THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Diann L. Neu

“How do we let justice flow? By praying to end human trafficking, by celebrating International Women’s Day, by Pride and Equality Day, by cherishing Friends and Friendship, by telling love stories around World AIDS Day.”

Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, July 2025

DN:  I’m Diann Lynn Neu, born in Beach Grove, Indiana, which is a suburb outside of Indianapolis.

MJC:  What year?

DN:  1948.

MJC:  Tell us a little bit about your family. How many kids?

DN:  I’m the oldest of six. I learned from my father that I could do anything I wanted to do in life, and I believed him. It has gotten me in trouble throughout my life, which is good. I wouldn’t say my father was a feminist, but he believed in his daughter. Let me put it that way. I was the oldest. I have two brothers after me who went into the family furniture business, and three sisters after them.

MJC:  Tell me about how your parents might have influenced the person you became.

DN:  What I didn’t say about my family, and it’s important to put in here, it was a Catholic-rooted family on the south side of Indianapolis, fourth generation German-American. My mother and her mother were the Catholic dedicated ones, shall I say. I went to novenas and masses and prayers and all with them, and that had a huge influence on my life without my even realizing it. I got a heavy dose. In my grade school and in my high school, I got a heavy dose of Catholic social justice and spirituality. And was very supported by my family in those issues, spirituality, Catholic social justice.

MJC:  So you went to Catholic school?

DN:  Yes.

MJC:  All the way through, right?

DN:  All the way through, even graduate school.

MJC:  I’ve never been in a public school myself, so I know how that feels. What was your life like before you got involved in the women’s movement?

DN:  When I was in grade school, looking for a high school, I felt a call to religious community or a call to something. That was when I came home from eighth grade and said to my mom, “Oh, I want to go to the woods, St. Mary of the Woods, Indiana.” “Fine. When you want to go?” I said, “I want to go for high school.” “Let’s wait until your father comes home and see what he says.” She was making my favorite butterscotch pie at the moment. So dad came home and we sat down and his response was, “Well, do you think you’re supposed to do this?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, then you have to do it.” And so, I went off to St. Mary-of-the-Woods in Terre Haute, Indiana.

MJC:  At what age were you?

DN:  Out of eighth grade, so I was 13, 14. They were very formative years, and they were also years… Let’s see, I graduated from grade school in ’66, so it was the time of the Second Vatican Council. It was the time of the anti-Vietnam movement. It was the time of the civil rights movement. It was a convergence of spirituality and justice in my life, and the community was the right place for me to be. I became the President of my class, my senior class. I became the President of Sodality, the President of Catholic Social Justice, crusade, et cetera. It was very formative.

MJC:  You went off to St. Mary-of-the-Woods. What was that experience like?

DN:  I went to the college, and I also entered the community. We worked, not only the usual classes, let’s see. I started out as a math major, which has stood me in good stead throughout my life as I’ve worked in organizations and worked on budgets and business. I then became an education major and a theology major. It was those two experiences that took me into my first career.

I was handpicked on a faculty as everyone was handpicked, to do an open classroom, non-graded grade school faculty that was funded by the Lilly Foundation. It was a combination of the grade school in St. Anne’s in Terre Haute, the College, St. Mary-of-the-Woods, and also a high school at Ladywood, St. Agnes in Indianapolis, that I later became the faculty of on the nonwestern humanities. I was in education, but never did the traditional education.

I never did the traditional anything, quite frankly, and was able to be that beloved faculty person because there were no walls. Even to this day, this year, I received a text, phone message, email from three of my students that I taught in sixth grade. So it’s that a close-knit environment that I was able to be part of. Not only teaching in grade school, but also teaching in high school, nonwestern and religion, nonwestern humanities and religion.

MJC:  How large was your class? Do you remember?

DN:  We were one of the last… The class ahead of me was 60, and my class was 35. So we were the first and the last of everything. The last to wear the long habit, the first to wear the short habit, and the first to go out of the habit totally, and the first to go into social justice work. Actually, my junior year of college, I said, I need to go someplace else. It’s when I went to Indianapolis and lived in the Black community, was one of four white nuns living in the Black community, going to Marion College at that point.

