Obituaries

Carmel McEnroy obituary: Catholic theologian fired for views on woman priests

Staunch advocate for women’s rights described as ‘a canary in the Catholic coal mine’

Sat Dec 28 2019 - 00:13

Sr Carmel McEnroy

Born: May 15th, 1936

Died: December 3rd, 2019

Mercy Sister Carmel McEnroy, the author of a groundbreaking book on the role of women in the Second Vatican Council, has died. Born and educated in Ireland, Sr McEnroy spent most of her adult life working in the United States as an eminent theologian and staunch advocate for justice and women’s rights.

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Her book, Guests in Their Own House: The Women of Vatican II (1996), is deemed to be the most insightful account to date of the 23 female auditors who participated in Vatican II. Although spiritual renewal and modernisation of the Roman Catholic Church was at the heart of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), women were not invited to be part of its deliberations until 1964 and even then, many of the bishops found their presence difficult.

In what was the first published account of the role of women at the council, Sr McEnroy wrote about how the 23 female auditors helped shape the language of documents and in some cases had full voting rights on mixed [gender] commissions. In an article published on the Mercy Sisters’ website in January 2013, she recalled how within 20 years of the closing of Vatican II, the fact that there were women at the council was already being forgotten.

“This exclusion motivated me to recover the dangerous memory of the female auditors before it was irretrievably lost,” she said. The book, which won the American Catholic Book Award for History/Biography in 1997, was re-published in 2011 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

Baptised Margaret Carmel Elizabeth McEnroy, she grew up the third of seven children born to Bernard and Agnes McEnroy in Carrickmakeegan, Ballinamore, Co Leitrim. She excelled at her studies in the Mercy Secondary School in Ballymahon, Co Longford, and entered the Sisters of Mercy as a postulant in 1955. She made her final profession in 1961. Volunteering for the missions in the US, she was sent to Jefferson City in the Missouri Diocese. She taught at and was principal of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Columbia, Missouri, for many years.

Sr McEnroy received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 from Marillac College in St Louis, Missouri. She completed a master’s in theology in 1976 followed by a doctorate in 1984 at the University of St Michael’s College at the St George’s Campus of the University of Toronto.

She went on to become a distinguished theologian, teaching systematic theology at St Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St Meinrad, Indiana, for 14 years. However, she was fired from her post as professor in theology in 1995 after she signed an open letter to Pope John Paul II and the American bishops asking that the discussion of women’s ordination be allowed to continue. The letter, which was published in the National Catholic Reporter in November 1994, was written in response to the pope’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of May 1994 which sought to close the debate on women priests definitively.

In autobiographical notes at the end of her book on women in Vatican II, Sr McEnroy wrote how she was fired from her teaching position “with less than two weeks’ notice, no due process and the insulting offer of half a year’s already meagre salary.” The charge brought against Sr McEnroy, was public dissent from magisterial teaching in regard to women’s ordination even though she had signed the letter in a private capacity.

The resignation of Sr Bridget Clare McKeever, a Sister of St Louis and also a tenured professor at St Meinrad’s College, and the Catholic Theological Society of America’s questioning of the charge of dissent and a call for Sr McEnroy’s reinstatement did nothing to budge the authorities at St Meinrad’s decision to sack Sr McEnroy.

Sr McEnroy took a civil action against St Meinrad but in 1999, the court of appeals of Indiana ruled in favour of the seminary’s argument that resolution of the action would “excessively entangle the court in religious matters in violation of the First Amendment”. The American Association of University Professors censured St Meinrad School of Theology for violating Sr McEnroy’s academic freedom.

Speaking to Global Sisters Report about Sr McEnroy, the feminist theologian, Mary Hunt described her as “a canary in the Catholic coal mine”. Hunt said, “She was a sign to other Catholic women scholars that there is no recourse from the power of the patriarchal church to crush its opposition. That seminary – like many others – still has only a minuscule percentage of women on the faculty. Yet her book remains a classic in the field, a gift to a church that did not want to read what she had to say but could not deny the truth of her message.”

Sr McEnroy went on to work as a visiting professor of theology at the Berea College and Lexington Theological Seminary, both Protestant educational institutions in Kentucky.

As well as her sharp intellectual skills, Sr McEnroy maintained a strong interest in Irish art and music throughout her life. She loved nature and explored photography and art: in her latter years, she produced some beautiful watercolour paintings. A loyal and generous friend, she also remained very close to her siblings, nieces and nephews, always remembering birthdays, graduations and wedding anniversaries. She returned to Ireland in her retirement, living her final years with members of the Mercy community and her beloved dogs in Renmore, Co Galway.

She is survived by her sisters, Rita (Fitzgerald), and Noreen (Smith) her brother, Brian, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, grand-nephews, cousins, many friends and Sisters of Mercy, Western Province. Her sisters, Bernadette, Sr. Gabriel and brother Ignatius pre-deceased her.

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