Participant Info

First Name
Catherine
Last Name
Mooney
Country
United States
State
MA Massachusetts
Affiliation
Boston College, School of Theology & Ministry
Website URL
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/stm/faculty/faculty-directory/catherine-mooney.html
Keywords
Saints, Canonization, History of nuns and religious sisters, Medieval Christianity, Medieval papacy, Medieval religious orders, Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, Philippine Duchesne
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Catherine Mooney holds a B.A. in History from Saint Louis University; an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School; an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in medieval history from Yale University. She has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was also Co-coordinator of the Gender Studies graduate program, and at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her research awards include grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Women’s Studies in Religion Program of Harvard Divinity School, and the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, NY. She has served on a number of boards, including the Society for Medieval Feminist Studies, the Franciscan Life in Ministry Directorate, and Monastic Matrix, an online scholarly resource for the study of women’s communities from 400 to 1600 CE. She also serves on a committee for a women’s religious order researching its slave-owning past and establishing programs to combat racism.

Besides lecturing in scholarly and pastoral venues, Dr. Mooney is active in human rights efforts. Since 1990, she has served on the board of the Ignacio Martin-Baro Fund for Mental Health and Human Rights, named after one of the Jesuits murdered by the military in El Salvador in 1989. She regularly circulates news to a list of thousands of online followers about the ongoing struggle for justice of the Wichi Amerindians of northern Argentina, whom she first met while working as a pastoral and human rights advocate during Argentina’s military dictatorship and “Dirty War.”

Recent Publications

Filipina Duchesne: Una Mujer con los Pobres y  Marginados. Forthcoming 2018. Revised and expanded from the English edition: Philippine Duchesne: A Woman with the Poor. Paulist Press, 1990; Wipf & Stock, 2007.

Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

“Medieval Monastic, Mendicant, and Mystical Writers: Women, Men, and the Holy Spirit.” In With the Holy Spirit: Responding to the Giver of Life, ed. Richard Lennan and Nancy Piñeda-Madrid. Paulist Press, 2016.

“Teresa of Avila, Monastic Founder and Master of Prayer.” In All Holy Men and Women: A Paulist Litany of Saints,ed. Thomas A. Kane. Paulist Press, 2014.

“Wondrous Words: Catherine of Siena’s Miraculous Reading and Writing According to the Early Sources.” In Catherine of Siena: The Making of a Cult, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger and Gabriela Signori, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts. Brepols, 2013).

“The ‘Lesser Sisters’ in Jacques de Vitry’s 1216 Letter.”  Franciscan Studies 69 (2011): 1-29.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
France, Mediterranean
Expertise by Chronology
Medieval, 19th century
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Religion, Women