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The Catholic Church and the Woman Question: Catholic Feminism in Italy in the Early 1900s
- The Catholic Historical Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 97, Number 3, July 2011
- pp. 484-526
- 10.1353/cat.2011.0089
- Article
- Additional Information
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At the turn of the twentieth century the Catholic Church promoted women’s associations in an attempt to reassert Christianity in a struggle against its liberal and socialist adversaries. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) called on Catholics to address a raft of serious problems resulting from social and economic transformations. This gave rise to a Christian Democratic movement and, within it, to Catholic feminism. Focusing on two Catholic women’s periodicals, L’azione muliebre and Pensiero e azione, the author studies the emergence and the nature of Catholic feminism as well as its suppression by the Church.