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.