Gender Identities in American Catholicism

Gender Identities in American Catholicism
Author: Paula M. Kane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2001
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Gender Identities in American Catholicism contains over one hundred original documents that range temporally from the earliest days of American Catholicism to the present. These documents illustrate how gender is a prime determiner of social position in the church and in American society as a whole, and how changing attitudes to gender identities affect a community's self-understanding. These carefully selected texts show ways in which gender issues were constructed in the past and how they are reconstructed in the midst of historical developments. What may surprise many readers are the ways in which male domination was subtly challenged long before such epochal events as women's suffrage and the feminist revolution occurred. Taken together, these texts show the plurality of American Catholic ideas about gender and the tension between competing attitudes.

New Women of the Old Faith

New Women of the Old Faith
Author: Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2009-02-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0807889849

American Catholic women rarely surface as protagonists in histories of the United States. Offering a new perspective, Kathleen Sprows Cummings places Catholic women at the forefront of two defining developments of the Progressive Era: the emergence of the "New Woman" and Catholics' struggle to define their place in American culture. Cummings highlights four women: Chicago-based journalist Margaret Buchanan Sullivan; Sister Julia McGroarty, SND, founder of Trinity College in Washington, D.C., one of the first Catholic women's colleges; Philadelphia educator Sister Assisium McEvoy, SSJ; and Katherine Eleanor Conway, a Boston editor, public figure, and antisuffragist. Cummings uses each woman's story to explore how debates over Catholic identity were intertwined with the renegotiation of American gender roles.

The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism

The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism
Author: Margaret M. McGuinness
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2021-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108472656

Provides a concise yet comprehensive guide to understanding the complexity and diversity of the American Catholic experience.

Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan

Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan
Author: USCCB Publishing
Publisher: Usccb Pub.
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2010-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781601370921

"Developed by the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops"--T.p. verso.

The Laywoman Project

The Laywoman Project
Author: Mary J. Henold
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469654504

Summoning everyday Catholic laywomen to the forefront of twentieth-century Catholic history, Mary J. Henold considers how these committed parishioners experienced their religion in the wake of Vatican II (1962–1965). This era saw major changes within the heavily patriarchal religious faith—at the same time as an American feminist revolution caught fire. Who was the Catholic woman for a new era? Henold uncovers a vast archive of writing, both intimate and public facing, by hundreds of rank-and-file American laywomen active in national laywomen's groups, including the National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Daughters of America, and the Daughters of Isabella. These records evoke a formative period when laywomen played publicly with a surprising variety of ideas about their own position in the Catholic Church. While marginalized near the bottom of the church hierarchy, laywomen quietly but purposefully engaged both their religious and gender roles as changing circumstances called them into question. Some eventually chose feminism while others rejected it, but most, Henold says, crafted a middle position: even conservative, nonfeminist laywomen came to reject the idea that the church could adapt to the modern world while keeping women's status frozen in amber.

Building a Bridge

Building a Bridge
Author: James Martin
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 006287344X

“A treasure...a wise and entertaining book that should appeal to the spiritual pilgrim in all of us, no matter what the faith and no matter whether believer or nonbeliever.” – Chicago Tribune The New York Times bestselling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and Jesus: A Pilgrimage turns his attention to the relationship between LGBT Catholics and the Church in this loving, inclusive, and revolutionary book. A powerful call for tolerance, acceptance, and support—and a reminder of Jesus' message for us to love one another. In this moving and inspiring book, Martin offers a powerful, loving, and much-needed voice in a time marked by anger, prejudice, and divisiveness. On the day after the Orlando nightclub shooting, James Martin S.J. posted a video on Facebook in which he called for solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters. "The largest mass shooting in US history took place at a gay club and the LGBT community has been profoundly affected," he began. He then implored his fellow Catholics—and people everywhere—to "stand not only with the people of Orlando but also with their LGBT brothers and sisters." Father Martin's post went viral and was viewed more than 1.6 million times. Adapted from an address he gave to New Ways Ministry, a group that ministers to and advocates for LGBT Catholics, Building a Bridge provides a roadmap for repairing and strengthening the bonds that unite all of us as God's children. Martin uses the image of a two-way bridge to enable LGBT Catholics and the Church to come together in a call to end the "us" versus "them" mentality. Turning to the Catechism, he draws on the three criteria at the heart of the Christian ministry—"respect, compassion, and sensitivity"—as a model for how the Catholic Church should relate to the LGBT community. WINNER OF THE LIVING NOW BOOK AWARD IN SOCIAL ACTIVISM/CHARITY.

A Saint of Our Own

A Saint of Our Own
Author: Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2019-02-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469649489

What drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest, full of twists and turns over more than a century, to win an American saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints had left many of the faithful feeling spiritually unmoored. But while canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, reveals Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this panoramic, passionate chronicle of American sanctity. Catholics had another reason for petitioning the Vatican to acknowledge an American holy hero. A home-grown saint would serve as a mediator between heaven and earth, yes, but also between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was also about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton to many others that are failed, forgotten, or still under way—represented evolving national values as Catholics made themselves at home. Cummings's vision of American sanctity shows just how much Catholics had at stake in cultivating devotion to men and women perched at the nexus of holiness and American history—until they finally felt little need to prove that they belonged.

American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era

American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era
Author: Deirdre M. Moloney
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2003-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860441

Tracing the development of social reform movements among American Catholics from 1880 to 1925, Deirdre Moloney reveals how Catholic gender ideologies, emerging middle-class values, and ethnic identities shaped the goals and activities of lay activists. Rather than simply appropriate American reform models, ethnic Catholics (particularly Irish and German Catholics) drew extensively on European traditions as they worked to establish settlement houses, promote temperance, and aid immigrants and the poor. Catholics also differed significantly from their Protestant counterparts in defining which reform efforts were appropriate for women. For example, while women played a major role in the Protestant temperance movement beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic temperance remained primarily a male movement in America. Gradually, however, women began to carve out a significant role in Catholic charitable and reform efforts. The first work to highlight the wide-ranging contributions of the Catholic laity to Progressive-era reform, the book shows how lay groups competed with Protestant reformers and at times even challenged members of the Catholic hierarchy. It also explores the tension that existed between the desire to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with American values and the wish to preserve the distinctiveness of Catholic life.

Remapping the History of Catholicism in the United States

Remapping the History of Catholicism in the United States
Author: David J. Endres
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813229693

"For more than thirty years, the quarterly journal U.S. Catholic historian has mapped the diverse terrain of American Catholicism. This collection of essays, including seven of the most popular and path-breaking contributions of recent years, tells the story of Catholics previously underappreciated by historians: women, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and those on the frontier and borderlands."--Publisher description.

Just Love

Just Love
Author: Margaret Farley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2008-02-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 144114420X

Winner of the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion This long-awaited book by one of American Christianity's foremost ethicists proposes a framework for sexual ethics whereby justice is the criterion for all loving, including love that is related to sexual activity and relationships. It begins with historical and cross-cultural explorations, then addresses the large questions of embodiment, gender, and sexuality, and finally delineates the justice framework for sexual ethics. Though Just Love's particular focus is Christian sexual ethics, Farley's framework is broad enough to have relevance for multiple traditions. Also covered are specific issues in sexual ethics, including same-sex relationships, marriage and family, divorce and second marriage.