Beyond the Altar examines gender discrimination in the Roman Catholic Church as experienced by English-speaking Canadian women religious. Because it might seem odd that a professor of criminology would take up a study of nuns, the author, Christine L.M. Gervais, explains early on to readers that her qualifications are sound: she is a sociologist whose work is in the areas of human rights, women, and religion. She even considers this study to be within the realm of criminal criminology as an example of what sociologist Tim Wise identified as “the threat of a good example” (xiv). The context of her interest was the Vatican's investigation of women religious in the United States; Gervais noting that “[W]hile Canadian women religious have not been subjected to the same systematic investigation and reprimand as their U.S. counterparts,” they were nevertheless negatively impacted (6).
Gervais's analysis is built on a study consisting of interviews and questionnaires, supplemented with participant observation. Thirty-two women participated (three were former sisters) and ranged in age from forty-nine to ninety-one at the time of the study. Although “a feminist orientation was not a prerequisite[,]” the responses suggest that the women who chose to participate “have feminist leanings and all are strongly in favor of gender equality” (12).
Beginning with an analysis of feminism in the lives of the respondents, Gervais concludes that that “if historically women religious were not feminists they have become feminists, albeit to various extents.” Here and in subsequent chapters, the participants reveal a nuanced and specifically Catholic feminism which echo the argument made by Mary J. Henold in Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement (The University of North Carolina Press, 2008).
With no surprise to informed readers, participants speak of the frustration and pain of discrimination they have faced within the Church. Even as women, including sisters, stepped into new roles in Church ritual and administration after Vatican II, the Church hierarchy remains exclusively male and all too often misogynist. Many of the women, for example, recount how they have been ignored or worse in efforts to create liturgy and participate in policy-making.
They voice strong grievances, and their accounts certainly give them the right to be angry. However, beyond the anger, we also hear equally strong thoughts about alternatives to the patriarchal Church and its methods. In the most intriguing parts of Beyond the Altar, sisters and former sisters explain the different paths they have created for themselves and other Catholics that circumvent traditional ways.
Gervais notes while “[I]llustrations and analyses of dissent among women religious in the United States, Europe, and Latin America have been published relatively widely and certainly more openly,” that has not been the case regarding the “unique experiences of Canadian women religious” (9). In Beyond the Altar, these Canadian women share some of the same thoughts about the future of both nuns and the entire Church as offered by those studies, in particular by the participants in Carole Garibaldi Roger's oral histories in the United States which included a few Canadian voices. (Carole Garibaldi Rogers, Poverty, Chastity, and Change: Lives of Contemporary Catholic Nuns [Twayne Publishers, 1996]; Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns [Oxford University Press, 1996, 2011].) However, the author and participants of Beyond the Altar also raise several issues and events that suggest uniquely Canadian circumstances which invite further research addressing that point. Gervais's remark that while cultivating humility like all women religious, Canadian sisters are “much more Canadian” (9) in being reticent to critique the Church is provocative, and reference to specific events as influential, the Montreal Massacre of 1989 and a boycott by sisters of a Chrism Mass (a celebration in Holy Week where sacred oils are consecrated by a bishop) for example, offer hints of Canadian specificity and unique experiences. In addition, the focus exclusively on Anglophone sisters lays groundwork for comparison with communities in Quebec.
In giving the participants a forum to speak, Gervais reveals how they have and continue to work toward their vision of what the Church should be even within constraints put upon them. The overwhelming theme of Beyond the Altar is that these women are working to make change—no Canadian reticence on that point.
