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Author: Russ Petrus

2021 Keynote Presentation by Massimo Faggioli, Ph.D.

Written on . Posted in Fall Event.

Keynote Presenter:
Massimo Faggioli, PhD is a leading authority on the history and administrative inner workings of the Catholic Church with specific expertise in the papacy, Vatican II, the Roman Curia, liturgical reform, new Catholic movements and on Catholicism and global politics. He is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much published author and commentator.  Professor Faggioli is one of the foremost scholars on the intersection of American Catholicism and the state of democracy in the United States.  He examines and charts both the impact and potential threats to democratic ideals as our increasingly “unique” brand of American Catholicism, embraced by a majority of U.S. Bishops and funded by weathly conservative donors, is wedded to a democracy increasing invested in free wheeling capitalism that eschews social safety networks.

2021 Fall Event Program

Written on . Posted in Fall Event.

FutureChurch’s 2021 Fall Event Program includes biographies of our guests, a listing of our event sponsors, advertisements from friends of FutureChurch, and reports and updates on our programming.

View/download the program.

As Francis visits Slovakia, international crowd celebrates Czech woman priest

Written on . Posted in In the News.

Excerpt:

Just hours after Pope Francis addressed Catholics in Slovakia, more than 420 Catholics from all over the world gathered in an online event to celebrate Ludmila Javorova, the first publicly known woman priest ordained in the modern era. In 1970, Bishop Felix Maria Davidek ordained her to serve the underground church in Czechoslovakia, where communist leaders were killing and imprisoning priests, nuns and lay leaders.

Javorova’s biographer, Medical Mission Sr. Miriam Therese Winter, spoke to an appreciative international crowd brought together through the wonders of cyberspace by FutureChurch and the Women’s Ordination Conference.

Pope Francis, Meet your Priest: Ludmila Javorová

Written on . Posted in Press Releases.

Release date:
July 14, 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Kate McElwee, Executive Director, Women’s Ordination Conference, kmcelwee@womensordination.org
Deborah Rose-Milavec, Co-Director, FutureChurch debrose@futurechurch.org

As Pope Francis arrives in Slovakia, we urge him to publicly recognize woman priest Ludmila Javorová, who 51 years ago was clandestinely ordained a priest by a Roman Catholic bishop as part of the underground church in Czechoslovakia during the country’s authoritarian Communist rule.

Entrusted by her bishop, Javorová courageously served the church at a time it seemed all but certain that Catholicism would be erased from Czecholavakia, risking her own life and safety. She offered sacraments to a community threatened by religious persecution, and along with so many other brave Catholics, answered the call of God to keep the faith alive. Today, she is 89 years old.

In 1970, Bishop Felix Maria Davidek of the underground Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia ordained Javorova and at least seven other women and married men, at a time when the persecuted Catholic community was in dire need of ministers. Davidek also ordained several bishops who continued the practice in the underground church.

The story of Javorová’s vocation and clandestine ordination are captured in the book Out of The Depths, by Sr. Miriam Therese Winters, Ph.D, who will join FutureChurch and the Women’s Ordination Conference in dialogue Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at noon EDT.

“The Magisterium so often claims, ‘We can’t ordain women because we never have,’” said Kate McElwee, of the Women’s Ordination Conference. “Here we have a living example of a woman ordained by a Roman Catholic bishop. Shamefully, the Vatican is choosing, once again, to ignore its own history.”

Instead of lauding her courageous act of faith and evangelization, the Vatican forbade her to exercise her priesthood in 1996, with the reason that her ordination was invalid simply because she is a woman.

“Ludmila accompanied the people of God in a time of immense difficulty and ensured those on the farthest margins received the Eucharist, “ said Deborah Rose-Milavec, of FutureChurch. “She is a model of the kind of priest the church needs today. ”

We call on Pope Francis to embrace Javorová’s priesthood, and open his eyes to the ministry she and so many women long to share with the People of God. The Pope has an opportunity and a moral responsibility to right this wrong.

END

About FutureChurch Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, FutureChurch seeks changes that will provide all Roman Catholics the opportunity to participate fully in Church life and leadership. It is a national coalition of parish centered Catholics striving to educate fellow Catholics about the seriousness of the priest shortage, the centrality of the Eucharist (the Mass), and the systemic inequality of women in the Catholic Church. FutureChurch is a nonprofit organization that makes presentations throughout the country, distributes education, advocacy and prayer resources and recruits activists who work on behalf of its mission.

Pope Francis: Meet Your Priest, Ludmilla Javarova with Miriam Therese Winter

Written on . Posted in Future of Priestly Ministry, Women In Church Leadership.

As Pope Francis traveled to Slovakia in 2021, Sr. Miriam Therese Winter joined FutureChurch and the Women’s Ordination Conference to recall the ministry and life of Ludmila Javorová, a woman who was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by Bishop Felix Davidek to serve in the underground church there when the church was under threat by the Communist regime from 1948 through 1989. Learn about her life, ministry, and why she is important as the world follows Francis to Slovakia.

Women Erased: Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of John with Elizabeth Schrader

Written on . Posted in Mary of Magdala, Women Erased, Women In Church Leadership.

In today’s Bibles, Lazarus has two sisters, Mary and Martha. But poring over hundreds of hand-copied early Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Gospel, Schrader found the name Martha had been altered. The scribes scratched out one Greek letter and replaced it with another, thereby changing the original name “Mary” to read “Martha.” They then split one woman into two. Schrader argues that the Mary of the original text is Mary Magdalene, not Martha or Martha’s sister, Mary. The two sisters belong to another story, in the Gospel of Luke, that is not repeated in John’s Gospel.

Elizabeth Schrader is a Ph.D. candidate in Early Christianity at Duke University. Her research interests include the New Testament Gospels, the Nag Hammadi corpus, Mary Magdalene, textual criticism, and feminist theology. She holds an M.A. and an S.T.M. from the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. Her work about the potential suppression of Mary Magdalene was published in the Harvard Theological Review and featured by both the Daily Beast and Religion News Service.

Schrader has focused her research on the way Mary Magdalene’s role was deliberately downplayed by biblical scribes to minimize her importance. Specifically, she looks at the story of the raising of Lazarus told in the Gospel of John. In today’s Bibles, Lazarus has two sisters, Mary and Martha.

Read Elizabeth Schrader’s groundbreaking article here. 

A Paradigm-Shifting Lectionary for the Whole Church

Written on . Posted in In the News.

Excerpt:

Because of the androcentric nature of biblical texts there are only an estimated 205 named female characters compared to an estimated 1,181 named men. But androcentrism is more than numbers. In a recent Women Erased presentation for FutureChurch, Gafney pointed out that because of male authorship, “Even when a woman is present, her story is serving a male story. If it’s focused on her, the larger arc is still a male story.” Given these realities — and the fact that the lectionary is a catechetical (teaching) text — it is unsurprising that in her introduction Gafney writes “not many of my students or parishioners can name even 10 women in the biblical canon.”

Since lectionary committees — guided in part by the Scriptures themselves — have selected predominantly male-oriented texts, people rarely learn about biblical women on Sunday — or any other time for that matter.