Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests Connect Mystical Oneness and Prophetic Social Justice Action in Public Witness by Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP

 

From our foundation, ARCWP members have demonstrated the connection between our mystical and prophetic call by our public witness as individuals and as an organization. Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP

"The experience of oneness brings us back into relationship with the allness. The oneness and the allness inter-be (to return to the term from Thich Nhat Hanh). Thus we feel deeply the wounds of a battered world, and the suffering and the needs of the people—including, as Thurman puts it in Jesus and the Disinherited, those “with their backs against the wall”—the disenfranchised, the marginalized and the oppressed. [2] Inaction is not an option. The mystic worldview creates an ethical mandate, and it offers a new way to enter the world of social transformation—from the position of oneness rather than dualism. It shifts the paradigm. . . ."

Action Based on Oneness, Week 21, Center for Action and Contemplation: Richard Rohr's Meditation 

1] Liza J. Rankow, “Mysticism and Social Action: The Ethical Demands of Oneness,” in Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet, ed. Gregory C. Ellison II (Westminster John Knox Press: 2020), 117–118.  [2] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Beacon Press: 1996, 1976), 11. Liza J. Rankow, “Mysticism and Social Action,” 120, 121, 126.

The Constitution of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests states 

"In the tradition of our mystics and prophets, we challenge the dominance of patriarchal systems by promoting practices of equality that lead us to recognize and stand for justice on behalf of all people, locally and globally, and on behalf of the urgent needs of Eco-justice for our planet.

We strive to live as justice makers in right relation to self, to others, and to the earth. Aware of the interconnectedness of all, we believe that action on behalf of justice is constitutive to the Gospels. Because we understand how unjust structures marginalize people on the basis of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and mental and physical challenges, we collaborate to create alternative structures that are inclusive of all and are deeply based in the traditions of social justice within our church.