ABSTRACT
It is hard to over-estimate the challenge that feminism poses to Roman Catholicism. Pope John Paul II's call for a 'new feminism' has led to the development of a Catholic theological response to the so-called 'old feminism'. The New Catholic Feminism sets up a dramatic encounter between the orthodox Catholic establishment and contemporary critical theory, including feminist theology and philosophy, queer theory, and French psycholinguistics, in order to explore fundamental questions about human identity, personhood and gender. From the naked bodies of Eden to the 'gay nuptials' of liturgy, it argues that the strange and volatile world of Catholic sexual symbolism cannot be 'tamed' to meet the ideological agendas of either feminist theology or conservative Catholicism. Only through a radical re-evaluation of the sacramental significance of the sexed human body might the Catholic Church provide a redemptive response to the sexual politics of contemporary society.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |15 pages
Introduction
part |71 pages
The middle
chapter |14 pages
Catholicism, feminism and faith
chapter |16 pages
Feminist bodies and feminist selves
chapter |19 pages
Gender, knowing and being
chapter |20 pages
Knowledge, desire and prayer
part |95 pages
The end
chapter |21 pages
Incarnation, difference and God
chapter |17 pages
Masculinity, femininity and God
chapter |14 pages
Desire, death and the female body
chapter |21 pages
Sex, death and melodrama
part |127 pages
The beginning