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Women and the Art of Magisterium: Reflections on Vatican II and the Postconciliar Church

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Abstract

This paper explores transformations in the understanding of teaching authority and also considers an often neglected group of subjects who have exercised such in the period during and since the Second Vatican Council. In particular, it explores both topics vis-à-vis the role of women in the church, especially their contributions to the church’s exercise of magisterium. The article outlines the need to increase awareness, acknowledgment and appreciation of the contribution of women to the church’s teaching authority and, most importantly of all, to increase further their participation in the same. First, the paper considers (as an important case study), the role played by the few women present in an active capacity at Vatican II. Through posing the rhetorical question, ‘what were they doing there?’, the author argues that these women were teaching with authority, i.e. exercising magisterium. Next, the paper explores some of the confusion and controversies surrounding the notion of what magisterium actually is and who should exercise it, before surveying some further brief examples of how women have exercised magisterium throughout the history of the church. The paper next considers how events in the church have developed from a stance of confrontation toward the more positive steps that have been taken in relation to the role of women in the church under Pope Francis. It concludes with reflections on the future and why attention to aggiornamento for magisterium is essential in order that the church becomes a body of greater and wider co-responsibility, including the indispensable collaboration of women practicing the art of magisterium.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On the conciliar documents and their eventual impact and reception from the perspective of women, see Margit Eckholt, ‘Eine Relektüre großer Leitlinien des Konzils in Frauenperspektive,’ in Ohne die Frauen ist keine Kirche zu machen: Der Aufbruch des Konzils und die Zeichen der Zeit, Margit Eckholt (Ostfildern: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 2012): 43–61. In the same study, see, also, ‘Das “Aggiornamento ” und die Frauenfrage als “Zeichen der Zeit”,’ 25–33, which considers the question and place of women in the church with reference to the Vatican II watchwords of ecclesial renewal and discerning the signs of the times.

  2. 2.

    The key and groundbreaking study of women at the council remains Carmel Elizabeth McEnroy’s, Guests in Their Own House: The Women of Vatican II (New York: Crossroad, 1996, revised edn. Wipf & Stock, 2011). This study also charts many such contributions prior to the council (especially Chapter 1, 19–51). Three other especially informative texts are Eckholt, Ohne die Frauen ist keine Kirche zu machen, Adriana Valerio, Madri del Concilio. Ventitré donne al Vaticano II (Rome: Carocci editore, 2012); Marinella Perroni and Hervé Legrand, eds., Avendo qualcosa da dire. Teologhe e teologi rileggono il Vaticano II (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 2014). The latter also explores further issues pertaining to the role of women in the post-conciliar church. The women at the council are also discussed in detail in Chapter 6 of this volume by Patricia Madigan, O.P., which offers additional and specific details concerning the experiences of the women at the council, including a list of the women who participated in the council in an appendix to her chapter.

  3. 3.

    A sample of other discussions include the dissertation, Giuliana Bragantini, ‘Le Donne nel Concilio Vaticano II’ (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1984); Mary Luke Tobin, ‘Women in the Church since Vatican II’, America (November 1, 1986), available online at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11898 (Nov. 1, 1986; accessed 1 May 2017); Ida Raming and Iris Müller, Contra LegemA Matter of Conscience : Our Lifelong Struggle for Human Rights for Women in the Roman-Catholic Church; Autobiographies, Background Papers, Documents, Future Prospects (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2011), esp. Ida Raming, ‘Women in the Council’, 192–200; Joseph A. Komonchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, in History of Vatican II, vol. IV, ed. Alberigo and Komonchak, Church as Communion: Third Period and Intersession Sept. 1964September 1965, 19–24, 26–28; María Salas, De la promoción de la mujer a la teología feminist: cuarenta años de historia (Santander, Editorial Sal Terrae, 1993): 85–93. Some further incisive reflections can be found in George H. Tavard, Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973) 125–50, with a treatment of the council’s approach to women, as reflected in representative samples of the conciliar debates at 126–30. See, also, his discussion of Paul VI’s closing words at the council on women, 135–36, Tavard’s anthropological reflections at 193–94 and, finally, his treatment of ‘Controverted Questions’ at 212ff. and 225.

