Encountering the Divine, Resisting Patriarchy: Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Prophetic Catholicism

Rosemary Radford Ruether, known as a prophetic Catholic scholar-activist, also had a formative mystical experience as a young woman that shaped her life's work. This paper presents Ruether as both a prophetic figure and a spiritually attuned seeker. It first offers a democratized and demystified view of mysticism using the work of Bernard McGinn, Dorothee Söelle, and Jess Byron Hollenback. Then it provides a biographical sketch, contextualizing her early mystical encounter with the divine as a feminine presence suffusing creation. That experience is interpreted as a meaningful source of inspiration for her decades-long commitment to an anti-patriarchal, ecofeminist theology.

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Abstract

While Rosemary Radford Ruether is widely, and rightly, acknowledged as a prophetic Catholic scholar–activist, her interest in and experience of mysticism is rarely emphasized. However, Ruether had an impactful mystical experience as a young woman, and the themes of this experience echo throughout her body of work. This paper paints a portrait of Ruether as both a profoundly prophetic scholar–activist and a spiritually attuned seeker of the very divinity that she encountered in her twenties. In the process, this paper first offers a democratized and demystified vision of mysticism by drawing on the work of Bernard McGinn, Dorothee Söelle, and Jess Byron Hollenback. Next, it offers a biographical sketch of Ruether, contextualizing her early mystical experience within the broader pattern of her spiritual and intellectual path. It interprets Ruether’s mystical experience, through which she encountered the divine as a feminine presence suffusing creation, as a meaningful source of inspiration for her decades-long commitment to an anti-patriarchal, ecofeminist theology.