Generative Concern And Generative Action Of Catholic Women Religious And Catholic Lay Women

Summoning everyday Catholic laywomen to the forefront of twentieth-century Catholic history, Mary J. Henold considers how these committed parishioners experienced their religion in the wake of Vatican II (1962–1965). This era saw major changes within the heavily patriarchal religious faith—at the same time as an American feminist revolution caught fire. Who was the Catholic woman for a new era? Henold uncovers a vast archive of writing, both intimate and public facing, by hundreds of rank-and-file American laywomen active in national laywomen's groups, including the National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Daughters of America, and the Daughters of Isabella. These records evoke a formative period when laywomen played publicly with a surprising variety of ideas about their own position in the Catholic Church. While marginalized near the bottom of the church hierarchy, laywomen quietly but purposefully engaged both their religious and gender roles as changing circumstances called them into question. Some eventually chose feminism while others rejected it, but most, Henold says, crafted a middle position: even conservative, nonfeminist laywomen came to reject the idea that the church could adapt to the modern world while keeping women's status frozen in amber.

"Weaver fills an important gap in women's studies through her investigation of the intersection of the women's movement with the lives of contemporary Roman Catholic women." -- Iris "Mary Jo Weaver has charted the course of this new consciousness among Roman Catholic women." -- Rosemary Radford Ruether "This is the first full-scale study of how the U.S. women's movement has intersected with the lives and aspirations of American Roman Catholic women."Â -- Elizabeth Johnson, Religious Studies Review

"The Church cannot be understood without women..."- Pope Francis, July 28, 2013 In the new book Promise and Challenge, ten diverse Catholic women -- theologians, philosophers, attorneys, and an economist -- answer Pope Francis' call to address the deeper questions about the meaning of womanhood and the role of women in the Church. Based on their presentations at the 2014 Symposium on Women in the Church, these women help move the conversation forward through their intriguing insights and analysis of established teachings and traditions combined with original scholarship and new ideas. Through their personal experience, spiritual depth, and professional expertise, you'll examine: Threshold issues and important context to expand the role of women in the Church Several important aspects of complementarity that require further theological development theologically Practical issues related to the place of women in the church The promise and challenge of the future With insight, clarity, and great love for the Church, these women touch on both the challenges of today and the promise of tomorrow for women in the Church.

In 1963, as Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique appeared and civil rights activists marched on Washington, a separate but related social movement emerged among American Catholics, says Mary Henold. Thousands of Catholic feminists--both lay women and women religious--marched, strategized, theologized, and prayed together, building sisterhood and confronting sexism in the Roman Catholic Church. In the first history of American Catholic feminism, Henold explores the movement from the 1960s through the early 1980s, showing that although Catholic feminists had much in common with their sisters in the larger American feminist movement, Catholic feminism was distinct and had not been simply imported from outside. Catholic feminism grew from within the church, rooted in women's own experiences of Catholicism and religious practice, Henold argues. She identifies the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), an inspiring but overtly sexist event that enraged and exhilarated Catholic women in equal measure, as a catalyst of the movement within the church. Catholic feminists regularly explained their feminism in terms of their commitment to a gospel mandate for social justice, liberation, and radical equality. They considered feminism to be a Christian principle. Yet as Catholic feminists confronted sexism in the church and the world, Henold explains, they struggled to integrate the two parts of their self-definition. Both Catholic culture and feminist culture indicated that such a conjunction was unlikely, if not impossible. Henold demonstrates that efforts to reconcile faith and feminism reveal both the complex nature of feminist consciousness and the creative potential of religious feminism.

Good Catholic Girls" is the story of educated, principled, and brave Catholic women who are challenging one of the world's last and most impenetrable bastions of male authority.

Building on various feminist theories of ethos, the authors in this collection explore how North American Catholic women from various periods, races, ethnicities, sexualities, and classes have used elements of the group’s positionality to make change. The women considered in the book range from the earliest Catholic sisters who arrived in the United States to women who held the Church hierarchy accountable for the sexual abuse scandals. The book analyzes women such as those in an African American order who developed an ethos that would resist racism. Chapters also consider better known Catholic women such as Dolores Huertas, Mary Daly, and Joan Chittister.

An anthology of essays by women who represent a broad international perspective and come from a variety of personal backgrounds, who believe that the Church cannot come to a wise and informed understanding of family life without listening to women.