Catholic Women Strike: Global Witness for Equality was launched this month and is calling on women who are regular churchgoers, who work for the church on a voluntary basis or who have paid jobs with Catholic organisations to withhold their labour through Lent next year (5 March to 20 April).
“We believe the time is ripe to demand what is right … Instead of waiting for a papal ‘yes’, we issue forth our ‘no’ to the systems of misogyny, sexism and patriarchy,” says the campaign’s website.
For the last three years the Catholic church has been engaged in a worldwide synod on synodality, with people encouraged to take part in meetings at parish and diocesan level to focus on the future of the church. Women’s issues, especially the need to allow women greater leadership roles and give them more of a voice in the running of the church, topped the agenda across the world.
Pope Francis has twice, in 2016 and 2020, commissioned reports to study the history of women deacons. The findings were not publicised, but it is widely acknowledged that women have performed this role. Many believe that, once women are ordained as deacons, it will only be a question of time before they are also ordained as priests.
The issue is urgent because fewer men, in Europe especially, are coming forward for ordination.
Matters came to a head as the synod in Rome ended last month. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, charged with heading a group on women’s ministry, failed to attend an important meeting on the subject. Then the final synod document appeared to sideline the project, saying: “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.”
Kate McElwee of the Women’s Ordination Conference, the body behind the strike plan, said the Vatican’s decision sparked a widespread belief among Catholic women that action is required. “We were founded in 1975, and at that time there was a sense, on the back of the Second Vatican Council, that change would soon happen,” she said. “Over the decades since, there have been many setbacks – but then the synod came along, and we felt inspired, excited and hopeful. Women’s ministry was clearly high on the agenda.”
For the first time in its history, the Women’s Ordination Conference was mentioned by name on the Vatican website. McElwee said: “That seemed to signal change, and that there was room for more.”
But over time, hopes of reform have been dashed by a pope and cardinals who turned out to be unwilling to make it central, she said.
“It’s felt like a betrayal … it has been heartbreaking. The final document [of the Synod] was disappointing and insufficient and deeply theological, which may not resonate with people in the parishes. It felt hollow. It has all been extremely frustrating … we want to make visible the huge contribution women make to the church,” she said. “If enough women join us, this will make an enormous difference – and we’re working with many organisations across the world.”
Miriam Duignan, of the UK-based Catholic Women’s Ordination, said the church was full of women who did its hard work while male priests took the credit. “It’s not good enough,” she said. “There are women who prepare people for the sacraments, such as baptism and marriage, and they do a whole host of other work.Women are already doing priestly work but by virtue of their gender they are never recognised.”
Duignan said she believed “the vast majority” of Catholics now realised the injustice of the current set-up, and were in support of change: “The church hierarchy says this is a white, western agenda but it isn’t: the whole world is saying: we want women to be recognised.”
Pat Brown, a Leeds-based member of Catholic Women’s Ordination, said the church would “fall apart” without women.
“The Synod has left many of us feeling angry. They kept saying they would look at the issue of women’s role, but how many hundreds of years do they need to do what is right?”