Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power

by Michele Dillon

• ISBN13: 9780521639590
• ISBN10: 052163959X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

It has been well documented that American Catholics tend to be Catholics on their own terms, or choose to remain Catholic while selectively embracing official Church doctrine. But why do Catholics who disagree with official Church teachings on major issues such as homosexuality, women's ordination, or abortion, and are thus institutionally marginalized, choose to remain Catholic? Why do they stay, when the cost of staying and being stigmatized would seem to be greater than the benefits they might gain from switching to religious groups whose doctrines would validate their beliefs on these issues? Michele Dillon, drawing upon in-depth interviews with Catholics who are openly gay or lesbian, advocates of women's ordination, and pro-choice, investigates why and how pro-change Catholics continue to remain actively involved with the Church, despite their rejection of the Vatican's teaching on sexuality and gender.

Table of Contents

1. Pro-change Catholics: forging community out of diversity

2. Doctrinal change in the Catholic Church

3. Official Church teaching on homosexuality, women's ordination, abortion, and the role of the theologian

4. Pro-change groups in the Catholic Church: dignity, the women's ordination conference, and Catholics for a free choice

5. Gay and lesbian Catholics: 'owning the identity differently'

6. Using doctrine to critique doctrine

7. Pluralism in community

8. Reasoned theology: legitimating emancipatory possibilities

9. The challenges of difference.