Let Their Voices Carry: International Women’s Day 2022

Let Their Voices Carry: International Women’s Day 2022

I have been an active feminist organizer and writer in three countries for nearly 60 years. This cause of justice still energizes me. I see it as spiritual-political work to which I am called for my lifetime.

I am thankful that Sophia Godde showed herself to me so early, and that I have had guidance from the best theologians and activists from around the world for many years to sustain me, deepen my convictions and provide me with an international community, even when nearby women, most church authorities and even an occasional family member were not with me.

My left-wing orientation, a fierce opposition to elitism and exclusion, and a commitment to internationalism have formed my beliefs, along with the example of my involved-citizen father, who actually subscribed to Hansard, the daily record of the House of Commons in print edition.

I find nourishment in the New Testament, in prayer and meditation, and in the witness of good people in Canada, Jamaica and Tanzania.

I am a philosophy and English grad from a Catholic Canadian college in Toronto, from the fifties. How, other than through grace, would I have landed there from a remote Northern Ontario town, and been drawn to living in residence with the Sisters of St. Joseph in Toronto? How, other than through grace, would I have recognized a desire to pursue the major questions which my major, philosophy, posed: who am I? where is here? and who are all those other people?

Rosemary with Sister Margo at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women

How, other than by grace, would I have taken myself off to Montreal at age 20 to a conference of Canadian Catholic students held at the Jesuit Loyola College, and there met the splendid young man who three years later would become my husband, friend and father of our four, and then co- worker with me in the vineyards of education and international development for the next 50 years?

With all that grace poured out on me, I was bound to take up a cause large enough, global enough, to be consuming.

When I looked at the great injustices wracking our world, I came to think that at bottom, was the way female members of humanity were regarded almost universally as inferior to male members.

Sadly, this state of affairs, which justified so many attitudes and practices that were damaging and unhealthy for both and all genders, was tolerated and even encouraged by the world’s religions. ”The roots of women’s oppression are in the religions”, I heard stated at the UN Conference on Women in 1995 in China, by Muslim feminist scholar Riffat Hassan.

Catholic Christianity, the largest of the world’s religions, was blessed with powerful feminist scholars, women such as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Rosemary Ruether, Sandra Schneiders, Ivonne Gebara, and Elizabeth Johnson, all, to me, doctors of the church. I studied their work, taught it in Jamaica and in various Canadian settings, and each time the shared experience was liberating for me, my students and our faith.

I had not personally been wounded by patriarchy; my father, brothers, spouse and 3 sons were feminists, but in my various parishes over the years, I met suspicion, exclusion, criticism and diminishment.

In the 2000’s, I co-edited an independent Catholic newspaper in Toronto, Catholic New Times and that was liberating. I examined the sexual teachings of the Church and found them dismally wanting, and so joined Catholics for Choice.

I have moved into ecumenical and secular feminist circles too, and into party politics. Change is made by feminists in all these sites.

In 2018, I was honoured to be asked by Prime Minister Trudeau to sit on an 18 member Gender Equality Advisory Council to the G7, which was meeting in Quebec.

Women have been making progress all over the world: In education, health, politics, media, business, leadership, the arts, and every field. I am very proud of Canada. But progress can be temporary, especially in a right-wing surge of populism. Violence against women and girls continues, as does racism and homophobia.

Rosemary Ruether said two crucial things to me. The first was that the transformation to gender equality is a two-hundred-year project, so don’t flag! The second was that the Church is stubbornly patriarchal, so don’t spend more than 15% of your time and energy on it. Guard your psychic and spiritual resources for potentially fruitful work.

I will participate in the Synod with a kind of hopeless hope, but Sr Becquart, Secretary to the Commission hasn’t responded to my hand written letter from November, and she was heard to say that women in the church must form better priests! Not good enough, Sr Nathalie.

Rather, we will announce goodness to the world, and join with others to expand human flourishing. So we reach International Women’s Day, 2022, recommitted and strengthened by feminist theology, (thealogy), liturgy and sisterhood.

I want to make mention of WATER, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual led by Mary E Hunt and Diann Neu in Washington. Their free programs have literally carried me through the pandemic.

