Download Free Constructions Of Feminine Identity In The Catholic Tradition Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Constructions Of Feminine Identity In The Catholic Tradition and write the review.

Christopher M. Flavin examines the ways in which late classical medieval women’s writings serve as a means of emphasizing both faith and social identity within a distinctly Christian, and later Catholic, tradition, which remains a major part of the understanding of faith and the self. Flavin focuses on key texts from the lives of desert saints and the Passio Perpetua to the autobiographies of Counter-Reformation women like Teresa of Ávila to illustrate the connections between the self and the divine.
Examining texts from the beginning of the Christian era through the Renaissance, the author demonstrates that the performative role of women writers is critical to understanding the place of the individual in the broader Catholic intellectual tradition in the Anglophone world.
The growing body of feminist literature in the late 20th and early 21st centuries demonstrates the phenomenal advances of feminist thought and movements in the context of church and society. Characteristic of this growth is the re-location of issues from the global North, and broadening of focus to include voices from the global South.
In the context of globalization new vistas and voices are emerging that trace new directions and seek to rephrase the central questions in the feminist discourse. This volume aims to highlight the changing face and color of feminist theological discourse, recognize innovative research in the field, and facilitate a global conversation among feminists engaged in theological ethics in the world church.
Growing numbers of young adults are either nonreligious or "spiritual but not religious," but this does not signal a lack of interest in religion and meaning-making. Though the lexicon describing sexuality and gender is quickly evolving, young people do not yet have satisfactory language to describe their fluid religious and spiritual identities. In Identities Under Construction Pamela Dickey Young and Heather Shipley undertake a focused study of youth sexual, religious, and gender identity construction. Drawing from survey responses and interviews with nearly five hundred participants, they reveal that youth today consider their identities fluid and open to change. Young people do not limit themselves to singular identity categories, experiencing the choice of one religion, of maleness or femaleness, or of a fixed sexuality as confining. Although they recognize various forces at work in identity construction - parents, peers, the internet - they regard themselves as the authors of their own identities. For most of the young adults in the study, even those who are most traditionally religious, religious opinions and values should adapt to changing social mores to ensure that people are not judged for their sexual choices or identities. Further, they are not judgmental of others' choices, even if they would not make these choices for themselves. Engaging religion and sexuality studies in new ways, Identities Under Construction calls for a new grammar of religion that better captures lived realities at a time when religious choice has broadened beyond choosing a single organized religious tradition.
The first anthology in English on modern Spanish women's history and identity formation.
Riots and demonstrations, the lifeblood of American social and political protest in the 1960s, are now largely a historical memory. But Mary Fainsod Katzenstein argues that protest has not disappeared--it has simply moved off the streets into the country's core institutions. As a result, conflicts over sexual harassment, affirmative action, and the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and people of color now touch us more than ever in our daily lives, whether we are among those seeking change or those threatened by its prospects. No one is more aware of this than women demanding change from within the United States military and the American Catholic church. Women in uniform are deeply patriotic and women active in the church are devoted to their callings. Yet Katzenstein shows that these women often feel isolated and demeaned, confronted by challenges as subtle as condescension and as blatant as career obstruction. Although faithful to their institutions, many have proved fearless in their attempts to reshape them. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred women in the military and the church--including senior officers, combat pilots, lay activists, and nuns--this book gives voice to the struggles and vision of these women as they have moved protest into the mainstream. Katzenstein shows why the military and the church, similarly hierarchical and insistent on obedience, have come to harbor deeply different forms of protest. She demonstrates that women in the military have turned to the courts and Congress, whereas feminists in the church have used "discursive" protests--writing, organizing workshops and conferences--to rethink in radical ways the meanings of faith and justice. These different strategies, she argues, reflect how the law regulates the military but leaves the church alone. Faithful and Fearless calls our attention to protest within institutions as a new stage in the history both of feminism and of social movements in America. The book is an inspiring account of strength in the face of adversity and a groundbreaking contribution to the study of American feminism, social protest, and the historical development of institutions in American society.
Building on various feminist theories of ethos, the authors in this collection explore how North American Catholic women from various periods, races, ethnicities, sexualities, and classes have used elements of the group’s positionality to make change. The women considered in the book range from the earliest Catholic sisters who arrived in the United States to women who held the Church hierarchy accountable for the sexual abuse scandals. The book analyzes women such as those in an African American order who developed an ethos that would resist racism. Chapters also consider better known Catholic women such as Dolores Huertas, Mary Daly, and Joan Chittister.
Weaving narratives with gendered analysis and historiography of Mexicans in the Midwest, Mexican Women and the Other Side of Immigration examines the unique transnational community created between San Ignacio Cerro Gordo, Jalisco, and Detroit, Michigan, in the last three decades of the twentieth century, asserting that both the community of origin and the receiving community are integral to an immigrant's everyday life, though the manifestations of this are rife with contradictions. Exploring the challenges faced by this population since the inception of the Bracero Program in 1942 in constantly re-creating, adapting, accommodating, shaping, and creating new meanings of their environments, Luz María Gordillo emphasizes the gender-specific aspects of these situations. While other studies of Mexican transnational identity focus on social institutions, Gordillo's work introduces the concept of transnational sexualities, particularly the social construction of working-class sexuality. Her findings indicate that many female San Ignacians shattered stereotypes, transgressing traditionally male roles while their husbands lived abroad. When the women themselves immigrated as well, these transgressions facilitated their adaptation in Detroit. Placed within the larger context of globalization, Mexican Women and the Other Side of Immigration is a timely excavation of oral histories, archival documents, and the remnants of three decades of memory.
This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to congregational studies in the UK. Through a series of innovative essays, it explores the difference that the increasingly post-Christian nature of British society is making to life in Christian congregations, and compares this to the very different scenario which exists in the USA. Contributions from leading scholars in the field include rich case studies of local communities and theoretical analyses which reflect on issues of method and develop broader understandings. Congregational studies is revealed as a rich and growing field of interest to scholars across many disciplines and to those involved in congregational life.
Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church argues that women can be validly ordained to ministerial office. O’Brien shows that claims by Roman dicasteries for an unbroken chain of authoritative tradition on the non-ordainability of women—a novel rather than traditional argument—are not historically supported. In the primitive Church, with the offices of deacon, presbyter, and bishop in process of development, women exercised ministries later understood as pertaining to those offices. The sub-apostolic period downplayed women’s ministry for reasons of cultural adaptation, not because it was thought that fidelity to Christ required it. Furthermore, extensive epigraphical evidence, from a wide geographical area, references women deacons and presbyters during the first millennium. Restrictive developments in the concept of ordination from the twelfth century onwards do not negate how, before that, women were validly ordained according to contemporary ecclesial understanding. Repeated canonical prohibitions on ordaining women show both that women were being ordained and how those bans were very selectively implemented. These canons were a cultural practice in search of a theology, and the subsequent theological justifications for restricting ordination to men appealed to supposed female inferiority against the background of priesthood as eminence rather than service. O’Brien shows that the assertion of women’s non-ordainability is a matter of canon law rather than doctrine. As such, that law can be reformed.