October 1, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)
From the Pews in the Back

Edited by Kate Dugan and Jennifer Owens

(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2009),

236 + xxiv pages

http://www.litpress.org/Detail.aspx?ISBN=9780814632581

This review begins with the caveat that it has been written by an aging Catholic male whose opinions can be considered for whatever they’re worth in this context.  Despite that limitation, I do consider myself sympathetic towards the central objective of the writers, equity in the Catholic Church for women and gay/lesbian people.

From the Pews in the Back is a collection of 29 brief personal accounts about life in the Catholic community, interspersed with introductions and commentary by two editors.  All the contributors are people of faith and dedicated feminists; most are students or graduates of theology programs (primarily Harvard Divinity School); many believe that they have been called by God to be priests; most have wondered whether to leave the Church, and have decided to stay; many have given years of their lives to volunteer work in support of social justice; some are children of former nuns or priests; some are gay; some are married with children.

The book is divided into five sections.  The first, “Growing Up Catholic,” recounts childhoods lived in homes so overtly Catholic that relatively few contemporary urban women can likely resonate with the experiences described.

“Faith in Action” describes experiences across a variety of cultures.  The most moving for me was the cry of an eighth-generation American woman of Mexican heritage, who says that the sexist patriarchy of her heritage is matched only by the machismo in the Catholic Church.  In both societies, “discrimination is shamelessly present, and there is a constant reminder that women are second-class citizens.”  Finding herself unable to confess her sins to a priest who represents such discrimination, she felt that she had experienced the sacrament of penance on her own terms, in soulful dialogue with “women who worked in the church.”

“Being a Catholic Woman” begins with the reflection of a woman who was asked by an “open-minded” male friend, “You’re Catholic? Why?… But you’re so smart!”  The author admits that she simultaneously loves and loathes her church, but she stays.  In a second article, a nursing mother experiences a deep understanding of the Eucharistic words “take and eat.”  In “Coming Out Catholic,” a lesbian finds inspiration in the writings of St. Theresa of Lisieux.  “May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”

In the section on Vocation (which sometimes but not always refers to a vocation to the priesthood), one woman declares that “if I had ignored my true calling in life, I would have become a nun.”  Instead, she perceives that her true calling is to pay attention to the daily challenges of following God as a Catholic lesbian.

The concluding section, “Spiritual Identity,” begins with a chapter by a married New York journalist who speaks of “the corrosive corruption of a Church that fetishizes authority and infantilizes the voice of its people.”  She remains Catholic “because I believe what I think is the heart of it, and because leaving seems like treason.”

From these examples, it is hoped that potential readers can decide whether to undertake a book full of such viewpoints.  For myself, I wish that more “ordinary” women were represented: most of the women I know who were born in the 70s and 80s had a much more secular upbringing than these authors; few of them have become theology students; many of them are disaffiliated from the church of their grandparents (because most of their parents are similarly disaffiliated).  This book doesn’t reach out to most of the women I know, but the voices that are represented in these pages deserve to be heard.

Copyright by Noel Cooper

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