Last year, Emily Borman stumbled upon an anonymous column in
the Sunday bulletin from St. John the Beloved Church in
McLean. The column featured testimonials of women talking
about how they lived and struggled with the church’s teaching
on natural family planning and women’s vocation.
“When do we ever talk about this? When do we share our
frustrations and blessings and support each other through
this journey to Christ?” Borman remembered thinking.
After talking to the three mothers who started the column,
she decided to start a forum for women to talk about their
experiences with faith and sexuality at her own parish, Our
Lady of Hope in Potomac Falls.
Then the idea got bigger and, in March, Borman launched
“Conversation with Women,” a new website for women to submit
stories anonymously about their journey of faith.
The stories in the testimony-based website talk about
sexuality, family planning, faith and a woman’s vocation.
They include a woman and her husband’s road to reverse a
vasectomy, the behind the scenes of a “big Catholic family”
and a single woman’s journey to live her vocation.
Borman hopes future submissions will include stories about
following church teaching about divorce and remarrying,
adoption, chastity and homosexuality, so women can continue
the conversation offline.
“It is hard to talk to your friends about this kind of
stuff,” Borman said. “But people could start the conversation
instead by asking: ‘What do you think of this
(article)?'”
Mary Clare Murray, one of the founders of the original column
and the website’s editor, said this story-sharing tool can be
seen as part of a new evangelization about issues that are
important to women.
The website “is a safe space where women can read about what
other women, who might be like them, have struggled with and
how they found God’s mercy in their life and in their
sexuality,” Murray said.
For Wendy Wagner, a parishioner of St. John the Apostle
Church in Leesburg, submitting her story about her own
experience trying to follow church teaching about not using
artificial contraception and being open to having children
was a way to help other women.
“I feel like there are a lot of women who were probably in
the same boat I was in within their marriages,” Wagner said.
“I did it for them to feel like they were not alone in their
struggles and to hear how other people got through it.”
Wagner said that the website serves as inspiration for women
who want to confront topics that are somewhat taboo in
secular society.
“What society thinks is so old fashioned and so backward and
so enslaving to women is actually just the opposite,” Wagner
said about her decision to not use contraception. “This
website offers kind of a safe space for women to share their
stories and not be attacked for being ‘old fashioned’ or ‘not
with the times.'”
Murray said that a central issue for Catholic women of any
age is sexuality and the importance of chastity as single and
married women.
She added that, although a priest can talk about the
teachings of the church and a doctor can discuss things like
family planning, hearing what other women went through is
very important.
“I like that it is honest,” said Amy McConville of Our Lady
of Good Counsel Church in Vienna. McConville added that the
website fosters a spiritual link with other women.
With the website, women can get a “deeper understanding about
the moral teachings of the church and the blessings that flow
from them,” said Murray, a mother of seven children and
former teacher.
Different women can find support in different stories.
“The stories involve women of such different backgrounds,
cradle Catholics, converts, single and married, older and
younger,” Murray said.
Jennessa Terraccino, who recently moved from Arlington to
Boston and found the website through a friend, said that the
website is useful because of the variety of experiences
shared.
“When you are seeking conversion, either for you or somebody
else, something has to speak to you in particular,”
Terraccino said.
At a time when following the church teaching about sexuality
and marriage is considered countercultural, for example, it
is easy to think one is alone, Terraccino added.
“I have talked to people who tell me that Catholics don’t
really practice their faith. And it’s not always appropriate
to start saying, ‘Yes, I do,'” Borman said. “To have a
website where people are telling you that yes they do
practice their faith,” is a great support.
As more people submit their stories, Murray said, the website
will become an example of “sisterhood in Christ.”
“When you read about the courage that some of these women
have shown in their stories, it affirms you in your own
faith,” Borman said.
Negro can be reached on Twitter @MNegroACH.
Find out more
To read some of the women’s stories, go to conversationwithwomen.org.
