July 2025 Patricia Horsley: Celebration of Gratitude for a Global Friend

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“Patricia Horsley: Celebration of Gratitude for a Global Friend”

7/16/25 U.S.  |  7/17/25 Australia

The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) delighted in collaborating with the members of WATAC (Women and the Australian Church) for a celebration of our friend Patricia Horsley. Her care for and support of both groups was a wonderful articulation of her generative love shared with so many.

A video of the event can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1A9oWrXJA.

The program included theologian Mary E. Hunt’s WATER welcome (attached), as well as theologian Tracy McEwen’s WATAC introductory remarks (attached). A brief slide show (which can be seen on the video) gave the 35+ participants from both groups a sense of who Patricia was and what she did. Sociologist Kathleen McPhillips sketched some of Patricia’s biography (attached) followed by Mary E. Hunt’s remarks on Patricia’s WATER connection (attached). Liturgist Diann L. Neu closed the program with a ritual (attached) focusing on Wisdom.

People in small groups chatted about their experiences of Patricia. We also talked about how we can continue her legacy of generative love, as Mary E. Hunt described it, as we go about the work of religiously informed social justice.

In the plenary discussion, people who had never met Patricia said that they felt as if they knew her! Stories of and by Patricia are always vivid. Patricia made them think of other creative, supportive women in their lives. Several family members remarked on how meaningful the whole event was for them. One participant noted that Patricia’s “good death,” surrounded by family and at home, gave her much to consider about her own death, including the possibility of offering a university course on the topic. A WATAC colleague reported that forthcoming WATAC programs to be held in various parts of Australia will honor Patricia’s memory.

A brief closing ritual with Diann Neu concluded our formal time together as “We carry on her legacy.”

The gathering was truly a celebration of gratitude for Patricia’s full and meaningful life. It was also a chance for friends and family to meet, and for people who did not know Patricia to become aware of her place of honor among WATAC and WATER colleagues. Gratitude abounds.

 

NOTE: WATAC provided Patricia’s response to their survey questions in a telephone interview (attached) as well as an article by Patricia Madigan on the history of WATAC (attached).

 

Attachments:

  1. Hunt/WATER Intro

Good evening in the U.S. and G’day in Australia. I am Mary E. Hunt from the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring MD, USA, where Patricia Horsely was quite at home. Today would have been her 95th birthday, so our coming together is a fitting way to remember her. I welcome all of you to this celebration of our friend and colleague, Patricia, Tricia, or Trish to many of you, whose love and generous spirit brings us together across the miles.

This is not a funeral or a memorial for Patricia. Both of those have been done beautifully in Australia. Rather, it is a celebration of the enormous goodness that Patricia generated. It is as if she rewrote a classic line of scripture to read: “Go, and make friends in all nations.” (Matt. 28:19).

This gathering is a chance to meet friends and family, and to think about how we can generate even more such goodness at a challenging time in the world’s history. I must admit that a part of me is glad that Patricia did not live to see how the U.S. government is behaving. Her love and expectations for this country deserve better.

I welcome with particular delight Patricia’s family members—especially Susan Burns Bower who has been so helpful to us, and Patricia’s brother Ian whom we know from stories of the land in the country, as well as her sister Mary’s widower, Harding Burns. We hope this hour together gives you a sense of how highly regarded and beloved Patricia was in WATER circles. She was instrumental in connecting WATER with WATAC and others in Oz, and she kept us deeply informed about political and ecclesial life in Australia.

WATER is a small non-profit or NGO in the Washington, DC area (“inside the Beltway” as the saying goes). Diann Neu and I founded WATER in 1983, so we have more than 40 years of experience bringing feminist studies in religion and the fruits of feminist spirituality to the work of social change.  We offer programs for education, time for meditation, liturgy and ritual. WATER  collaborates with many other progressive people to bring about a more just and equitable society. While started by two women with Catholic roots, the Alliance now includes men and non-binary people, folks from many religious backgrounds and none whatsoever. Alliance members live in many countries—including but not limited to Canada, Ecuador, Chile, Germany, Switzerland, the Philippines, not to mention Australia and New Zealand. With Zoom, our global connections are more important than ever.

