St. Rafka Maronite Church

St. Rafka Maronite Church in Lakewood, Colorado hosted an ENDOW study group from September 2009 through January 2010. Nine women met every 2 weeks after the Divine Liturgy on Sunday afternoons to share a meal and study Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Women.

This letter, written on the eve of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, was partly written in response to the world reaction to the Church after the UN International Conference on Population and Development held one year earlier in Cairo. At the Cairo conference, a crusade for abortion and eugenic population control programs led by the United States pushed unsuccessfully for abortion on demand as a means of population control, blocking out the discussion of all other population and development issues.

In contrast, the Catholic Church represented by the Vatican defended the dignity of the person and the need for programs to promote development in Third World countries. Afterwards, the press accepted the population control lobby’s depiction of the Vatican at Cairo as anti-woman, anti-sex, and in favor of unrestrained procreation, prompting Pope John Paul II to declare 1995 the “Year of the Woman” and to write “Letter to Women” to all women to better explain the position of the Church to the public.

ENDOW is a Catholic educational program that brings women together to discover their God-given dignity and to understand their role in humanizing and transforming society. ENDOW utilizes small study groups, conferences and retreats to cultivate faith, fellowship and formation.

ENDOW is a growing Ecclesiastical organization, and the majority of the people involved ENDOW are Catholic women in the pews of parishes across the country. Like eparchies, dioceses, or individual parishes, ENDOW is open to all spiritualities recognized by the Catholic Church. This is the distinctive charism of ENDOW: a blend of the many beautiful spiritualities within the Church working together to offer a program of study on Catholic feminism.

ENDOW's leadership and participants include: members of the Third Order Carmelites, members of the Christian Life Movement, Third Order Dominicans, Third Order Franciscans, members of Neocatechumenal Way, cooperators of Opus Dei, members of Regnum Christi, Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan and Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St. Cecilia of Nashville, Tennessee-among others!

The women of St. Rafka Maronite Church started their first ENDOW group. During this session, they are studying "Letter to Women" by Pope John Paul II.

This document was written in preparation for the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China. Letter to Women gives the participants a clear understanding of how the Church interacts with the world. It is addressed to "all of the women of the world" and in it, Pope John Paul II gives thanks to all women, reinforces the special gifts of women, and calls to mind all of the contributions women have made throughout history. He also asks for forgiveness from those who may have been harmed by the church in any way. He concludes with a "call to action" on the part of all women to make the world more human, to reverse the "culture of death" and to create a "culture of life."

Author - Erica Laethem
Erica Laethem is currently pursuing a Licentiate in Bioethics at the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum in Rome. She earned her undergraduate degree in Political Science at the University of Michigan, where her encounter with the writings of early Protestant Reformers and the discovery of the teachings of John Paul II led her back to the Catholic faith.

Erica provided consultation to national delegations on issues pertaining to humans rights and the dignity of women at the United Nation's Beijing + 10 Conference on the Status of Women in March of 2005.

Information was provided by ENDOW.