Abstract
Rosemary Radford Ruether (2 November 1936–21 May 2022), feminist foremother, prophet, and empowering voice for women in the Roman Catholic Church and in the theological academy, particularly in the areas of feminist liberation theology, ecofeminism, women’s ordination, and global activism.
Rosemary passed away peacefully on 21 May 2022 at 2 pm at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, in Pomona, California, surrounded by her daughters, Rebecca and Mimi, after a short illness from complications of a devastating stroke in 2016. The stroke left her partially paralyzed and no longer able to speak or write—both of which were integral to her life as a writer, teacher, activist, and scholar. Rosemary was married to Herman Ruether for 65 years and the proud mother of their three children, Rebecca, Mimi, and David. When she died, she was 85 years old.
She was born on 2 November 1936, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to a Roman Catholic mother and an Episcopalian father. She was raised in Washington, D.C., the youngest of three daughters. Her father died when she was 12, and she and her mother relocated to La Jolla, California. An early stint in writing as the editor of her high-school newspaper revealed her nascent leftist sympathies: the publication was attacked as “subversive” by local anticommunists, and it would not be the last time she was accused of trying to thwart the established order. In 1957, she married Herman J. Ruether, a professor in political science and Asian studies. As a family they traveled the world.
Rosemary began her studies at Scripps College in Claremont, California. In 1958, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Art and Philosophy. In 1960, Rosemary graduated with a Master’s degree in ancient history. She earned a PhD in classics and patristics from Claremont Graduate School in 1965. Her dissertation was entitled Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher.
Ruether’s first appointment was as a professor at Howard University, one of the most important Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States located in Washington, D.C. She filled that position from 1965 to 1975. In 1977, she was the first woman to hold an endowed chair as the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. She held this position until her retirement in 2002. She also taught summer classes at the Immaculate Heart College, invited by Patricia A. Reif, IHM, another compatriot in the long struggle to reconstruct faith for women without false patriarchal constructs. From 2000 to 2005, Rosemary taught part-time at the Graduate Theological Union and was the Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
In 2002, Rosemary and husband retired to Pilgrim Place, an ecumenical retirement community in Claremont, California. She was an active member and founder of Women Church—a women’s collective that actively practiced alternative ritual and liturgical services for women. She continued to teach part-time as Visiting Professor of Religion and Feminist Theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. In addition, she was regularly invited to speak at global religious conferences.
As a renowned Catholic feminist liberation theologian, Rosemary’s reputation and influence can be seen in numerous affirmations published after her passing. Rev. David Vásquez-Levy, the current president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, grieves and remembers Rosemary as a “courageous voice [that] remains vital in our day.” 1 Mary E. Hunt, her dear friend, colleague, co-conspirator, and co-founder of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) conveyed in her remembrance that Rosemary “amplified the voice of the voiceless advocating justice for all, particularly for women within Christian history.” 2 Javier A. Viera, president of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary remembers Rosemary as a “compelling voice for women, the poor, and the earth.” His own faith was “rocked” because he sensed Rosemary’s understanding of the hurtful theological systems at play in the world that he felt came from her “deep faithfulness [in a] genuine hope for renewal.” 3 Theresa A. Yugar, former student of Rosemary Radford Ruether at Claremont Graduate University, states, “Rosemary inspired me because she was able to hold in tension being both a Catholic woman and a feminist.” Michael Centore, in his remembrance quotes Rosemary’s thoughts about her theology, “I grew up assuming that Catholicism was the cloak of a mysterium tremendum,” she would later confide in a personal essay, “Beginnings: An Intellectual Autobiography,” 4 “When it exhibited a vulgar or narrowly doctrinaire style, I felt assured that it could be safely ignored.” 5
Rosemary’s Life Work: An Inclusive Vision for Catholicism and Christianity
Rosemary’s daughters, Rebecca and Mimi often conveyed their mother’s strong work ethic to us about how she would wake up at 4 am daily to write before breakfast and then feed them before leaving to teach. Rosemary’s discipline inspired generations of her students who are now academic scholars themselves. In more than 47 books, hundreds of chapters and articles, countless lectures, and decades of teaching, Rosemary’s primary purpose was transformation through education, another mandate of Catholic social teaching. Her theology was grounded in patristics and the effects of male patriarchy. The trajectory of Ruether’s writings also demonstrates the depth and breadth of her vast scholarly knowledge. As a feminist, she utilized historical evidence to offer an inclusive interpretation of Christian history and doctrine. She also brought in new perspectives from feminism that emphasized the significant role of women within the Christian tradition. Ruether had the ability to foresee a long-term vision for a Church and a more just world. Her ultimate desire was for a Roman Catholic Church that could be a liberative institution for all, as Paul states in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The thread that unifies Rosemary’s scholarship was her advocacy for women’s full liberation in society and the Roman Catholic Church. Over the course of her career, she wrote on a wide range of topics, including antisemitism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Here is a partial selection and short commentary on her most influential oeuvres over her decades-long scholarship: Feminism, women, and religion were the guiding posts for all of Rosemary’s books. Rosemary’s books parallel her spiritual and intellectual development. A primary theme in her books is the recognition of women’s leadership in the Church.
