By Kerry Danner-McDonald, Stephanie Barnes,
Laura Singer and Aisha S. Taylor

Printed in NewWomen, NewChurch, a publication of Women's Ordination Conference, Vol. 28, No.3, Fall 2005

Beginnings

Kerry Danner-McDonald

In November of 1995, thirty-plus young women, ranging in age from seventeen to thirty-five, gathered during WOC’s Discipleship of Equals: Breaking Bread/Doing Justice Conference. That caucus was the forerunner of what would soon be WOC’s Young Feminist Network (YFN). It was a meeting rife with emotion and energy—we were excited to see so many young women in one place and anxious to share our frustrations and ideas about Women’s Ordination Conference specifically and the Catholic Church more generally.

I attended that meeting as a staff member of WOC and, encouraged by the other young women, later urged the Director and Board to designate staff time to address the issues raised in the meeting. What were those issues? Most urgently, we wanted women’s ordination to be more integrated into not only our daily lives but our various faith communities and we wanted a stronger visible leadership presence of young women within the movement. Others issues included how to increase the presence of women of color, young women with children, and how, or if, to integrate supportive male friends. Some issues related to intergenerational work: how young women often feel patronized by older women, frustration at why we are sometimes valued for some obscure “future” contribution and anger at tokenism.

After getting the blessings and a small amount of seed money from the WOC budget, I set up a national youth leadership team with Laura Singer of Illinois, Theresa Yugar of Massachusetts, Theresa Trujillo of Colorado and Stephanie Barnes of Virginia. We drafted a mission statement, goals and objectives, designed to provide support, resources and training, and began to seek YFN individual contributions and small amounts of grant money.

Once we set the foundation of YFN, we began taking action. We promoted networking amongst young women in academic settings (women’s centers and campus ministry offices), at the parish level and through small faith/action groups. In the first few years, we had connected with about fifteen women’s centers and ministry offices. How we worked with these groups varied. Resources, including information on the history of women’s ordination movement, subscriptions to NewWomen, NewChurch, lists of biblical female images of God, key religious feminist books, and ecumenical young women’s groups were also made available. Sometimes, campus ministers used these resources themselves to shape their programs and outreach; other times information was passed on to particular women struggling to integrate their Catholicism and feminism.

We hosted a very successful interactive panel at the National Organization for Women’s Young Summit meeting and were invited to speak or co-sponsor programs at various universities, including James Madison University, George Mason University, and Georgetown University. We also provided regular caucus space for young people at Call To Action and Dignity Conferences several years before these organizations launched their own organizing efforts with young people. We also sought to help establish some mentoring relationships, but these attempts were less successful. It seemed like those that stuck were local and organic; this early aspect of our program was soon dropped. Our largest programs included a national three-day leadership training in Chicago in 1998 and a one-day training in Los Angeles in 1999. At both of these events Latina women were well represented and, in Chicago, local young women remain connected today.

WOC’s Young Feminist Network remains a unique space for young women to organize around issues of Catholic faith and feminism. By trusting young people to develop their own vision within the larger tradition it serves both the specific young women involved and the church renewal movement more generally.

Broadening the Vision

While many of the original reasons for starting YFN have stayed the same, others have taken on more urgency throughout the years. One of the most pressing issues for many of us who attended the different YFN conferences, trainings, demonstrations, or small faith groups was, how could we as young women — who often feel marginalized from the church — use that experience of marginalization to identify with others who feel marginalized? How is this true not only in the church but in our own organization? What did we need to do to face our own oppressions both personally and institutionally?

One of the most powerful examples of this resulted from the 2001 Retreat, “Justice, Not ‘Just-Us’: Liberation Through Women’s Witness” in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Throughout the week we heard moving testimonials of powerful Mexican women, co-ops and radical nuns. Many of us were also forced to examine our own role as oppressed and oppressors. Like the story of Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, we asked each other, “when are we at the center of power and when are we on the periphery?”

It was through these conversations and struggles that many of us in Young Feminist Network realized that the only way to work for justice in the church was to work for justice everywhere, including in our own lives. We needed to broaden our understanding of justice for women in the church to include all women — women of color, lesbian women, and women with low incomes.

Progress throughout the years

Young Feminist Network started like many women’s initiatives do — by sharing stories. I remember the 1995 WOC conference in DC where the seeds for YFN were planted. We gathered on the floor at the edge of the main conference room to discuss the weekend’s events. I also remember the energetic caucuses that YFN held at the national Call To Action conferences in 1996 and 1997 for young adults to share their experiences with trying to find faith communities to support them.

It was an honor for me to serve on the leadership team for the first YFN retreat in 1998. The leadership team truly modeled the feminist principles of leadership that we want to see in a renewed church – building consensus, participative decision making, respect, honesty and constructive conflict resolution.

