By Casey Chalk, Catholic Education Resource Center
Casey Chalk. “A Marian or a Feminist Church?.” The Catholic Thing (May 13, 2024).
Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Thing.
Casey Chalk is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands (Sophia Institute Press) and a senior contributor at The Federalist. He holds a Masters in Theology from Christendom College.
The New Testament begins with a story about a humble young woman who willingly submits to the will of God when He calls her to a momentous vocation.
Yet she is also portrayed as a virtuous, contemplative heroine, capable of articulating the desires and expectations of her entire people in poetry so brilliant and beautiful that today, more than 2,000 years removed from that event, it’s daily prayed by millions of Catholics the world over. The contemporary feminist critique of Catholicism, however, claims it’s a misogynist institution: whether it be the Church telling women what to do with their bodies (abortion and contraception), or prohibiting them from positions of ecclesial authority.
In response to this criticism, many Catholics claim that, far from being antiquated and sexist, the Church has always been the impetus for religious and social change that elevates the status of women. They’re not wrong. Nevertheless, apologetics that aim to argue that the Church was the first feminist institution—or similar rhetoric approaches—risk adopting the very same false premises that underlie the entire modern feminist project with its emphasis on power, autonomy, equality. …
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