Program Trains Women To Lead Gonzaga’s Mater Dei Helps Women Become Lay Ministers

The walls of Mater Dei Institute are solid concrete. A World-War II-era building, it was designed with a fallout shelter. Like the Roman Catholic church itself, it’s not easily remodeled.

But within these walls during the last school year, women have suddenly appeared. Mater Dei Institute, formerly a seminary which closed in 1994 because of a lack of men training for the priesthood, has reopened.

It now prepares women and men for lay ministry within the Catholic church, as well as men bound for the priesthood. forefront,” says the Rev. Charles Skok, who served as director during the 1995-96 school year.

The Roman Catholic Church has opened many of the traditional priest’s job duties to lay men and women. Now, in many parishes, lay leaders run church finance councils, and religious education boards provide counseling, visit the sick and prepare families for marriage, death and baptism.

Mater Dei (pronounced MAH-ter Day) serves a wide range of students, from ages 24 to 76, from liberals to conservatives, from Americans to Africans.

Twenty-eight-year-old Leslie Hill, a former circus trapeze performer, woke up one day and realized she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in the circus.

Bright and articulate, she signed up for a philosophy of religion class.

“I found myself on fire for the first time in my academic life,” Hill said.

She’s now a student at Mater Dei and hopes to become a college theology professor. She is not intimidated by the church’s all-male hierarchy.

“This is my tradition, too, and I’m as much a part of it as the men who are in positions of power,” she says.

Paul Davis, a student from Gibraltar, plans to become one of those men.

He is pursuing a master of divinity degree at Gonzaga and will return to Gibraltar, a tiny British colony on the southern coast of Spain, to be ordained as a priest.

The church in Gibraltar is quite autocratic, and at first Davis found the independence of American Catholics startling.

Now he says, “I hope to take this wonderful spirit back to Gibraltar and let a little light in there.”

One of Mater Dei’s strengths is the presence of women students, Davis says.

In the past, priests were trained in all-male seminaries and emerged with few skills for working with the women of their parishes.

“You have to treat women with the dignity and respect which they deserve,” Davis says.

According to Skok, Mater Dei emphasizes a collaborative ministry among priests and lay leaders.

“We really don’t believe in the lone wolf approach,” he says.

During the past school year, 20 students lived in the former seminary building at 405 E. Sinto and in houses that surround it. They were primarily enrolled in religious studies programs at Gonzaga.

The students, many of whom are still on campus during the summer, meet weekly for Mass, dinner and a community meeting. They get opportunities to work in pastoral ministry in local parishes.

The staff of Mater Dei must remain faithful to church tradition even as it prepares ministers for the church of the future.

Bob Troman took over as director this summer.

“We’re being deliberate in what we do,” he says. “We have to retain a portion of who we were and look forward to future needs. It’s a complex journey.”

Mater Dei faculty are careful not to offer possibilities, such as the ordination of women, which do not presently exist in the Catholic church.

“The need is here now,” Troman says. “We’re not trying to shape a church and go out and staff it.”

Students include 76-year-old Dr. Al Fornace, a retired cardiologist, and 24-year-old Maria Spies, who hopes to become a nursing home chaplain.

“When I was being raised, my parents told me I could do or be anything I wanted to,” Spies said. “They didn’t really prepare me for any brick walls I might run up against. Anytime I run up against one, I am surprised.”

There is also Steve Osborn, who is training to become a canon lawyer, and his wife, Linda, who plans to be a church liturgy director.

Did the Osburns ever think they’d wind up in a seminary program together?

“Not,” says Steve Osborn, “in our wildest dreams.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo