Courtesy of Feminist Review, I am excited to be able to continue the conversation on GWP about the relationship between feminism and religion. Last week, Allison McCarthy brought us an interview with Leora Tanenbaum, author of Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality. Today Renee Leonowicz reviews Mary Henold’s Catholic and Feminist (UNC Press) and the rise of a feminist movement that originated within the Catholicism it hopes to change. –Kristen

It may be customary for some to place Catholic and feminist identities in opposition to each other, but Mary Henold’s illuminating and meticulous examination of the Catholic feminist movement unearths a critical link between feminist consciousness and activism, and Catholic tradition and conviction. Her comprehensive research illuminates an exhaustive timeline of the Catholic feminist movement that incorporates information gathered from texts and periodicals, a number of self-conducted interviews, and archival documents.

Henold traces the beginning of the feminist movement within the Catholic community to around the same time of the emergence of the larger women’s movement in the United States. She asserts, however, that religious women’s embrace of feminism was not applied to their faith as a mere reaction to the political climate at large. Henold argues that their feminism was actually propagated by their faith, and explores the inherently radical nature of Christianity through the actions of practicing feminist Catholics who declare social justice as a principle of their faith.

The American Catholic community underwent a radical reconstruction in the 1960s that brought blossoms of feminist consciousness into the church. This change led to a struggle to assert women’s autonomy and integrate progressive ambitions within the staunch conventionalism of the church’s hierarchy, and resulted in confusion, doubt, and subdued optimism in the 1970s. A fissure formed between women who were disenchanted with, and repudiating, the church, and those still hopeful for improvement. Henold chronicles the beginning of those divergent paths, which continue today.

In Catholic and Feminist, readers are introduced to the encapsulating sisterhood of religious women, theological scholars, and laywomen born of the prestigious and virile hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Whether ruminating on the sexist implications of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, demanding ordination through grassroots organizing, or marching against injustices alongside nonreligious activists, Catholic feminists have incorporated their zeal for revolutionary equality with their faith to challenge sexism and other forms of oppression within the church and society at large.

Review by Renee Leonowicz

Cross-posted from Feminist Review