By Mallika Rao
c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) A letter was sent from Ohio to Vatican City this month with a message for Pope Benedict XVI backed by thousands of women from around the world.
“We want women to stop being invisible in the church’s proclamation,” said Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch. “If you try to make it look like God likes men better than women, people just aren’t going to buy it.”
FutureChurch, an independent Catholic renewal group that counts some 5,000 members worldwide, is broadcasting a plea ahead of a key Vatican meeting this October. The group wants more Bible passages featuring women to be read at Catholic Masses throughout the world.
So far, FutureChurch has sent more than 18,000 e-mails and letters to bishops, including Benedict, who will preside over the synod on “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”
“When we heard that the synod was going to focus primarily on Scripture we knew that we had to raise awareness about the hidden women of the lectionary,” said Schenk, a member of the Cleveland-based Congregation of St. Joseph.
The body of scriptural texts read at Mass every day, known as the lectionary, is determined by the Vatican. For churchgoers who seldom read the Bible, those extracts may comprise their only knowledge of the holy book, Schenk said.
And women are conspicuously absent from the lectionary, she added.
“When you can show a systematic exclusion of biblical women leaders in the text,” she said, “it sends a really unhealthy message to our daughters and our sons.”
Schenk’s argument appears to be bolstered by a 1996 article in the American Benedictine Review. The article’s author, Sister Ruth Fox, cites Mass readings that stop just before a woman’s vital role is mentioned, or leave her out altogether.
For example, Fox writes, take Exodus 15:20-21, in which Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, is identified as a prophet and leads a liturgy of thanksgiving after the crossing of the Red Sea. That passage is not in the lectionary.
And Phoebe, a woman who in the Greek translation of the New Testament is called a “deaconess,” does not appear once in the daily readings.
Likewise, the role of Mary Magdalene, who according to the Gospels is the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection, is never recounted on Sundays, Schenk said, while “we hear about doubting Thomas every single year.”
At a time when women hold powerful political offices worldwide, the lectionary seems, at best, outdated, the sister said.
The one woman the lectionary does mention is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, as a virgin and a mother, is “a pretty hard act to follow,” Schenk said. “And it’s not all women can be. We also need to hear about women leaders who evangelized, proclaimed the gospel and founded churches.”
Monsignor Anthony Sherman, of the Secretariat for Divine Worship at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said FutureChurch is not alone in questioning the Mass readings.
The world — and the status of women — has changed drastically since the current lectionary was approved in the 1960s, Sherman said.
But the lectionary has not. “It’s been around for 40 years, since Vatican II. A lot of people have problems with it.”
He said FutureChurch has a shot at achieving its goal, as long as bishops are persuaded to speak.
Schenk said most bishops have responded positively. Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., met with FutureChurch women, she said, and other bishops say they are interested. None, however, have committed to bringing the topic to the synod.
Even if the issue gets play in October, Sherman said, rewriting the lectionary is a “monumental” task. But that doesn’t mean the Bible’s women will necessarily go unheard.
As Sherman pointed out, “There’s nothing preventing Catholics from owning and reading a whole copy of the Bible themselves.”
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted August 22, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Maybe the women have a small chance of being heard by Benny 16 and his male dominated church…but I wouldn’t count on it. No surprise that the women of the Bible aren’t mentioned in Mass nor are women reading the passages. Their job is to have babies and wait on the men. Maybe some of the Bishops will help this change take place…but I’m not too optimistic.
posted August 22, 2008 at 11:33 pm
“None, however, have committed to bringing the topic to the synod.”
Brave bunch of bishops they’ve got!
posted August 24, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Yes, Monsignor Sherman, I do have a Bible and read it on my own. It has many stories of women of faith. If I never see that represented in the Church, or read in the Church, why would I want to go to that Church, that supposedly represents God, but apparently just represents the Church?
posted August 25, 2008 at 9:37 am
Seriously? Stretchin’ a little thin trying to find stories to bash the Church…Pax!
posted August 25, 2008 at 11:28 am
500 years ago one priest in Germany realized that knocking on the door of The Church and asking politely got no where. So he tacked his grievances on the door. That work of minor vandalism (actually tacking stuff to that church’s door was standard practice) got him some attention. Eventually he stopped being nice, took action that included separating himself from the very Church he hope to revive and reform. Only then did any change happen – but not within the group he had hoped to help.
