The Spring 2012 issue of The Seed Keepers focused on ways that online resources can be used to support pro-change Catholic and feminist spiritualities. We hope that the CNWE website is a resource that you will find useful in this regard. This is the first in a series of posts in which we will direct you towards websites that can be used to nurture spiritualities of inclusivity, promote institutional change, sustain ecological awareness, encourage social action and respect for religious diversity.

What follows is a list of websites where you can find information on Catholic women’s ordination.

Women Priests
A really comprehensive site with information on the history of women religious in the Church and reasons for it today, as well as tons of other resources: “We raise awareness and facilitate informed discussion about women’s ordination. We promote the ordination of women as part of the life-giving mission Christ intended for his Church. We work for reform from the centre of the Church and within the parameters of canon law.

Women’s Ordination Conference
The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) is the world’s oldest and largest organization working solely for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Catholic Church. To this end, we work to: renew church governance to be inclusive, accountable and transparent; bring about justice and equality for Catholic women; incorporate women-centered theologies into every-day Catholicism.

Women’s Ordination Worldwide
The Women’s Ordination Worldwide site is under construction, but STILL has a comprehensive list of other resources and websites. WOW was founded in 1996 at the First European Women’s Synod in Gmunden, Austria. It is an ecumenical network of national and international groups whose primary mission at this time is the admission of Roman Catholic women to all ordained ministries. WOW is founded on the principle of equality and therefore opposes any discrimination. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. (Galatians 3.28). WOW affirms the God-given diversity of humanity and is committed to providing a model of collaborative, non-hierarchical leadership.

Roman Catholic Womenpriests
This is the main site for Roman Catholic Womenpriests or RCWP – but there are many “sub” RCWP associations in different areas. This one gives a good history of the RCWP movement in the U.S., but there is also a “regions” page, from which you can find other areas, including pages for RCWP Canada West and RCWP Canada East (but there is little on these pages at the moment, as much of the information sharing is currently done through email and our Facebook page).

The Association of Roman Catholic Womenpriests
The Association of Roman Catholic Womenpriests is a U.S. subgroup of RCWP that has womenpriests in the States and South America. Though the RCWP mainpage has more of the history of RCWP, this page is more user friendly and is updated more frequently with many of the ongoings of ARCWP.

RCWP Canada on Facebook
So, this isn’t actually a webpage – BUT it sort of functions like one, and you don’t need a Facebook account to look around on it (you just won’t be able to post anything). It offers current news about RCWP Canada events as well as ongoing newsfeeds of related stories. You can check out some of the pictures from events of RCWP Canada as well. We also have a biographies page, a whom to contact page, and a related websites page (where we have a direct link to CNWE).

We Are Church
We Are Church is UK-based website that offers information on the reasons for women’s ordination, as well as support for Vatican II.  It also presents updated related news stories.

Catholics for a Changing Church
Catholics for a Changing Church (UK), earlier known as the Catholic Renewal Movement, began as a protest movement against Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical in 1968, in which artificial means of contraception were banned. Within months it became a pressure-group with the positive aim of furthering the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Marginalised after the 1980 National Pastoral Congress in Liverpool, it became  a think-tank or study-group. All along it has been a refuge and help-line for the oppressed, and a network for the like-minded. It has been a new way of being church – the People of God actively participating in the Church. It has been ‘the friends of Vatican 2’.

WATAC
The story of Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) commenced in 1984 as a national project of the Religious women and men of Australia. While the WATAC organisation is Catholic by origin it is ecumenical by membership and has a commitment to working together with all churches and on an inter-faith basis.