Two things can be true: Catholicism and feminism
(iStock)The 20th-century Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, noting that the love of God extends to all, contemplated the possibility of salvation for all in his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? While he is often charged by more conservative critics with providing kindling for heretical universalism, Balthasar defends himself: “I never spoke of certainty but rather of hope.”
While von Balthasar might seem like an unlikely conversation partner, I found overlap between his book, written almost 40 years ago, and Julie Hanlon Rubio’s new book Can You Be a Catholic and a Feminist? Both theologians forgo the despair of contradiction and ambiguity to choose hope.
Hope for a future of a Catholic Church that listens fully to women and queer folk ebbs and flows in a sometimes dramatic fashion; in our current moment, I found Hanlon Rubio’s book to be timely. In the aftermath of the Synod on Synodality, one might pick up this book as a way of considering a way forward—notwithstanding the synod’s own conclusions.
Hanlon Rubio’s book performs a balancing act that is inevitable for a thinker who is tasked with managing thousands of years’ worth of texts, history and doctrines. Add to that the complexity of describing feminism in all its history, its texts, its diversity. Taking on an overwhelming task for most, Hanlon Rubio creates a streamlined, organized answer to the book’s titular question: Can you be a Catholic and a feminist? She gives her answer in the introduction of the book—in the form of a confident “yes.”
Many of us might relate to her when she says that the question was not one we always had. I myself recognize how my mother’s own wrestling with Catholicism (wrestling I only learned much later in life was unusual in that it was visible to her children) has affected my relationship to the church, the community of believers and Catholic teachings. In my mother, I saw the embodied forms of “yes” to this question, warts and all.
Yet, as Hanlon Rubio points out, over the last nearly three decades, something has changed. A question that we might have only thought about in corollary ways in the past has become more prominent in religious discourses.
This book’s most valuable contribution is that it is honest about the often-uneasy relationship between feminism and Catholicism without collapsing into condemnation or romanticization about either tradition. Hanlon Rubio sets out to “explore tensions, map synergies, and highlight strategies of authentic belonging through a variety of lenses.” Her book can serve as a valuable resource for those who find noticeable tension between Catholicism and feminism in their lives, be it in seminaries, colleges, high schools, diocesan formation programs, parishes, spiritual direction or book clubs.
The book is broken up into an introduction, eight chapters revolving around eight themes, and a final chapter on “Belonging.” In “Being Authentically Human,” which grounds many of the book’s basic premises, Hanlon Rubio asserts that there is great agreement (or at the very least little contradiction) between Catholicism and certain strands of feminism. In chapters on work, sex and marriage, she finds fewer overlaps but still many resonances. In the areas of gender, life, and power, the substantial obstacles are only overcome by seeking a way forward that enables authenticity. The final chapter revisits the central question of the book.
“Belonging” names what I believe to be the most fundamental part of the question for many: “The question is not ‘Can I do this?’ but ‘Can I be this?’ or ‘Can I belong?’” Research from the Springtide Research Institute indicates that this distinction makes all the difference for young people in their sense of loneliness. Springtide’s research found that the three levels of belonging were “I am noticed,” “I am named” and “I am known.” The “authenticity” Hanlon Rubio seeks to attain for Catholic feminists is this third level of belonging, of being known.
Drawing from the work of Charles Taylor, she explains that relationships to others must be nontentative and noninstrumental, and must be balanced with a level of self-care and affirmation. For those for whom the tension between Catholicism and feminism is a source of pain, it is not enough to notice and to name, but there must be an ability to feel known, to be authentically themselves.
In her chapter on sex, Hanlon Rubio names the strategies of a “space between” that will be needed to address sexual violence. This space in the context of sex is somewhere between the #MeToo movement and the church’s silence on sexual violence (the “elephant in the room” being the church’s own egregious covering up of that violence). She draws on Catholic teachings on social sin and solidarity, as well as the feminist movement’s tools for talking about sex in the context of patriarchy. Neither an overemphasis on vice and virtue nor a sole focus on politics can be the solution.
This concept of “space between” that Hanlon Rubio introduces in this chapter might be stretched across much of the book. Catholic feminists exist in the liminal space where belonging is threatened by polarity. I think here of the work of Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz and the Chicana feminist group Las Hermanas.
As Latina Catholic women, they existed across many different “spaces between.” The scholar Lara Medina names Las Hermanas as the first Latina “religious-political” movement in the country. It straddled the space between the church and the political arena in a time when the Second Vatican Council and the Chicano Movement were both ushering in substantial changes.
Isasi-Díaz, a leader of Las Hermanas, existed in the in-between in many ways: the United States and Cuba, academic and political spaces, Latina feminist spaces in Las Hermanas and white feminist spaces in the Women’s Ordination Conference, and ecumenical spaces. The lives and writings of these women testify to a deep fidelity to the church paired with feminist commitments to the empowerment of women and other marginalized groups.
Hanlon Rubio’s book differentiates itself from other books on this theme in that it promises and delivers attention to stories and experience, rather than solely theoretical debates. It is a book written by an academic theologian, most noticeably in its breadth of citations, but not necessarily for academic theologians (although, as an academic theologian myself, I still learned from it).
One of its most valuable chapters in this regard is one on “Life,” which unwaveringly takes up the national and intra-church conversation on abortion. Hanlon Rubio admits that “abortion presents a difficult case for this book’s project” and that there is an unresolvable tension on this point. However, instead of turning to abstract concepts, she draws out agency and relationality by way of stories of miscarriages, motherhood and abortions. These stories ground the conclusive thought of the chapter: As Catholics, we can choose to listen to women and make the pain of vulnerable mothers and children our own. That, for Hanlon Rubio, begins a path toward genuine authenticity—or at least, that is what she/I/we hope(s).
Hanlon Rubio’s book is a bold and hopeful work. It is hopeful without being overly optimistic and bold without being overly certain. In a time of intense individualism, where it is easy to let people simply “choose on their own” how and whether to be Catholic and/or a feminist, Hanlon Rubio’s project is an attempt to accompany people through this challenge.
These people might include the parish priest who feels defeated when yet another young, queer person becomes less involved despite his best efforts to make them feel loved and cared for, or the mother who does not know how to raise her children in a faith that contradicts other values she might want to instill, or the many others who try to live authentically in the ambiguity.
Julie Hanlon Rubio has written a letter of hope and encouragement to them all.
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