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‍Is heaven full of only skinny, pretty saints? Between the spiritual fitness trend and the images of people in the stained glass windows of our churches, we might think so. Social media can lead us to believe that being a Catholic woman means winning some popularity contest, where the attractive women with a Bible-based workout routine and perfect diet are the model examples. What was Mother Teresa’s dress size when she founded the Missionaries of Charity? Did Joan of Arc have a thigh gap when she led France to victory? You don’t know? Me, neither – and that’s because it doesn’t matter.

Learning Body Acceptance from the Saints

The saints include women from every race, background, size, and shape. St. Teresa of Avila and Servant of God Catherine Doherty are just two examples of holy, beautiful women who refused to conform to the beauty standards of their time.

Most historic saints are depicted today as thin, with clear complexions and no wrinkles. We gave them “filters” on holy cards long before it was a thing on Instagram. We aren’t expected to be perfect – in body or mind – in order to be Catholic women. We should strive to be perfect in love of God and other people. Thankfully, we can do that in any dress size.

Even Pope St. John Paul II called out the fact that women have been valued for their beauty more than their work:

"Sadly, very little of women's achievements in history can be registered by the science of history. But even though time may have buried the documentary evidence of those achievements, their beneficent influence can be felt as a force which has shaped the lives of successive generations, right up to our own. To this great, immense feminine "tradition" humanity owes a debt which can never be repaid. Yet how many women have been and continue to be valued more for their physical appearance than for their skill, their professionalism, their intellectual abilities, their deep sensitivity; in a word, the very dignity of their being!”

Remembering That Our Bodies are Good

Your body shape and size aren’t reflections of your ability to live as an authentically Catholic woman. When you were baptized, your body became a temple of the Holy Spirit. Congratulations! Caring for your body is a response to the reality that it was made in the image of God. And so, we shouldn’t take care of our bodies in order to make them worthy; we should care for them because they are already good.

Much of society – and even Christians at-large – reinforce the message that women must earn worth by looking a certain way or doing specific things. The beauty of our Catholic Faith is that we can rest in knowing that our bodies are good, just as God made them.

St. Catherine of Siena said, “What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all of those things, and he might weep when they are gone.”

No one remembers the great saints for how much they weighed or whether they were attractive by one society’s standards. They loved well; they lived their mission well. This is what we celebrate about every female saint from Mary Magdalene to Teresa of Calcutta. We must care for our bodies in order to have the capacity to live well, but that doesn’t mean that we need to conform to specific beauty standards – not at all. Our unique gifts are a reflection of a specific aspect of God, and the mosaic of saints is more beautiful because of its endless variety.

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis writes about the “throwaway culture” in which we live. This culture starts with the material things that we throw into a trash can on a daily basis, but also permeates the attitude that we have toward individuals who we place at the margins of society once they’re no longer convenient to have around. In an effort to stop participating in this culture, I’ve tried to gradually reduce the amount of waste I produce. But there’s one area of life where I haven’t been able to motivate myself to make the switch to something eco-friendly and sustainable: period products.

Making the Switch to Sustainable Period Products

Women use up to 15,000 pads or tampons in their lifetime, the vast majority of which end up in landfills. The average pad or tampon contains several different types of plastic, including plastic applicators, thin layers of plastic in absorbent pieces, and plastic wrappers.

I remember hearing women talk about their Diva cups and thinking something along the lines of, “Wow, that’s something I should really do, but… ew.” This feeling of dirtiness and shame associated with menstrual blood is part of the reason why women switched to the more-easily disposable products in the first place: they’re easier to hide than fabric that needs to be washed. Companies launched marketing campaigns that boasted these products for modern and efficient women, thus clinching a reliable source of monthly revenue for the roughly 40 years that each woman menstruates.

With my period being a normal part of my life as a woman, I’ve grown more convicted about trying to embrace and celebrate it. Switching to sustainable period products would help me with both my goal of producing less waste, and my goal of feeling more empowered in my body.

This Earth Day, I’m resolving to find a more sustainable period care solution. I wasn’t sure where to start among the plethora of options that are now on the market, so I did a little research and some crowd-sourcing from the FemCatholic community on Instagram to compare my options.

Here are the sustainable period products I found and what women had to say about them. Whichever product you choose, remember that you can now use your HSA/FSA accounts to pay for them.

Menstrual Cups

These are silicone cups that are inserted into the vagina to collect menstrual blood. They can be worn for up to 12 hours and reused each month. Here’s what our FemCatholic community had to say about them:

“I love my Diva Cup. I am so bummed I didn’t try it sooner. I have a really heavy flow and it’s perfect.”

Diva has been around for 18 years and is probably the most well-known brand of menstrual cups. Diva is a certified B-corp and partners with organizations that work “at the intersections of climate crises, lack of accessibility to safe and sustainable products, and the destigmatization of a life-giving bodily process.” Once you’re done using your cup, you can recycle it so even that doesn’t have to be thrown away.

“Love love love my Lena Cup! Shorter periods, no chemicals in my body, and I can go 6+ hours on a medium/light day without changing it!”

In addition to their large or small sizes, Lena offers a “sensitive cup” with slightly softer silicone for people with increased sensitivity or menstrual cramping. They’ve also donated their products to several different organizations in local communities to improve access to menstrual care.

“Love the MeLuna cup. Different options for your comfort, more tailored compared to others.”

The MeLuna cup has the most customizable design, with the ability to choose how squishy it is, how short it is (depending on the height of your cervix), what sort of handle it has for removal, and how large it is. They donate cups to Cloth Connection Outreach, which provides free, reusable menstrual kits to women in need.

“Saalt menstrual cup! Fewer chemicals than tampons/pads and much more sustainable.”

Another certified B-corp, Saalt has a whole line of sustainable period products, including the cup, the disc, and underwear. The cups are similar to others on this list, but the reusable disc is positioned behind the pubic bone, making it “ideal for those with bladder sensitivities, a weak pelvic floor or a low or high cervix.” It also has a finger notch for easy removal.

“Garnuu is a new brand that celebrates women, is pro-life, and fights human trafficking.”

This company works with women in Nepal who are vulnerable to sex trafficking. Specifically, they work with the bottom of the Nepali caste system called the Badi, who are referred to as the “untouchables” and raised to believe they’re unclean. Garnuu partners with the organization Venture to teach women about their bodies, teach them how to use reusable menstrual kits, and provide them with trauma training to help them overcome gender-based violence. Garnuu sells both menstrual cups and organic tampons.

Period Underwear

Period underwear can replace pads or be used as a backup for days when you really need protection from leaks. Here are the two options our readers recommended:

“LOVE Knix period underwear. After 3 kids, it’s the best option for my body: no leaks or discomfort.”

Knix offers a variety of styles and absorbency levels. It has three different layers that fight odor and keep moisture away from your skin and your clothes.

“Thinx! Long-lasting, secure, comfortable and cute.”

Thinx has an even larger variety of styles, from thong to “super hiphugger.” The company also donates its products to people in need and engages in advocacy. Through its Thinx2020 campaign, it called on every 2020 presidential candidate and member of Congress to prioritize menstrual equity and to end period poverty.

Reusable Pads

These are worn like disposable pads, except they don’t have the chemicals and additives that can sometimes interfere with how our body works and cause irritation. Here's one suggestion if you want to make the switch:

“Hannahpads. They are organic cotton & white, meaning I can see the color of my flow & assess.”

Hannahpads may be white on top, but they have cute designs on the bottom. They come in sets with various sizes for different points of the menstrual cycle.

Chemical-Free Disposable Period Products

Because none of us are perfect and – let’s be honest – sometimes we need the convenience of disposable products. Without the harsh chemicals found in some of the mainstream period products, these brands have a more friendly impact on the earth and on our bodies. They all use organic cotton. Plus, each of the brands that our community recommended has a mission that focuses on social impact:

“L. organic tampons! They leave out all the chemicals that are in normal brands of tampons. I didn’t realize how harsh the regular brands were until I used L for awhile. Now whenever I use regular brand tampons, the chemicals from them actually make my V hurt so bad.”

