Mary J. Henold's Catholic and Feminist is a noteworthy and exciting contribution to emerging studies on post–Vatican II Catholicism in America as well as gender studies and religion. Catholic and Feminist appeals to a broad readership as Henold deftly crafts a narrative detailing the rise of women's activism within American Catholic culture from the 1960s to the 1980s. She directly confronts the seemingly unlikely pairing of feminism within a patriarchal institution, asking not only “if or why women were Catholic feminists, but how and thus analyzes the nature and significance of Catholic feminism as a distinct branch of American feminism” (3).

Using multiple archival and oral history sources, Henold provides an analysis of Catholic women—many of whom are women religious—and their negotiations of multiple loyalties, various movements, shifting goals, and ultimately changing identities. She argues that while at times the Catholic feminist movement shared themes with the secular movement, Catholic feminists created a distinctive brand of feminism inspired by their faith and growing awareness of social justice issues. They developed their own language, agenda, and protest. In short, Catholic feminism organically emerged out of experience, the language of faith, and even the teaching of the Catholic Church. Women of the Saint Joan's International Alliance United States Section summed up their self-identification: “We are feminists because we are Catholic” (83–84).

Henold acknowledges early influences, such as the Sister Formation Conference, the Grail, the Christian Family Movement, Catholic women writers in the early 1960s, and eventually the “new” nuns, who began to question “Eternal Woman” rhetoric emphasizing self-sacrifice and passivity. Yet, she pinpoints Vatican II as the catalyst for feminist awareness within the church. Henold documents how women became painfully aware of their near exclusion from the historic council but nonetheless were eager to shape a vision of church renewal. A myriad of Catholic feminist organizations sprung up after the Second Vatican Council, particularly between 1965 and 1974.

Henold traces the rise of prominent feminist voices, particularly female theologians such as Mary Daily and Elizabeth Farians, who are at first optimistic about renewal, reform, and shared power in the Catholic Church. They re-appropriated Christian symbols, wrote extensively on church history, and were doing theology. Eventually they led part of the movement in a more radical direction, although Henold points out that terms such as liberal and radical “were very much in flux at the time” (76). Early into the 1970s, many of these women moved away from Catholicism, finding feminism and the church irreconcilable. Others, particularly women religious, carved out a feminist space in the church, choosing a path Henold calls “loyal opposition,” focusing a strategy on consciousness-raising and social justice while simultaneously “criticizing/educating/lobbying the hierarchy” (94).

Henold exposes theological fractures, increased tensions, and confusion in the burgeoning movements and organizations by focusing on the issue of women's ordination, particularly the first Women's Ordination Conference in 1975. While women religious made up the bulk of feminist leadership, Henold's coverage of lay voices and the Deaconess Movement as related to women's ordination provides much-needed insight into the lives of everyday Catholic women who without the support of a women's community came to feminism along different paths and contributed different goals and loyalties for church renewal.

Liturgy played a dual mode of activism in the movement: (1) fueling controversies over the roles of male priests in feminist liturgies and redefining the meaning of the Eucharist, and (2) providing a space for women to seek renewed spirituality, healing, and protest. Henold documents the liberal and reconciling tone of these liturgies despite palpable frustration with church authorities over women's issues. Often these liturgies were shared by separate woman-centered services removed from traditional liturgies, but they still combined protest with reconciliation.

As the movement galvanized around women's ordination and moved into the late 1970s, many more women had left the church. Others continued attempted dialogue with American bishops while simultaneously carving out their own space on the church's margins. Henold's care and attention to detailed case studies of movement leaders is helpful as she traces the overall themes and changing sentiments of women integrating competing visions of the church with feminism. She argues that ultimately “the movement (and many individuals) adopted a position of ‘sustained ambivalence,’ ” moving farther away from reconciliation with church hierarchies and a total vision of renewal to the creation of their own separate communities on the margins (11).

Henold's work offers readers an analysis of changing Catholic identities in the final decades of the twentieth century. She judiciously reveals tensions within the diverse movement and traces the intricate layers of networking among feminist Catholics. By focusing on ordination, Henold is able to trace a unique Catholic feminist movement in which prayer and liturgy become sustainable forms of protest. Yet because the movement galvanized around women's ordination, in a way, the women calling for renewal were bound to the institution seeking legitimacy within the church (115). She respects her subjects and conveys their faithful optimism for renewal, while demonstrating they were not naive but pragmatically strategic. Henold weaves together a narrative of shifting and splitting relationships with the institutional church.

Catholic and Feminist is an important historical study that exposes the debates over social reform, power, politics, and religion.