by Margaret Smith,
from Women in Ministry: A Sisters’ View, National Assembly of Women Religious, Chicago, 1972, pp. 161-174.
Last October, when the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry (CCUM) met for a four-day workshop at Notre Dame, something new was added to the priestly discussions. Not one, but thirty-seven women participated, 36 of them members of religious congregations. This new development resulted in the “women’s caucus,” for it was quite evident that with regard to emerging ministries, urban or rural, women would have important input to give to the Seventies. Religious women have a style and response unique to women. What they have to say is important enough to be talked about, and what they are saying is different. No sure guidelines or goals emerged at Notre Dame, yet there was general agreement that the dialog should continue.
When the Executive Board of the National Assembly of Women Religious met in Louisville three weeks later, S. Marjorie Tuite and myself reported on CCUM developments. The Board passed a resolution that NAWR reinitiate the discussion with Msgr. John J. Egan, CCUM chairman and director of Notre Dame’s Center for Urban Studies, and that members from other sisters groups be involved in the planning for a followup meeting. NAWR’s Committee on Pastoral and Changing Ministries assumed responsibility for the evolving project.
This committee met at O’Hare airport in Chicago on January 23, 1972. Present were S. Helen Flaherty, LCWR Committee on Ecclesial Women; S. Dorothy Ortner, president of the Sisters Council of St. Louis; Msgr. Egan and his assistant, Miss Peggy Roach; S. Marjorie and myself. We spent the morning on the mechanics of the workshop: how much time? how many participants? who? where? what sort of resource people? etc. During that afternoon we began struggling with content for the April week.
To stimulate discussion of agenda, I’d brought along some suggested areas for exploration. In outline form they were these:
1. Comparative Research on programs that exist in the U.S. today which relate to pastoral charisms. (Planning Committee decided that one week was too short to include this. Idea valuable for longer search process)
2. Content: Existential and Experiential.
a. Pastoral and Developing Ministries, (4) i.e. actual data on experiential approach to ministry; experiential content and scope to date; experiential learnings to date, scriptural and theological dimensions of this ministry.
b. Ministry in the direct light of the Gospel. (3) i.e. the basic methodology for discovering ministry would be a theology distilled from Gospel acts and activities, clearly analyzed,
social ministries