L. has a one-for-one model where, every time you buy an L. product, one is donated to someone around the world who needs it. Plus, you can buy their products at Target.

“Honeypot because they hold well and the lavender mint is refreshing.”

Honeypot makes both herbal and non-herbal pads, as well as organic cotton tampons.They set aside 2% of their online sales toward social impact, and each purchase helps with a different project.

“Cora! Cleaner ingredients. Gives back. Less comfortable but so worth it.”

Cora makes applicator-free tampons to cut back on the amount of plastic used with tampon insertion. They also make tampons with traditional applicators, along with discs, cups, and underwear. Cora provides menstrual resources and education in the U.S. and abroad, with 81% of their domestic donations going to organizations that support BIPOC communities.

And in case you want a few other options, we also recommend Seventh Generation, Veeda, Lola, and Organyc products.

Happy (sustainable) shopping!

I began my internship with Catholic Climate Covenant in October 2021 without having read Laudato si’, or even knowing what phrases like “climate justice” meant – and to be honest, I never really expected I would. After six months and one perfect cup of coffee, though, I’m starting to understand.

One day at work, my co-worker offered me some coffee – and it was absolutely delicious. It had hints of cinnamon and chocolate, and I knew she’d made it with patience and love on the stove. I closed my eyes and imagined all the people connected with this cup of coffee. First, my co-worker and her sincerity. I thought about how she was always taking care of me. Then, the workers who cultivated the beans came to mind. I thought of my daily labor and theirs, of how we were workers together, connected by something that came from the earth. I offered a prayer of gratitude and took the last sip, leaving my cup empty and my heart full.

What is Climate Justice?

Early in my internship, I questioned the phrase “climate justice.” I didn’t see how it included people. My supervisor, Anna Robertson, the Covenant’s Director of Youth and Young Adult Mobilization, explained that climate justice affects people because people are part of Creation.

I had not questioned the idea that somehow human beings were placed above the rest of Creation. In Laudato Si’ (which I eventually read), Pope Francis speaks about ecological conversion, saying that it “entails a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion.” This is the reality that phrases like “climate justice” or “care for creation” communicate: They call us to be mindful of everything God created, which includes both humanity and the Earth itself.

How Does Climate Justice Affect People?

The phrases “ecospirituality” and “integral ecology” also piqued my interest. I worked with Anna on creating an “Ecospirituality Nights” series, which was born out of my own thirst to learn more. We invited three speakers: Christina Leaño, Associate Director of Laudato Si’ Movement; Joan Brown, OSF, Executive Director of New Mexico and El Paso Region Interfaith Power and Light; and Sharon Lavigne, 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize winner and founder of Rise St. James. I had never heard of these women before, but they will always be with me now.

Leaño spoke about mindfulness. Pausing with my cup of coffee was a moment of mindfulness as I thought about my connection to others. Brown taught me that integral ecology is about answering a call to love the world, which I did in offering a prayer of gratitude for my fellow workers. As I write this I have not yet heard Lavigne speak, but the focus of her keynote is action and advocacy, bringing to the forefront the knowledge that not all coffee workers are laboring happily to produce my beverages. Because of climate change, some of their lives and livelihoods are at risk.

‍As a Catholic, I know that people come first, which means that when I work for climate justice, I am putting people first. If God’s creation is in danger, then people are in danger, especially those who have fewer resources and opportunities, and therefore less protection. It’s not my cup of coffee or the beans I’m worried about – it’s the people behind them. Who is going to stand with them if those of us who have the resources and opportunities do not? Working for climate justice might feel overwhelming, but we are not alone. We have God, we have each other, and we still have this beautiful world. All of that is worth fighting for.

Our lives are full of moments that make us wonder, “What if?” What if I went to a different college? What if I became a lawyer instead of a teacher? What if I had caught that subway train instead of the next one? The new show What If…? on Disney+ runs with this idea and explores how the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be changed if major events had happened in a different way – or hadn’t happened at all. This show is one of the first major steps that the MCU takes in exploring the idea of a multiverse: alternate, coexisting timelines in different universes. While watching the series, I was struck by the episodes about the women of Marvel. They show us that, if you get rid of the strong, brave women of the Marvel universe, the stories would be drastically different.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for What If…? episode 4 and the MCU Phases 1-3.

Dr. Palmer as the Voice of Reason for Doctor Strange

Episode 4 of the series literally asks the question, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” In the eponymous debut film, the brilliant and egotistical surgeon suffers a car accident that leaves him unable to perform surgeries, in essence robbing him of his career. It’s because of this accident that he goes on his journey of becoming a powerful sorcerer and protector of the time stone.

In the What If…? episode, the car accident causes Doctor Strange to lose his girlfriend, Dr. Christine Palmer, rather than his ability to do his job. Doctor Strange still becomes a powerful sorcerer, but he uses his power to try to turn back time and get Dr. Palmer back, rather than to help save the universe. In the original film, Dr. Palmer acts as Doctor Strange’s guiding light. She is his voice of reason and the person he goes to when his world is turned upside down. Without her guidance, Doctor Strange is driven mad and, in his desperation to get her back, he ends up becoming a villain who destroys his universe instead of protecting it.

The Women of Marvel’s Universe and Our Own

If Pepper Potts hadn’t been the heart of the Iron Man saga, or if Sersei had been a less compassionate and empathetic Eternal, what would have happened? These women and other female characters continue to impact the trajectory of the MCU in significant ways. And every day, women in our own universe – from those in “starring roles” like CEOs to women you meet in daily life like teachers – effect change that’s equally important.

What If…? demonstrates that a woman’s power – her genius – isn’t what she appears to be, but rather who she is in word and deed. While Marvel has been slow to highlight them, it’s finally starting to demonstrate the impact that female characters have on other (oftentimes male) characters. Through their actions and influence on others, the women of Marvel affect the franchise as a whole.

However, when audiences and critics discuss the women of the Marvel universe, their feminine genius is rarely the main focus. Instead, the buzz is usually about the physical attributes of these women: “She isn’t sexy enough.” “She’s too skinny to be a hero.” “She’s too muscular.” “What is she wearing?” “She’s too demanding. Too emotional. Too weak.”

Caring about female superheroes can feel like a lose/lose situation. The beloved women of the comic series are often belittled, cast aside in favor of male heroes. And when they do appear in mainstream conversation, it’s usually to criticize their physical appearance. Female characters face so much criticism, and yet at the end of the day we still hold them to be heroes in this fictional universe. Even those women who aren’t titular characters play important roles in their stories.

This isn’t unlike our universe. All women play a unique role and our presence is important in ways we might not realize. So, ladies: Whenever life has got you down, remember that even if your genius seems to play a background role right now, your story is still unfolding.

I’m of the belief that Taylor Swift’s repertoire is so deep that there’s a song for every emotion. Through her gifted songwriting, I can belt out songs about heartbreak and revenge with stunning authenticity for a person who’s been in a happy, committed relationship for the past five years. This Lent, I’ve been trying to see Jesus as a person more than as an abstract concept, and I’ve been talking to him more personally in my prayer life. I wondered, if Taylor can transport me so deeply into other people’s stories, could I bring her music into my prayer life?

As I was listening to Reputation, the lyrics of “Call It What You Want” leapt out at me for all the ways they parallel the bible stories we hear throughout Lent and on Good Friday. So I sat down with my bible and my headphones to dive into the connections. What followed was a version of the Ignatian spiritual practice of contemplation (imaginative prayer) in which we put ourselves inside the stories we read in Scripture, imagining the sights, sounds, and feelings that Jesus and his followers experienced in those moments. Here are some of the insights I gained through the practice:

“My castle crumbled overnight
I brought a knife to a gunfight
They took the crown, but it's alright”

Jesus went from being hailed as a king when he arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to being condemned to death just days later. The word “crumbled” also reminded me of Jesus’ prophecy, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).

“All the liars are calling me one”

The chief priests and elders who felt threatened by Jesus got together to think of ways to get rid of him. They accused him of treachery – that is, deception (Matthew 26:3-4).

“Nobody's heard from me for months”

Nobody heard from Jesus for months (40 days, to be exact) as he went into the desert to fast and be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11).

