Undervalued gifts: women in the Church 

The Tablet

Amy Cameron: I've got a reputation for saying things how they are

Gender equality

Seven years ago, Kathryn Turner travelled more than 300 miles to take up the post of Spirituality Co­ordinator at the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. It was, Turner says, “a leap of faith”.
Her post was created as part of a shake-up of pastoral care and formation in Hexham and Newcastle, which identified spirituality and formation as priorities. After a further reorganisation, Turner was soon heading up a new Department for Spirituality.
Trained as a primary-school teacher, Turner had started volunteering in her parish and the diocese when she left teaching to look after her children. She self-funded an MA in liturgy and then took a job assisting a religious order in setting up a retreat centre. She was searching for a new direction when she saw the Hexham and Newcastle post advertised in The Tablet.
For the second part of The Tablet’s survey of the experiences of women who work for the Church, I met those such as Kathryn Turner, who have paid roles in ministry and catechesis in the dioceses of England and Wales.

Turner leads a department supported by two administrative workers, both women. Her work involves developing spirituality in parishes by introducing traditions such as Lectio Divina. She says that previously this would usually have been done by religious orders, often in a retreat centre. She also has a role encouraging the dioceses to bring more prayer and discernment into their meetings.
At 62 and with no dependents, Turner says she earns enough “for my needs and many of my wants”. The circumstances are different for her colleague, Amy Cameron, who, with her husband, has to support their three children.
Cameron was appointed to the new post of Discipleship Coordinator at Hexham and Newcastle after spending 16 years in teaching, latterly as a head of RE. She took a substantial pay cut, although, as her responsibilities grew, she negotiated a pay rise that went a small way to bridging the gap. She leads a team of three and her job involves developing leadership among lay people as well has helping them to discover their role in the Church. Two years on, she finds the work hugely satisfying.
“In Hexham and Newcastle, we’re pioneering in what we’re trying to do,” says Cameron. “The diocese has never had to deal with lay people in these kind of roles before. These are new areas of work that were previously done by priests. They’ve empowered us to move forward. I’ve been given a blank canvas to come up with a strategy.”
She has found significant differences between working in education and for the Church. In her current job, there are none of the systems and procedures there were at school. She now has the opportunity to create her own networks and has a greater say in how things are done. Though there is evening and weekend work, she can juggle her timetable to attend events at her children’s schools. She has found that being a mother is an asset and that priests warm to working alongside a woman with children.
“I’m unapologetic about the family. It’s bringing so much strength and understanding,” she says, adding that there are occasional clashes of opinion but she thinks she has won the respect of her peers. “I’ve got a reputation for saying things as they are. I think it comes from all those years in the classroom. People find it quite refreshing.”
Natalie Orefice worked in prisons for 14 years before taking a role as an adviser for Parish Evangelisation with the Archdiocese of Birmingham. A graduate in psychology, she was a detention officer for West Midlands Police, documenting men going into prison, doing drug tests, finger printing and strip searches. She often faced abuse from prisoners and, occasionally, unpleasant remarks from male staff.
“The Church is the complete opposite to what I experienced in prison, with cell doors slammed in my face and men shouting at me,” Orefice says, explaining that, in her present job, she feels supported and encouraged to make the most of her gifts, and is completing an MA in Catholic Theology at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham. She says: “Not every day is perfect. I have to prove myself anew. I would have to do that whatever I was doing but, over the last few years, priests have encouraged me and affirmed my work. Without their encouragement, I would not be able to do the work I do.”
Orefice advises women who want to take on roles like hers to work hard within existing structures rather than campaign for change. The recent modest advances women have made in the Vatican are an indication, she believes, that the Church is interested in their views, appreciates their strengths and wants them to participate.
Catechist Colette Joyce is also watching developments in Rome. Joyce has been in parish ministry for more than 20 years in between jobs in a refugee centre and drug rehabilitation centre. She currently works in a parish in Hounslow on the fringes of west London and is studying for a PhD on John Paul II’s teaching and practice on complementarity and authority. She says she can only commit to parish work because she is single and has no dependants.
“Jobs like mine are advertised at £11 to £13 an hour. As a more experienced worker, I now get £14 an hour. I’m paid for 24 hours a week. I am also a parishioner so there is always the temptation to volunteer on top, which then gets taken for granted as part of my role, but I’m being very strict at the moment, as I’ve got to study.”
Joyce is one of around 45 paid catechetical advisers and parish workers working full or part-time in the Archdiocese of Westminster. At least 2,000 more are volunteers. She is a trade union rep for the Faith Workers’ branch of Unite and knows of just five Catholic members.
“Women really do need to be encouraged to join a union,” she says. “If they are not in the union then I can’t represent them when they get into difficulty. I attribute my own longevity in church ministry and capacity to move around to the confidence and resilience that has been built up in me by union training and by supportive ecumenical and interfaith colleagues.”
What are those difficulties? Joyce says: “I’ve had a couple of union cases in my own diocese. One woman was being bullied by a priest. A new priest came in and he didn’t like her, he didn’t like the way she did things so she negotiated a settlement and left. But women tend not to tell us if they have a problem. They quietly disappear.”
There is evidence that the number of paid jobs in pastoral ministry is shrinking. Pat Jones, who was Assistant General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales for six years from 1992, puts this down to the dioceses having less money because of the decline in Mass attendance. Says Jones: “For some years in the 1990s, there was a national Network for Lay Ministry, gathering anyone we could find doing pastoral work as a layperson, at whatever level. I think we had around 175 members; but it disappeared as many of the jobs disappeared; I think 90 per cent of the members were women.”
Cristina Gangemi, who specialises in supporting people with disabilities, finds there is less money for her sphere of work today. Gangemi was an assistant in a school for children with special needs when she was recruited by Southwark Diocese in 2000 as an adviser on disability. She stayed for 12 years and enjoyed a “blessed time” doing pioneering work that was highly regarded and well paid. She says that at that time there were 12 other advisers doing similar work in the dioceses but now there are only two.
The Diocese of Middlesbrough is among several that have no paid pastoral workers. Vicar General Mgr Gerard Robinson, who is also Dean at St Mary’s Cathedral, says he is very proud of the women volunteers who keep his parish afloat. According to Mgr Robinson, his diocese cannot afford to pay pastoral workers: “We’re a small diocese and we can only pay what the parish can afford.”
Yet Kathryn Turner says a new generation of theologically literate women will not settle for being volunteers: “I stayed at home to look after my children. The next generation expects to be treated differently. They will, hopefully, be working with priests who are used to working with qualified and capable women and see them as co-workers. We bring different gifts but are co-responsible for the growth and well-being of the Church.”
This kind of collaborative ministry with men and women working alongside priests was advocated in a report published by the bishops’ conference in 1995, called The Sign We Give. It was produced by a working party under the direction of Jones, with an introduction by the then Bishop of Portsmouth, Crispian Hollis.
The report talked about giving women a real share in leadership and decision-making, and advised bishops to develop policy on the employment of lay pastoral workers. Twenty-three years on, progress towards realising this vision has been limited.
Elena Curti is a former deputy editor of The Tablet.