“You talked to the priests? Why’d you do that? Priests are men!”
-MT, a lady in Toronto from their local Catholic Women’s League
“They get those jobs because they can smooth things over.”
-HB, a religious sister explaining the types of priests who become Vicars
“I lived as though I wasn’t aware I was a daughter of God.”
-CG, a cradle Catholic who left the practice of Catholic-Christianity after high school but came back many years later
From speaking to Catholic women after my disastrous Rites of Initiation, I have realised a few things:
1 On spiritual and moral questions, women need to talk to other women.
2 Women should interact with priests as little as possible. This is just better for both.
3 The step where an inquirer formally and publicly becomes a catechumen is important because it tells practicing Catholics that this new person has a mustard seed of faith, and that they may and should participate in this person’s journey, through Catholic mentorship. Converts are hardly coming to the table empty-handed; we can be ‘mustard seeds of faith’ to established communities, too.
4 The process of healing wounded conscience or consciousness (for the glory of God and more peaceful families, workplaces, organizations) needs time. After acquiring new information and the awareness of having made choices out-of-step with your best life, sometimes it takes years before someone with the right experience appears in your path with the right words. For me, when it comes to personal topics like dating, mating, procreating, I just needed the phrase, “I hadn’t lived like I was aware I was daughter of God” which expressed everything I felt. Converts who know how to succinctly encapsulate all the elements of ‘a good confession’ in under a minute would save the sense doors (eyes, ears) of the priest from images they’d rather not allow into their mind.