“I'm doing better than I ever was, 'cause
My baby's fit like a daydream
Walking with his head down
I'm the one he's walking to
So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to”

Obviously the parallels aren’t perfect here because this is a pop song about romantic love, which is different from the kind of love between the God the Father and Jesus, His Son. God himself is a perfect and eternal exchange of love between God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son are always oriented toward each other, drawn together by the Holy Spirit. Jesus can trust that his Father is always present.

“My baby's fly like a jet stream
High above the whole scene
Loves me like I'm brand new
So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to”

Again, ignoring the romantic language of “my baby,” I also thought of this stanza in terms of the love between Jesus and the Father. In the story of the Transfiguration, God the Father is literally “high above the whole scene,” with a booming voice coming down from the clouds to express his love for his Son: “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him’” (Matthew 17:5).

“All my flowers grew back as thorns
Windows boarded up after the storm
He built a fire just to keep me warm”

After he is betrayed and condemned to death, Jesus is mocked mercilessly: “Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” (Matthew 27:29)

“All the drama queens taking swings”

Countless people taking swings at Jesus: Judas, in his betrayal; the Pharisees and others who testified against him; the crowd who insisted that they’d rather have a murderer, Barabbas, living among them than let Jesus walk free. 

“All the jokers dressin' up as kings
They fade to nothing when I look at him”

When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Satan pretended to be a king and offered Jesus the keys to the kingdom. However, Jesus saw right through this facade, realizing Satan is nothing but a joker. Jesus refused to worship him, clapping back, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve’” (Matthew 4:8-10).

“And I know I make the same mistakes every time
Bridges burn, I never learn, at least I did one thing right
I did one thing right
I'm laughing with my lover, making forts under covers
Trust him like a brother, yeah, you know I did one thing right
Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night”

Since Jesus is perfect, he doesn’t make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he can’t identify with this stanza’s juxtaposition of pain and gratitude. In the Agony in the Garden, the night before he is given up to death, Jesus exclaimed to his Father, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). He doesn’t want to undergo what is to come, but he ultimately trusts in his Father.

“I recall late November, holdin' my breath
Slowly I said, ‘You don't need to save me
But would you run away with me?’”

During his crucifixion, onlookers taunted Jesus and dared him to ask his Father to save him. They said things like, “[S]ave yourself, if you are the Son of God, [and] come down from the cross!” and, “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him” (Matthew 27:40-43). But Jesus doesn’t call out to his Father to save him. Instead, he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He doesn’t ask to be spared, but he does reach out to his Father.

As I imagined Jesus experiencing real human emotions, he seemed more real to me. Through listening to this song, I walked through his temptations, his desolation, and his ultimate trust in his Father. Ultimately, Taylor’s song is a happy one, where trust in a strong relationship prevails – but the song is still layered and complex, as most emotions are. I found this practice to be spiritually enriching, and I’d encourage you to try it with some music that speaks to you.

Have you heard of Melissa Lucio? She is an inmate in Texas currently sentenced on death row. But possibly one of the most incredible parts of her story is how the Catholic bishops in Texas are working to save her life. Here's what you need to know (and how you can help).

On March 22, 2022, the 21 Catholic bishops in Texas wrote to Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and Governor Greg Abbott calling for a stay of execution and clemency for Melissa Lucio who is sentenced to be executed on April 27.

The bishops wrote that they’re appealing for Ms. Lucio “not solely because of the Church’s opposition to the death penalty and the inherent dignity of every human life, but also due to the mitigating circumstances surrounding her case.” Melissa Lucio, mother of 14 and grandmother, has maintained her innocence over the death of her daughter, Mariah, for the last 14 years. She has found support not only from the Texas bishops, but also from the Innocence Project and John Oliver.

Who is Melissa Lucio?

Melissa Lucio is a Catholic, Mexican-American mother. She is also a survivor who endured lifelong, repeated sexual assault and domestic violence beginning at age 6, while also fighting the cycle of poverty. In an attempt to escape her situation, she married an alcoholic abuser at 16. She and her husband had five children before he left her to fend for herself and their children. Ms. Lucio found herself with another abusive partner and another nine children, including Mariah. Before her incarceration, Melissa was not only fighting to survive her home life but also life in poverty with 14 children, experiencing intermittent homelessness and foster care. Despite struggling to provide for her family, she was described as a loving and caring mother.

On February 15, 2007, Ms. Lucio’s two-year-old daughter Mariah fell down a flight of stairs while the family was moving. While Mariah did not appear injured after the fall, two days later she was unresponsive after a nap. Mariah was taken to the hospital, where she was declared dead and detectives were called in to interrogate Ms. Lucio.

Ms. Lucio, who was pregnant with twins at the time, was rushed into an interrogation room while still processing the loss of her daughter. Detectives berated and intimidated her, using coercive tactics known to lead to false confessions. This interrogation went on until 3:00 AM, when Melissa gave in, saying, “I guess I did it,” in an attempt to end the interrogation.

The district attorney’s office sought a murder conviction and the death penalty as a result, even though the child’s father was charged with endangering a child and only sentenced to four years in prison. Rather than spending her time grieving this tragic accident and loss, she has spent the last 14 years incarcerated and faces execution in April.

Ms. Lucio’s legal team has filed a petition to the governor and Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, asking them to grant clemency citing “coercive tactics used against Ms. Lucio, the misleading evidence presented at her trial, and declarations from five jurors who served at her trial stating they have grave concerns about evidence that was withheld and would support relief in her case” as reasons for a stay of execution to allow time for further review of her case. The Innocence Project provides an overview of the specifics of the systemic failure and injustices that occurred during her trial.

Women Face Unique Injustices in the Justice System

Women face unique challenges and injustices when it comes to facing the justice system. Melissa Lucio’s case is no different. Her case was impacted and driven by these factors that resulted in her wrongful conviction and imprisonment, shedding light on systemic issues.

Melissa’s experience is based on two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions of women: false admissions made during police interrogation and faulty forensic evidence. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, “Approximately 40% of exonerated women were wrongly convicted of harming children or other loved ones in their care and nearly 70% were wrongfully convicted of crimes that never took place at all – events that were accidents, death by suicide, and fabricated.”

Ms. Lucio’s coerced confession should not be surprising. She was not only berated and intimidated for hours in a state of grief, but is herself an abuse survivor who struggled with PTSD, addiction, and poverty by the time she was 35. Women who are survivors of sexual abuse and violence are more vulnerable to falsely confessing under coercive conditions. Expert witnesses were ready to speak to how her previous trauma informed her false confession, but they were excluded from evidence and not allowed to present at the trial. The National Registry of Exoneration records that of the 67 women exonerated after a murder conviction, 17 of them involved false confessions and 20 involved child victims.

Women, especially mothers, accused of harming a child also tend to be perceived more negatively than men, and even demonized in the media. Nearly one in three female exonerees were wrongly convicted of harming a child. The sentencing of Melissa Lucio in comparison to her partner, Mariah’s father, demonstrates this perception and its influence on the process of trial, conviction, and sentencing.

Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty

In 2018, Pope Francis solidified the Church’s development on teaching concerning the death penalty that began with Pope St. John Paul II. The pope approved a new draft of section 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty. The teaching states that while historically the death penalty has been considered an “appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes,” today “there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” and therefore “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.’”

Regarding this revision, Pope Francis wrote to the bishops that the death penalty entails “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” and is often a result of the “defective selectivity of the criminal justice system” and “the possibility of judicial error.”

Cases like Melissa Lucio’s reaffirm the reality of the errors made by the criminal justice system and the irreparable consequence that state executions bring to not only the incarcerated, but also to their families. The Texas bishops heed this call to fight for human life through their advocacy for Melissa Lucio.

How Can You Help Melissa Lucio?

The Texas bishops state in their letter that “[j]ustice was not served by Ms. Lucio’s conviction and will not be served by her execution, considering her history as a victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence, her troubling interrogation by law enforcement, and the unanswered questions regarding the manner of her daughter Mariah’s death” and so they call for the governor “to commute her death sentence and conduct a meaningful review of her case to enable this family to continue the hard work of restorative justice and healing.”

