Women plan open letter to Pope

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 8

Women plan open letter to Pope

A group of Christchurch Catholic women, unhappy about the Church’s attitude to women, plan to send an open letter to Pope John Paul II challenging him to listen to their concerns and questioning the need for his expensive global visits.

Catholic Women in the Church is a group of about 25 Christchurch women. It was formed about six years ago as a support group for women working within the Catholic Church who “felt oppressed by the Church structures,” say the women in an explanatory note with the letter. They hope the letter will be presented to the Pope, when he visits New Zealand in three weeks, by Qirdinal Thomak Williams. *T

An Auckland-based Catholic Group, St Clare’s Community, also plans an open letter to the Pope in the form of a full-page advertisement to be published on November 17, five days before the visit. The Chistchurch group does not plan to take such action although it supported the concerns of the St Clare’s Community, said a spokeswoman for the group who did not want to be named.

“We struggle in a world and a Church in which women are treated unjustly and violently simply because they are women,” says the eight-paragraph letter.

“So we must challenge a Church that sometimes seems more interested in pomp and spectacle than in the poor and oppressed

on the margins of society, and in which the freedom to ask real questions in the search for truth seems to be increasingly curtailed.” The letter also challenges the Pope to reflect on whether his visits round the world really reveal Jesus to the people or merely provide an entertainment which dazzles and prevents them from questioning the power and methods of the Church.

In addition the group questioned the sale of souvenirs and the parish collections to pay for the visit while there were still New Zealanders who were in need.

Pope John Paul’s theme was justice and peace, issues which the group was also “deeply

“Peace is our passionate desire for ourselves and our families ... yet this peace is threatened from without and from within,” said the letter.

"From without, it is threatened by those who seek to oppress us by stereotyping socially, economically and spiritually, defining the roles we may be permitted to fulfil by reason of our sex ... Spiritually we are threatened by a Church which tells us that we cannot fulfil a priestly role within it because we are female.”

To imply that women could not represent the “person of Christ” seemed arbitrary and unjust, said the letter.

The letter a personal attack spa the

Pope but in sending it the group hoped to raise the Pope’s awareness of the needs of women as well as raise the awareness of “those other people in the Church who might not reflect much on what the structure is doing,” the spokeswoman said. “What we are saying is that from a feminist analysis it seems to us that the Church structure has become distorted from its original historical structure.”

The spokeswoman said women were questioning a patriarchal "kingly” Church in this present age.

“We are looking towards a Church in which each person has rights and responsibilities rather than being directed by one person.”