Editorial

As you are aware, the ACU Project for Research in Women's History, Theology and Spirituality (WHTS) commenced formally on 23 October 2000. The first major concern of the Central Project Team was to produce an introductory newsletter. By this means we aimed to make contact with the network of historians, archivists and associates, which had developed in association with the Institute for Religious Studies (IRS), and to inform those within ACU, who had supported the proposal for the Project, that we were finally "off the ground". Attached to the Newsletter sent to the network outside the University was an invitation to become a Friend of the ACU WHTS Research Project..

The response was most encouraging. At one end of the geographical spectrum Rosemary Goldie wrote from Rome: "' many congratulations! " I look forward to further news. I am glad that the Consultation 'Woman and Man '" is to be the subject of an ACTA (Australian Catholic Theological Association) meeting and intrigued by your project on women's suffrage!" At the other end of the spectrum a woman in Victoria wrote: "As a member of WATAC (Vic,) I heard about your research and wanted to give my support. I wish you every success in this important work."

Limited postings on the internet have brought a number of responses ranging from a graduate fACU now teaching in Buenos Aires and an Anglican woman minister in Barbados, West Indies to a Catholic woman in New Jersey, USA, who is working with the aid of the Sisters of Charity to establish a Centre akin to the projected WHTS Research Centre.

From within ACU we have received a number of email and verbal expressions of support. We were perceived as making a strong beginning and the Newsletter was generally described as 'interesting'.

We welcome contributions from our readers within and without the University and would appreciate your drawing our attention to matters, which would be of interest to Friends of the ACU WHTS Research Project .

New Zealand Conference for Women Scholars in Religion and Theology, January 2001

Te Hui Rangahau Whakapono o Te Hunga Wananga Wahine - Women Scholars and Theology Conference was held at the University of Auckland 19-22 January, 2001. The theme was "sharing the baskets of knowledge".

This was a very stimulating conference but also one full of fellowship and warmth. Not only had the New Zealand organising committee done an excellent job of organising accommodation and meals, but also they showed great thoughtfulness. Sensitivity to Maroi culture was manifest throughout the conference and we were privileged to receive a traditional welcome and farewell.

The conference comprised papers and workshops on a variety of topics. Across the papers some themes were clearly discernible: theoretical problems in defining "woman" as a category and the tension between essentialism and constructionism; the play of language in representing theological experience and the limitations of metaphor for God talk; postmodern feminism; eco-feminisn; spirituality and healing; and goddess religion. As one could not attend all offerings, this review is sure to be incomplete, but it should convey some flavour of the conference.

One highlight of the conference was the launch of the Association of Women's Scholars of Religions and Theology's electronic journal SeaChanges, which will be free online at http://www.wsrt.com.cu/
seachanges/index.html. The editors are Drs Elaine Wainwright, Anita Munro, and Angela Coco.

Another highlight was Dr Kathleen McPhillips' report on the Feminist Theology Project, which she is conducting from the University of Western Sydney. This Project will provide a census of all subjects and courses in feminist theology and the quantitative data will be amplified with interviews with lecturers and students. In addition it will provide a foundation for an investigation into the establishment of a Chair in Feminist Theology in an Australian University.

At the conference dinner participants provided music and round dances that were not only great fun, but also created a sense of community.

The Association elected a committee to administer the Association and a conference committee was elected to organise the next conference which will be in Melbourne in 2004. We are fortunate to have indigenous theologians from New Zealand and Fiji on both committees.

Australian Women's Studies Association Conference - Casting New Shadows!

January 31 - February 2, 2001, Macquarie University

The hope expressed by the organisers of this conference was to encourage reflection about the shadows cast by examining new objects for thought in a changing feminist light.

This they also hoped would bring together people from a variety of backgrounds to discuss intersections of race and gender; new sexualities, new questions on education; health; creating and writing in the shadow of past feminists; gender and multiculturalism; new colonial power; immigration; media; new feminist generations; changing materialisms etc The range was indeed wide and challenging, indicating the extensive diversity of interests in women’s studies courses across Australia.

There was a strong philosophical, psychological and sociological postmodernist trend in many of the papers presented at this conference. Literary criticism was also much in evidence. History was the Cinderella discipline and there was no evidence of explicit theology or spirituality.

There was one interesting but poorly attended session called ‘Choice?’ at which two thought provoking papers were presented. The first was given by Angella Duvnjak, a doctoral candidate in Women’s Studies, Department of Social Inquiry, Adelaide, and entitled: ‘Abortion, feminism and the “new” politics of morality’. The second of the papers was given by Dr Nicole Moore, School of English and European Languages and Literatures, University of Tasmania, and entitled ‘The monster of indecision: Abortion, choice and commodity culture in women’s modernism.’ The authors of each of these papers was finally compelled to question ‘abortion’ as a ‘given good’ as it has tended to be presented by some feminists since the 1960s.

The threat posed to women’s studies by the burgeoning of gender studies programmes across the nation emerged as a central concern to many at the conference. For some it was the case of ‘a rose by another name’ but for many more such a development was met with alarm since it had been found that it rapidly led to the study of woman being subsumed in the study of man.

Eucharistic: Experience and Testimony
Colloquium, February 2001

From February 8-10 a Colloquium on the Eucharist and Experience was held at the Australian Catholic University, St Patrick’s Campus in Fitzroy. Sponsored jointly by the Australian Catholic University, The Blessed Sacrament Fathers, and their Centre Eucharistia in Rome, it offered a rich variety of perspectives on Eucharist.

