Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set

RELIGIOUS WOMEN IN COLONIAL MEXICO

RELIGIOUS WOMEN IN COLONIAL MEXICO l 133 for women’s ordination at bishop’s meetings and ordinations of men. In 1978 lobbying at a Catholic bishop’s conference in Washington resulted in the bishops accepting a three-year process of dialogue with the Women’s Ordination Conference on issues of women in the Church. This dialogue, in turn, resulted in a decision to write a Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on women in the Church. The first drafts of this letter condemned “sexism as sin” and promoted a “partnership model” of women and men in the Church, family, and society. But intervention of the Vatican to insist on the traditional anthropology of complementarity, and on explicit condemnation of birth control, abortion, and women’s ordination, resulted in a document that became increasingly unacceptable to the progressive wing of women and even some bishops in the Church. The result was the tabling of the Pastoral Letter by the bishops. This failure to agree on an official document on women in the Church signaled the growing polarization of North American Catholicism on issues of women (Weaver, ibid.; Fiedler and Pomerleau, “The Women’s Ordination Movement in the Roman Catholic Church”). Women involved in the Women’s Ordination movement and Catholic feminist theology became more and more doubtful whether ordination was even an appropriate goal for Catholic women, given the repressive system of control by the hierarchical Church over both the laity and the clergy. Catholic feminists began to look instead to the idea of “women-church,” a feminist-based community movement where women could design their own liturgies and reflect on their aspirations as women in the church and in society, as the place for their spiritual nurture and support (Hunt, “Women-Church”). The Women of the Church Convergence networked Catholic feminist organizations, both women-church groups and lay feminist organizations, such as Catholics for a Free Choice, the Women’s Ordination Conference, and WATER (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, a Washington-based group promoting Catholic feminist thought and practice in the United States and internationally.) Religious women and laity in African and Hispanic Catholic communities also began to shape their own distinctive forms of feminism. Among African American women, religious, feminist or womanist reflection grew within the movements that began to meet together to shape their distinct perspectives as black Catholics. Hispanic women also joined with Hispanic men to shape a distinct perspective as Catholic Hispanics in the United States. But Catholic women religious, with increasing numbers of laywomen, also developed Las Hermanas to question how women were treated, not only by the larger Catholic Church (including white Catholic feminism ) but also within Hispanic Catholicism itself (Medina , “Las Hermanas”). As the Vatican became increasingly vigorous in its efforts at retrenchment and restoration of pre–Vatican II forms of Catholicism, against feminist and democratization movements, progressive Catholic movements, such as Women of the Church Convergence, the Women’s Ordination Conference, and Call to Action, a lay progressive movement, began to take on the aspect of a parachurch within North American Catholicism, gathering in its own liturgical communities, sometimes with ex-priests, sometimes with lay presiders. These groups developed their own media of communication, newsletters, and newspapers and organized national conferences to continue to promote their reform perspectives . At the same time conservative Catholicisms developed that defined these dissenting Catholics as “no longer Catholics,” claiming to be the only true representative of faithful Catholicism. This polarization has taken on the dimensions of an impasse where dialogue is not only not possible but officially not allowed on the critical issues, such as birth control, abortion, women’s ordination, and even an anthropology of “partnership,” rather than masculine-feminine complementarity. The future of this polarization is uncertain. It may result in an increasing departure of Catholics to other Christian groups or to secular identities. Many Catholic women who wish to be ordained are leaving Catholicism for Protestant churches that ordain women. Catholicism may become a smaller, more unified, conservative denomination . Yet Catholic reform organizations may be able to maintain their existence and create, over a period of time, a new synthesis of traditional and progressive Catholicism. That Catholicism in North America will return to a public consensus on issues of women and sexuality any time soon appears unlikely. Catholic women in North America have worked within and alongside the official Church—and occasionally in opposition to it. In these various relations to the Church, women have been...