Reviewed by: The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era by Mary J. Henold Theresa Keeley Mary J. Henold, The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020) Vatican II—the worldwide conference of Catholic bishops from 1962 to 1965—presented Catholic women with a contradiction. The council expanded laypeople's role in the church, but it did so without altering ideas "that women's nature was basically fixed and subordinate" (3). The question then became: What does it mean to be a Catholic woman? Mary J. Henold argues that, initially, there was no single answer or "collective consciousness" among women (8). Instead, nonfeminist women developed different understandings of this tension over time. To track this process—what Henold terms the "laywoman project"—she analyzes letters to the editor, organizational publications, conference addresses, and private memos and papers from four Catholic laywomen's organizations and the magazine Marriage. The women Henold studies were mainly white, middle-class, and middle-aged. Overall, they were more representative of Catholic women, as feminists were a minority. Henold first focuses on the Theresians of America, which became "an explicitly feminist organization" (15), although its path was circuitous. A priest first founded the group to encourage women to enter religious life. The number of women becoming sisters was not keeping pace with Catholics' baby boom, prompting parochial schools to hire lay teachers and pay them higher wages [End Page 113] than sisters. In response, Catholic periodicals spoke of a vocational crisis and blamed mothers for supposedly discouraging their daughters from becoming nuns. Initially, the Theresians saw themselves as praying and suffering for others, especially women religious whom they regarded as their superiors. In 1969, however, the board rejected the organization's founding purpose and recognized laywomen's vocation as just as valuable as that of women religious. Theresians' prayer also shifted to focus more on themselves and their fellow members, a display of female empowerment of sorts. This move grew from laywomen's consideration of their relationship to women religious, not women's status vis-à-vis men or women's overall place within church structures. Instead of unequivocal change, the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW) adopted a position that was less conclusive. US bishops established the NCCW, which became "an umbrella organization for thousands of parish- and diocesan-based women's groups as well as many national laywomen's organizations, and claimed to represent all laywomen in the United States" (73). The NCCW initially welcomed Vatican II and eagerly educated its members about it. The organization reconsidered "women's nature," encouraged women to take on greater responsibility in the church, and rethought clergy's authority. This approach mirrored the way secular feminists were questioning society at the time. The NCCW, however, distanced itself from the radical feminist movement that emerged in 1968. At the same time, the NCCW exhibited "a mild, but still recognizable form of feminism" in its organizational publications and conferences (84). By the early 1970s, support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and abortion rights were considered the litmus test of a true feminist. The NCCW officially condemned the ERA, leading outsiders to label it antifeminist. But the story was more complicated. Opposing the ERA was not an organizational priority. There were internal divides within the NCCW, and most significantly, the NCCW promoted "justice for women while rejecting organized feminism" (89). In this way, the NCCW exhibited what Henold terms "nonfeminist feminism," a provocative and useful way to emphasize how the NCCW did not align with the feminist movement but still advocated for women (15). Change characterized Marriage, the monthly magazine of the Benedictines of St. Meinrad Abbey. Marriage addressed topics such as "intimate areas of home, spousal relationships, work, and bedroom," which Catholic women's organizations, such as the Theresians and the NCCW, did not typically discuss, and which self-identified feminists regarded as settled (107). Although men created and ran the magazine, the periodical provided space for women as authors of articles and, especially, of letters to the editor. Over time, Marriage shifted its view of women's role in married life. Its pages moved from...
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Jan 1, 2023
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