by their historic Orthodox heritage, regardless of anyone’s current religious identity.
Similarly American Catholics and American Protestants values are far more influenced by our being American than our being Catholic or Protestants. American values tracked by the World Values Studies are more closely related to English speaking countries like Australia, Britain, and Canada than to the Protestant values of Northern Europe or the Catholic values of Southern Europe or the Orthodox values of Eastern Europe or the Catholic values of Latin America.
Of course, American Catholic women vary greatly in how they feel about their American nationality, their Catholic faith and their feminine gender but they cannot easily change what others who have known them for some time think about their identity. Most Americans have disagreements with their fellow Americans about what constitutes American values, just as most Catholics have disagreements with their fellow Catholics about what constitutes Catholicism, and most men and women have disagreements about what constitutes masculinity and femininity.
Sociologists have generally agreed that Catholics have “thicker” religious identities that stick to them more than Protestants. Protestants have easily changed denominations. Indeed, they often did so as they climbed the social ladder in their communities. Protestants more often than Catholics choose a church based upon the quality of its music and preaching rather than its denominational identity. Non-denomination churches and churches that deemphasize their denomination have grown greatly in recent decades. The word Protestant has been replaced by Christian. Protestants more than Catholics report their religious affiliation based upon whether or not they go regularly to a particular congregation on Sundays. Catholics on the other hand often report themselves as Catholics even though they go to Church only on Christmas and Easter when as some pastors say the Santa Clauses and the Easter Bunnies fill the Masses.
ReplyDeleteCatholics may have thicker identities because baptism is not simply a choice that can be undone. Like ordination baptism permanently changes oneself (soul, identity). If one renounces Catholicism, it does not change one’s baptismal character. One is not baptized again if one returns to the Church. Even if one is excommunicated, one’s baptismal character remains. Baptism gives a Catholic an identity that is far beyond a particular congregation or even diocese. It is interesting that the values measured by the World Values Survey are much more resistance to change in Catholic countries than in Protestant Countries or Orthodox counties. Sociologists have long recognized that the economic efforts of industrialization were far great in Protestant countries than in Catholic or Orthodox countries. Communism also had a greater effect on Orthodox than in Catholic countries, e.g. the resistance of Poland and Hungary to Communism. Why is that, especially since Catholicism and Orthodoxy are similar.
Well Orthodoxy has always welded the Church to the State more than Catholicism. Emperors dominated Patriarchs whereas Popes were often independent of Emperors and Kings. But the thickness of Catholic identity which gives it an international character is more than the papacy. It consists of the international character of most religious orders. This has become abundantly apparent in Francis and Leo whose religious order character has made them far more important than being just bishops from Latin America.
My “thick identity” as a Catholic has a lot to do with my Benediction formation from my youth when the Benedictine priests said the extra Masses at our parish, my formation as a solitary by reading Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation, and my Jesuit formation as a novice. I can immediately find a home at any Trappist or Benedictine Monastery or Jesuit institution, far more than at any parish in this or any other country. And, of course, all these religious orders have the Hours, so my observance of the Hours since childhood gives me a very thick Catholic identity far beyond how much I might like or dislike the current Pope, Bishop, or pastor of the local parish or fellow Catholics that I might encounter.
ReplyDeleteNow that I have talked about the big picture it should be much easier to understand how Sister Joan and I with deal with the issue of gender discrimination. With the strong influence of religious orders in our lives, we are both well aware of the enormous contributions of women religious throughout the history of the church and more particularly of their enormous contributions to American Catholic institutions, e.g. schools, healthcare, social services. Yes, there have always been abundant tensions with male bishops, priests and religious, but women religious have flourished and shaped many of our Catholic institutions.
Why did Catholic women as well as Catholic men flock to religious orders in this country before Vatican II? Likely it was because religious orders had many great leadership opportunities. Vatican II, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Kennedy Presidency, the Peace Corp challenged us to find leadership opportunities in the broader world of civil society.
Yes, since Vatican II, there has been much more progress in opportunities for women in civil and political society in this country in comparison to progress in the church. Much of the lack of progress in the church has been due to the clericalism of the Church which has not been willing to empower Catholic laity to run our schools, health care and other social institutions. With all my Catholic background I would have made an ideal leader as a faculty member of a Catholic college or university. I always sent a resume to them which emphasized those talents. However, the priests and religious who did the interviewing where not interested in any competition for spiritual leadership, and the laity that did the interviewing were afraid that I might get along with the clergy and religious more than they. We lost the Catholic identity of many of our college and universities by failing to hire committed Catholics.
Francis had it right. The problem in the church is clericalism not sexism. The clerical problem applies as much to me as to women. At one of our Commonweal CLC meetings most of the group one evening were men who had studied for the priesthood or religious life. As one person aptly put it, we did that until we either spat out the clericalism or it spit us out. Most of us went on to find God in our secular vocations far more than in our parishes. Most of us agreed that our talents have not been well recognized and used by Catholic institutions.
In the mental health system, women came to occupy leadership positions because they focused upon the problems in the system not upon their leadership as women. I think that women who want leaderships positions in the church should focus their talents upon the leadership of laity both men and women.
My sense as an outsider with a fairly thin Catholic identity, is that any advancement of women's roles in a future RCC (or even any appreciation for women beyond child bearing, homemaking, and "nurturing") will be predicated on a fuller view of what women have contributed in the past.
ReplyDeleteWhat women can achieve in secular society or should be able to achieve as matters of modern "fairness" or "equality" cuts no ice with doctrinal theologians; a case would have to be made that women have always served as religious leaders, thinkers, homilists, and pastors.
I understood, from an earlier comment you made some time back, that converts coming into the Church with very narrow (and fairly unCatholic, ISTM) ideas about the proper role of women, will be in the vanguard of opposing their expanded participation.