Feminism is a Counterfeit Religion (Guest: Dr. Carrie Gress)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Doctor Cary Grice. Thank you. Grass. Sorry, I mispronounced your name right at the beginning there. Dr. Carrie Gress. Thank you very much for coming on the program. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. And I've been called much worse, much worse before. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Okay, that's. I'm sure with this book, you will be called even much worse. Speaking of which, that's what we want to talk about is your new book, Something Wicked. Why Finn, is why Feminism can't be Fused with Christianity by Sophia and Supress. I will, of course, put a link to it in the show notes for People. I have it here. It's great. I'm very excited about this. I, you know, I've kind of stopped doing regular podcasts with book authors for their latest book because I find sometimes it just ends up being like, oh, we just. It's kind of boring. And just talk about their book. And so that. I was like, I got it. I got to talk to you about this one because I've had. I had a podcast, I think, a couple months ago, about feminism, and so I. I was like, okay, this really hits a lot of those themes. This is something a lot of people are talking about. So I just want. And I want to hit the ground running. I don't even want to, like, you know, have a prelude here. I want you to tell me why in 30 words less. No, I'm just kidding on that part. Why, exactly. Feminism is a counterfeit religion. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, let's go then. Yeah, I definitely can't do it in 30 words or less, but. But I think it's. It all starts because we have made an idol out of autonomy, of womanhood. I kind of ran into this idea of feminism as a shadow church when I was really looking at a lot of the key pieces of how I was defining feminism, or really how feminism defines itself. It's. It's been a movement for 200 years. There's some very clear pieces to it. And when I started putting them together, I was like, wait a minute. You've got an idol of. You know, you've got an object of worship and an idol, which is female autonomy. You've got some commandments which we can go into. There's three of them. For feminism, it's got its own theological virtues, which I. I think will take very little convincing generally when you're looking at the culture that instead of faith, hope, and love, which comes from Christianity, you've got rage, contempt, and envy is part of feminism. Peter K. Obviously has done this great service for the church in, in describing the abortion as the sacrament of feminism. It has its own kind of, of evangelization. So in any event, it was really just, you know, breaking down, going back to the, the philosophical roots of feminism and just piecing these things together. And that's when it just jumped out at me like, wow, this is, this is why feminism is so powerful, why it's so hard to get away from. Because it tells, you know, why it's been so impressionable upon women because it really tells us how to think, how to act, how to feel, how to behave. And you know, it's this whole system that I, that we've, we've bought into deeply. And so that's really, you know, and that's the backbone of the book fundamentally is that whole, all those pieces and, and how they work. Yeah. [00:03:04] Speaker A: And we're going to talk about in a little bit why it's incompatible with Christianity, because of course there are a lot of Christians, like Catholics, who talk about a Catholic feminism, a Christian feminism, you know, JP2, Edith Stein, they mention all these people. We'll get to that in a minute. Well, let's actually break down how feminism is a religion specifically. You mentioned there's commandments, you mentioned there's a sacrament and you mentioned like it's evangelical zeal, what its virtues are. And they're all really in a large way a, an inverse of Christianity. So what are, what are the commandments of feminism? [00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so this is a fascinating part because the, the commandments, the three of them, the first is contempt for men, the second is promiscuity, and the third is the occult. And I, I first dug these up by, when I was reading Percy Shelley, who was highly influenced by his mother in law, who, whom he never met because she died in childbirth delivering his wife, who became Mary Shelley. But he was deeply influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft. I'm sorry, did I say Mary Shelley? I meant Mary Wollstonecraft, who was his mother in law. And he was trying to do this thing called the Women's Revolution. And so he had, he took some ideas from her, he took some ideas from his father in law, who was the best known anti monogamy scholar in Western Europe, I think for a very long time, William Godwin. And then he took his own interest in the occult and he sort of smushed these things together, this idea of, you know, contempt for men, the getting rid of monogamy and the occult and made this character named Sitha in one of his Poems. And that's really where the kind of this. This, you know, this feminist woman came about. And. And this woman became a sith, became a model for the theosophists, for all of the. The later women in the women's movement, women who