BOOK REVIEW
Good Catholic Girls - How Women Are Leading the
Fight to Change the Church by Angela Bonavoglia,
Harper Collins (Regan Books), 2005
There's a particular kinetic energy among Catholic
women - in itself, somewhat of a phenomenon. After all,
many Catholics and non-Catholics have wondered for decades
why women stay in one of the largest and oldest discriminating
institutions on the planet. Angela Bonavoglia puts the
question to rest in this invaluable recap of who stays,
what they're doing and where they're taking the rest
of us. When the company is this good, the work becomes
compelling, empowering and, yes, healing. Good Catholic
Girls is about the women who are moving toward full
equality in the Roman Catholic Church. Bonavoglia has
not written an academic treatise or a scholarly feminist
argument. Better - she has added with clarity and conviction
to the "good news" that is our Gospel.
Bonavoglia grew up in the 1950s/60s, uniformed, obeisant
parochialism so familiar to baby boomers. Equally familiar,
her path led to the itinerant mode of Catholics in exile
- but not without a deep-rooted connection to the liturgy
and the restorative grace of her faith. Her personal
revolution grew out of despair in the institutional
"demonization of sexuality …. I saw the Church as depriving
women of authority not only in the public sphere, by
forbidding women's ordination and access to the highest
levels of sacramental and jurisdictional power but also
in the private sphere, by usurping a woman's right to
her own conscience and moral voice on matters sexual,
marital, and maternal." Thus began Bonavoglia's journey,
pretty much where so many others, including Christ's,
began-amongst women. Indeed, she says, that is an elephant
on the altar.
Bonavoglia's interviews vivify a sweeping panorama
of women in the Church from Mary Magdalene to Sr. Joan
Chittister and from Catherine of Siena to Elisabeth
Johnson. Together with the likes of Edwina Gately, Frances
Kissling, and Mary Ramerman - what we hear seems to
rest and grow on the obscure and the obscured, the silenced
and the banned until we recognize the bold stillness
of a mountain revealed. Conferences and symposia, statements
and resolutions, new organizations and old, the courageous,
the dismissed and the excommunicated - all share the
language and the hope of truth revealed.
One might expect a few angry outbursts among these
women. Regardless the grist, anger is not a player in
Good Catholic Girls - educated conviction is
the driver. Some of the more blatant efforts to marginalize
women have made the case against full equality in the
Church something of a caricature - for lay people in
general, but women in particular. Consider the liturgical
calendar that gives such short shrift to female voices
and, effectively, fuels the preposterous thinking that
because we don't hear women's voices in our practice,
there weren't any or, worse, they don't "count"; the
shallow dismissal of women's ordination based, in part,
on dissimilar genitalia; the befuddled response of the
all-male hierarchy to open dialogue with all of
those whom Vatican II called the "people of God"; and
the curiously narrow understanding by Church "fathers"
of vocations among the "living Body of Christ." Were
misogyny intelligent, it might have done better than
this.
In the end, like so many before them, the women mentioned,
quoted and/or interviewed in this book are with us despite
the Church of clericalism and secrecy, arrogance and
power mongering. The Church of the 6th century's spin
on Mary Magdalene was, centuries later, corrected by
Biblical scholarship, restoring Mary to her rightful
place in the forefront of Christian history; the 14th
Century Catherine of Siena and 16th Century Teresa of
Avila were finally "recognized" in 1970 as Doctors of
the Church. Inevitability leaves a fascinating paper
trail.
The whole question of women in the Church has become
so fraught with wisdom and common sense that the current
Pope found the very discussion of women's ordination
to be a closed case. It seems that Church leadership
has been so undone by the prospect of women priests,
that the Vatican "expanded Canon Law so that Catholics
who refused to accept certain Church teachings - including
the Church's refusal to ordain women - could be excommunicated."
The sex abuse crisis and its cover-up, as well as recent
and current political events, underscore the extent
to which this papal administration is prepared to go
in keeping things just the way they are. And lay Catholics
are demonstrating ever more forcefully the extent to
which they are refusing to acquiesce.
Regardless the revolutionizing research of academics
in feminist theology, the change to a fully inclusive
Church will be the work not of scholars whose brilliance
seems most at home in its own milieu but among the messengers
who carry their words, like Angela Bonavoglia, and among
the marginalized who find ways to live their vocations.
That challenge exists for both women and men; it has
found a rich variety of iterations in the lives of the
women named and in the many organizations Bonavoglia
notes, among them Voice of the Faithful, Call To Action,
and the National Coalition of American Nuns.
The women we meet in Good Catholic Girls are
not leaving the Church and yet they are not staying
- they are changing the Church while their work moves
and alters everything and everyone it passes. These
good, Catholic girls embolden the vision of inclusivity
and animate the very word "Christian." Bonavoglia deftly
interprets the law of conscience articulated in the
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:
"For woman has in her heart a law written by God; to
obey it is the very dignity of woman; according to it,
she will be judged."
Dignity restored is what Good Catholic Girls is all
about.
P.L.Thorp
Voice
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