Lack of women will irreversibly harm the church

Lack of women will irreversibly harm the church November 13, 2011

by Joan Chittister
National Catholic Reporter

The story is an old one and I’ve told it before, but never has it felt so ominous as it does right now.
It happened this way:
About 15 or 20 years ago, I gave a series of conferences in a parish in Canada.
I like Canada a lot — its beauty, its pace, its seeming patience with conflict and its apparent calmer approach to otherwise disruptive subjects — subjects that lead to almost immediate choosing up of sides down here. Maybe it’s the Brit in them. Or maybe, given their smaller population and more far-flung population centers, wildfire simply isn’t as wild north the border as it is here. Whatever.
At any rate, what was already euphemistically called “The women’s issue” here appeared at that time to be a great deal less of an issue to our neighbors to the north.
So I was surprised when the topic came up at lunch from the couple hosting my visit. More than that, I was surprised at what triggered it.
It wasn’t the dearth of theology around the question of the ordination of women that piqued them. It wasn’t the growing statistic on the coming decline in the priesthood that worried them. It wasn’t the fear of merging parishes that troubled them.

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