ABSTRACT
Catholic convert Margaret Fletcher (1862–1943), founder of the Catholic Women's League (CWL) in 1906 and its mouthpiece The Crucible, fought to raise the status of middle-class English Catholic women in both the secular world and the Church. In this, Fletcher demonstrated the potential of Catholicism to provide a space in which non-elite women could assert agency and autonomy through the founding and management of women's groups and publications. The Crucible and the CWL provided various supports for “born” English Roman Catholic middle-class lay women, who were raised apart for fear of persecution and therefore lacked a connection with the secular world. Fletcher sought to create an organization wherein lay middle-class professional Catholic women in particular could be “useful.” A historical record of the writings, life, and motivations of this convert show how tremendously she believed in empowering lay middle-class Catholic women to engage more fully in the public sphere. Fletcher was galvanized by her conversion to bring her “crusade” for equality to the middle-class women of Catholic England. Finally, her writings on the place of Roman Catholic women in England provide evidence of how Christian feminists were able to harmonize and theorize thinking about women within a “patriarchal” religion.
