Monika Schmid, who who has been de facto administrator at a parish in the Swiss Catholic diocese of Chur in German-speaking Switzerland "presided" at the August 28 farewell Mass, preached the homily and concelebrated the Eucharist.

"As diocesan bishop, I have a duty to react to the events of these last few weeks (...) in the parish ...," said Bishop Joseph Bonnemain.

At the Mass, Schmid led the head of the procession, with a staff in hand as a symbol of the community's shepherd. She was surrounded by two priests, a deacon and a theologian.

At the moment of the Eucharistic prayer - the text of which had been extensively revised - the group stood around the altar.

Schmid occupied the central place at the moment of the consecration. She also recited the Eucharistic prayer. A priest held up the host and the cup.

Earlier in the Mass, Schmid based her homily on the Gospel reading of the day: "For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be raised up".

A video of the concelebration is circulating on social media.

At the end of the farewell ceremony, Schmid passed on her pastor's staff to one of the two priests present, to whom she entrusted "her" parish.

Bonnemain says he will be opening a preliminary canonical investigation into these events.

"Because of the scope of these events, I deliberately chose not to act immediately. In such a situation, it is important to carefully evaluate an appropriate procedure," he said.

"The complexity of the liturgical abuses that have taken place necessitates a preliminary canonical investigation."

The incident occurred when a conference was held on "Sacramentality and the Church", organised by the Swiss Bishops' Conference and the Swiss League of Catholic Women.

The meeting's theological and pastoral reflection raised the question of "the dispensation of sacraments by non-consecrated pastoral agents", primarily women.

While reflections begun in 2020 consider "new forms of sacramental missions for lay pastoral agents, men and women, for example the celebration of baptisms or the anointing of the sick", these don't include presiding at Mass.

The Code of Canon Law is unambiguous about this.

"In the Eucharistic celebration deacons and lay persons are not permitted to offer prayers, especially the Eucharistic prayer, or to perform actions which are proper to the celebrating priest," says canon 907.

One question concerns whether the presence of "concelebrating" ordained priests validates the Eucharistic when a lay person is also involved in reading the prayers.

It is possible the preliminary canonical investigation could place responsibility for the transgression on the ordained ministers.

"The results of this first investigation will form the basis for possible further measures.

"They will also show whether these are offences that should be dealt with by the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith and should therefore be reported to it," Bonnemain says.

Source

• La Croix

"Second-class membership for women anywhere is unjust," she told Flashes of Insight on Wednesday.

Asked by host Joe Grayland if the relationship of women and the Catholic Church is a problem, she replied she did not choose to see it this way and simply called the relationship of women and the Catholic Church "a matter of justice".

Ayers said that God is made known to us in all our relationships and in examining these we are told that women are fully human.

She says that the Catholic Church is no longer prophetic for women and that civil society is.

"The evidence in New Zealand of women in leadership, in the highest jobs in the country underscores that civic society is ahead of the (Catholic) Church".

It is a point echoed by Palmerston North catechist and theologian, Kate Bell, who is concerned the Church is so far behind.

"It is the (Catholic) Church that has the problem. It has not been able to comprehend and stay on board with the fact that women are baptized.

"The Church fails to understand that in the power and the validity of baptism we are made into Christ", she said.

Bell says that society has not got it all right either and the church could provide some really interesting critique.

It is a point picked up by Elizabeth Young, theologian, pastoral worker and chaplain in Forbes, Australia.

Young says the Scriptures, Proverbs, legitimize women's leadership in for example business.

She says Jesus call to people was not limited; that it was inclusive.

She told Flashes of Insight that Jesus called women, men, those from various cultural backgrounds, young and old and not Christian stereotypes because he called unlikely people too!

For Young, the challenge is how can the Church embody and exemplify this ‘reign of God' in civil society.

Like Bell she wonders how the Church can, today, challenge society.

Fiona Dyball from the Liturgy and Faith Formation office of the Australian Catholic Bishops told the conversation of the importance of understanding discipleship.