  4. 4.

    See Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 20. But, there is one partial and qualified exception here. It appears that Blanche Shaffer, General Secretary of the Friends’ World Consultative Council, was permitted to be present in the aula for around one week during the first session, thereby being the first woman permitted to remain in the aula for a working session. However, she was neither an ‘official’ observer nor an officially invited guest. I am most grateful to John Borelli for bringing this lesser-known fact to my attention.

  5. 5.

    Not until September 16, 1964, the Third Session’s second day. See Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 20. One female journalist, Eva Fleischsner, ‘was physically restrained from receiving communion with her male colleagues.’ Ibid., 21; see also, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 105, Valerio, Madri del Concilio, 34–35 and n5. McEnroy notes that ‘Not a single mention was made of women in the first conciliar session’, only two were made in the second session and, once women were actually present at the council, the third session saw fifteen and the fourth session ten. However, ‘Not all were positive or contributed to women’s advancement…’, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 36.

  6. 6.

    As also discussed in Chapter 6 by Patricia Madigan, above, 79–96.

  7. 7.

    See Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 21.

  8. 8.

    Tobin, ‘Women in the Church since Vatican II’.

  9. 9.

    Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001, original edn., Fortress Press, 1994), 16.

  10. 10.

    Margit Eckholt, ‘Kein Konzil der Frauen, aber eines mit Frauen’, in Ohne die Frauen ist keine Kirche zu machen, 34–43.

  11. 11.

    Valerio, ‘Un Nuova Pentecoste’, in Madri del Concilio, 33–38. Monika Hellwig, who was in Rome during the Council, would later write of ‘Vatican II: The Glorious Years,’ in Vatican II: Fifty Personal Stories, ed. William Madges and Michael J. Daley (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2012), 14–20. She recounts the great energy and excitement generated by the council and how the debates on the council floor were mirrored in the universities, Vatican district streets and even the bars and restaurants of Rome at that time, with much ecclesial strategizing taking place in the various pensioni and religious houses (ibid., 15). Hellwig speaks of the great hope for a renewed church that the council sessions were generating (ibid., 17–18), in particular the great sense that the laity is the church, which was especially welcome news for women in the 1960s (ibid., 18).

  12. 12.

    McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 101. McEnroy does not, however, perceive the development through rose-tinted spectacles in any sense.

  13. 13.

    Indeed the progress of the ecumenical movement, particularly in the 1950s also helped lay much of the groundwork for opening up debates about the role of women within Catholicism, too.

  14. 14.

    Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 21. A further snapshot of the feelings being expressed at the time around the world is illustrated by the fact that, in May 1962, a Swiss lawyer, Gertrud Heinzelmann wrote to the council’s preparatory commission demanding that the council affirm equality for women and that women be ordained to the priesthood (see her Frau und Konzil; Hoffnung und Erwartung: Eingabe an die hohe vorbereitende Kommission des Vatikanischen Konzils über Wertung und Stellung der Frau in der Römisch-katholischen Kirche (Zürich: Verlag der “Staatsbürgerin”, 1962), and Wir schweigen nicht länger! Frauen äußern sich zum II. Vatikanischen Konzil (Zürich: Interfeminas, 1964).

  15. 15.

    Who served as the first general secretary of the Permanent Committee for International Congresses of the Lay Apostolate (COPECIAL) from 1952 to 1958 (Rosemary Goldie also joined the organization in 1952). He also served as Director Genera of UNESCO between 1958 and 1961, having previously served as president of Azione Cattolica Italiana from 1946 to 1952 (and president of the Bank of Rome from 1961 to 1976).

  16. 16.

    See Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 20 (AS VI/3, 37–38).

  17. 17.

    See, for example, Valerio, Madri del Concilio, 35–38.

  18. 18.