Today’s program includes:

  1. Welcoming remarks from Tracy McEwan, a theologian who is a member of WATAC
  2. Images of Patricia
  3. Remarks from Kathleen McPhillips, a sociologist of religion, who will sketch some of Patricia’s biography
  4. Remarks on Patricia’s connection to WATER that I, Mary E. Hunt, will offer
  5. Time in small groups to meet and chat not only about Patricia, but how we seek to emulate her good example—never pretending to imitate her unique style!—as we, too, go about the work of religiously informed social justice
  6. After 15 minutes in the groups, we will regather to hear highlights
  7. A brief closing ritual with Diann Neu will conclude our formal time together, but the Zoom will remain open for conversation as long as people wish

 

2. McEwan/WATAC Intro

WATAC is an ecumenical organisation in Australia founded in 1984, originally by Catholic women and men, aimed at reshaping the role of women in the church. Patricia was one of the early members. She is remembered as someone who was deeply engaged with feminist issues in the Church and society who always gave her full attention to all she spoke to.

The 2002 WATAC conference was held in Canberra with Miriam Therese Winter as the keynote speaker. Patricia attended and when the conversation turned to fund raising, she stood and committed to donating her next born cow to WATAC. The cow was to be named Miriam and although all female calves would be kept, any male offspring would be named Michael and would be sold with the funds donated to WATAC. A large sum of money was raised and donated to WATAC through the endeavour.

Over the years WATAC hosted several prominent feminist guest speakers at Parliament House in Macquarie St, Syndey. Patricia would always buy a table and donate the seats so that schoolgirls could attend.

2. McPhillips/Horsley Biography

Acknowledgement of Country

I speak to you today from the lands of the Awabakal people, north of Sydney and I pay my deep respects to the leaders of this beautiful life enriching country for caring so well for its lands and waters. I am a beneficiary of their care and am deeply appreciative.

Trish was without doubt a woman of her time. She was born in the early 1930s to a well-known and well-off family, and benefitted from good schooling and university. In her life, she made great use of these opportunities. Her family lived in Sydney but also had farms land in the southwest of NSW not that far from the Snowy Mountains region and she grew up with a great love for this land and a deep understanding of the power of belonging to it.

The unfolding of modernity in 20th century Australia, provided expanded opportunities for young women and they were ones she did not squander. She attended a girls convent school in Sydney – Kincoppal Rose Bay – run by the Sacred Heart sisters and she maintained a life-long love of the sisters and the school contributing to restoration projects and the alumni community which she gave her time and leadership to. She never lost her strong Catholic faith, although the patriarchal culture of Catholicism would in her later years, draw her to the women’s reform movements in and around the Christian churches, particularly in Sydney where she was a member of WATAC from the 1980s. Trish supported the feminist reform projects, including the ordination of Catholic women, something which at that time, was considered quite radical. She read ferociously and her library attests to her great interest in feminist theology and Church analysis. She donated many of her books to WATAC and I remember visiting her apartment after she had died and feeling like I had fallen back in time to the great debates and analysis of the feminist Christian movement of that time.

Trish attended Sydney University and studied architecture where she met many other young women and men who had lived through and whom many had participated in WW2.

At Sancta Sophia college for women, she met my mother Prudence McLachlan, who was studying medicine. The two women became lifelong friends, bolstered by the marriage of Trish’s older sister Mary to Prue’s cousin Harding Burns, also a doctor. Prue, who was slightly older than Trish, had had a slightly different upbringing to Patricia, which while middle class, was hampered by the fact that her father (my grandfather) did not believe in the education of girls, and she was forced to leave school at 16 for secretarial school. After working in the Women’s auxiliary Air Force Unit during WW2, she was given the opportunity to study at University by the federal government which she pounced upon and promptly enrolled in medicine. I remember as a child and later as a young woman pondering my mother’s women friends who all met at Sancta Sophia college and appreciating the new opportunities that the upheaval of the world war had brought to their lives.

Many years later, in the mid 1980s and independently of each other, Trisha and Prue joined WATAC and rekindled their friendship. They could see how the Catholic Church and other faith traditions were holding women back and pressing them into stereotyped versions of Christianized womanhood. They wanted change and were prepared to stand up for it. Patricia, who didn’t marry or have children, had a freedom borne from living in a time of great social change and personal privilege which she fully engaged. She travelled widely, often to places that were risky and unusual such as Mao’s China and particularly South America which in the middle to late decades of the 20th century were a ferment of political disruption and revolution. Patricia’s nephew, Nicholas Burns, tells of how she was caught up in a political protest in the streets of Buenos Aires during the dictatorship of Peron, and rather than being terrified, had been uplifted and excited to witness the class struggles for justice.

