Are you sure that you’re problem is with women in certain positions or with your preferences. Allow me explain.
In the diocese where we live, we have a sister as the chancellor. She’s excellent. We’ve always had men. None of them ever did the kind of work that Sister does. She has the entire diocese recovering from the days of silliness as I like to call them.
We have a sister from another congregation who is the head of the Office for Liturgy. She has an STD, which most priests do not have and she is an excellent liturgist. She has saved the Ordinary Form from chaos and has instituted the Extraordinary Form. Even the bishop celebrates it. She goes around to parishes and trains priests to celebrate the EF.
Our Vicar for Religious is a Sister, even though 98% of our religious are male. She is also a Canon Lawyer. Therefore, she knows religious law as well as she knows her breviary. There is nothing that religious and religious superiors can ask her that she does not know how to answer. She is an excellent bridge between those of us who are major superiors and the bishop. She understands us and she understands him. She is in the right spot. None of the male religious mind her being there.
In my community we have only 10% of our brothers are priests. Ninety percent are not. We have a brother, who is not a priest, but is a Doctor of Ministry who a parish administrator and one brother who is a priest is his assistant. The parish has no pastor, because the non-clerical brother cannot be pastor, obviously. The parish has 600 kids in CCD. It has eight masses every weekend with about 800 people at each mass and more than 35 different ministries. It’s mortgage is paid off. Brother is an excellent spiritual director and pastoral counselor.
The brother who is a priest celebrates mass, hears confession and then goes to the centers where he serves as a counselor. He’s excellent at it.
Despite the fact that we have priests, I was appointed superior general and I am not a priest. Traditionally, the post of superior general is held by a priest. I did not run for office. We didn’t even have an election. It was an appointment that came from the Church herself. I would not have wanted the post in the first place.
My point is that we’re seeing many posts that were once held by priests held by other people, not just women. But these other people do a very good job. There are many positions in the Church that were held by men simply because it was a male dominated Church. Women were not allowed to study theology until the 1970s. Seminaries were always for men only. Women studied education, sciences, nursing, social work, art and other humanities.
Today, women can be canon lawyers, theologians, philosophers, scripture scholars, and pastoral administrators if they have the qualifications. If you visit the Vatican today, you would be surprised at the number of women who run departments at the Vatican. The only posts that are strictly reserved for men are those that require that the person be a priest. Those are usually the prefects. You will also find many religious brothers from different communities running ministries, offices and departments in the Church that were once run by priests. That’s because from Vatican I to Vatican II religious brothers were reduced to teaching, nursing and serving priests. Once the Church told them to go back to their original charism, Dominican brothers became theologians again. Franciscan brothers became preachers again. Jesuit brothers became professors of theology again. Carmelite brothers took over parishes and parish ministries again
It’s not just women that are moving into these positions. To say so would be incorrect. There are more women than let’s say religious brothers. The reason is obvious. There are less religious brothers than there are women. The other issue is that most priests are not theologians, canon lawyers, scripture scholars, philosophers or trained administrators.
Today’s parish is much more complex than it was 50 years ago. Take this whole issue with the HHS mandate. Pastors call the Office for Respect Life asking how far they can go without falling into the pit, because they don’t know how the mandate works and they don’t know the finer points of moral theology. They studies all of the areas that I mentioned above, but they took one or two courses during the four years that it takes to get an M.Div. These other people, who are specialists, male or female, are most welcome by the pastors. The pastors don’t want to go on for further education. They’re happy doing what they do and they are good at it. But they often need the expert to handle certain things. Finances is always a big one and the other big area is Canon Law.
Don’t be so hard on these women and don’t think for one second that they are incompetent. Most are very competent. Also, not all of these posts are held by women, even though they are held by people who are not priests.
I guess my question is whether your objection is that these are not priests or that they are not males. Incompetent and competent people come in both genders.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
