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This is a translation of a report
entitled “Yes, I am a Catholic woman priest!” by Werner Ertel and
Georg Motylewicz in Kirche Intern vol. 9 (1995) no 11, pp. 18-19. It was
the first published account of her ordination to the priesthood.
Translated by Mary Dittrich and
published on www.womenpriests.org with permission of the author and
publisher.
Ludmila
Javorová, 65, Vicar-General of the underground Czech Bishop
Felix Davidek (d.1987) in Brno, declares publicly for
the first time: “Yes, I am a Catholic priest!”
Stara Osada 23, a small flat on the ground floor of a concrete block in the
mellowness of Brno, in the Czech Republic. High pressure over Central Europe
means a warm blue sky over the capital of Moravia on this 13 October 1995.
Ludmila is standing by her gas cooker in the kitchen, stirs the dill sauce,
adds little semolina dumplings to it and garnishes it with a few sprigs of
parsley, ready for the plate. The three of us stand around the table. A
moment’s hush, and she blesses the meal, making the sign of the cross with
her right hand as priests do. The conversation is in Czech, her mother tongue.
Georg, being a Pole and perfectly conversant with
all East European languages, translates the essentials from time to time. He
knows his way very well round the labyrinthine underground Church of Communist
days, is in touch with bishops such as Blaha, Kratky, Zahradnik and repeatedly
amazes Ludmila with details from the history of the persecuted Church. We are
both eager to hear what the retired Vicar-General of Brno’s underground
Bishop Davidek wishes to entrust us with, because this time she has invited us
around to a personal interview, not like the time three years ago when we
turned up at her home with a camera team, for the “Kompass” European
magazine run by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF.
Ludmila serves hot black Nescafé with home made appelstrudel, and we
move over into the living room, directly under a big portrait of Bishop Felix Davidek, who died in 1987. The slightly built,
ascetic-like woman with reddish brown hair lights a candle and puts it on the
little table. Her clear eyes behind glasses are alert, always a bit cautious,
her voice is somewhat restrained, with a warm kindly timber.
Her
ordination
Quietly she says that she has long prayed for this meeting, and that she sees
in it a stroke of Providence, work of the Holy Spirit. She refers to our last
meeting three years ago when, in connection with her activities in the
underground Church, I asked her if she was an ordained priest. “Then as
the camera was running, I evaded the question, because the matter was not meant
for publication. But it kept on worrying me, which is why I invited you here
today.” Ludmila, seated, closes the already not very wide open window till
it is only just ajar, and draws the curtain a bit more.
“It was in 1970 that we summoned a Synod of the underground Church. One of
the subjects was the ordination of women. We all had to promise Felix
faithfully that we would keep absolute silence on the matter, indeed he
demanded that in writing. One group was anxious not to discuss this theme at
all; they more or less split off, and they were excommunicated by Davidek.
Bishop Dubovsky did annul this excommunication, but up to now there has been no
reconciliation with this group.”
“ But in our circle around Bishop Davidek the
question of ordaining women continued to be discussed favourably, so that soon
the first ordinations of women to the priesthood took place, including my own.
One of the principal reasons for this was that in women’s prisons nuns and
other inmates had died without priestly support or the sacraments. But it was
also clear to us that a woman is much better at dealing with women’s
problems than a man is. Just think of the sacrament of
reconciliation.”
Ludmila moves into the present, and tells us that recently Czech television had
shown a discussion between women and the spokesman of the Bishop’s
Conference, Peter Fiala, during its “Arena” programme. A sociologist
reproached Fiala, maintaining that celibate males can know nothing at all about
women’s problems, whereupon he answered that he knew everything, because
women came to confess to him too, telling all. “But it stands to
reason”, commented Ludmila on this, “and the sociologist thought so
too, that a women, badly treated by a man, is not going to confide all her
misery and her problems to a male pastor.”
Her priestly ordination unfortunately met with mistrust on the part of her male
colleagues in office. At Eucharistic celebrations, she says, she only
concelebrated, and she was never the principal celebrant among male priests.
