Recent statements by Pope Francis and top Vatican officials support the need to bring more lay women to top leadership positions at the Roman Curia. However, Voices of Faith is concerned about the apparent difficulties and lack of transparency in regard to how those women are chosen and the process undertaken to appoint them. In an extensively quoted interview with Reuters on June 17th 2018, Pope Francis is reported saying, “I don't have any problem naming a woman as the head of a dicastery." At the same time, he talks about difficulties in finding the right candidates and convincing curial officials to accept women for leadership positions. The Prefect of the Dicastery of Laity, Family and Life, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, stated that the Vatican is "overloaded with clerics" and that "administrative functions within the church can be done by anybody" including laity.

All global indicators point to CHANGE. Science tells us about the Big Bang and the ongoing history of the cosmos. A living faith tells us that God’s creation continues to emerge toward a peace and oneness for which we all yearn. We as people of God can contribute to this emergence by coming to the first-ever Peoples Synod in Dallas, October 12-14, 2018, to experience deep listening - a new method of dialogue that brings people together.

This gathering is not only about what happens at the event, but far more about what the participants take home and do with it afterwards.

“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads ... to those who have quit or are indifferent.” [Pope Francis, September 30, 2013, America Magazine]

“Dare to imagine a Church in which Love surpasses law.”

Attendees will work in dialogue circles of ten or twelve, listening to one another and exploring with one another how law is fundamentally needed to maintain the order that all social systems need but we are looking to introduce love, our guiding principle as Christians, as the arbitrator of lived experience. Some decisions require adherence to law, yet others season the situation with mercy and love. It is our hope that, through these circle conversations, questions and wisdom will bubble up from the grassroots, guide the participants to grow in discernment, and arrive at their own perspective for their personal lives.

All are welcome to this ecumenical gathering. It is an enterprise of pilgrims where people from different faith communities, different beliefs, and different walks of life, by listening to one another, can live out Jesus’ message of love in different ways. It is our hope that, in these chaotic times, this experience will

(1) equip the participants with tools for rekindling and drawing strength from the relationships they have cultivated at the synod; and

(2) give witness to the maturation of faithful people who will be Spirit-led into an understanding of precisely how they can apply what they’ve learned to their own lived experiences and bring this wisdom back into their communal living.

Come and join us!

11 June 2018

Pope Francis has said about gay people "Who am I to judge?" But the Catholic Catechism still refers to the LGBT community as "objectively disordered." Would Jesus use these words? Pope Francis is to visit Ireland 25-26 August 2018 and we are calling on him to change theological church LGBT language. If you agree, we invite you to sign this petition.

CCRI joins with We Are Church Ireland in speaking out against Catholic Church officials' continued insistence on calling the LGBT community’s “inclinations” as “objectively disordered” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358), or even worse, “ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Person, 1986). The Catholic Church’s formal language to describe our LGBT sisters and brothers makes the institutional Church complicit in the marginalization of gay people. Under the guise of religion and faith, the Church models intolerance, breeds prejudices, and attempts to justify discrimination.

We call on the Church to formally change its language about the countless LGBT people whose lives benefit the church and who are impacted by such diminishing language. We invite you to sign this petition now.

Gratefully,

Rene Reid
CCRI director

Today, Thursday 7th June We Are Church Ireland is launching a petition calling on Pope Francis to change Vatican theological language that is gravely insulting to LGBTQI people.

Words like 'objectively disordered ' and ' intrinsically evil' to describe any human being is wrong but for an institution like the Catholic Church to teach that these words are an expression of the mind of God to describe her image in LGBTQI persons is not alone scandalous but blasphemous.

The petition is being launched by Ursula Halligan of WAC Ireland, Senator David Norris and Pádraig Ó Tuama of the Corrymeela Community.

Find the petition on Change.org at:

https://www.change.org/p/info-dublindiocese-ie-pope-francis-change-church-lgbtqi-language?recruiter=16658031&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

'We Are Church Ireland encourages every Catholic who continues to be enraged by this Vatican Un-Christian language to sign the petition demanding the withdrawal of this offensive language to describe our LGBTQI sisters and brothers' stated Brendan Butler.

Brendan Butler, We are Church spokesperson.
Mobile 086 4054984
7 June 2018

To all Catholic Women,

Catholic Women Speak and Voices of Faith have collaborated to write an open letter to Pope Francis appealing for greater participation of and dialogue with women in the worldwide Church. They have asked for our support of this effort to open a meaningful dialogue with women in the church so that women can have a more "decisive" presence in the universal Church. Please read the letter and, if you agree, you are invited to sign the letter and, in turn, circulate it to your networks. ​As you will see, the letter is supportive of Pope Francis and seeks to open up a dialogue. The creators of this website believe it is important to express our concerns about the language used to describe women, and this letter strives to do so gently - not to provoke a confrontation  Here is the link to the website with the letter and the signature form: We are grateful in advance for your support.