Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope by Celia Viggo Wexler (review)

While there are in the United States alone thousands of women similar to the ten whom the author describes, fewer are as perceptive, well educated, and articulate as those whom Celia Viggo Wexler chose to interview for this book. Some are nationally and internationally known to those who follow contemporary church or social developments (Simone Campbell, Marianne Duddy-Burke, Diana Hayes, Frances Kissling, and the author herself), while the others are more regionally and/or topically focused (Barbara Blaine, Teresa Delgado, Sharon MacIsaac McKenna, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, and Johunda Sanders). The women’s lives are similar in several of their underlying convictions, as noted by Wexler in her introduction (9–10): “primacy of conscience, importance of social justice, rejection of the church’s opposition to women priests, and a faith that transcends the institutional church.”

Despite the similarities of convictions among the women, their individual biographies display the uniqueness of each. Those that tell of attempts to deal with circumstances that might seem destructively overwhelming are particularly revealing: One grew up homeless and moved with her mother from shelter to shelter, others were survivors of clergy, familial, or peer sex abuse. Still others achieved their extraordinary education while working several jobs, raising their children, and aggressively seeking out financial aid programs. Wexler reports each of the ten mini-biographies with clarity, focus, and, in the end, fidelity to the similarity that binds them into this one volume: the pain they experience(d) at the hands of Roman Catholic clergy and hierarchy.

While the pool of only ten women is too small to make many generalizations, it is worth noting that several of them have earned advanced degrees in their respective academic disciplines and are on faculties in graduate and undergraduate schools. Others of them do their teaching in less structured settings, as lecturers, researchers, and advocates—both in the public arena and in their families. Four of them either are or were members of religious communities of women. Some are married and some have children. Their distinguishing feature is their passion for the Roman Catholic community and for bettering the lot of its members, despite the odds.

The focus on details of each woman’s life is appropriate, for in them the reader will see and learn the power of each individual’s decision-making. And that is precisely the point of Wexler’s research: the hope that these women offer the world is the possibility of personal change, not necessarily of institutional reform.

This book is in many ways an easy read and it draws the reader in by its clear structure, human stories, and comprehensible rendering of ecclesial and spiritual concepts. Not written as a textbook, still it deserves and will find a welcome place on college reading lists and library shelves. Even more likely is the market that should develop among general readers and book discussion groups who have an interest in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church. After all, Wexler does state that one of her purposes in writing the book is to address the lack of conversation about the issues among like-minded women.