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Elizabeth Bayley Seton corresponds with Bishop John Carroll
The first letter of Elizabeth Bayley Seton’s correspondence with Bishop John Carroll recounts her experience in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Seton looked to John Carroll as a spiritual director, confidant, and support as she began the Sisters of Charity. In 1812 John Carroll approved a version of the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity for use by Seton’s community, then called the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph’s. -
Period: to
First-wave of the Women's Movement
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Seneca Falls Convention
The Seneca Falls Declaration enumerates the oppression of women by men in the United States. It outlines a clear course of action for "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to [women] as citizens of the United States." The hope is that the Seneca Falls Convention will be the first of many women's conventions in the future. Seneca Falls marks the first public political meeting in the United States dealing with women's rights. -
Ordination of Antoinette Brown Blackwell
Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first ordained woman minister in the United States. Although women ministers were rare, they were not longer an anomaly. Blackwell also wrote extensively about evolution, religion, and gender. She suggested a proper understanding of the order of nature and the equality of the two sexes. -
The Woman's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The Woman's Bible is a product of changes and developments in the American religious and social landscapes in the ninteenth century. It was impacted by the organization of the women's movement and the development of liberal theologies that emphasized more natural and human religion. New scholarly techniques were applied to the Bible and raised objections about it being divinely inspired. Stanton's reading of the Bible received considerable opposition from fellow suffragettes. -
Women & the Christian Religion by Bishop John L. Spalding
Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria is significant because of his role as a reformer and critic of sex stereotyping occupations; unequal pay for equal work; discriminatory civil and criminal laws against women; voting; and the double standards of sexual morality and promiscuity. Spalding argued that in an ideal society, women would have the same rights as men. -
Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." -
Casti Connubii (On Chaste Marriage) Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI's encyclical reiterated the teaching that the primary purpose of marriage was procreation and any form of birth control -- other than natural methods -- was intrinsically evil. Furthermore, he argued that women must submit to their husbands' authority in marriage and that women's primary purpose was motherhood. -
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker
Dorothy Day developed Peter Maurin's "Houses of Hospitality" in poor parishes of every city in the country, where the precepts of God could be put into effect. She argued that we have turned to state responsibility through home relief, social legislation and social security, and that we no longer practice personal responsibility for fellow brothers and sisters. -
Period: to
Second-wave of the Women's Movement
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The Pill
When the birth control pill became widely available in the late 1950s, women gained nearly complete control of their reproductive capacities for the first time ever. -
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Friedan identified "the problem which has no name," the problem being that many middle-class white women felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction and meaninglessness about their lives. She argued that women needed a greater sense of identity and autonomy while avoiding the persuasive imagery created by women's magazines, television, movies, and popular books. -
The Sisters of Selma
Rosemary Flanigan, formerly known as Sr Thomas Marguerite, CSJ, was one of the first six nuns who participated in the third March at Selma to bear witness to the social injustices against African-Americans, advocate for voter registration, and protest the deaths of Rev. James Reeb and Jimmie Lee Jackson. Religious women in St. Louis were urged to participate in forms of social activism by Joseph Cardinal Ritter, to bear witness to the plight of those living in unjust social conditions. -
Pontifical Commission on Population and Birth Control
The overwhelming majority of the members on the Pontifical Commission on Population and Birth Control recommended in favor of changing the Church's teaching on birth control. In spite of the Pontifical Commission, the Vatican rejected the arguments supporting a change to the teaching on birth control. In response to Humanae Vitae, a group of theologians, clergy, and laity signed a statement that judged it was permissible for Catholics of good conscience to dissent from the Church's teaching. -
Roe v. Wade
The Supreme Court ruled in favor that women's constitutional right to privacy includes the right to obtain an abortion. The issue of reproductive rights and feminist bioethics was in the center of the public debate in the United States. -
Period: to
Global-wave of the Women's Movement
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United Nations International Women's Conference
The first United Nations International Women's Conference took place in Mexico City in 1975. It was soon followed by conferences in Nairobi, Stockholm, and Beijing. These conferences characterize the international development of women's movements throughout the world. -
Beyond Anger by Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ
Beyond Anger is a journey towards claiming one's own identity as Christian women in the face of a tradition and community that have not been generally receptive to that journey. A change of consciousness brings about a changed interpretation of events in the Church and religious history. Osiek and other feminist theologians argue for conversion and structural transformation. -
Women's Rereading the Bible by Elsa Tamez
The liberation theology movement throughout Latin America was a breakthrough towards developing a stronger commitment to the poor. Even though the Bible has supported this movement, there are numerous explicit cases of marginalization in the Bible. Tamez argues for a re-reading of the Bible through a woman's eyes and experience.
