Catholic women go on strike and pretend to be bishops and priests
With pink hats to more rights: Church women march on strike
Women do a lot for the church, but the important decisions are made by men. This should change. Now the Swiss Catholic Women's Federation is calling on churchwomen to march on the national Women's Strike Day.
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They will wear a pink dot with the inscription "Equality. Dot. Amen." Some will wear a homemade pink mitre, the bishop's headdress for the liturgy. And put on pink boots. "To symbolically show that we churchwomen want to wade out of the swamp of the Catholic Church," says Vroni Peterhans.
"Out of a swamp of sexual abuse and gender inequality," adds the vice president of the Swiss Catholic Women's Federation (SKF), which represents 130,000 women. It's worth it. For despite their faults, women like the church; it offers an emotional home.
Peterhans is disappointed by the "reform-incapable hierarchical church. The catechist from the canton of Aargau is involved in the preparations of the church women for the national women's strike day on Friday, June 14. They will also demand in the Catholic Church. The SKF is supported, among others, by the IG feminist theologians of Switzerland and Liechtenstein and the Evangelical Women of Switzerland (EFS).
Women are underrepresented in Protestant governing bodies, says EFS President Dorothea Forster. And the EFS expressed solidarity with Catholic women and their demand that all church offices be opened to women as in the Reformed Church.
Resistance in worship
On the one hand, the church women will mingle with the strikes organized by trade unions all over Switzerland. They support their concerns such as equal pay or a better reconciliation of work and family life.
On the other hand, they will draw attention to their concerns on the following Saturday and Sunday in front of and in churches with various actions. "It is conceivable, for example, that women will celebrate the service in front of the door, have sheets with the pink dot waving on church towers or place banners on church doors," says Peterhans.
In addition, they want to read out a declaration of resistance in church services, which the Lucerne theologian Jacqueline Keune has written. In it, she criticizes, for example, that women "are still devalued and excluded solely on the basis of their gender".
Without the commitment of women, pastoral care comes to a standstill.
Peterhans is not aware of any female pastoral assistants or sacristans, for example, refusing to participate in services. "We don't want to strike a baptism and hurt people," Peterhans says. "But if circumstances in individual places allow it, I would love to see a strike." This, says the SKF vice president, would be a way to show how important women are to keeping the church running. "Without their commitment, pastoral care grinds to a halt," she says.
Indeed, women are making a significant contribution to mitigating the priest shortage. For example, in recent years, the number of female pastoral assistants has steadily increased to 403 in 2017, while 451 men served as pastoral assistants that year. Pastoral assistants conduct church services and sermons, visit the sick, and teach religious education. They may also baptize children and perform marriages.
However, just like deacons, they may not administer all the sacraments. The Eucharist, confession and anointing of the sick are reserved for ordained priests. In short, pastoral assistants undergo the same training as priests but have fewer powers.
Now the churchwomen are demanding equality between men and women at all levels, access for women to all offices, less hierarchy, more co-determination. They also want to press these concerns with the Swiss bishops.
Ultimately, the reform efforts amount to the ordination of women as deacons, priests or bishops. Vroni Peterhans adds that what is important above all are structures that are more friendly to men, but also to women, for example, the abolition of compulsory celibacy, of forced marriages. "Otherwise, women can become priests, but the old structures remain."
There are signs that Switzerland's clerical authorities are opening up to the concerns of churchwomen. In his Easter sermon in Solothurn Cathedral, for example, Felix Gmür, bishop of the Basel diocese and currently president of the Swiss Bishops' Conference, said one must also think practically. The women's diaconate is in the pipeline in Rome, he said, and he would be positive about a forward-looking decision.
In other words, Gmür would welcome it if the Pope gave the green light for the ordination of women deacons. The diaconate is a preliminary stage to the priesthood that is also open to married men.
She wants to become a priest
And the Pope? For Francis, women continue to be out of the question as priests. In an apostolic letter, he held, "The priesthood reserved to men as a sign of Christ, the Bridegroom, who gives himself in the Eucharist, is a question that is not open to discussion." That has disappointed many Catholic women.
One of them is Jacqueline Straub, a native of Germany who now lives in Muri in the Canton of Aargau. Nevertheless, the 28-year-old married theologian is not giving up hope that one day she will be ordained a priest after all. She feels this calling and this desire.
Straub, a journalist and author of the book "Kick the Church Out of its Coma," welcomes the churchwomen's strike. "It allows them to show all they do for the church," she says - and hopes the strike day will put the women's priesthood back on the Swiss bishops' agenda.
Straub demands that they not only show understanding for the cause, but also defend it in Rome against conservative forces. Straub herself will not be able to participate in the strike activities. She is in Germany for a lecture, but will wear pink in solidarity on that day and will draw attention via social media to the fact that she will be taking part.
Meanwhile, Vroni Peterhans hopes that tens of thousands of churchwomen will take to the streets on June 14, wearing pink and making their voices heard. How many women in total will take to the streets is difficult to estimate. During the last women's strike on June 14, 1991, about half a million women took to the streets throughout Switzerland.
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