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

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