In 1985, Rosemary saw how women were being spiritually harmed by patriarchal liturgies that implicitly left women out of parish services. As a result, she was compelled to create alternative ritual practices that she organized for women in the book, Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities. Her exquisite mind formulated solutions to the problems that she saw for herself in Catholic ritual, so she wrote this guide book for women to develop their own meaningful ways of doing “church” for women. She wrote: Women in contemporary churches are suffering from linguistic deprivation and eucharistic famine. They can no longer nurture their souls in alienating words that ignore or systematically deny their existence. They are starved for the words of life, for symbolic forms that fully and whole-heartedly affirm their personhood and speak truth about the evils of sexism and the possibilities of a future beyond patriarchy. They desperately need primary communities that nurture their journey into wholeness, rather than constantly negating and thwarting it. This book takes steps to end the famine of the words of life and to begin to bake new bread of life now. We must do more than protect against the old. We must begin to incarnate the community of faith in the liberation of humanity from patriarchy in words and deeds, in new prayers, new symbols, and new praxis. This means that we need to form gathered communities to support us as we set out on our exodus from patriarchy.
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As a true minister, Rosemary inspired us to rethink ourselves, and patriarchal dualisms in Catholic religious practices so that women could become whole beings.
Over the trajectory of Rosemary’s academic career, she wrote groundbreaking books and articles that challenged, transformed, and expanded on traditional religious doctrines and ritual around Catholic Church teachings about abortion, contraception, complementarity, and papal infallibility. She championed women’s participation in religion but transformed their faith practice by introducing an interdisciplinary approach to include social justice issues. As a visionary and progressive voice in the Roman Catholic Church, she challenged the Church to “repent” of errors propagated under the guise of papal infallibility. 7 Among these errors, she included the Church’s “teachings about birth control, about the exclusion of all women and married and gay men from ordination, about the spiritual superiority of celibacy, and about the divine sanction for patriarchal hierarchy.” 8 She was concerned with the Church’s struggles surrounding all-male clericalism, the clergy abuse scandals, and climate change. During her life, Rosemary fought for a more inclusive Catholic Church. In 1975, she was one of the keynote speakers at the first Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) in the United States in Detroit, Michigan, when WOC became a national organization.
Rosemary Radford Ruether was a religious historian whose scholarship addressed the non-liberative aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. In Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism, published in 2008, she is critical of the Pope and the Vatican Magisterium for its stance on papal infallibility, which is intertwined with Western European hegemony. In the Catholic and Christian traditions, this has fostered dualisms between men, women, and the earth through social and political structures which emerged as Catholicism developed into a religious institution.
Rosemary’s experience as a woman in the Church was her initial inspiration for her scholarly focus on the exclusion of women in Christian historical documents, liturgical practices, and by the patriarchal structures of the Roman Catholic Church. Her first book, published in 1967, The Church Against Itself: An Inquiry into the Conditions of Historical Existence of the Eschatological Community, analyzes “religiously based sexism.” 9 It maps the trajectory for her evaluation of women’s status in the Church—consequently, sparking her interest in Liberation Theology relating to the gendered status of women.