    In a very real sense, then, O’Brien might be considered another important ‘woman of the council’. See Léon Josef Suenens, The Hidden Hand of God: The Life of Veronica O’Brien (Dublin: Veritas, 1994). I am most grateful to John Haughey, S.J., for bringing the extent of O’Brien’s influence upon Suenens’s conciliar contributions to my attention.

  19. 19.

    McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 40 and see 41–50 which recounts further the reflections and aspirations of women with regard to the council prior to 1964.

  20. 20.

    Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 22, citing Insegnamenti, II, 529.

  21. 21.

    Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 22.

  22. 22.

    Tobin, ‘Women in the Church since Vatican II’.

  23. 23.

    Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 23. Even attempts to segregate the women by setting up their own coffee bar, dubbed Bar-Nun, would eventually fail as mingling took places across the differing bars. Ibid., 23–24. Although, perhaps with more poignant evocations pertaining to the exclusionary context, it is termed ‘Bar None’ (reflecting the Italian feminine plural for ninth) in McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 108, and also in Valerio, Madri del Concilio, 52 – this joke most likely emerged from the English-speaking contingent, the wordplay requiring some explanation in Italian from Valerio to ensure the humor carries.

  24. 24.

    Komonchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 24, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 136.

  25. 25.

    Additional work stills needs to be done on the other women who were influential in various ways in and around both the council and the Vatican in general at that time, including, for example, not simply those such as the economist Barbara Ward who had a great deal of input into Gaudium et Spes (yet whose speech to the council was read by a man), but also those working, teaching and studying in and around Rome. This includes those in the houses and institutions connected to female religious congregations, especially in leadership roles and the other ‘hidden influences’, for example, Monika Hellwig, who worked as a research assistant to a Vatican official during the council and I have already noted the deep influence of Veronica O’Brien upon Cardinal Suenens.

  26. 26.

    In correspondence with Joseph Komanchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 20n.58. Note that it would take some time and struggles, still, before women were permitted to address the council session itself, see Komonchak, ‘Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion’, 24–27.

  27. 27.

    On Häring’s role here see, also, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 131–34.

  28. 28.

    Tobin, ‘Women in the Church since Vatican II’; see also, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 99–100.

  29. 29.

    Some sources, such as McEnroy, point to Maria Vendrik as having served as a perita (Guests in Their Own House, 94). Rosemary Goldie describes her as having been invited as a lay ‘expert’ to the council, although she does not specifically describe her as a perita, as such: ‘… Maria Vendrik, une des experts laïcs invités au Concile’, Rosemary Goldie , ‘La participation des laïcs aux travaux du concile Vatican II’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses tome 62, fascicule 1 (1988) 54–73 at 72n.47. Part of the problem here is that, technically, only priests were officially listed as serving as periti—despite many others, including laypeople and among them women, as we shall see, serving in the same function without necessarily enjoying that official title (others were listed as auditores—including priests—or auditrices). See, also, n.24, above, on Monica Hellwig who also seems to have served as a perita in all but name and n.32, below referencing Pilar Bellosillo describing how Paul VI viewed the auditors .

  30. 30.

    See McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 134–37; also Valerio, Madri del Concilio, 113–15.

  31. 31.

    See, for example, §32. None of this is to deny the presence of more hierarchical ecclesiological perceptions throughout these and most other council documents (in fact in this very passage we are provided with an example of such), alongside the more participatory ecclesiological vision that would come to dominate the council. See also, McEnroy, Guests in their Own House, 33–34. Among other council texts, Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., also draws attention to Lumen Gentium §31, Apostolicam Actuositatem §2–3, on the sharing in the threefold ministry of Christ and Ad Gentes §35 on the entire faithful’s responsibility to bear witness to the gospel and ‘announce’ the good news. See ‘Anointed and Sent: the Charism of Preaching,’ in Retrieving Charisms for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Doris Donnelly (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 47–64 at 54–62.

  32. 32.

