Dignity and Equality
Women in Sacramental Ministry
Women in the Roman Catholic Church are excluded from all ordained ministries and experience incredible resistance when attempting to claim their equality and dignity. Nevertheless, women have never stopped demanding admission to all sacramental ministries.
​
In recent years, discourse, initiatives, conferences, and publications around this issue have increased significantly, adding great urgency to the growing calls for women's sacramental ministries.
​
Around the world women are calling out discriminatory traditions and misogynistic teachings, language, structures, and practices that are used to exclude women and further exploit and abuse their charisms and vocations
Women expect answers and visible signs from the Synod that the Church is committed to implement their votes and their rights. Women therefore demand an end to the Vatican's delaying tactics and insist that the Church must recognises their vocations to sacramental ministry.​
Worldwide Action & Events
Numerous groups and many women around the world do not want to accept the Pope's harsh "no" or the exclusion of issues relevant to women so they are launching initiatives and campaigns to give women a voice.
Press Statements & Responses
Books and Testimonials
Networks & Organisations
Sacramental Life
People encounter the extravagant generosity of God’s presence and grace far beyond the clerical, hierarchical and "male" expressions that lack a feminine presence and spirituality.
Women therefore recommend:
-
Embrace the charisms, contributions, and vocations of women and take concrete steps to facilitate their full participation in the life of the Church, including greater access to theological education, training, and formation.
-
Celebrate an expansive understanding of sacramentality as experienced in so many ways every day. Sacramental life is being aware of, responding to, and living out the presence of God in the world.
-
Deepen our metaphors and language for the divine and its mystery so that no person, regardless of gender or sexual identity is excluded. We must include the wisdom, spirituality and notions of sacramentality of historically oppressed communities.
-
Transform the priesthood the promotes men alone as "another Christ" and eradicate clericalism through a renewed theology of priesthood. This must include shifting or abolishing any seminary training that furthers clerical thinking and isolates priests from communities. Make celibacy optional.
-
Open up spaces to allow God to ‘speak’ or be revealed through sincere encounters and accompaniment, particularly for those women who experience "voicelessness" or "invisibility" in their Church, those called to ordained ministry, and those members of the LGBTQ+ community.
-
Open all ordained ministries to women.​