This colloquium was one of those rare scholarly settings, like the CECS (Centre for Early Christianity Studies) Prayer and Spirituality conferences, where God is admitted. As Professor Kevin Hart stated at the opening of his keynote address, a fundamental question underlying all his scholarly reflection was the one he was often asked:’Why do you still go to church?’ Or as Professor Tony Kelly added, ‘What do you get out of the Mass?’

The structure of the conference facilitated the integration of material presented. Each day there were keynote presentations with time each afternoon for shorter papers and workshops. The keynote speakers were Dr Robyn Horner, Dean of the Melbourne College of Divinity, Professor Kevin Hart of Monash, Rev.Dr Frank O’Laughlin of Sandringham parish, Professor Tony Kelly (ACU), Assoc. Professor Robert Gascoigne (ACU), Dr Dennis Rochford (ACU), Dr John Ozolins (ACU), Dr Gerard Moore (CIS), Fr Philip Malone msc, and Dr Joan Nowotny pbvm. Each evening, at a plenary session, the keynote speakers and their respondents held a conversation on the themes of the day, with conference participants welcome to join in.

The impact of the postmodern was a persistent theme, made accessible by Robyn Horner’s excellent opening address on ‘The Eucharist and the Postmodern’. Another was the dynamic interaction whereby ‘Eucharist makes the community and the community makes the Eucharist’. Both provided a context not only for Kevin Hart’s title paper on experience and testimony, but to Tony Kelly’s, ‘Towards a Eucharist Ecology’ and Robert Gascoigne’s discussion of the ethical implications of Eucharist.

Frank O’Loughlin’s paper, ‘Eucharist and Transubstantiation, Symbol’, provided an historical context for the development of doctrine that was relevant to any contemporary exploration or formulation of Eucharistic theology. The importance of thinkers such as Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being and Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, was evident in many of the keynote speeches.

The shorter papers ranged over a variety of topics: From transubstantiation to the priesthood of the faithful; from missionary perspectives to medieval ones. There was an ecumenical flavour with papers presented on the Byzantine, Anglican, and Baptist traditions. The only disappointment was the absence of parish priests, pastoral assistants, and seminarians. The rich experience of priestly and pastoral ministry would have made a vital contribution to the theological reflection, invaluable to seminarians and theologians.

Notwithstanding this lack, the conference, superbly organised by Fr Tom Knowles, had a delightful sense of camaraderie, further facilitated by the excellent catering and the selection of Café K for the conference dinner.

Women’s Religious Institutes: a double-strand history

Increasingly, religious institutes of women are commissioning histories of their presence and ministries in Australia and these are being undertaken by both religious and lay women. More rigorous and critical standards are being set for these histories, though there still remains an honourable place for the chronicler, the collector of anecdotes and the compiler of documentary statements.

Interpretive histories, however, demand a social hermeneutic as motivations, customs and actions in the past are assessed in their local settings. Increasingly also, writers of religious life histories are challenged to place these within the wider currents of changing emphases in theological perception and in schools of spirituality. This posits, first of all, knowledge of the type of religious institute being studied, whether the older solemn-vow orders dating from medieval times or the later simple vow congregations which were recognised canonically as religious only in 1900. Though the largest and most widely known of the latter date, at most, from the 17th century, their tradition has a long pre-history, with some claim to be rooted ultimately in the deaconesses and the later canonesses of the early Christian centuries.

From the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) when institutes canonically recognised as religious were required for the first time to adopt an approved rule, the pronouncing of solemn, that is public vows – analogous to solemn feudal oaths – became also a required condition for such recognition. These were upheld in both civil and canon law and were dispensed only for a grave cause or defect. From 1298 the tradition of observance of enclosure by women religious also became a canonical requirement. Enclosure was to have an eventful history in the institutes to which it applied, not least in their Australian experience.

At the same time, from the central Middle Ages, there existed groups of women who did not seek canonical recognition as religious and whose vows, if they made them, were described as simple or private. Such vows, or promised undertakings, did not reach the level of public legislation and, while serious to the vow-maker, were easily dispensed, usually by the witness, whether bishop or confessor before whom they were made. If these groups sought approbation by the Church it was given by a local bishop. The degree of ‘enclosure’ they observed was that expected of local women of good social standing. Such groups in medieval times were locally known as beguines, beatas, mantellate, From the time of the Crusades, hospitalier Sisters became widely present in Western Europe. Many women attracted to the spirituality of the newly founded mendicant orders became lay tertiaries formed communities for their own mutual support and usually to undertake some needed social relief work.

In the 17th century, in the tide of the Counter-Reformation, many of these new groups arose as others diminished or faded away with new social change. The best known of these were the Daughters of Charity founded by St Vincent de Paul, but there were many others. (The French word fille here signified much the same lifestyle as that of the medieval celibate, religiously committed, usually socially active, lay woman.) Such women were not recognised, either socially or canonically, as nuns.

The19th century, following the French Revolution, saw a flowering of new simple-vow groups, devoted to every kind of social need. It was only in the course of this century, with its greatly increased demographic mobility, that these communities began to seek and receive papal approbation. Rome soon moved to approve them as centralised congregations with spreading branch systems. In 1900 they were accepted as authentically religious in the canonical sense.

Unless these two differing traditions – solemn-vow religious and simple-vow Sisterhoods – are understood and placed in context, their distinctive lines of continuity tend to be confused and less than accurate conclusions drawn. The evolution of the simple vow tradition is helpfully explored in the following works: Elizabeth Rapley’s The Devotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press 1993); Roberta Gilchrist’s Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (London: Leicester University Press, 1995); and Daniel Hickey’s Local Hospitalis in Ancien Regime France: Rationalization, Resistance and Renewal, 1530-1789 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University press, 1997).

(For any further clarification contact Rosa MacGinley, McAuley Campus, ACU, Q’land)