The New Catholic Feminism: Theology, Gender Theory and Dialogue

by Beattie; Tina

• ISBN13: 9780415301473
• ISBN10: 0415301475
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Roman Catholicism exerts a continuing influence on the culture and politics of the world's nations, and never more so than on issues of gender and sexuality. If the Catholic Church is to continue to be relevant to modern women, it needs to go beyond its traditional anachronistic sexual stereotypes and hierarchies, to present the Gospel in a way that is attentive to the questions, needs and values of the age, without surrendering the central truths of Christian faith.

Author Biography

Tina Beattie is Reader in Christian Studies at Roehampton University, where she also convenes the MA programme in Religion and Human Rights.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(16)
PART I The middle	17	(72)
Catholicism, feminism and faith	19	(14)
The Vatican and feminism	20	(3)
Catholicism and the end of feminism?	23	(3)
Secular theory and feminist theology	26	(3)
The secularization of knowledge	29	(4)
Feminist bodies and feminist selves	33	(16)
The disembodied self	33	(4)
Butler's absent God	37	(3)
Sex, gender and the secular body	40	(2)
Rethinking essentialism	42	(3)
The self as gift	45	(4)
Gender, knowing and being	49	(19)
Heidegger and the question of Being	50	(4)
Sexual difference, being and language	54	(3)
Feminist theology after Heidegger	57	(3)
Towards a feminist Thomism	60	(5)
Gendering apophaticism	65	(3)
Knowledge, desire and prayer	68	(21)
The secularization of vision	70	(2)
The problematization of prayer	72	(4)
Desire and reason	76	(5)
Praying as a woman	81	(8)
PART II The end	89	(96)
Incarnation, difference and God	91	(21)
Balthasar and Irigaray: engendering difference	92	(3)
Language and embodiment	95	(1)
Irigaray and the otherness of God	96	(3)
Balthasar's theo-drama	99	(2)
Balthasar and the otherness of woman	101	(2)
Eve, Mary and the Church as woman	103	(4)
The end of woman	107	(5)
Masculinity, femininity and God	112	(17)
Acting up: man as material girl	113	(4)
Sexual difference in eastern and western Christianity	117	(4)
Sexual difference and the imago Dei	121	(5)
Sexuality and sacramentality	126	(3)
Cherchez la femme: gender, Church and priesthood	129	(20)
The nuptial significance of the priesthood	130	(3)
The Marian and Petrine Church	133	(4)
Justifying the male priesthood	137	(2)
The sacrament of the body	139	(3)
Sacramentality and the female body	142	(3)
Cherchez l'homme: Balthasar's sexual paradoxes	145	(4)
Desire, death and the female body	149	(14)
Balthasar's suprasexuality	150	(2)
Woman, sex and time	152	(3)
Sex, death and the polarities of human existence	155	(3)
Kenosis, sex and death	158	(3)
Kenosis, masculinity and vulnerability	161	(2)
Sex, death and melodrama	163	(22)
Sexual role models? Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr	163	(4)
Hell and the female body	167	(3)
Balthasar's struggle	170	(3)
Casta meretrix	173	(6)
The female sex as other	179	(3)
The indictment of theology	182	(3)
PART III The beginning	185	(127)
Being beyond death	187	(21)
Befriending death	188	(2)
Beyond necrophilia	190	(7)
Lacan, Heidegger and death	197	(4)
Rene Girard: desire and violence	201	(3)
Girard and the peace of Christ	204	(4)
Maternal beginnings	208	(17)
The maternal sacrifice	210	(2)
Maternal abjection	212	(3)
The maternal subject	215	(5)
The incineration of meaning	220	(5)
Redeeming fatherhood	225	(21)
God, suffering and sacrifice	225	(4)
Masculinity and violence	229	(2)
Christ the dragon-slayer	231	(2)
Peace and martyrdom	233	(1)
God's origins	234	(5)
The compassion of the father	239	(3)
The community of the father	242	(4)
Redeeming motherhood	246	(23)
God and the status quo	246	(3)
Balthasar's motherly God	249	(4)
Maternity and natality	253	(3)
The maternal Church	256	(4)
The cosmic mother	260	(5)
The Church as Eve	265	(4)
Redeeming language	269	(21)
The silenced sex	269	(4)
The body that speaks	273	(4)
Redeeming the nightmare	277	(4)
The elemental matrix	281	(3)
Difference beyond death	284	(3)
Theology beyond feminism	287	(3)
Redeeming sacramentality	290	(22)
The fire and the rose	292	(1)
The knowledge of angels	293	(5)
The liturgical body	298	(4)
The maternal priest	302	(2)
Fecundity and sacrifice	304	(6)
God's grandeur and the body's grace	310	(2)
Notes	312	(45)
Bibliography	357	(13)
Index	370