Women of faith celebrated International Women’s day with discussions on women’s future in the Catholic Church and by exploring if women have been written out of scripture.
“We are talking about the survival of the Church,” said Joanna Moorhead, The Tablet’s Arts editor, who has written widely on the subject of women in the Church for publications including The Guardian, The Observer and The Times.
She told more than 200 participants in The Tablet’s webinar, Do Women have a future in the Catholic Church? that the issue was no longer a women’s issue but an issue for everyone. The question is – does the Church have a future without women?
“Of course it doesn’t. The church has no future without us,” she stated. She also noted the implications of younger catholic women falling away as the Church needs a membership to survive.
During The Tablet’s webinar, Zuzanna Flisowska-Caridi of Voices of Faith recounted her experience of the German Church’s synodal path of reform.
The process has brought together lay people, religious and bishops to discuss four major topics: the way power is exercised in the Church; sexual morality; the priesthood; and the role of women in ministries and offices in the Church.
Zuzanna Flisowska-Caridi, who is part of the commission working on women’s issues, described her experience in Germany as “quite extra-ordinary.”
She said: “Obviously, the process has its limits. But for me, it’s been a really wonderful experience in which lay people, theologians, male and, and female, religious sisters, are all sitting together at the one table, and they’re really trying not to have this hierarchical view. Everyone has his or her voice.