Media Type: Video

The sexual exploitation/abuse of women religious by Catholic priests was first reported by Sr. Maureen O’Donoghue in her 1994 report to the Vatican — a report that remained largely overlooked until 2001. This practice of “erasing” the experience and reality of Catholic women remains today. Professor Tara M. Tuttle probes the manner in which media outlets submerged the experiences and realities of Catholic women, both lay and consecrated, as they sought to affirm their own biases regarding the connection between clergy sexual abuse and homosexuality. That motif, along with inordinate deference for prelate and priest abusers, corrupted the truth and propped up the abuser’s narrative where women’s credibility was questioned and their efforts to access justice were routinely discounted or despised. Thus, women, accused of treachery against the Church for going public, suffered, too often, in silence.

Professor Tara M. Tuttle is the Assistant Dean of Diversity and Inclusion and a Senior Lecturer in the Lewis Honors College. She has a Ph.D. in Humanities with an emphasis in 20th century American culture, a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Louisville, and an MA in Humanities from Indiana State University.

Black Catholic Women have been instrumental in shaping the life and faith of the Church, yet, our collective memory of their work, courage, challenge, generosity, and faith is too often made “invisible” in our Catholic education, Catholic liturgy, and Catholic art. Sr. Anita Baird, a native of Chicago, IL, and a member of the Religious Congregation of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary shares the stories of some of the Black Catholic Women who challenged the Church, challenged their communities, and brought enormous change to this country as they stood against racism and for a more just Catholic Church and world.

Throughout the early (2nd-6th) Christian centuries, the lives of most women were lived in silence, while the few elite ascetic women got at least some attention. What about the rest? Dr. Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ, Catholic Professor of New Testament emerita at Brite Divinity School and past president of the Catholic Biblical Association, explores the lives of these early Christian women we know little about.

Carol Dempsey, OP, PhD explores new ways of reading the Scripture “against the grain” and offers us new understandings of many of the stories and poems can become uncanningly “prophetic” to move us forward in our work for global justice. Included in our discussion is the topic of the gendering of “God” as we explore hegemonic power.  Professor Carol J. Dempsey, OP is an internationally recognized and award-winning scholar who teaches courses in Biblical Studies, specifically in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. With particular expertise in the Prophets, Professor Dempsey’s interests lie in a feminist and liberation approach to biblical texts, gender studies, biblical theology, literary and rhetorical criticism, and environmental/ecological studies.