www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Female Dominance in Lay Ministries

Via the National Catholic Reporter and The Cafeteria is Closed ;


"According to the National Pastoral Life Center, there are 31,000 lay ecclesial ministers working in Catholic parishes in the United States today, surpassing the 29,000 diocesan priests in the country. Growth has been rapid. As of 1990, there were just 22,000 lay ministers, meaning that American Catholicism generated an additional 9,000 lay ministers in just a decade and a half. During the same period, the total number of priests, diocesan and religious, dropped by almost 6,000, from 49,054 to 43,304. This imbalance is destined to grow under even the most wildly optimistic projections of priestly vocations. There are currently 18,000 people preparing to become lay ecclesial ministers, roughly six times the number of seminarians preparing to become priests.

For a church long perceived as bastion of male privilege, it's striking that these new lay professional roles are held disproportionately by women. As of 2005, roughly 80 percent of lay ecclesial ministers in the United States were women. A 2005 document from the American bishops provides this breakdown: lay women, 64 percent; religious women, 16 percent; and lay men, 20 percent. While the percentage of male lay ministers grew from 15 percent in 1900 to 20 percent in 2005, the overall pattern seems to be that the bulk of these positions will be held by women."

What say you, I think we have a problem...

james

Is this occuring in the Byzantine Catholics?

Why is it a problem? Women cannot be ordained, but they can run a parish without theological/doctrinal conflict - provided they are orthodox and not out for some agenda. The ordained Priesthood have been overburdened for too long with tasks that lay men and woman (the lay priesthood) can do.

The article did not indicate if it included Eastern Catholics, but one might guess by observing what is happening within your particular Church, but I feel it is looking at the Roman Catholic Lay Ministries in America, though I'm curious about European stats...

james

I absolutely agree that the laity can share in the burdens of running a parish. Many times too much has been delegated to the priest, thus isolating the laity from the realities of running a parish.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Besides Eucharistic Ministers and Lectors, what other categories of lay ministers are there in the RCC?

Cantors, Sacristans and then the multitude of other jobs that have to be done - flowers , Church Linen ,cleaning, teaching etc etc.

Whoever has a job likes to have a grandiose title for it - so you get Music Ministry , Welcome ministry etc [ I personally like the term Greeters as a Scot who greets is usually crying ]

If my memory is still reliable for the previous week, the ratio of women to men at Sunday Mass is about near that figure 8/2...

Especially during the September to January time frame...

james

James,

That figure is also dependent on what time "kick-off" or the "opening pitch" is on a particular Sunday.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

My former spiritual father was transferred to a much larger parish some six years ago. In that same time period he had another, smaller parish added to his responsibility. Then his assistant was moved because of a clergy shortage.

He told me he hired a parish business manager who does the logistics of keeping the place going. She has an MBA and lots of background. She does budgets, finance, oversees the school, and on and on. Why not? That's her thing: running a small business; and a parish of this size is a small business. (By comparison my parish has some 750 families with probably 2000 members. This parish was about 50% larger BEFORE the addition of the smaller parish.)

BOB

Hear Hear! Well said Michael. What a wonderful opportunity for women to use their God given talents for the good of the Church.
Jakub, I see from your profile that you are Roman Catholic. Maybe you personally see women in ministry in your Roman Catholic Church as a threat, but it seems from the response to this thread that we in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic
churches welcome the gifts of women for the Glory of God.

In a way this might also be an embarrassment to the Church. After all, we find women in so many jobs earning less than their male counterparts or working for wages and salaries that men won't accept. Are these people being fairly compensated for the great work they do?

BOB

I don't have a problem with the laity having an active role in the administrative needs of a parish, or of those laity being women. I do see a problem with a heavily dispproportionate amount of women doing these tasks. Where are the men and what are they doing?

If they were all on the altar and being involved, it would be great. They aren't there, they aren't doing the administrative work, they aren't doing the other ministerial work, so what are they doing? Nothing. Someone above said they aren't even showing up to church on Sunday. That's a problem. We have an obligation to reach these men and to show them their proper place in the church. We need them to be active and involved in their families and our parishes. Women having a role in the church does not negate our need for men, it enhances it.

I find these statistics disturbing. It says we aren't reaching half our church community. We need to do something to pull them in. We need active male role models just as much as we need active female role models. What is it that is keeping them from forming?

Wondering,

You may have nailed also the reason why there is a vocations crisis in so many churches today.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

From Miller...

"Jakub, I see from your profile that you are Roman Catholic. Maybe you personally see women in ministry in your Roman Catholic Church as a threat"

My concern is with them performing roles & tasks that should be done by Deacons and Acolytes...which is also a concern to those of the Eastern Church, Orthodox or Catholic...

james