BREAKING THE STAINED GLASS CEILING: INTERSECTIONALITY AND THE FEMALE ORDINATION MOVEMENT IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Abstract

This thesis examines the female ordination movement within the Catholic Church as a feminist social justice collective seeking to overturn gender based oppression within this religious institution. Through a study of three communities, Mary Mother of Jesus, Good Shepherd, and Mary Magdalene Apostolic Catholic Community, this thesis explores the emancipatory strategies utilized by the female ordination movement to instil equality within the Church and within society. Each community’s commitment to gender inclusivity intersects with additional areas of structural reform, including LGBTIQ equality, racial justice, social welfare provision for the poor and the elimination of power and hierarchy within organized religion. This study is thus motivated by the question of how the female ordination movement is incorporating intersectional considerations within its fight of oppression in the Roman Catholic Church. Informed by a feminist epistemology, this thesis integrates the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality and kyriarchy to explore the positioning of the female ordination movement around multiple axes of domination within the Catholic Church, including sexism, racism, homophobia and classism. The methodology is triangulated. Firstly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of this movement and were evaluated through narrative analysis. Second, participation observation of the communities’ liturgies was evaluated through ritual analysis. This dual methodological approach addresses both the core beliefs and communal acts of these communities and understands their activism as both ideological and performative in nature. Given that women have been noticeably absent from the androcentric history of the Roman Catholic Church, and given also that there have been few fieldwork-based studies to date of feminist Catholic communities, the inclusion of these women’s voices and experiences represents an important contribution to scholarly inquiries investigating sexism and feminist activism within religious structures. This thesis draws upon their voices and their communal activities to fill a lacuna in research surrounding the tensions between feminism and patriarchy, and the ways in which intersectional feminism is transforming the structures and nature of Catholicism