Feminism

Feminism

Carrie Gress, USA, August 6, 2024

The historical roots of feminism

Resentment is a powerful passion. Marxist revolutionaries have fostered it in the hearts of their followers for more than a century. Few are aware that envy and resentment are also at the heart of feminist ideology. I have written about this in my book entitled the “Gospel of Discontent.” Most mistakenly believe that feminism was some kind of spontaneous cultural spark needed to dignify women, ignoring that its ideological articulation has been effectively prepared, first by the socialists, then by the communists and finally by the New Left. Marxists saw in the ease with which they could manipulate women’s emotions a very useful force for their communist revolution.

Betty Friedan, who is credited with founding the second wave of feminism, is not well known for her Marxist roots. I discuss this in my book The End of Women, but her friend Daniel Horowitz details it thoroughly in one of his books.

Friedan, like other feminists before her, notably Margaret Sanger, was a master at hiding her true intentions. Friedan hid her radical past well. Sanger, decades before Friedan, learned from her lover, the sexual radical Havelock Ellis, the importance of appearing as normal as possible. For example, Ellis advised Sanger to stop talking about abortion and to present herself as a devoted mother while pushing birth control. Meanwhile, behind their good-mom facades, both women were stirring up discontent among women around the world by promoting their radical leftist agendas.

Women took the bait. And not just secular women. Today, Catholic women take contraceptives and have abortions in the same proportions as the rest of the population, despite the firm prohibition of both practices by the Catholic Church.

The ideology that sinks the birth rate

https://thinktanklatam.org/the-family-the-only-salvation-of-society/

What should come as no surprise is that the main problems facing the Church today are related to women’s fertility: contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, as well as the more general problems facing the family: divorce, pornography and even homosexuality. Fatima visionary Sister Lucia’s warning that the final battle between the Church and Satan would revolve around the family rings truer today than ever.

Friedan’s success within Catholicism has been largely due to the help of women from within the Church for several reasons. First, feminism has a built-in ability to silence men, especially those who are part of a patriarchy. Few priests or bishops want to discuss the role of women today because they know they will be accused of wanting women to be like slaves and married to abusive husbands. The left has been very effective in crafting a negative image of what those who oppose feminism are like, and few are willing to fight against that caricature. In light of this seemingly indefensible position, women who have embraced feminist principles have readily pushed their feminist views because of the assurance that men-clergy, husbands, fathers, colleagues-would not object.

Second, there has long been an attempt to conflate Catholicism with feminism. Certainly Pope John Paul II mentions feminism only once, in Veritatis Splendor, referring to “a new feminism,” supported by the general mistaken belief that feminism is simply a movement to help women. Most are unaware that its corrosive philosophical roots are anti-Catholic. Anyone who has read Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s anti-Christian Woman’s Bible, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics would be hard-pressed to say that these foundational feminist texts have anything in common with the Polish Pope’s The Dignity of Woman.

Feminism’s death sowing

The broad appeal of feminism has created an army of people willing to fight for it everywhere, including in our churches. As the Gospel of Discontent and the Gospel of Christ clash, women have the social advantage. Their resentment-driven desire to claim their status as victims, and thus seeking a tacit special dispensation from the demands of family life, has created a kind of Marxist infiltration within the Church. The Marxists no longer have to fight the Church from outside; they have gone inside.

Feminism’s legions of minifriedans throughout the West silence the patriarchy through threats of attacks on social media, letters to the bishop or by withholding donations. Few priests-and who can blame them-have the courage to fight such battles. The result is an almost universal absence of homilies on hot-button issues related to female fertility. God bless those priests who still have the fortitude to speak about this from the pulpit, even if it is in the most casual way, such as including them among the things to confess.

The critical point is that the leftist attack on the Church does not come from outside. It is carried out daily in almost every church and Catholic school by naive women in the pews and in line at school, even if they don’t know it. The Marxist ideal of women prioritizing career over family has triumphed. For the moment, Friedan and Sanger have apparently won. Women have come to truly believe that living their best life means using contraceptives and even turning to abortion to make their way to career opportunities.

Female-driven depopulation

https://thinktanklatam.org/la-familia-y-el-auge-de-occidente/

The social effects are shocking: 3,000 children aborted every day, millions of frozen embryos in laboratory limbo, and deregulated surrogate motherhood, to the point that single men from China are “buying” babies in California to gain access to dual citizenship. Meanwhile, most Western countries face a dramatic shortage of births, with statistical rates well below population replacement levels. The world’s biggest cause of death – more than cancer, heart disease and COVID – is abortion. At the same time, the family is being decimated by couples who ignore what it means to be married, not understanding the self-sacrifice involved in raising children.

Ironically, the Church, with millennia of wisdom, has beautiful and compelling answers to these critical issues of fertility and family. The Church, through the sacraments, also has the ability to help women heal from resentment, envy and anger. We have a choice: we can continue to embrace Marx, Sanger and Friedan, or we can let the truth be known. Only it will give us what we truly desire and allow men and women to become the creatures God made us to be.

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Carrie Gress holds a doctorate in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. She is editor-in-chief of Theology of Home and author of several books, including The Marian Option, The Anti-Mary Exposed and co-author of Theology of Home. She also raises her children as a stay-at-home mom. Her new book is The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us. This article is published by permission of ˇThe Catholic Thing’, USA. We have changed the title and added the subtitles.