She was at the central places of social action long before many of us. I remember as a young academic, beginning my membership of the American Academy of Religion in the mid-1990s and attending my first conference in Boston. I remember feeling slightly isolated and concerned that so few Australian women were attending and participating in what felt like very powerful opportunities for learning and networking with women scholars in religion. Of course, I ran into Patricia early on as she was attending the WATER meetings held at the beginning of every AAR conference, and I was surprised when Mary and Diann casually mentioned that Trish was a great friend and would be joining them for Thanksgiving at their place in Washington. I saw then that Trish really was quite remarkable. She had the capacity to relate to many people in many places on different levels, and she had a deep commitment to the education of women everywhere, she understood the politics of feminism and gender inequality. She was not afraid to speak her mind and see the reality of the damage of gender inequality.

She was one of the women who led the way for us younger feminists and scholars, and in that sense, we stand on the shoulders of this generation.

Although I didn’t know Trish well, she has always been someone that I have held affection for, in her connection to my mother Prue and the amazing women of her post war generation, and her commitment to fighting gender inequality in the Churches. I am grateful for her insight, her individuality and independence, her deep intelligence, and her courage to live a different life and pass on her wisdom to her large and loving family and the women she came to know in the feminist space. These women strode forth, built networks, questioned power, and then handed on their knowledge and wisdom to the next generations with confidence and love. Long may she be remembered as a woman of courage, faith and strength.

 

3. Hunt/WATER connections

Diann Neu and I went to Australia in January 1993 where I lectured at an Australian Council of Churches event entitled “Living Under the Southern Cross.” As part of that conference, an indigenous man spoke about his challenging life. When he finished, Patricia rose and told of a relative being rescued from a flood on his land by an indigenous person. She expressed her desire to be supportive of indigenous people and asked how she could be helpful. The man replied that she could make friends with indigenous people, which I am sure Patricia did. Since I had lectured on friendship, it was a memorable, touching exchange that reinforced my sense that we were all on the same page somehow.

Not long after that, Patricia came to the U.S. where we reconnected at a Call to Action meeting in Chicago, a group of progressive Catholics in discussion about church issues. She planned to visit friends in Washington, DC so I invited her to stop by WATER. She did. She felt a certain kinship, a sisterhood, with WATER people, ideas, and commitments. The rest is the story of friendship—Patricia’s and mine, and, by extension, the friendships of WATAC colleagues and WATER folks.

Patricia was here a few times. She was a great fan of the environmental pioneer Rachel Carson (whose important book, A Silent Spring, was published in 1962) who was born here in Silver Spring so that meant a visit to her birthplace. Patricia admired author and activist Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan who are buried at the Washington National Cathedral so we explored the crypt church there. In her travels, she always paid her respects at Religious of the Sacred Heart schools so we made that pilgrimage here in suburban Washington, DC to Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland.

Patricia enjoyed visiting her friend Louise Dunn in Connecticut, the daughter of the famed artist Hildreth Meière. Louise’s mother had taken her daughter to Australia and enrolled her in the convent school in Rose Bay for a bit when Louise and Patricia, also Patricia’s sister Mary, were girls. All these many years later, they were still friends.

Patricia loved music so we heard a concert at the Strathmore Music Center. She adored trains so we poked around the old regional train station from which she travelled to visit yet another friend in West Virginia. But mostly, she liked to come to the WATER office for tea in the afternoon and chat about feminist work in religion and our lives.

One memorial Fourth of July, she arrived here for a party sporting an American flag patterned apron with two pockets. She laughed that she was the mother kangaroo with her joeys, except hers were bottles of a nice Australian red!  I seem to recall her here for an election party one November, but I can’t put a year on it. She always fit right in with U.S. friends, happy to share our reality and tell us about hers.

My calendar is replete with the notation “Call Patricia” as we developed the habit of talking regularly. She was progressive in most ways except technology, preferring the old-fashioned phone call. We often chatted two hours at a time, late into the night for me, an early to bed person, and rarely before noon for Patricia.

We covered the WATERfront, literally. It was WATER’s custom to mail her an envelope most months with programs and writings that mere mortals got via email. But she never warmed to the Internet, so we sent things by post. We always joked that she had the best WATER archive as it is rumored that she never threw anything out. Her comments about and critiques of our work were invariably spot on, always encouraging and supportive.

