Faithful Daughters

Chapter four explores how two conservative, fraternal orders for Catholic laywomen – the Catholic Daughters of America (CDA) and the Daughters of Isabella (DI) – experienced the upheavals of feminism and Vatican II. The two groups attempted to reassess their organizations and beliefs in the wake of Vatican II, seriously considering new ways of viewing both Catholicism and Catholic womanhood. Ultimately, however, the groups rejected new conceptions of laywomen’s identity and vocations, affirming complementarity and female difference. Analysis of their records suggests that these laywomen perceived their power to be linked to traditional perceptions of Catholic womanhood and their own obedience to authority. As a backlash to the changes of Vatican II began in the mid-1970s, they had little incentive to adjust their worldview.

Catholic (Non)Feminism

In this chapter, the history of the National Council of Catholic Women in the 1960s and 1970s – the years during and following Vatican II – is reassessed. The NCCW has been commonly perceived as a powerful anti-feminist organization for Catholic laywomen that was controlled by the Catholic hierarchy, but its archives reveal a sustained effort to engage with feminist ideas after the Second Vatican Council. Although most of the NCCW’s leadership did not self-identify as feminist, the group espoused many feminist beliefs, particularly about women’s leadership, opportunity, challenging ideas about women’s vocation, and women’s right to participate fully in the life of the Catholic church. The NCCW, under the leadership of Margaret Mealey, developed new organizational structures, educational programs, and publications to educate their membership about changing gender roles and the need to press the church for greater inclusion. Comparison to the international organization the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations (WUCWO), reveals the limitations of their feminism, however. Whereas WUCWO was willing to openly embrace feminism and feminist activism, NCCW was divided and preferred not to self-identify as feminist.

Legacies

The Epilogue considers recent attempts to affirm the importance of Catholic laywomen in the church and extend their participation in decision making, while upholding Catholic teaching on gender essentialism and complementarity. Such limited efforts must be placed in the context of the 1960s and 1970s, when Catholic women’s leadership was also affirmed, and yet these women were still limited to prescribed roles and excluded from power. The work that Catholic laywomen did in these years to challenge Catholic teaching on gender roles, and remake laywomen’s identity, has been largely ignored and forgotten. As a result, the church, and particularly Pope Francis, continue to give lip service to laywomen’s dignity while failing to listen to their voices or give them genuine authority.

On Their Own Behalf

This chapter introduces the argument that Catholic laywomen expanded on the changes of Vatican II by exploring shifting understandings of gender on a large scale in the ten years following the Second Vatican Council. The historical record reveals a significant output of written material in these years, written by laywomen, and intended to probe unsettled questions about gender rising in those uncertain times. Despite the official church’s reluctance to reassess its teaching on gender roles, moderate and often non-feminist laywomen used ideas from the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s to challenge accepted definitions of Catholic womanhood. In particular, Catholic women questioned the immutability of gender roles, and the accepted and wide-spread teaching of complementarity. They also challenged narrow conceptions of laywomen’s vocation, both spiritual and professional.

Complementarity and Intimate Life

This chapter focuses on the community of lay Catholic women who wrote for the magazine Marriage, a magazine for Catholic couples. Transitioning gender roles were a major preoccupation in the magazine in the years during and following Vatican II. Catholics debated issues of vital importance to the identity of Catholic laywomen, including complementarity, gender essentialism, working women, male headship in the family and feminism. The chapter also examines Catholic attitudes toward marital sexuality after the Rhythm Method was largely abandoned by American Catholics as a means of contraception. Although the magazine remained moderate in its responses to the women’s movement, analysis suggests that attitudes about Catholic women’s role in the church, home, and the workplace shifted significantly. Acceptance of complementarity was waning by the mid-1970s as increasing numbers of Catholic laywomen challenged cultural beliefs about Catholic womanhood.

Womanhood Is Sisterhood

This chapter uses the group the Theresians as a case study to analyze shifting perceptions of Catholic laywomen’s vocation in the 1960s and 1970s. The Theresians was founded in the early 1960s by Fr. Elwood Voss as a group for laywomen to promote vocations to the Catholic sisterhoods. The organization’s founding was an outgrowth of the perceived vocation crisis that began in the late 1950s in the American church. Theresians at this time were consistently taught to privilege the “higher” vocation of women religious (nuns) rather than their own vocations as married or single laywomen. Such beliefs were reinforced by a mid-century Catholic culture that discouraged friendship between laywomen and sisters, and emphasized not only sisters’ special sanctity, but also their authority over laywomen. Over time, however, lay and religious Theresians came to challenge the idea of laywomen’s inferiority, and the group sought new ways of expressing and affirming laywomen’s vocational choices and Catholic women’s self-definition.

Killing Vocations over Wheaties and Milk

The turn of the 1960s marked a time of extreme demographic challenges for the American Catholic church. While the number of vocations to religious life was rising, the church itself was experiencing massive growth due to the baby boom of the post-war years. There simply were not enough women religious (nuns) to staff the growing number of Catholic schools required to educate the youth of the church. In response, Catholic periodicals signaled what they called a “vocation crisis” starting as early as 1958. An analysis of the articles produced at the height of the crisis in the first half of the 1960s reveals, not only the church’s fears at this unique moment, but also its perception of Catholic laywomen. Laywomen were most frequently blamed for causing the crisis by holding back their daughters from religious life. They were counseled to sacrifice everything for the church in order to achieve sanctity, and criticized for their failure to do so. The literature of the vocation crisis reveals common assumptions about laywomen’s vocation and its importance in the early 1960s.