I remember one night, about 10:00 or 11:00, driving by myself back home, got stopped by the police. You’re a young white woman. What are you doing in this Black community? I said, I live right over there, and introduced myself, and they escorted me home. Those kind of racist things mark you for the rest of your life.

MJC:  Well, you’re living there, having the experience of the people who live there from a different point of view, right? What about your women’s consciousness? When did that become evident to you, would you say?

DN:  Probably early on in my life when I could see my brothers being able to do things that I couldn’t, even though I was the oldest and told I could do anything I needed to do. Certainly, it caught me when I was teaching at an all-girls high school and realized that, well, when the school was sold to an all boys high school, let me put it that way, and the girls, feminism, just what was it? What does it mean that girls could be who they want to be? When they were for the four years that I was teaching there?

Then I went on to the faculty through the merger, and you would have thought that women didn’t even exist. It was at that point that I went to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, and they were the faculty that came against the Vatican when the Vatican said women could not be priests because we didn’t look like Jesus, having portable parts, as we would say. They were the faculty that said, yes, women can. I thought, okay, fine. I was feeling a call to be a priest, be a minister, be something spiritual.

I thought, I can learn from these to people. It was revolutionary for me that this was after Vatican II, it was when feminism was rising, it was revolutionary for me and freeing. It meant that I could focus on feminist spirituality, feminist church issues, feminist religious issues, and have some colleagues.

MJC:  Just my personal comment is we were born at the right time, a very dynamic time in human history, weren’t we?

DN:  We didn’t realize at the time, did we? No. But it’s amazing as we look now and look back, it’s like, oh, my gosh, look what we were able to do because of who we were, who the supports were, what the justice and feminists and women’s organizations around us were able to do.

MJC:  I mean, your entire history basically from that point on is involvement in the women’s movement. We’re just going to have to, we want to record all of that. Can you do that just as much as you can in a systematic way to go through your career as a feminist?

DN:  It’s who I am. Let’s do it.

MJC:  Okay. So, at that point in time, you’re in the order. How long are you in the order, or is that not relevant to this?

DN:  I was in the order for 16 years. There was a point when the order and I did not see eye to eye. And that was 1980.

MJC:  Okay. So have we captured your work life up until 1980? If not, we should go back and do that.

DN:  We really have. My work shifted after the seminary.

MJC:  So in 1980, you decide that it’s time to part ways. So can you describe that transition for us in your own thinking?

DN:  In 1977, when I went to the Jesuit School of Theology, my focus was women’s ordination. Feminism, actually, women’s ordination. Feminism exploded in 1977 for me through the Center for Women and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union. I came in touch with lesbianism, feminism, women’s power, let’s put it that way. When I was focusing on ordination issues, the community was fine. When I was focusing on feminism in terms of lesbianism, the community was like, wait a minute.

It was clear that the trajectory was not moving in the same direction. In 1980, when I finished my Master’s in Divinity, I came to Washington – this is a piece of my career – and worked at the Center of Concern, which put me into international feminism in Washington, DC. That’s where after my studies – but then I returned and got further degrees, a Master of Divinity, Master of Sacred Theology, and then a doctorate in Ministry. That finishes the educational and moves me into the international scene.

MJC:  Could I ask an interim question? Did you ever anticipate or were you hopeful that the priesthood would become available to you?

DN:  I always thought I would be the first Catholic woman ordained in the United States, if not the world. In 1977, the Episcopal women had been ordained in ’74. We Catholic women felt we were on the next wave. Now we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Episcopal women this very year. Listening. We’ve had them here at Water tell their story. They really were able to get into the organization, into the structure, to make it possible in a way that Catholic women were not, and still are not able to do it. In some ways, I don’t think anybody should be, ordained, that’s a whole other piece of the story. But we were spared that in a way. But it’s really unfortunate for the church, for the world, for spiritual places.

MJC:  I wanted to get that on the record because, yes, because the anticipation, I was doing some work in the church at that time, too. I would never, I would have bet any amount of money that we would at least have a married male priesthood by now. I would really have hoped. It was reasonable to me that women would have the priesthood by now. I’m astonished.

