8 Ways to Celebrate Women's History Month in Your Home Parish

March is Women's History Month. I'd like to bring some focus to it here on my blog. Feminism and women's oppression are very relevant topics to my experience in Peru. Machismo and domestic abuse are uncomfortably common here in Andhuaylillas. On top of that, the Catholic church, which is made up of mostly women, has it's own traditions of sexism. Finally, I live in a house of 6 that only holds one Y chromosome (hint:it's mine). Living with 5 women, I would be a fool if I didn't open my ears to their stories, their experiences, and their insights. This month let's explore the sin of women's oppression, celebrate women's triumphs, and examine ourselves in how we view and treat the women in our lives.

To start the month off, I want to offer some suggestions to parishes that wish to celebrate Women's History Month.

1. Witness by the Women. My home parish, St. Katharine Drexel, has a different woman speak during mass each week. The women give their testimony to God's movements in their lives, to the joys and the sorrows they have faced, to the troubles they have overcome. These talks could easily be placed outside of the mass. Indeed they could be placed outside of the church and down in the church hall. But they aren't. The message is clear: the witnesses of these women are sacred. “These are my daughters, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to them."
2. Place women in all the prominent lay positions during the mass. Say a mass where all the readers are women, the cantor is a woman, the Eucharistic ministers are women, and yes, Cardinal Burke, the altar servers are female.
3. Add the Hail Mary to each mass. Perhaps place it after communion. As Padre Calilo said at Christmas Eve mass, “Jesus was born because God so loved the world, and because a women said yes.”
4. Focus the prayers of the faithful on women's issues. There's lots of women's issues. Can't think of any off the top of your head? No worries, I'll help you out. Here are 5 statistics:    
   1 - 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. Among all rape victims, about nine out of ten are female.
   
   2 - Around 14 million girls, some as young as eight years old, will be married in 2014.
   3 - An estimated 1.2m children are trafficked into slavery each year; 80 per cent are girls.
   4 - In 10 countries around the world women are legally bound to obey their husbands.
   5 - Only 76 countries have legislation that specifically addresses domestic violence – and just 57 of them include sexual abuse. (There are 196 countries in the world). 
5. Priests, focus your sermons on the female saints during daily masses. 
• March 6 - Saint Colette (hey that's today!)
• March 14 - Saint Maud
• March 16 - Saints Mary and Abraham
• March 22 - Saint Catherine of Sweden
• March 25 - Aunnciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
6. Switch up them pronouns! (This one might need some explaining.)
   Quick, imagine God. What does God look like? Most of you, maybe all of you, are imagining God looking something like this impressively tall man.* 

   

   First image that came up when I google image searched "God"

   God's a white man. That's a clear message in our society. It may not be intentional, and I'm not here to call people sexist for imagining God as a white man or for reinforcing that image. I'm not even saying that it's a bad image of God. I am saying that this thing we do - where we consistently depict God as a very big bearded white man - is sexist. It's a sin, because sexism is a sin. And we don't want a sexist church. Jesus wouldn't be too happy with us for that, after all, he loved his momma something fierce. Is this the message we want to teach our daughters - that God is nothing like them? Is this the message we want to teach our nonwhite chilren - that God looks like the oppressors in their society?
   
   So what can we do about this limiting image we have of God? God is the Father. But God is also the Mother. We use male gendered pronouns for God because the scriptures were written in a time when patriarchy was even more powerful than it is today. Now we refer to God as “He” out of habit. We can change that. For women's month, let's change the pronouns that refer to God in the mass. Let's call God our heavenly mother. Let's ask for Her mercy. Let's say the Our Mother prayer instead of the Our Father.** Let's push ourselves to rethink the wording of our familiar prayers. Let's reconsider the limitations we put on our relationship with the Almighty when we only concieve of God as a bearded white man. 
7. Let a woman preach. According to Canon Law***, only a priest can give a sermon/homily. But there is a provision in Canon Law for laity to preach. Canon 766 states

   The laity may be allowed to preach in a church or oratory if in certain circumstances it is necessary, or in particular cases it would be advantageous, according to the provisions of the Episcopal Conference....

   Would is be advantageous to hear from the women in your parish? Do you know a nun who's a real firecracker? Might she be worth listening to, might she not have some useful spiritual insights into the Gospel readings?
   
   If letting a woman (laity or nun) preach is too much, then have the parish priest give a short homily and allow time for a woman to give a reflection. 
8. Blend a Communion Service with a Mass. What do you do if the priest is late? Do you just go home? That seems like a waste. After all, you go to church to experience God, not a priest. Here's how one catholic parish deals with the issue of late priests 

   If all else fails and the priest hasn't arrived by ten minutes after Mass was due to start, we start without him. On only one occasion did we get to the Gospel with no priest and we continued with a Eucharistic service giving Holy Communion from the reserved Sacrament. I have subsequently been advised by our Diocesan Liturgical Commission that we acted correctly. 
   (from the forum discussion "What to do if the priest is late for mass?" on forums.catholic.com)

   So what if we acted as if the priest was late for mass? A respected woman of the parish, perhaps a nun, can begin the service. She can say the opening prayers and give a reflection on the readings. She can perform the whole liturgy of the of the word. Then when it's time for the liturgy of the eurcharist to begin, she can step back and the priest can step forward. I've been in this situation once, and this is just how it proceeded. I didn't feel like the nun who lead the beginning of the service got in the way of relating to Jesus. 

Thanks for reading. Did I make you think? I hope so. As psychologist William James said "thinking is for doing." So don't just sit there and think, DO SOMETHING! Bring up an idea you liked to you parish council or pastoral committee.  Suggest other ideas in the comments. Get some conversations going. More than half of churchgoers are female (source); let's pay more attention to them. The Church can be better than She is today. She can be more open, more loving, more caring. Push her to be her best self. That will help us be our best selves. Push her to be a better Bride of Christ.

*Seriously, he's got to be miles tall!

**It's the same prayer, with just one word changed. Kind of like how sometimes we say “forgive us our trespasses” and other times we say “forgive us our debts.”

***For the non-Catholics out there, Canon law=Catholic Church law (not laws about canon use). Yes there are real rules for what constitutes mass and what doesn't. There's lots of rules in Catholicism. Sometimes that's frustrating and limiting, sometimes that's directing and enlightening. Nothing's perfect.  

Sources

From point 4, Item 1, Items 4-5
Image of God