Sixty years ago, women first stepped into the council hall and for the first time during a session, Patrick Keegan, as lay auditor, addressed the Council Fathers. Together with the other lay auditors and with the involvement of other members of the laity, they ensured the integration of decades of experience with the lay apostolate and their engagement in the public sphere. This session seeks contributions to reassess the laity’s impact on Vatican II, explore their legacy in responding to and challenging the council, and discuss their ongoing influence on church teaching. What characterized the profile and role of the laity at Vatican II, did these aspects evolve in the post-Vatican II era, and how can their advocacy and identity be comprehended? How has the expansion of laypeople's roles in the church specifically impacted women? How did the laity and lay groups shape or resist the conciliar reception?
The auxiliaires de l’Apostolat, established in 1917, are women who diverge from traditional practices by combining vows with a life as laypeople, active within society. Despite lacking formal canonical recognition, they served as an example for Lumen Gentium’s universal call for holiness. Consequently, they contributed to the international recognition of new forms of religious life. In return, the Council helped them to articulate and understand their vocation within the broader context of the Church’s mission. This paper draws upon archival material and interviews with auxiliaires who witnessed the Council. It highlights the importance of the study of the local reception of Vatican II and women’s roles beyond the Council floor, and illustrates how oral history can contribute to a better understanding of the Council.
In 2012, the Vatican accused The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of “radical feminism,” and yet only five years after the Council, LCWR faced similar accusations from other women. In 1971, Mother Mary Elise SND founded Consortium Perfectae Caritatis (CPC) with like-minded women to protest LCWR’s interpretation of Council documents, and to protect the preconciliar traditions of religious life. Using archival documents from LCWR and CPC, I argue that Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, and Perfectae Caritatis gave some ecclesial women the language to contest their relationship to the Church hierarchy, and for others to sacralize traditional gender roles for women religious. Even though the male council never discussed women’s place in the Church, women engaged with each other to decide what the masculine language of the Council documents meant for their gender. The disagreement between these women is an important yet untold part of that story.
This paper examines how female lay auditors’ lived experience of Vatican II contributed to the adoption of a gender equality agenda and, concomitantly, of a more explicit feminist stance by the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations, the largest movement of Catholic lay women involved in the international institutions. Because of its commitment to gender equality, the Catholic women’s organization did not limit her feminist activism to social justice and women’s liberation, but also militated in favor of women’s ordination. WUCWO’s gender equality agenda became increasingly challenged by new requests of cultural diversity in the 1980s. The complex dynamics of its reception of Vatican II highlight how the irresolute tension between two conciliar achievements –gender equality and cultural diversity.