names we would recognize, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Um, so in any event, that's really where it started. And all of that sounds very esoteric until you sort of take those three ideas and map them onto what we see, you know, among women today, particularly on college campuses. Promiscuity, the occult, and contempt for men are just rampant. I mean, that's exact. This is, you know, kind of the, by definition, what it is that we've come to carve out as womanhood in the culture today. So it's not an accident that it's those three either. I think that's another important piece of this, is if you look at those three elements, each one of them attacks a different aspect of the Holy Trinity. So if you have contempt for men, you're going to have a very hard time connecting with God the Father. If you are promiscuous, you're going to have a very difficult time receiving the graces through your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. And then, of course, the authority of Christ over the earth. When you're involved in, you know, somehow connecting yourself in any way through the occult, you're separating yourself from that authority of Christ as well. So it's really fascinating to see, you know, this isn't just a. These aren't just things that became popular that people are following, but there are real theological elements to them that I. I think, you know, very few of us have any idea are actually going on behind the whole movement. [00:06:10] Speaker A: I think probably the most controversial of those three is the connection to the occult, because I'm sure there's people who are watching this podcast even, who might even describe themselves as feminists, or at least feminist friendly. And, you know, and we. And. Or at least they know somebody who kind of is more feminist, but they're still Catholics of that. But yet you're connecting it to the occult, which is obviously, that's. That's evil, that's demonic, everything. So what is the real connection, like the historic connection of the occult and feminism? Why are they so integrated, linked to each other? [00:06:44] Speaker B: No, that's a great question. I think one of the problems is really definitional, too, because feminism has done this amazing job of protecting itself from any kind of scrutiny, because most people just think feminism is just about helping women like that. That's kind of the friendly face of feminism that most people, if you, you know, if you start digging too much, you realize that they don't, you know, most of us don't really know that much about feminism. Janice Fiamingo, who's been doing scholarship on early feminism even longer than I have been, she says basically everything that people think they know about feminism is actually wrong. And I think there's a lot to it. And so this is one of the ways that feminism has protected itself by just saying, oh, it's just about helping women out. Um, the other, some of my other favorites are, well, you can't talk about feminism because you're a man. And then the one I get a lot is, you know, how can you be upset with feminism when you, you wouldn't have a PhD if it weren't for feminism. All of which are, you know, deeply problematic and, and super interesting, especially from a Catholic perspective, because these same people would never accept, you know, the dogma of the church without any kind of rationale for it. But somehow we're supposed to bow down to the ideologies of feminism without really scrutinizing them. But the problem is feminism from the very beginning. Mary Wollstonecraft, this is a woman who was first Anglican, then she became a dissenting Anglican, and then ultimately she became a Unitarian, which means she didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. And actually because of the way this kind of rational religion was set up, she believed that any kind of male mediation between her and God, including Christ, was an obstacle to women's potential. So that's from the very get go is this idea of Unitarianism. And then if you look at all of the, the early, what was called then with the women's movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony. Fanny Wright's another one that's not well known. Matilda Gage, who was the mother in law of Frank Baum who wrote the wizard of Oz, all of these women were either became Unitarians or they were deeply involved in witchcraft like Matilda Gage, or they were atheists. Susan B. Anthony is said to eventually become an atheist. Fanny Wright was definitely an atheist. So that, that's a key p piece of it is that that Christianity was actually the target of feminism early on. It was this effort to try to compare women with slavery and to say that Christianity was the tool of men to enslave women. So that's really what they were fighting against. And you know, this morphs again in the 1900s because the fact that it's, it joins forces with Communism. And of course, we know that communism is obviously not friendly to Christianity and specifically Catholic Catholicism either. So the, the occult is a very important piece of it, I think, because the fact that steps out of the Christian framework and sets up an alternative frame, framework for belief, for power, for control, all of which are really part and parcel of feminist movement. [00:09:44] Speaker A: