Suzanne Mulligan

The documents of General Congregation 32 (GC32), issued by the Society of Jesus in 1975, signalled a transition in how the Jesuits understood their mission to serve the faith and promote justice in the world. This document captured ‘the signs of the times’ and articulated the Society’s commitment to social justice. In issuing the document, the Society sought to not only name injustice but also identify pathways towards a more just world. It is a rich document, at times reflecting the optimism of the era, but also deeply rooted in reality; the complexities of social sin are laid bare but not at the expense of offering a hopeful vision for a future inspired by the Gospel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women do not feature in GC32. One could argue that women’s inclusion in discussions of justice, economics, and politics was not commonplace at the time, and that we can forgive the authors for this omission as a result. But an omission it was, and when we read the document today, fifty years on, how might we evaluate it? More particularly, what can we say about women’s role in the Church and society today that offers signs of hope for a better world?

I would argue that if we attempt to answer this question from a purely ecclesial perspective we are left with a ‘negative result’. There has been little progress within Catholic Church structures to advance women’s participation and authoritative decision-making. Some developments have occurred, certainly, but progress is slow. It must also be said that where progress is happening, it is the outcome of courageous, innovative theology that affirms an ethos of inclusivity and participation. Moreover, the late Pope Francis’ dedication to a synodal Church has helped advanced this renewed ecclesiology. In addition, the decades since GC32 have witnessed a major shift in the type of person taking advanced degrees in theology: many are women. Thus, there are many hopeful signs, which I acknowledge here, but I nevertheless maintain that institutional progress on women’s authoritative ecclesial participation remains patchy at best.

None of this is to say that women have been inactive in the life of the Catholic Church or that their presence has not often been visionary,imaginative, and courageous. Vatican II proved to be a crucial event in the life of the modern Church. Among the many contributions it made was to reiterate the theological belief that the Church is not just an institution but is the ‘People of God’, ‘a holy community … all the baptised together’. Distinct roles in the Church can be respected but not in such a way as to undermine the gifts, talents, and contributions of all believers. Vatican II spoke of a universal call to holiness, and as Elizabeth Johnson says, ‘The call and gift are there for all, an intrinsic part of Christian identity. Talents may differ. But about the participation in God’s life that blesses every heart there is no doubt.’¹

Women play a transformative role socially, politically, economically, and environmentally. In many respects, they are leading the way. And this is true also among the People of God. Women have a prophetic role to play within the Church; they have lifted their heads above the parapet and have not allowed structural inertia to thwart their generosity, creativity, and wisdom. They have risen above misogyny and sexism; they have refused to allow structural sin, and the pervasive cultures that legitimise sin, to limit their integrity or diminish their agency. Women have been, and continue to be, visionaries; they see a different world and imagine different possibilities for the Church too. As Johnson explains:

Women have always been ministering in the Church, albeit in unofficial and undervalued, though irreplaceable, ways. Think of the millions of women named ‘anonymous’ through the centuries who have handed on the faith and enacted God’s love in the world… Women with deep gladness are responding to a call from the Holy Spirit of God, heard in the depths of their hearts, to take the giftedness of their ‘one wild and precious life’ and meet the world’s deep hunger for meaning and healing, liberation, and redemption.²

Johnson also notes that there are today more highly qualified women in pastoral ministry than ever before, something to be welcomed, and a rich source of creativity for the Church to draw from. ‘Something new is afoot,’ she claims.³

Without doubt, ‘something new is afoot’ in the synodal process.⁴ This is a genuine effort, I believe, towards a more inclusive, participatory, and vibrant Church. But as I said above, there is some distance yet to go. Synodality is an opportunity to recognise women’s place and contribution among the People of God, and as such, it has the potential to become part of a broader effort to reform an ecclesial culture that excludes or dehumanises.⁵ As a pilgrim Church, Christians are graced by doubt. Pope Francis once said, ‘Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened … It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ.’⁶ And the Pontifical Biblical Commission, in its document The Bible and Morality, identifies the importance of prayer and reflection in the discernment process, as well as prudence, persistence, and heroism as we journey towards fuller knowledge of truth.⁷ As a humble Church, graced by doubt, listening to voices on the margins becomes an indispensable aspect of ongoing moral discernment. Similarly, recognising the contribution women make to Church and society and a willingness to learn from their witness and experience are critical components of the sensus fidelium and sources of moral wisdom.

