BOOK REVIEW

Listening to the voices of Catholic women

By Teresa M. Hanafin, Globe Staff, 11/12/1992

Buy it on  Amazon.com   (Boston.com receives a small percentage of each sale.)

iven all the conflicts between being a Catholic and being an American woman -- the church's opposition to birth control, abortion and the ordination of women, to name a few -- one wonders why any woman would choose to remain part of the church. The answers, explored through the voices of dozens of women in Jane Redmont's "Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today," are varied, complex, and ultimately touching.

There is Karen Doherty of Manhattan, assistant director of membership for the American Management Association, who grew angry at the church for its refusal to allow her to divorce a violent man and still maintain her standing in the church. Yet she remains faithful: "When I pray in a community with the symbols and traditions I've been raised with," she says, "they speak to me."

Or Marlene Jones of California, who briefly attended a Baptist church, but returned to her Catholic roots. Although some traditions annoy her -- "One day they're going to realize that women can be priests," she says -- she finds comfort in others. "I was Catholic," she says. "It was something that was innate. That's what it's all about. It's the tradition."

Redmont turned on her tape recorder and let it run, not shutting it off until she had interviewed more than 100 women across the country ranging in age from 17 to 92. The result is fascinating: women speaking in their own words about their religious and personal lives and their relationship with God and the church, interspersed with essays by Redmont exploring topics raised by the women: knowing God, the role of sex, Catholic women as ministers.

While not all the women interviewed by Redmont criticized the paternalism of the church, almost every woman questioned whether the church respected them as valuable, fully adult human beings. Many of them longed not just for female priests and bishops, but for a more visible, public voice in the hierarchy of the church -- a decision-making role, rather than the traditional supporting role that women have always filled.

Redmont believes that American Catholic women carry a dual burden: As women, they are expected to be the caretakers of their families; as Catholics, they are given the public mission of caring for others. The result is that many women "do for others" to the point of neglecting themselves -- the so- called generous lives of the title.

In many ways, the yearnings of women in the United States are unique in the worldwide church. Redmont maintains that Catholics in this country bring a uniquely American experience to their relationship with the church. Accustomed to free speech and participatory democracy in every other aspect of their lives, many Catholic women find themselves labeled rebellious when they question church dogma. Most disagreed with the church's official teachings, in both theory and practice, but did not see themselves as defiant for not following those teachings. Rather, they shrugged off many of the church's views as simply irrelevant to their practical experience.

What Redmont discovered is that many women stay in the church because they have a deeply personal, spiritual connection to God, and attending Mass provides a forum for them to renew that relationship. "The belief that God is present in the ordinary life is characteristically Catholic," she writes. "It is also typically female." Nancy Vitti of Brooklyn, who drives a school bus for disabled children, is one such example. "I speak to God the way I'm speaking to you," she says.

As interesting as the women's first-person testimonials are, Redmont's chapters on the issues raised by the women are equally provocative. She discusses the demographic distribution of American Catholics, and how Catholics' presence sometimes infuses the political and social life of a region. As Sister Mary Boys, a professor of theology at Boston College, points out, "You'd never find a Monsignor O'Brien Highway in Seattle." Redmont also borrows from Rev. Andrew Greeley's book, "The Catholic Myth," to make the point that American Catholics -- now better educated and more highly paid than their Protestant counterparts -- are changing the American face of the church from that of immigrant to professional, making it more ecumenical, more supportive of women's rights -- changes that often put them at odds with the institutional church.

But Redmont's women simply refuse to allow the church to drive them away. As Caryl Rivers, author and Boston University professor, whom Redmont credits with persuading her to write the book, says: "I am Catholic by my definition, which is the only one that really matters."

This story ran on page 61 of the Boston Globe on 11/12/1992.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.