It’s no surprise that Sr M Isabell Naumann ISSM’s favourite saints are Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).
Their images are kept on a bookshelf in Sr Naumann’s office at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, where she served as a professor for many years, as president from 2018 to 2025, and where she is still a member of faculty.
Apart from sharing Sr Naumann’s German heritage, both saints were brave and brilliant women of the church who served the Lord passionately in her own way.
A Benedictine abbess, polymath and a mystic, St Hildegard was vindicated when her writings were acknowledged by Pope Eugenius III at the Synod of Trier in 1147.
St Teresa was a brilliant Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942 along with her sister Rosa.
“I think Hildegard of Bingen has a lot to say to us today about the importance of the human person, our part in the cosmos and how to live in the God-given order,” Sr Naumann says.
“Edith Stein, while not yet a Doctor of the Church like Hildegard of Bingen is, has a similar message not only for the human person but also for women—that women should have a place in society and not be hidden away.
“She was very different to Hildegard but at the same time I think hers was a very beautiful theological anthropology as well and as such too is a person for our time.”
Sr Naumann says today’s women have their own important part to play in the church and are needed as leaders who will complement their male counterparts.
She has plenty of experience in that respect—appointed the first woman dean of studies at Sydney’s Good Shepherd Seminary, the first woman president of CIS, and one of only five women serving on the International Theological Commission, since her appointment by Pope Francis in 2021.
She believes there is scope for women to share more responsibility for leadership in the church, thereby offering a fuller view of its needs and possibilities in a way that is complementary and informed by the church’s hierarchy.
And not only women, but all of the lay baptised need to actualise their own responsibilities, she believes, adding there is still too much of a discrepancy between “Sunday Catholics” and “every-day Catholics” and there is a need for greater formation of the lay faithful.
“Sometimes I think we expect too little of our people. It’s a commitment, that through baptism, I am not just a recipient of Christ, but I also have to play a part in the body of Christ,” she says.
“If you believe that each one of us is called by God to play a particular role in life only that person can play and no one else can take that, then also in the practical application in the church it needs to be there.
“All of this in my eyes is an essential part of ecclesiology, the right understanding of the church.
“It’s not that lay people take away from the role of a priest and his leadership, but to cooperate with him according to our call.”
For Sr Naumann, Christ’s blessed mother Mary is the ideal human person, as the first of the redeemed and someone utterly guided by the Holy Spirit.
“She’s the only one who covers the whole life of Christ, from the conception until the birth of the church and Pentecost.”
Spirituality as a Schoenstatt Sister means tapping into a “Marian modality”, an attitude of attentiveness to God in any circumstances.
“And through that attunedness to God Mary has a harmonious personality and that relates also to the relationships she has with others.
“That is what we as members of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary want to foster which is why we do not have just one particular apostolate, say in schools or hospitals, but we work in all areas that are open to women.
“We seek a covenant of love with Mary, and that means we entrust ourselves to her and ask her to form us into Christ-like people.”
Over her own ministry to date, Sr Naumann is most pleased with her tenure as CIS professor, during which she has forged, and in part pursued, good relationships with other institutions including the University of Notre Dame Australia and the canon law faculty at the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas in Manila.
“CIS is the only ecclesiastical faculty in Australia, established by the Holy See in 1954 for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, and can confer bachelor degrees, licentiates and doctorates,” Sr Naumann says.
“One focal point for me was to build on what the institute is as an ecclesiastical faculty, so my work was fairly concentrated on that, and to also establish good relationships with the Dicastery for Culture and Education in Rome, which I did.”
Last year Rome also approved the launch at CIS of the Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Higher Institute of Religious Sciences, which offers a three-year Bachelor of Religious Sciences.
It is one of the few of its kind to be offered in the English-speaking world, in response to increasing demand from lay people for ecclesiastically-accredited philosophical and theological formation.