The Feminist Genius of Asian Catholic Women Preaching: Reclaiming an Uncommon Priesthood

This chapter accords epistemic privilege to Asian theologians featured in Catholic Women Preach as women who inhabit an uncommon home as pilgrims, prophets and priests. I contend that they embody an uncommon priesthood as faithful religious and laywomen of the Catholic Church who are invested in opening up spaces of belonging for themselves and other women. In doing so, they manifest what I term as a “feminist genius”—a counterpoint to the Church’s essentialising construct of “feminine genius.” A “feminist genius” draws from the much disparaged “gender ideologies” such as feminism that seeks to affirm women’s inherent dignity, her manifold gifts and fundamental rights to fully realize her personhood and live an abundant life. It inadvertently challenges the Church’s resolute “no,” its “closed door” on the thorny issue of women’s ordination to priesthood, and its reluctance at institutionalizing the tradition of women deacons despite the clarion call to synodality. This chapter offers a textual analysis of selected Asian Catholic women’s sermons, notably members of the Ecclesia of Women in Asia. The analysis has wider implications on the relevance of Catholic social teachings through the litmus test of women’s lived realities and their call for greater discipleship in our fractured world today.