Gen X women and the Australian Catholic Church: Negotiating religious identity and participation

Gen X were the first generation to be raised in the Catholic Church in the environment of cultural and theological change brought about by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). During the council, the Catholic Church sought to respond to societal shifts and increase its relevance in the modern world. The resultant ecclesial transformations were widely predicted to increase women’s involvement in the Catholic Church in Australia. In fact, the opposite transpired. The participation of women is currently at substantially low levels. Gen X Catholic women are less likely than earlier generations to attend Mass and take part in daily devotions. Within a feminist theological framework, this thesis uses a Foucauldian genealogy as the methodological approach to analyse the identities and participation of Gen X women in the Catholic Church in Australia. It will show that magisterial formulations of Catholic identity do not accurately reflect the way Gen X women are enacting Catholicism. Instead, this thesis will argue that Gen X women are negotiating the impact of magisterial ecclesiology and its gendered archetypes. They are expressing their identities and positioning themselves in Catholicism via the performance of technologies of Catholicism and the use of interpretive adjustments. It will reveal that many Gen X women are choosing to de-identify from Catholicism, not because of a loss of faith, but owing to the abuses and harm they experience in official ecclesial spaces. As an alternative, this thesis proposes a feminist ecclesiology grounded in a theology of flourishing and an imaginary of natality. Herein, the biblical promise of wholeness and flourishing can be found in feminist ecclesial spaces, contained and produced in a genealogy of women’s herstories. These feminist ecclesial spaces are not simply places to “be church”; they are spaces of socio-political alterity where women join together to live and advocate theologies of hope, justice, and flourishing.