JENNIFER SLEEMAN, who organised a boycott of Sunday Mass in her own church in Co Cork last September in a call for change in the Catholic Church’s attitude to women, is this year urging people to wear green for reform to Mass on Sunday, September 25th.
Although her call for a nationwide protest last year got little response outside a small group of supporters, she said: “We have not gone away and are still hoping for change. Perhaps those priests who would also hope for change might pin up a green ribbon in the church,” she said.
In her statement from Clonakilty, Co Cork, she recalled how “this time last year I was approaching my 81st birthday and I was receiving lots of cards and letters, messages from all over the world, not to do with my age but in support of the Mass boycott on September 26th.”
On that occasion she called on the Catholic women of Ireland to “join your sisters . . .” and “on that one day, boycott Mass. Stay at home and pray for change. We are the majority."
“We may have been protesting individually but unremarked on, but together we have strength and our absence, the empty pews, will be noticed.”
She said then: “Whatever change you long for, recognition, ordination, the end of celibacy, which is another means of keeping women out, join with your sisters and let the hierarchy know by your absence that the days of an exclusively male-dominated church are over.”
That boycott last year, she recalled, “was a plea for women to be treated as equals by the Catholic Church."
“Some people did stay at home and pray, some went to Mass adopting the American idea of green arm bands.”
Ms Sleeman said that “a year later there is no sign of change. There are fewer priests, ageing, overworked and tired and still the church, reeling from abuse scandals, fails to acknowledge the wealth of wisdom and energy in women, especially those who feel called to the priesthood. What is so fearful about women?"
“Why are men seen as better at spreading the original message of love? My 82nd birthday is coming up. This year other people are joining together on Sunday, September 25th, urging those who hope for change to go to Mass, and to wear a green ribbon or armband,” she said.