Madam, – You give front-page prominence (August 11th) to a call by Jennifer Sleeman for Catholic women to boycott Sunday Mass on September 26th to “let the Vatican and the Irish church know that women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens”.
Perhaps Ms Sleeman missed a report in your newspaper (July 12th) which referred to the commissioning of 10 new parish pastoral workers by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for the diocese of Dublin.
Although your report did not state it, eight of those 10 people are women. At the ceremony the archbishop stated that the archdiocese was “happy to see a growing commitment of lay men and women who wish to be active in the pastoral structures of the diocese”.
It is accepted that this is just a small, but ongoing, step in lay involvement, by women as much as men, in the structures of the church.
However, that report on the parish pastoral workers was hidden on page 8 of your newspaper, so may have been missed by some readers. Perhaps in the next few weeks when these pastoral workers are allocated to parishes you might redress the balance by giving them prominence on the Front page of your newspaper. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – If Jennifer Sleeman (“Monk’s mother calls on women to join one-day boycott of Mass) is a true Catholic, perhaps she should consider having a Mass for all the women of Ireland in the Phoenix Park or similar venue in order to achieve her objective rather than staying away!
Catholic belief, as I understand it, is that the true body of Christ is offered up to the final arbitrator on these matters! – Yours, etc,