A Catholic Definition of Womanhood From Edith Stein, Defender of Women, by Lorraine V. Murray

By Lorraine V. Murray, EWTN News, December 4, 2023

Lorraine V. Murray Lorraine Murray is a columnist with The Georgia Bulletin, the archdiocesan newspaper of Atlanta. She is the author of The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey and three church mysteries: Death in the Choir, Death of a Liturgist and Death Dons a Mask.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, in her philosophical essays, showed that women are endowed with wonderful, God-given natures.

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” is a famous lament expressed by professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Although the song brought laughter to audiences, the lingering question about the differences between men and women still is hotly debated today.

Feminists weren’t much help in answering the question, since they didn’t want to acknowledge any innate traits distinguishing men from women. Feminists in the popular press were largely atheists, and by denying God as the Creator, they denied the reality of inborn masculine and feminine natures. As the atheistic philosopher Simone de Beauvoir so famously put it, “One is not born, but becomes a woman.” …

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