Abstract
This “trinity” of articles in one incorporates reflections by three feminist community psychologists from the Irish Catholic diaspora. Using a narrative approach, we explore the roots of our common commitment to social justice, and the emergence of our feminism from diverse life experiences across four countries, within a shared spiritual tradition. We argue that building inclusive and just communities is impossible without addressing the complexities of our own communities, cultural identities, and spiritual heritages, the latter often underacknowledged within feminism and community psychology. Catholic Ireland in the 19th century was a colonized^1^ country that became a colonial power by the export of its people and their religion out of oppression, famine, and poverty to the “new worlds” of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA. Our mixed experiences of internalized dominance as White, English‐speaking members of the “one true Church” and of internalized oppression as Irish Catholic minority women in predominantly Protestant Anglo‐Saxon patriarchal societies resonate in our accounts of the pressures to “do good and be good.” Our stories illustrate commonalities and contradictions between feminism, community psychology, and shifting meanings of spirituality. We offer strategies for harnessing energies and fostering commitment for social change, and examine how understandings of feminism, spirituality, culture, and community might be acknowledged and incorporated into community psychology theory and practice. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.