This article will outline a feminist interpretation for responses of the Roman Catholic Church to particular events in modern history, and sketch feminist proposals for solving the resulting problems of the Church today. The first section interprets the Church's initial response to scientific and philosophic discoveries and movements of the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment period as responsible for the feminization of the image of Roman Catholicism in the secular mind. The second section interprets the Church's response to liberalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as confirming for the secular, and increasingly popular, mind this feminine image of Catholicism. The third section depicts Vatican II as a contemporary attempt to create a more masculine image for the faith by moving the Church's sphere of action from the feminized private sector to the public world characterized by masculine rationality and technology. The final section sketches some ways in which modern feminist scholarship and its perspective can be a major and necessary contributor to the eradication of this feminine view of religion through the elimination of public/private dualism.

From the manuals of the classicist period, moral theology inherited an understanding of the moral act that is rooted in the classical conception of the human being as a rational animal. However, the new personalist and relational anthropology characterizing contemporary theology requires a corresponding revised idea of the nature of the moral act. This revision, it appears, cannot be definitively achieved unless a holistic material understanding of the moral life first replaces the merely formal and empty concept of it in the manualist tradition. Fortunately, this replacement seems to be occurring. The areas of sexual morality and social consciousness are those that suffer the greatest distortion in ethics based on classicist anthropology and, similarly, admit the greatest revision when transferred into the context of contemporary theological anthropology.

The negative image of the Pharisees in the Christian tradition since the time of the Gospels is stark, to say the least. Ninety percent of the references to them in elementary Catholic textbooks and seventy-eight percent in secondary Catholic school texts are negative. Because this image is historically unwarranted and because the Pharisees are the forefathers of present-day rabbinic Judaism, correcting that distorted image both in Christian scholarship and popular education is essential to further Jewish-Christian dialogue. With Vatican II there was “turning around” in the official Catholic Church on the image of the Pharisees, and since that time numerous official Catholic documents have called for a balancing of the distorted image of the Pharisees. Some Catholic scholars, mostly in the United States, and to some extent in Germany, have begun that scholarly and popular education process. John Pawlikowski, Eugene Fisher, Clemens Thoma, and Franz Mussner stand out in this work. But much remains to be done to bring that new scholarship into the classroom, books, and liturgy.

Thomas Altizer develops the theme of the death of God as an attempt to reverse the emphasis on transcendence which is central to a more traditional theology. He believes a theology of transcendence establishes a dichotomy between God and humanity which is unfaithful to the meaning disclosed in the Christ event. His concern is to interpret the positive aspect of God's death as an example of a self-giving which, by becoming empty, is able to stand open to all. By making use of themes from Buddhist thought, Altizer develops a richly paradoxical theology whose negations, when properly understood, hold within them even deeper affirmations.

Nathan A. Scott, Jr. is identified as a leading figure in the development of the interdisciplinary field of theology and literature. This essay presents an interpretation of his methodology and scholarly development over a thirty-year period (1952-1981). Paul Tillich's theology of culture is understood as the major methodological and theological influence on Scott's early work. Martin Heidegger's philosophy (preeminently the essays on aesthetics) is the major influence in the development of Scott's mature scholarship. Scott's methodology has a seven-step structure and the textual analysis of his works is presented in a chronological manner. The central foci in the shift in Scott's inquiry are the type of literature he analyzes and his understanding of the role of the poet. The essay concludes with an evaluation of Scott's contribution to this field of study and suggestions for its future development.

Contrary to widely held assumptions, American Catholics in the nineteenth century made some interesting and even original contributions to religious thought. This essay serves as an introductory resource for this significant body of writing. Surveying the period between 1840 and 1907, it identifies distinctive and self-aware American Catholic contributions to theology in three areas, the church question, Catholic Americanism, and modernism. Finally it draws attention to some of the unfinished agenda left to us by this largely forgotten tradition.

Considering that History and Religious Studies are two of the areas in which feminist scholars have been most active, it is surprising how very little information is compiled in the area of American Catholic Women's History. Catholic Church historians, of course, have never found the laity of great interest, and the contemporary feminist movement has been strongly secular. Protestant and Jewish materials are more easily available, and even those books which purport to address women in American religion in general give only brief attention to Catholicisim, often by dealing solely with women in religious orders. So work on American Catholic women remains to be done.

The one exception is books dealing with individual religious orders, partly because of the accessibility of the materials, though I have been gently admonished not to overestimate the order in convent archives. Studies moving wider to focus on sisters in general are still very few, and attempts to integrate these materials with lay women's history have barely begun. People interested in this field will find help in Elizabeth Kolmer, A.S.C., “Catholic Women Religious and Women's History: A Survey of the Literature,” American Quarterly 30 (1978), 639-51, and in the forthcoming book by Evangeline Thomas, C.S.J., Women Religious History Sources: A Guide to Archives (New York: Bowker).

Anyone who plies the noble art-science of social ethics (moral theology, Christian ethics), while taking no account of the feminist turn of consciousness, is open to charges of professional irresponsibility and incompetence. No. That is not an overstatement or an overblown rhetorical lead-in. The history of ethics is turning an epochal corner. To miss the turn is to be lost and useless.

Feminism is concerned with the shift in roles and the question of the rights that have been unjustly denied women. But all of that, however important and even essential, is secondary. The main event is epistemological. Changes in what we know are normal; changes in how we know are revolutionary. Feminism is a challenge to the way we have gone about knowing. The epistemological terra firma of the recent past is rocking and as the event develops, it promises to change the face of the earth.

The main impact of feminism will be felt in the area of moral knowledge. That, of course, is broader than ethics since all of the social sciences are heavy with moral assumptions and evaluations. Economics, politics (simplistically called political science), education, journalism, business administration, engineering, et al. are all intra-familial siblings of social ethics, although educational systems have treated them as separable strangers. (This mischievous separation, indeed, is a natural target of the emerging feminist consciousness.)