Faithful and Fearless

The fireworks set off by the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and '70s barely registered in the United States armed forces and the American dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church. More than a quarter century later, these male bastions are just starting to respond to the challenges feminists have repeatedly issued. Faithful and Fearless handily shows how some women who support these institutions, yet chafe under restrictions and belittlement aimed at their sex, have brought about changes. Beneath some heavy academic trappings, Faithful and Fearless is a wellspring of pungent quotes from military women who invoked the law to redress injustices and female religious who merely spoke louder when condemnation rolled down from the Vatican. Said Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister when Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the ban on ordaining women: "After 2,000 years of teaching errors on matters as global and major as anti-Semitism, usury, the Inquisition, slavery, the nature of the universe, and meat on Fridays, it is hard to believe that concern for the recognition of the fullness of grace in all creatures can be considered a distortion of the faith. I'll take my chances." --Francesca Coltrera