From Where I Sit                                  Judith Lynch (writing from Melbourne)                                    Judith's website

February 4, 2012                                                                                                   Judith's previous articles

“Now Simon’s mother-in-law had gone to bed with fever …”  

As a Cardinal, Pope John 2 visited Australia, and during that time he said Mass and had lunch in the church of the Resurrection, a Polish church in our street. The teenager who was our babysitter at the time of the Pope’s election, remarked with awe that “when the pope was in Australia he ate my mother’s pavlova”.  

It reminds me of the countless generations of women who have cooked for and served the people of God and the men of God in particular. My mother and her friends belonged to the Catholic Women’s Guild, darned the Brother’s socks, washed up after First Communion breakfasts, organized raffles, ran stalls at the parish fete and volunteered at tuck shop. And it’s still women, mostly of the no-name variety, who are involved in these forms of what they called ‘service’ but I call ministry.   

Peter’s mother- in-law was one of those women. We do not know her name nor do we know the name of her daughter, Peter’s wife. They belong to the “no-name” cast of women who people the pages of the four Gospels. There was the widow of Naim, burying her only son. What a story Luke tells in just five verses and yet her name is never mentioned.  

Recall the woman with a haemorrhage and the Syro-phoenician woman pleading for a cure for her daughter.  Jesus presented both of them as models of faith, in marked contrast to the response he was getting from his apostles.  

Jesus broke religious and cultural taboos when he touched Jairus’ dead daughter and drank from the Samaritan woman’s jug. He sent women, classified in Jewish tradition as “unreliable witnesses” to announce his resurrection to the disciples.  

The bent-over woman, the widow giving her mite in the temple,, the woman accused of adultery, the woman who anointed Jesus’ head and fee - all of them un-named -  but each one somehow releasing in Jesus the courage and authority to challenge taken-for-granted attitudes to women.  

The role of women in today’s Church is a delicate and controversial subject. American Benedictine Joan Chittester says somewhere that male religious dominance is not tradition, but a long-lasting social practice that was based on bad biology and became theology as time went by.  

Jesus stuck his neck out for women. That’s why it’s hard to understand why the Church leadership today works so hard to keep women out of things.  

Over the last four decades  Catholic women have become  aware of a deeper, different call to ministry - to liturgical ministry. Increasing numbers of women have theology degrees and are spiritual directors. As well as serving on parish committees, teaching catechetics, writing and printing newsletters and taking Communion to the sick, they ache to be able to welcome others into the Church in baptism, anoint the sick, speak about the Word of God when the faithful gather.  

It may take a long time, more than my  lifetime and that of my children, but from where I sit I believe that a time will come when women will be released from the anonymity of the past to take their rightful place in the Body of Christ, the Church