Encountering priests’ stories—and a priest cousin!—at AUSCP

Years ago, my mom told me about a cousin of mine whom I’ve been dying to meet ever since.

My mom started telling me about Charlie around the time my own vocation to service was coming alive, during the time I spent in Latin America. Fr. Charlie is my maternal grandmother’s cousin, and for as long as I’ve been alive and then some he’s called Cambodia home. He’s a Maryknoll priest with a longstanding ministry to the Deaf community. My mom intuited that we’d have a lot to talk about, and I agreed. So, over the years, whenever I would meet someone with Maryknoll connections, I would say, “I have a distant cousin who’s a Maryknoll priest in Cambodia! Do you know him?” Often, the answer was “yes.” And so my curiosity grew as I accumulated contacts over the years who had met this mystery priest cousin of mine

So when, this past week, I was representing Discerning Deacons at the annual meeting of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests (AUSCP) and ran into a Maryknoll priest at breakfast, I gave him my spiel: “Do you know Charlie?!” He’d never met him, but he knew exactly who he was—”he’s a good one,” he said.

At lunch, I had my plate in hand and was scanning the room for a place to sit when I spotted him. I had seen pictures of Charlie, and there was a priest with an empty seat next to him who looked a lot like the pictures. Could it be?

I walked over: “Is this seat taken?”

He gestured invitingly. I introduced myself. “And you are?”

“Charlie,” he said, reaching for his nametag that had gotten turned around and showing it to me. Sure enough, there was his name: “Charlie Dittmeier.”

“I thought it was you!” I said. “I’m related to you!”

And so began an epic catch-up between first cousins, twice removed (we both did some internet research that evening to figure out exactly what our relationship to each other was). I told him about my work with Discerning Deacons and asked him about his forty-year ministry in Cambodia, which he wrapped up less than a year ago.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that if I was going to run into Charlie anywhere, it would be at the AUSCP conference. AUSCP is an organization of Catholic priests in the United States, deeply committed to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

Through their Women in the Church working group, AUSCP has been a source of great support and companioning for Discerning Deacons over our five years of existence as an organization, galvanizing St. Phoebe Day celebrations around the country, hosting webinars like this one on women’s experiences in the Church, and developing pastoral resources for priests navigating women’s calls to ministry.

In our conversations at AUSCP, Charlie told me about how women had been influential at every turn in his faith journey. He was far from the only priest I heard this from over the course of the week. Over meals and in encounters at our booth, many priests shared about the women who had ministered alongside them and the impact those women had on them and their communities. Many reminisced about seasons in their dioceses when women were routinely leading parishes as pastoral administrators and breaking open the Word for congregations. In almost every case, these seasons were abruptly truncated, usually by a new bishop who didn’t see fit for women to serve in such roles. Painfully, it was in some cases the introduction of the permanent diaconate itself that ended these women’s ministry leadership in a given diocese. Some women were even asked to train the deacons who would replace them.

As I listened to priest after priest share their stories of ministering alongside women—and the impact on their communities, on the women, and on the priests themselves when women’s access to ministry is expanded and constricted based on the particular feelings of a given bishop or pastor—a conviction took root in me: our mission and ministries are intertwined. And our Church’s decision makers need to hear these priests’ stories.

I know many of our newsletter readers are priests—maybe you found us through AUSCP, because a woman in your congregation felt a diaconal call, or because you long for a Church that lets you unleash women for mission more freely. You have lived experience serving alongside deacons and alongside women in ministry—you have crucial insight into what’s been working and what hasn’t been working.

During the 2025-2028 Synod Implementation Phase, the Vatican is looking for exactly this kind of feedback rooted in lived experience. Paragraphs 60 and 73 call for the expansion of women’s ministry into all roles that are canonically permissible, for the continuation of the discernment about women’s access to diaconal ministry, and for a review of the lived experience of the permanent diaconate since its renewal after Vatican II.

Over the course of the next six months, Discerning Deacons is engaging in the synod implementation phase through prayer, education, and consultation. We plan to share the fruits of our learning and labor in a synthesis for the Synod Office in Rome.

If you are a priest, will you contribute to the discernment?

If you are not a priest, will you forward this to a priest you know and ask them to contribute? (And we also want YOU non-priests to contribute to the discernment via numbers 2 and 3 below!)Here’s how:

1. Fill out this brief survey sharing about your experience of ministering to and alongside women—as a contribution to Discerning Deacons’ Implementation Phase report.
2. Join the Feast of St. Phoebe International Prayer Service on September 3; turn on your camera to offer visible participation as a priest. (Maybe you’ll see Fr. Charlie there!)
3. Attend a Discerning Deacons synodal listening session in October or November—and bring a fellow priest or deacon!