Category: Young Feminist Network

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Paul is a conflicting figure for many feminist women of faith because his letters have often been used to reinforce gender roles and stereotypes. Be that as it may, today I want to consider what Paul’s conversion story has to offer women fighting for ordination. …
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As Catholics, we might think that we know all there is to know about Mary. We wouldn’t have Christmas without her, after all. Mary’s backstory is sprinkled throughout the liturgical calendar, from the Immaculate Conception to the Annunciation to the Visitation, culminating on the day when she brings God into the world. Upon reflection, though,…
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[Editors’ note: Maryclare O’Brien-Wilson is a 2018 awardee of the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship for Women Discerning Priestly Ordination. This is the second of three in a series of reflections from our 2018 awardees on how the scholarship impacted their journey over the academic year. Read the first reflection, from Allison Connelly, here.] “I found…
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Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is a common summer undertaking for seminarians. Many large hospitals offer the intensive summer program, which challenges us to put all those lofty ideals into action. At Bellevue Hospital in New York, I spend three days a week offering pastoral care to some of the most underprivileged patients in the city.…
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[Editors’ note: Allison Connelly is a 2018 awardee of the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship for Women Discerning Priestly Ordination. This is the first of three in a series of reflections from our 2018 awardees on how the scholarship impacted their journey over the academic year.] “While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in…
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Nothing, based on our experience Thursday as guests in a class for a course called “Catholic Philadelphia: Then and Now.” Maureen Tate of the Grail and SEPA WOC and I were asked to speak on the local woman priest movement by a woman professor in this area school run by a men’s religious order. Every…
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“Blasted” is how Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press characterizes the response of the Women’s Ordination Conference to Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation, “Christus Vivit.” Winfield does not quote WOC’s best blast: that the Pope is “suggesting no concrete actions to further his own bishops’ call for the inclusion of women in decision-making and leadership…
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Did you notice this line in Josepha Madigan’s speech to We Are Church in Ireland? The full sentence is “Yes, we say to our daughters, you can be an altar girl but don’t get too ahead of yourself, you will never be a priest.” I love that Irish women who have succeeded in politics are…
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I’m sitting at the end of my friend’s bed in Sharjah, one of the seven United Arab Emirates (just outside its more famous sister city, Dubai). I’m on my winter break from divinity school and another friend and I have flown here to visit Bushra, one of our best friends from college. We hadn’t seen…
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Staying ‘because it’s our church, too’ had come to feel like complicity by another name. And even staying for the Eucharist made me wonder at what point I had to stop letting the hierarchy use the real presence to excuse the inexcusable. Does Jesus ever feel like he’s being held hostage? (Melinda Henneberger’s “Why I…
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