TOM GRALISH / Inquirer
Antonella Bouchard
Antonella Bouchard, 44, has been active in Queen of Heaven parish since her family immigrated from Italy in 1968, when she was a child.
Bouchard, now a teacher in the theology department at Bishop Eustace Preparatory School in Pennsauken, likens the parish to a second family for her and her husband, Joseph, and their daughters, Joelle, 14, and Marisa, 5. She is a leader in the parish, a role that is increasingly being taken by Catholic women around the nation.
She leads a youth music group that performs at Mass each Sunday. She used to teach third and fifth grades in the parish school, and has taught religious education classes. She helps out, she said, "wherever they need me."
"It's our parish. It belongs to all of us. We have history, we have future," she said. "We share children, we share common goals and history, we tell our stories, we support each other as women, as families. And then we pray together and share Eucharist. It's wonderful."
Bouchard says the role of women as leaders in a parish has not changed as much as some think.
"I think the word leadership is the issue. Women have always been involved. I think the words get in the way of the purpose of what we do. . . . I think women have always just done the work that's been needed. I think maybe, externally, it is being labeled now as 'leadership,' but it's not much different than it has been in the past."
" . . . Perhaps the roles that have been there have been traditionally male, through structure. But, personally, at the human-human level, it has always been cooperative. We work for a common goal."
The laity cannot leave all the work to the priests and nuns, Bouchard said, because "there's too much to do."
"They're not just people fulfilling roles," she said. "They are human beings living out their calling. And they're not the only ones. They have a specific call. I have a specific call. And we share that calling for the same purpose."
