Women Religious Professionals and Stress

Abstract

Clergywomen, fairly new to the religious scene, are still feeling their way to define a role for themselves in the previously all-male religious hierarchies. Although women have been involved in clerical roles within some settings for over 50 years, the fact that as a class they have been subjected to much discrimination, and even given a derogatory image in other ecclesiastical surroundings, has left an unpleasant and unhealthy situation for those who would be religious professionals. This in turn has led to much stress, whether denied or expressed and recognized, among women clergy. Yet the very negative picture of women painted by early church theologians such as Augustine, Chrysostom, and Luther (Daly, 1973; O’Faolain & Martines, 1973) and by the papal sacred congregation for the doctrine of the faith in recent times (1976) may have discouraged women from looking realistically at the stress to which they are subjected. Such recognition might cause them to run the risk of appearing even more imperfect—though entirely human—to the male enclave that still holds some hope of eliminating women from religious professionalism and positions of leadership. Nonetheless, their stress serves to handicap these women in accomplishing all they might, in their roles as religious professionals. They must be able to recognize more adequately, deal with, and even accept some stress in their newly carved positions in order to function optimally.