Because the Catholic Church has always taught that only men can be ordained to the priesthood instituted by Christ, there is a perception that the Church’s story is a story about men. There’s the Blessed Mother, of course, and maybe the occasional nun who rises to prominence, but since only men can be ordained, the thinking goes, it is men who have built and shaped the Church’s common life throughout the centuries.

Not only is this bad ecclesiology, it is bad history, argues historian Bronwen McShea. In this episode, Andrew Petiprin speaks with McShea about her new book, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know. Women have always been at the heart of the Church, McShea says, and the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural contributions of women—queens and abbesses, wives and mothers, religious sisters, writers, and mystics—have made the Church what she is today.

Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, published by Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute, is now available at Ignatius.com.

You can read an excerpt from the book at First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/04/the-remarkable-legacies-of-ordinary-catholic-women