"If we are following Jesus, we follow what Jesus did, and Jesus chose and called women all over the place to receive the good news, to spread the Gospel and be Jesus witnesses", she told the conversation.

She says she is reminded of the fantastic work the Sisters did and how empowered they were.

"They just made pathways and did it through partnerships and by forming relationships."

A fan of Pope Francis who is really setting the say, Dyball says she is however looking for more public encouragement from some of the male leaders in the Church.

Far from seeing the cupboard bare, Dyball says she sees women in the Church ministry who are prophetic but sees there is still plenty of room, in the spirit of Vatican II, to ‘open the windows'.

But there is also evidence church attendance can be good for your health — unless, that is, you are a woman at a church that bars women from preaching or other leadership roles.

A new study published in the American Sociological Review has found that women who attend churches with such restrictions report worse health than those who attend churches with women in leadership roles.

The study suggests sexism can counter some of the health benefits associated with religion, said co-author Patricia Homan, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University.

"Women who attend sexist congregations have the same health as those who do not attend religious services at all, and have worse health than women who attend inclusive churches," said Homan.

A number of past studies have shown that taking part in religious services and belonging to a religious community can be associated with better health outcomes.

Regular worship attenders are less likely to smoke, may be less likely to use drugs and may live longer than those who don't attend services.

That health effect of religion appears to be tied to active participation in a church. Those who have religious beliefs but don't attend can report poorer health outcomes. (Atheists, by contrast, also seem to report better health.)

Gender discrimination, on the other hand, can be associated with poorer health outcomes.

In a previous study, Homan looked at the effects of what she called "structural sexism" at the state level.

She found that states that had fewer women political leaders, larger gaps in wages and workplace participation between women and men, and a larger percentage of conservative Christians had higher levels of chronic health issues.

For this new study, Homan and her co-author, Amy Burdette, a professor of sociology at Florida State, wanted to see if sexism counters the health benefits of religion.

To do this, they drew from two nationally representative sources of data: the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study.

The GSS collects data about religion, gender, marital status and health, among other factors.

The National Congregations Study collects data about local congregations, including data on the roles women are allowed to play in those churches.

The samples collected by the two studies are linked.

In 2006, 2012 and 2018, the GSS collected data about how often respondents attended religious services, then asked attenders to identify their specific congregation.

That data was used to create a nationally representative list of congregations for the NCS.

The researchers looked at three different measures of sexism, using four questions included in the 2006 and 2012 waves of NCS: Could women teach a co-ed class, could they preach at the main worship service, could they serve on the governing board of the church, and could they be the main leader?

Those questions were used to sort into what the researchers called either "sexist" or "inclusive" congregations.

Churches that banned women as the main leader (50%) were labelled as sexist.

So were congregations that only allowed men on the governing board (14%).

Homan and Burdette also looked at all four questions — and rated congregations on how many restrictions on women were in place. Those with more than two limits on women were labelled as sexist.

They then matched churches in both the sexist and inclusive categories with health data about individuals who attended those churches from the GSS.

The GSS asked participants to rate their overall health using this question: "Would you say your own health, in general, is excellent, good, fair, or poor?"

Their answers were then rated on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being poor and 4 being excellent.

Women in inclusive churches had an average self-reported health score of 3.03. Women in sexist congregations had an average score of 2.79.

That difference is equivalent to a person having at least three years of additional education (which has been shown to impact health) or at least 15 years' difference in age, said Homan.

"We found that only women who attended inclusive congregations got that health benefit from religious participation," Homan told Religion News Service.

And the more restrictions there were on women's participation in the life of a congregation, the worse the reported health outcomes were.

There was no conclusive data showing whether or not sexism had any effect on men's health in the study.

The role of women in churches has been the subject of a national debate over sexism in religious groups.

Southern Baptist Bible teacher Beth Moore made national headlines after telling RNS she no longer identified with that denomination after years of controversy over sexism, abuse and racial divides in the church.

