From the Pews in the Back

I just got back from a lecture put on by Fordham's American Catholic Studies program. However, this was not just any lecture, this lecture was insightful, emotional, truthful, challenging and definitely blog-worthy.

So here it is. A bunch of women wrote essays about what it means to be a modern woman in the Catholic Church and they were compiled into a book. The editors -the guests of the lecture- had amazing insight and brought up challenges that we Catholic women can't help but grapple with: how to raise Catholic kids, how to stand up to an institution that makes women inferior and, most of all, how (and why!) we're staying Catholic amidst our issues with the church! A panel of Fordham students (who were also Catholic women) shared their thoughts, and they, too, were great.

I've written before about how Fordham is Catholic, and it's something that I'm always sure to bring up on tours, to prospective students, etc. But what does it mean, really, to be a Catholic woman in a church where women cannot be ordained, where they are not included in the second Eucharistic prayer, where they (we!) are ignored in the petitions??? We are too smart to not notice any of this. And we're way too smart not to care.
In the good spirit of caring, and of critical discussion, I ask YOU:
What are YOUR thoughts/opinions on this????

For more about the stuff of tonight's lecture, check out http://fromthepewsintheback.com/
and fordham.edu for the video of the actual event!