Patricia was generous beyond measure with her resources, but more important, with her generative love, her care and kindness. She was generative in the full sense of the word—literally producing justice, reproducing goodness, generating laughter, and regenerating good will in her own unique way. I consider it an honor to call her my dear friend.

 

4. Neu/Closing Ritual

Trish was a unique virtuous woman who lived a wise and fulfilling life among us and throughout the world. Think of the photos and stories of Patricia as we listen to excerpts from Wisdom literature in the Book of Proverbs. These practical guides on living a meaningful life give us clues about how to live equally meaningful lives.

 Wisdom has built her house. She has prepared her food, decanted her wine, and set her table. She calls to all in the city and in the countryside. Come, eat my bread and drink the wine which I have prepared for you. Proverbs 9:1, 5

Wisdom calls out in the streets. I will pour out my heart to you. Tune your ear to Wisdom, and take her truth into your heart. Then you will understand who Divine Wisdom Sophia is and discover love of life. You will understand justice and the ways of happiness. Proverbs 1:20; 2:1, 6

Wisdom is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs at the days to come. Many are the women of proven worth, but you excel them all. Proverbs 31: 25, 29

We honor her for all that her hands have done. Let our works bring her praise at the city gates.  Proverbs 31:31

Quiet Reflection

We each have our own special memories of Patricia, Trish, or Tricia as she was known to most. Think of one memory you have right now, and feel her special presence with you for a moment. (Pause)

Litany of Remembrance and Legacy

We will remember Trish and carry on her legacy.

When we create and cherish global friendships,

We carry on her legacy.

When we treasure the land around us and advocate to stop climate change,

We carry on her legacy.

When we work for Catholic women’s equality and justice,

We carry on her legacy.

When we collaborate through WATAC and WATER,

We carry on her legacy.

When we support feminist work in church and society around the world,

We carry on her legacy.

When we see a need and use our resources to make a difference,

We carry on her legacy.

 

Sending Forth

Let us go forth remembering Trish as we carry on her legacy.

Let us love as she loved, and be generative.

Let us carry on her legacy of advocacy, philanthropy, and global friendship.

Let us smile, open our eyes and ears, and make a difference in the world as Trish did!

 

So long as we shall live, Trish too shall live,

For she is a part of us, as we remember her and carry on her legacy.

 

Thank you, Patricia! Thank you, All!

Amen. Blessed Be. Let It Be So.

 

 

WATAC Response from Patricia Horsley, Age 90 (by phone, 30 November 2020)

When and how did you first become involved in WATAC?

Some time around the mid-1980s I heard from a network of old school friends about a meeting of Catholic women in the Northern beaches area. It was held over 2 days and I stayed at a hotel nearby. Graham English and Erin White were involved in this group and Bernice Moore was an executive secretary. Erin co-authored with Marie Tulip a book called “Knowing Otherwise”.  The first meetings had been held in Sydney. A priest, when he heard about it advised us – “Be patient ladies, be patient” but we had already been patient for 2000 years!

What influenced you?

We went to meetings and there was much discussion around topics of interest which were “music to our ears”. It was very new to me, but it fitted in well with other things I had been reading and thinking of in a number of areas.

For you, what were the most beneficial aspects of WATAC?

It was all grist to the mill. It was answering a need. We were heading into middle age, with much more energy than we had in later life. I was open to whatever was presented as being something of interest.

What were the highlights?

For me the highlights were the special speakers from overseas – sponsored by WATAC. One was Sr Joan Chittister – I heard her speak. A flyer about her was circulated. There was also an ecumenical dimension – with Anglicans and Catholics involved together.

What do you think were the main achievements of WATAC?

One of the main achievements was that it was making women aware of their wisdom, which had been suppressed. There was some opposition, both locally and in wider terms.  Priests got knocked on the head too when they became strong in their criticism. They felt they had to be careful – to be loyal to their local bishop and their own conferences.

Anything further you would like to share?

We have a lopsided church and hierarchy, and lopsided thinking – may be anti-women’s-participation in decision-making. But God is not lopsided. God is the fullness of the male and the fullness of the female. How can we describe who God is or how God is? It is as human that God wants to relate to us.

 

Recorded by Dr Patricia Madigan OP

 

Patricia Madigan, “”Be Patient, Ladies! Be Patient!’: Women and the Australian Church (WATAC), 1982-2021”
https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/Madigan-2021-WATAC.pdf