Jessica Gazzola

 “I always feel better about myself when I think of myself as a human before I think of myself as a woman,” she explains, “because there are expectations attached to being a girl or a woman that, when I remember that I’m just a person, really kind of fall away.”
Tavi Gevinson, founder of Rookie, an online magazine for teenage girls

Eighteen year old, Tavi Gevinson, caught my attention this week.  She was interviewed on The Take Away’s series “Being a Woman Online”.  When the host introduced her by touting her renowned fashion blog she started at age 15, I rolled my eyes.  But Tavi did a glorious thing.  She crushed my stereotypes – of teenagers, of fashion bloggers, of women.  Because when I’m really honest, even I have stereotypes and expectations of girls and women in our culture, and, like Tavi, I’m better off when they fall away to reveal the person underneath.

Okay… this topic is huge!  As a woman, a female priest, and the parent of a young girl there is more swirling in my head than you would care to read in one post.  So here I explore being a woman, being human in the man’s world of the Catholic priesthood… but there will be more to come!

I’m in a privileged position.  I was born female and also identify with that gender.  I’m white, heterosexual, and grew up middle class.  I’m sure all of these qualities I didn’t choose helped me when I chose to defy expectations in one area – the Catholic priesthood.  I was ordained in 2007 and I was the first female priest many in my community had ever experienced.  I would guess that my experiences would parallel those of other women who have made their way into male professions.  There were times when I was hyper aware of my difference.  Some of the difference was positive.  When I was pregnant, for example, I would rest my hands on my belly in prayer and feel hyper-priestly, so full of life!  But when men would attempt to compliment me by saying they were “distracted” when I presided, my priesthood felt diminished.  I could tell when I was the token, held up as a hope for a patriarchal institution struggling to find relevance in this century.

“You have such a feminine presence,” I’ve been told more than once; but womankind I can never claim to represent – at the altar, in this blog, or anywhere else. As much femininity as some people perceive, there’s just as much in me that balks at the expectations of a modest, pretty, soft spoken, constant servant of others.  I’m human first and sometimes my humanity puts on a pretty dress and sometimes it drinks a beer and squishes its toes in the mud.

Now that I’m not serving a parish or putting on the clothes of a priest I have this wonderful opportunity to come to find the truest form of priesthood that has nothing to do with being ordained.  My kids are helpful.  Food gets thrown at my table and confessions are hard to come by (“because he/she always started it!”).  They don’t care that I’m a Catholic priest.  They don’t know that I’m different than anyone else’s mommy.  I have to find my priesthood in my humanity, and being human is hard and it’s different for everyone.  Expressing the utter uniqueness of our humanity… that, I’m coming to learn, serves a world drowning in expectations.