Lisa Miller

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The Vanishing Role of Women in Church Readings

April 28, 2010 By Lisa Miller

Response to my April 12 article “A Woman’s Place Is in the Church” was overwhelming. Maureen Dowd cited it in her New York Times column. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, critiqued it in an op-ed. But one of the questions most often asked in e-mails from readers concerned the last paragraph, which asserted that Bible stories about women have slowly disappeared from the Sunday lectionary. Regular women who go to mass only on Sundays rarely have the opportunity to hear stories of women from the Bible. If they don’t see or hear themselves reflected in church, I argued, they will leave: and they’ll take their children with them.

People wanted to see proof. Which stories have been left out? Over what period of time? A good place to start is this article from a 1996 issue of Liturgy magazine, by Ruth Fox, OSB, which explains how women have been revised out of the readings.

Filed Under: BeliefWatch: Lisa Miller, Newsweek Tagged With: Bible, Bible Stories, Conference of Catholic Bishops, lectionary, Lisa Miller, liturgy, Mary Ann Walsh, Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Ruth Fox, Sister Mary, U.S. Conference of Bishops

Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is a former columnist for the Washington Post, former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife."

About Lisa Miller

Lisa-Miller-Headshot

Lisa Miller is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife."

In 2014, Lisa Miller was nominated for the National Magazine Award and featured in Best Magazine Writing of 2014.

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NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD

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