PRINCETON, NJ, October 5, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to some in today’s popular culture, being a “Catholic woman” is practically an oxymoron. In a newly-released book, nine women of faith seek to dispel that myth.
The book, Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, is edited by Helen Alvaré, a Witherspoon Institute Senior Fellow in Princeton.
Alvaré recognized the need the “Catholic woman’s” story to be heard while observing popular culture and media increasingly treating the Catholic female as a split personality: a woman who, while she might say “yes” to the faith as a private source of comfort, should say “no” to its countercultural teachings on sex, contraception, marriage, child-rearing, and other ethical teachings of modernity.
In recent years the faithful Catholics, as well as hierarchy and canon lawyers, have tried to correct the perception that political figures like Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are in good standing and representative of the typical Catholic female.
“But Catholic women themselves are in a different place,” stated Alvaré. “Faced with situations their grandmothers and even their mothers never imagined, they are faced with the question of whether a 2,000-year-old Church has anything to offer them at this moment in time. They are trying to make sense of the intersection of faith, modern science, and their contemporary, lived experience.”
Alvaré’s book attempts to show that the authentic Catholic woman’s life, while not being devoid of struggle and confusion, is lived quite differently than what is being portrayed by the popular culture.
