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A Journey Toward God p.7 | Women Religious and LGBTQ Catholic Ministry
Women Religious and LGBTQ Catholic Ministry
BY JEANNINE GRAMICK, SL
Photo © Seydisfjordur Kirkje,Naturfreund, pixabay
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) ministry in the United States Catholic Church began, developed, endured, and flourishes today because of women religious. This is an unknown story that needs to be told.
Countless sisters have embraced LGBTQ ministry in assorted ways. For more than 40 years, sisters have opened their motherhouses and retreat centers for LGBTQ programs. Many have signed petitions, demonstrated, or written letters of complaint when LGBTQ people are fired from Catholic institutions. Some have marched in solidarity in gay pride parades. The backbone of financial support for LGBTQ Catholic ministry has been women religious and their congregations. A number of communities are conducting educational programs for their own members about sexuality and gender issues. Sisters have long been part of the LGBTQ struggle as trusted allies.
In the 1980s, women religious convinced Archbishop Weakland to support civil rights for lesbian and gay persons in Wisconsin, paving the way for it to become the first state with civil rights protections. In this same decade, a provincial leader of the School Sisters of Notre Dame sponsored a meeting for sisters who served as chaplains for Dignity, a Catholic lesbian/gay organization. In these early days, there was no public consciousness of transgender, intersex, or non-binary people.
A number of sisters have healed the spirits and saved the lives of many transgender people. Members of the Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic, Racine Dominicans, Dominican Sisters of Peace, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet have companioned transgender people and their families on their sacred journeys. Through a ministry of presence and accompaniment, women religious have welcomed transgender folks into their lives and been welcomed in return. The sisters’ basic message is that God loves them for who they are.
Women religious are conscious that this ministry is also needed within their own communities. For the last 20 years, New Ways Ministry, the organization I co-founded with Fr. Robert Nugent, sponsored educational conferences for lesbian religious, their congregational leaders, and formation and vocation personnel. Last year, when the anthology, Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious, was published, the authors received overwhelming support from their religious congregations.
All of the above pastoral support on a private level has been accompanied by public backing. In 1974, the National Coalition of American Nuns became the first Catholic group to assert that it is immoral, and should be illegal, to discriminate against any person because of their sexual orientation. Three years later, the Sisters Council of the diocese of Rochester, NY, affirmed the need for ministry of the lesbian and gay community.
In 1993, the National Board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) publicly affirmed the rights of lesbian and gay persons to full and equal protection under law at every level in our nation. The year before, the General Assembly of the Sisters of Loretto publicly disagreed with the document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which opposed civil rights legislation for gay and lesbian persons. In their employment policies, the Loretto Sisters include sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and personal support for marriage equality.
At a high school they operate in San Francisco, the Sisters of Mercy publicly backed a teacher who came out as transgender in 2016. Shortly thereafter, the Sisters of St. Agnes in Fond du Lac, WI, organized a public prayer vigil after a rampant shooting of LGBTQ people at the Pulse nightclub.
All of these activities, both private and public, are merely a bird’s-eye description of the countless ways women religious have long been in the forefront of LGBTQ ministry.
The Early Days
My own story is a good case study that shows the tenacity and early embrace of LGBTQ ministry by women religious. In 1977, the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) assigned me to full-time lesbian/gay ministry. Many gay Catholics felt alienated from a church they loved. Some experienced being thrown out of the confessional and being told by a priest that they were going to hell. Others were told by their parents never to come home
again. SSND sought to fill the gap by providing official pastoral care to accompany these ostracized persons and their families on life’s journey.
From time to time, my religious leaders had to respond to argumentative letters or phone calls, and they did so admirably. The most serious objections came from United States bishops who protested directly to the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious. On three occasions, the Vatican requested the School Sisters to investigate the ministry and to recommend sanctions. Each time SSND leaders supported the continuation of the ministry and recommended no sanctions.
One bishop complained that New Ways Ministry was sponsoring a retreat for lesbian sisters. The Vatican’s Congregation for Religious, deciding that the nuns were using the word ‘celibate’ as a ‘slogan,’ informed the SSND Superior General that New Ways Ministry should cancel the retreat. I remember that phone call well:
“Now, Jeannine, Mother Georgianne told me to pass along this information to you. Listen carefully. I’m merely relaying the message.” The retreat was held quietly without any challenge to the Vatican. There was no public controversy, and the unreasonable request was circumvented.
Women religious find “wiggle room” to go around a brick wall, instead of going through it. As in this case, there is no outright challenge or public confrontation of authority. Instructions are simply sidestepped or explained away. Women religious have used creative circumvention to achieve many transformations. And isn’t this the way that moves change? Without flourish or fanfare, people merely disregard rules or laws that simply make no sense.
