‘Votes for women!’ was shouted on 7 June 1914 in Westminster Cathedral where Bernard Vaughan, a conservative but popular Jesuit within the Catholic society, was giving a sermon. He answered angrily that there was ‘nothing ethically wrong’ in letting women suffragists die from their hunger strike.Footnote ¹ While not supporting violent and illegal actions, the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society (hereafter CWSS)—here studied by Andrea Rota—was claiming the right to vote for women. As women and as lay Catholics, they were challenging both male and clerical hierarchy. At the same time, Father Vaughan was the chaplain of another major but more moderate Catholic movement, the Catholic Women’s League (hereafter CWL), here studied by Olivier Rota. The Jesuit author of The Sins of Society (1906) appeared as a good choice as he guaranteed the orthodoxy of the league without hindering its initiatives.

This volume, edited by Bruno Duriez, Olivier Rota, and Catherine Vialle, brings together a collection of essays presented at a conference in Lille in 2014. It highlights the role of Catholic and lay women organising in massive movements to promote an agenda of reform. The beginning of the twentieth century appears as a time of leagues. The CWL was founded in 1907, the CWSS in 1911, participating in what appeared as a European trend: Belgium saw the foundation of the Flemish League for Catholic Action (Vrouwenverbond voor Katholieke Actie) studied here by Tine Van Osselaer; France gave rise to the League of French Women (Ligue des femmes françaises, 1901), and the Patriot League of French Women (Ligue patriotique des Françaises, 1902), both studied by Magali Della Sudda. These movements gathered thousands of women, alongside numerous former women religious who, in France, had to choose around 1901–1904 between exile and secularization. The latter became lay teachers or nurses and only with difficulty found their place between male cleric and civil authorities, as Chantal Paisant argues.

A paradox, now well documented in scholarly literature, is that women’s agency in undermining gender roles and separate spheres was grounded in a conservative (Émile Poulat would have said ‘intransigent’) way of thinking, shared by Catholic women. The triangulation between Liberalism, Catholicism, and Socialism which characterizes modern society (once again notably studied by Poulat whose work is unfortunately not used here) seems to be relevant here, as the women’s leagues tried to reconquer society against liberal and socialist influences. Their struggle was based on their faith; Alice Abadam, suffragist and convert to Catholicism, claimed at a meeting of the CWSS: ‘in the face of these evils, women must be rebels, because rebellion against evil is fidelity to God’Footnote ². Catholicism’s representations of women as mothers and care providers also inspired them. The Catholic hierarchy was therefore reassured and felt confident to let space to women organised in single-sex movements. If the relationship with the clergy is well-studied in this volume—support by cardinal Francis Bourne, for instance, in contrast with resistance from parish priests—we don’t hear much about the reaction of lay male Catholics, often husbands of women militants —and sometimes militant themselves. Women’s commitments gradually led to more progressive gender roles which abandoned or relativised the model of the ‘angel of the household’, defined by maternity, and inherited from the nineteenth century. While at the beginning of the twentieth century Catholic women had a bad opinion of feminists, they became closer over time, mainly after World War II and thanks to activists from lower social classes (as mapped in an overview by Geneviève Dermenjian and Dominique Loiseau, studying the Mouvement populaire des familles and its successors in France). Gradually growing closer to leftist political parties or trade unions, Catholic women broke away from the Catholic hierarchy. In the context of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and more generally the Sixties, birth control and abortion became an issue leading to a rupture, more or less discreet, after the encyclical Humane Vitae (July 1968).

As a source edition specifically created for the volume, the inclusion of three testimonies by Catholic women (Denise Cacheux, b. 1932; Françoise Maillard, b. 1944; Nathalie Willemetz, b. 1968) offers fascinating insights in those militant lives and helps to understand the more general concepts studied previously. Through the narratives, many profiles of women appeared. They all reveal how subversive—whether loudly or silently—women’s action was for Church, society, and their personal lives. New leadership roles emerged for women, such as positions as theologian. How they reinterpreted the Bible, discussed the question of access to priesthood, and undertook the governance of the Catholic Church is analysed in two chapters by Catherine Vialle and Alphonse Borras. They present the background that could help to understand how the theologian Anne Soupa (b. 1948) has recently dared to apply for the position of archbishop of Lyon, in France, after cardinal Barbarin resigned in the context of sexual abuse scandal. In her proclamation, she insisted on both her roles as a lay Catholic and a woman: ‘Is there only one type of bishop, that of a man, single, old, and all dressed in black? However, what possibilities offer themselves if other faces could exist for such a position!’.Footnote ³ Has nothing changed, as some Catholic feminists might argue? This book offers more nuanced answers, and in its conclusion (by Bruno Dumons) proffers an invitation for more transnational scholarship of the ‘feminization thesis’ of Modern Catholicism.