It’s Time For A Woman Pope

The Church of England Just Cracked the Stained Glass Ceiling; Why Can’t The Catholics?

It’s a good day for women.

Today the Church of England took its first major step towards becoming an equal opportunity employer when it voted to allow women to become bishops, overturning centuries of exclusion.

Mind you, the Church of England has allowed women to become priests for twenty years and around one-third of Anglican clerics are women. The new vote means that the stained glass ceiling in that church has finally been broken.

Meanwhile, in the Catholic Church, it has yet to even be cracked.

It’s no secret that women’s status in the Catholic Church is the most radical and ignored issue in the institution right now.

The new vote means that the stained glass ceiling in that church has finally been broken.

Pope Francis is consistently hailed as a progressive icon (he takes selfies! He tweets!), and yet on the subject of women in the Church, he remains loyal to a long-held and antiquated stance—women cannot be priests.

“The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion,” he said in his first apostolic exhortation in November 2013. He insisted he wanted women and their “feminine genius” to contribute to the Church in other ways, just not as priests.

I have strong views on this topic because I just finished writing a book about feminine genius in the Church. In “If Nuns Ruled the World,” I profile ten incredibly driven women within the Catholic Church, all of whom, if they wanted to be, would make extraordinary priests.

Other major world religions have already embraced equality of women whole-heartedly.

In 1972, the Jewish Reform movement ordained Sally J. Priesand as America’s first female rabbi. In 1974, the “Philadelphia Eleven” caused a firestorm within the Episcopal Church when eleven female deacons presented themselves to three male bishops to be ordained as priests. In the Roman Catholic Church, women CAN’T even be ordained as deacons, much less priests or bishops.

The poll, almost forty years ago, concluded that Vatican II Catholics were receptive to the idea of women priests. The Vatican was much less receptive.

Are Catholics themselves not ready? Sister Maureen Fiedler, a Sister of Loretto and the host of the popular public radio talk show Interfaith Voices conducted a polling project in the late seventies, soon after the first Women’s Ordination Conference in Detroit in 1975 to determine Catholic attitudes towards women in leadership positions.

The poll, almost forty years ago, concluded that Vatican II Catholics were receptive to the idea of women priests. The Vatican was much less receptive.

Shortly afterwards, in January 1977, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith delivered a decisive no on the question of women priests. Their calculus was that because Jesus Christ was a man, women couldn’t be ordained in his image. “The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women . . . by calling only men to the priestly order and ministry in its true sense, the Church intends to remain faithful to the type of ordained ministry willed by the Lord Jesus Christ and carefully maintained by the Apostles,” they wrote.

When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States in October 1979, Sister Maureen helped to organize the “Stand Up for Women” demonstration at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, where fifty-three Catholic sisters wore blue armbands and refused to sit down during the pope’s speech in order to call attention to the lack of gender equality in the Catholic Church.

Today’s progressive pope is still taken aback by the idea of women in power, as is the antiquated patriarchy of the Catholic Church.

“We stand in solidarity with all women out of love and concern for the Church, to call the Church to repentance for the injustice of sexism, because we believe the Church can change,” read a statement distributed at the event.

At the same event, Sister Theresa Kane, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most of the nation’s 140,000 nuns, stood up to the podium wearing a brown suit and a jaunty checkered blouse with a bow at the neck. The pope cocked his head, poised to listen, forming a wide steeple with his fingers in front of his face. Sister Theresa took a deep breath before asking the pope for equality for women. “The Church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of our Church,” she said, growing more confident with each word. “I urge you, Your Holiness, to respond to the voices coming from the women of this country who are desirous of serving in and with this Church as fully participating members.” It may have been the only moment that a sister would have been able to confront the pope on an issue like this. The pope was taken aback.

Not much has changed.

“Why doesn’t the media pick up on the fact that the Church is all men? All men are in power.”

Today’s pope is still taken aback by the idea of women in power, as is the antiquated patriarchy of the Catholic Church.

Speaking to the public radio station WBEZ Chicago on the occasion of the pope’s first anniversary this past March, Donna Quinn, a Catholic nun in Chicago who I profiled in my book said she hadn’t seen very much action on the Church’s “women issue.”

“I see this nice wonderfulness of words in the media,” Donna said. “Why doesn’t the media pick up on the fact that the Church is all men? All men are in power.” The one hopeful sign, she said jokingly, was the pope’s decision to ditch his fancy red shoes.

I e-mailed Donna to tell her I liked her joke.

“Hope the readership gets the comparison of shoes to first step toward working with women globally,” she wrote back. “Little by little we will change this Church.”

But can they?

Even if the new pope is willing to fix what is very obviously a “woman problem” in the Catholic Church, it remains to be seen whether he is able. Changing Church doctrine is a multilayered process that would require changing the hearts and minds of hundreds of male church leaders, many of whom have never been required to have any dealings at all with women, much less strong, powerful, and opinionated women.

“After all, Jesus was a feminist, and we claim to follow him.”

The Church does itself a great disservice in keeping nuns out of positions of power. I can’t even begin to imagine all of the good a female pope could do in the world, but I hope against hope that one day it becomes a possibility.

Sister Maureen Fiedler doesn’t think that Pope Francis will be the pope to finally ordain women.

“I doubt that he will move to ordain women, mainly because there will be a major revolt in the Vatican Curia,” she told me. “It is so male-entrenched there that the thought of having a bunch of powerful women around probably scares the living daylights out of them.

“But change will come,” she says. “After all, Jesus was a feminist, and we claim to follow him.”

Jo Piazza is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and numerous other publications. She is currently the Managing Editor of Yahoo Travel and is the author of the soon to be released book, “If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission.”