Laywomen Enacting the Mystical Body

This essay focuses on the generative impact of the twentieth-century ecclesial image, the Mystical Body of Christ, coupled with the papally sanctioned Catholic Action on Catholic laywomen. Using the lens of “spatial stories” as described in Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, the essay first considers how US. Catholic intellectual leaders among the ordained discussed Mystical Body ecclesiology and its relation to Catholic Action and then turns to examine how it was enacted in the lives of four lay Catholic women: Dr. Eva Ross, white, Irish immigrant, and sociologist; Dorothy Day, white, convert, and co-founder of Catholic Worker; Helen Caldwell Day, African American, convert, and founder of an interracial Catholic Worker House in Memphis; and Mary Daly, white, Catholic theologian, and post-Christian radical feminist philosopher. The concluding section explores possible reasons for the eclipse of the Mystical Body metaphor in the 1960s writings of two other lay Catholic women, Sally Cunneen, white, Catholic; and public intellectual and Sydney Callahan, white, convert, and psychologist.