1. Biography

2. Work

3. References

Sister Mary Prudence Allen {{post-nominals|size=100|post-noms=RSM}} (born 21 July 1940) is an American philosopher who converted to Catholicism and joined the Religious Sisters of Mercy. In 2014 she was appointed to the International Theological Commission by Pope Francis.

Biography

Allen was born Christine Hope Allen in Oneida, New York, on July 21, 1940. She joined the Catholic Church in 1964 and married one year later. In 1967 she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School of California. She and her husband had two sons, whom she helped raise while continuing to teach university philosophy. Her marriage was annulled in 1972. Allen began to feel the call to serve as a member of a religious order, and in 1983 she was accepted into the novitiate of the Religious Sisters of Mercy. She took perpetual vows in 1990.^[1]

Allen taught at St. John Vianney Seminary, eventually becoming chair of its philosophy department, and went on to serve with the chaplaincy team at Lancaster University. In 2014 she became one of five women that Pope Francis invited to serve on the International Theological Commission, which had previously not included more than two female members.^[2]

On October 25, 2018, the University of Notre Dame's McGrath Institute for Church Life held a day-long conference to celebrate the completion of Allen's Concept of Woman trilogy.^[3]

Work

Allen has stated that she considers herself a New Feminist philosopher, citing the influence of Pope John Paul II on her writing. The philosophy of the human person and of human community is a major focus of her writing. She agrees with Aristotle's understanding of the relationship between soul and body, as well as his approach to science, but opposes his view that human males are superior to females. Like other feminists, she wants to eliminate the discrimination and violence that many women face, but, as a New Feminist, she opposes abortion.^[4]

Allen's three-volume magnum opus, The Concept of Woman, is the culmination of a lifetime of the scholarly investigation into how womanhood has been understood throughout the history of philosophy. Allen argues that there have been three understandings of gender throughout history: gender polarity, gender unity, and gender complementarity. Gender polarity can appear either in its traditional form, in which men are considered superior to women, or in a reversed form, in which women are seen as superior. In its traditional form, gender polarity became dominant in philosophical circles for centuries under the influence of Aristotle. Gender unity holds that there are no significant differences between men and women. Gender complementarity can appear in one of two forms—fractional complementarity, in which men and women form two halves of a whole, and integral complementarity, in which men and women are whole on their own and together form something greater than two wholes.^[5] Allen holds to the integral complementarity position.^[6]

References

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