Homan said she has a great deal of respect for Christians who hold so-called complementarian beliefs — the idea that men and women are equal in God's eyes but have different roles in the church and at home.

She grew up in a Southern Baptist family and attended complementarian churches for years as an adult and had a good experience.

The study also seemed to draw a line between complementarian beliefs and sexist structures in religious groups.

"Complementarianism provides a clear guide for the acceptable roles of men and women within gender-traditional religious groups, but the reality is more complicated.

"Rather than being simple-minded victims of patriarchy, numerous studies show that conservative religious women display a great deal of agency within church and home," the authors wrote.

Homan said her research of sexism and health outcomes at the state level prompted her to follow up with the study in religion and health and she can't deny what they found: Policies and practices that limit women's participation can undermine the health benefits associated with church attendance.

"The full equal participation of women in church and society is important for the health and well-being of everyone," Homan said.

• Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. See other Ahead of the Trend articles here.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

He would like women to "participate more in areas of responsibility in the church."

"Today there is a need to broaden the spaces for a more incisive female presence in the church," he said on October 11, "because in general women are set aside. We must promote the integration of women into places where important decisions are made."

Adding, however, that women leaders in the church must maintain their vocation as laity and not fall into "clericalism."

Pope Francis has made many gestures to give momentum to this desire to give women greater weight in the Church.

"Demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected, based on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity, present the Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly evaded," he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium.

Fr. Frédéric Fornos S.J., International Director of the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, says that since 2013, much has been accomplished, but more needs to be done.

Earlier, Pope Francis reflected on Jesus' parable from the Gospel of Matthew about the king who prepared a wedding feast for his son. When the initially invited guests did not arrive, he sent his messengers out to invite anyone and everyone.

God loves and has prepared a banquet for everyone — "the just and sinners, the good and the bad, the intelligent and the uneducated." Every Christian is called to go out to the highways and byways sharing God's invitation to the feast, Pope Francis said.

"Even those on the margins, even those who are rejected and scorned by society, are considered by God to be worthy of his love," the pope told the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to pray with him.

The church as a whole and each of its members, he said, are called to go out to "the geographic and existential peripheries of humanity, those places at the margins, those situations where those who have set up camp are found and where the hopeless remnants of humanity live."

"It is a matter of not settling for comfort and the customary ways of evangelization and witnessing to charity," the pope said, but rather "opening the doors of our hearts and our communities to everyone, because the Gospel is not reserved to a select few."

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Vatican News

John recounts the amazing story in the Gospel passage proclaimed at Easter Sunday Mass: "On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb" (Jn 20:1).

Nothing in the Gospel occurs by mere chance.

It is highly significant that in a society where men wielded power in almost every aspect of life, Christ chose a woman to be the first to see him after his resurrection and to announce the news to his apostles.

Pope Francis' act demonstrated the church's respect for the dignity of women.

Women make up a large majority of volunteers, catechists, religious educators, faith formation leaders, sacristans and others who do so much for our church, and Mary Magdalene is most qualified to be an example and a source of inspiration to them.

In Mary's life, we glimpse "the greatness of the mystery of mercy," as Archbishop Arthur Roche, the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, mentions in his explanation of the pope's decision.

In the last few years, there has been much talk about how to better appreciate the gifts that women bring to the church and how to better integrate feminine presence in the church's decision-making processes.

Pope Francis frequently reminds us that the church is "feminine" and has repeatedly called for a more robust theology of women.

Given these conversations, the time is right to further elevate the feast of St. Mary Magdalene to a solemnity.

It would accord this great woman equal dignity with the nativity of John the Baptist, which is liturgically observed as a solemnity.

This would be a good way to recognize both John and Mary as pivotal players in announcing the good news of salvation: the former announcing the Lamb of God to the world and the latter announcing the resurrection to the frightened Apostles. Continue reading

• Image: Diveena Seshetta