Two Women Given Grants by Fund Fighting Sex Discrimination in the Catholic Church, by Bridgette P. LaVictoire, Lez Get Real, December 15, 2010

Two Women Given Grants by Fund Fighting Sex Discrimination in the Catholic Church

By Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Lez Get Real
December 15, 2010

http://lezgetreal.com/2010/12/two-women-given-grants-by-fund-fighting-sex-discrimination-in-the-catholic-church/

Lynette Petruska is a former Roman Catholic nun and current St. Louis attorney, and last year she founded the Emily & Rosemary Fund. The aim of the fund is to support women “who lose employment in the Roman Catholic Church as a result of injustice or discrimination and to help women who are working to bring about justice and equality in the Church.” Petruska has said that she experienced discrimination and injustice because she opposed sexual harassment and sexual misconduct by priests at Gannon University in Erie, PA. She had been appointed there as the first female chaplain in 1999. She then filed suit against the university and the bishop of Erie. She ultimately failed in her suit because of Justice Antonin Scalia, but her fund is helping, and it has given out now the first of its awards.

Last year when she founded the fund, Petruska stated “I was fortunate to have a profession to which I could return, but many women serving the church find themselves and their families at great risk when targeted by discriminatory practices or when they stand up to injustice.”

Two women have now been given the first $10,000 grands by the Voice of the Faithful’s Emily & Rosemary Fund for Women in the Church.

Two women who reported losing their positions because of discrimination have received the first $10,0000grants awarded by the Voice of the Faithful’s Emily & Rosemary Fund for Women in the Church.

In the case of Johnson, whose first name is not given, said that her position as a Fordham University Graduate School of Religion assistant dean was fired after she filed a complaint with the university’s equal employment opportunity office regarding sex discrimination and mistreatment. She will be using the grant to pay legal fees and living expenses while she seeks another position. Her job had been to help run and expand admissions and enrollment.

To the fund, she expressed her gratitude thusly “I am most grateful for the generous financial and moral support that Lynette Petruska and VOTF have extended to me and other women faced with the dilemma of risking their livelihoods by speaking the truth.”

As a pastoral associate in the Roman Catholic diocese of Ft. Worth, TX, DeFilippis served for twenty-five years, but that she dismissed because her degree from a Jesuit university was considered to be too liberal for the Church as it is today. She was dismissed without severance or unemployment compensation, and she plans to use her grant money to further her education to get her Masters degree in social work or her doctorate in pastoral care. She said of the grant “God is a God of liberation and has sent a holy chorus of angels in the form of VOTF to help get my feet on firm ground and move forward in service of the reign of God. My heart is filled with gratitude for the work you do and for this new path of light that you have shown to me.”

Dan Bartley, the president of the fund, said “We’re extremely grateful to Lynette for making it possible to ease somewhat the effects of discrimination that women can experience within a church we are striving to remake more in Christ’s image. Our fear is that such cases are not the exception but the rule. We have much work to do to reform the church’s attitudes toward women.”