By Rosemary Ganley,  Feb 2022

The Chapel Project

”I have been up to London three times this quarter. I find the people very glad to hear the gospel preached to them. I have in attendance on public preaching about one hundred and twenty-five persons I think…On last Lord’s Day I held an experience meeting. I invited some white friends to meet with us. I must say the meeting was one of deep feeling. There was many tears shed. In the afternoon, I administered the Lord’s Supper. God was with us, his spirit it was felt powerfully in the hearts of those who loved him. We have a tolerable good meeting house to worship almighty God in. It is a hard thing to preach among those who have made their way to Canada from slavery, but it requires much faith and patience. But I do not feel weary in trying to work for God. I love the peace of Christ and I am determined to spend and be spent in the missionary cause.”

These moving words were written on 20 April 1860 by Rev. Lewis C. Chambers to George Whipple, secretary of the American Missionary Association in New York. Chambers was working as a missionary for the AMA in the neighbourhood of Dresden, Canada West, and had just been appointed elder to the British Methodist Episcopal Church on Thames Street in London. He moved his family to that young city in October 1860.

Sketch, John Rutledge

The “tolerable good meeting house” was likely built c.1848 by trustees of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (in Canada, from 1856, the BME Church). Chambers was a diligent and devoted pastor and missionary during his three years in London: when he left for a new posting in St Catharines in June 1863, his congregation was already discussing expanding the small building on Thames Street. Moreover, he had also nurtured new church groups in Ingersoll and St Thomas. In the event, the London trustees bought land on Grey Street and built a larger, brick church, Beth Emanuel, still a place of worship and hospitality today. The small frame chapel near the river was sold and then became a modest family home for approximately 130 years.

Few buildings of that vintage in London have survived the vicissitudes of Canada’s climate, neglectful owners, and rampant urban redevelopment. But the former AME church on Thames Street did survive. When its last owner, planning a business expansion, sought a demolition permit from the City of London in 2013, city officials and politicians, concerned citizens, and heritage activists protested the request and mobilized to save what was generally referred to as the “Fugitive Slave Chapel.”  Mirable dictu, a lot on Grey Street next to and owned by Beth Emanuel Church was offered as a home for the chapel, and it was moved there in November 2014.

For more than eight years those concerned citizens and heritage activists worked with church officials to plan both the restoration of the chapel and an addition to it so that the building could eventually serve both as a learning centre about London’s Black settlement, the history of slavery, and the Underground Railroad, as well as a locus for community engagement. An architect was hired to draw up necessary plans, outreach was made to other southwestern Ontario centres that celebrated Black history, and heritage festivals like Black History Month in London were engaged. The work of restoring the building also began; volunteers worked with staff from Pathways Buildworks to strip off layers on the inside and outside of the chapel added by previous owners. Fundraising got off to a slow start, but hopes were always high that the goal of transforming the humble chapel into a learning centre could be achieved in time.

Aerial photo of Beth Emmanuel and the (daughter) chapel on Grey Street. Photo: Reubin Kuc

But by early 2018 it was clear that this was beyond reach, as Beth Emmanuel gave priority to its admirable community outreach. With the church no longer in a position to host the learning centre project, the British Methodist Episcopal Church offered the chapel to the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, hoping that the outdoor museum could take both ownership of the building and include the story of Black settlement into its already successful program of historical interpretation. The offer was first declined (many factors were at work here) but when made again in May 2021, the building was accepted with gratitude.

Plans are now underway to raise the necessary funds to move the chapel from Grey Street to the Village site, to provide a concrete pad as its new resting place, to restore the interior and exterior as closely as possible to its original design, and to begin plans for its future educational role. Everyone seems energized by this auspicious new partnership: the trustees and employees of the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, members of the Chapel Project who have been labouring for such an outcome for so many years, and Londoners who waited patiently for the learning centre to materialize. Perhaps also, its late pastor, Lewis C. Chambers, watched and prayed for this new home for his former worship place.

It is an unusual human being that does not become attached to familiar places and buildings. We often invest them with deep affection and nostalgia for the times spent and events enjoyed there. They gain in significance when we know those feelings have been and are shared with family members, contemporaries, and ancestors. Those of us who are currently involved in saving and restoring London’s “Fugitive Slave Chapel” feel that accumulated love for this humble building. Whether or not we have ancestors who actually worshipped there, we value what it meant for them and their descendants. Its walls, floors, and wainscotting have known anguish and joy, deep prayers and hymns of praise, struggle and harmony. This building is at the heart of London’s Black history.