In 1974, Rosemary’s book Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, 10 engaged the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism. She did this in the Spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s interfaith documents, Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio. Nostra Aetate engages Judaism and other religions, while Unitatis Redintegratio engages Christian religions for increased ecumenism and interfaith dialogue.
In 1975, Rosemary published New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation. 11 In it, she envisions a non-sexist and anti-semitic Church.
In the 1980s, Rosemary’s books continued to engage religious issues of liberation. In 1983, she published her pioneering text, Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology, 12 which is a systematic evaluation of Church teachings from a feminist lens. In it, she did a historical analysis of God, creation, anthropology, good and evil, Christology, the church, redemption, and eschatology. Through these topics, she examined how Western dualistic ideals misaligned with the authentic mission of Jesus because of the Church’s patriarchal structures.
Her books Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology, and Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities, 13 both published in 1985, addressed the liturgical exclusion of women in the Church by practically creating and proposing new ways of being church focusing on the inclusion of women in liturgical life.
In the 1990s, Rosemary’s scholarship broadened to focus on the dual oppression of both women and the earth. Her pioneering book, Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, originally published in 1992, is where she considered Christian and non-Christian creation narratives of domination and how they informed the way God relates to people, animals, and the earth. In 1996, Rosemary published, Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion. 14 In it, she privileged the ecological wisdom of women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Her aim was for Western individuals to learn new liberating ways of relating to our Earth. In 1998, Rosemary’s book, Women and Redemption: A Theological History, 15 highlights the contributions of women theologians critiquing patriarchal paradigms in historical theology to reconsider what redemption for women looks like. Her question is whether women can be redeemed by either God, or Christ.
In 2005, Rosemary published Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions, 16 where she continues to consider liberating resources in religions other than Catholicism. In doing so, she examined new ways of thinking across the religious landscape of other traditions and how they relate to both people and the natural world.
In 2007 and 2009, Rosemary authored, respectively, America Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence and Christianity and Social Systems: Historical Constructions and Ethical Challenges. 17 Both books address specifically the ways that the church evolved into a hierarchical and patriarchal institution. In America Amerikka, Rosemary provides a historical analysis of White “choseness” in the US context of White supremacy and anti-Blackness. In Christianity and Social Systems, Rosemary broadens her critique of patriarchal social systems on a global scale. In 2008, Rosemary published Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism, 18 which critiques papal infallibility as declared at the First Vatican Council (1868–1870). She calls on the Church to “repent” of her sins including sexism, racism, and genderism.
In 2013, Rosemary’s book My Quests for Hope and Meaning: An Autobiography, 19 is the culmination of all her books, which together weave the evolution of her Catholic identity into a rich fabric of intellectual, spiritual, and academic prowess. Over the trajectory of her career, Rosemary Radford Ruether, evaluated elements of the Catholic and Christian tradition that inhibited true and “authentic” liberation and flourishing of all peoples as conveyed in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the twenty-first century, Rosemary Radford Ruether’s books hold the answer to Pope Francis’ Synodal vision for a new inclusive multicultural, non-sexist, and non-hierarchical Church.
For Janice and myself, the past 5 years’ caring for and visiting Rosemary after her stroke have been a blessing in ways that we are still learning to comprehend, because we found new ways of engaging her that were academically stimulating and healing for her. During this time, we became advocates for her as she had been an advocate for us.
So Janice and I dedicate this introduction to her children, Rebecca, David, and Mimi in their mother’s memory and to her husband, Herman. We know there will be many more voices to come from so many others whom she mentored, influenced, and touched, as we struggle to find our way without her. We offer now in the midst of our grief and sadness at her loss, this incomplete look at her. To fill in the gaps, we invited a few of our colleagues to help us.