Interested in adding your voice to that of the Texas bishops, the Innocence Project, and others fighting for Melissa’s life?

• Visit www.savemelissa.org and sign the petition for a stay of execution in her case. 
• Follow the Innocence Project’s guidelines for campaigning on social media.
• If you live in Texas, you can call D.A. Saenz to urge him to withdraw the execution date (956-300-3881) and Governor Abbot to request a stay of execution (956-446-2866).

Over the past 25 years, life coaching has exploded into a $3 billion industry and many have at least heard of coaching, even if they don’t have personal experience with it. Life coaching, which has its roots in psychology, is a powerful process through which we can address our identity and purpose. However, there’s still some confusion about the differences between life coaching and therapy.

What is life coaching?

In a broad sense, life coaching is a partnership or collaborative relationship between the coach and the client. Coaching comes from a different perspective than other professional relationships, such as therapy or mentoring, do. In the therapeutic relationship, the person receiving therapy is seen as a patient and sometimes given a diagnosis that requires treatment. In a mentorship, the mentor provides guidance and often directives to the mentee.

However, in the traditional coaching-client relationship, the coach sees the client through a more empowered lens and believes that the client has the answers within. From this perspective, both the coach and the client are on an even playing field. The coach sees the client as the expert on herself while the coach is the expert on the process that allows the client to uncover the wisdom that she already has inside. The coach takes on the role of facilitator and can help their client gain a fresh, informed perspective on problems.

In short, life coaching helps people to identify the obstacles that keep getting in their way, to find motivation, and to zero in on any resistance to change. Unlike a therapist, a life coach does not provide a clinical diagnosis and he or she focuses on what is to come instead of looking at the past.

Do I need a life coach?

Typically someone comes to life coaching with a specific problem or issue that they need support with. Most people seek out a coach when they feel unable to get past a certain point in their life. Someone might seek out a life coach for guidance in navigating a significant life change, such as taking on a new career.  Life coaches might provide general coaching or specialize in an area such as career, finances, business, weight loss, and dating. The coaching process is future-focused and goal-oriented. Through asking important questions, the coach can help a client to clarify her goals, become aware of potential blindspots, discover internally-resourced strategies and solutions, and provide accountability. Coaching is a way to help you move past anything that might be keeping you stuck in your career or other areas of life.

What should I look for in a life coach?

When working with a life coach, you’re trusting an individual to guide some of your important life decisions.

God can work with and through anyone. However, with so many options for life coaching these days, it’s easier than ever to find a coach who shares your beliefs and values. A coach who understands your motivations will help you achieve your goals in a manner that honors your values. 

A coach who shares these values will not only nurture your mental and emotional needs, but your spiritual needs as well. For example, in my coaching practice, I pray for my clients and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance before a session or consultation. Aligning our goal-setting with our faith can move us closer to identifying our purpose.

By Emily Martin and Abigail Jorgensen

Nonprofit organizations – such as Catholic dioceses – struggle with high turnover rates. When workers leave frequently, businesses may suffer as it becomes challenging to transmit social norms and knowledge about the organization. Furthermore, nonprofits may have difficulty recruiting new, talented workers if the job comes with long hours, uncompetitive pay, and subpar benefits. And yet, a nonprofit’s success relies on its ability to maintain a staff that is incentivized to stay with the organization.

Women make up 73% of the nonprofit workforce, compared to 48% of the business workforce. Because of this, nonprofits suffer even more than for-profit businesses when women look for more flexible work or leave the workforce altogether because of caregiving obligations and unsupportive business practices. Nonprofits – Catholic and otherwise – would benefit from instituting paid maternity leave that allows them to not only hire and retain talented workers, but also to uphold a company culture in line with their values.

To illustrate the advantages of paid maternity leave for both organizations and workers, we would like to introduce you to Columba, a 25-year-old woman who is recently married and plans to have kids as soon as financially feasible. Her husband has been working full time, but his income and Columba’s part-time job at her parish have not been making their monthly budget meeting easy. Columba’s current job does not make her eligible for maternity leave benefits, so she is considering a full-time job.

Who can afford to take maternity leave?

There are several ways that policies prevent women from taking or having the option to take maternity leave. We call these “drop points”: moments in the process of seeking maternity leave when taking leave becomes infeasible – or impossible. There are three major drop points for women in the United States.

The first drop point is that many places of employment simply do not offer maternity leave. Only 55% of firms in a recent survey offered new child leave for women – and 16% were required to do so by law.

Human resource representatives reported that the most common reason their organizations did not offer paid leave was cost. One could imagine that nonprofits, which often operate on minimal budgets, would be especially hesitant to offer maternity leave. However, the opposite is true. One study of 200 organizations in the U.S. found that while 42% of government contractors and 45% of commercial businesses offered paid parental leave, 48% of nonprofits did the same.

Unfortunately, this proportion does not hold for Catholic churches and dioceses. In the United States, only 31 of the 176 dioceses currently provide fully paid maternity leave – that is 18%. While women who work for nonprofits might be more likely to have paid maternity leave, if women work for the Catholic Church, that is not the case.

The second drop point for maternity leave is that not all working women are eligible for leave, despite what their official company policies claim. In 2019, human resource managers reported that on average only 68% of employees at their firm were eligible to claim maternity leave. This can occur for any number of reasons, but one common reason is that many women who (like Columba) work part-time do not qualify for maternity leave benefits. Because the majority of part-time workers are women, this poses an additional challenge for those who need maternity leave.

The third drop point is the financial infeasibility of unpaid maternity leave. For many families, unpaid leave is scarcely better than no leave, or finances make them equivalent. When a family is offered only unpaid leave, mothers have to return to work to pay the bills: “As many as 23% of employed mothers return to work within ten days of giving birth, because of their inability to pay living expenses without income.” And 66% of families with two parents and one or more children have both parents working, either both full-time or one full-time and one part-time.

Maternity leave is not equally available to all groups of people. Rather than having a preferential option for the poor in these policies, we mostly see accommodations for the rich. 28% of the highest-paid quartile of workers in the United States are eligible for maternity leave, while only 8% of the lowest-paid quartile of workers are. This inequality is also present with unpaid maternity leave, which is offered to 95% of the highest-paid workers and 82% of the lowest-paid workers.

In seeking maternity leave, impoverished and disadvantaged groups are more impacted. When California enacted a program that made formerly unpaid maternity leave paid at 55% or higher replacement wage for the first six weeks, the average amount of maternity leave taken went from 3 weeks to 6 weeks. But the amount of maternity leave taken for disadvantaged groups jumped even more: one additional week for mothers without a college education, and six additional weeks for Black mothers. These results demonstrate the reality that unpaid leave is functionally similar to no leave at all, especially for those who cannot afford to take unpaid options.

In addition to the benefits of paid maternity leave for women and families, there are several benefits for businesses.

Paid Maternity Leave Helps Organizations Attract High Quality Talent

Columba starts looking for a full-time job and finds a few, including one in her diocese that she is excited about. She starts researching what it is like to work for her diocese. She posts on her local Catholic women’s group page and chats with a few other women who work there. She learns that this position is available because the person who had just filled the role left when she became pregnant. Columba realizes that the diocese offers only unpaid maternity leave, so she begins considering other jobs that would provide paid leave.

Benefit packages are an important part of deciding which job provides the best options for the employee and his or her family. In particular, people often choose to apply for a non-profit over a government job to obtain more family-friendly policies and flexibility, and this is particularly true of women. Companies attract the talented workers they need with benefits such as paid maternity leave. In fact, 28% of HR representatives said this was a reason why paid leave was offered at their organization.

Paid Maternity Leave Improves Employee Retention

Retention is an acute problem for nonprofits, especially for employees under 30 years old; 46% of nonprofits listed this as the most challenging age group to retain. 30% of nonprofits reported that their company struggled to retain women, compared to only 14% who reported that they struggled to retain men. This group of employees that is the hardest to retain – young women – is also the group most likely to require or desire some form of maternity leave.

