This morning when going to an interview on the Marquette University campus with a graduate student,I decided to park my car on the street instead of in the parking lot right near where I was going. While I have been ‘unbanned’ by Marquette University to be on campus I was not sure if my known trespasser car had been unbanned.

After the interview, while walking through the parking lot to my car I noticed this sign (on left) on a couple of parking spaces. It read “Parking for Gesu Parish Jesuit Fathers.” I thought to myself if one was not a Catholic they might not know what “Gesu”, “Parish” or “Jesuit” meant. Then the sign would read “Parking for Fathers”. The obvious question would then be “What about the mothers? Where can they park?”

This sign represents the male hierarchy of our Roman Catholic Church. Only men can be ordained priest, pastors, Bishops or Pope. We call God, “Our Father” not our ‘Our Mother and Our Father’. We recognize only twelve apostles, all male, although there are followers of the Way of Jesus, some called apostles, in the early church. A hierarchical top down Church is bad enough but when it is an all male hierarchical Church it can become unbearable.

A woman friend of mine, an ordained Catholic priest, will say Mass this weekend at the SOAWatch to close the School of America’s, an USA military training school for terrorist in Latin America, located at Fort Benning in Columbus GA. The last two male ordained Roman Catholic priests who said Mass with her the last few years, elderly religious priest, have been banned by the Church from saying Mass. The founder of the School of America Watch was excommunicated from the Church and kicked out of his religious order for being present on the altar at her ordination. She and all the many woman Catholic priest in the USA, although ordained by an ordained Bishop have all been excommunicated.

So I ask “What about the Mothers”. Is there room for the mothers and daughters in our Church to preside over our liturgies? Would a woman Archbishop, rather than our present male Archbishop, close her eyes and ears to the poor and marginalized when closing Catholic Churches. Would a woman ignore the teaching of killing without conscience at our largest Catholic University? I doubt it. We need to make spaces for the mothers as well as the fathers.

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