Alumni Spotlight: Joyce Yurko

A Vision for Living Life
by Alois Sandner
MOSAIC, Fall 2008

  
The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved.” In this stirring way, Pope John Paul II opens his apostolic letter on the dignity and vocation of women, Mulieris Dignitatem, by quoting the Closing Message of the Second Vatican Council.

Joyce Yurko of Ypsilanti, Michigan—a mother of five, graduate of the University of Michigan and Sacred Heart Major Seminary, lecturer, counselor and teacher—is striving to spread that message and to live it in her daily life. More than forty years after the closing of the council and twenty years after the release of Mulieris Dignitatem, she sees that hour of fullness inching closer and sees the obstacles that prevent the hour’s fulfillment. She also knows the efforts to bring it about contain certain dangers.

“When I speak to women about Mulieris Dignitatem, about their dignity, being made in the image of God, of God’s plans for them, you can visibly see this new understanding and this joy and this peace that comes over them,” she says on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as we sit at a picnic table on the grounds of Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“We’ve made a lot of advances, but a lot still needs to be done within the Church and in society. So much in our culture degrades women, treats them as objects, that they need to hear this message.

“It is always freeing to women to hear what John Paul II has said about them and for them,” says Joyce. “He gives them a vision for living their life—the example of Mary—for single and married and religious  women.”

Joyce was born in Cleveland, Ohio, reared in New Jersey and Belgium and graduated from high school in Houston, Texas (her father was a peripatetic oil company executive). She learned from her parents that “serving is part of being Christian.” Her husband, John (they met at the U of M, where she majored in history and he in computer science), shares that belief, as they volunteer as time permits while he pursues his career in computer project management.

Rearing five children (two born during her eight years of study at Sacred Heart), managing a household and lecturing have kept her out of the out-of-home workforce. She recalls that balancing family life and graduate studies was hectic but worked out well. “The kids thought it was cool that mom had homework, too. They also knew that study time was serious.” But with the youngest child now five and entering kindergarten and with two recent teaching offers, she is considering entering the working world again.

After receiving her MA in Theology from Sacred Heart, Joyce spent several years coordinating family catechesis for Spiritus Sanctus Academies, the two Ann Arbor-area K-8 Catholic schools. Her work helped academy parents keep up with the Catholic education their children were receiving. She also helped with the Image of Christ
Program that assists students to integrate their religious education  with their faith life.

While women are advancing in the workplace, they face the tendency of society to try to turn them into men, she says, while Pope John Paul II emphasizes that women enrich the workplace—as women.

“We are meant to retain the womanhood or femininity that God has given us. That’s often perceived as being weak,” says Joyce. “Pope John Paul is saying that women are equally strong, equally gifted, and bring that unique ‘feminine genius’ to every area they’re in, whether it’s the workplace or the home.

“Which also means women are to be given the same opportunities in the workplace. And while opportunities have increased significantly in the past forty years in our country, we still have a long way to go.”