Why is it important to consider the role of women in a discerning Church?

As a discerning Church, all members are called to careful listening, to be open to the possibility of surprise, and to recognise the intrinsic dignity of those on the peripheries. Knowing is relational; we think, debate, learn, listen in relation to others. As a faith community, this is all the more important as we journey towards God, for as Kathleen McManus OP explains:

Knowing is relational because it necessitates going beyond the limits of what our own situated experience and rational intellectual pursuits can teach us; knowing requires crossing-over into the context of the ‘other’. Such a crossing-over requires courage and the capacity to risk leaving behind one’s own secure certainties; it requires trust that it is God who summons us in the difference of the other … It is a dynamic, ongoing, loving process requiring contemplative praying and being in the world, and an ever- deepening attunement to the Holy Spirit.⁸

However, McManus identifies two problems that persist in the Catholic Church today, problems that obstruct the sort of relational knowing described here. They are the structures of patriarchy and the exclusion of women and others from what she calls the ‘production of knowledge’. McManus’ fears are echoed by Meghan Clark who says that magisterial teaching on women is ‘filtered through a male gaze’, as she puts it.⁹ Consequently, the lived experiences of women, their voices and stories, are still ‘being examined from the outside’.¹⁰ It is true that Pope Francis helped raise awareness of the injustices done to women and girls globally in his many documents and speeches. And I would argue too that his emphasis on ‘encounter’ and ‘accompaniment’ offers a positive framework for collaborative engagement. But even Francis was unable abandon traditional, often limiting, gender stereotypes, and reverted to predictable and safe gender categories for women. Clark notes that ‘The acceptance of the male embodied experience as normative alongside a romanticised image of the Church as feminine have traditionally resulted in essentialising women’s domestic experiences. As a result, even within Catholic Social Teaching, space for women in their full, complicated, embodied, and nuanced lives is … insufficient.’¹¹

For Clark, although magisterial teaching defends women’s equal rights and dignity, it nevertheless reverts to an essential qualification: ‘their proper role in accordance with their own nature’.¹² At other moments, she notes, church leadership appears to place excessive burdens on women’s shoulders. Clark cites Pope Paul VI’s letter to women at the end of Vatican II, where he appears to place the fate of the entire world on their shoulders: women are to ‘hold back the hand of man who in a moment of folly might attempt to destroy human civilization’ and ‘save the peace of the world’.¹³ No small task! Such a role becomes all the more unlikely when women’s full social and ecclesial participation is routinely undermined, ignored, and undervalued in many contexts. McManus notes that these gender categories, and the incomplete thinking that supports them, can have a negative effect on men too: ‘this dominant ecclesial attitude has a warping effect on men, creating a “gender gestalt” within the Church that is truly “disordered”.’¹⁴

But there are reasons to be hopeful. Women are reclaiming their agency in a myriad ways, and especially from the 1960s on, women have participated in what Johnson calls ‘a spiritual reformation’. No longer willing to be silent, women began speaking out, demanding their rightful place in society, business, the academy, and the Church. ‘Together with other women,’ Johnson insists, ‘she is growing the Church and society toward a more graced future.’¹⁵ Hope grows from the mutual support women foster among themselves and is sustained by prayer and a deep faith in God. It is strengthened through humour, anger, resilience, and resistance. For Johnson, hope also grows from remembering and retelling the stories of biblical women.¹⁶ The act of remembering these biblical women is an act of resistance, empowering women to be seen today. ‘History is not over,’ Johnson says. ‘New decisions are possible, more in line with the Gospels and Christian origins and with the baptismal vocation of gifted women today. Toward that end, the dangerous memory of New Testament women acts as a spur to both critique and hope.’¹⁷ At the end of this article, I will conclude by looking at the witness of one such biblical woman and consider her message for the Church today. But first I wish to turn attention briefly to two areas where women continue to make powerful, transformative contributions to social justice in our world. These areas are climate justice and peacebuilding. My focus, therefore, is not on the Church ad intra but rather on the pivotal role women play in the Church ad extra. I wish to leave debates about women’s ordination to the priesthood or their ordination as deacons to experts in ecclesiology, Scripture, and canon law. By looking at the Church ad extra – the Church in the world – I wish to celebrate the daily contribution women make in their communities and society that advance the gospel call to be agents of kindness and justice in the world.