Hilary Bates Neary

Hilary Bates Neary is an active historian in London. She was entered in the Mayor's New Year's Honour List in 2015 for Heritage. She also contributed a chapter to Shepherds According to my Heart: a History of St. Peter's Seminary in 2012. Her book, A Black American Missionary in Canada West: the life and letters of Lewis Champion Chambers, will be published by McGill Queen's University Press in its Studies in the History of Religion series in the fall of 2022.

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The Sisters of St. Joseph are honoured to contribute to this local fundraising campaign. Interested in more information? Please visit The Chapel Project.

World Day for Consecrated Life

World Day for Consecrated Life - February 2, 2022

Every Thanksgiving weekend our Congregation gathers to celebrate the lives of women who have lived their commitment to consecrated life for 25, 50, 60, 70, 75 and 80 years. It is a celebration of God’s fidelity and the Sisters’ joy of being called to minister to God’s people. 

Before I entered, I appreciated two songs that seemed to sum up my call: “The Simple Life” by Valdy and “Shower the People” by James Taylor. Even more now, the world celebrates “excess and extravagance.” “Give me the simple life, don’t want to worry about tomorrow,” sings Valdy. When you live simply, you are able to focus on what is truly important. James Taylor reminds us, “Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.” What a blessing it is to be able to pour yourself into your ministry so that those on the margins are seen and cared for.

“When you live simply, you are able to focus on what is truly important. ”

Image: Unsplash|Billy Pasco

You cannot live this life without being in relationship with the Source of all Being. This relationship supplies all the energy, direction, hope, love and grace that is required to be happy. It is not rainbows and balloons every day, but even in difficult times there is peace in the depths. And when one gets off track, there is plenty of mercy and forgiveness. There are many ways to live one’s life, to become a saint: single life, married life, religious life and priestly life, to name some. Each one offers a person a way to be in relationship with God and with the Church and the world. Religious life is a fulfilling adventure if you are called to it. Are you experiencing a desire to live a simple life? A life of joy and grace? A life of faith, hope and love? Consider life as a vowed consecrated person.  There’s no life like it!

-Sister Pat Carter, csj

Living with Christ/Bayard Presse Canada. Used with permission.

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Pat Carter, CSJ is a disciple, a teacher and an advocate for the poor.She has been a Sister of St. Joseph for more than half of her life and loves to use words to inspire faith and laughter.

St. Elsewhere

I have not thought about the TV series, St. Elsewhere, in years. Not until this morning, when my dear friend Jack referred to it in an email, he sent me.  Do you remember watching this American medical drama in the early 80’s?  I watched it in South Africa. The show was about the lives and work of the staff of fictional St. Eligius Hospital, an old and disrespected Boston teaching hospital.  According to Wikipedia, “The hospital’s nickname, “St. Elsewhere”, is a slang term used in the medical field to refer to lesser-equipped hospitals that serve patients turned away by more prestigious institutions.”  

You may be wondering where I am going with all of this.  It all started when my quirky mind jumped into gear while I read this in Jack’s email, “… one must admit, [it is hard] when one wishes for St. Elsewhere, when here is the moment we have.”  Of course, the moment Jack refers to is this pandemic with all its endless challenges and restrictions.  For me, as you already know, the moment is here, nestled in my room during this particular Covid outbreak. As well you can imagine, hunkering down in my hermitage for the fourth time, was not high on my to-do list.  I had other plans.  Still, once again, I had to face, as John Lennon put it, that “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”

At some point during this alone time, I began to wonder what God’s plan might be in all of this untimely stint of isolation.  “I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” we read in the Book of Jeremiah 29:11.  Did these plans have to include yet another stint of being sequestered in my room?  As wonderful as it is to make plans and dream about being elsewhere, we should not be surprised if God brings us somewhere else.  Ah, yes, there is that saying that we should let God be God.  Still, sigh, I would like to have a say about my destination St. Elsewhere! 

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

— Jeremiah 9:11

There are times in our lives when all of us would rather be anywhere else but where we are.  Sure, being in isolation once again is reason enough to wish I were anywhere else but here. Where else would I rather be? Where is that place called Elsewhere? Obviously, this is not about Fernweh or Wanderlust. This is something different.  In my present situation, I am wondering if it is because I am tired of being alone with myself. It is one of life’s ironies that, no matter how much we want to get away and be elsewhere, wherever we go, there we are.