The fact that unpaid leave does not address the needs of most families introduces another problem: If women cannot afford to return to work, the company or organization will not be able to retain their employees. The financial benefits to organizations of providing maternity leave are numerous, but they center on the retention of excellent employees who are knowledgeable about the organization.

Retaining workers through benefits such as maternity leave may sound expensive, but the cost of losing talented workers who understand the company is staggering, estimated to be between 70% and 200% of an employee’s annual salary. And companies do in fact retain talented workers with paid maternity leave: 41% of HR representatives said that retaining talented workers was a reason why paid leave was offered at their organization. Does the option of paid leave actually help women return? Most certainly. 98% of women taking paid new child leave return to work. Paid maternity leave allows women to remain in the workforce and is associated with higher wages later in women’s careers. Some studies have found that while substantial maternity leave does not disincentivize returning to the workforce, too little maternity leave does.

Organizations Can Uphold Their Values by Offering Paid Maternity Leave

At 49% of organizations, the number one reason HR representatives cited for offering paid leave at their company was because it upholds their values. Similarly, 22% of HR representatives said that their company offers paid leave to improve the organization’s reputation. In other words, a willingness to offer paid maternity leave reflects positively on the business as a whole because it suggests a workplace that embraces women workers, family-friendly policies, and equitable working conditions.

Columba considers her values of love for the Catholic Church and of a potential future child, and applies to the diocesan job, as well as a job at a local company (which offers great benefits, including paid maternity leave). She receives offers from both. She and her husband run hypothetical budgets, trying to determine whether taking a position at the diocese would result in them needing to continue avoiding pregnancy while they build up enough savings to justify her taking a few months off to be with the baby. It would be so meaningful for her to work for the Catholic Church, but it would also be meaningful to know that she had organizational support if she becomes a mother. For many women in Columba’s place, the choice of whether to work for the Catholic Church is not an easy one, but paid maternity leave benefits could make it possible for women like her to work there – and continue their employment after starting a family.

Catholic Organizations Have an Opportunity to Live Out Their Values

If Catholic organizations want to attract talented workers, retain women employees, provide financial support for families, and uphold their pro-family values, they should institute paid maternity leave for their employees. Paid maternity leave benefits both families and companies financially. As such, Catholic organizations also stand to gain by implementing these policies.

In allowing more disadvantaged women to support their families and stay in the workforce, paid maternity leave is consistent with Catholic social teaching’s preferential option for the poor. Dioceses therefore have an opportunity to live out their values by providing paid maternity leave. If we, as Catholics, truly believe in a preferential option for the poor, we must consider that those who struggle to make enough income need paid leave even more than women from financially stable backgrounds. It is also important that we expand the eligibility for maternity leave benefits, including by providing options to part-time employees. With many families unable to survive on a single income, Catholic organizations have an opportunity to help their employees support their families with paid work after childbirth as part of the Church’s teachings on the dignity of marriage and the family.

After years of people asking, FemCatholic launched a podcast mini-series to go behind the scenes on an important issue - maternity leave!

Get to know Samantha and Danielle as we explore the findings of FemCatholic's report and:

Why don't more Catholic dioceses offer paid leave?

What does Catholic teaching say about maternity leave and working moms?

Why do women - or all parents - need time off after having a baby?

Does paid leave help or hurt organizations?

--

Listen now on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts and Stitcher.

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By Isabella Volmert, Kelly Sankowski and Renée Roden

When Christine John started researching her maternity leave options while working for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2017, she learned she would have to take short-term disability leave at 60% of her hourly pay. 

At the time, she was working part-time as the music director for Hispanic Liturgy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on the weekends, on top of her full-time job as assistant to Bishop Mario Dorsonville. Even though she and her husband were both employed and living in the more-affordable Washington D.C. suburbs, she knew they could not make ends meet with the pay cut. 

“Sixty percent pay was not enough to survive with a newborn,” she explained, “With the diapers and rent and food, it doesn’t cover everything.”

Ms. John, who was 27 at the time, recalled colleagues quitting after having children because they lacked financial support. She decided to advocate for a paid maternity leave policy at the archdiocese. 

After fruitless communication with the human resources department, Ms. John and her coworker wrote a letter to the Executive Secretary of the Curia in the archdiocese, asking for a maternity leave policy that was more “pro-life” and “pro-family.” He pushed the policy through. Today, the Archdiocese of Washington offers eight weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave – one of the most generous diocesan policies in the country. 

National State of Paid Maternity Leave

However, dioceses like the Archdiocese of Washington are the exception, not the rule.

FemCatholic reached out to the 176 dioceses across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to confirm their family leave policies. Through telephone interviews with current and former diocesan employees, FemCatholic ascertained that 31 dioceses offer fully paid maternity leave policies, 32 provide some percentage of employee salaries through either short-term disability or state paid leave laws, and 44 do not offer any paid leave. 

This data includes the 58 policies we were able to confirm with diocesan representatives, as well as information collected from employee handbooks and diocesan websites. 98 dioceses did not respond by press time, and 20 dioceses declined to provide answers or confirmation. The policies represented apply specifically to the central offices of the diocese – which often excludes parishes, schools or charitable agencies.

The length of the fully paid leave in U.S. Catholic dioceses ranges from five days to 12 weeks, with only four dioceses offering 12 weeks of fully paid leave. These diocesan policies broadly reflect overall national trends. Only 23% of Americans have access to paid parental leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The United States is the sole member country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that does not offer working women at least 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. Germany, one of Europe’s most populous countries, offers 12 weeks of paid leave. Canada offers mothers one year of leave, 39 weeks paid. The United Kingdom offers 52 weeks and provides mothers with state-funded childcare from the age of three until the child begins school. 

“We honestly held off on having another child until we came back to the UK,” said Sophie Caldecott, a writer from London who worked for two years at a Catholic women’s magazine in the United States. Her job as an editor provided financially for her family while her husband was on the academic job market. 

“I remember reading in my contract I had three months unpaid maternity leave – that was supposed to be a good thing,” said Ms. Caldecott. “But it’s still not feasible to have a child in that situation unless you have very good savings or a spouse or partner who’s working.”

Since the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, most workers in the United States are guaranteed the right to return to their jobs from a 12-week leave in order to care for a family member and bond with a new baby or an adopted child. In order to qualify for FMLA, the employee must have worked for their employer for at least a year for a minimum of 1,250 hours, and at a location of at least 50 employees. 

For many diocesan employees protected under FMLA, accrued paid time off can be used over their 12-week leave. However, women who are early in their careers or entering the workforce during the same years as starting a family often have not accrued enough paid time off to cover six weeks of maternity leave, much less twelve. Additionally, saving paid time off for post-birth maternity leave can shortchange mothers of sick leave they may need during their pregnancies.

At least 20 U.S. dioceses offer short-term disability insurance, a common system for covering maternity leaves. Short-term disability insurance, however, does not help families living paycheck to paycheck, as more than 60% of American families are. Any period of unpaid leave presents a problem to these families, even if both spouses work. 

As of 2015, nearly half of both parents in two-parent households are working full-time. Rather than being the “second income,” 70% of American mothers are, at some point in their child’s life, the sole or primary breadwinners, according to the Council on Contemporary Families. Younger women are continuing the trend of working more. Five years ago, nearly 80% of millennial women reported working full-time.

Over the past 30 years, as more women have joined the workforce, the Church has begun to employ more laypeople, with the number of lay ecclesial ministers working in parishes nearly doubling from 21,569 in 1990 to almost 40,000 in 2015. 

The increase of lay involvement in the Church is no accident. Official Catholic teaching encourages lay ministry in the church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) dedicated a 2005 document, “Co-Workers in the Vineyard” to the “co-responsibility” of the laity. Lay Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI said, must be“truly recognized as ‘co-responsible’ for the Church’s being and action.” Personnel policies are often used to foster lay leadership, particularly the leadership of women. 

“The church deserves to have women in leadership,” said Kerry Robinson, a partner at Leadership Roundtable, an organization that promotes best management practices in the Catholic Church. “We have to have policies that incentivize and enable women to excel in their work.”

