Challenging The Church More Catholic Women Are Seeking Leadership Roles

Michaele Dietzel stood outside the front door of St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church before 9 a.m. Mass last Sunday and passed out an unusual prayer request.

“O God of all creation, we stand today in solidarity with the women among us who have discerned your call to the priesthood,” the prayer began.

Dietzel did not attend the beginning of the Mass. Instead, she and 20 fellow parishioners met in the chapel down the street to pray for women’s ordination. They returned to the sanctuary during the kiss of peace and placed a loaf of bread at the foot of the altar.

It was a quiet, respectful event, which nonetheless worried some parishioners and pointed to the tension in the Roman Catholic church between its well-educated and gifted women and Pope John Paul II’s firm stance against their ordination.

“For me this is not a protest against St. Ann’s,” says Dietzel. “St. Ann’s is a wonderful community. It’s a comment about the overall crisis in our church.”

As the number of American Catholic men willing to train for a celibate priesthood has dropped, parishes such as St. Ann’s have increasingly relied on the leadership of lay women. According to The Official Catholic Directory, the number of seminarians training for the priesthood in this country has declined from 17,752 in 1975 to 5,083 last year.

This summer, St. Ann’s lost its half-time priest, the Rev. Larry Dunphy. The parish is run primarily by the pastoral administrator, Linda Kobe-Smith, a 46-year-old married mother of three children who holds a master of divinity degree from Gonzaga University.

A member of the parish, the Rev. Jim Dallen, a Gonzaga religious studies professor, will serve a limited role as priest. He’ll work 10 hours a week.

Dietzel asks, “Why aren’t the people scrambling and filling in all the gaps being ordained? Why isn’t our woman pastoral minister being ordained? It’s just such a logical answer.”

According to a 1993 report, in 78 percent of the nation’s graduate programs in Catholic ministry, 50 percent or more of the students were women.

“There are women all over this country who are prepared,” Dietzel says.

A diocesan priest earns a three-year master of divinity degree, which includes training in performing the sacraments.

Dietzel herself, a married mother of three, has earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministry.

She recently gave a homily at St. Ann’s on her decision to speak out on behalf of women’s ordination.

“When I am too timid to speak up or to act, I teach my children that passivity and resignation are the way to deal with what isn’t right with their world,” she says. “And when I fail to speak up for them, I teach my children that they are not worth speaking for, and I diminish their voices until they, too, fall silent.”

Recently her daughter Annie told Dietzel’s husband, “Daddy, when Jesus died, we started living.”

“I’m not sure, but I think there just might be another homilist in the family, a theologian at the very least … maybe even a priest,” Dietzel says. “I can no longer resign myself to a reality where priesthood would not be possible for her. I’m ready to join the ranks of the warriors.”

One day last November, several women attending Mater Dei Institute at Gonzaga University read the morning paper and expressed their anger over breakfast.

Mater Dei, a former seminary, now trains men and women bound for lay ministry as well as men preparing for priesthood.

The Vatican had just announced that the church’s doctrine on admitting only men to the priesthood must be considered an “infallible” teaching.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. Catholic Conference, explains that because Jesus Christ and his apostles were all men, Pope John Paul II does not believe ordination should be extended to women.

“The pope said Jesus broke a lot of rules, but he did not choose to break this one,” Walsh says. “There were women in the Bible who were very close to Jesus, but they were not apostles.”

In March the pope called for a greater role for women in the Catholic Church.

“The pope is promoting women in every area possible, except ordination,” Walsh says.

The women surrounding the breakfast table at Mater Dei that November morning don’t personally want to be priests. But they do believe some women have been called by God for that role.

Says Marina Bresba, who plans to serve as a youth minister in a Catholic parish, “I think there are women who are called to the priesthood whose gifts and talents are completely wasted. It is a terrible shame.”

Linda Kobe-Smith, the thoughtful, articulate administrator at St. Ann’s East Central parish, one of Spokane’s poorest neighborhoods, feels no great urge to preside at Mass.

But she did sense a call, as a girl, to minister in the Catholic Church. She just didn’t see any women priests as role models.

After her master of divinity degree, Kobe-Smith’s ministry began to unfold at St. Ann’s.

“In terms of her education and her skills, she is comparable to anyone who is an ordained minister,” says Dallen, who served as Kobe-Smith’s adviser while she was a student at Gonzaga. “How is she different? I see her as perhaps more empathetic and more able to relate to people than many of the male clergy I have known.”

Kobe-Smith builds relationships among the parishioners, tends the sick and dying, delivers a homily once a month. She can distribute Holy Communion, but she cannot consecrate the bread and wine. The Roman Catholic Church’s seven sacraments are largely reserved for priests.

It’s a restriction that sometimes seems awkward.

Recently Kobe-Smith sat by a deathbed with a parishioner, helping him to tend his mother as she lay dying.

Kobe-Smith spent from 10 a.m. to midnight with that man and his mother. But when it came time for the annointing of the sick, she called in Dunphy, as an ordained priest, to perform the sacrament.

Had Dunphy not been a member of the St. Ann’s community, she’d have had to call in a stranger.

“It would be like having a Thanksgiving dinner and having to run across the street and ask someone else to say the blessing and cut the turkey,” Kobe-Smith says.