Standing Up to the Vatican
The most serious obstacle to this ministry began in the 1980s when Washington, D.C.’s James Cardinal Hickey requested my removal from the ministry. The General Administrative Team of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cleveland, who had known and worked with the cardinal personally, volunteered to effect some reconciliation, but the cardinal refused. The SSND superior general asked to meet with his theologian to discuss his objections. The cardinal, unwilling to do so, preferred to take his case to the CDF.
During a formal Vatican investigation in the 1990s, the succeeding superior general challenged the process a number of times. For example, after objecting to the lack of input, SSND was allowed to submit a list of names to fill one position on the commission. When none of the suggested people were appointed, the Vatican responded that they merely agreed to accept a list of names, not necessarily to select anyone from the list.
During the investigation, my provincial leader challenged the inclusion of nongay items on the inquisitional agenda. This same provincial had previously informed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that SSND approved this ministry, asking that her letter be sent to all United States bishops, but there is no evidence that her letter was communicated.
Finally, in 1999, the Vatican issued a notification to prohibit me from any LGBTQ pastoral work. An overwhelming number of members of LCWR wrote to the CDF to object to their evaluation and penalty. LCWR encouraged their members to engage in conversations with local bishops about the issue of homosexuality and many leaders did so.
For more than two decades, SSND was able to shield me in the ministry they had embraced. When this protection was no longer possible, the Sisters of Loretto offered shelter. For the next eight years, the Loretto presidents received a series of letters from the Congregation for Religious suggesting my voluntary or forced departure from religious life if I continued in LGBTQ ministry. But the Loretto community stood firm. The letters ceased after 2009 when the Vatican launched its investigation of all United States women’s congregations.
Since the election of Pope Francis, the atmosphere at the Vatican has dramatically shifted. In an exchange of letters with New Ways Ministry, Pope Francis said that his “shepherd’s heart” has “good feelings” about LGBTQ ministry.
Persistence from Women Religious
Besides showing the tenacity of women religious, this case study reveals how shabbily women religious have been treated by the patriarchal church. Their pleas may be dismissed, but like the woman in the Gospel who persistently knocks on the door of the unjust judge, women religious continue to find ways to do the works of mercy.
Without the support of visionary women religious, I would not have been able to continue my ministry for 50 years, and I would not be writing this article today. More importantly, the acceptance of LGBTQ people today by more than three-fourths of the Catholic faithful has largely been due to the efforts of United States women religious. While they clearly have less power than male priests and bishops, women religious have used their institutional standing to achieve enormous good. As representatives of the Catholic Church, albeit lowly ones, they have comforted innumerable LGBTQ Catholics, assuring them that they are loved by God just as they are.
Women religious are the real unsung heroes of LGBTQ Catholic ministry.
Jeannine Gramick, a Sister of Loretto, taught college mathematics before she co-founded New Ways Ministry, an LGBTQ+ Catholic ministry, in 1977. For more than a dozen years, she served as an Executive Coordinator of the National Coalition of American Nuns.
To Change the Church, Have the Conversation
BY ELLIE HIDALGO AND CASEY STANTON
How does the Church discern the movement of the Holy Spirit for our times? When you’re talking about a 2,000-yearold institution grounded in tradition, how does the Holy Spirit try to move the hearts of the faithful to do a new thing? Or an old thing once again?
The possible restoration of women to the permanent ordained diaconate necessitates a global conversation that is complex and consequential. In discussing the pathway to such a change, Fr. Warren Sazama, pastor of St. Thomas More Parish in the Twin Cities, said off the cuff, “The way you change the Church is you have the conversation.” He may not have been intending to offer a blue-print for how the Holy Spirit works, but his words have stuck with women discerning a call to the diaconate who are wondering if they could ever be brave enough to initiate the conversation with their pastors, parishioners, even their bishops.
Discerning Deacons launched in April 2021 to engage Catholics in the active discernment of our Church about restoring women to the permanent diaconate—including blessing women with the sacramental grace of diaconate ordination. Our work supports educational opportunities and conversations in parishes and communities so that everyone can participate in the discernment.
Inspired by the synodal journey and dreams of the Church in the Amazonian territory of South America, our project seeks to create encounters between diaconal women and other Catholic leaders, where Spirit-inspired listening and dialogue can bear the fruits of conversion. Why the need to be brave?
Conversation Closed
If the way to conversion is through conversation and encounter, then the converse is also true; the way to keep things as they are is to silence the conversation.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II taught in Ordinatio sacerdotalis that the Church “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women,” and his successors have confirmed this teaching. Intended or not, the impact has often been to stifle the larger conversation about women’s leadership in the church, including what is within the bounds of the authority of the Church with regards to women.
