Would There Be A Church Without Women?

Women outnumber men in the Catholic Church but are held back from serving in major leadership roles. Will that change? (Photo couresy of Shutterstock).

This Sunday across many churches, people in the pews will hear one of my favorite gospel passages. It’s the story of the daring woman who encounters Jesus while she’s drawing water at Jacob’s well.

We aren’t told the woman’s name. The gospel’s male writer doesn’t include it. What’s important, though, is how this encounter unfolds. It ends with Jesus revealing for the first time that he is the awaited messiah — and this to a woman! That is the part that carries so much meaning for women in the church today.

The passage helps me to recall the many contributions that women daily offer the church, even while facing regrettable — and many would argue-- unnecessary obstacles. I recently wrote of the joy I experienced last month speaking at the Religious Education Congress, sponsored by the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The liturgies, presentations, and workshops were all top notch, drawing some 15,000 people. The key organizers: all women. The head of the LA education office: A religious sister.

Catholic Sisters Week continues through March 18 — an annual event recognizing the contributions to education, health care and social justice of Catholic sisters. I, for one, owe much of my career success to the classical education I received from the Sisters of Charity of Convent Station, N.J.

I owe endless gratitude to the Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Kansas for teaching me to value the Benedictine values of listening, community, consensus, prayer, humility and hospitality.

Sister Rosalia Meza, left, greets a woman at the L.A. Religious Education Congress that draws thousands of lay persons and church ministers each year. (Photo courtesy of L.A. Archdiocese).

Sister Mary Lou Kownacki of the Erie Benedictines, a friend who passed away last January on the Feast of the Epiphany, also represents for me the vast debt we owe to women in the church. As a devoted peace and social justice activist, Mary Lou participated in countless demonstrations and protests and was arrested some 13 times for it. A recent appreciation of her life and work said this:

“She was a strong presence in the urban neighborhood where she herself had been raised. She was one of the founders of Emmaus Ministries Soup Kitchen, Erie’s Inner-City Neighborhood Art House, and Poetry Park — a neighborhood garden and green space that includes a stage, sculptures, and painted poetry murals. She herself was a published poet.”

Reviewing Sister Mary Lou’s many gifts to others causes me to ask myself: what more can I do to be of service?

Mary Lou modeled for all of us how to die with dignity and grace. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she wrote of the “immeasurable joy” she experienced in having more time to engage in her favorite past-time, window-gazing. As she looked out on the cosmos flowers and canaries in her garden she reflected, “Maybe my wild cosmos and canaries get it. We’re here for wonder, for awe and mystery.”

Mary Lou taught all of us to seek out awe, to savor wonder.

Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, right, with Sister Joan Chittister, holding a book of Sister Joan’s writings that she edited. The two spent decades collaborating on books and spirituality projects.

Which brings me back to the woman at the well and the many important takeaways from this gospel. This is a woman who isn’t afraid to speak to a stranger from a different ethnic group. She doesn’t let her outsider status as a Samaritan force her out of the conversation. This is a practical woman. When Jesus asks her for a drink, she reminds him he doesn’t have a cup.

What is also so endearing is that she’s a woman with a history. She’s had several husbands and is living with another man, facts that Jesus lets drop without judging. When he peers into her soul, when he offers to give her to “living water” to drink, she doesn’t laugh in his face. She doesn’t protest that she’s unworthy. She accepts, and in doing so muses whether this man just might be no ordinary passerby, but possibly the messiah.

Jesus then utters the unforgettable words, “I am he, the one speaking with you.” It’s a revelation he hasn’t yet pronounced so clearly to his 12 closest male companions.

What then to make of women’s exclusion from certain roles in the church?

One of the speakers at the L.A. Religious Education Congress was Phyllis Zagano, a professor at Hoftstra University in New York and foremost scholar on women in the church. Phyllis has long argued that there is clear Scriptural basis for women becoming deacons — a role that like the Catholic priesthood is now reserved to men. Phyllis’ remarks received a standing ovation from women who attended her talk.

Phyllis has been advocating for women in the diaconate for decades. It might take a several more decades, but it is my belief that all roles in the church will one day open to women. Women outnumber men in the church. They know change going to happen, even if some men can’t quite see it yet.

Women like Phyllis Zagano, like Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, like my teachers in high school, and my Benedictine mentors at Mount St. Scholastica Monastery, will not be held back forever. After all, we have the Holy Spirit on our side.

Phyllis Zagano, a professor of Hofstra University in NY, has long chronicled women’s contributions to the church and advocated for women in the Catholic diaconate.