Pope Francis Assigns Vatican Office to Promote Women's Participation

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If he wants to I don’t see a problem with that, and they can probably contribute a different perspective to the Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life.
 
Don’t the stats say that women already do most of the participation in the Church?
 
Exactly…

So, we have a ‘fire’ of the laymen of the Church leaving…

Why are we adding wood and gas to the fire as opposed to water?
 
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It seems to me that women are already participating in the Church plenty, and a better Office to set up would be one about participation in the Church of young men.

But this is only my perspective in one area in America, so probably just a tad myopic.
 
I could hopefully express a reason why but it would likely make this thread blow up, so I will leave it to all our collective imagination
 
Ah, yes.

Some institutions have white guilt.
The Vatican has woman guilt. Even though our most highly venerated saint is a woman, and we are one of the largest anti human trafficking organizations in the world, we still are trying to shed the old “The Church is misygonist” myth.

Gimme a break… :roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:
 
Spyridon said:
It seems to me that women are already participating in the Church plenty, and a better Office to set up would be one about participation in the Church of young men.

But this is only my perspective in one area in America, so probably just a tad myopic.
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It´s something our priest says, too. We have so many women, young and old, participating in our parish here in germany, but a lack of young men. We recently heard a “serious sentence” from our dear priest about the absence of husbands at the liturgy…
 
He just appointed two women to an otherwise all-male office. I don’t think it matters if women participate more overall. It’s only important for alter servers to be predominantly male, unless there is a shortage.
 
Ehhh…

It’s not a complete zero-sum game, but lay men, more and more, feel pushed out of the Church. This won’t help.
 
Sometimes I think those in Rome have never been to a parish. Other than the priest himself, women do and run everything (God bless them!). They also make up most of the people in the pews. If anything, we need an office to promote the participation of men!

(EDIT: others said the same thing…I should have read the other posts first)
 
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I guess my parish is lucky. We have lots and lots of male participation. We also have lots and lots of female participation.

Perhaps they are thinking the woman shortage is in Vatican and diocesan positions?
 
Even at my EF parish which folks would assume is ran by chauvinist males, the women do most of the work.

Altar serving is run by the males but everything else is run by the ladies.
 
If nothing else, I think these kinds of things have a certain amount of “perception is reality.”

There’s a widespread perception that women in the church are still supposed to be " good little women" - not that women aren’t involved, but that men lead and make all the decisions and women get to do the scutwork that the men don’t want to deal with. For example, I know in the protestant church I grew up in, men were the ones who studied and taught theology, made financial decisions, had (name removed by moderator)ut into hiring processes, decided what programs should be run, that sort of thing. Women did the cooking and cleaning, took care of small children, and did secretarial work.
 
The Church also has a huge practical problem with not enough men stepping up to the plate to take care of the work of parishes.
If more men aren’t going to head for the seminary and the diaconate, then it’s necessary to look at ways more women can participate, to help out those priests who are being assigned 1 per 2,400 parishioners as currently being done by the bishop of Pittsburgh.

You can look at this as the Vatican trying to change its “misogynist” image or throw a sop to “feminists”, or you can be open-minded and look at it as having real potential for either finding better ways to utilize women, or if men are truly worried about females taking over the place, inspiring those men to go find more ways they themselves can do the work of the church.
 
Spyridon said:
It seems to me that women are already participating in the Church plenty, and a better Office to set up would be one about participation in the Church of young men.
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That has been changing. While men’s attendance has somewhat stabilized in the low 20’s percentage, women’s rates of attendance continue to decline and are now only 6 points higher than men’s.

The CC has to be concerned with that. Women are the mothers of the next generation of Catholics.


 
It’s not that way everywhere, obviously. The Protestant church next door to me has a woman minister running the place, showing up in a nice car and a suit for services, and tons of men doing stuff like the yard work and the maintenance of the old building.
 
It’s not. But when we’re dealing with folk outside the church, or even lukewarm Catholics, we have to deal with the perception a bit whether or not it is everywhere.
 
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