Women’s leadership today: climate justice and peacebuilding

Climate Justice

According to UN statistics compiled at the millennium, women form one- half of the world’s population, ‘work three-fourths of the world’s working hours, receive one-tenth of the world’s salary, own one one-hundredth of the world’s land, form two-thirds of illiterate adults, and with their dependent children form three-quarters of the world’s starving people’.¹⁸ In addition, women are raped, sexually exploited, and trafficked into sexual slavery, endure violence in their homes, and are murdered by male relatives to a degree that is not experienced by men. This is true globally, and although poorer women may be at heightened risk, women across all economic, ethnic, and racial categories face these threats. Moreover, we know that climate change is exacerbating gender inequality and heightening the precarity of poorer women. In particular, indigenous women and women in the Global South have fewer legal rights to land ownership and are generally omitted from decisions about climate change. To put this in context, women account for only 13% of landowners globally but do most of the agricultural work. Agricultural policies are often ‘gender blind’, failing to respond to, or acknowledge, the barriers faced by women and girls in this industry.¹⁹

Women spend more time collecting firewood and fetching water than men. And the World Health Organization (WHO) states that ‘natural disasters such as droughts, floods and storms kill more women than men, and tend to kill women at a younger age.’²⁰ One consequence is that women and girls have less time to participate in decision-making and education, further diminishing their ability to reshape the structures and norms that cause their social, cultural, and economic vulnerability. As Trócaire explains, women ‘are disproportionately impacted by climate change and the abuse of human rights by corporations’. But despite this, and although women face additional barriers to participation and decision-making, they are often at the forefront of tackling climate change and human rights abuses and articulating the need for transformative change. Despite the increasingly challenging and dangerous environment, women continue to organise, speak out, and to challenge human rights abuses. Their experiences, views, and participation are critical to solving these urgent problems effectively.²¹

Thus, a deep listening to the experiences, wisdom, and realities of women is crucial, both for the Church and for society. As McManus explains:

In the encounter with those who suffer, who are oppressed, or who are visibly or invisibly alienated, Christ is waiting to be made known. To enter into that saving revelation, we need to attend to our functioning epistemology: How do we know what we ‘know’? What experiences condition our perceptions? How might we be imposing our own unconscious presuppositions and values on the ‘other’, thus strengthening rather than dismantling the walls that divide us from one another?²²

Integrating women’s experiences and insights into climate action is an effective way of advancing ecological responsibility, and it fosters women’s agency. Strengthening women’s agency helps build stronger communities and advances goals for development and environmental sustainability, all of which improves the quality of life for women and men, helps protect families, and improves children’s development. But unlocking this potential means dismantling the sinful structures that keep women and girls on the margins of society and deepen their invisibility.

Agnes Brazal and Ann Marie Mealey are two scholars examining women’s leadership roles in the climate crisis. Ecofeminism considers the link between the oppression of women and the oppression of the earth; any effort to alleviate the environmental crisis must address gender inequality also. As Mealey explains, ‘Many believe that attention to women’s experience can not only help create a more just society but can also provide a vital starting point for egalitarian responses to the ecological crisis.’²³ Drawing on the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Ann Marie Mealey outlines four key tenets of ecofeminist thought:

1. The oppression of women and the oppression of nature are interconnected;
2. these connections must be uncovered in order to understand both the oppression of women and the oppression of nature;
3. feminist analysis must include ecological insights; and
4. a feminist perspective must be part of any proposed ecological solutions.²⁴

It is important to note that there are many different spiritualities, agendas, and perspectives within ecofeminism – it is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach to gender and the environment. Owing to this diversity of thought and the complex socioeconomic realities facing women, Mealey has coined the phrase ‘hermeneutic of difference’, which she explains is a ‘praxis-based methodology’.²⁵ This methodology is important because it relies on women’s agency and participation and has a pragmatic impact on outcomes. As Mealey states:

