Catholic Women Redesign Catholicism: an Essay in Honor of Maria Jose Rosado Nunez

Resumo

This essay explores how Catholic women have changed Catholicism as a culture, if not so much the institutional church, in the years between 1970 and 2020. Catholic women have not endeared ourselves to Catholic hierarchs; in fact many dislike and fear us. But we have saved lives, spiritual as well as physical, by providing solid opposition and creative alternatives to the institutional church. A redesign of Catholicsm begins with the culture and ethos. Catholic women envision it as a global movement rooted in particular cultures, united by values of love and justice, open to the wisdom of many religious traditions, and structured to provide ministry and meaning through cooperative, horizontally organized communities. While there has been progress, more work remains to be done.