CTU women 'quietly push forth a vision.' - Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, Illinois - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, March 11, 1994 by Tim Unsworth

Moreau worked in church-related programs Bolivia and Haiti before coming to CTU. She wrote to some 20 theologates before enrolling in CTU's World Mission program.

This place will give me more credibility," said Kara McBride, youngest of the students interviewed. McBride, whose mother is a CTU alumna, expects to complete her master of divinity in 1995. She graduated from the College of St. Thomas in Minnesota and spent a year at Chicago's Amate House, a sanctuary for recovering addicts, before coming to CTU.

"I can't picture myself graduating," she said lightly. "But if I do, I'll have some background. I can go toe-to-toe.'

McBride was part of CTU's program in Israel, one dominated by male seminirians. They couldn't use inclusive language if they tried," she said with youthful exaggeration. "So I told them they simply couldn't understand what it's like to be on the outside. At least twelve priests stopped talking to me." On balance, the women of CTU have few complaints about oppression. "I'm respected and challenged," Moreau said. "I'm looked upon as an equal." Any male-female tension seemed to be in line with comparative ages. The younger women sensed more repression and were more outspoken about it, largely because young people are more outspoken. All agreed that the theologate was setting trends in trying to overcome societal and institutional sexism.

The importance of sound academic preparation was not lost on these women. Said Judy Logue, a convert mother of three grown children who now directs the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Wilmette, Ill.: "I've got CTU in my hip pocket. My education there is very important toward my status with clergy. Women have to know that you can't just be good-hearted and expect equal treatment.'

Catholic Theological Union's modest campus is on the outer edge of the University of Chicago, in what was once the old Aragon Hotel, home to polite but poor people. As things turned out, the area stabilized and the CTU neighborhood is more than passable, an important consideration for a school that would attract commuting women.

Barbara Anderson attends CTU part time. She works for the Department of Health and Human Services and is a youth minister at St. Helena's Parish "I want to work in a youth program. I don't care if it's archdiocesan or not," she said. I'm just tired of seeing girls pregnant and boys

Anderson is African American, attending CIU on an Augustus Tolton Memorial Scholarship, funded in memory Chicago's first African-American priest. She serves as a unpaid youth minister - a commonplace for women in parishes that still find ways to pay male bowling coaches.

We put on plays," Anderson said proudly. "We write our own plays. We don't get them from a book. We deal with sex and drugs. We perform at the Baptist church and before the Girl Scout troop. Our youth group is ecumenical. We work on the strains between parent and child and we look at the parents viewpoint.

"You know, the archbishop should be doing more for us. It's very difficult for an African-American to accept a European-American to minister to us."