";
document.write(HotScript);
//var TableBegin="
|
|
|
S i d e b a r
Women in the Church
|
This Rock
Volume 17, Number 3
 March 2006 
|
|
|
Throughout the history of the Church, this pattern has held true: There are more women converts and more women active in the life of the Church than men. According to Catherine Mowry Lacugna, writing about the late twentieth century: Over 85 percent of those responsible for altar preparation are women. Over 80 percent of CCD teachers and sponsors for the catechumenate are women. Over 75 percent of adult Bible study leaders and participants are women. Over 70 percent of those active in parish renewal and spiritual growth are women, and over 80 percent of those who join prayer groups are women. Nearly 60 percent of those involved with youth groups and recreational activities are women. Over 85 percent of those who lead or assist in ministries designed to help the poor, visit the sick, comfort the grieving, and minister to the handicapped are women ("Catholic Women As Ministers and Theologians," America, October 10, 1992, 240). In the U.S., there are about 45,000 priests but approximately 90,000 women religious. At Mass on any given Sunday or weekday, chances are that there will be many more women than men. The sheer numbers of women so dedicated to the Church over the course of two millennia is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a pervasively misogynistic Church—unless one assumes the patronizing idea that these women are uneducated, confused, or deeply disturbed.
In fact, Lacugna notes, the typical Catholic woman engaged in Church ministry is married with children, usually between thirty-six and forty-nine years of age, middle class, and well-educated. Indeed, some of these women in service to the Church are among the intellectual elite, such as Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the Eléonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University; and the late Elizabeth Anscombe, renowned philosopher at the University of Cambridge.
|
|
