To reach and keep young Catholics, the church must recognize women’s leadership | Opinion
Women play a vital role in passing on the faith to the next generation. But when 99% of Catholic churches will have a male preacher this Sunday in a world where 50% of the Catholic population are women, it’s time for our daughters and granddaughters — and sons and grandsons — to see us naming out loud a problem we’ve endured quietly in our hearts.
What seemed normalized to my devout Catholic Cuban grandmothers, and became uncomfortable for my mother and has become unacceptable for me, is now unbearable for my nieces and many of our daughters. This will have untold consequences for the future of Catholic ministries.
According to a report by the Pew Research Center, as of 2022, 43% of Hispanic adults identify as Catholic, down from 67% in 2010. In my work listening to older Hispanic/Latino Catholics in Miami, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere, I often hear how their children and grandchildren have become disengaged from their families’ long-standing, multigenerational Catholic faith. The loss of family unity feels enormous.
I co-direct Discerning Deacons, a project inviting Catholics to consider women’s inclusion in the permanent diaconate — an order that already includes married men ordained to serve in the life of the church. We launched our effort because young Catholics have only ever lived in a church reckoning with the clergy sex-abuse crisis. They see other professional fields taking steps to recognize women in visible leadership roles — athletics, government, academics, medicine, business — and wonder why their religious institutions will not.
These challenges have not escaped my own family.
After my niece Carolina was confirmed as a teenager, she begged her parents not to obligate her to keep going to Mass. My niece found it increasingly painful and unbearable to walk into a church where only men preached.
“I can’t find God in church when I’m feeling so angry and rejected,” Carolina told her mother. “They haven’t set up a space to welcome me the way I believe God would welcome me.”
The family was faced with rethinking Sundays. Ultimately, they agreed that Carolina would choose a spiritual book that interested her to keep nurturing her soul, which was important to her parents, and on the way to Mass, they would drop her off at Starbucks. After they picked her up, they would engage in a faith conversation.
Today, Carolina is living out her faith by building a community that is more inclusive and welcoming — much like what Jesus did. A college senior, she spent a recent internship cooking dinners with community members and formerly incarcerated people. How much stronger her local parish would have been had it retained such a promising young leader.
Youth hunger to know that their church supports their passionate commitment to make the world a better place. Rethinking women’s participation has emerged as a critical and urgent concern around the Catholic world. Catholics must build capacities for listening, dialogue and building consensus about how we are called to be “church” in the third millennium.
In October, Catholic leaders from around the world will gather in Rome for the Synod of Bishops. The convening is expected to address a number of topics, including the role of women in church leadership. For the first time in history, the pope has decided to include women delegates who can vote. It is a seismic shift in the way the Catholic Church walks in the world. Catholic Church leadership must continue this vital work toward genuinely valuing the voices and trusting all of the faithful — women, men, lay, clergy, youth, elders — to be part of discerning the path forward for our global church.
Ellie Hidalgo is a parishioner at Our Lady of Divine Providence Church in Miami, Florida.