DN:  Totally astonished. In some ways, we thought Pope Francis might do it. Every bishop along the way… When I was at the center of concern, I was on so many women’s committees, and I met with the Catholic bishops, the US Catholic bishops, and we tried to get them to understand. There were ones that were like, I’ll ordain you and come to my diocese and work in liturgy. It didn’t happen for all kinds of reasons. Then enter, of course, the red line… What do you call it? The issues like abortion and LGBTQ issues. And here we are.

MJC:  Here we are. It’s amazing. I thought from an organizer standpoint, when something is making your organization diminish and weaker, as the Catholic Church has become since that time, you would think that you would do something practical to change that, but didn’t happen.

DN:  Didn’t happen, and who knows when it’s going to happen. Then what we created, which I think is really interesting. The women coming out of the seminary in the ’80s were different than the Episcopal women coming out in the ’70s. In the ’80s, we had all of these social justice issues around us. It was clear that we were, this was really my wake-up call. Here I was. I could do anything, be anything. I kept running up against this wall in the Catholic Church. No, you can’t. No, you can’t. No, you can’t.

It’s finally like, You know what? Yes, we can and we will. And so, we created Women Church. I remember the conference, and I was the conference coordinator in Cincinnati in 1985 or 1987. It was clear to us that Catholicism, Catholic women needed to really… It was before intersectionality was the word on our mouths. We needed to really intersect with the feminist movement. We brought together people like Gloria Steinem and Catholics – Frances Kissling, Yourself. I mean, on board, it’s like, Okay, come on, girls. We’re all together in this. What can we do? I think we were able to make some important inroads.

Of course, now we take a deep breath and say, Okay, what does that mean? What did that mean? And what does that mean for now? But it was life-giving. It was really life-giving for many, for many of us, for yourself, for myself, for other colleagues like ours, for women everywhere, and some men, and certainly children.

MJC:  Definitely. So, Women Church, you start Women Church. Talk about that and talk about the mission and how it evolved.

DN:  I remember being in New York at the Riverside Drive offices of the God Box, and we were sitting around the table, the leadership of Catholic women’s organizations, saying, What can we do? What do we need? It was the birth of Women Church. Woman Church, One, “an,” many people were talking about it. I’m like, “Women,” we’re in this together. Well, I lost in the beginning, and it became Woman in the Chicago conference. By the time that conference was Women Church Claiming Our Power. By the time that conference was over, it was clear that it was the alliance, it was the collective, it was the ‘en,’ and it shifted so that the ’87 conference was Women Church.

Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has quoted me in her book as translating Ecclesia of Women, which is the big mouthful that Elizabeth used, into Women Church. So what does Women Church do? It’s an inclusive space for people who are finding the organizational structures oppressive and non-life-giving. It’s a space in its in the ’80s, it created a lifeline so that people like you and me and many, many others found that we could be spiritual, we could focus on religion and not be alienated or not be without a home.

I remember Mary Jean, you and I  were the ones whose names are on the 501(C)(3) for Women’s Church. Maureen Fiedler was one of the other ones. I have that actually in my drawer from the archives. Why was that important? Because 501(C)(3)s mean that you are an organization, you can fundraise, you can be fiscally responsible. That was a time when it was to look at money and be able to raise money. The Cincinnati conference gathered 3,200 people. It was over the top. I credit my staff for really just blitzing everyone to come, which meant, how did we protect our money and not have to go through a church source? That’s why that 501(C)(3) was so important.

MJC:  And tax deductible contributions.

DN:  Tax deductible contributions. That’s what the 501(C)(3) means. So, women have tried to protect our money or tried to use our money for spaces and organizations that support feminist issues. My own organization, WATER, we’ve celebrated 41 years this year. The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual. Dr. Mary Hunt and I were all dressed up as Catholic women with no place to go. Therefore, we had both come from the Jesuit School of Theology, and we said, Okay, what do we need to create?

We were both the top of our class in seminary. My class was ordained, and I wasn’t. I used to sing with the St. Louis Jesuits. They asked me to sing at the ordination of my class, and I said, You’ve got to be kidding. Absolutely not. No. We paid the price for women not having space, and we said, Okay, then we will create space. That was the incentive behind creating WATER , Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual.

We were, 40 years ago, a small ragtag group. We are now internationally known and are considered one of the places to go to for feminist spirituality, feminist work and religion. I’m proud of that. Because women like us need a home in a space, and WATER is one.