Through the efforts of Young Feminist Network, the commitment to these feminist principles have been renewed and re-emphasized in the full WOC organization. We put forth strategies for fully recognizing the experiences of young women and to incorporate their gifts and talents into the struggle to ordain women as priests. The activities of YFN have not only offered opportunities for young women, they have also helped transform the organization, making it stronger and more effective, thus, ensuring WOC’s sustainability. YFN’s success lies not in how it serves as an entry point for young women to the larger WOC organization, but in how it enables young women to move beyond token participation.

Over the last 10 years, I have witnessed the participants of YFN move from the sidelines of the organization to assuming full leadership roles on the board and staff. Other diverse leadership roles for young women have also been encouraged and nurtured through the online community, Alternative World Youth Day, World Day of Prayer for Women’s Ordination, Bishop Murphy Scholarships, and small faith groups. WOC now serves as an example to other multi-generational organizations as to how to respect the experiences of young adults and include them in a way in which they can contribute equally to the task of renewing the Catholic Church.

Current Activity

Aisha S. Taylor

I first heard about Young Feminist Network from Joy Barnes at WATER’s 2004 Anniversary event. One year later, I was hired as Program Director and Coordinator of YFN, and discovered there had not been a lot of activity in YFN; however, in the past year, there has been a flurry of renewed activity!

The YFN Leadership Team was gathered, including Carmen Lane of Michigan and Theresa Trujillo of Colorado and I, and we applied for and obtained grant money for a Leadership & Organizing Retreat in January 2006 at the Leaven Center in Michigan. The retreat will celebrate ten years of YFN’s work in church reform, and it will solidify and strengthen the leadership and direction of YFN for the next five years and beyond. We will develop organizational structure and recruit new leaders, so YFN will be active and continue to build a powerful movement of progressive young adult Catholics. We will create a five-year plan of action that will incorporate our commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression, so we can authentically and consistently advocate for justice in our church and world.

In addition, YFN’s online community has grown exponentially, and participation increased from 25 to 125 people in one year! Conversation has ranged from discussions about faith, feminism, contraception, diversity and inclusion to announcements for jobs, internships and reading suggestions.

One key component of YFN has been strengthened as well — the community found in small faith groups. Young adults from Call to Action’s Next Generation, FutureChurch and I, representing WOC’s YFN, have collaborated in developing a resource packet to help small faith groups get started. In addition, Washington, DC has a thriving and active small faith community of young feminists of faith. To read more, see Jenn Taylor’s article in this edition.

Local activism continues to be a major part of YFN, as we strive to gain visibility in society and the church reform movement. The recent papal transition provided an opportunity for us to become activated, as we did with the release of a statement on the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King and Pope John Paul II and by helping organize the Pink Smoke events. YFN members were instrumental in organizing the activities in Washington DC, with two phone banking parties to contact WOC members, and in Chicago, where Laura Singer was featured on CNN’s Paul Zahn Now.

As bell hooks stated in Feminism is for Everyone, “Truly, there can be no feminist transformation of our culture without a transformation in our religious beliefs.” We are working to do just that — transform our religious institution, the Catholic Church. There is urgency now in our mission, especially after the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, and we realize it is vitally important to provide young feminists of faith with resources to develop their spirituality and leadership skills. We will continue to do this, and look forward to updating this “YFN Herstory” with more events and progress in the next few years. Stay tuned!

Kerry Danner-McDonald is the founding staff member of YFN. She currently lives in Maryland with her family and is working on her doctorate in Theology.

Stephanie Barnes works at the Center for Global Education, Augsburg College in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  She has been involved with WOC and YFN for almost 10 years, and she is active in a small women’s group in her community.

Laura Singer lives in Chicago, IL with her family and has been an active member of WOC since 1994.

Aisha S. Taylor serves as WOC’s Program Director and Coordinator of YFN.

Young Feminist Network

Young Feminist Network (YFN), a ministry of Women’s Ordination Conference, is a national, diverse and inclusive community of womanist, mujerista and feminist Catholics in our 20’s and 30’s. We are a Roman Catholic group who recognizes the issues we address affect people regardless of religious affiliation.

Our Mission

To equip and mobilize young Catholic women to integrate faith with feminism and to eliminate oppression within ourselves, society, and the Roman Catholic Church.. 

Our Vision

As an education and advocacy ministry, our vision is to:

• Eliminate oppression: We work to eliminate oppression and discrimination in ourselves, our peers, our families, our communities and our church
• Create an inclusive Roman Catholic Church: We re-imagine and work toward changing and creating church structures that are fully inclusive, affirming and participatory
• Promote community faith life: We empower young women to participate in community faith life through parishes or faith sharing groups
• Provide leadership opportunities: We provide young Catholic feminists with training and opportunities to develop skills in leadership and prophetic witness
• Encourage healthy and diverse expressions of sexuality: We encourage young women to use their moral authority to make decisions about their sexuality, gender identity, and all other aspects of their body.