For example, the Second Vatican Council (Lumen gentium) teaches that deacons are ordained “not unto the priesthood, but unto a ministry of service...in the diaconia of the liturgy, of the word, and of charity to the people of God.” It is a vocation distinct from the priesthood which points to Jesus the Servant Leader. There is nothing in Catholic doctrine that would prevent the Church from restoring women to the diaconate, and yet it has been challenging for the faithful to fully embrace having the conversation.
Pope Francis’s vision of a synodal, listening, and participatory Church has led to greater permission to engage in conversations, trusting that as we listen more deeply to one another and create spaces for discernment, the Holy Spirit reveals God’s will that allows us to walk together and build the kingdom of God.
An opportunity to take up the issue of women and the diaconate opened up in 2016 when religious superiors from the International Union of Superiors General asked Pope Francis to create an official commission to study the possibility of including women among permanent deacons, as was the case in the early Church. Pope Francis responded positively to the sisters’ request and formally established his Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women, naming twelve scholars as members—six men and six women. In the two millennia of church history, this commission may be the first to include an equal representation of both men and women.
In describing the work of the papal commission on women deacons, the Holy Father, in a March 2017 interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, said, “We must not be afraid! Fear closes doors. Freedom opens them. And if freedom is small, it opens at least a little window.”
However, the findings from this commission were never made public. The question emerged again at the Synod
of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region when the bishops asked to share the experiences of women engaged in diaconal ministry. In response, Pope Francis established a new commission in April 2020 which met for the first time in September 2021. How did this conversation bubble up in the peripheries of the Amazon region of Latin America?
Numerous bishops in the Amazon already rely on women to engage in missionary diaconal work in remote communities. Among them Divine Providence Sr. Catarina Mees1 who has directed the Rural Institute of the Vicariate of Pando in remote Bolivia since 2016. Under the direction of Bishop Eugenio Coter, Sr. Mees is responsible for the spiritual and pastoral care of some 150 rural communities. Her responsibilities include the formation of local leaders and working collaboratively with her pastoral team, local animators of faith communities, liturgical teams, and catechists. Sr. Mees represents the Church’s presence as she visits rural communities and brings them the Holy Eucharist, presides at baptisms, and witnesses marriages. She and her pastoral team have baptized more than 1,000 children, youth, and adults. “The rural communities accept me with ease to be their pastor, their deacon, the one who serves their community. Celebrating with them is always a joy!” shared Sr. Mees at a recent celebration of the Feast of St. Phoebe on September 3, 2021. “The acceptance of my ministry as a servant of the community is very peaceful, very normal in this Amazon region of the Apostolate of Pando.”
Making it Safe to Talk
Is the issue of women’s diaconate only a concern for the Amazonian Church where reaching remote rural territories necessitates more laborers in the vineyard, including women pastoral ministers? Or did the Amazonian Church reveal something that could be prophetic for the whole of the Church?
The scholarship of theologians like Phyllis Zagano, Serena Nocceti, Carolyn Osiek, and Isabel Corpas has begun to restore the memory of early Church women deacons. Hidden in plain sight,
Timeline
Provided By Ellie Hidalgo and Casey Stanton Information drawn from Church documents, and “Women Deacons: Past, Present, and Future” William Ditewig’s timeline pp 43-45 1966 The U.S. Catholic bishops permitted women to serve as lectors, but only “when a qualified man is not available” and “while standing outside the sanctuary.”
1967 Pope Paul VI implemented this decree of the Council; re-established the permanent diaconate in the Latin Church. • Bishop León Bonaventura de Uriarte Begnoa, OFM of San Ramon, Peru, asked that “deaconesses be instituted.”
1970 Pope Paul VI gave general permission for women to serve as lectors, read the prayers of the faithful, cantor and, with a mandate, distribute communion. They still could not be altar servers, even in homes,
convents and institutions for women!
1972 Pope Paul VI decreed that lay men (but not women) could be formally installed as lectors and acolytes.
1980 Pope John Paul II repeated the ban on women serving at the altar. 1983 Revision to the Code of Canon Law appeared to open the door to women serving at the altar, but it wasn’t until 1994 that Pope Saint John Paul II made it official, though leaving the decision to individual bishops, if approved by their regional conference. At that point, it was already common practice in many US parishes.
1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on the restriction of presbyteral ordination to men alone was promulgated by John Paul II.
1998 The Congregation for Clergy and the Congregation for Catholic Education jointly promulgated the Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons and the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent deacons. No mention was made in either document about the possibility of ordaining women.
2015 The president of the Canadian bishops’ conference asked the Synod of Bishops to open up a process for the ordination of women to the diaconate.
2016 Women who lead religious orders asked Pope Francis to establish a commission to study the topic. He agreed. Three years later, the pope received a report from the commission but never made it public.
2019 Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon region requested that Pope Francis amend canon law so that women could be formally installed into the ministries of lector and acolyte.
