This dissertation studies one of the new ministries for women in the Catholic Church that developed after the Second Vatican Council. It is a historical, critical, descriptive, and evaluative study. While professional roles for women in the Church had become limited and privatized through the centuries, there are precedents in the early Church and even in the Middle Ages for more public and official roles for women. Vatican II renewed and broadened the definitions of "minister" and of "ministry" and called upon all Christians to participate actively in the work of the Church. We have sought to discover the degree. to which women have been able to achieve a professional ministerial role for themselves in campus ministry. Many primary sources were available to answer this question, the most important being the testimony of the women themselves. One chapter of the dissertation traces the history of women's roles in the Catholic Church. Another follows the history of Catholic campus ministry and shows why this was a ministry open to women more than many others in the Church. A third chapter traces the efforts of women in the American Catholic Church as a whole as they made a transition from being assistants of priest chaplains to chaplains themselves, a movement requiring changes in concepts of ministry and of minister held by the women themselves as well as those held by their colleagues and constituencies. The women, numbering nearly three hundred by 1972 were able, within limits, to win the title chaplain, to prove their value as ministers in individual situations, and to increase their own self-confidence as ministers. Their experiences give insights into job descriptions, models, procedures, and criteria that have developed over a twelve-year period. The fourth, and longest, chapter is in effect a case study of the larger movement as it developed in the Archdiocese of Boston. This diocese was chosen as a case study because of its comprehensive and varied academic community and because of the representative character of the 18 women chaplains who have served within its boundaries. Conclusions of the study are: 1. Since 1962 campus ministry has provided a situation in which Catholic women have been able to realize a ministerial identity and reveal the potentialities of women as ministers. 2. Experiences of the women have varied from very positive to very negative. Factors contributing to negative experiences were: a. Women, denied the sacramental-cultic forms of ministry, are marginal to a ministry that has itself been marginal to both the Church and the university. b. Catholic ministry was so identified with priestly functions that women had no models to follow. c. The changes in attitudes and practices in the Catholic Church after Vatican II often left the women anxious and without adequate support systems. Factors contributing to positive experiences were: a. The personal character of the individual woman. b. Effective team-work situations. c. Support from Church officials, colleagues, and religious communities. 3. Issues related to the positive or negative experiences of women are a woman's feminist consciousness, the attitudes of people toward women as public ministers, and the question of ordination of women in the Catholic Church. 4. Even when and where women are accepted and find success as campus ministers, two other problems arise: the relationship of women religious to their communities, and the prejudices lay women encounter. The broad significance of the experience of these women lies in the way attention has been called to women's capacities, when given a chance, to exercise ministry and to their unequal position in the Church. A direction has been set by women campus ministers that will not easily be reversed. These women may be creating models that recall the origins of Christian ministry as well as suggest its future.

with Walter Robinson, Stephen Kurkjian, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Matt Carroll / Robsham Theater