MJC:  So looking back, again, I would have bet any amount of money that we would be not so outside the institution 40 years later as we currently are. I would like to talk about the impact that it had, that our presence in the alternative to the church had on ourselves, which you’ve already begun to do, and also, if any, on the institution itself.

DN:  I think we’ve been, initially, we were like that thorn in the side of the institution, which is a good thing. On the institution itself, I think our sister groups, like the Women’s Ordination Conference during the Synod, during the recent meetings in Rome, there’s pink smoke rose at the time that everybody was looking for the white smoke. Did it make a difference? It made news. Journalists paid attention. What did it signal? It signaled that there were no women inside that conclave, which meant it’s a big farce, which meant the church is not inclusive.

So those are the little ways, symbolically, that I think we still make a difference. I’ll go back in history, but I think of the ERA when you all, and I say you all because I wasn’t there, but my colleagues were with you, trying to get the ERA passed. It was religious women plus women from NOW, Women Church, coming together to say, Okay, let’s get this done. We still need to come together to say, Let’s get this done. But it’s the symbolic and the real and the hope that someday will be different.

MJC:  I think that our current situation in the political arena reminds us of how much is undone. I’ll speak for myself. I thought we did a lot, and I [thought] we would be able to do more. I’m still shocked at our lack of success in some of these key areas, like getting the priesthood for women in the Catholic Church. But that’s what happened. The power of the opposition is very powerful, right?

DN:  Very powerful. I can say one of the things that I’m surprised that I have been able to do and has been really needed is work around rituals. It’s one of my gifts, and I’ve written four books about it, four books on Rituals. I do a monthly ritual through WATER. And there’s a hunger. Why is there hunger? Because we are spiritual people. We search for meaning in life.

I remember when I was studying in seminary and I was one of the model students, even among the men. I could hold my hands in the proper way. I could do the blessings. I celebrated Mass for the first time. Well, we were supposed to have a male ordained priest come in, and the group of us were gathered, and no one came. My credit to my male seminary colleagues [who] said, “Diann, you’ve got as much education as the rest of us. Go ahead and celebrate.” So I celebrated Mass. The sun came up the next day. I was still alive. It didn’t feel right. And I said to myself, Okay, I just broke through a taboo. Something is not right about the structure of this Mass. Something is not hitting me soul-wise.

What is it? What needs to be done? And it’s out of that, and this was 1979, it was out of that that I started saying, Okay, what are the spiritual needs? What’s the structure that can meet that? I started working with ritual, very much, I mean, informed by Catholicism, and then informed by Judaism, and then informed by Buddhism, and then informed by the breadth of spiritual traditions. It’s out of that that I started then publishing the rituals that I had created.

People who have responded have found them to be very helpful. There are numbers of inclusive communities thanks to Zoom, thanks to COVID, that caused people to get on Zoom like we are now. And many people use the ritual work that I have found helpful and valuable and have created with others. So the newness is happening. The need is there. There are resources, and I’m grateful that I have been able to make resources available to those communities that need them. And that is, in a strange way, a renewal in the church. If I want to say there, how is anything feminist affecting the churches? That’s how renewal in the churches is happening, as well as ordination that’s happening in other traditions.

Some of those women who have been ordained or that It’s the same way. This structure doesn’t work. How can we re-invent it, if you will? That’s happening. That happened, and it’s going to continue to happen.

MJC:  You’re describing the impact, really, of women inside, outside, whatever, on the development and formation of new processes of spirituality. Is the contribution that women have continued to make that contribution inside whatever institutions they’re allowed in and then change them. But the important thing, I think, that you’re saying is it just proves that we needed to be there because once inside the opportunity to change and update the approach to spirituality, we’ve added so much to the process, right?

DN:  We have. We’ve added so much. And let’s face it, babies are born, people die, young people get married, whether it’s same sex or male/female. Rites of passage happen. People want to mark those. And who’s around to do that? I mean, I do weddings, I do funerals, I do naming ceremonies. I’m a psychotherapist and spiritual director. I help people through those places in their lives that they need some spiritual direction, shall I say, companionship. The needs are there. How do we meet them and who’s going to meet them? A lot of women like me do.

MJC:  How would you say that all of this has affected you in your personal life? How has your personal life been different because of your work and because of even the obstruction of the church in terms of your goals?