And would you argue that today's feminism. So you talk about the origins of feminism connected to the occult. Would you say that today's feminist. Have they. Are they, I mean, are they outwardly involved in occult things or is it more a matter of they keep that secret because they know it wouldn't be very good for their press? [00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, it depends on, on the person. There are obviously some, you know, who call themselves Catholic feminists who are not going to be involved in the occult and they're also not going to be pro choice, but that there, there are other issues which we can get into there, but there are others who are very blatantly about it. The connection with witchcraft. I think, you know, if you spend any amount among celebrity or teen influencers, you're going to run into tarot cards and manifesting and horoscopes, all of these kinds of things that are sort of passed off as just fun. But obviously we know that, you know, as Catholics, that these have deep connections to the occult. So they, they, they're filling a gap because when you take Christianity, a strong Christianity out of the culture, it's going to create a vacuum. And so it's being filled in by this sort of alternate religion of sorts, through the occult, for sure. [00:10:56] Speaker A: And then you mentioned the sacrament. Now, I think a lot of us, we will say that abortion is a sacrament of the left or of feminism. But at least as I've used and I've heard, usually we're just thinking of it as a metaphor and just kind of like it's important. It's basically a way of saying it's important to them. Yeah, but I think you're kind of saying it a little bit deeper than that. And so how would you, how would you say that, like, abortion has become the sacrament and obviously the early feminists. And if I'm wrong, but this. Let me know. But at least my understanding of the early feminists is they were not pro abortion. And maybe I'm wrong about that. So how is it that. Did it become the sacrament of feminism? Has it always been. Is it. Do you just mean it kind of symbolically or. [00:11:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Are you really saying, like a true, like A religious type of sacrament. [00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, let me start with the early feminists. So abortion in the 1800s is very difficult biologically. You know, the technology wasn't there for them to happen the way that they can now. But abortions certainly happen. In fact, most people don't know that the YMCA was actually set up in 1850 so that men would, you know, all these young men were coming to New York City, they were alone, and they ended up impregnating all these women. And that's why the YMCA was established, to stop abortion, actually, of all things, because they just didn't have community and they were trying to figure out, how do we stop these abortions? So abortions were happening. And I, there's a. There's a lot of stories about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and, and Victoria Woodhull. I actually talk about this in my book that the End of Woman Connecting Abortion. So that, yes, in a certain respect, most people were against abortion and would not publicly be promoting it the way that we do now. But what's interesting about it is to see that you already, when. When you have a woman denying her maternity, when you have, you know, motherhood is the problem. And we see this certainly with Margaret Sanger. A woman's fertility is really what feminism set itself up against. And you can see the language change in around, like 1870s, where motherhood is referred to as this kind of drudgery. It's something that's awful, that's supposed to be avoided. And you see the language over and over and over again. So in the same way that, you know, no one would ever say Betty Friedan was pro gay marriage, the ideas that Betty Friedan espoused helped get us to gay marriage into the trans movement. It's the same thing, I think with, with Mary Wollstonecraft and others is sure they might have been very, you know, Wollstonecraft loved her children and, you know, obviously was very forward thinking in the way that she took care of her daughter and before her death. But I think that there's things that are loaded into feminism from the get go that then create these, these problems. And you also have to remember too, there's, you know, huge shifts happening simultaneously with the home. Industrialization is happening and the home is, you know, suddenly is no longer the locust of attention. And this is why women are grasping for something, some deeper meaning, because everything's happening outside the home. Children are now liability instead of an asset. So all these shifts are taking place. And I think this is really why feminism has been so effective. Was it. Was. It was filling in that vacuum of trying to say, okay, well the home's not important anymore, so what is important, it's. It's becoming more like men. So that's a really key piece to be aware of. But feminism in terms of looking at abortion as the sacrament, you know, Peter crave compared the idea of, you know, this is Christ saying, this is my body offered up for you? And I don't know that he says this, but I say it in the book. Is this what feminism says is in a. Through