International News and Actions

April 4, 2005
Press Release

Press Release: Toronto CNWE. CATHOLIC NETWORK FOR WOMEN'S EQUALITY

Date: April 4,2005
Spokesperson: Elaine Guillemin
For immediate release Telephone: 416 698-6122

CNWE TORONTO LOCAL GROUP REFLECTS ON THE CONFLICTING LEGACY OF JOHN PAUL 11 The Toronto Local Group of the Catholic Network for Women's Equality, acknowledges the significant global influence of John Paul II. We celebrate his taking ownership for the Catholic Church's long history of anti-Semitism and we applaud the concrete steps he took to reconcile with the Jewish people. We celebrate his reaching out to other world faith communities. We celebrate his clear opposition to war, particularly in recent times the war with Iraq, his voice on behalf of the vulnerable, his commitment to social justice, his own personal piety, and his obvious love for children and the vulnerable.

At the same time, we deplore both the cult of personality that surrounded him and his reinforcement of a patriarchal and centralized hierarchy which failed to acknowledge and celebrate the diverse gifts of the church's members, especially its women. Under his spiritual guidance, clerical sexual abuse of women and children was ignored or covered up. The banning of the use of condoms impeded the fight against AIDS and contributed to the horrible suffering and death of countless women and children, and ultimately huge populations in Africa and elsewhere. His continued support of an exclusively male Roman Catholic priesthood and his refusal to permit even discussion of women's ordination was scandalous. During his tenure, a church that claimed to take a public position against violence against women, reinforced the image of women as subordinate to men and circumscribed in their roles as wife and/or mother. Women's gifts were placed below those of men as the voices of progressive Catholic feminist biblical and theological scholars were either ignored or silenced by the institutional Church.

We believe that it is time to let go of medieval structures so that the Church may become truly a church in and of the modern world. We desire a more decentralized ecclesial structure which reflects the enormous diversity of the Church. We call for and are dedicated to making the church a discipleship of equals in which trained and gifted women and men labour as partners to bring forth the rich harvest of the basileia. We look forward with hope to a new era in which the Spirit is manifested not in the power of a pontif and a hierarchy, but in the empowerment of and by all members of the people of God.

CNWE is a national movement of Roman Catholic women and men whose mission is to enable women to name their giftedness and to effect structural change in the church that reflects the co-responsibility of women and men within the church. One of the aims of CNWE is to work towards the full inclusion of women in all aspects of the life and structure of the church: prayer, language, public worship and all ministries including ordained ministries. CNWE is affiliated with Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW) whose membership includes movements in Australia, Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United States, as well as Canada. (CNWE will host the second international WOW conference in Ottawa in July 2005. For A copy of the conference poster go to www.cnwe.org