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Angry Catholic Women
By Andrew M. Greeley and Mary G. Durkin
Chicago, Thomas More Press, 1984. 213 pp. $ l 5.95.

Andrew Greeley may seem strangely out of character in his role of co-author of Angry Catholic Women. Those of us who have come to know him as novelist may tend to forget that his original claim to fame came from plying the trade of sociologist. He is adept at the work of sociologist in this book, and he even keeps his broadsides against his clerical confreres and the hierarchy to a minimum. Mary Durkin, theologian, wife, mother, and, coincidentally, sister of Andrew Greeley, provides a theological reflection on how and why a ministering church can and should address the fundamental causes of women's anger. Both Andrew Greeley and Mary Durkin assume prophetic roles when they speak to the alienation many, women experience in the Catholic Church. They predict that their analyses and agenda for change will as likely be ignored, as were the challenges of the biblical prophets.

Angry Catholic Women reads like a typed, double-spaced term paper; the publisher describes it as "an outsized monograph format." The text is supplemented by fifty-one pages of statistical tables and thirteen pages of illustrative diagrams. Greeley is painstaking in defining terms and cautious in drawing conclusions. By "anger" he means a negative correlation between church attendance and certain attitudes about the participation of women in political, economic, and religious life. Persons who reject old stereotypes which severely restrict women's aspirations and opportunities are likely to be feminists and, if these feminists are young Catholic women (between 18 and 30), they are likely to be angry at the Church and alienated from it. "Feminist," in Greeley's lexicon, refers to those men and women who favor ordination of women and

364 - Angry Catholic Women

employment of women outside the home for reasons of personal satisfaction, regardless of economic need. In addition, "feminists" disagree that pre-schoolers suffer emotional damage if mother works, that men are better suited for politics than women, and that men are better able to run the country while women are better able to manage the home.

Using data from the National Opinion Research Center's annual General Social Survey and a 1979 study of young Catholic adults, Greeley concludes that approximately 340,000 young women are not attending church regularly because they, are angry/alienated as a result of their perception that feminism is incompatible with Catholicism. The fact that there are two million female feminists in that age group, and that only, seventeen percent of this group are estranged from the Catholic Church because of anger, leads Greeley to search for reasons why some feminist Catholic women are alienated while others are not. Weaving his way through a sociological thicket of variables, he isolates the factors which result in anger in young female Catholic feminists: these women went to college, they do not have a great deal of confidence in church leaders; their mothers did not work during the first six years of their lives. This last factor, having a mother who was cast in a traditional mode, when combined with a perception that the Catholic Church still advocates that stereotype, causes some feminists to perceive a basic clash between what they, choose to be, and what the Church endorses as their proper role.

Mary Durkin suggests developing a theology which would provide the basis for reconciliation. She asserts that the problem of angry Catholic women will not be solved at the level of theological abstraction or juridical mandate because the problem is rooted in religious imagination. How, then, should the Catholic Church address the anger of women whose total number, according to Greeley, is between one and one and a half million? Durkin says there is need to develop an integrated theology of sexuality which is much more than a compendium of rules. She cites the weekly audiences on sexuality conducted by Pope John Paul II a few years ago as a step in this direction, because the Pope elaborated on scriptural themes, the sense of mystery, and the notion of liberation in order to speak to human sexuality. Further development of such an approach might serve to underscore the innate value of personhood, and angry Catholic women might begin hearing from their Church the conviction that their value is much more than merely instrumental.

Durkin looks to the Catholic Church to proclaim that femininity does not equal inferiority, and that marital intimacy is an utterly unique experience for each couple. She argues that spouses should relate to one another as person to person, and not in a preconceived stereotypical way. By this, I think she means that the wife should not be wedded to the notion that husbands put the garbage out, and husbands should not be rigid in holding that wives have eighty to one hundred percent of the responsibility for raising the kids.

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Being an angry Catholic woman, numbered among the "devout" (weekly church attendees), I looked with interest for a description of my alienation. I found it in Chap. XIV, "The Domestic Church," where Durkin speaks of tokenism, paternalism, institutional structure, patriarchy, and altar girls. And Greeley revealed why, despite my anger, I have staved with it. The picture of God, in my imagination, exorcised the incompatibilites between the image of Church in the past and the image of Woman in the present. I have been able to continue in the Catholic Church because in the deep recesses of my mind and heart I relate to God as Lover. Thus, I am able to overcome my distaste for many aspects of institutional Catholicism, and I worship God in the flawed community to which I have always belonged.

Persons interested in faith, imagination, gender gap, reconciliation, and evangelization should read this book. While not the last word, it is a thoughtful commentary on a very pressing problem.

Eileen P. Flynn
Saint Peter's College
Jersey City, New Jersey