But she is certain that women are suited to the priesthood, since Christ speaks
to humanity through priests, irrespective of whether they are men or women. The
telephone rings outside. Ludmila goes out for a moment.
Priestly vocation
Georg regrets that we are not getting concrete
replies to our interposed questions on how her ordination as a woman priest
took place in practice. Evidently Ludmila wants to keep a secret of the precise
details of time, place, and ordaining bishop. She does not confirm conjectures
that this could have been the Greek Catholic Bishop Krett, a member of the
Basilian order, who ordained a number of women. As she told us later, she
herself set forth the circumstances of her ordination in a letter to Pope John
Paul II, to which she never received a reply.
The talk with Ludmila that afternoon in Brno is not like an interview. She
wants to tell us something, wants to share with us the evidently most important
phase of her life - and she lays down how far she wants to go. During our
conversation it becomes increasingly clear what problems and difficulties
Ludmila as a woman priest has - particularly - nowadays too. In effect she says
she is rather lonely: people come to her, come to a church service and go away
again. She cannot count on solidarity from her male colleagues, or on help from
them. “On the surface they accept it, because they know that I am
ordained, but internally they can’t cope with it. That’s the two
thousand year old tradition of a male church, which can’t be changed
overnight.”
Nevertheless, Ludmila is sure of herself and of her vocation to the priesthood.
The children in her family were numerous, and at the age of fifteen she was
already asking her father if she could become a priest. She felt the first
person to understand her in this was Bishop Felix
Davidek. who “tackled it properly as soon as he was released from his
fifteen year imprisonment.”
And so the 1970 Synod was the firm foundation for ordaining women. The sun is
by now very low in the sky. Ludmila draws the curtain closer. “Formerly we
all had to sit on the floor when we aired the room” said Ludmila,
remembering the era of the catacomb church. “I was always expecting
arrest. The Secret Service knew too, about us women priests.” It is
unlikely that the source of the leaks will be found. There are rumours that
Sokol, now Bishop of Tyrnau, was an informant of the Secret Service. It is a
fact, confirmed by Ludmila, that when investigating the matter of women
priests, Sokol’s first question was about money: “How much did you
earn from Mass offerings?”
More
vocations
Ludmila knows names and addresses of other ordained women who now live in
Slovakia. “I would like to get in touch with them”. One, at any rate,
is working as a nurse in the Brno area. At the forthcoming Synod of the
underground Church, early in November, she hopes to meet some of her women
colleagues-in-office. For her work as Vicar-General and priest in the
underground Church she gets neither thanks nor recognition, nor payment of any
kind. So, in her mid sixties, she has to earn her living teaching in state
schools. “Recently two girls in the school asked me spontaneously if they
could become women priests. Both are from completely atheist families, which
allows me to hope that the ordination of women will still be a subject for the
next generation.” She regards herself as someone who has to offer her life
in this cause: “In battle the first line always falls, so that the second
line can get through.”
It is now late in Stara Osada. We accompany Ludmila to an evening dedication
and opening of a youth centre in an outlying Brno parish, the one where three
years ago she was allowed to celebrate the Liturgy of the Word. Nowadays
Ludmila will no longer be allowed to stand at the altar “in full
canonicals”, at least not at the altar of a parish church in which a man
is the boss. Today she suffers the destiny of the underground Church exactly as
when Communism prevailed: she must hide, must not admit to what she really is,
may not officially exercise her true function. The only difference from past
times, when she had to live in constant fear of arrest by the State Secret
Service, is that the Vatican does not send agents to render her harmless. But
should she receive any recognition in this life, that is more likely to come
from the world of Western feminist theologians than from the Czech Republic, a
country which tends to think it can put aside the confessors of the underground
Church “like rubbish on the roadside” (Bishop Jan Blaha in Kirche
Intern 10/95).
Read also:
Overview
Signs of a
Vocation
A woman's
journey
Steps to
take
Answering
critics
Writing your
story
Six options for Catholic women who feel called to the
priesthood?
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