The New Woman

The increasing number of Roman Catholic women who have been to college is something of a parish problem, according to Jesuit Joseph H. Fichter, visiting professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Writing in the Jesuit weekly America, Father Fichter sketches a portrait of the "educated Catholic woman."

She is "residentiary more mobile" than her less educated sisters and more anxious to climb in the social scale. In this form of upward and onward, Fichter points out, the church is no help; "from the point of view of status, the doors are closed to the laity. It is the clergy who have the positions of prestige."

The attitude college graduates often have toward the clergy hardly helps matters. "The educated laity are not nearly so humble, nor so pliable, in relation to the parish priests as are the non-college people." College graduates subconsciously tend to compare their pastors unfavorably with the more culturally polished priests they knew in college.

"The college woman has learned about the liturgy and the Mystical Body of Christ, has picked up principles, plans and blueprints in an idealistic way, and she may pretend to be shocked that the pastor is not 'up' on these matters. Meanwhile the pastor must busy himself with debts and business problems, worrying about putting a new roof on the convent or providing classroom space ..."

What should the Catholic college woman be doing? Anything that needs to be done, answers Jesuit Fichter, whether she thinks it interesting and important enough for her or not. There is a need for trained women in Catholic youth and social organizations. There are the aged and ill to be visited, the parish library to be maintained, and babies to be sat with (babysitting ought to be done as a matter of neighborly good will, not to be paid for). The educated Catholic woman, says Father Fichter, must set about making herself part of the modern parish; she is a "new woman."

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