abortion is to a baby, to. To our own children. We say, this is your body offered up for me. So we know that there's this whole element of scapegoating that's going on, that abortion, you know, is, is the fruit of the promiscuity that feminism promotes. And so there has to be a way to sort of fix that or solve that. And so it's not uncommon to hear abortion doctors. There was one that just closed in Colorado that I think I quote in the book, and he talks about this, this sacred work that he does, aborting children. So I think it is something deeper because of the kind of language that, that it's given that, you know, really reflects this, this idea of a shadow church, of this, you know, filling that gap which, you know, obviously we know Christ is the only one that can fill, but people are made to be religious. And so I think this is something that, that really has become an important thing, especially when you look at the way in which women fight for it, you know, the ferocity that comes out at women's marches. And anytime there's, you know, any kind of a bill or, or political issue on this, all of that energy that women used to direct towards their children is now directed at this sacrament, this capacity to be able to kill our own children. And I think that's obviously really turning, you know, the Marian imagery, the beauty of the church, all of those things on its head as well. So anyway, I hope I answered all those questions. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I, I've been, you know, either involved in or adjacent to the pro life movement for 30 plus years. And one of the things that always amazes me is the intensity in which. The laugh in which feminism supports abortion. It's. It. That's one thing you realize very quickly. Like, when I was in high school, I thought of abortion as just a political issue. You know, it's like, you know, what's going to be the immigration policy, what's going to be the tax policy, what's going to be the abortion policy? They're all kind of on the same level. As I got more involved in pro life movement, I saw that's not how the left looks at it. I mean, they might get upset about, you know, taxes or economic policy, whatever. Boy, you even think about touching abortion and it's, it's all bets are off. They will just go completely demonic on you. Completely. And they have zero compromise on that. And you see that in how the Democratic Party, they don't. You cannot go anywhere if you're even slightly pro life. I mean, if you even are like, hey, maybe we shouldn't have abortions in the 36th week. They'll be like, you zealot, you know, your anti choice bigot, get out of here. And it's just like, it's kind of weird. And you do start to see there's got to be some type of spiritual aspect to it because it just makes no political sense to really be that hardcore about that. And if you look at other. And I also. Do you see there's anything about it that's American? Because I feel like you go like European countries, even some other countries, their abortion policies aren't as radical as ours are. And so I just wonder, have we imbibed more the spiritual aspects of it being an anti sacrament or something? I don't know. I just kind of. My thoughts on just the intensity of their support for abortion. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a good question. I think you're right about the rabidness. And I think this, you know, one of the pieces that we as pro lifers have not done a good job of paying enough attention to is the fact that abortion is really fueled by feminism. That, that the, that's what's, you know, this is why it happened in the 1970s. This is why Betty Friedan was convinced to put it in the platform of now was because of the fact that it was, it was this belief that women could not be free, could not be equal if they, they had to manage their fertility the way that, in a, in a way different from men. So this is 100% what, what is behind it and continually fueling it ideologically. I think Europe is a different case though. I know when I lived over there, I remember people didn't realize that Roe v. Wade put no limitations on abortion. You know, I remember talking with my landlady, of all people, and I lived in Rome and she was like, why are Americans so upset about this. And of course I said, well, because we can, you know, explain what partial birth abortion was to her. And she was just aghast. She had no idea. So I think part of it was just bec. The relationship with Roe and what happened with Roe and how radical Roe was from the very beginning that most people don't understand in Europe. And, and maybe that's why it feels like less of an issue there, because their laws came in in different fashion, in different way and weren't so extreme from the very beginning and weren't so all encompassing. There was. There was a lot more nuance to it. So I don't know if it's that. I think the other thing that's really important too is even that idea, though, the theological virtues, the, the rage, contempt and, and envy that feel feminism has really promoted because this is something that didn't come out of nowhere. You know, this isn't just sort of spontaneous emotions coming from women. This has actually been very manufactured since the 1890s. I found that the socialists started this thing that we now