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AMERICAN CATHOLIC WOMEN, 1900–1965 l 187 asking, “Where is God calling us, what does God want us to do?” I remember thinking, “God wants us to go to America.” In the patriarchal culture of Korea, I was aware that my options were limited. I felt I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my potential if I stayed in Korea. And I felt that that’s not what God wanted. . . . I am culturally Catholic and remember my family going to church, praying morning, lunch, and evening prayers with me. . . . The Eucharist is very important to me and liturgy in general, with the liturgical year following the seasons, winter solstice and spring equinox. The cross is a reminder that Jesus is not this removed person, his opposition to injustice, his commitment to social justice, this is a symbol of communion to me. Generally, they find religious institutions suspect and question Church teaching and institutional hierarchy, as Juhi Ryo, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago and an adult convert to Catholicism, resonates with this perspective: At age 13 I immigrated to the U.S. I had a difficult time “fitting in” either in the Korean speaking churches or English speaking churches. . . . When I was 14 or 15, I rebelled and quit going to church on Sundays. I thought I should arrive at some sort of revelation about God on my own, just one-onone with God, at my most honest moments. . . . Even though I didn’t attend a church, I always thought myself a Christian. As a generation exposed to many different nationalities, cultures, and lifestyles, this group values tolerance and pluralism. They are also open to many different religious traditions. Finally, community, another deeply held value by Generation X Catholics, is a group of people with a common spiritual purpose and commitment. A Korean American woman comments on her spiritual practice individually and with a community: I also practice yoga and sit in silence for meditation . What is meaningful to me in my practice with others is a circle of people sharing symbolism of giving birth to light and the divine. Asian American Catholic women have been instrumental in shaping and preserving Catholic teachings, practices, and institutions within their communities. From the beginning of Asian immigrant history in the United States at the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, women have been primary role models of faith at home with their families, in internment camps and refugee camps, in their parishes , in the institutional Church, and in their work in the communities where they have settled. SOURCES: An important treatment of Asian American history from women’s perspective can be found in the anthology Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women (1989), edited by Asian Women United of California . A highly readable collection of essays, this book is written for a general audience with great attention to presenting the voices of the women. Quotes by and about Japanese women on Hawaiian plantations as well as the Korean picture brides come from essays in this book. References to the early Chinese and Japanese mission churches, Catholic outreach to the first Filipino communities on the West Coast, and the work of Japanese religious in World War II internment camps come from a recent book explicitly concerned with Asian immigrants and the U.S. Catholic Church titled, Keeping Faith: European and Asian Catholic Immigrants (2000), edited by Jeffrey M. Burns, Ellen Skerrett, and Joseph M. White. The book is a valuable collection of primary historical documents, ranging from diocesan, parish, and clerical commentaries on ethnic groups to firsthand accounts by members of the groups themselves . An extensive collection, it covers European groups from the beginning of the country’s history to the influx of Irish, Italian, and German immigrants in the nineteenth century, to the Asian immigrants of the twentieth. Quotes by Asian American Catholic women without reference to published material are taken from personal interviews conducted for this essay from 2000 to 2002. Ms. Cecile Motus, Coordinator for Ethnic Ministries, Office for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees at the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., contributed her research about Vietnamese American Catholic Women to this article. AMERICAN CATHOLIC WOMEN, 1900–1965 Debra Campbell THE YEARS BETWEEN 1900 and 1965 ushered in unprecedented turbulence and change for American women, including Catholic women. What made Catholic women’s experience profoundly different...

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