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Gender Imbalance - Sick Church
Joe Mulvaney • 23 September 2020
'Top of the agenda should be our demand for justice for women and gender balance in all healthy institutions.'
One hundred years since brave women won the vote, Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels rightly attempts to achieve
gender balance in the College of European Commissioners. She has acted. She is convinced that the rich and
complementary talents of women and men are needed everywhere. We all heard the old saying that a bird never
flew on one wing. She is on the right road – more power to her. The oft-derided “secular world” seems way ahead of
Catholic Church leaders on this crucial moral issue of justice and equality for women. It is truly depressing for us
Catholics to contemplate that the Catholic Church may be the last big institution to concede that gender balance is
wholesome and that there must be justice and equality for women. It is galling to listen to the official fake news that
the Roman Church never changes – or may do in 1000 years if you wait around.
The pandemic of patriarchy and male supremacy has plagued the world for too many millennia. There is too much
macho imbalance in some dysfunctional institutions of State and Church worldwide. There is too much war, greed,
violence, dictators, misery, and injustice. There is too much patriarchal entitlement and ongoing domestic violence.
Official reports and films over the past decades in Ireland about child abuse and Magdalene laundries have shamed
us and have shown that, perhaps unwittingly, we had served as silent sheep within a totally unbalanced, patriarchal
system. While there was a veneer of prayers, novenas, devotions and some good works, there was also much
harshness, cruelty, injustice and abuse of women and children. In many ways, the God of Love was absent. The
crucial female dimension was missing and is still deliberately excluded by a small group of men. In the Catholic
Church today, unelected clerics refuse to share power in a meaningful way and, sadly, double down on their
suppression policy of apartheid for women. They retain complete control of the words, rules, rituals, doctrines, and
narrative. Under a code of obedience, we are expected to turn a blind eye once again to nonsense and abuses.
Pastoral priests and lay people who dare to question are abused or subject to inquisition. With all the above in the
mix allied to total gender imbalance, it is very difficult to present a credible and wholesome Good News of Jesus
Christ narrative or church institution to people in the developed world.
Pope Francis in Rome has rightly urged Catholics to say “no” to clericalism. He has proclaimed that he wants us all to
play our part in much needed reform and to challenge those who insist on remaining in the cul de sac of an old boys’
club. While there have been many pious words, he has been unable as yet to back that up with concrete actions in
response to the extremely urgent needs of overburdened priests and Eucharist deprived people worldwide. Since
the Amazon Synod, he seems to have backtracked and frozen into traditional papal mode. A recent Vatican directive
about future parish reorganization continued to advocate clerical control even in a situation where there is a
growing shortage of men prepared to submit to the abuse and injustice of enforced celibacy. We can surmise that he
has come from a culture with strong elements of machismo as well as long years of strict clerical training. He is
constrained within the rulings of his predecessors and the morass of creeping infallibility. He is confronted in the
Vatican and beyond by fierce resistance from career clerics, vested interests, slow learners, and people who wish to
revert to the pre-Vatican II life of the Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, many old boys do not get it and they remain
implacably opposed to any move towards gender balance. This is a tragedy and serves to deprive people today of
meaningful Good News. It is not possible to evangelise people today in the language of sexism, misogyny, negative
sexuality, homophobia, patriarchy, apartheid, and refusal to share power. People today are less fearful and while
they cherish the basic Good News of a loving God, they are increasingly reluctant to collude in any institution with
the abuse of women, children, homosexuals, priests, or power.
Look at the global power for good example if the hierarchy of the 1.3 billion Catholic Church repented and openly
admitted to having been on the wrong road for centuries with ancient church fathers as they proclaimed their
mistaken misogynistic doctrines. This huge and influential Church has millions of people and priests doing wonderful
works of love, care, and action for justice. But, tragically, there are many others touched with the patriarchal virus
causing societal damage and daily domestic abuse. All of that evil might be lessened if the official Church confessed
the ancient sin of sexism and then proclaimed that there must be gender balance and full participation by women in
the leadership, governance, teaching office and ministry of the Catholic Church. This could also be a step on the
crucial road to reunion.
It seems that most Irish Catholics have seen the light for gender balance, justice for women and the urgent need for
power sharing so that all baptized persons are equal and proudly hold a stake in building up the Kingdom of God.
Irish Catholics have voted for female presidents and women in all roles. Polls over the past decades show that Irish
Catholics who value Eucharist and vibrant parish communities want married priests and women priests. Just as the
official teaching on slavery and antisemitism was wrong for too many centuries with disastrous consequences, so,
now, the official clerical teachings on apartheid for women, contraception, homophobia and enforced
celibacy/eucharistic famine are rightly being challenged by some Catholics. Sadly, the hierarchy seems deaf to the
wisdom and charisms of lay people and, we the people, are powerless without a vote to introduce the much-needed
reforms. We are ashamed in front of our young people and have few answers as to why we continue to collude with
elements of patriarchal codology apart from the fact that we cherish the core Good News of Jesus Christ and the
good people/priests around us.
Faced with the intransigent refusal to reform as a matter of urgency, many Catholics are resorting to variants of the
following understandable options. Some people opt for basic Sunday attendance with minimal personal involvement
or financial contribution. It appears that the pandemic may exacerbate financial problems and bring about unwanted
and negative change to the detriment of parish communities. While leadership is deaf and in the absence of a vote,
money withheld may have some influence for better or worse. Very large numbers have walked away in despair
from regular practice and the potential benefits for their daily life that are contained therein mixed up with the
outdated stuff. Undoubtedly, they will encounter God elsewhere in Her great world. Some Catholics take the very
logical option of joining one of the other Christian Churches. However, all of the above options mean that the serious
systemic problems bearing huge societal repercussions within the largest Christian Church are not confronted and
remedied in a massive program of reform and positive change. It is utterly disheartening for us that the intransigent
institution doubles down and refuses to reform while very serious issues are covered up under the carpet. The
important objective of Christian Reunion is rendered more difficult. A further difficult option for some Catholics who
resist being bullied into a refugee situation from their family church of origin is to remain in local parish practice as
well as working with individuals and groups who continue to cry out in the wilderness for reform.
Some say that it may be a much-changed world and church post the COVID-19 pandemic. We all pray for an end to
the COVID-19 disease and the poisons arising from the patriarchal virus. It will be great to congregate freely again for
worship, remembrance, thanksgiving, and celebration of life milestones. However, we will also need much open
conversation, dialogue and active listening in every parish leading to consensus, change and significant reform in
Vatican III. It will be crucial for us Catholics to confirm Pope Francis once again on his reform agenda by speaking out
in every possible way to our priests, bishops, and papal nuncios. Top of the agenda should be our demand for justice
for women and gender balance in all healthy institutions.
Joe Mulvaney
Dundrum, Co. Dublin.
Interview with Soline Humbert Irish Daily Mail 15 March 2025
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
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