know is called consciousness raising, where it was basically trying to bring a bunch of women together and make them angry, not just about their own situations, but about all the other women in their group. And, and there was no intention of healing. It was really just to stir women's emotions up. And they found that the reason they did this was because they realized that if women are angry, they're going to be much more politically active than if they're not angry. So here's might be the difference in Americanism versus European. You know, when you go to Europe, everyone's very quiet publicly. Nobody talks. It's very sedate. People don't want to be seen or kind of outed in any way. And I think that's obviously very different than kind of this, the American ethos of women where, you know, shouting your abortion is somehow supposed to be a good thing. But all of that has been intentionally provoked throughout the century, really the last century, even the International Day of Womanhood actually came about because the communists realized if we can get these angry feminists on our side, we've got a whole nother layer of, you know, the Red army that we can work with to defeat the culture and, and gain the revolution. So, yeah, I think there's. It's really remarkable when you just start looking at that, that aspect of rage and anger and just the emotions and how we've been really told, you know, whatever you feel, that's, you're, you know, you need to just Pursue that and a lot of that. Obviously we're, we know we're seeing in real time just how or how disordered it is. [00:21:22] Speaker A: So I want to get. This is going to be touch step on some toes probably. But your book seems to not care about doing that. So I don't mind asking you. You mentioned how the, like we were talking about the pro life movement and the connection between feminism and abortion. Now I remember I feel like I'm at the old, old timers home telling my stories. But I remember I first got really involved in pro life movement in the 1990s and that was when there started to be a push to kind of embrace a form of feminism in the pro life movement. In fact, I'll tell a story my wife might not want me to tell us, but she was originally like a super pro life feminist. When we were at college, she was literally the vice president of the pro life group and I think it was the secretary treasurer of the feminist group. And she was the only pro lifer in the feminist group. Now over time, I will say she kind of, she's evolved between, you know, developed from that to then she kind of embraced a Catholic feminism. Like JP2 she called and now she's like, the whole thing is just, she's like with you, like it's all evil. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Right, Right. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, but the point is, is that there is definitely a segment of the pro life world, including many leaders who really do talk, you know, feminist talking points in a lot of ways. And there's a lot of emphasis on like kind of feminist, like I said, talking points about that, that kind of infiltrated, for lack of a better word, into the pro life movement. I just want. And I maybe before I even get your thoughts on the pro life movement, let's go ahead and segue in that because you talk about this in your book a lot, the kind of fusion, the attempted fusion between Christianity, between Catholicism and feminism. So why don't you just give an overview of like who's doing that, who's been doing that historically and you know, I guess then we'll go into why it's doomed to failure. [00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think, you know, there's the, the start of it really, I think you, you hit on already is just this idea of John Paul II and kind of this new feminism. So John Paul II uses the word feminism that we know of three times in his, his 26 year pontificate. So not a resounding endorsement. We've actually used the word more here in this conversation than he used it during this whole pontificate. So. And John Paul, of course, was a master with language. He was a. He understood ideologies deeply. And I think, you know, even using it was really radical for him to use rights language. And that's. You know, it's been very well documented that the rights language is actually what helped with the fall of communism. So it's not unusual to find in his work him using a word and trying to sort of shift the meaning for it to function in a. In a healthier way. And I think that's what he was trying to do with feminism, especially in the 80s where, you know, if you remember the 80s. You remember the 80s. The. [00:24:14] Speaker A: I do. [00:24:14] Speaker B: You're not old enough. But in any event, I do. [00:24:17] Speaker A: I was a teenager. I graduated from high school in the 80s. [00:24:20] Speaker B: Okay, so fair enough. You remember, you know, nine to five is huge. That feminism is just everywhere. There's all these women, all these movies about women. Working girl, you know, I mean, it was just so part of the ethos. And I actually even found some work by Christopher lash from the 80s where he's even promoting feminism. And so I. I did find out that he later was more critical of it. But you have to remember, you know, just it was at the height of popularity, so it's not