Leadership and loyalty revisited : Catholic Latinas and leadership

Graduation date: 2008White women’s experiences with major institutions, the church included, often are generalized to other women’s experiences, much like how the experience of men in often represented as the experience of all humankind. In 2001 Elaine Howard Ecklund studied white lay women in the Catholic Church and explored two questions: What causes dissatisfied Catholic women to remain loyal to their congregations? What makes a congregation open to women’s leadership? (Howard Ecklund, 2001) In this study I aim to replicate, as much as possible, Howard Ecklund’s research with Latinas. I found four major themes in the interviews with local Latina leaders: (1) the women tend to underestimate their involvement in the parish; (2) the women have mixed reviews on feminism; (3) their perceptions on the priest and the roles of women in the church prevent them from criticizing church structures; and (4) there is a need to balance the efforts of ministry to women and men in local parishes