All of the various groups surfaced strategies that fall into these four categories:
- Strategies for ensuring the growth and development of women leaders
- Strategies for building the momentum for change within the communities they serve and developing tools for outreach to larger communities
- Strategies for empowering other women to join a new “Discipleship of Equals”
- Strategies for effectively collaborating within the existing structure; but also prophetically challenging the status quo
- Strategies for ensuring the growth and development of women leaders
- Education is essential
- Knowing historical background is essential
- Being theologically well-grounded
- Study of Canon Law is important so that you can navigate the obstacles
- Emphasis on the importance of having reflected on one’s own life story
- Draw on the strengths and wisdom of Mother’s and Grandmother’s stories
- Explore the parallels between their stories and the stories of Biblical women
- Develop strategies for surviving the inevitable bumps and challenges
- Develop a positive attitude and a deep sense of humor
- Being grounded in contemplative prayer
- Openness to the Word
- Living in Hope, even knowing we won’t see Jesus’ vision perfectly implemented
- Education is essential
- Building momentum for change
- Education for the laity within a community is also essential for change
- Increase Adult Education about early Church history and its inclusion of women
- Educate about all the changes ushered in by Vatican II
- Educate boys and girls together about equality and justice within the Church
- Bring different cultural groups together to foster cross-cultural understanding and learning
- Model the importance of reflection on personal stories
- Teach mothers to pass along their stories to their children
- Encourage formation of groups within which women can share their stories, struggles and hopes with one another in solidarity
- Use old and new media tools
- Start a Women and the Word column in the Church bulletin
- Build good computer skills and include social networking sites such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter
- Increase Media activism through letter writing and working to get innovative ministries highlighted in religious news coverage
- Work to get women ministry leaders featured on local access T.V.
- Remember to include men
- Encourage men to become educated re: early Church, Vatican II, etc.
- Model inclusive language
- Help men understand the importance of recognizing and supporting the gifts of women
- Education for the laity within a community is also essential for change
- Strategies for empowering other women to join in a new “Discipleship of equals”
- Emphasize that the shared “priesthood of all the baptized” calls for the community to see its responsibility to use all our gifts
- Know where the talents are and model how to share them
- Engage in the broadest participation possible
- Encourage everyone in the community to validate the contribution of others: empowers from the bottom up
- Model a strong sense of self as women
- How to bring about effective change and change the status quo
- Use homilies or reflections of how Catholic Social Teaching about justice should apply in the Church itself
- Use the role of the Parish Life Directors to encourage parishioners to become comfortable with women leaders
- Seek out other women ministers to form support groups to sustain each other
- Be creative and imaginative about how aspects of decision making, parish leadership and liturgical language can be re-structured without being destructive
- Reclaim an understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ that Includes plural forms of Feminism
- Be willing to be a risk taker and a prophetic voice to name, Critique and challenge existing unjust, hierarchical, structures
- Foster the necessary collaborative skills to sustain change in non-threatening ways
- Communicate in a true dialogue that respects both yourself and others
- Resist seeing and treating others as rivals and downplay the role of ego
- Use non-confrontational strategies, such as asking questions
- Listen to differences