These women will get no response form Rome as long as Rome remains a bastion of eccelsiastical testosterone. They have no reason to change so no change will happen. But if they, like Luther decide to leave and start something new, change will happen. But that change will be in their own lives, not the Church. Until someone discovers a reason for the The Church to change, a postive move toward something it wants and not a negative reaction to threats, it will not change. That is a pattern almost every institutional follows – and the vatican is no different.
posted August 25, 2008 at 8:37 pm
jjkans: “Strerchin’ a litte thin trying to find stories to bash the Church.”
When the truth is stated, it isn’t “bashing” the Church. I don’t think there is any stretch for a story here. Women have been 2nd class citizens since the beginning of the RCC. And Benny16 has done nothing to improve the situation, and with what he has shown since becoming Pope, I imagine that isn’t a priority with him. He wants to go backwards, not forward with the RCC…and so far, in that, he has succeeded. Women Priests? JC was a guy and he had 12 dudes following him around, so how can a WOMAN be a Priest? That is a silly reason to not allow #1, woman priests and #2, male priests to marry. What is the excuse for not highlighting women by reading about them at Mass? There is none…
posted August 26, 2008 at 9:58 am
pagansister,
This is just another case of people wanting to force their ideals, be them well meaning or not, onto others who have the beliefs established and for all to see. If these groups don’t like how the Church does its business, then they are more than welcome to form their own congregations based on their own beliefs like thousands of others have done. But, they will no longer be Catholics. I’m sure the Anglican communion will happily welcome them. Although they are having some problems at this time for some reason…hmmm. Pax!
posted August 26, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Leaving the religion is the cowards way out. Trying to work from within to update and modernize, IMO is the better way. Having women in the Bible recognized at Mass and allowing women priests, and allowing priests to marry might actually stop the folks from leaving the church, as well as accepting GLBT, and allowing birth control. (of course, the Catholics I know use birth control). Rituals in the RCC are beautiful and of course, draped in history and a bit of updating won’t stop the beauty of the rituals.
posted September 2, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Just what are they (the authoritarians) afraid of? Most good commentators indicate that FEAR is the root of authoritarianism and control. Fear breeds the refusal to implement the unavoidable changes that are needed in our contemporary Church. But well informed Catholics follow the lead of Jesus himself who so often said DO NOT BE AFRAID! IT MUST NOT BE THAT WAY WITH YOU! Congratulations to all those who are promoting the presence of women at the Synod! They are the courageous ones among us! —Aristophilos
posted September 3, 2008 at 1:53 am
In my studies I have come upon a quote from Karl Rahner that I would like to share as a point of interest. The Church of the future, according to Karl Rahner, “will no longer be a cultural necessity as in the days of Christendom. There was a time when Church and culture were so unified in Europe that the whole was called Christendom. In that situation it was easier to believe than not to, because everyone else believed. The Church of the future, on the other hand, will be made up of people who have struggled against the cultural current to come to a personal, free, responsible faith; a faith continually formed afresh in the ultimate experience of life and God” (Rahner, Shape 25).
Such a personal, freely chosen faith, continually formed afresh from its sources in the experience of life and of God, presupposes a search inward.
posted September 10, 2008 at 8:00 pm
The Gospel of Mary(Magdala) and the Gospel of Mary(mother of Jesus,and written by her son James) have been suppressed.
Page 17 of Mary’s gospel documents the first act of sex discrimination by the Catholic Church. It is Peter questioning of Mary’s vision and the recitation of her conversation with Jesus. Levi(Matthew)the Cannonical Gospel writer corrects Peter.
We hear and see that the ancestors of Paul, the Gentile and apostle to the Gentiles gets coverage for the council of Rome, but why was Mary’s gospel suppressed?
How can we claim to be following Christ when we disobey the greatest commendments of God, to act in love?
St. Paul’s instruction to the Romans that love is the fulfillment of the law is in our Lectionary, so why isn’t what that really means put in practice by the Church?
From Ezekiel and Matthew 18, we are given the clear instruction to admonish the wicked one, the sinner, the one who is not acting in love and to treat that person as a pagan or a tax collector.
Benedict has made some correct moves, but the jury is still out on whether we should get him a job with the IRS.