The Dialog

By Francis X Rocca

Pope Francis greets the crowd as he arrives to lead his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 3. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Women have a privileged role in the church because of their ability to pass on the faith through love, Pope Francis said.

“Women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord, in following him and communicating his face, because the eyes of faith always need the simple and profound look of love,” the pope told an estimated 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square April 3.

“This is the mission of women, of mothers and women, to give witness to their children and grandchildren that Christ is risen,” he said. “Faith is professed with the mouth and heart, with the word and love.”

In the second weekly public audience of his pontificate, Pope Francis resumed a series of catechetical talks on the creed begun by Pope Benedict XVI in January.

Commenting on the words, “rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” the pope noted that the New Testament gives women a “primary, fundamental role” as witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. He cited the passage in Mark Chapter 16 in which women find an empty tomb and an angel who tells them that Jesus is alive.

“Here we can see an argument in favor of the historical truth of the resurrection,” Pope Francis said. “If it had been an invention, in the context of that time it would not have been linked to the testimony of women,” since the Jewish law of period did not consider women or children as “reliable, credible witnesses.”

“This tells us that God does not choose according to human criteria,” the pope said. “The first witnesses of the birth of Jesus are the shepherds, simple and humble people, and the first witnesses of the resurrection are women.”

Jesus’ male apostles and disciples “find it harder to believe in the risen Christ,” the pope said. “Peter runs to the tomb, but stops before the empty tomb. Thomas has to touch the wounds of the body of Jesus with his own hands.”

By contrast, the “women are driven by love and they know to accept this proclamation (of the resurrection) with faith,” the pope said. “They believe and immediately transmit it; they do not keep it for themselves.”

“Let us also have the courage to go out to bring this joy and light to all the places of our lives,” the pope said, eliciting cheers from the crowd, as at several other moments in his talk. “The resurrection of Christ is our greatest certainty, it is our most precious treasure. How can we not share this treasure, this beautiful certainty with others?”

“Unfortunately, there have often been attempts to obscure faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and doubts have crept in even among believers themselves,” Pope Francis said, lamenting what he called a “rosewater”-like faith, diluted by superficiality, indifference, other priorities or a “purely horizontal vision of life.”

Hope in the resurrection, he said, enables Christians to “live everyday realities with more confidence, to face them with courage and commitment.”

Following the audience, the pope spent about 45 minutes personally greeting prelates and other dignitaries, as well as members of the general public, including many small children and disabled people in wheelchairs.

In what has already become a common sight during his young papacy, a number of pilgrims, including a group of Jesuit deacons studying in Rome, broke Vatican protocol by embracing Pope Francis and kissing him on both cheeks.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — To counteract the widespread perception that women don’t have a vital role in the church, Catholics need to learn more about the historical importance of women in ministry and retell those stories to younger generations, said a prominent U.S. Catholic speaker.

Catholics need “to take these young people, sometimes adults, under our wing and talk about these things and share our own life story of ministry,” said Vicki Thorn.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix and Archbishops Samuel J. Aquila of Denver, William E. Lori of Baltimore and Gerald Lacroix of Quebec leave in procession after attending the opening Mass of the International Congress on the Church in America in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 9. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Thorn, who is the founder of Project Rachel, a Catholic post-abortion healing ministry, and executive director of the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing in Milwaukee, was attending a Dec. 9-12 international congress at the Vatican.

The congress marked the 15th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops for America, and Thorn addressed one of the assembly’s working groups in a talk about the church’s vision of the dignity of women.

She said Dec. 10 that the church needs to shine the spotlight back on the significant role women have played in the life of the church.

“If you look at Scripture, there were the women who fed Jesus, supported him and traveled with the Apostles,” she said.

“Women have always been the pragmatic responders,” she said. “If you look at the saints, women saw a need, they went and took care of it” and worked with other church authorities to get the necessary infrastructure and support to keep their services going, such as caring for the sick or neglected, and educating the young.

Many Catholics, especially young adults, are surprised when they hear stories of the saints’ strength and gumption, she said. “We have to reclaim that, it’s our tradition.”

Part of the reason why women’s contributions get overlooked, she said, is women are often too concerned with getting things done than tooting their own horns; another problem is that the mass media interpret the fact that priestly ordination is open only to men as proof the church considers women to be inferior.

“But our role is different than the role of men, and that’s not a problem,” she said.

However, “in the media there’s this mindset that we should be the same. No, we shouldn’t. There’s complementarity and that’s what’s important.” Women “bring to the church perceptiveness; the way we view the world is different than the male way and that’s not bad,” she said.

So-called “gender neutrality” ends up erasing the two gender’s unique gifts, she added.

“Women who are involved in the church have to tell the stories and take pride in what women have done because we get caught up in the authority issue,” she said.

Women have had different kinds of authority in the church, Thorn said, with women running religious communities, schools, hospitals and other institutions even long before they were allowed such positions in secular society.

Thorn said that when she tells young women about the long history of women in the church, “their faces light up” and they want to know more.

“We, for centuries, have been a people of story,” yet those days of passing on the faith in an informal family setting are now rare, she said.

Stories or experiences of faith had been handed down from grandmothers and other relatives to the younger generations, she said, giving life to the saying: “Faith is caught, not taught.”

Stained glass windows, statues and other sacred artwork were all meant to offer an opportunity to tell the story of the event or holy person depicted, but now people just see them as beautiful artistic decorations, missing their true purpose.

“There is this vacuum” in a lack of well-catechized adults, including parents, who are knowledgeable about church history, she said.

Given the success, for example, of the “Veggie Tales” Christian video series for kids, Thorn said, Catholic media could create compelling videos for children that explain the lives of women saints and help kids apply those stories’ lessons to real-life problems.

“There are great adventures in many of those lives,” she said, like St. Teresa of Avila who, opposed to her father’s wishes, sneaked away in the dead of night to a Carmelite convent to escape being married off.

The saint’s story also helps kids become aware of the continued problem of forced marriage in some cultures and how, as a church, people can help those on the run, said Thorn.

Teaching and ministering need renewed attention as “I think in some respects over time we grew away from the practical work of the church and we became more bureaucratic.”

“Feeding the people, walking with Jesus, making sure he had what was needed, that’s what’s important,” she said.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has launched a monthly insert dedicated to women, aiming to bring greater attention to their important but sometimes neglected role in the church.

The glossy four-page color supplement, which debuted May 31 to mark the end of the month dedicated to Mary, is called “Women, church, world,” and will run the last Thursday of every month. Read more »