Like many women from my generation, I have often wondered what happened to the imprint of radical feminism that was left on American political culture as ‘sixties activism evolved into pragmatic action in the ‘seventies .

In this election cycle, Republicans seem determined to roll back the clock on women’s rights, and it appears that the outrageous scope of their overreach may have reignited the timbers that have smoldered quietly for so many years.  

The appearance of those gutsy “Nuns on the Bus” takes me back to some of the good Sisters of Charity at Immaculata  high school in Chicago.

It was these ladies who first radicalized me in my teenage years.  Not all of them, by any means; but a few key role-models carried views on social responsibility, pacifism, fairness, feminism…and even activism… that kept them on the cusp of contemporary relevance.

We were encouraged to think for ourselves and demand answers to tough questions. Post Vatican II, there seemed to be a renewed commitment throughout much of the American Church to charity, tolerance and enlightenment, rolling back hundreds and hundreds of years of intolerance and repression.  

Like “radical” feminism, that age of enlightenment in the Church was all too brief; and at the death of John XXIII, conservative forces within the Church quickly whipped it into an about-face, from which it has been marching steadily backwards ever since.

Immaculata is long gone, now.  Ironically, the limited success of feminism in popular culture was probably responsible for its demise.  The idea that girls and boys had different, and therefore separate, educational needs in high school fell from favor; and the overall decline of the Catholic Church under strict conservative control sealed the deal.

The Vatican is understandably chaffing as the American sisterhood once again takes up the reigns of social justice.  With its priesthood under fire for the most offensive possible systemic corruption, Vatican strategists can ill-afford to force a schism among the sisterhoods; but if this new sense of social mission and organized strength begins to expand in the sisterhoods, we could be looking at a dramatic shift in the political weight of the Church.

From where I sit, very much on the outside looking in;  I say, “Bring it on, Baby!”