that surprising that John Paul would sort of try to pivot with it, which he did. I mean, he's. He. But he offered a different vision. And actually, what he offers, especially in Moliere's Dignitatin, where he actually never uses the word feminism, he offers this antidote to what it is that feminism is doing. So if you look at, you know, go back to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Bible, the women's Bible that she wrote, which most people don't know about it, but it's basically kind of this adolescent commentary on. On Scripture. If you take those ideas and then you compare it to John Paul II's ideas, they're. They're diametrically opposed. They're, like, from totally different sources, very, you know, very different ways of. Of looking at womanhood. So there, you know, there's something noble in terms of trying to shift that. Something very pastoral, I think, that John Paul was doing. And there were a lot of women who picked up on that and, you know, wanted to promote this idea of John Paul II's feminism, because especially with women, there's something to be said about trying to, like, be in with the in crowd. The left has set up kind of these Categories where you're either the, in women or you're a doormat. And I think that there's something, you know, it makes sense to try to like infiltrate in a way, the cool girls. You know, I think that was what was, was going on is how do we use this language but then sort of change it. The problem is, is that there was not a lot of discipline used for, for this idea of a new feminism. And I think that's the stage that we're at now is that there was this fusion of Mary Wollstonecraft with John Paul II that just doesn't work at all. And I go into this in the book in, in great depth, but, you know, you can't take Mary Wollstonecraft. Who's she? You know, she. If you look at her work and you're a 21st century Catholic woman and you see the words imago day and reason and God and virtue, it's very easy to think, oh, she's one of us. She's using all this, you know, crypto Thomist language. Maybe she was a Thomas. You know, this is kind of been the argument that's made. The problem, of course, is that anybody who studied philosophy knows that words change and she doesn't mean by those words the same thing that we mean by those words in contemporary culture. And so I go through all of that explanation and just say, look, this is, these are not at all, you know, she's using the word virtue. But what she really means are, you know, David Hume's understanding of virtue, imago day, looks very different to a Catholic than it does to a woman who doesn't believe in Jesus. So these are some of the problems that I think have been created because the people that are promoting this idea of first wave feminism, of being good, do not have the philosophical background to really understand what it is that they're stepping into and have really cherry picked a lot of ideas and then tried to say, you know, this was really the foreground or forerunning or the four ideas that led John Paul to his work. And even as I've heard it, the, you know, extreme point made that these were what allowed John Paul II to sort of correct the errors of Thomas Aquinas. Anyway, all of this is so deeply far fetched philosophically that, you know, I don't need to explain to your audience the deep problems with that, but I think they are deep problems and I think that, you know, this kind of glossing over of the intellectual tradition and the roots, the philosophical roots and what's really being said has created a much deeper problem because it's provided cover for people that have no understanding of what it is that they're talking about on a philosophical level. And so they're, they just are using, again, this idea of, oh, feminism is what's good for women, and they're promoting it, people are funding it. You know, this is all over the conservative Catholic world right now, and it's pretty amazing to see how far it's gotten without really sufficient pushback by people that I, you know, I, I would think would know better. I'm certainly not the only person with a PhD in philosophy who's, who's noticed these discrepancies. But I think this is also really the power of feminism, where people are afraid to step out and to say something because they know it's, you know, it's probably not going to go well. It's. Nobody wants to get into a fight with a bunch of women who are upset about something. So anyway, I, yeah, I, I think it's a real challenge that we're facing in the church right now, for sure. [00:28:56] Speaker A: What about the argument, you know, from the Christian, from the Catholic, of we're just trying to, like, they're trying to reinterpret feminism and just okay, it, like, redefine feminism is just what's good for women. And obviously nobody's going to be against what's good for women. And so we're gonna say this is what feminism really is. True Christian feminism means X. And if it rejects everything of actual classical feminism is. I mean, it's a little Orwellian. But is that, oh, I mean, what's wrong with just doing that? Like, why can't we just kind of redefine feminism? [00:29:35] Speaker B: I think that if, if Catholic women had been more disciplined and stayed exactly to the script that John Paul II wrote and is his dignitatem encyclical. I