August 23–30, 2001

media

Men at Work

The Chicago Archdiocese embarked on a media campaign to recruit new priests last summer, hoping to bolster the number of men willing to dedicate their lives to the church. Billboards were put up, plastered with the phrase, "If you are waiting for a sign from God, this is it. Consider the Priesthood."

The unconventional recruitment drive received an unconventional response. A number of local women called the archdiocese saying they felt called to be priests.

Not surprisingly, the church did not take the women up on their offer to serve.

In response, the spurned Chicago women mounted their own billboard. "You’re waiting for a sign from God? This is it! Ordain Women," it read.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia wasn’t about to repeat Chicago’s mistake and open itself up to female inquiries when it launched its own billboard campaign earlier this summer. As part of its nearly $500,000 Priest Call media campaign, the Philly Archdiocese’s billboards use the pitch, "Ordinary men called to do extraordinary work."

The shrewdly written billboards get the word out that the church is looking for new priests, but also makes it clear that women need not apply.

"It can only apply to men," says Catherine Rossi, communications director for the local archdiocese. "We didn’t want to be misleading."

But the billboards haven’t completely thwarted local women’s ordination activists. While the witty call-in tactic won’t fly here in Philly, local women are mounting a counter-billboard. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference (SEPAWOC) will unveil its sign, a copy of the one used in Chicago, on Monday. It will be posted on the corner of 51st Street and City Avenue, near two Catholic educational institutions — St. Joseph’s University and St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. On Wednesday evening, activists will host a procession from the billboard to the seminary.

SEPAWOC presents the ordination of women as not just an idea whose time has come, but as a solution to the priest shortage — a solution much easier and less expensive than archdiocese-funded billboards.

Citing the closure of a number of Philadelphia parishes in the early ’90s, activists claim the priest shortage has already arrived.

"Sadly, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia would rather close churches and deny sacraments than let women be priests," says SEPAWOC member Eileen DiFranco.

Rossi maintains that it was a decline in parishioners in some downtown parishes, coupled with an increasing suburban Catholic population, that forced the closures. Last winter Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua himself commented, "We are not in crisis at this time, but it’s important that we take steps to avoid one."

The cardinal and the church in Rome insist that the decision not to ordain women was made by Jesus, through his decision to choose only men as his apostles. Bevilacqua has said publicly, "Not in a hundred, not in a thousand, not in a million years" will women be priests.

SEPAWOC is on a shorter-term schedule. The group has paid to keep its billboard up for one month and is currently raising funds for a second.

—Daniel Brook