It is clear that the diversity of women’s experience is such that only a ‘creative hermeneutic’ can adequately address the problem. This does not necessarily mean a rejection of principles; rather it requires us to uncover in local domains a source of wisdom that can be used to liberate women and the earth from the destructive forces that keep both in positions of inferiority and subjugation.²⁶

Agnes Brazal argues that ecofeminism must additionally acknowledge the effects of colonialism and postcolonialism. ‘Ecofeminist theories have so far not sufficiently addressed the connection between the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature through the double-bind of being female and colonised.’ She continues, ‘women’s closeness to nature and ecological virtuousness cannot be accepted as a given fact but must be interrogated in each concrete case.’²⁷ Moreover, she proposes an ‘ethic of care’ as a helpful framework for analysis. Brazal explains that in the past decades, a shift has occurred in care ethics from simply attending to vulnerable persons and animals to a broader global ethic concerned with the protection of ecosystems and the planet.

Others further blend ethics of care and postcolonial feminism especially as coloured women or those from the two-thirds world have borne the burden of care work not only within their own families but also in the current global division of labour.²⁸

Caring for the earth, our common home, must integrate strategies that incorporate the lived experiences of women. These experiences are not singular, but ought to reflect the diversity of female reality. As climate change continues to place the greatest burden on the poorest, we are seeing women emerge in their local communities as courageous leaders of change.

Peace building

Violence across our world is rising. Peacebuilding responses, whether local, regional, or global, will require multi-faceted strategies, able to address a series of complex and interconnected crises. Peacebuilding, understood in a broad way similar to what we find in GC32, is based on social justice and human rights and will require intersectional thinking that allows space for diverse voices, especially the voices of those most affected by violence, to be heard. Thus, peace and reconciliation efforts must be founded on sophisticated thinking, and with an understanding that peace is won in contexts of broader social, economic, and human rights gains. With this in mind, the UN Security Council recommends a series of measures targeted at enhancing women’s security, which include:

Adequate consultations with women-led organizations to capture the pressing gendered security and protection concerns faced by women and girls in conflict-affected settings, and enhance measures to protect women briefers to the Security Council, including through the adoption of dedicated protocols or guidelines to prevent and address reprisals.²⁹

Women, in post-conflict situations, can assume a valuable role as active, participatory peacebuilders. These women are not passive agents but rather contribute in imaginative ways to healing and reconciliation. They are tellers of stories. Thus, achieving more peaceful societies, in which justice, equality, and participation for women and girls is normalised, requires hearing the stories of women. There is an ecclesial and social responsibility to recognise this agency and foster avenues for its expression. Kathleen McManus concurs, arguing that an epistemological shift as regards women’s suffering and experiences is urgently needed within the Catholic Church: ‘amidst the complex suffering of all marginalised peoples, the global suffering of women constitutes an ethical imperative for the Church.’³⁰

Moreover, Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward explain that as ‘a force that shapes notions of acceptable gendered behavior, religion lies at the heart of social norms and political and economic systems that disadvantage women.’³¹ Religions, therefore, have a moral duty to address the attitudes and structures that do violence to women. Marshall and Hayward see a particular role for women religious here and consider the varied ways in which female religious orders have worked in local communities bringing healing and fostering forgiveness amidst brokenness. They identify a valuable opportunity here, noting how ‘women have demonstrated their abilities to achieve common ground and work effectively to better their communities in instances where men have failed.’³² They contend that the strengths of religious women lie in the fact that they have greater – often global – networks from which they draw support, and that they are more relationship-based. For Marshall and Hayward, this can foster trust in communities and help build what they refer to as ‘movements for peace’.³³

Despite the vital role women can play in peacebuilding, Marshall and Hayward note that they do not participate sufficiently at political and policy-making levels of peacebuilding. The people who are at the center of decision-making pay inadequate attention to ‘softer’ peace work. This ‘softer’ work includes dialogue within communities and the creation of spaces for storytelling that I mention above.³⁴

