Review by Choice Review
An award-winning journalist and lifelong Catholic, Wexler presents the stories of nine Catholic women who have navigated Catholic identity in the last 50 years. The women profiled represent a range of races, classes, and economic strata. Readers may recognize media-savvy women like Simone Campbell (executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social service lobby) and Frances Kissling (one-time president of Catholics for Choice). The stories are linked by the women's defiant positions in relation to the church: love and resistance intermingle in the way these women say "I am Catholic." For example, Teresa Delgado's desire to be an agent of change from within the church inspires her Catholicism. In the same spirit, Gretchen Reydams-Schils insists that no one can take her Catholicism away from her. Wexler's book is also a history of Catholicism in North America since the Second Vatican Council. Referencing key critical issues surrounding female theologians, Catholic feminism, LGBTQ and sexual ethics, the sex-abuse crisis, the Catholic Worker Movement, Catholic education, and the papacy in recent years, this book is a story of Catholic women figuring out how to be both women and Catholic and also a portrait of a changing religious landscape. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; professionals; general readers. --Katherine Anne Dugan, Springfield College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Wexler, a journalist and lifelong Roman Catholic, offers 10 biographical portraits developed from interviews with women who continue to practice Catholicism or have returned to it in spite of social, political, theological, and psychological issues they have faced with the Church. In addition to the well-known Sister Simone Campbell (Nuns on the Bus), the subjects include Sharon MacIsaac-McKenna, present at Vatican II before leaving the religious life; Marianne Duddy-Burke, active in the American Church's LGBT DignityUSA; women who have persevered in Catholic academia in spite of its sexism; and those who have suffered deeply and personally through abuse by clergy or racial injustice. Each woman's story of internal conflict, theological development, and spiritual growth is, of course, unique, and yet together they form a nuanced account of women in the American Church today and offer models for those who experience both deep belief and religious structural doubt. An excellent companion to Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist (2013) and Michal Smart and Barbara Ashkenas' Kaddish: Women's Voices.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Award-winning journalist Wexler tells the stories of 10 women (including herself) of various ages, ethnicities, and life experiences who have wrestled with their Catholicism and the institutional church's approach to women. Each finely crafted profile includes a biographical story interwoven with a faith journey in progress, all of which include a strong sense of a call to service. Certain themes recur: the question of women's ordination, ordination in general, issues of social justice, and a commitment to a "faith that transcends the institutional church." Those profiled include Sister Simone Campbell, of "Nuns on the Bus" fame; Barbara Blaine, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests; and Marianne Duddy-Burke, "a full-throated advocate for gay Catholics." Wexler quotes liberally, conveying the women's own voices; for example, Frances Kissling, longtime president of Catholics for Free Choice, says, "Abortion is very serious for me. It is a moral issue"; Diana L. Hayes, an African-American womanist theologian and adult convert, says, "God knew not to ask me into this church prior to Vatican II." These thought-provoking profiles brim with hope and concern for the future of the Catholic Church. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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