think possibly that could have happened. Possibly because you could that if everybody was really on the same page and you moved in that direction. The problem is, is all the first wave stuff that got brought in and was tried to be melded into that as if it was something good. So it's really the lack of discipline. The other problem is you have very few feminists, Catholic feminists, that actually define their terms what it is that they mean by feminism. You know, just saying it's what's good for women isn't good enough, especially when there's all this incredible baggage. And this is one of the things that I, you know, it's not that hard to find is that feminism fundamentally usually always means that women are a minority that needs. That's been victimized and needs to be treated differently. And that's one of the whole. And, and simultaneously, men are the victimizers who need to be challenged to change continuously and always apologizing. Like those are the two pieces that are there that nobody really ever talks about, but that, you know, if you don't have to read that far or watch too many lectures and discussions about the topic to see those things sort of implicit in it. And that's one of the reasons why I think, you know, nobody wants to get rid of the word because there's. They, they like those aspects of it and they feel that that's important. Now, this is not, of course, to say that every man has been perfect, but we also have to recognize that, you know, ontologically, in our very being, men are not victimizers and women aren't the victimized. Those are very Marxist categories. And so this is, you know, where the problems really start because you start integrating all of these woke concepts into the church that, that are just not meant to be there and are certainly part of the deformation that has come from feminism. Yeah. [00:31:26] Speaker A: So now I know there's been a movement in recent years, kind of an anti feminist movement, and you like talking about calls for the patriarchy and the manosphere and things like that. And I've talked about that some on the podcast, this podcast before, because I think there's obviously some very good things about it, but I also think there's some troubling aspects about it. I mean, I'm not going to endorse Andrew Tate, for example, or somebody like that. And I'm sure you won't either. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:53] Speaker A: But what is kind of that from, you know, what is the perspective of the good of that movement and maybe some of the more troubling aspects of that kind of anti feminist movement? [00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic question and kind of trying to make those distinctions, I think a lot of us are trying to navigate that and figure out, you know, why is there this bizarre part to it, like the Andrew Tates who are, you know, obviously is an indictment on human trafficking. Like, there's so many problems with that aspect of it. And one of the things that's really. First of all, there are two things that are really interesting to me about it. The first one is the fact that the manosphere took so long to come about. You know, it's what are we in the third or fourth generation of feminism and men are finally like lashing back, which I think bespeaks to the fact that men fundamentally, authentically want what is good for women. Now, they may not have known that feminism wasn't good for women, but we've been, we've assured that, that it's good for women for so long that you can kind of understand this going along with it. And, and, you know, feminine feminism has this capacity to really silence men in ways that are, I think, have been really unhealthy. But you also have to remember this generation of young men probably has not seen a lot of great women. You know, if you go back to previous generations, people still had mothers or grandmothers or daughters or wives that, that embodied something beautiful and compelling, that, that weren't this embodiment of contempt for men. And that's what we are seeing now is just this deep contempt for men. And I think the manosphere, the, the violent and the, the bad parts of it are just mirroring that. So the, the Andrew Tates just are going to say, well, you have this contempt for us, we're going to have this contempt for you. It's this, you know, very adolescent war that's going on that actually will never heal anything. But I do think that there are some, some positive aspects of men's response to this that are going back to this idea of, of healing, of men being authentically good men being ordered, ordering their families, trying to order their relationships with their wives. And more probably more importantly too, or as important is just their role as, as fathers and allowing. You know, this is one of the things that I loved about researching this was even looking at all the data on what men give to their children. In a way, there's, there's a reason why matriarchies always end up sort of ghettoized. And it's partially because of the fact that men are the ones that either push their children to do things they wouldn't normally do, kind of push them out of the nest, or that allow them to protect their gifts like their sexuality. That's what a good father is meant to do. So I, I think in a lot of respects, it's