The first call for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church came in the 1930s from a little-known British organization called the Saint Joan’s Alliance. With utmost deference, the group submitted a petition to the Vatican that said, “Should the Church in her wisdom and in her good time decide to extend to women the dignity of the priesthood, women would be willing and eager to respond.” The society has submitted similar petitions every year since.
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In the United States the movement started in the mid-1960s when a New York woman, Mary Lynch, appended a little message to her Christmas cards: “Isn’t it time that women be ordained priests?” Her card list was apparently extensive and included some strong voices, because the discussion has not died down since. It was also in the mid-1960s that Catholic sisters, obedient to the directions of the Second Vatican Council, began examining their own regulations, upgrading their educations, and emerging from the shelter of their cloisters. Since the sisters could not attend theology courses in the all-male Catholic seminaries, many found themselves by default at far more stimulating institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago. Within a remarkably few years the U.S. church had a phalanx of sisters and ex-sisters who were better educated than their priests and bishops.
Some Catholic women who feel called to the priesthood have switched to other churches that have no sex barriers, such as the Episcopalian Church and the United Church of Christ. In October, for example, Julie Raino, a former chaplain at the University of Chicago’s Catholic center, was ordained a minister in the nondenominational Saint Paul Community Church. Though her work is among Protestants, she still considers herself a Catholic. Her departure from the university was triggered by the arrival of a conservative priest-chaplain who essentially removed her authority to do her job.
