Rhetoric, paradox, and the movement for women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church

Abstract

The movement for women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church sharpened and intensified perceptions of the paradoxical situation facing Catholic women. Women who are unhappy with the Church's position on women's issues and who continue to identify as Roman Catholics must embrace a paradoxical world‐view. At the poles of this world‐view are a commitment to viewing women's experience as central to female spirituality and a belief in at least some of the core traditions and dogma of Roman Catholicism. Women who oppose the Church's ban on female priests shift back and forth between the poles of the paradox, but tend ultimately to identify more strongly with one polarity than the other. Those who assume a selectively orthodox stance identify primarily as Catholics and secondarily as feminists, while those who take a selectively heterodox stance identify primarily as feminists and secondarily as Catholics. This essay identifies and assesses the means by which proponents of each stance seek to reconcile women to their paradoxical situation and gauges the potential of each to persuade Church authorities to modify the institution's position on women.