A Limerick diocesan report has found that there needs to be a “radical change of mindset” to balance leadership within the Church and “recognise the role of women”.
The ‘Role of Women in Church Leadership Working Group Report’ found that “If you went into any parish, any church in the country, you would find that there are women involved all the time in the background doing work, helping out and stuff like that,” in the words of Rose O’Connor, Chair of the Women in Church Leadership Working Group.
She noted that the findings were equally applicable to laymen, saying that “it’s not just women, actually, it’s laypeople in general”.
She described a sense of “invisibility”, which is in part due to a cultural attitude of the “priest as the centre of everything”.
“We’re so used to that clerical model of the Church,” Ms O’Connor said.
“I think women have been playing a very important role in the Church almost forever, but I suppose what they don’t have is any official recognition of the roles that they play and certainly when it comes to leadership and decision-making, they don’t have a space in which their voices are heard.”
Ms O’Connor emphasised that the working group is interested in what’s possible “within the provisions of Canon Law”.
“The other thing we’ve discovered is, in terms of Canon Law, there is a lot of scope to do more than we’re doing and to actually open that up a bit more,” Ms O’Connor said.
She suggested that more official positions could be made of positions that “we’re already familiar with”, such as pastoral or parish councils, ministers of the Word and of the Eucharist, and finance committees.
In line with this, Ms O’Connor said she was fully supportive of Pope Francis’ moves this year to institutionalise the roles of lectors, acolytes and catechists .
The report also suggests that these new roles are developed alongside other ministry roles such as the permanent diaconate to avoid either one displacing the other.