Given the United States’ position as the only member state of the United Nations without national paid leave, the Catholic Church in the United States has the opportunity to be “a prophetic voice,” one former diocesan employee from the Mid-Atlantic Region, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

“To be able to say, ‘We are going to advocate for this; we are going to model it. This is a good place to work,’” the employee said. “‘We will show you that a holistic life of work and family and prayer can go together, and that is what makes up a Catholic life.’”

Why US Dioceses Lack Paid Leave

Dioceses lack paid leave for a variety of reasons: there’s no legal requirement, they have a small staff or they believe staff can cover maternity through accrued time off and disability insurance. The largest percent of dioceses surveyed by FemCatholic do not offer paid leave, but offer the amount of unpaid leave required by state or federal family leave laws. 

“If it were the law to offer paid leave, we would offer that,” said Maya Alamillo, speaking for the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon. 

The Diocese of Grand Island, in central Nebraska, doesn’t provide paid leave due to demographics. Their chancery office has 18 staff members. Though 14 are women, none of them are of child-bearing age, according to Chancellor Kathy Hahn. 

The Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, allows its employees to accrue up to 16 weeks of paid sick time at a rate of 143 hours per year. These sick days, along with accrued vacation time, can be cashed in while on FMLA leave, a common practice among dioceses without paid family leave.

If a woman in the Diocese of Harrisburg runs out of paid time off during the six to eight week recovery period after giving birth, she is able to receive short-term disability at 60% of her pay. Given the general rule of a six-week recovery period for vaginal delivery and eight weeks after for a cesarean section, most short-term disability benefits are only available through the eight weeks after birth, although complications from birth such as postpartum bleeding and urinary incontinence can last longer.

After a group of Harrisburg employees asked for more time off, the diocese created a parental leave policy, which allows all employees of the diocese to apply for an additional 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave after FMLA. Some employers within the diocese offer yet another 12 weeks on top of that for a total of 36 weeks of unpaid leave. Upon returning to work, employees who take the full 36 weeks of leave are not guaranteed the same job but are guaranteed a job with equivalent pay, benefits, and seniority.

The Diocese of Harrisburg’s Human Resources Director Janet Jackson said the use of sick time, vacation and short-term disability to provide pay during their period of leave seems to satisfy staff, and they have “never had a group of female staff lobbying us” for a separate paid maternity leave policy.

“They use what is available to the best of their advantage and have never asked for more,” Ms. Jackson said.

The Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, which serves around 110,000 Catholics and employs around 1,300 people in its parishes, schools, chancery and social services, does not offer paid parental leave. Director of Communication and Public Relations Donald Carson said implementing a paid leave policy would be an issue of funding. 

“You do have to make sure that you can account for how that’s going to be paid for,” he said. “Personally, I think it’s definitely something that we can take a look at. But I can’t say that that right now is on the table for the diocese.”

Several diocesan employees told FemCatholic that paid parental leave policies for their diocesan offices don’t cost anything above already-budgeted employee salaries.

“It really doesn’t cost anything,” said Lisa Kutas, the Human Resources Director in the Diocese of Lansing. “The vast majority of our folks are salaried, so there’s maybe a couple of weeks where they’re not going to be productive, they’re going to take that time off anyway.”

Diocese Who Offer Paid Leave

The Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, which offers 12 weeks of paid leave to all eligible employees, including schools, parishes and diocesan agencies, does so in part “to remain one step ahead of our state schools which is our main competitor when trying to hire teachers,” said Maureen House, the Human Resources Manager for the diocese.

It costs the Diocese of Raleigh an average of $433,663 in gross wages per year to provide paid parental leave to its employees. Prior to the implementation of the diocese’s paid employee and family medical leave program, employees were required to use paid time off while on FMLA, so in many cases, the costs are the same. 

“It wasn’t cost-neutral, but we definitely felt that it was worth it – to go back to Catholic Social Teaching – to honor the family, to give people the chance to not have to choose between their livelihood or their family members or their own health,” Ms. House said. In 2021, 20 of their employees took parental leave.

The dioceses who do offer paid leave have a variety of motivations for doing so. Some dioceses are simply following the law. Others are offering paid leave in an effort to put their faith in action. In either employee handbooks or conversations with FemCatholic, more than a dozen dioceses explicitly cited wanting to support families or be open to life as reasons for offering paid leave. 

Based on data from diocesan financial reports, a diocese’s assets do not correlate with the amount of paid leave offered. The four dioceses that offer the longest paid parental leave –  the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Raleigh and the Archdiocese of Omaha –  have very different financial makeups, with 2020 total assets at $3.8 billion, $804 million, $193 million and $71 million, respectively. Chicago has $1,769 in assets per Catholic, while Raleigh has $836, Omaha has $296 and New York has just $287.

Comparisons between dioceses on the lower end of the financial spectrum also illustrate a lack of correlation. The Diocese of Tucson, which offers its employees five days of paid leave, has $39 in assets per Catholic. The Diocese of Yakima, which offers 12-18 weeks of up to 90% of an employee’s pay, has about $48 in assets per Catholic. And the Diocese of Tyler, which does not offer any paid parental leave, has $80 in assets per Catholic. 

What many dioceses with paid leave do have in common, however, is responsiveness to the needs and requests of employees. 

Sarah Comiskey, the Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Louisiana, said when their policy of six weeks of paid leave was being implemented eight years ago, they heard stories from many young families who were struggling to make ends meet without paid leave.

“That was a big driver,” she said. 

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio has an employee committee that solicits feedback from their colleagues on the archdiocese’s policies. Through this process, the archdiocese recently increased their paid maternity and paternity leave from three to four weeks and instituted two weeks of paid leave for parents suffering a pregnancy loss due to miscarriage or stillbirth.

The Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, is currently in the process of reworking its employee handbook. The diocese recently expedited a maternity and paternity leave policy because there were several employees who gave birth. They gave those employees six weeks of paid leave.

“I was so delighted to see these young women have a little bit of time to catch their breath,” said Anne-Marie Welsh, the Director of Communications for the Erie diocese. “I know from experience how valuable that was.”

Ms. Welsh, a mother of three, recalled when she had her children three decades ago, her experience without access to paid leave was “a bit of a nightmare.” She had to use her vacation time to take six weeks off when her children were born. Therefore, she didn’t have a lot of paid time off to spend with her children in their first year of life.

“I didn’t think it was doing myself or my employer any favors that I rushed back,” she said.

But even dioceses that have paid leave policies in place acknowledge there are improvements to be made. 

In the United States, an employer can require spouses who work at the same organization to share their leave time. One diocesan representative described this policy like being “penalized for being married.” While the Archdiocese of Chicago offers its paid parental leave policy to both spouses, seven other dioceses with paid parental leave require their employees if spouses to split the time between them. For dioceses like Austin, which offers 10 days of paid leave, that means the mother in a family would get five days of paid leave and the father would get five days as well. 

Some dioceses have separate family leave policies for the chancery than for other diocesan agencies. Maureen House said, in the Diocese of Raleigh, the decision to implement their policy for all eligible diocesan employees across parishes, schools and agencies was a justice issue. 

“It would be unjust to offer such a benefit to only one small group of people when everyone has families,” she said.

Katie Alexander is a grade school music and art teacher in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which offers 20 days of paid parental leave to diocesan employees, including schools. When she gave birth to her first child in late 2014, she regretted not taking more time off to recover and be with her daughter. When her second child came along three years later, she utilized all 20 days of available paid leave.

Ms. Alexander said while she is a salaried worker, her husband is an hourly paid landscaper. Her family has what she described as an unpredictable income. 

“So to lose the steady income would be detrimental to us,” she said, describing the times before her full-time job when the couple went without heat or hot water. “We wouldn’t have considered having children because we wouldn’t have been able to provide a safe environment for them without that.” 

The Clear Benefits of Paid Family Leave

Olivia Cossell, a former full-time strategic planning associate with the Archdiocese of Chicago, gave birth to her first child in the summer of 2017, one year after the policy had been instated. The Archdiocese of Chicago offers one of the most extensive diocesan parental leave policies in the country, with three months of paid leave provided for both female and male employees for the birth of a new child, adoption, or foster care. Additionally, couples can then take an additional three months of unpaid leave.