    Here see, also, McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, especially 130–66 on the direct impact the women auditors had upon the conciliar documents and 156–57 on Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, in particular. Valerio, Madri del Concilio, 146–52 briefly discusses the impact of the women auditors , in particular on these same two monumental documents (respectively illustrated by §32 for the former and §§9, 29, 49, 52, 60, 90 for the latter and also on Apostolicam Actuositatem (e.g. §§9–10) and Ad Gentes (§§9, 32). Valerio also comments upon the general impact the women auditors had upon the council’s renewal of religious life (53–56) and upon the lay life, the laity’s responsibilities and the lay apostolate in general (56–60). In one sub-commission for Gaudium et Spes, Goldie later remarked how she had been a voting member whereas the Polish Archbishop Karol Wojtyla had no such voting rights. McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 133. One of the auditors , Pilar Bellosillo , particularly underlined the fact that Paul VI called the auditors , male and female alike, ‘experts in life’ with reference to the preparations of Gaudium et Spes, a document which marked an ecclesial sea-change as the conciliar fathers listened to and learned from the laity, ‘“This inductive method was new. It was both exciting and gratifying to be part of this magisterium of the laity in practice”’, cited from an interview with McEnroy (January 27–29, 1989) in McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 134.

  33. 33.

    And this notwithstanding more outdated perceptions of the role of women in both church and society in some council and post-conciliar documents.

  34. 34.

    John L. McKenzie, S.J., Authority in the Church (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1966), 136.

  35. 35.

    And what the term came to be employed to refer to.

  36. 36.

    The numerous writings from Yves Congar are the most obvious examples of painstaking researches into the history of the church which demonstrate this fact. For example, ‘Theologians and the Magisterium in the West: From the Gregorian Reform to the Council of Trent,’ Chicago Studies 17, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 210–24; ‘Magisterium , Theologians, the Faithful and the Faith,’ Doctrine and Life 31 (1981): 548–64; ‘A Semantic History of the Term “Magisterium ”,’ and ‘A Brief History of the Forms of the Magisterium and Its Relations with Scholars,’ the latter two both available in The Magisterium and Morality, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, Readings in Moral Theology, No. 3, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), at 297–313 and 314–31. Although the term magisterium as it is often understood in recent times can be found in some eighteenth century texts, Congar is adamant that it is not until the nineteenth century that the term magisterium (as employed by and with reference to the life of) the church either acquires a sense in regular usage that, (in certain languages) involves a preceding definite article (‘the magisterium ’) or is used by default to refer not to the function or activity of magisterium but rather to those in positions of church leadership and office who perform the function or activity. Congar underlines this point in explicit detail in his ‘A Semantic History…’, 298, ‘A Brief History…’, 324–26, and ‘Magisterium , Theologians, the Faithful and the Faith’, 552–55. All in all, Congar concludes, ‘In the sense of “body of pastors” exercising authoritatively the function of teaching, magisterium , “the magisterium ”, seems to us to be of recent usage’, ‘A Semantic History…’, 309–10.

  37. 37.

    Le Groupe Des Dombres , ‘Un Seul Maître’: L’autorité doctrinal dans L’Ėglise, (Bayard, 2005), translated by Catherine Clifford as One Teacher: Doctrinal Authority in the Church (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2010), §339, p. 103. This echoes aspects of Lumen Gentium, in particular.

  38. 38.

    See the various contributions in Dennis M. Doyle, Timothy J. Furry, and Pascal D. Bazzell, eds., Ecclesiology and Exclusion: Boundaries of Being and Belonging in Postmodern Times (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2012).

  39. 39.

    McKenzie, Authority in the Church, 126.

  40. 40.

    Cf., for example, Richard A. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 160.

  41. 41.

    Ladislas Örsy, The Church: Learning and Teaching: Magisterium, Assent, Dissent, Academic Freedom (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1987), 63.

  42. 42.

    DS 3074.

  43. 43.

