Living Vocation Despite the Obstacles: Catholic Women in Leadership

The Synod on Synodality highlighted a paradox: whilst the Church has taken positive steps towards engaging women in positions of responsibility, women across the world have spoken of obstacles to living their calling and participating in Church structures. Using a collaborative roundtable methodology, six authors of this special edition reflect on their experiences of living vocation as a lens through which to explore why progress remains elusive despite apparent advances. The roundtable identifies obstacles operating at multiple, mutually reinforcing levels including masculine and clerical imaginaries of vocation that struggle to conceive of women’s calling beyond religious life and married life; the difficulty in accessing paid formation opportunities; the precarity of lay employment; and the lack of recognition for women’s contributions. The authors argue that overcoming such obstacles requires starting from the equal dignity of baptism for men and women and will involve serious labor to identify and overcome them. Failing to do so does not just risk the vocation of individual women, but, as the Final Document of the Synod Assembly states, “is to the detriment of serving the Church’s shared mission” (no. 60).