Cossell took four months of leave following a c-section delivery.

“Honestly, I needed every day of that,” she said. 

Women need physical recovery time after birth. Yet roughly one in four working mothers return to their jobs within two weeks of giving birth, according to a 2012 report from the Department of Labor. 

At two weeks postpartum, women are likely still bleeding heavily, cramping, and experiencing vaginal or abdominal pain from delivery. On top of that, they are suffering from a chronic lack of sleep from caring for a newborn who does not yet know the difference between day and night. Due to fluctuating hormones, about 80% of new mothers experience sadness known as the “baby blues,” and around 13% experience postpartum depression. 

“I think it’s appalling that we don’t have a mandated paid maternity leave,” said Dr. Les Ruppersberger, OBGYN, former president of the Catholic Medical Association . 

Studies consistently show that paid maternity leave clearly benefits women’s health. Just eight weeks of paid maternity leave has been shown to decrease the symptoms and severity of postpartum depression by 15%. Paid leave also lowers the incidences of rehospitalization after giving birth from complications, according to a study published recently in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. 

The United States currently has the highest rate of maternal mortality among developed nations, and it increased in 2020 – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, Black women are three times more likely than white women to die from a pregnancy-related condition. 

Paid maternity leave is also critical for the health of the newborn and reduces infant mortality by 12%, according to a 2020 study. Babies need time with their mothers, and paying mothers to stay with them bears fruit in a cornucopia of physical and developmental benefits. Studies show overwhelmingly that paid maternity leave increases the frequency of breastfeeding and mothers continue breastfeeding longer. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends one year of breastfeeding to build up a baby’s immune system. The Academy even links breastfeeding to higher intelligence and education levels later in life. And, in 2020, the Academy endorsed a 12 week maternity leave – at a minimum.

Although short-term disability can give a woman who has just given birth time to physically recover, Kerry Robinson, of Leadership Roundtable, said that the best managerial practices meant offering paid family leave.

“It’s about the health of the family,” Ms. Robinson said. “It’s another way the Church can be imaginative and holistic in its commitment to putting people first.”

Not only is paid family leave good for mothers and families, but it’s good for organizations. A key way to attract and retain talented lay employees, experts like Lisa Kutas, Human Resources Director at the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan say, is to offer generous family leave.

“We have so many talented people,” Kutas said. “And because we can’t pay them what we know they’re worth, what we can do is to compensate them in other ways.”

Kutas was among several diocesan representatives who cited the desire to attract and retain young talent as an important reason to implement paid leave policies. 

Women make up 73% of the nonprofit workforce, according to the 2009 White House Project Report. Nearly two million women left the workforce during the pandemic, almost all of them to care for children. But women who have paid leave during their child’s infancy tend to stay in the workforce. Maureen House, the Human Resources Manager for the Diocese of Raleigh, said implementing their paid leave policy has made a big difference in the retention of employees.

“Back before paid family leave, people were feeling rushed to go back to work,” she explained. “Whereas if we are able to offer them as much leave as we can – it has been really great from a retention standpoint.”

But implementing maternity leave alone isn't enough, new parents say. Working families say they need support in the months and years following the birth of a child, including flexible work schedules and childcare options.

After Christine John took her eight weeks of maternity leave from the Archdiocese of Washington, following an unplanned, grueling c-section, she did not feel supported when she returned to work. After having to advocate for her leave, a private and sanitary place to pump breast milk, and a more flexible work environment, she was exhausted. She decided to take a new job that offered three months of paid leave and a room she could pump in that had a couch, a lock, and a fridge for the milk.

“I felt like I had to fight too much for something I should have already been given, especially in the Church,” said Ms. John. “They tell us to get married, have Catholic babies – you literally make a vow that you will accept all the kids that God will give you – and then you get no support from the Church.”

The Church on Maternity Leave 

How does change happen in the Catholic Church? One shepherd relies on his flock to lead the way. 

Co-responsibility, for Bishop William Wack, C.S.C., means relying on others to help bring up new ideas and point out blind spots. He hopes his brother bishops can foster this same openness. 

“Don’t be afraid to listen to those around you,” he said, “Their end goal is to help you be a better, more effective bishop.”

Bishop Wack was appointed Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida, in 2017. But he only learned his diocese didn’t offer paid maternity leave when someone asked him about it a few months ago. 

“It’s something that I’d like to do, even if it’s just a minimum,” Bishop Wack said. “It’s embarrassing that we don’t have anything. If we say we’re pro-family and pro-life, then we really have to do that.” 

Having a baby is expensive, with the average hospital bill for a delivery without complications in the United States being $10,808 before insurance. Then, once the baby arrives, there is the cost of food, diapers, and childcare among other expenses.

During the 2019-2020 financial year, the USCCB reported spending $2 million on pro-life activities. This report does not include the spending of individual dioceses. The USCCB hasn’t taken a stance on paid maternity leave legislation. Paid family leave falls under the Domestic Justice Committee’s purview rather than the Pro-Life Committee. 

“Yet so many women feel like they can't choose life, especially women doing shift-work or hourly work who aren’t salaried,” one young woman said, speaking on background out of concern for her employment. “As a pro-life woman working for the Church, it’s surprising to me that it’s not more talked about.”

The issue of paid maternity leave is intertwined with inequality. Women who are more likely to have paid maternity leave in the United States are white, upper class, and salaried. Women who are less likely to have access to paid maternity leave are Black, Latina, and lower-wage workers – the same people who are also less likely to have savings to cover a period of unpaid leave.

Recent Church leaders have written frequently on women’s participation in the economy as a moral issue worth prioritizing. In his 2015 address to the Italian National Institute of Social Security, Pope Francis said, “May your priorities include special attention to women’s employment, as well as to maternity assistance which must always defend new life and those who serve it daily. Defend women, women’s employment.” 

The Vatican State itself offers new mothers six months of paid leave after a child is born at 50% pay and now offers three days of paternity leave.

Kerry Robinson, of Leadership Roundtable, said, “Who else should be the gold standard of generous parental leave policies than the Catholic Church?”

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Additional research by Abigail Jorgensen, Emily Martin, and Sophie-Anne Sachs.

FemCatholic launched a campaign in response to this report. Learn more and sign the Letter to Bishops here.

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You’ve probably heard of Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa. You might even be familiar with Clare of Assisi, if only because of her friend, Francis. And every Catholic knows about Mary, Jesus’ mother. But there are two curious things about this list of famous Catholic women: Only one was alive as recently as the 20th century, and none were American. However, there’s no shortage of noteworthy American Catholic women. Despite the fact that the lives of these women can provide key insights into what it means to be female, American, and Catholic, most of them have gone unremembered.

Why Notable American Catholic Women Have Gone Unremembered

Part of the reason for this lack of recognition – at least, according to Notre Dame professor Kathleen Cummings – is that religious institutions haven’t been constructed with the intention of remembering these women.

Cummings, whose research focuses on the overlap of where “women’s history and religious history” overlap, and with whom I was able to speak, noted that “we have no mechanism for remembering” the Catholic sisters who provided much for both Church and nation between the early 19th century and late 1960s. These women, whose individual names and identities have largely been lost to history, provided “education … health care, and social services'' for poor and marginalized Americans, essentially constructing a social safety net before there was any conception that government should do the same. These acts of social and economic service were by no means dramatic or flashy, but they impacted the fabric of American society.

Despite the “vast numbers” of women offering invaluable services through participation in religious life, only a few have achieved Church-wide recognition; this recognition came via canonization, the process of being named a saint in the Catholic Church. Like their unremembered sisters, these women impacted their nation in service of those who were, themselves, easily forgotten.

Who Were These Memorable American Catholic Women?

Saint Katharine Drexel, for instance, founded a religious order now called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891 with the intention of serving African Americans and Native Americans. Though applying the terms feminist or anti-racist to Drexel’s beliefs would be anachronistic, Cummings said that she was “quite pioneering in terms of thinking about race in America.” Drexel was convinced that African American women could have vocations within the Church, and she spent her family’s sizable fortune building schools for African Americans and Native Americans across the country.

