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Document Details :

Title: Interior Motions from a Female Perspective
Subtitle: Their Role in Guiding the Spiritual Exercises
Author(s): LIEBERT, Elizabeth
Journal: Studies in Spirituality
Volume: 31    Date: 2021   
Pages: 71-84
DOI: 10.2143/SIS.31.0.3289728

Abstract :
This essay examines the concept of interior motions in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola from the perspective of intersectional feminism. Beginning with a foundation in ‘second wave’ feminism, it adds the perspective of intersectionality to create a hermeneutic that is more adequate for understanding the experience of contemporary women making the Spiritual Exercises than feminism alone. Once the hermeneutic is in place, the essay explores implications for attitudes and behaviors in the one who guides the Exercises and then applies the hermeneutic to selected passages from the First Week of the Exercises, demonstrating that interior motions are heavily dependent on the social system in which individual women live. It concludes with a dual challenge: that those who give the Exercises bring this hermeneutic to their work with women making the Exercises and that they challenge the intersectional dynamics that hinder both individual women and women as a distinct group from becoming the persons God created them to be.

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