Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church by Jill Peterfeso

Abstract

Reviewed by: Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church by Jill Peterfeso Marian Ronan Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church. By Jill Peterfeso. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2020. 272 pp. $30.00. As I plunged into Jill Peterfeso’s Womanpriest, I quickly recalled Mary Fainsod Katzenstein’s 1998 analysis of feminist protest inside the Catholic Church and the U.S. military, Faithful and Fearless. For Katzenstein, feminist protest in the Catholic Church had until then used a form of “discursive radicalism,”—through publications, newspaper ads, and conferences rather than outright “protest activities”—to challenge the institutional church’s position on women. Faithful and Fearless was, however, published four years before the first ordination of Roman Catholic womanpriests on the Danube in 2002 and multiple such ordinations since then. And as Peterfeso argues, these developments expand considerably Katzenstein’s framework; Catholic feminist protest is now inside and outside the institution, in “transgression” as well as “tradition.” Peterfeso uses an expanded ethnographic method, involving interviews, observation, and data collection, but also some of her own experiences in womanpriest communities and how this has influenced [End Page 87] her Catholic identity. She draws on this research to identify actions and language showing the impact of womanpriests on contemporary Roman Catholicism. Chapter 1 details the ways in which womanpriests use the deeply personal narrative of “calling.” Focusing on the central experience of “being called,” such narratives enable these womanpriests to dispute Rome’s claim that they are nothing but activist agitators. Rather, they are faithful Catholics who, in order to obey God’s call, must disobey a patriarchal institution. Chapter 2 argues that the retention of “Roman Catholic” in the group’s title demonstrates a commitment to Roman Catholic identity. It also explores ways in which Roman Catholicism since Vatican II has sent out mixed messages, bringing the word “conscience” into the Catholic vernacular even as it refuses women who feel called to priesthood the right to follow their consciences. These methods combine “conflict and creativity” (chapter 3). In response to the decline of a male-priest-centered western Roman Catholicism, womanpriests create “discipleships of equals” that enable members to express their Catholicism more fully. But such creativity also generates conflict, as when the Association of Roman Catholic Womanpriests split from the original Roman Catholic Womanpriests in 2010 over how to structure leadership without authoritarianism. Womanpriest ordinations (chapter 4) are a prime instance of such creativity and conflict, eliciting not only Vatican condemnation and excommunication as “contra legem,” but also feminist critique for their ostensible reinforcement of “subordination.” Yet such ordinations also bring much-needed public attention to the issue of women’s subordination in the church. The emphasis on the centrality of the community in the celebration of the sacraments is another of the transformative effects of womanpriest leadership (chapter 5). But this, too, elicits creativity and conflict, with some participants seeing the ontological nature of the [End Page 88] sacraments and apostolic succession as more important than community participation. Chapter 6 then examines how womanpriests’ situation as unsalaried “worker priests” facilitates their involvement with other groups and group leaders, while Chapter 7 explores how the actual bodies of womanpriests have the potential to reposition the gendered, sexual, and sacred natures of the priesthood. Finally, in the conclusion, Peterfeso extends earlier reflections about her involvement in a womanpriest congregation in St. Louis, Therese of Divine Peace Inclusive Roman Catholic Community. Initially she was unable to decide what to make of the liturgies there—did they remind her of the thousands of Catholic liturgies throughout her life or deviate too much from them? Peterfeso’s initial concerns—about the absence of kneelers, for example, and the “enthusiastic affection” throughout womanpriest liturgies—receded, however, as she came to appreciate engaging more directly with others, in shared homilies and other liturgical interactions. Her experience also intensified her discomfort with the church’s history of treating women as less holy than men. In the conclusion, Peterfeso raises certain critical questions about the future of the womanpriest movement, the small numbers and increasing age of its membership, and the negative attitudes toward women’s ordination in the Global South...