Conference explores roles, frustrations of women in Catholic church

NEWTON -- Saying they are struggling to reconcile their faith in Catholicism with their concern for women's issues, more than 500 people gathered yesterday at Boston College to examine the role of women in the church following the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

During a series of workshops, lectures, and informal conversations, members of the mostly female crowd expressed frustration at what they described as insufficient roles for women in church leadership and a slow pace of change since the 1960s.

Some expressed particular frustration with Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, who on Holy Thursday chose an all-male group for a foot-washing ritual at the cathedral, and who in his Chrism Mass homily listed feminism alongside the drug culture, the sexual revolution, the breakdown of authority, and divorce as a factor influencing the Baby Boom generation.

The conference, "Envisioning the Church Women Want," notably did not focus on the topic of women's ordination, and organizers said they did not have a consensus on that issue. Instead, the organizers said they wanted to confront the particular challenges facing women in a changing church.

The conference was an outgrowth of a gathering of female Boston College faculty and staff who have been meeting weekly for several decades to discuss the role of women in the church, and of Boston College's Church in the 21st Century initiative, which has been examining the state of the church in light of the clergy abuse crisis. Organizers said women have made up the bulk of the audience at many of the initiative's events.

Panelists and attendees said they wanted to remain in the Catholic Church, but at times are angered by some of the church's teachings and rules.

One Boston College junior, Meg M. Feist, said that "in my church, I'm often confined to roles that are auxiliary," and that she is seeking greater roles for women to play in the church. She also said the church's teachings about sexuality are overly legalistic and do not speak effectively to young people.

A graduate student at Boston College, Cynthia Kennedy, rued "an absence of female voices in positions of power, an absence of female presence on the altar, and an absence of female images of the divine." But Kennedy, who worked as a volunteer missionary in El Salvador, said she finds hope in the Christian communities being formed in Latin America, as well as in women's spirituality groups here.

Several panelists said the church has not kept up with the changing roles of women in American society.

"There is no putting the genie back in the bottle -- women have been educated, we are teaching the seminarians, and we are slowly changing the church," said Greer Gordon, director of the Frederick Douglass Unity House at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Gordon complained that "people are starving . . . yet we find ourselves faced with whose feet will we wash on which day."

The topic of the church's teachings on sexuality, including the widely ignored ban on the use of artificial birth control and the prohibition against homosexual sex, came under repeated criticism. "We have one of the most immature visions of human sexuality," Greer said.

"I don't think that many people pay attention to what the Catholic Church says about sexuality because it's such a narrow message," said Boston College theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill.

Participants, including many nuns and women who teach religious education or work in other forms of ministry, said they were heartened to get a chance to talk with one another.

"This is the spiritual food we need to find support from each other in what is otherwise a desert," said Carolyn B. Disco, a cofounder of New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership and survivor support chairwoman for New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.