Vatican City, Mar 9, 2018 / 09:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A women’s conference in Rome this week called for changes in Church teaching that organizers say would promote equality, but the head of a Catholic women’s organization cautioned that true equality must adhere to truth.
First held in 2014, the “Voices of Faith” conference has taken place annually on March 8 in honor of International Women’s Day. The title for this year’s event was “Why Women Matter.”
The event is known to annually include at least a few speakers who oppose Catholic teaching on key topics such as homosexuality and women’s ordination. This year, however, a dissenting tone was much more prominent among conference presenters.
Past events have featured also positive stories about women and the Church, such as a testimony last year from a Rwandan genocide refugee who received an education with the help of Salesian missionaries.
This year’s event, in contrast, focused heavily on a push to change Church teaching, with not a single speaker defending Church doctrine and practice.
Former president of Ireland Mary McAleese, herself a Catholic, delivered a keynote speech accusing the Church of maintaining a misogynistic attitude, saying Church leaders are trying to drown women out due to fear.
“We are here to shout, to bring down our Church’s walls of misogyny,” she said, and, referring to the Church hierarchy, added that “I hope that all the hearing aids are turned up today!”
McAleese, who has previously advocated publicly for same-sex marriage and women’s ordination to the priesthood, argued that “misogyny and homophobia” have been present since the Church’s establishment and have “kept Christ out and bigotry in.”
The Catholic Church “lags noticeably behind” other nations in the advancement of women and uprooting of discrimination, she said, calling this “a disgrace” for an organization “that claims to be created by God.”
Although new jobs and positions have opened up to members of the laity, both women and men, since the Second Vatican Council, McAleese said that “these have simply marginally increased the visibility of women in subordinate roles, including in the Curia,” and have “added nothing to their decision-making power or their voice.”
Ultimately, she said, not allowing women to be ordained to the priesthood, “has locked women out of any significant role in the Church’s leadership, doctrinal development and authority structure since these have historically been reserved to or filtered through ordained men.”
Other speakers took up similar topics, focusing on exclusion and calling the Church to change its teaching on homosexuality.
However Mary Rice Hasson, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C., warned that events such as the Voices of Faith conference do not effectively foster dialogue if they openly reject Church teaching.
“Dialogue and accompaniment have to be a walk towards the truth, in confidence that living in the truth is what brings happiness,” she told CNA.
Hasson, who was not affiliated with the conference, stressed that women should certainly discuss differences and try to understand points of conflict. But she cautioned that true constructive dialogue about women’s role in the Church “needs to take the Church’s teaching as its starting point.”
McAleese also complained that no cardinals or members of the curia were attending the event, despite a social media campaign by Voices of the Faith calling on them to do so.
“No Church leader bothers to turn up not just because we do not matter, but because their priestly formation prepares them to resist treating us as full equals,” she said.
In past years, a few Vatican officials have attending the Voices of Faith panel. This year’s event, however, drew controversy over some of the speakers.
The event has traditionally taken place inside the Vatican’s Casina Pio IV, headquarters of the Pontifical Academy for Sciences. This year, however, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, objected to two of the speakers: McAleese and Ssenfuka Juanita Warry, a LGBT advocate in Uganda.
The event required the cardinal’s approval in order to take place at Casina Pio V. Rather than adjusting their roster of speakers, Voices of Faith opted for a change of venue, and held the gathering at the headquarters of the Jesuit Curia in Rome rather than the Casina, which is located inside Vatican City State.
At the March 1 launch of the book “A Pope Francis Lexicon,” edited by Vatican journalists Cindy Wooden and Josh McElwee, Cardinal Farrell responded to a question about the dispute, saying events held within the Vatican are “presumed to be sponsored by the pope” and people assume that the pope “is in agreement with everything that is said.”
Farrell said that when he found out what the conference was about, “it was not appropriate for me to continue to sponsor such an event.”
In comments to CNA, Hasson said the Church is not just a human institution, but a supernatural gift, meaning its teachings “are true.”
“Unfortunately, the question of women’s ordination hijacked the conversation about women and the Church for decades,” she said. “It’s time to move past that.”
Similarly, Hasson said the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality will not change, “so agitation for change in those areas is counterproductive and is more likely to confuse people or give scandal.”
