Women Shaping the Church at Loyola

I just got back from Loyola University Chicago, where I had the pleasure of being invited by the Sister Ann Ida Gannon Center for Women and Leadership to contribute to a panel of women engaging in what was billed as "A conversation at the intersection of professional life, the practice of faith, and working toward the common good", Women Shaping the Church.  The other panelists were Simone Campbell, SSS, JD, Executive Director of NETWORK, telling the story of how she came to draft the letter in support of the Senate Healthcare bill that was signed by about 60 women's religious orders; Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM, President of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, explaining how her order dealt with the recent Apostolic visitation; and Judge Sheila O'Brien, Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, who recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune that's gotten a lot of attention:  Excommunicate Me, Please.  We were moderated by Lisa Sowle Cahill, who was recently spotlighted in Commonweal.

It was an extraordinarily stimulating, positive, energizing conversation about women's role in the Church.  We all expressed varying degrees of frustration at various aspects of this issue, but the overall tone of the conversation stressed our common love for the Church, and our desire to participate in finding the right space for the application of the particular feminine genius to the issues most dear to each of us. 

I was struck by how significantly Loyola's undergraduate campus is marked by the presence of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The organizer of the event, Janet Sisler, is the relatively-new Director of the Gannon Center for Women in Leadership.  If the charisma, energy, tact and love for the Church that she demonstrated in orchestrating this event are any indication of where Loyola is heading, I expect great things from the next generation of women leaders in the Church coming out of Chicago!