Can John Paul II and Catholic Women Save Authentic Feminism?

[Michie]

Authentic feminism, as envisioned by John Paul II, empowers women to embrace their unique role in building a civilization of love.

Has feminism offered society a positive contribution? Or has it, as Carrie Gress says in her new book, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us, been so corrupt from its inception that it must be “slayed” as an “ideological dragon?”

Is there such a thing as “authentic feminism,” or is the tree of “feminism,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” so rotten at its core that it must be cut down completely?

Before I address those questions, let me begin by saying that the history and impact of feminism that Gress presents in her book, particularly the “second wave” of feminism that came forth in the 1960s as a push for women’s equality in the workplace and for reproductive rights, rang extremely true to my own experience.

Continued below.

Can John Paul II and Catholic Women Save Authentic Feminism?

COMMENTARY: Authentic feminism, as envisioned by John Paul II, empowers women to embrace their unique role in building a civilization of love.

www.ncregister.com

 

[fide]

Authentic feminism, as envisioned by John Paul II, empowers women to embrace their unique role in building a civilization of love.

Has feminism offered society a positive contribution? Or has it, as Carrie Gress says in her new book, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us, been so corrupt from its inception that it must be “slayed” as an “ideological dragon?”

Is there such a thing as “authentic feminism,” or is the tree of “feminism,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” so rotten at its core that it must be cut down completely?

Before I address those questions, let me begin by saying that the history and impact of feminism that Gress presents in her book, particularly the “second wave” of feminism that came forth in the 1960s as a push for women’s equality in the workplace and for reproductive rights, rang extremely true to my own experience.

Continued below.

Can John Paul II and Catholic Women Save Authentic Feminism?

COMMENTARY: Authentic feminism, as envisioned by John Paul II, empowers women to embrace their unique role in building a civilization of love.

www.ncregister.com

This is a good article. It emphasizes for me how sin has so permeated and corrupted humanity, culture by culture, into shades of different "cultures of death." Men need women; women need men; God is a (sadly literally) "unbelievable" designer. We many feel free to pick and choose praise or blame upon God for our differences, man and woman. The Catechism is right, our differences are ordered to complementarity (CCC 2333), but our sins distort that reality into a huge "problem." Yet this temptation, born in pride, is overcome with true and holy love - holy charity.