The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas announced her death in this simple, traditional way: “We pray in thanksgiving for the life of Sister Mary Theresa Kane, who died August 22, 2024, in Watchung, New Jersey. A Sister of Mercy for 69 years, she was 87 years old.” Theresa Kane was, in my view, the most consequential, respected, and beloved American Catholic woman of the last half century, without whom enormous changes could not have happened.
Theresa was born Margaret Kane in 1936 into a large family with Irish immigrant parents. She entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1955, studied at Manhattanville College, and went on to a career in Mercy ministries focusing on health care. She was the CEO of a hospital well before she was 30. In the 1970s, she became president of the community as well as President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious which encompasses leaders from congregations that make up about 90% of US nuns. It was in that capacity that she was tapped to welcome Pope John Paul II to the US on behalf of American religious women. His life was never the same.
On November 7, 1979, at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, thousands of nuns gathered for their special time with John Paul II. Some stood silently during his remarks wearing blue armbands to signal their support of women’s ordination. It was all quite genteel, including Theresa’s historic remarks delivered calmly without rancor or regret:
As I share this privileged moment with you, Your Holiness, I urge you to be mindful of the intense suffering and pain which is part of the life of many women in these United States. I call upon you to listen with compassion and to hear the call of women who comprise half of humankind. As women we have heard the powerful messages of our Church addressing the dignity and reverence for all persons. As women we have pondered upon these words. Our contemplation leads us to state that the Church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of our Church.
Loud applause by what the Vatican mistakenly thought were docile nuns greeted Theresa’s mention of women’s pain and the full inclusion of women “in all ministries of our Church.” But Pope John Paul II and his colleagues took her words as a shot across the bow. They reacted as if hers were a cheeky affront to their absolute patriarchal authority to make decisions, preside at the Eucharist, and run the Roman Catholic Church as the dysfunctional boys’ club it was revealed to be in subsequent decades. When asked by Roman authorities to clarify her remarks, to say that she really didn’t mean the O word—ordination—Theresa made clear that indeed she did.
Other affronts followed both to Theresa and to the Mercy community, affronts aimed at American women religious but affecting all women, as the Vatican realized that it was game-over for patriarchy. For example, the Vatican pushed the Mercies aggressively not to permit medically-indicated tubal ligations—which would prevent future pregnancies—in their hospitals. A Mercy sister, Agnes Mary Mansour, was forced to choose between her membership in the community or her job in Michigan social services through which funding for abortions was administered. This happened while Theresa was in Rome, despite the assurance of the papal nuncio to the US, Cardinal Pio Laghi, that no action would be taken in the Mansour case while Theresa was out of the country.
Christine Schenk, CSJ, captures Theresa’s story as part of the larger movements for ecclesial and social change in American Catholicism in her welcome, detailed, and comprehensive book, To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Theresa Kane, RSM. I highly recommend it for the history of Theresa, the Mercy Sisters, and the American Catholic scene of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Disillusioned Catholics are moving on
Theresa Kane was enormously consequential. She spoke truth to power, paid a price for it, and made significant change despite the fact that little is different in the Vatican today. She said the quiet part out loud in 1979; in front of her God and everybody, she said that Catholic women expect to be included fully in the life of the church. Period. Full stop. Drop the mic. Vatican officials couldn’t say they’d never heard it. That so little progress on women has been made in the institutional church 45 years later is entirely on them.
Roman Catholic women are still not ordained, neither to the diaconate nor to the presbyterate. Prohibitions on contraception, abortion, tubal ligations, and the like remain intact. American nuns have experienced an Apostolic Visitation (2008-2014) with the Vatican unsuccessfully nosing around in their business to figure out who’$ who and what’$ what (dollar signs very much intended). The Leadership Conference of Women Religious was subjected to a Doctrinal Assessment (2009-2015) which ended more with a Vatican whimper than a bang. Yet today, the same patriarchal power dynamics still hold sway.
Nonetheless, Theresa’s public utterances, her enduring graciousness, and her continued, decades-long insistence on women’s equality in the face of institutional intransigence have facilitated important changes beyond the institution. Many disillusioned Catholics—disproportionately women—have simply moved on, taking their money and their children with them. Weekly mass attendance among US Catholics is in the neighborhood of 25% (according to Pew and Gallup polls) in contrast to near universal attendance just a generation ago. Catholic parishes are closing by the dozens. Many, if not most, dioceses have lost market share and are saddled with legal bills to settle clergy sexual abuse cases. The church’s future is not bright in an increasingly secular culture. By contrast, women are engaged in myriad forms of ministry, doing the work of justice well beyond church boundaries.
