Women & the Church

Article

Will the Church Get Women Deacons?

Clergy who obsess about the dangers of clericalism in women are projecting their own sins and selling short women’s capacity for virtue.

By Rita Ferrone

June 27, 2016

Article

After the Death of God the Father

Mary Daly's groundbreaking work in the 1970s on patriarchal theology

By Mary Daly

March 12, 1971

Women in the Church

Article

Francis’s Words About Women

Behind Francis’s clumsy metaphors about women is an intuition that the role of women in the church needs to be take more seriously

By Rita Ferrone

April 5, 2017

Article

… to convene a commission to study the female diaconate. I was especially attentive to this … Alexandria, decided to revive the female diaconate in Africa and proceeded to … on this issue—we did not know the female diaconate was even under consideration by the …

By Carrie Frederick Frost

May 18, 2017

Women in the Church

Theology

Article

Life Amid Loss

I've been visiting sisters’ homes across Britain and Ireland, seeking to collaborate with them in reflecting on suffering and its relationship to love.

By Karen Kilby

February 13, 2017

Article

The evidence for women deacons is on the literal rocks themselves

Women Deacons, Set in Stone

By Michael Peppard

September 8, 2016

Article

At the Foot of the Cross

How did a shy young woman from the suburban Midwest turn into someone brave enough to travel by foot from village to village in the midst of a civil war?

By Kathleen DeSutter Jordan

August 30, 2016

Article

Backhanded Complementarity

In this collection of essays, authors draw on “Theology of the Body" to present the Church as a place where women’s leadership can flourish. The results are mixed.

By Nancy A. Dallavalle

September 24, 2015

Article

A Place at the Table

The initial euphoria of Pope Francis's election was being replaced by the realization that we women would continue to be joked about, romanticized, and patronized.

By Tina Beattie

March 29, 2016

Article

Let’s continue this conversation toward women’s ordination, not because there are power-hungry clerics-in-waiting who want control of the church but because the needs of so many women are misunderstood by church leaders and ministers

Mother Church & Her Battered Daughters

By Kaitlin Campbell

January 27, 2016

Article

‘The Gospel Is Hard’

By Patrick Jordan

January 14, 2013

Article

The Wisdom of the Beguines

Laura Swan does a good job of explaining both the beguines’ spiritual practices in the context of their own times and how their continuing legacy affects us today.

By Jean Hughes Raber

July 29, 2015

Article

An Interview with Elizabeth McAlister (1971)

An interview with Sr. Elizabeth McAlister from 1971, co-founder of Jonah House in Baltimore and member of the "Harrisburg Seven" group of anti-war activists

By The Editors

May 2, 2016

Article

‘I Want to Be a Sister’

Where do the desires that direct your life find their source? And how and when do they assert themselves through all unlikelihood and doubt?

By Helen Maher Garvey

November 20, 2014

Article

The U.S. Sisters & the Holy See

The awkward conversation between the LCWR and the CDF may turn out to be just the kind of encounter the church needs.

By Mollie Wilson O’Reilly

May 29, 2014

Article

The Big Chill

Are we likely to hear from Catholic women who believe responsible use of birth control is compatible with their faith and their vocations as wives any time soon?

By Cathleen Kaveny

October 10, 2013