The Tablet: How those who call for women’s equality in Church face ‘serious pushback’
Sarah Mac Donald 24 June 2025, The Tablet
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A leading woman theologian based in South Africa has called for the Church to go back to Pentecost, where the Spirit fell on everyone without discrimination and everyone was given the same commission
“Whenever the Catholic Church talks about Africa it is always in a very condescending way, especially when talking about African women. It is like the struggle for women’s equality is all Western and African women are quite adaptable to patriarchy, and that is the culture,” said Dr Nontando Hadebe, research fellow at the University of Free State and presenter at Radio Veritas
“That is the tradition of the Church, communitarian leadership, no hierarchy, equality and inclusion,” she told The Tablet webinar, “Papabile Women: A New Conversation on Leadership in the Church”.
She described the current model as contradictory to the vision of Pentecost and to what the Church should be.
A member of the Circle of Concerned African women theologians and Catholic Women Speak, Preach, Dr Hadebe highlighted that the Church in Africa is “following these beliefs of women’s inferiority, right next to a society that is pushing boundaries, which is saying that all leadership is accessible for women, that is removing all limitations”.
Recently the people of Namibia voted for a female president and the people of Ghana voted for a female vice president.
The lay theologian said she was excited to be living in Africa at this time, but also “saddened to see the Church becoming more and more irrelevant”.
“Yes, we may be growing in numbers, but in the movement of what is happening on the continent, I think we are slowly being sidelined, and I think that is the tragedy.”
Christina Reymer and educator and advocate from New Zealand told the webinar that young people today want authenticity and justice. “They won’t stay in a Church that doesn’t reflect their values. My hope is to reform the Church not just for us, but for our future generations.” For those who had turned to tradition, it was important to “build bridges” to reach them, she said.
Kate McElwee, executive director of Women’s Ordination Conference, recalled how during the recent papal conclave, while the male cardinals gathered behind closed doors, “we raised pink smoke outside the Vatican. It was a protest, yes, but also a signal: a Church that excludes women is in crisis”.
She said the message of the protest was “a woman’s place is in the conclave. A male only conclave is a celebration of patriarchy and a betrayal of the synodal process. God calls Catholic women to be deacons and priests. Sexism is a cardinal sin, and a Catholic Church without women has never existed and never will.”
Representing over half the Church, the protestors had stood out on that Roman hill “to proclaim that the Holy Spirit cannot be contained by a closed door”.
She pledged to continue her “ministry of irritation” as part of the group’s advocacy to create “more and necessary space for the people of God to speak up, to be in dialogue with decision-makers, and to know that they are not isolated in their prayer for a more just Church and world”.
Miriam Duignan, executive director of the Wijngaards Institute, a research institute founded by the late Dutch priest and former Vicar General of the Mill Hill missionary order, Dr John Wijngaards, who resigned from the active priestly ministry in 1998 in protest at the St John Paul II’s ban on women priests, said Dr Wijngaards was brave and outspoken.
Those calling for greater inclusion of women in the church face serious pushback, she said.
“I’ve been arrested multiple times in Rome simply for holding signs or standing in Vatican spaces.”
During the recent conclave, plainclothes officers tracked and detained her and others and removed them from St Peter’s Square and banned them from Vatican property – “even though we had a permit” and had been in the Square to see the outcome of the first round of voting at the conclave.
“The Vatican’s reaction proves the power of protest. They see us as a threat because we’re exposing the institutional misogyny at the heart of the Church. But our courage also makes space for others to speak up.”
Stressing that protest works, she said it is seen as dangerous “because we are drawing attention to the lies that sustain the ban on women priests. We are drawing attention to the fact that men are quite comfortably running the Church without including half of the church in their decision-making and management of the Church.
“And so that’s why some of your papabile, instead of being in the Sistine Chapel, were actually in a police station instead.”
Another speaker, Mary Ring, a member of the Root and Branch core team, noted that two-thirds of the world’s refugees are women and children.
“This oppression of women has been aided, if not vigorously promoted, at times, by the institutional churches’ implicit teachings that women matter less than men. Why does our Church so wantonly waste the talents that God bestows on us?” A “new conversation” was needed within the Church on how to value women as Jesus had taught, she said.
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