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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46674 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Kelley, Ann Elizabeth |
| Publisher | Boston University |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | This work is being made available in OpenBU by permission of its author, and is available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the author. |
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