A new dynamic: Conversations add depth to essays by Catholic women theologians

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In Mexico City June 18, mothers carry posters of their daughters who disappeared in Ciudad Juárez. The marchers were demanding police investigate the cases of missing women in the border area. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

by Mary E. Hunt | Nov. 27, 2013



WOMEN, WISDOM, AND WITNESS: ENGAGING CONTEXTS IN CONVERSATION
Edited by Rosemary P. Carbine and Kathleen J. Dolphin
Published by Liturgical Press, $34.95

Catholic women theologians work with abundant hope on contested turf. Women, Wisdom, and Witness: Engaging Contexts in Conversation makes clear that they need collegiality to survive. The collection of essays is divided into three sections: "Women's Experience in Context: Suffering and Resistance"; "Women's Wisdom in Context: Academic and Higher Education"; and "Women's Witness in Context: Religion and Public Life." Work of this scope does not mask the fact that there are still too few women teaching in Catholic higher education, especially at the graduate level, to make much structural difference. Still, editors Rosemary Carbine and Kathleen Dolphin have done a service to the field by publishing a volume that demonstrates the skills and commitment of more than a dozen women writers/teachers.

The essays were part of the New Voices Seminar, an annual meeting held in conjunction with the Madeleva Lecture at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind. More than 50 young women have participated in that experience, which combines critical theological reflection with personal support. They practice the art of engaged conversation, learning to listen and learning to expect to be listened to as well.

This dynamic is reflected in a unique feature of this collection, namely, transcripts of telephone conversations among the authors that add depth to their chapters. They model how feminists are attempting to transform the ways in which we work as well as the work itself. The appended conversations help to make academic writing accessible for a broad audience. These sections make the book welcoming for students and other informed, but not necessarily expert, readers.

A chapter from each successive section shows just how effective this method can be. Nancy Pineda-Madrid offers the painful, powerful story of "Feminicide and the Reinvention of Religious Practices" in the essays on experience. She details the killing of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and other places, murders that their perpetrators carry out with impunity because women's lives are seemingly expendable.

http://ncronline.org/books/2013/11/new-dynamic-conversations-add-depth-essays-catholic-women-theologians