Hasson is also director of the Catholic Women’s Forum, an international network of women dedicated to amplifying the role women both in the Church and in society in support of Church teaching.
“Women are already contributing to the Church’s evangelical mission in significant ways – and have for centuries,” she said, but acknowledged that there is a need for women to be included in more high-level conversations, “because the Church needs our insights and gifts in order to accomplish its mission.”
In her opinion, Hasson said Voices of Faith “is, in part, a well-intentioned effort” to acknowledge both the gifts of women and the valuable role they play in the Church. She pointed to how previous events have drawn attention to the work women have done to assist the poor and marginalized.
Where Voices of Faith fails to serve the Church well, she said, “is in its support of advocacy agendas, proposed by women who dissent from the Church’s teaching.”
She pointed to the presence of McAlesse at this year’s conference as well as the inclusion of Sr. Simone Campbell, known for her involvement in the “Nuns on the Bus,” who works in legal advocacy for the poor yet supports the legalization of abortion, contraception and has pushed for women’s ordination.
Hasson said the organization’s demand for power is also problematic, since, as Pope Francis has emphasized, “participation is not a question of power but of service.”
She said she does not find it helpful “to measure women’s participation in the institutional Church by corporate measures,” such as keeping a tally of the number of women in leadership roles and how many of them have power and authority.
At the same time, Hasson said it is good “to open the Church’s consultative structure to make room for women,” but to do so in ways that recognize the unique needs of mothers.
Addressing the argument made by Voices of Faith conference participants that young women are leaving the Church in droves because they can’t find adequate leadership opportunities, Hasson said she doesn’t buy it.
“Women, especially young women, are leaving because they have not been brought into relationship with the Lord,” she said. “Their hearts are not converted, they don’t know the faith and don’t see the Church as a supernatural gift from God to help us live better and more fully human lives.”
“A woman who loves God doesn’t leave the Church because she doesn’t see a career path for herself in the Church.”
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Don’t worry Angelo! Francis will have you out in no time! Unless you happen to have conservative or traditional leanings. In that case, good luck in the big house.
To be sure, there were several stupid business dealings, like London. But where was the theft? And didn’t the Pope approve everything?
Will we ever know where the millions went in Australia? Cardinal Pell deserved to know. What a mess.
“Loans” to family members that didn’t have to be paid back under the rationale that it would be good for the local economies where they would spend the money. Sort of like Obamanomics.
Where do you send a Cardinal to jail?
A different angle on the story: prisons and apartments. Francis has broken with his predecessors who, as Bishops of Rome, used to celebrate Holy Thursday Evening Mass for the diocese in his cathedral, St. John Lateran. Francis has delegated that job to a substitute while he does his “peripheries” thing in assorted Roman jails. Except in 2021, when he celebrated that Mass in Becciu’s apartment (in the middle of his trial). So, maybe Becciu can serve his “sentence” under “house arrest,” “accompanied” to his apartment (unless the Pope kicks him out) by the Pope who insists on living in a hotel room. Maybe we had a preview of what “peripheral accompaniment” of a poor Cardinal means?
$11K fine for a cardinal who apparently lost millions? Good deal. Papal economics?
From From 10 Vatican City Facts You Didn’t Know:
Excerpt:
2. Vatican City Has No Prison
Vatican City is likely the only nation on Earth to not have a prison. The country does have a few cells for pre-trial detention. Those convicted and sentenced to imprisonment serve time in Italian prisons as per the Lateran Treaty. The costs for imprisonment are covered by the Vatican government.
P.S.: Will Becciu be removed from the College of Cardinals while he does his time? After all, Francis insists that sexual sins are not necessarily the most serious (which, in one sense, may be true), yet he laicized McCarrick.
I am growing convinced the Polish National Catholics under Hodur, in advocating for trusteeship, were right. In a normal, democratic society (e.g., Western societies where the state’s reach into the Church is limited) there should be clear lines of separation between finance and power, not the “corporate sole” nonsense that allows Bishops to do whatever they want with the money of the People of God. Require an accountability board the majority of whose members are NOT episcopally removable (at least immediately) to approve expenditures. THAT would (a) create financial transparency AND (b) end “clericalism” by taking away a significant clerical prerogative: unlimited financial decision-making. Next time some bishop babbles about “reform” and “declericalization as Pope Francis urges” ask him (and Francis) whether they’d be willing to sign on to this financial divestment. If you can’t get a “yes” or “no” (as opposed to qualificatiosn and equivocations), call out the hot air.