Cummings also mentioned Saints Frances Xavier Cabrini and Elizabeth Ann Seton. A trailblazer in Catholic education, Seton is credited with founding the American parochial school system in the early 19th century as a way of caring for and teaching the children of the poor. Cabrini’s service also catered to children within vulnerable populations. Less than 100 years after Seton established what would become the parochial school system, Mother Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an institution that supported Italian immigrants through the establishment of schools and orphanages for their children.

Though she was careful not to label them as feminists, Cummings asserted that these foundresses — and the women who joined their organizations — did “prefigure feminism in creating female-only spaces and challenging the status quo.” After all, religious life offered women a “means to education, to meaningful work, [and] to a sense of purpose” that was hardly available in the secular world before the 1960s. During a time when married women couldn’t own property, some religious women were effectively “functioning as CEOs,” influencing American society through their presence in places that wouldn’t have been readily available to them outside their role in the Church.

The Constraints on Catholic Women

Due to the constraints imposed by society, most of the influential American Catholic women throughout history have been members of religious orders. However, religious women still faced misogyny within the institutional Church at the same time that both religious and lay Catholic women experienced the effects of anti-Catholicism.

Female leaders of religious orders often had their authority thwarted by their male counterparts. According to Cummings, “women could not represent themselves in causes for canonization before the Holy See” until 1983. Outside of the Church, Catholic women such as Katherine Conway became anti-suffragists in the early 20th century not because they were uninterested in politics, but because they recognized the anti-Catholic, xenophobic elements of messages for women’s suffrage.

The social contributions of Catholic women have historically been both impeded and shaped by their dual identities as women and Catholics. And these contributions have sometimes been ignored to the point of outright erasure.

Hope for More Opportunities for Catholic Women

Cummings said that the impact of Catholic women — especially lay women, as a result of the secular feminist movement — may continue to grow. She mentioned that Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI official, was hired by the US Catholic Bishops Conference as an advisor following a sex abuse scandal in 2002. Cummings also noted Sister Norma Pimentel, who leads Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, an organization that feeds and shelters immigrant families at the southern border. These two examples show that the contributions of women are now more likely to be recognized by both secular and Church authorities: McChesney was sought out by a council of (male) bishops and Pimentel was named one of TIME magazine’s most influential people.

Even in this age of increased opportunity and recognition, we must not forget the scores of Catholic women whose names we might never know, but whose hands fed and sheltered, whose minds taught, whose hearts loved, and whose very presence disrupted the American status quo.

1) In Letter to Women, Pope St. John Paul II calls for redesigning existing systems to be more humanizing - and says inclusion of women is what will prompt this to happen

I know of course that simply saying thank you is not enough. Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. In every time and place, this conditioning has been an obstacle to the progress of women. Women's dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. Certainly it is no easy task to assign the blame for this, considering the many kinds of cultural conditioning which down the centuries have shaped ways of thinking and acting. And if objective blame, especially in particular historical contexts, has belonged to not just a few members of the Church, for this I am truly sorry. May this regret be transformed, on the part of the whole Church, into a renewed commitment of fidelity to the Gospel vision. When it comes to setting women free from every kind of exploitation and domination, the Gospel contains an ever relevant message which goes back to the attitude of Jesus Christ himself. Transcending the established norms of his own culture, Jesus treated women with openness, respect, acceptance and tenderness. In this way he honoured the dignity which women have always possessed according to God's plan and in his love. As we look to Christ at the end of this Second Millennium, it is natural to ask ourselves: how much of his message has been heard and acted upon?

And what shall we say of the obstacles which in so many parts of the world still keep women from being fully integrated into social, political and economic life? We need only think of how the gift of motherhood is often penalized rather than rewarded, even though humanity owes its very survival to this gift. Certainly, much remains to be done to prevent discrimination against those who have chosen to be wives and mothers. As far as personal rights are concerned, there is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area: equal pay for equal work, protection for working mothers, fairness in career advancements, equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic State.

This is a matter of justice but also of necessity. Women will increasingly play a part in the solution of the serious problems of the future: leisure time, the quality of life, migration, social services, euthanasia, drugs, health care, the ecology, etc. In all these areas a greater presence of women in society will prove most valuable, for it will help to manifest the contradictions present when society is organized solely according to the criteria of efficiency and productivity, and it will force systems to be redesigned in a way which favours the pro- cesses of humanization which mark the "civilization of love". - Pope St. John Paul II, 1995 (Letter to Women)

2) Women carry the burden of pregnancy in a particular way, and men owe her a kind of ‘debt’

It is the woman who "pays" directly for this shared generation, which literally absorbs the energies of her body and soul. It is therefore necessary that the man be fully aware that in their shared parenthood he owes a special debt to the woman. No programme of "equal rights" between women and men is valid unless it takes this fact fully into account. - Pope St. John Paul II, 1995 (Mulieris Dignitatem)

3) Women demanding better is a good thing

"Women are gaining an increasing awareness of their natural dignity…..they are demanding both in domestic and in public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons." - Pope John XXIII, 1963 (Pacem in Terris).

4) Injustice against women affects all of us

"Similarly, inadequate consideration for the condition of women helps to create instability in the fabric of society. I think of the exploitation of women who are treated as objects, and of the many ways that a lack of respect is shown for their dignity; I also think —in a different context—of the mindset persisting in some cultures, where women are still firmly subordinated to the arbitrary decisions of men, with grave consequences for their personal dignity and for the exercise of their fundamental freedoms. There can be no illusion of a secure peace until these forms of discrimination are also overcome, since they injure the personal dignity impressed by the Creator upon every human being." - Pope Benedict XVI, 2007 (World Day of Peace)

5) Social policies should combat unjust discrimination and consider the equal dignity of women and men

On a more concrete level, if social policies – in the areas of education, work, family, access to services and civic participation – must combat all unjust sexual discrimination, they must also listen to the aspirations and identify the needs of all. The defence and promotion of equal dignity and common personal values must be harmonized with attentive recognition of the difference and reciprocity between the sexes where this is relevant to the realization of one's humanity, whether male or female. - Pope Benedict XVI, 2004 (On the Collaboration of Men and Women)

6) We are called to address pro-life issues holistically

A radical solidarity with women requires that the underlying causes which make a child unwanted be addressed.” - Saint Pope John Paul II, Letter to the Fourth World Conference on Women of the United Nations, 1995

7) Women working and being involved in society is good

"The growing presence of women in social, economic and political life at the local, national and international levels is thus a very positive development. Women have a full right to become actively involved in all areas of public life, and this right must be affirmed and guaranteed, also, where necessary, through appropriate legislation” - Pope John Paul II, 1995 (World Day of Peace)

8) Work should respect people’s dignity 

What is meant by the word “decent” in regard to work? It means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labour; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one's roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living. - Pope Benedict XVI, 2009 (Caritas in Veritate)

9) Women are called in a particular way to “reconcile people with life”

 I address to women this urgent appeal: "Reconcile people with life". You are called to bear witness to the meaning of genuine love, of that gift of self” -  Pope Saint John Paul II, 1995 (Evangelium Vitae)

10) The Pope called for a campaign promoting women’s dignity - which is the mission of FemCatholic 

Such respect (for women) must first and foremost be won through an effective and intelligent campaign for the promotion of women, concentrating on all areas of women's life and beginning with a universal recognition of the dignity of women. Our ability to recognize this dignity, in spite of historical conditioning, comes from the use of reason itself, which is able to understand the law of God written in the heart of every human being. - Pope Saint John Paul II, 1995 (Letter to Women)

11) In 2015 Pope Francis clearly called for the Church to support maternity leave 

May your priorities include special attention to women’s employment, as well as to maternity assistance which must always defend new life and those who serve it daily. Defend women, women’s employment! May insurance for old age, for illness, for accidents in the workplace, never be lacking. May the right to retirement never be lacking, and I would like to highlight: right — retirement is a right! — because this is what it’s about. May you be conscious of the inalienable dignity of each worker, in whose service you work. By supporting income during and after the working period, you contribute to the quality of its commitment as an investment for a life worthy of mankind. - Pope Franics, 2015 (Address to the INPS)

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