Lisa Sowle Cahill, 27 April 2003

U.S. Catholic women growing up at the time of the Second Vatican Council have a different experience of Catholicism and society than that of young adults today. While Vatican II women have strong roots in a cohesive Church, they also came of age in a more repressive society and in a religious community with separate, hierarchical gender roles. While these two groups of women have different experiences of sexuality, gender, and the home-work conflict, they can share a feminism based on Catholicism’s strong traditional commitment to social justice and to a sacramental understanding of faith, reappropriated for a newly global and participatory Church.