NUNS in the Catholic Church have been "laughed at, patronised and talked down to", but were now "breaking out of [their] boxes", a meeting of the National Conference of Priests was told yesterday.
Sister Pat Murray, a nun of the Loreto order, said women religious want to be respected by the church. "We want to be paid appropriately for our work. We want to be listened to by our church," she said.
There were many sisters working in the community who were paid nothing. As part of her own work she had more "creative partnerships with politicians, community groups and community workers than within the church".
Sister Murray told the 120 people at the meeting in All Hallows College in Dublin that nuns have moved from the traditional view of the religious as living a depersonalised, desexualised and detached way of life.
"We are no longer docile and passive. Even though we are dying in numbers we are living and vibrant, claiming back our femininity and shaping our lives."
Ms Grainne Hamill, a teacher in Derry, warned that the future of the church lay with young people and they were not going to take up that role unless they felt they had a voice.
Young women in particular felt their only roles in the church were as altar girl, reader, flower arranger or minister of the Eucharist. These roles were important in themselves, but "it is an insult to women's intelligence" if the church thinks they will be satisfied only with them.
Both women were speaking during a session of the conference entitled "Are Women Changing the Church?" They are members of a sub committee on women, which is the first formal recognition by the Conference of Priests of the role of women in the church.
The conference, an association for Catholic clerics, has been holding regional meetings of local church communities since last September to discuss the "serious crisis" in the church, and the fear that it is in "terminal decline".
Yesterday's meeting was a national gathering involving clerical, religious and lay people.
The conference press officer, Father Loman MacAodha, said the discussions were part of the priests facing up to the fact the church needed to conduct an in depth dialogue with itself. The church needed to deal with the "fed upness" people felt about their church, which he said was like a "dysfunctional family" with all the decisions being made by men.
The church had had 1,500 years of hierarchy, and the change to democracy was a cultural change which would take time to bring about. The church also reflected society which he said was "built on maximising the male presence". It was therefore difficult for the "men centred" church to give us power, and to create a leadership which was not "above the people".
As part of the session the participants were divided up into single sex groups, and the men were, asked to "imagine what it is like to be a woman and excluded".
One man said he would be angry at the judgments made for women about sexuality, morality, and family life by people who had no experience. Another pointed out that it was women - who handed on the faith to their children but were excluded from celebration of that faith. One speaker, again male, said theology, the thinking of the church, had been the preserve of males.
Mr Oliver Maloney, who conducted a session on the church ill the community, said talk about holding a synod on the future of the church was very premature. The church must first consult with the people, particularly the marginalised, the poor, the unemployed and those who had no voice or role in the community. To do this, he said, the church had to go out to those people because they were not going to come to the church.