2020 Pope Francis established a 2nd commission for the study of the women’s diaconate.
2021 Pope Francis orders a change to the Code of Canon Law. Women can now formally be installed as lectors and acolytes.
Feb. Sr. Natalie Becquart appointed under-secretary at Synod of Bishops, the 1st time a woman has been appointed to this position.
Apr. 29 Launch of Discerning Deacons
Oct.10 Opening of the global synod For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission to include a global consultation with the people of God, a back and forth between the people, the bishops, and the team in Rome to develop a dynamic working document leading towards an inperson Synod of Bishops in Rome, Oct 2023.
“Guardian Angel” © Laura James
St. Phoebe is named as a deacon by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans,2 the woman he entrusted to deliver and interpret his letter to the faith community in Rome. Among women deacon saints in the Church’s history are St. Domnika of Alexandra, St. Theosebia of Nyssa, St. Junia of Rome, St. Priscilla of Corinth, St. Susanna of Palestine and many others. The recovery of their names is slowly stirring the modern Catholic imagination about the present and future of women’s leadership in the church.
When Discerning Deacons launched in the spring it was with Bishop Randolph Calvo of Reno as an advisor, along with priests, deacons, religious women and recognized lay pastoral leaders endorsing the conversation and thereby giving more Catholics in the pews permission to consider the issue. It has been important to share widely and often that the church is actively engaging in this particular discussion about women and the diaconate.
During the summer, Discerning Deacons galvanized more than 1,500 Catholics in twenty-two cities throughout the United States, Canada and India to gather for parish dialogues and house meetings to pray, learn and discern about women and the diaconate. Among the central questions guiding the conversations were: 1. Is there a pastoral need for women as deacons? 2. Do we know women whose ministry resembles the charism of Jesus the
Servant Leader and who would discern a call to the diaconate if that path were available to them? 3. What is the sense of the faithful and how could people be prepared to receive women as deacons? 4. How does our Catholic tradition inform our discernment about women and the diaconate?
These conversations revealed the quiet hope many Catholics have, that women ordained as deacons could help to renew the church in the third millennium and provide much needed visible leadership role models for Catholic girls and young women to stay engaged in the faith. Female preachers would provide vital perspectives on the Gospel from their lived experiences as daughters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and godmothers. In places like the Amazon and elsewhere, women already are committed to diaconal ministry and the church would benefit from recognizing the work they already do: “As the church prays, so she believes.” It would recognize the fruitful leadership collaboration between Catholic men and women that has existed since the beginning of early Christianity, including the witness of St. Paul and St. Phoebe.
Discerning Deacons is also helping to disseminate the findings of an indepth interview study of United States Catholic women and the diaconate which was published this fall. 3 Lead researcher and University of Notre Dame sociologist Tricia Bruce, PhD, found that Catholic women feel called into service, constrained by barriers to ordination and service reserved for men in the church, they must adapt creatively to do “de facto deacon” ministry anyway, and contribute in ways that uphold the very foundations of the local and global Catholicism. The study was conducted confidentially to make it safe for women currently working in and for the church to speak honestly about their experiences without fear of reprisal.
An invitation to Go On a Synodal Journey
It is our hope that recent conversations are helping to give courage to women and men to speak authentically about the pastoral needs of faith communities today. The current synod that is underway, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission,” is the next phase in Pope Francis’ remarkable vision for a church unafraid to be open to the Holy Spirit as she renews and refreshes the whole Body of Christ. Pope Francis invites bishops and clergy to reimagine governances as beginning from the ground. The guiding documents for this ambitious synod begin with listening processes, which place incredible trust in the people of God to witness God’s will for moving in communion and mission in the world. The Pope is asking bishops and clergy of the world to prioritize engaging with those who are excluded, marginalized, on the peripheries of society and of church structures. With this synod, the church has an opportunity to keep creating safe spaces and to hear directly from the Catholic faithful about their hopes and dreams, as well as concerns for how best to heal from the wounds of clergy abuse, and to correct the imbalance of power that is born of clericalism. Might restoring women to the permanent diaconate play an important role in opening up new pathways of healing and the sharing of authority for the church? The Synod on Synodality invites all of our participation on this pilgrim journey to pray for the grace to listen broadly and widely, to build bridges to those who are excluded, and to move out of fear and into prophetic action.
Pope Francis lays out a prayer in Episcopalis Communio for the Synod of Bishops to become the privileged instrument for listening to God’s people. May it be our prayer too. “For the Synod Fathers we ask the Holy Spirit first of all for the gift of listening: to listen to God, that with him we may hear the cry of the people; to listen to the people until breathing in the desire to which God calls us.”
Ellie Hidalgo and
Casey Stanton
are co-directors of Discerning Deacons.