There is an advantage that comes, ironically, from women’s invisibility. Women are more likely to be able to work ‘off radar’, so to speak. Their work might meet with less resistance since it tends not to attract much public scrutiny. And this can prove useful, especially in contexts of conflict and violence. There is a ‘shadow side’ to this invisibility, of course, since it is harder to document women’s efforts in the peacebuilding space, in turn making it more difficult for outside, international organisations to support religious women in these efforts.³⁵ There is also the risk of turning women’s invisibility into orthopraxis, deepening their social and ecclesial disempowerment. Finally, there is the risk of confining women to the ‘soft’ forms of peacebuilding, located more at the community level, and thus excluding them from high-level public negotiations and political decision- making.³⁶ I agree with Marshall and Hayward when they conclude that ‘more spaces are needed to give voice to women’s successful work for peace and remove the blinders on secular institutions that have obscured the role of faith in their work.’³⁷

Nevertheless, as Elizabeth Johnson noted above, women have always been ministering in the Church and in their communities, even if often unnoticed and undervalued. Women have experienced a deep sense of vocation to ministry and have responded to the call to be positive forces for change in the world. This continues today across our world as women become increasingly present in action for justice: ‘Women with deep gladness are responding to a call from the Holy Spirit of God, heard in the depths of their hearts, to take the giftedness of their “one wild and precious life” and meet the world’s deep hunger for meaning and healing, liberation and redemption.’³⁸

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, let us recall the story of the bent-over woman in Luke’s Gospel. In her work, Kathleen McManus uses this story to demonstrate the courage that women display in contexts of exclusion and invisibility. The ‘bent-over women’ of our time, the women who are invisible, abused, impoverished, and neglected, present an ethical imperative to the Catholic Church today. This imperative ‘demands institutional self-examination of how patriarchal structures, language, symbols, epistemology, and modes of relating, decision-making, and communication contribute to the suffering of women in multiple ways and in diverse contexts,’ McManus insists.³⁹ This powerful Lukan passage asks us to examine the structures, attitudes, and norms that shape women’s invisibility. One might think of the number of women and girls who ‘disappear’ every year due to violence, human trafficking, and displacement. McManus asks how our theology, symbols, and rituals serve to reinforce this oppression.⁴⁰ The treatment of the bent- over woman is, she says, ‘witheringly dismissive’ and the ‘definition of fundamentalism’.⁴¹ This woman was ignored because she was a woman. Her invisibility kept her culturally and religiously excluded. But the person we encounter in this story rises above her invisibility, revealing someone of immense courage, determination, and faith. Her integrity shines through, and this very integrity exposes the sinful biases of the community. In the face of prejudice, she insisted on being seen. In seeing her, Jesus not only rejected prevailing norms, he affirmed her dignity.⁴² The humiliation of invisibility is transformed into a life-enhancing encounter with Christ.

And it is because of this encounter that the bent-over woman stood up straight. McManus says that ‘in her sacred space of worship, a space that itself was fraught with forces of diminishment rendering her invisible, forces that Jesus dispelled as he called her forth and laid hands on her.’ This woman’s faith sustained her and strengthened her resistance: ‘we know it because the first thing she does when she stands up straight is to praise and glorify God: she is exalted, and the community rejoices.’⁴³ The community rejoiced! The act of recognition, of acknowledging this woman’s dignity, had a profound effect not only on her but on the whole community. In other words, they were liberated from their moral blindness, from dehumanising religious principles, and were instead empowered to embrace a new way of relating, gathering, and belonging. McManus asks, ‘What impact might her upright presence as feminine image of God presiding in the gathered assembly have on her bent-over sisters, and on the forces that bend them over, today?’⁴⁴ I suggest that although women’s full, mysterious, imaginative, and courageous participation in the Church is resisted by a few, it is the very thing that will ultimately enable our ecclesial community to rejoice, to stand up straight, and to praise the glory of God.

Dr Suzanne Mulligan is Professor of Practice at the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.