Theresa’s reasonable request, and similar efforts by equally well intentioned leaders have been ignored or actively refuted by Catholic Church officials. Church policy on optional celibacy for clergy, LGBTQ2S+ inclusion, reproductive justice, and other plain readings of the Christian justice imperatives remain unchanged. The result is that the institution’s influence is waning, many leaders’ reputations are in ruins, and Earth is spinning quite efficiently on its axis without them. Thank you, Theresa Kane.
What you see is what you get
It’s hard to overstate the difference and distance between Theresa Kane’s qualifications to lead a congregation, a diocese, even the church at large, and those thin resumes of most priests and bishops. She had long years of administrative experience and a background in finance. She had decades of spiritual formation, community living, theological reflection, and committed work with those who are made poor and consigned to the margins.
Contrast that with a wet-behind-the-ears, Roman-collared seminarian ordained on Saturday and unleashed on a parish on Monday morning. No wonder bankruptcy, poor preaching, inadequate pastoral care, and dwindling congregations are increasingly normative in Catholic churches. No wonder new, community-based models of church and new job descriptions for ministers are replacing the old.
In Mercy circles, “integrity of word and deed” is a high value. Think of that in light of the double crossing by Pio Laghi and the insulting request by the Vatican that Theresa “clarify” (i.e., walk back) her statement on ordination. Not likely, gentlemen, and not done. Theresa Kane modeled what you see is what you get.
Theresa spent her later years in campus ministry and teaching Women’s Studies at Mercy College (now University) where her colleagues valued her being a Mercy presence on the now independent, nonsectarian campus and in the classroom. She believed she was qualified to be a bishop, though perhaps not pope because she wasn’t great at languages (I’m not sure that was the major obstacle!). I suspect that even Vatican officials respected her authenticity and effectiveness. I hope news of her death prompted some to reflect on the missed opportunity to make use of the stunning talents of Theresa Kane and other women in ministry.
Theresa was a role model who valued both insider efforts and outsider achievements. She did what she could as an inside player—the head of a large and influential order that Rome had to take seriously. But what she came to realize was that what she could not get done on the inside required collaboration with groups like Women’s Ordination Conference, Call to Action, Future Church, Dignity USA, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER), and others whose very existence chills the bones of ecclesial patriarchs.
She strategized and collaborated with many groups, always realistic about what was possible. She once said that it was fruitless to look to the institutional church for things it was constitutionally incapable of being, like egalitarian. She gave license to people to ‘be’ church themselves. And many are.
The changes endure
Theresa Kane was beloved. Like all leaders and prophets, she was controversial—perhaps even in her own community, and undoubtedly in the larger world. But she was beloved by so many, especially women, whom she encouraged to claim their truth and act on it. I was a lucky recipient of her abundant support. She loved progressive feminist Catholic women, and showered us with enthusiastic encouragement.
She supported LGBTQ2S+ people before it was safe and popular, indeed when it was quite risky. Scant years after her up-close and personal encounter with John Paul II, she agreed to give the keynote address at the first Conference of Catholic Lesbians held at Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Pennsylvania in November of 1982. It was a bold choice given the hot holy water she was in, but one she embraced with grace and gratitude.
Forty years later, the words of her lecture remain indelibly etched in the minds and hearts of the women gathered. Many were former nuns; all were seeking ways to be both Catholic and lesbian. Despite how she was rejected by the institutional church, she was for us a person who embodied the best of the Catholic tradition: a welcoming and accepting presence at a time when we needed just that.
Dedicated as she was to equality, Theresa realized it would take generations to make change, so we might as well enjoy ourselves along the way. She arrived early and stayed late at parties. She danced. She never stood on ceremony or exploited her position; she was always part of the group. I recall her once ducking out of a conference session a tad early to stake out a table in the hotel bar where she sat into the night with young women encouraging them with her wisdom and care.
Theresa Kane and her generation paved the way for Catholic women’s efforts to be full members of a church that still doesn’t want us. She did so with extraordinary courage and integrity every step of the way.
When popes die, their rings are smashed to thwart imposters and a secret conclave is held where men elect their successors. When Theresa Kane died, people mourned and told vivid stories, rejoicing in the richness of her contributions, her remarkable goodness, and her impact. Her successors of all genders and walks of life are legion, gathering in the wide open, welcoming spaces where her spirit dwells. The changes she made endure.