DN:  You’re hitting at prayer for me. I say that because This is a personal story. When everybody else was going through COVID, I was going through cancer. I had lymphoma, which is a curable cancer, and I’m five years in remission. But it put me into the space of, look at all that I have done. Do I believe in this? Does this affect my life? How does it affect me? So fast forward from, well, 2025, here we are, five years later, and I just had hip replacement surgery.

So what is prayer for me? And I’ve also got a book ready on cancer prayers. So here it is. So how is prayer for me? Sitting on my deck, communing with the trees, listening to the birds, having water nearby, I have a fountain on my deck, connecting with the universe. It’s a whole different way. Throughout my life, it’s been there. I grew up on a lake. I grew up with nature.

But it’s realizing, wow, we have written prayers, but the greatest prayer is just connecting with all it is. I’ve just come through a space where I know that’s true for me. As much as I have written all these other prayers, and they’ve come out of my soul, and they’ve come out of my heart. But just being present in love is probably what it boils down to.

MJC:  How would you describe your work at the present time?

DN:  Too much. Needing to take some breather space more. How’s my work at the present time? Overwhelming, overflowing. Why? Probably because I’m older and need to slow down, but the needs are so great. We won’t talk politics at the moment, but let me put it right front and center. People are afraid, people are overwhelmed, people are searching for hope, people are searching for community that they believe in and connect with, on and on and on. What does that mean? I think that means that all of our work is more focused, more needed, desperate. People are desperate.

MJC:  So let’s talk about looking back and talking since we’re doing the story of your life here. Let’s talk about what accomplishments you feel you have made and how things have changed because of your work.

DN:  So I’ve given you some of it already, but let me focus it on the ritual piece, the spirituality piece. It’s what I bring to the conversation. I think the conversation, the movement, is what people look to me for. It’s a gift that I have. It’s how I think I can help bring about change. Why is that? Because I think we have to be centered in ourselves in order to deal with all the injustices around us.

I think about that in my psychotherapy, the people I work with in counseling. There are women like you and me that face a variety of life issues. I see myself as like a container, just holding people’s stories. Why do we hold one another’s stories? So that we can feel that we are loved and cared for, so that we can go about doing whatever it is that needs to be done.

MJC:  What are you most proud of?

DN:  Still being alive. The spirituality work that I do, the rituals that I create. I love creating rituals. What are the rituals? The monthly rituals for Cancer, for domestic violence, for Pride. It’s rituals that intersect with the justice issues of the time, as well as raising up people like Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, the strong spiritual wisdom leaders of beyond time. I’m going to grab my Stirring Waters books, my recent ones, and just say the quick answer to your question around ritual is, the first section is drink from the well. Whose wells do we drink from? We drink from Miriam. We drink from Catherine of Siena, Mary Magdalene, on and on and on.

Then how do we step into the pool like Sojourner Truth did, like Sally Wright did, like a Malala does, and like those who face breast cancer do? How do we let justice flow? By praying to end human trafficking, by celebrating International Women’s Day, by Pride and Equality Day, by cherishing Friends and Friendship, by telling love stories around World AIDS Day. Then how do we be well ourselves? We look at the blessings of the New Year. We celebrate Earth Day.

We realize that we are the salt of the Earth. We ask for healing. We gather for Thanksgiving. Then there are those – how do we listen to the cries for justice that are around us that we think we know what they are, but they’re new ones every day. How do we pray with one another? How do we reclaim our voices in an age of violence? I would say in an age of democracy diminishing. I can go on and on, but that’s a quick summary of what I’m talking about and what you asked.

MJC:  Are there areas that we should cover that we haven’t?

DN:  We’ve talked about a lot, Mary Jean. We have. Probably going forward. I mean, for me, well, the age that we are, what’s the mark that needs to be left? Or how do we even… We can’t control that. That’s like within me, what’s a legacy that we need to pay attention to? And you’re talking with me, and others are marking that, creating that legacy.

The archival work is something that’s so important so that our stories don’t get lost. So that’s one piece. The other piece, I think, is really going forward, how do we do this? What’s needed? There are no answers right now, but there are all the questions. How do we continue to be hopeful when every day it seems to be tearing at us?