Catholic Women’s Network

VISION

Catholic Women’s Network (CWN) exists to support Catholic women in Sydney and beyond in living faith-filled lives and making an impact in the wider community. Inspired and shaped by this faith the Network seeks to connect individual women to each other and existing women’s ministries. CWN also seeks to support and enrich Catholic women by creating new opportunities, programs, and initiatives. Through the influence and example of the women connected to the network, CWN will proclaim Christ in all things and bear the Church’s eternal message of Truth.

Catholic Women’s Network is:
• Authentically and obediently Catholic
• Feminine
• Vocations focused (gifts and pathways)
• Accessible/approachable/down to earth

CHARISM

CWN’s mission is to help Catholic women live out St Catherine of Siena’s call to “be who God created you to be and you will set the world on fire”. Drawing from the inspiration of Venerable Catherine McAuley as well, our framework aims to foster a congruence of heart and purpose, helping to “fit women for earth without unfitting them for heaven”. We do this by helping to equip women to live fruitful lives, encouraging the development of their individual gifts, as well as those of the ‘feminine genius’ – receptivity, sensitivity, generosity, and maternity.

Our aim is to encourage Catholic women to live firmly in the world but not be of the world, taking inspiration from the call to mission in John 17:16-18: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

We take inspiration too from the words of St. Teresa of Avila and encourage the development of gifts and talents to enable women to be God’s hands and feet: “Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

HISTORY

Catholic Women’s Network has been born out of the life of a previous ministry named “Catholic Women’s Mentoring”. It was founded by Christine Pace and supported by Sally Hood – two peers who had just completed their 2-year fellowship with the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference “Young Catholic Women’s Interfaith Fellowship” (now known as “Leadership for Mission”).