A Change of Ideals for Christian Women

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While she is praised for her commitment to this way of life, like the prior women mentioned, Catherine also couldn’t fit the perfect model of Christian woman ideality. As a virgin, Catherine never could bear children and experience the life of motherhood, so prized by the faith. She fell short of the requirements of fertility, yet still, French women sought healing powers in the relics of Catherine in issues related to her relics. The standard of the Christian women to uphold both vows of virginity and motherhood, while submissive to a male counterpart, were impossibly pressed in society. The only seemingly perfect figure is that of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus.

One flaw in this is the attack that underwent in the early modern period by Christians, as well as Jewish and Pagan people, that viewed the female body as disgusting. Women were associated with decay and filth, because of their menstrual blood, seen as a release of rotting matter from a body of purity.[5] The womb also in turn was described as dirty, and even Jesus himself had come from such a place mocked by many outside of Christianity. Within the confines of Christian faith, Mary was sought be elevated from human impurities and looked as a figure more then human, yet not quite divine.[6]

Also, as time went on, there was increasing oppression of Christian women with regards to their position within the Church. As the church was becoming institutionalized, women’s roles as prophets and leaders became restricted, and they were even cut out altogether of important position, so as to remain submissive to the men, again seeing the same repression that Margery Kempe felt. A rebellion of this led to persecution, and strong women were undermined as heretics or seen as crazy. A virgin martyr, alike to Catherine Tekakwitha, would be glorified, while Mary Magdalene would have been killed.

Through an examination of many Christian women and their experiences throughout their lives and devotions of religion, there are multitudes of ways that women chose to express their faith. Catherine Tekakwitha, a famous Native American Catholic convert chose extreme measures that were radical for her time and went against the norm of her people. Women such as Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, and Margery Kempe, chose to express their Christianity in ways that also challenged the norms of their time. They risked their lives to remain devout in their practices. Each woman faced struggles of acceptance and finding themselves, and continuing down paths less traveled. It is because of this that there are remembered today and praised for their work in moving the spiritual life of women towards a promising future. Women have been held to an impossible standard, and while each of these women fell short of that, they were extraordinary enough to leave a lasting mark on the world that would shape their religion for centuries.

Bibliography

Clancy-Smith, Julia. Exemplary Women and Sacred Journeys: women and gender in Judaism, Christianity and Islam from late antiquity to the eve of modernity. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 2006

Faulkner, Mary. Women’s Spirituality: Power and Grace. Charlottesville, Virginia: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2011.

Greer, Allan. Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Hoffmann, John P. and John P. Bartkowski. 2008. "Gender, Religious Tradition and Biblical Literalism." Social Forces 86, no. 3 (2008): 1245-1272. http://search.proquest.com/docview/229875253?accountid=9673.

Holmes, Paula E. “The Narrative Repatriation of Blessed Kateri Tekakwith: Repatriation of Kateri Tekakwitha through Narratives, as Told by her Pueblo Women Devotees.” Anthropologica 43, no. 1 (2001): 87-103 http://search.proquest.com/docview/214177807?accountid=9673.

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