• Source: Christine Schenk

Christine Schenk (born 1946) is an American Roman Catholic nun and author. She is the founding director of FutureChurch, an international group of Catholics affiliated with parishes focusing on full lay participation in the life of the Church, from which she stepped down in 2013. Among other books, she is the author of Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity (Fortress 2017), which Brian McDermott, SJ, reviewing for America: The Jesuit Review, described as ample material to "radically transform our understanding of Christian women as authority figures in the early centuries".




Early life, education, and first vocation with Medical Mission Sisters


She was born in Lima, Ohio to Joan Artz Schenk and Paul Anthony Schenk, the oldest of four daughters. Her father, an insurance salesman, received the Purple Heart for his service in World War II, having spent 33 months in the Southwest Pacific. She attended St. John School, run by Dominican sisters, for elementary school through grade 4. Then she went to St. Rose of Lima School, run by the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, for grades 5–7, and 8th grade at St. Charles School. She attended Lima Central Catholic High School, graduating first in her class. In 2007 she was inducted into its Hall of Fame, based on her advocacy for pregnant low-income women and their children.
She went to Washington, DC to attend Georgetown University, a Jesuit campus, on a full scholarship. During her first year, which was the 125th anniversary of the university, she attended a symposium featuring the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng, the German Catholic Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, SJ, and American philosopher and Jesuit John Courtney Murray, SJ, an event that influenced her decision to study theology as well as nursing, and to pursue religious life. She earned a bachelor's of science degree in nursing and graduated magna cum laude. Her graduating class of 1968 included future US president Bill Clinton, whom she knew through committee work; musician Bill Danoff, and others. They were invited to celebrate their 25th reunion at the White House. She served as president of Gamma Pi Epsilon, a national women's honor society for women at Jesuit colleges and universities. She received a Master of Science degree in nursing education from another Jesuit campus, Boston College, in 1971. She joined the Medical Mission Sisters in 1972, taught nursing for one year at Temple University. She then acquired community organizing skills while working for 2.5 years as an interfaith coordinator with the Philadelphia United Farm Workers union during the grape and lettuce boycotts. She then earned a certificate in midwifery and family nursing from the Frontier School of Kentucky (now Frontier Nursing University) in 1976. Eventually she left the Medical Mission Sisters for health reasons. After much discernment she discovered her own call was not to foreign missions. She earned a second master's degree in theology, with distinction, at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in 1993.




Work as a nurse-midwife and second vocation with Sisters of St. Joseph


After two years of clinical training at the Frontier School, she taught for a third year. In 1978 Schenk moved to Cleveland to serve low-income families as a nurse midwife for 16 years. From 1984 to 1993 she worked with the Sanctuary Movement, and also with the Prenatal Investment Program (PNIP), a group trying to expand Medicaid to working-poor mothers and their children. She re-discerned her call to religious life, choosing to work with the poor in the United States rather than going to the foreign missions as she had previously. She entered the Congregation of Saint Joseph, the group she admired the most from having seen them work with the poor and in various social justice arenas. Sr. Schenk professed her final vows in 1993. In 1994, after twenty years as a nurse-midwife, she decided to change direction toward pastoral ministry and church reform.




FutureChurch


Her career-defining establishment of FutureChurch grew out of work at her parish, the Community of St. Malachi. In the summer of 1990, she co-chaired a committee on church reform, and engaged some of the most important issues of the day, including a growing shortage of Catholic priests, and the role of the Eucharist versus Eucharistic celebrations led by others. Instead of merely holding these celebrations, the committee called for the return of priests who left the active ministry to marry, and for the ordination of women. Upon the advice of Schenk's pastor, the Rev. Paul Hritz, Schenk's committee partnered with the nearby Church of the Resurrection under the leadership of its pastor, Fr. Lou Trivison. That group had recently approved a resolution opening ordination to "all those called to it by God and the People of God," which would include married men, and women. The St. Malachi committee adopted it as well. The resolution gained support over the next two years, and soon garnered approval from other Catholic organizations in the Cleveland diocese. In 1990, Catholics from 16 faith communities gathered together to formally establish the FutureChurch coalition, electing both Schenk and Trivison as co-coordinators. FutureChurch incorporated as a not-for-profit in 1994, eventually growing to include 3000 national and international donors and many more parish-centered activists. Both of the parish committees that formed FutureChurch and then the organization itself wrote to National Conference of Catholic Bishops with a letter of concern, asking that the bishops seriously consider these issues, while maintaining what it describes as a "cordial, non-adversarial relationship with diocesan authorities." In conversation with their local bishop, Anthony Pilla, Schenk said they told him "we would always do everything we could to be respectful of his leadership, but that we would be public about our concerns." Schenk's religious congregation agreed to fund her full-time ministry with FutureChurch for a three-year period, after which time the organization became self-sustaining. This did not imply her religious community's endorsement, but rather that they respected her decision as being in line with their overall charism of unity, to "be one with God, among ourselves and with all others." FutureChurch worked with data from Richard Schoenherr and Lawrence A. Young, both sociologists, in their book and later academic article Full Pews and Empty Altars. Under Schenk's leadership, FutureChurch soon partnered with Call To Action (CTA), which was then the largest Catholic reform organization in the United States, with many regional chapters. Using priest-shortage statistics from Schoenherr and Young, Schenk gave presentations to CTA regional chapters in scores of US dioceses. In most instances this was the first time ordinary Catholics realized the extent of this looming problem. The path was not smooth, and there was immediate pushback from some traditionalists. Despite such obstacles, it grew. By October 2013, FutureChurch was a diocesan network consisting of 28 parish councils, 100 parish leaders, and over 3500 global, parish-focused activists. Schenk decided to step down after 23 years of leadership. She was succeeded by Deborah Rose-Milavec.




Crispina and Her Sisters, a subsequent book, and two documentaries


Schenk spent the next four years writing Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity, published by Fortress Press in 2017. Ever since she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph she had wondered about early church women. In an interview with Georgetown University, she told of how the book also developed from her reflections when she saw male classmates being ordained. “. . . It hit me in a way I had never experienced it before – my own marginalization within the Catholic Church and what that can do to the psyche of women who you never see, women in sacred roles." The book took the first-place prize in history from the Catholic Press Association, now the Catholic Media Association. Her second book, To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Sr. Theresa Kane RSM (Orbis Press 2019) took first place in the biography category from both The Association of Catholic Publishers and the Catholic Press Association. Schenk was featured in an award-winning documentary from Rebecca Parrish and Nicole Bernardo-Reese, Radical Grace. She is also featured in the 2017 documentary produced by Viktoria Somogyi and Jeff MacIntyre, Foreclosing on Faith: America’s Church Closing Crisis. It profiles Sr. Kate Kuenstler, PHJC whose advocacy as a canon lawyer changed Vatican policy regarding whether to close vibrant parishes simply to pay off church debts. Schenk is a columnist for National Catholic Reporter, she contributes regularly to other publications, and she is working on a book about the Kuenstler case.




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