Is It Possible to Ignore Your Calling?
For French Irish spiritual director Soline Humbert, the answer has always been no. From her late teens, she has felt a clear and persistent call to priesthood in the Catholic Church, a calling that refuses to fade even though the institution insists it is impossible.
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In this episode of Your Radical Truth, shares the journey she has carried for fifty years; one shaped by courage, resistance, and a deep trust in the movement of the Spirit even when the church hierarchy refuses to listen.
Who Is Soline Humbert
Soline Humbert is a French Irish spiritual director and longtime advocate for equality in the Catholic Church. She co-founded the group Brothers and Sisters in Christ, now part of We Are Church Ireland, and served as spokesperson for the first international conference for women’s ordination in Dublin in 2001.
Her spiritual memoir, A Divine Calling, launched at Trinity College Dublin with a foreword by former president Dr. Mary McAleese, traces her decades long struggle to answer a vocation denied to her by institutional rules. Soline has written for major publications, appeared in televised documentaries, and continues to challenge the structures that silence women’s voices.
The Moment the Calling Arrived
Soline describes the first time she sensed her call to priesthood as a teenager in 1974. Nothing in her upbringing suggested women could be called. The idea
was not only unspoken but unthinkable.
The calling brought both clarity and crisis. She felt a strong, unmistakable pull that came from beyond her own imagination. At the same time, she had been taught that God calls only men. With no support system, no internet, and no examples of women naming such experiences, she faced her vocation alone and in silence.
Years later, in her thirties, the calling returned with such intensity that she could no longer push it aside. She finally said yes, trusting that God does not contradict God’s own Spirit, even when human institutions do.
A Church That Studies the Question Instead of Listening
Soline and Margaret Mary discuss the Vatican’s latest refusal of women deacons and its renewed insistence that women cannot be ordained priests.
Soline highlights several painful realities:
- Four separate commissions have studied women deacons, all while avoiding the voices of women with actual callings
- The global synod has barred discussion of women’s ordination entirely
- The church claims to listen to the Spirit yet silences the very people the Spirit may be speaking through
Her memoir serves as her contribution to this synodal moment, a testimony the institution refuses to include but cannot erase.
The Cost of Patriarchy and the Weight of Spiritual Abuse
Soline names the root issue clearly. The Catholic Church still treats maleness as more Christ-like and continues to operate from a deeply patriarchal image of God.
She explains how:
- Women are presumed to be unqualified, while men are presumed to be called
- The exclusion of women functions as a form of gender apartheid
- Women are routinely told their calling is delusion or pride
- This pattern amounts to long standing spiritual abuse
Just as it took decades for the church to acknowledge the reality of sexual abuse, Soline believes the institution has not begun to face the harm done to women who have been shamed, dismissed, or spiritually wounded for naming a vocation.
What Clericalism Really Looks Like
When asked to define clericalism, Soline frames it as a system that elevates certain people as more sacred than others. Instead of serving the community, clericalism creates hierarchy, power imbalances, and a culture where priests are set above the people of God.
She explains how this environment not only contributed to the sexual abuse crisis but also fuels the ongoing refusal to consider women’s ordination. Priesthood has been treated as a personal sacred status rather than a ministry rooted in baptismal equality.
Presiding at Eucharist for the First Time
One of the most moving stories Soline shares is the moment she presided at Eucharist for the first time on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1996.
After months of prayer, a missionary sister friend unexpectedly brought her a chalice and paten with the words, “Rome is not ready, but you are.”
Soline describes the experience as deeply spiritual, intimate, and unmistakably real. It reminded her of giving birth. She was not pretending. She was not grasping at power. Something life-giving was flowing through her with clarity and peace.
She has continued to celebrate Eucharist ever since, often with communities who long for spiritual nourishment but are denied it by institutional limits.
Breaking Silence So Others Can Speak
Soline believes many Catholic women feel called but have never spoken their truth. Fear of ridicule, dismissal, or spiritual punishment has kept generations silent.
Her hope is that her book gives women permission to speak and gives others the courage to listen. Real transformation requires honest testimony. It requires voices the institution has tried to avoid.
Soline urges church leaders and laity alike to stop pretending, to stop repeating beliefs they do not truly hold, and to confront the hypocrisy that weakens both faith and community.
A Closing Message of Courage
The church needs courage. It needs truth. It needs love that is willing to disrupt systems of harm.
Until leaders face the reality of spiritual abuse, discrimination, and the silencing of women’s experiences, the church cannot live out the gospel or serve the world with integrity.
There is hope, but hope requires honesty. And honesty begins with listening to voices like Soline Humbert.
A Divine Calling: One Woman’s Life-Long Battle for Equality in the Catholic Church is available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3MFYbsV
About Soline Humbert
Soline Humbert is a French Irish spiritual director, writer, and leading advocate for women’s equality in the Catholic Church. She first sensed a call to priesthood as a teenager, a vocation she has pursued with courage despite the institution’s refusal to recognize women’s callings.
Soline co-founded Brothers and Sisters in Christ, now part of We Are Church Ireland, and has written widely on reform, spirituality, and women’s roles in the church. Her memoir, A Divine Calling, traces fifty years of perseverance and invites readers to confront the deep contradictions between the gospel and the church’s treatment of women.
About Deacon Margaret Mary O’Connor
Deacon Margaret Mary O’Connor, a member of the Catholic laity, once believed she understood her Church and its teachings. Everything changed the day she uncovered a centuries old scandal of lies and institutional cover up surrounding the history of women in ordained ministry. Realizing that her own Church had hidden the truth about women priests, women deacons, and even women bishops, she felt a deep and unforgettable sense of betrayal.
That moment became the catalyst for her mission. Margaret Mary now travels what she calls the Highway of Radical Truth, exposing the layers of deception that
have kept millions of Catholics unaware of the prominent roles women held in early Church history. Her work challenges long held assumptions, confronts the complicity of the hierarchy, and calls Catholics to learn the real history for themselves.
For Margaret Mary, every Catholic deserves the truth. She believes transparency is not optional, especially when the suppression of women’s vocations continues to harm the Church today. Her research shines a spotlight on hidden historical records that may even hold answers to the modern priest shortage.
Often described as a “Modern Day David,” Margaret Mary is relentless in her commitment to revealing what has been intentionally concealed. Through her well researched writings, public advocacy, and ministry within the Celtic Christian Church, she brings these buried truths to light.
She is the author of Scandal in the Shadows and Journey of a Celiac’s Soul, and remains a force for honesty, courage, and reform within the broader Catholic conversation.