Yes, wherever I am, there I am. But more importantly, God is there too.  One of my favourite scripture quotes, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you” (John 15:4)  invites me to be rooted in God, my home, my dwelling place, the place where I abide.  Home, then, is wherever I am and not elsewhere.  Which begs the question, can I be happy here and now, sheltering in place during this “winter of [my] discontent?” In my warm home St. Here, instead of wishing I were elsewhere, can I be fully present here and now?  Yes, I can. With the grace of God, here and now, though I am weak, I am strong.  So here I am, with myself, in isolation, choosing to be content and at peace with my situation in St. Here, not hankering for that place called St. Elsewhere.

During these frosty winter months, the sun rarely shines into my room, except briefly around noon.  What gift, to feel the sun’s warmth on my face here and now. Warmed like this, I count my many blessings and refrain from stressing over things I cannot change. Instead, I will shine some warmth by calling a friend and sending emails to those I know feel isolated and lonely. Perhaps you, who read this are one of them.  Be blessed, my friend.

Sister Magdalena Vogt, cps

It All Started With A Dream

There is evidence from many sources about the importance and significance of dreams. In 1999 two Pembroke associates, Susan and Richard Schmaltz, retired educators, had an experience that changed their lives and ultimately the lives of many when Susan had a dream that they were to go to Guatemala. She didn’t know why, but as the dreams persisted Susan was certain that they must go. With the support and encouragement of Richard, the Pembroke Sisters, associates and many other people they were able to follow the compelling message of Susan’s dream. This inspiring story has been written and published by Susan in her book, “Beyond Belief.”

The Schmaltzes began their work in Guatemala with Richard leading teams to build houses and Susan developing preschools and training teachers. In the evenings they would make lunches which they handed to the homeless as they walked the streets. They partnered with Safe Passage, an organization working with the poor at the Guatemala City dump, where Susan established a daycare program. Eventually they developed a non-governmental organization called Oneness Through Service, which was changed in 2017 to Planting Seeds International.

The educational programs based on the Planting Seeds Methodology created by Susan grew beyond Guatemala City dump. Teams of volunteers from the Ottawa Valley, among them many associates, Marjorie FitzPatrick, a Sister of St. Joseph, family and friends from other parts of Canada and the United States joined the Schmaltzes. They helped establish schools by building furniture for 23 classrooms, painting, creating learning activities, setting up a Teacher Training Centre, and one group undertook the planning, engineering, and funding for digging a well and bringing water to the mountain village of Sacala, where one of the preschool programs had been established.

Planting Seeds Methodology, an alternative approach to the rote learning used in Guatemala schools, is a child-centered, hands-on, activity-based learning philosophy and methodology that encourages the students to be creative, to become critical thinkers and decision makers. Respect and love for self and care about others is its essence, recognizing everyone’s value and goodness. In 2014 following several years of continued success the methodology was accredited by the Guatemala Department of Education to teach children from preschool to grade six.

That same year Richard and Susan made the decision to retire to Canada. After a time of discernment and searching, the Schmaltzes passed the torch on to two young volunteers who had worked with them since 2006. Shannon Moyle from Ottawa and Maclane Phillips from Chicago became co-executive directors of Planting Seeds International.

Pictured from left, Mac and Shannon in Guatemala

On December 12, 2021, a 20-year anniversary event was held in the Conference Room of The Best Western in Pembroke where supporters, Sisters and associates gathered to hear Shannon Moyle share experiences that happened over the course of the year, telling of successes and future plans.

20th Anniversary event in Pembroke, ON

Through a PowerPoint presentation she highlighted school and community activities and initiatives depicting children, teachers, youth and parents in the various programs operated by Planting Seeds International. Shannon’s love and passion for what she does shone through in her words:

“Every time I see the Ottawa Valley crew I get re-energized. I think what we have to be really, really grateful for is the fact that we’re all here together, 20 years later. It really warms my heart. We can’t all change the world, but we can be that person for somebody else, where they know they can count on you. They know they can come to you and trust you to be that one person. What else can we ask for.” (Pembroke Observer)

It is a daunting task to attempt to tell this story because there is so much more to it than recorded here. I hope their dream has inspired you.

-Grace McGuire, Associate

For more information and inquiries re: Beyond Belief please visit: www.plantingseedsinternational.org