Notes

1. Elizabeth A. Johnson, ‘“Your One Wild and Precious Life”: Women on the Road to Ministry’, Theo- logical Studies, 80:1 (2019), p. 205.
2. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road to Ministry’, p. 203.
3. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road to Ministry’, p. 204.
4. For more on this see Gerry O’Hanlon, ‘The Final Document of the World Synod’, The Furrow, 75:12 (December 2024), pp. 652–657. Gerry O’Hanlon, ‘Discerning the Decision Point: Next Steps on the Synodal Pathway in Ireland’, The Furrow, 76:6 (June 2025), pp. 308–313. Michael Conway, ‘Synodality: A Journey with a Future’, The Furrow, 76:6 (June 2025), pp. 299–307.
5. One damaging culture identified by James Keenan SJ is what he calls ‘hierarchicalism’. See James F. Keenan SJ, ‘Hierarchicalism’, Theological Studies, 83:1 (2022), pp. 84–108.
6. Joshua J. McElwee, ‘Catholicism Can and Must Change, Francis Forcefully Tells Italian Church Gathering’, National Catholic Reporter, https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/catholicism-can- and-must-change-francis-forcefully-tells-italian-church-gathering
7. See Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Bible and Morality: Biblical Roots of Christian Conduct (Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2008).
8. Kathleen McManus OP, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance: The Global Suffering of Women as an Ethical Imperative for the Church’, Theological Studies, 79:4 (2018), p. 892.
9. Meghan J. Clark, ‘Equal Dignity and Agency: Catholic Social Teaching & The Lives of Women’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 90:2, p. 117.
10. Clark, ‘Equal Dignity and Agency’, p. 120.
11. Clark, ‘Equal Dignity and Agency’, p. 110.
12. Clark, ‘Equal Dignity and Agency’, p. 115. Quotation is from Gaudium et Spes (The Holy See, 1964), 60.
13. Clark, ‘Equal Dignity and Agency’, p. 115.
14. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 890.
15. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road to Ministry’, p. 206.
16. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road to Ministry’, p. 210.
17. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road to Ministry’, p. 212.
18. See, for example, UN Women, ‘Facts & Figures’, www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/ commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures
19. Trócaire, Women Taking the Lead: Defending Human Rights and the Environment (2020), p. 10, www.trocaire.org/documents/women-taking-the-lead-defending-human-rights-and-the- environment-2/
20. World Health Organization, Gender, Climate Change and Health, p. 3, https://apps.who.int/iris/ bitstream/handle/10665/144781/9789241508186_eng.pdf
21. Trócaire, Women Taking the Lead, p. 3.
22. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 881.
23. Ann Marie Mealey, ‘Feminism and Ecology’, in Just Sustainability: Technology, Ecology, and Resource Extraction, ed by Christiana Peppard and Andrea Vicini (Orbis, 2015), p. 184.
24. Mealey, ‘Feminism and Ecology’, p. 184.
25. Mealey, ‘Feminism and Ecology’, p. 188.
26. Mealey, ‘Feminism and Ecology’, p. 191.
27. Agnes Brazal, ‘Ethics of Care in Laudato Si’: A Postcolonial Ecofeminist Critique’, Feminist Theology, 29:3 (2021), p. 221.
28. Brazal, ‘Ethics of Care’, p. 223.
29. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, ‘Conflict-related Sexual Violence’, p. 59.
30. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 882.
31. Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding (US Institute of Peace, 2011), p. 6.
32. Marshall and Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding, p. 7.
33. Marshall and Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding, p. 8.
34. Marshall and Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding, p. 9.
35. On this point see Marshall and Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding, p. 11. See also Susan Hayward, Katherine Marshall (eds), Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen (US Institute for Peace, 2015).
36. Hayward and Marshall, ‘Religious Women’s Invisibility: Obstacles and Opportunities’, in Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding, p. 23.
37. Marshall and Hayward, Women in Religious Peacebuilding, p. 14. See also Hayward and Marshall, ‘Religious Women’s Invisibility’.
38. Johnson, ‘Women on the Road of Ministry’, p. 203.
39. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 883.
40. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 886.
41. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 886.
42. Clemens Sedmak, for example, connects invisibility and a lack of recognition with a dehumanisation of the person. He says that ‘people are humiliated when they are “invisible”, when they are not invited to occupy public spaces. The shaming and shame endured … in their experience of not being welcome points to humiliation; persons are humiliated when they have reasons to feel out of place.’ Clemens Sedmak, Enacting Catholic Social Tradition: The Deep Practice of Human Dignity, (Orbis, 2022), p. 4.
43. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, p. 886.
44. McManus, ‘The Mysticism of Resistance’, pp. 989–990.