A September 1995 New York Times poll showed that 61 percent of American Catholics favor women’s ordination.

Kobe-Smith also sees signs that people are moving toward a greater acceptance of Catholic women in traditionally priestly roles.

At a recent anniversary party for a married couple in the parish, Kobe-Smith asked if they’d like to receive a blessing.

They said yes. Kobe-Smith offered the prayer. Not one person said, “Oh, it’s too bad Father couldn’t be here.”

Occasionally people ask her why she remains a Catholic.

“That’s like asking someone who is Italian, ‘Why are you still Italian?’ I just am,” she says.

Kobe-Smith believes that God is aware of the gifts and talents of the women who have remained faithful to the Catholic Church.

The church may refuse to ordain them as priests, but, says Kobe-Smith, “I think that risks breaking the heart of God.”

“The hardest thing for a parent is to watch their children’s talents and gifts overlooked or trod upon or shoved aside,” she says. “I know when my children are being pushed and shoved around I can react like a mother bear. I wonder if God does not react in the same way.”

Twenty years ago Sister Cathy Beckley seriously considered joining the Episcopal church and becoming a priest. Ultimately, she decided against leaving the Roman Catholic Church.

But the sense of being called to the priesthood returned at a gathering she attended last August. “It emerged for me in a very deep way,” Beckley says. “It’s the same emotional response I’ve had about my baptismal call, saying ‘yes’ to God.”

Beckley decided to leave her position as director of The Women’s Drop In Center in downtown Spokane, where she worked with women in transition for the past five years.

A warm, gregarious woman, Beckley will soon begin the master of divinity program at Gonzaga.

“After my work at the drop-in center, I came to believe we need women in public and visible leadership roles,” Beckley says.

“I don’t know if the church will change. I do believe the church is responsive to the Holy Spirit.”

Beckley, a Holy Names sister, hopes that the Roman Catholic Church will begin to ordain women within her lifetime.

“When we have a new pope, things could change pretty dramatically,” she says.

In the meantime, Beckley feels peaceful about her decision. She will begin pursuing the training that priests receive and trust that the degree will improve her lay ministry.

“Sometimes we have to be open and take the steps in front of us and leave the rest up to God and the Holy Spirit,” Beckley says.

When will the Catholic Church ordain women?

“My favorite answer is in the near future,” says Terri Monaghan McKenzie, sitting in her office hung with flowered wallpaper in Gonzaga’s religious studies department. She laughs.

“But this is a church that is 2,000 years old,” she says, “so the near future for us could be 500 years. … I can’t tell whether it’ll be in the next 25 years or the next 50 years or 500 years. I know it will happen but I don’t have a clue about when.”

McKenzie speaks with pastoral eloquence. She served for 12 years at St. Peter’s parish on the South Hill, leaving as pastoral associate.

She loved lay ministry, yet was hurt by the reality that lay ministers can risk greater financial insecurity than clergy who have taken vows of poverty.

“I deeply miss the pastoral connection with the people in the pews,” she says. “I miss the children. I miss the birthing and the dying of the pastoral experience.”

McKenzie, the married mother of five children, now works as director of continuing education and renewal programs. Here she has more financial security, as well as more time to reflect on major church issues.

“The church will eventually ordain women,” she says. “It will ordain women when that’s a natural movement of the people. It has to bubble up from the bottom. … Eventually what the church will say is, ‘Of course Christ is re-presented in women.”’

McKenzie admires the women pastoral ministers she knows.

“They are amazing women, they are absolutely astonishing. They are as good a pastor as you can find,” she says. “These are the cream of the crop.”

As a group, she finds men training for the priesthood more conservative, less open to new ideas, often misogynist. “There’s a high level of people who seem to need to be in control,” she says.

The church has chosen male celibacy over the Eucharist, McKenzie says. With fewer priests, some Catholics cannot receive the sacrament each Sunday.

The national conference of bishops published a new liturgical guide this year called “Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest.” It outlines services that may be held in place of the Eucharist.

“We are a Eucharistic church. That’s essential to who we are as Catholics. We’re risking our very essence in our life,” McKenzie says.

Despite the pain she feels over this issue and her fears that her own children may not choose to remain Catholic, she stays with the church. She believes that in other Christian churches, women may be ordained, but still lack equality.

She believes she has a responsibility to live faithfully with these issues.

“I am one of those people who is a part of a bridge,” she says. “Bridges are funny things. They get walked on. But they are the only way you get from one end of the chasm to the other.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PRIESTS CONDUCT MOST CATHOLIC SACRAMENTS The Roman Catholic Church recognizes seven sacraments that are primarily performed by ordained priests, who must be male and celibate. Baptism: Usually performed by a priest or an ordained deacon. Deacons are ordained men who may be married. In an emergency, baptism may be performed by anyone. Confirmation: Only by a bishop or an ordained priest. Reconciliation: Only by a priest. Anointing the sick: Only by a priest. Holy orders: Only by a bishop. This sacrament ordains men as priests or deacons. Matrimony: The couple actually marry one another, but the official church witness is a priest or deacon. Eucharist: Only an ordained priest may preside. However, at a Communion service without a Mass, a lay person may distribute previously consecrated bread. In addition, the homily is usually given by a priest or deacon, but lay people may share reflections. Jamie Tobias Neely