Book Review: "The Wounded Shepherd" By Austen Ivereigh

An insightful and informative look into the man who vowed to create change.

Welcoming yet moving Pope Francis is showing that the process is tedious, slow, but can be accomplished with the right tools in place.

To be brutally honest one of the reasons I wanted to examine this book further in depth was because of the treatment or lack there of in the Catholic Church.

In fact, to be even more specific I was a former minister of hospitality in a Catholic Church run by men. Men were in every aspect of the hierarchy.

So, imagine this young, vibrant, tenacious women stepping up to fulfill the role as not only minister but lead usher among all men.

Miraculously you can say something odd resulted from this desire to serve. After serving in this full capacity for several years I was astonished when the priest came up to me one day and acted like as if he's never seen me before after I served for 2 full years (on and off with medical issues such as pneumonia/bronchitis/flu).

One Sunday I went to perform my usual routine and was bombarded by angry white men from all angles who wished to run me out of the church for simply wishing to take up the collection. A volunteer position I've done every other Sunday for 2 years straight w/o ever a complaint and in fact nothing but complements for finally having a woman serve in such capacity.

I was then shocked when two male ushers (older white men and one with a med condition) grabbed the wicker collection basket out of my hands).

The reasoning was nothing more than they were afraid of change and never did apologize. Consequently, I've never been back to church since this incident and refuse to go back until such an apology and acceptance is provided.

I now will address this book- per page 94/95 in which this author notes: "It wasn't misogyny that kept women out of senior roles at the Vatican but clericalism -"when the {the curiali} see how much better women are at doing things, there's no problem," He said; rather, it was a "problem of power."

Pope Francis has in ways perceived the changes in our society and our times and has acted upon them for the good of all.

"Under Francis, there's a lot more movement, a lot more talk about women."

Far too often women operated out of a role of simply servitude and not true service.
As we now see Francis observed that," to invite a woman to speak about the wounds of the Church is to invite the Church to speak about herself, about the wounds she has."

Even more importantly, " Integrating the woman as a figure of the Church into our thinking."

Which is exactly what the priest noted to me that these men need time to come around to this thinking.

In the meantime, women shouldn't sit on the sideline but are being forced out and silenced and it's wrong.

When this happened to me the older man said to the others-there's more of us than her- meaning I was all alone, as a woman, and these men would ultimately get there way by force and by numbers!

They all went out to pray and worship and it's disgusting that they can sin such as this in the church mind you without even a thoughtful reflection to wrong doing.
It reminds me much of the same with the sexual abuse scandals which in my area has resulted in filing bankruptcy among the diocese.

Similar to the way the Vatican also felt similar financial constraints and had to reconfigure it's financial dealings.

While the Pope doesn't welcome the fancy ways and is very laid back it's also noted he can show his dark side such as the recent incident in which he slapped a woman's hand for reaching out and grabbing him.

While I agree she was also not innocent -what does this show the world in terms of character, responsibility, and accountability.

This is my issue with the Catholic Church and we must stop kicking the can and start addressing these underlying issues.

While I feel this book was well written I believe more can and needs to be done to fix this broken channel of worship.

Women being silenced, children going unheard, adults with wounds is not my idea of healing using payoffs behind closed doors.