Paper short abstract:

This paper is an exploration of gender roles in a traditionalist Catholic sect—the Order of Saint Charbel— and how they play out in everyday life. It draws on the lived experience of the author and subsequent reflection on this and contemporary scholarship on Roman Catholic Traditionalism.

Paper long abstract:

The Order of Saint Charbel is a small religious group which emerged in the late 1980s Australia as part of a wider global enthusiasm for Marian apparitions which has marked sectors of the Roman Catholic Church for the last two hundred years. From the mid-1980s, the Charbelites established themselves as a series of millennialist communities in both Australia and overseas, ostensibly drawing on the experience and practice of both historical Roman Catholic models of communal and religious life and contemporary movements for ecclesial renewal like those called for by Pope John Paul II in several contemporary writings especially Vita Consecrata (1996). While spiritual renewal was the ideal, the reality proved more contested, and the Charbelites found themselves marginalized and sanctioned by the mainstream Church and ridiculed by wider society. This paper will offer s a brief account of the history, beliefs and structure of the Order of Saint Charbel and the eschatological vision of its founder William Kamm (“The Little Pebble”). In drawing on the lived experience of the author, this paper will look at both the ideal and the reality of the Charbelites experience as they attempted to build and maintain a millennial community over the decade of the 1990s, focusing on the roles, expectations, and experiences of women in the Charbelites.