Discusses feminist spirituality, looks at the concept of wisdom and provides exercises, meditations, and sermons

Wisdom's Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration

Politics & Social Sciences

Cady, Susan

Ronan, Marian

Taussig, Hal

Cole, Susan

Sociology

Harpercollins

Attempts to reconcile spirituality and feminism, discusses the role of Sophia in the scriptures, and examines spirituality from the perspective of modern social issues

Sophia: The Future of Feminist Spirituality

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Winston Pr

In April of 2012 the Vatican issued a harsh “doctrinal assessment” of the largest organization of Catholic sisters in the U.S., the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The “assessment” was the culmination of a three-year investigation. Simultaneously, the Vatican had been conducting a visitation of 340 active (non-cloistered) congregations of U.S sisters. What do these developments mean? This is the question Catholic scholar and activist Marian Ronan sets out to answer in Sister Trouble: The Vatican, the Bishops, and the Nuns, her galvanizing collection of articles about the investigations, the doctrinal assessment, and the issues that connect them. In the first section of Sister Trouble, Ronan chronicles the conflict from the 2009 launch of the investigations to the 2012 actions of bishops appointed to oversee the Leadership Conference. She also examines the condemnation of Sister Elizabeth Johnson’s book, the link between the sisters’ support for the Affordable Care Act and the Vatican crackdown, and the dispute over the ultimate meaning of the Second Vatican Council that underlies the conflict. The articles sizzle with Ronan’s distinctive and sometimes acerbic humor. Readers curious about the Vatican crackdown will learn a good deal from this first section of Sister Trouble. But the talk that comprises the second section provides much-needed context for understanding the conflict. Here the author examines in particular the treatment of dedicated celibate women throughout church history and the threat they have always posed to the supposedly absolute gender boundaries with which male leaders justify their domination of the church. Finally, in the concluding section, Ronan makes clear her reasons for undertaking Sister Trouble—because she cares so deeply about Catholic sisters. In the first article, she uses a statue of Joan of Arc to trace a genealogy from one U.S. Catholic sister to another and finally to herself. Then she draws on Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain to explore how the sisters shaped the lives and characters of generations of Catholic women. And in the final essay, Ronan steps beyond the current conflict to bid farewell to three recently deceased sisters whose lives of commitment profoundly influenced her own. As theologian Tania Oldenhage has written, Sister Trouble is an “urgent, clear-sighted and deeply-moving account” of the conflict between the Vatican and the nuns. It’s also a testimony to the legacy of Catholic sisters throughout the ages.

Sister Trouble: The Vatican, the Bishops, and the Nuns

Christian Books & Bibles

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Women of Vision is a book that expands significantly public knowledge of the contributions of Catholic laywomen to church and society over the past century.    Despite historic advances in women’s recognition and equality over the past half-century, the significant roles played by Roman Catholic laywomen in church and society still go largely unacknowledged. With Women of Vision: Sixteen Founders of the International Grail Movement, Marian Ronan and Mary O’Brien contribute substantially to remedying this situation.  Founded in the Netherlands in 1921, just after World War I, the Grail movement was focused, from the outset, on using laywomen’s extraordinary gifts to resolve the crises in which the world found itself. By 1961, the movement had spread  to twenty other countries, including Brazil, Australia, the Philippines and nine African countries.   Drawn from interviews done with Grail founders in many of these countries, Women of Vision highlights the relentless and often heroic work done by Grail women, founding and staffing hospitals and schools, supporting indigenous women and girls, preparing local women for church and Grail leadership, and in some cases, assuming governance roles in their own countries and at the United Nations.  "The Grail founders whose voices are heard in this volume were and are women of great faith and enterprise. Their stories are invaluable to the history of the movement that inspired them.” —Alden V. Brown, author, The Grail Movement and American Catholicism 1940-1975 (1989)  Women of Vision tells the story of The Grail through the memories and experience of sixteen of its remarkable leaders, representing efforts on six continents and nearly a century of prophetic wisdom. It is a book which, like the movement it recounts, carries readers compellingly to “the cutting edge” of lay ministry, alongside women who transcend boundaries of geography and culture as they “trust in the Spirit of God, Mystery and Source of Life.” —Margaret Susan Thompson, Syracuse University

Women of Vision: Sixteen Founders of the International Grail Movement

O'Brien, Mary

Apocryphile Press

This unique handbook combines the theory and practice of the celebration of Sophia-whose name literally means "wisdom"-in one indispensable volume. In this new edition of Wisdom's Feast, the authors combine exercises, liturgies, sermons, study guides, prayers and meditations to create the first book of its kind-one that provides for experiencing Sophia in a ritual setting. Wisdom's Feast includes: - An introduction to Sophia - Activities for women's groups, churches and academic settings - Exercises on the most prominent Sophia themes in the Bible - Meditations and sermons - A comparative study of the biblical Sophia and other goddess figures - Studies of Sophia as mother, creator, wisdom and teacher

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