Non-ordained
Examining the Level of Female Religious Political Engagement and Social Policy Influence within the American Catholic Church
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.32964Keywords:
Catholic, clergy, institution, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, NETWORK, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, women religiousAbstract
The Catholic Church, constructed on an all-male clerical model, is a hierarchical and gendered institution, creating barriers to female leadership. In interviewing members of the clergy and women religious of the faith, this article examines how female non-ordained and male clerical religious leaders engage and influence social policy. It specifically addresses how women religious maneuver around the institutional constraints of the Church, in order to take action on social issues and effect change. In adding to the scholarship on this topic, I argue that part of the strategy of women religious in navigating barriers of the institutional Church is not only knowing when to act outside of the formal hierarchy, but realizing when it is in the benefit of their social policy objectives to collaborate with it. This maneuvering may not always safeguard women religious from institutional scrutiny, as seen by the 2012 Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, but instead captures the tension between female religious and the clergy. It also highlights how situations of institutional scrutiny can have positive implications for female religious leaders, their policy goals and congregations. Finally, this examination shows how even when women are appointed to leadership posts within the institutional Church, they can face limitations of acceptance and other constraints that are different from their female religious counterparts working within their own respective religious congregations or outside organizations.
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References
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Vatican 2016 Catholic Church Hierarchy. Online: https://www.vatican.com (accessed July 9, 2016).
----- 2012 Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_20120418_assessment-lcwr_en.html (accessed July 9, 2016).
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Wittberg, Patricia. 1989 Non-ordained Workers in the Catholic Church: Power and Mobility Among American Nuns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28(2): 148- 161. doi:10.2307/1387056
Adams, J. 2007 Stained Glass Makes the Ceiling Visible: Organizational Opposition to Women in Congregational Leadership. Gender & Society 21(1): 80-105. doi: 10.1177/0891243206293773
Berrelleza, Erick, S.J. Mary L. Gautier, and Mark M. Gray. 2014 Population Trends among Religious Institutes of Women. Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Online: file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/WomenReligious%20(2).pdf (accessed July 11, 2016).
Bradley Hagerty, Barbara. 2012 Sisters and Vatican II: A Generational Tug of War. (10 October). National Public Radio. Online: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/10/16265083/sisters- and-vatican-ii-a-generational-tug-of-war (accessed August 4, 2016).
Brigham, Erin. 2015 Women Religious and the Public Voice of Catholicism. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 31(2): 109-126. doi:10.2979/jfemistudreli.31.2.109
Burns, Gene. 1992 The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World. Berkley: University of California Press.
Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. 2017 Frequently Requested Church Statistics. Online: http://cara.georgetown.edu/frequently-requested-church-statistics/ (accessed February 04, 2017).
Djupe, Paul A. and Laura R. Olson. 2013 Stained-glass Politics and Descriptive Representation: Does Associational Leadership by Women Engender Political Engagement Among Women? Politics, Groups and Identities 1(3): 329-348. doi: 10.1080/21565503.2013.816632
Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 1993 Patriarchal Bargains and Latent Avenues of Social Mobility: Nuns in the Roman Catholic Church. Gender & Society 7(3): 400-414. doi:10.1177/089124393007003005
Flannery, Austin O.P. (eds) 1982 Vatican Council II, Vol. 1: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Costello Publishing Company: Newport, New York.
Gray, Mark M., Mary L. Gautier and Melissa A. Cidade. 2011 The Changing Face of U.S. Catholic Parishes. National Association for Lay Emerging Models for Pastoral Leadership and Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Online: file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Parishes% 20Phase%20One%20(6).pdf. (accessed July 11, 2016).
Katzenstein, Mary Fainsod. 1995 Discursive Politics and Feminist Activism in the Catholic Church. In Feminist Organizations, edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin, 35- 52. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
----- 1998 Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest Inside the Church and Military. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kuhn, Elizabeth. 2005 The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns. New York: Double Day
Libresco, Leah. 2014 Pope Francis Called for More Work from Priest, But 20 Percent of Parishes Don’t Have One. (September 24). Five Thirty-Eight Blog. Online: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/pope-francis-us-visit-catholic-priest-shortage/ (accessed July 11, 2016).
Lynch, Julia. 2013 Aligning Sampling Strategies with Analytical Goals. In Interview Research in Political Science, edited by Layna Mosely, 31-44 New York: Cornell University Press.
Leadership Conference of Women Religious 2017 About Us. https://lcwr.org/about (accessed January 09, 2017).
Lieblich, Julia. 1992 Sisters Lives of Devotion and Defiance. New York: Ballantine Books.
McElwee, Joshua. 2015 Vatican Ends Controversial Three-Year Oversight of U.S. Sisters Leaders. (April 16). National Catholic Reporter. Online: http://ncronline.org/news/ vatican/ vatican-and-lcwr-announce-end-controversial-three-year-oversight (accessed July 05, 2016).
Olson, Laura R., Sue E.S. Crawford, and Melissa M. Deckman. 2005 Women with a Mission: Religion, Gender, and the Politics of Women Clergy. Tusacloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
Olson, Laura, Karen V. Guth and James L. Guth. 2003 The Lotto and the Lord: Religious Influence on the Adoption of a Lottery in South Carolina. Sociology of Religion 64(1): 87-110. doi: 10.2307/3712270
Ross Sammon, Margaret. 2008 The Politics of the U.S. Catholic Bishops: The Centrality of Abortion. In Catholics and Politics, edited by Kristin E. Hayer, Mark J. Rozell and Michael Genovese, 11-26. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Schlumpf, Heidi. 2011 Femme Fidele: How Women Who Work for the Church Keep the Faith. U.S. Catholic 76(1): 12-17. Online: http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2010 11/femme-fidele-how-women-who-work-church-keep-faith (accessed June 25, 2016).
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth. 2002 Public Discourse, Religion, and Wo/men’s Struggles for Justice. DePaul Law Review 51(4): 1077-1102. Online: http://via.library.depaul.edu cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1575&context=law-review (accessed June 29, 2016).
Stalp, Marybeth C. and Bill Winders. 2002 Power in the Margins: Gendered Organizational Effects on Religious Activism. Religious Research Association 2(1): 41-60 doi:10.2307/3512143
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 2017 About USCCB. http://usccb.org/about/index.cfm (accessed January 09, 2017).
Vatican 2016 Catholic Church Hierarchy. Online: https://www.vatican.com (accessed July 9, 2016).
----- 2012 Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_20120418_assessment-lcwr_en.html (accessed July 9, 2016).
Wallace, Ruth. 1988 Catholic Women and the Creation of a New Social Reality. Gender & Society 2(1): 24-38. doi:10.1177/089124388002001003
Wittberg, Patricia. 1989 Non-ordained Workers in the Catholic Church: Power and Mobility Among American Nuns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28(2): 148- 161. doi:10.2307/1387056
Published
2017-04-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Kraybill, J. (2017). Non-ordained: Examining the Level of Female Religious Political Engagement and Social Policy Influence within the American Catholic Church. Fieldwork in Religion, 11(2), 137-156. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.32964