The answer is not schismatic Polish National Catholic-style lay trusteeship, especially with today’s vast majority of liberal and heretical Catholics-in-name-only who do not even recognize the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. If one wants a sure recipe for disaster that is it. The answer is rather holy, orthodox, and traditional Catholic bishops and priests whose love is for Christ Crucified, not t
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That includes absolute financial power. Ask the Apostolic Treasurer, Judas. Episcopal ordination does not remove those temptations.
There’s no need for the bishop to be the sole agent who disposes of Church’s funds. If the “People of God” are the Church, there’s no reason bishops should not have to convince other people to fund their projects. They may have total responsibility in teaching. That does not imply “one signature is enough” on checks.
Yes, let’s give “financial power” to the holy fornicating, shacking-up, contracepting, aborting, pro-homosexual, and transsexual “People of God” who every recent CARA survey shows are overwhelmingly the majority of modern American “Catholics”. Let’s have Paul and Nancy Pelosi and Joe and Jill Biden as the Apostolic Treasurers. Let’s add another downward spiral to the catastrophic state of the Catholic Church. Let patron saint be Judas since he is already their model.
Yes, I agree that establishing trusteeship is a big part of what would be an “actual reform in the Church.”
The fact that it doesn’t exist, and is not being vigorously pursued, puts the Church into the hands of frauds and thieves.
All the talk of “the reform” by the sitting Pontiff and his Cardinals and Bishops is rubbish until the true reform indicated by actions like trusteeship arrangements.
We continue to hear “poverty-pimping” about the Church’s “preferential option for the poor.”
It was voiced by “His Eminence” Beccui himself, on the night he stood on the balcony in Rome next to the Pontiff Francis, moments before his introduction to the world, he reminded the new Pontiff to “remember the poor.”
These characters are the supreme carnival…
Speaking of prosecuting the criminally stupid, did this show trial cost a million? How can anyone donate to this pontificate?
At least Cardinal Becciu will have housing and an assured means of sustaining his human needs. That’s more than Francis afforded Cardinal Burke. Maybe the best punishment for Becciu would be to kick him out into the streets, strip him of his financial support and tell him to get out of Rome and return to wherever he came from. I do have in mind one other bishop who ought to vacate the Vatican precincts.
Having been born on the island of Sardinia, Beccui likely could exist substantively on a small island. Where is there a small island large enough to accommodate a table, toilet, and a tall banana tree or two? Bergoglio could visit the island’s periphery, maybe even keep Beccui perpetual company. Such digs could well be their best before Someone requires the two to move one last time.
You’ve made my day!
What has become of the millions and the apartment in London?
Do these dignitaries pack them for their post-mortem trip?
Vanitas vanitaties and omnia sunt vanitas.
The Pope approved these stooges. They should all go to jail for not buying ETFs! A fool and his money are soon parted…🤦🏼♂️ (All this episcopal incompetence reminds me of how the Texas Bishops lobby in Austin, save Strickland…)
“Prosecutors allege the second broker, Gianluigi Torzi, hoodwinked the Vatican by maneuvering to secure full control of the building that he relinquished only when the Vatican paid him off 15 million euros (with the Pope’s approval!)… a British judge rejected Vatican requests to seize Torzi’s assets — it was a negotiated exit from a legally binding contract…Torzi’s whereabouts weren’t immediately known.”
Have they looked for Torzi in the Cayman Islands? Maybe he paid Cecilia Marogna to join him for her “intelligence services?” Who knows, maybe they are with Australian friends, trying to free a nun on Seven Mile Beach?
What do you get for misleading the faithful into heresy? Mortal sin?
Jesus came to save the sinner, lest we forget.
There is that warning about leading the little ones to sin and a millstone would have been a better option
If the result is unfair may the Holy Father catch it in time and commute the sentence or quash the conviction.
This is beyond disgraceful, whoever is responsible – Becciu or Parra.
Has there been any comment from the Pope about this?