Generous lives

Women are the heart and soul of the Catholic church, passing on its faith and traditions to the next generation. But an exclusively male hierarchy voices official teaching on faith and the moral life, and excludes from the ordained ministry the women who dedicate so much of their lives to the Church. More and more American Catholic women are choosing to leave the Church, yet most of them stay. Why? What does it mean to these women to be Catholic? To be women? To be American? In Generous Lives, Jane Redmont has gone beyond theories and taken these questions directly to the women in the street, creating a realistic and fascinating portrait of the female half of a living religion. Redmont interviewed more than a hundred American women between the ages of seventeen and ninety-two, in cities, suburbs, and rural areas from New England to south Texas and California to Wisconsin. They represent a changing church, one that reflects the diversity of American cultures and that is as much African-American and Asian-American as Irish or Hispanic. Deeply committed to their church, painfully alienated, or barely involved, all these women have deep and rich spiritual lives. Few experience crises of faith, but many question the shape and practices of the institutional church. Priests are key religious figures in their lives, but so are other women. Virtually all wonder whether their religious family views them as fully adult human beings. Being a Catholic woman in the United States has as much to do with "American" and "woman" as it does with "Catholic." Redmont examines how Catholic women work, love, vote, and pray. A lively and opinionated group, the women of Generous Lives speak their minds on a range of issues including poverty, violence, death and the afterlife, abortion, child-rearing, feminism, friendship, marriage, homosexuality, and the relationship and difference between women and men. Those who do stay in the Church stay on their own terms, critical yet positive, testing tradition against their experience and the voice of their conscience, which guides them on matters ranging from politics to birth control. Most do not see themselves as dissenters. Faithful, active, strong, and generous - often to a fault - the women of Generous Lives are the living church. The core of their Catholic life is the celebration of the sacraments and the commitment to the welfare of others - a belief in a generous God and in the necessity of leading a generous life.