<p><i><b>This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</b></i><br><br>While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. <i>Womanpriest </i>is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, <i>Womanpriest </i>analyzes the womenpriests' actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change.<br><br>In order to understand how womenpriests navigate tradition and transgression, this study situates RCWP within post-Vatican II Catholicism, apostolic succession, sacraments, ministerial action, and questions of embodiment. Womanpriest reveals RCWP to be a discrete religious movement in a distinct religious moment, with a small group of tenacious women defying the Catholic patriarchy, taking on the priestly role, and demanding reconsideration of Roman Catholic tradition. Doing so, the women inhabit and re-create the central tensions in Catholicism today.</p>