    Örsy, The Church: Learning and Teaching, 64–65.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 64.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 65 and also 67.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 67. Örsy then cites a fascinating passage from Gratian’s Decretum Magistriani Gratiani, ed. Aemilius Friedberg (Graz: Akademie Verlagsanstalt, 1959), col. 65 about the respective competencies of the ‘interpreters of scripture’ in contrast with the ‘pontiffs’, ibid., 67–69. And all of this despite Örsy concurring with Francis Sullivan (Magisterium, p29, contra Avery Dulles) that in contemporary times, confusion could result in speaking of ‘two magisteria’. Effectively, Örsy in these pages provides all the evidence to the contrary of Sullivan’s point himself. The real confusion enters in when the term magisterium is employed only to refer to a specific group of actors rather than to the act of exercising magisterium.

  47. 47.

    There has been a continuously growing amount of literature that explores the role and functions of women in the church at various stages of its history (of course, among the many scholarly and theological learned studies, one can also find polemical perspectives that generalize to a degree that mirrors the very polemic that downplays the role and function of women in the church that such studies wish to critique). Among the vast body of literature available are the following examples. Andrew Kadle’s, Matrology: A Bibliography of Writings by Christian Women from the First to the Fifteenth Centuries (New York: Continuum, 1995); Ute E. Eisen, Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000); Eldon Jay Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (New York: Fortress, 2005); Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983 and 1994); Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, Women & Christian Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Patricia M. Rumsey, Women of the Church: The Religious Experience of Monastic Women (Dublin: Columba Press, 2011); Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian Women (New York: Paulist, 2001); J. N. M. Wijngaards, Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates (New York: Crossroad, 2006); Ben Witherington and Ann Witherington, Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Phyllis Zagano, Women and Catholicism: Gender, Communion and Authority (New York: Macmillan, 2011). The numerous works of Gary Macy are also of special relevance here. See also, Christine E. Joynes and Christopher C. Rowland, eds., From the Margins 2: Women of the New Testament and Their Afterlives (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009); and Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi, Fulata Mbano Moyo and Aikaterini Pekridou, Many Women Were Also There: The Participation of Orthodox Women in the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2010).

  48. 48.

    Most significantly, Mary Magdalene was long honored with the title apostolorum apostola. A 2016 decree elevating her liturgical memorial to the rank of a feast enables her to be celebrated liturgically like the rest of the apostles, and the new preface for that feast states that Christ “honoured her with the task of being apostle to the apostles” (eam apostolatus officio coram apostolis honoravit), Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Decree Resurrectionis dominicae primam, AAS 108, no. 7 (2016): 798–99; see also the accompanying letter by Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary for the Congregation, and the official communiqué from the Vatican Press Office, 10 June 2016.

  49. 49.

    See, for example, Rumsey, Women of the Church.

  50. 50.

    See, for example, the Apophthegmata Patrum.

  51. 51.

    Maeve B. Callan, ‘St Darerca and Her Sister Scholars: Women and Education in Medieval Ireland’, Gender and History 15, no. 1 (April 2003): 32–49 at 45.

  52. 52.

    See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’, http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=55544. See, also, the preceding chapter in this present volume by the late Anne E. Patrick, S.N.J.M which details the tensions of this period and offers further analysis of the situation at length.

  53. 53.

    Sandra M. Schneiders, Prophets in Their Own Country: Women Religious Bearing Witness to the Gospel in a Troubled Church (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011), 119. Again, the preceding chapter by Anne E. Patrick also argues at length that the interpretation of Vatican II was the core factor at the heart of the divisions among US women religious during this period, as well as between the LCWR and the church authorities of the USCCB and in Rome.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 120.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 27.

  56. 56.

    The report can be accessed at: http://www.apostolicvisitation.org/en/index.html, with reactions from the LCWR featured at: https://lcwr.org/media/report-vaticans-apostolic-visitation-us-women-religious.

  57. 57.

    Joint Final Report on the Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), https://lcwr.org/sites/default/files/news/files/joint_final_report_of_conclusion_of_cdf_mandate.pdf (16 April 2015).

  58. 58.

    Sister Sharon Holland.

  59. 59.

