Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement (review)

The American Catholic feminist movement, which Mary J. Henold examines in this history, was primarily a phenomenon of women religious, and it almost annihilated their world. This book is thus an account of the early years of a tragedy. But the author does not seem to know it; so reading it is something like hearing "Dies Irae" sung to the tune of "Seventy-Six Trombones."

Henold never knew the Catholic universe that flourished from pioneer times through the 1950s. It demanded extraordinary heroism, courage, and apostolic zeal of women religious, who were missionaries, builders, nurses, educators, and social workers to Native Americans, urban immigrants, poor Southern blacks, and frontier farmers. They operated orphan homes, nursed wounded soldiers from both armies during the Civil War, and fought city halls and chancery offices. They were college presidents and hospital CEOs when few women held such positions. Their numbers were always modest, peaking at 180,000 in 1965, but their accomplishments were stunning.

But by 1974, when Henold was born, most women's communities had effectively abandoned the charism of carrying one's cross. Certainly a scholar need not live in an era to write its history. Catholic and Feministis adapted from Henold's doctoral dissertation, and it reflects thorough archival research. What she reports did happen; the names and dates are accurate. Henold sees Catholic feminism as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council. It was an expression of the nuns' Catholic faith, she says, describing their revolt and even eventual apostasy as justified.

Catholic feminism was indeed a consequence of the council, but I reject her rationale. Conciliar directives for the renewal of religious life were widely misinterpreted. The turmoil of the times disrupted the sisters' lives, shook their certitude, and unsettled their identity, leaving them vulnerable to radicalization. In the guise of "renewal," agitators inundated them in neo-mod-ernist skepticism, Jungian psychology, encounter therapy, and feminist liberation theology. Their Catholic faith destroyed, many nuns seized on feminism as a substitute belief. A strong-minded remnant kept the unadulterated faith, but in most communities rebels seized power. The evidence is clear in the record of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the formal liaison group between women's congregations and the hierarchy.

Like children from Hamelin trooping after the Pied Piper, nuns began vanishing from parishes. Many joined a precipitate exodus from religious life, driven by disillusion, disorientation, or rebel persecution. Others changed careers; between 1965 and 1975, more than half of American teaching sisters fled their classrooms, often to enter master's programs in catechetics or theology.

Dissident books appeared, written by Mary Daly, Sidney Callahan, Rosemary Radford Reuther, and other Catholic feminists. Their articles, often published in Americaor Commonwealmagazines, were discussed in secular publications such as Timeand Newsweek. In the nascent prolife movement, activists puzzled over the failure of women religious to enlist as expected.

Catholic school students reported that "Sister said" they need not attend Sunday Mass, confess sins, or remain virgin until marriage. Saints and scholars of the "pre-Vatican II" past were replaced in their curricula by new writers such as Gregory Baum, Hans Küng, and Malcolm X. Catholic culture, rooted in the Creed and the sacraments, seemed to be committing suicide.

Perhaps because a dissertation requires an original premise, Henold insists that hers is the first book-length study of Catholic feminism. Not even feminist partisan Mary Jo Weaver's New Catholic Women(San Francisco, 1985) meets Henold's standards. She calls Weaver's revealing report on Catholic feminism "the most influential portrait of the movement to date" (p. 246n2) but rejects it as less comprehensive than her own. One book she does commend is Defecting in Place(New York, 1994), an essay collection edited by Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter, with Protestants Adair Lummis and Allison Stokes.

Henold never addresses the substance of...