In the twenty-first century, Rosemary Radford Ruether shares the same status as the early Church Fathers—Origen, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Cassian, and St. Augustine; Women Doctors of the Church—St. Hildegard von Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Ávila, and St. Thérèse de Lisieux—and well-known Catholic male theologians including Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Karl Rahner, and Charles Curran. Like them, Ruether was a Church visionary. Janice L. Poss, writes that: Rosemary broke ground wherever she spoke, wrote or taught. She gave generously of her time to students who were her first priority. Her legacy lives on in all the students, academics, ministers, clerics, and others that she touched and influenced through her more than forty-seven books and innumerable articles. This is the legacy that she leaves us.
Today, her legacy is remembered in the festschrift: Voices of Feminist Liberation 20 co-authored by Emily Leah Silverman, Dirk von der Horst, and Whitney Bauman, each of whom were former students of Rosemary. Their book explores the significant contributions of Ruether’s scholarship in the fields of liberation theology, feminism, ecofeminism, queer theology, social justice, and intereligious dialogue. Theresa A. Yugar, Sarah E. Robinson, Teresia Mbari Hinga, and Lilian Dube also co-edited a festschrift called Valuing Lives, Healing Earth: Religion, Gender, and Life on Earth 21 to celebrate Rosemary’s lifelong commitment to privileging the ecological wisdom and environmental contributions of women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as she had previously done in Women Healing Earth. Twenty-five years later, like Rosemary’s pioneering book Women Healing Earth; Valuing Lives, Healing Earth empowers the positive contributions and movements led by women who are championing the work of ecological justice on a global level. The link that bridges both books is a shared trajectory of planetary justice for women from all regions of the world. Rosemary has been recognized with 14 honorary degrees from various institutions such as the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University in Sweden and a Doctor of Humane Letters (LHD) from Whittier College, California.
Rosemary in silence—We sat at her bedstead together with her daughters in the hospital for 3 days, as she slowly transitioned. We sang her favorite hymns calling on the angels as they carried her soul up to heaven. Now she is with her other feminist sisters including Carol Christ, Rita Gross, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Katie Geneva Cannon, bell hooks, Rosemary Keller, Barbara Harrison, Dolores Williams, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Janette Gray, Majoree Truit, Grace Jantzen, Ita Ford, MM, Maura Clarke, MM Dorothy Kazel, OSU, Jean Donovan, Dorothy Stang, Patricia A. Reif, IHM, and so many others. Although we grieve your loss, and miss you, we will hold your words and actions in our hearts forever. May you rest, dear Rosemary, in power and peace. Rosemary Radford Ruether is Presente!
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
2
We emailed Mary to get where she quoted this on 1-5-23 at 9:15 PM.
3
4
Ruether RR (1975) Beginnings: An intellectual autobiography. In: Baum G (ed.) Journeys: The Impact of Personal Experience on Religious Thought. New York: Paulist Press, 34.
5
6
Radford RR (1985) Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities. New York: HarperCollins.
7
Ruether RR (2008) Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism. New York: New York Press, 6–8.
8
Ruether RR (2008) Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican, 6–7.
9
Ruether RR (2013) My Quests for Hope and Meaning: An Autobiography. Eugene, OR: CASCADE Books, 18.
10
Ruether RR (1975) Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.
11
Ruether RR (1975) New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation. New York: Seabury Press.
12
Ruether RR (1983) Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
13
Ruether RR (1985) Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology, and Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
14
Ruether RR (1996) Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion. London: SCM Press.
15
Ruether RR (1998) Women and Redemption: A Theological History. London: SCM Press.
16
Ruether RR (2004) Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
17
Ruether RR (2007) America Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence and Christianity and Social Systems: Historical Constructions and Ethical Challenges. New York: Routledge.
18
Ruether RR (2009) Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism. New York: The New Press.
19
Ruether RR (2013) My Quests for Hope and Meaning. An Autobiography.
20
Silverman EL, von der Horst D and Bauman W (eds) (2012) Voices of Feminist Liberation. New York: Routledge.
21
Yugar TA, Robinson SE, Hinga TM, et al. (eds) (2021) Valuing Lives, Healing Earth: Religion, Gender, and Life on Earth. Leuvan: Peeters Publishing.