How to Be a Catholic and a Feminist: Celia Viggo Wexler

[rug]

By Jean E. Barker
Sep 28, 2016

Full of questions about her lifelong Catholic faith, journalist-turned-public-interest-lobbyist Celia Viggo Wexler decided to interview other women who have remained in the Church despite their disagreements with its official teachings. Her new book, Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope (Rowman & Littlefield, Sept.), features nine activists, theologians, and other professional women who are engaging with the institutional church in multiple ways.

Conflicted about the Church’s refusal to respond to the concerns of Catholic women, and uncomfortable with the conservative Catholicism practiced in her parish, “I had come to a fork in the road in my own life,” Wexler told PW. “I did not know whether I could continue to be a practicing Catholic and a feminist.”

In the resulting book, Wexler reveals a complex web of connections among faith, tragedy, life choices, and career trajectories as women reflect on their identities as Catholics, their experiences with the Church, and why—and in what ways—they’ve decided to stay Catholic despite the challenges.

Among the range of diverse voices, including those of younger Catholics, Wexler discovered key themes, in particular what she called “the primacy of conscience” in making moral decisions that might differ from official Church teachings. While this can apply to a broad range of personal choices, “there is for many women a sense that the church does not respect the role of conscience when women are making decisions about reproductive issues, even birth control,” Wexler said. For Frances Kissling, whom Wexler refers to in the book as “abortion’s moralist,” her disagreements with the Church’s teachings on sexual ethics led to a 25-year career of very public activism as president of Catholics for a Free Choice (now Catholics for Choice), which fights for abortion rights.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/71598-how-to-be-a-catholic-and-a-feminist-celia-viggo-wexler.html