REFLECTIONS AT THE CNWE CONFERENCE 2001

by CCWO/CNWE founder, Alexina Murphy

When I think back to the woman I was twenty years ago, I see a stranger. Who was I way back then? and collectively, what did we think we were doing when we called together the first conference?

In 1981, I was coming to the end of five years part-time study of theology. Our four children were in their mid-teens and as a family we were about to return to Europe where I have lived ever since. Religion has always been a strong central current in my self-awareness and self- definition. Studying theology was an important life shaping event for me. I was seeking personal information and insight. I wanted to explore the authenticity and authority of scripture and tradition on who is god, what is humanity that god created and redeemed us, abides with us and calls us to abide in god. I wanted to know how to teach religion, how to pass on faith to my children and by extension to that whole generation.

In addition, I have always had a strong sense of community, perhaps starting with the family but undoubtedly shaped by convent education and continued in various student movements, lay Catholic Action groups of the '50's. My god is not only a personal god but our god, a universal, catholic god, for all people in all times. How god reveals god's self and is present and active with us, whatever our generation or time in history, is to be discerned and discovered in the context of believing, worshipping communities. In other words, what is Church, who is Church, where is Church, are all accompanying questions.

Formal study as a mature student here at St. Mike's enabled me to develop a feminist perspective in theological reflection. From the earliest age, I was gender aware and knew that whereas I was a girl, boys were preferred and that so many more opportunities were open to them compared with girls. I was probably thirty before I challenged the assumption that women complement men and felt confident to assert women's autonomy. I now realise that in our relationships we follow a path from dependence on each other to independence of each other. Then we are able to make a conscious choice as social beings, an act of will to be inter-dependent, in friendship, in politics and economics, and spiritually when we join together to give glory to god.

The community of women theologians here in the university in the late '70's, showed me that self-realisation needs to be expressed in political commitment. I learnt to identify my vocation as a social change agent, one who knows and acts on the knowledge that no woman is free while any woman anywhere is still in chains. My personal quest had become a political commitment to change our world. At that time I understood my focus for change would be institutional church and my tools would be good theology and a sisterhood, the support of women of faith and hope and love in the name of Christ.

Then as now, women's ordination occupies centre stage in any programme of radical change in the Church. Without ordination, women are excluded both from the real and the symbolic levers of leadership and power in the Church. Without ordination, our role continues to be subservient in a community shaped by men. There are next to no resources for women's needs and scant attention to the specific pastoral needs of women, especially our need for spiritual nourishment from other women. I am thinking for example, of support for young mothers handling their infants and allowing that exact experience to draw them more deeply into union with god our compassionate mother. Or consider how women's mature experience of spirituality and ministry is a neglected resource in churches. Sunday homilies are preached by men from their life experience and so rarely do we have affirmed in sacred space, women's knowledge of her own body, her feelings in relationships, or any insight she may have into the love and justice of god. Men, especially priests, can speak volumes to the full and equal humanity of women with men, without changing one iota of their behaviour, never relinquishing their power, never seeking mutuality. The one question that always puts them on the spot is: " Why can't women be ordained?"

It is a challenging question, even for women who have the insight of their experience to guide them. The great achievement of feminist scholars has been to give substance to the claim that the Holy Spirit, Sophia Wisdom is immanent in all our encounters and that every day life brings fresh insight into how scripture and tradition can inform our lives. Nonetheless, it takes guts to stand up and shout "the emperor has no clothes," that instructions from the Vatican ruling out women's ordination are a mistake. Linking authenticity and authority enables me to assert that what is not true to life, what is not honest about our deepest selves, has no authority and so to distance myself from these recent instructions.

So have we achieved anything in the last twenty years? For the first ten, I was in the UK and associated with Catholic Women's Network. There we discovered "Women Church." We tried to educate ourselves as women, as Christians, as activists, as feminists. Most of us were able to accept that "f" word as the right name for our commitment to the rights and dignity of women alongside men in a discipleship of equals. We experimented with liturgies that spoke directly from our experience and understood our meetings as acts of worship. We did not have high political profile or sufficient resources to pursue all our goals or to become a strong national network. But it was worthwhile just to exist and to witness to another way of being church.

In the '90's, my husband and I lived in Belgium and I took on a responsible leadership role in the Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women. This organisation sprang from the experience of Protestant and Catholic women who met each other at sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Where in Europe is there a meeting place for women from different Christian Churches, they asked themselves, where women can share faith, seek a common identity as women, co-operate in addressing various problems faced by women in church and in society. Working with women across Europe, across the many different languages and cultures, divided by geography and history, brought me personally many challenges and rewards.

In conclusion, let me say that I have lived long enough to see the four children we brought up become adults with their own children to care for. I feel keenly, the importance of developing good parenting practices for the benefit of the both the parents and the children. I feel sure that true radical social transformation starts with infants. The question remains, did we succeed in handing on the faith to our children? I fear not, though Sophia Wisdom moves in truly mysterious ways. I recognise that I belong to the generation now reaching retirement age, born just before or just after the Second World War. We have struggled with the meaning of life, the tyranny of institutional church, to establish equality and dignity for every human being, as best we could. My daughter's generation, my sons and their wives, live in another world. Institutional Church has little hold on them. They know next to nothing about scripture, tradition, sacramental practice. Their spiritual journey, their conversion experience, their redemption, will be something else still held in the bosom of Sophia Wisdom. Come Holy Spirit!