Media Release: Catholic Network for Women’s Equality, Canada (CNWE) Calls Vatican Assembly to Recognize Women’s Equality in Ministry and Governance as Integral to a Synodal Church

Catholic Network for Women’s Equality, Canada (CNWE) Calls Vatican Assembly to Recognize Women’s Equality in Ministry and Governance as Integral to a Synodal Church

CNWE members engage the Synodal process in Canada and Rome.

As the second of two Synodal Assemblies gets underway this month at the Vatican, CNWE returns to Rome to join in prayer and action for women’s equality in the Catholic Church, together with reform movements from around the world. CNWE members in Rome, Dr. Susan Roll, Joanne Jasper, Doug McDougall and Dr. Rosemary Ganley, C.M, join the groundswell of Catholics who are working to create an inclusive, creative, collaborative Church for the future.

Concrete structural changes needed now to move the Church toward synodality.

A hopeful and historic change to Catholic Synods has been the participation of lay delegates (including women), and a roundtable, prayerful methodology of ‘Conversations in the Spirit’. However, it is demoralizing that Synod organizers have decided to refer discussions on 10 major themes, including women in all ministries, to study groups that will report back to the Pope in June 2025. In response to this decision, CNWE joined members of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) on the opening day of the Synod, in a street action that called delegates to stop ‘kicking the can down the road’. Until the Synod addresses how women (and other groups marginalized by the hierarchy) become co-responsible, equal partners in every aspect of Church life, ‘synodality’ is merely an abstract idea.

“How can we become a synodal Church in Mission?”

CNWE’s response to this central question is that the Synod should vote to dismantle the sexism and clericalism that continue to permeate Church law, teaching and practice and has allowed misogyny to flourish in the Church for so long. As CNWE member, Louise Dowhan says, “Women are not a ‘hot button issue’, or objects of further study. We are persons, made in the image of God, baptized in Christ, equal in dignity, and equally called by God to ministry and governance in our Church.”

We call Synod delegates to a bold revisioning of a Church that welcomes all.

It is our hope that Synod delegates will be emboldened by the Gospel to advocate for women’s equality and gender equity so that a path toward credible synodality can be initiated at this Synod with the urgency it requires. Guided by the Holy Spirit, may it be so.

Media Inquiries

Rome:
Rosemary Ganley: rganley209@gmail.com Cell/Whats App: 705 768 2514
Susan Roll: sroll@ustpaul.ca Cell/Whats App: 613 851 9642

Canada:
Louise Dowhan: ldb14@shaw.ca Cell/Whats App: 204 297 0932