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	Clonakilty Woman Organizes Boycott of Sunday Mass. Cork Student News August 11 2010 http://www.corkstudentnews.com/non-front-page-news/clonakilty-woman-organizes-boycott-of-sunday-mass-9016 An 80 year old form Clonakilty is organizing a day long boycott of Sunday mass by “the faithful women of Ireland” in response to the Church’s latest document increasing the penalty for anyone found trying to ordain a woman priest. Jennifer Sleeman from Clonakilty in Cork said she wants “to let the Vatican and the Irish church know that women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens”. She has called on the Catholic women of Ireland to “join your sisters on Sunday, September 26th. The Clonakilty woman instructs her supports to: “boycott Mass. Stay at home and pray for change. We are the majority. We may have been protesting individually but unremarked on, but together we have strength and our absence, the empty pews, will be noticed,” she said. “Whatever change you long for, recognition, ordination, the end of celibacy, which is another means of keeping women out, join with your sisters and let the hierarchy know by your absence that the days of an exclusively male-dominated church are over,” added the pensioner. Her son, Fr Simon, said that he was supportive of her in her action. She also said that her children and grand-children were growing increasingly disillusioned with the Church, and felt that there was an acute need for change. Sleeman is a former Presbyterian who converted to Catholicism 54 years ago, she said: “I am not a cradle Catholic. I chose to join as an adult helped by meeting a wonderful priest . . . but I now wonder did I do the right thing?” She has found that “somehow I have grown up but the church has not”. She said that she felt that the modern day Church was run by “celibate men who seemed divorced from the realities of life”, and questioned whether there was any future with the Church’s current leadership.
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