    ‘Intervista del Direttore a Papa Francesco’, La Civiltà Cattolica Anno 164 (19 settembre 2013): 449–77 at 466–67. The interview took place on August 19th, 2013 with Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica. An English translation appeared as ‘A Big Heart Open to God’ in America (September 30, 2013): 13–38 at 28. The term ‘feminine genius’ has been the subject of much debate and criticism (e.g. see the preceding chapters by Patricia Madigan and Anne E. Patrick) and here, as with his other statements on women, translations of Pope Francis’s exact words have proved more controversial perhaps than his own original intended meaning. There is no doubt this phrase has caused consternation and offense to some—being identified with the subordinationist tendencies of the ‘complementarity ’ theology that emerged during the pontificate of John Paul II in particular. However, those issues of translation and the hermeneutics of Francis’s own understanding here remain live and continue to be debated (as Madigan and Patrick, respectively, both acknowledge in differing ways) and, in reading the wider interview, along with his many subsequent statements on women, in addition to surveying his subsequent actions with regard to promoting a wider involvement for women in ecclesial roles—as evidenced here and in the further examples that follow—it is beyond doubt his intentions have been constructive and positive.

  60. 60.

    http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130403_udienza-generale_en.html (3 April 2013). See, also, http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-women-have-special-role-church (3 April 2013) and, coverage in more depth, at http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=22276 (6 April 2013).

  61. 61.

    See Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009).

  62. 62.

    Lest there be any doubt, when the pope preached at Vespers in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on September 24th during his visit to the United States he stated that ‘In a special way I would like to express my esteem and gratitude to the religious women of the United States. What would the Church be without you? Women of strength, fighters, with that spirit of courage which puts you in the front lines in the proclamation of the Gospel. To you, religious women, sisters and mothers of this people, I wish to say “thank you”, a big thank you… and to tell you that I love you very much.’ In words that almost replicate the sentiments of Schneiders above, Francis continued, saying, ‘I know that many of you are in the front lines in meeting the challenges of adapting to an evolving pastoral landscape. Whatever difficulties and trials you face, I ask you, like Saint Peter, to be at peace and to respond to them as Christ did: he thanked the Father, took up his cross and looked forward!’, ‘Vespers with Priests and Religious, Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis’, St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150924_usa-omelia-vespri-nyc.html (24 September 2015).

  63. 63.

    https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150926_usa-omelia-philadelphia.html (27 September 2015).

  64. 64.

    Statutes of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life (May 7, 2018), at http://www.laityfamilylife.va/content/laityfamilylife/en/il-dicastero/lo-statuto.html.

  65. 65.

    Some of the material here helped form the basis of a considerably shorter essay published in Italian as ‘Donne E Magistero Teologico’, in Avendo qualcosa da dire, ed. Perroni and Legrand, 95–106. I examined these and related themes in still further detail in ‘Changing the (Magisterial) Subject: Women Teaching-with-Authority—From Vatican II To Tomorrow’, Irish Theological Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 3–33. I am most grateful to all editors concerned for permission to draw upon those articles here.

  66. 66.

    McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, x.

  67. 67.

    For example, consider the themes discussed in Letty M. Russell, Household of FreedomAuthority in Feminist Theology (London: Westminster Press, 1987).

  68. 68.

    James A. Coriden, ‘Theologians and Bishops: Good Procedures Promotes Collaboration,’ in Theology and Magisterium (Concilium 2012/2), ed. Felix Wilfred and Susan A. Ross (London: SCM Press, 2012), 64–74 at 65. Coriden’s reflections were in the context of an essay about the case of Elizabeth Johnson .

  69. 69.

    Rosemary Goldie , ‘Una donna nella Concilio’, Review of Religious Sciences (Pontifical Regional Seminary, Pius IX, Maufetta), (January 1989), 376, translation by Rosemary Goldie as ‘A Woman at the Council: Memories of an Auditor’, cited in McEnroy, Guests in Their Own House, 129.

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Mannion, G. (2018). Women and the Art of Magisterium: Reflections on Vatican II and the Postconciliar Church. In: Latinovic, V., Mannion, G., Welle, O.F.M., J. (eds) Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98581-7_9

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