Chapters: Mary O’Keefe, “Preface to Women in Dialogue”, 1979

The National Assembly of Women Religious, in collaboration with the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, Notre Dame, Indiana, is pleased to be able to present to North American readers the book, Women in Dialogue–papers from the Mujeres para el Dialogo which were presented during that group’s series of seminars in Cuernavaca and Puebla, Mexico. A group of Latin American women, joined by some North American women, engaged in serious analysis of the situation of women in the Latin American continent with the primary purpose of influencing the meeting of the Latin American bishops (CELAM III) so that the problems of women would not be overlooked. They met from January 23-26 in Cuernavaca and then continued the seminars in Puebla in a downtown hotel while the bishops were meeting at the Seminario Palafoxiano.

It was my privilege to be part of that dialogue in Cuernavaca and in some of the sessions in Puebla. Because this was such a rich experience I believed it important to make these papers available in an English translation. This would not have been possible without the enthusiastic and generous collaboration of Helen Volkomener, SP, Executive Director of the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry whose office assumed responsibility for typing, printing and distribution of the final product. I am also deeply grateful to Ruth McDonough Fitzpatrick who assumed the task of editing and of helping to identify persons for the work of translation of the papers.

Much more could be said about the stimulating dynamics and interaction which occurred among the women at Puebla–lay and religious, North and South American. We will let the papers speak for themselves. The dialogue of these days was further enhanced by a series of seminars conducted in English by Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, but we have made a conscious decision to include in this book only those papers presented by the Latin American women. We regret also the inability to share the forthright and provocative interaction which the papers stimulated. It is our earnest hope that the dialogue begun in Mexico on the occasion of the Puebla Latin American Bishops Conference among women of the Americas will continue in many ways and that the papers presented in Women in Dialogue will make an important contribution to this interchange.

Mary O’Keefe, OP

Co-director, National Assembly of Women Religious

Chicago, Illinois

July 1, 1979

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Women in Dialogue: Inter-American Meeting. Notre Dame, Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979

January 27 to February 13, 1979, in Puebla, México, gathered the bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Roman Catholic Church for a conclave that would decide the future of Christian commitments on the continent. Meanwhile, “an international group of Catholic women met for three intensive days in Cuernavaca, Mexico [… working] over the preliminary Working Document the bishops would be using. The sessions continued in Puebla, during which many more Latin American women participated in the dialogue” recalls Ruth McDonough in the Forward, “We named ourselves ‘Mujeres para el Diálogo’.” That group bussed to Puebla city to intervene and make sure that women would not be ignored in the episcopal conference as they had been in the past.

The English translations here were the work of The [U.S.] National Assembly of Women Religious, in collaboration with the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, who published this text for English-reading audiences who might join in solidarity with the women of the Latin American and Caribbean churches facing violence on all fronts.

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