exciting to be actually having conversations about this and, and allowing men space to talk about this where they don't feel like they're going to be attacked or, you know, really stir things up in a way that's going to get them canceled. But I think that there, there has to be, you know, the more that we can dig into it and provide models of what authentic manhood and ordered manhood, Catholic manhood, looks like the better things are going to be, really, for everyone, because this is one of the things that women have lacked as well. It's just we've been told how bad the patriarchy is and, you know, any kind of masculinity of any sort, how bad that is. So we have to get back to the sense of what are these complementarity gifts that. These gifts of complementarity that men and women have and how do we have them work together so that we're facing the same goal in working with God and that instead of this, you know, constant breaking apart of, you know, the war of the sexes. [00:35:29] Speaker A: So I want to ask, like, kind of practically how you think this looks. Okay, you mentioned it already at the beginning of the podcast, but, you know, you're a scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University of America. I'm sure there are feminists who would say, if you got your way, you should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. And here you have a job, you've written a book and stuff like that. You're a big hypocrite. But how would you look at the role of men and women in society? Because obviously you're not saying every woman should be staying at home and every man is providing for him. It's like every husband like that. So how would you practically see a. A authentic patriarchy and view of the proper roles of men and women playing out in modern society? We're not talking about 1850 farmland. We're talking about today in 21st century America and the Western world. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think that's a false dichotomy that either you. You have to be working or you have to be at home. I think this is one of the challenges that we have and why it feels like our conversations are kind of. Of talking past each other is that, for me, the fundamental issue isn't what it is that you're doing, it's who it is that you are. And this, I think, is a hugely important piece that, you know, I try to impress upon every young woman that I meet is, please develop your character such that you grow into your. Your femininity fully. One of the things that we have done as Catholics is we've kind of gone into these spaces of professionalism, and then we take. We pick up the ethos of. Of the masculine, and we become very masculine. And this is something I did myself. I was in, you know, the PhD program at Catholic University. Much easier to mimic the behavior of men than it was to sort of integrate my personality deeply into who I was as a. As a scholar. And, you know, that's the beauty of growing up and having children. But I think this is an important element is what women are called to be mothers. And I don't just mean that biologically. I mean, across the board, all women. I mean, this is why you see young girls playing with dolls. There's something ordered in us where we have this desire to love, nurture, care, protect others. We can see it very much in the bad extreme of the devouring mother who wants to just control and, you know, take care of people in this very disordered way. But we also have witnessed it. And, you know, if you've been around women who have it in an integrated, ordered way, it's very compelling and beautiful, and you want more of it. And I think this is one of the real message that women need to get is that we have these desires in our heart for reason. And it's through prayer and it's through discernment, and it's through. Through the lives of other women modeling to us that we can come to find out who it is that God made us to be. And there's got to be an element of that mothering that will happen no matter where we work or who we are, whether we're a female religious, you know, an abbess or a nun, or if we're in the workplace or if we're home with our children. There has to be the sense of prioritizing others and serving others, again in an ordered way. But that's just something that's. That's innate to women and an incredible gift that we have. And it's going to be in various, you know, it's going to manifest itself in various ways based on who it is that we are. So that said, I think that, you know, this incumbent upon men to sort of recognize those same traits of fatherhood. This is why we call our priests Father, because there's something that's meant to be self giving, providing, protecting. You know, if you go to some great churches, I remember going to a church in New York and just feeling like the. The priest that was in charge of it was creating an environment where I could walk into it and have this amazing connection with God because of the music, the beauty, reverence, all of these things were there to be a conduit for me to find God. And I. I think this is one of the things that. That men are meant to do in their children's lives, in our families as well. So I Think they're bigger questions than the practical issue of, you know, well, what job do I take? It's, it's really becomes a question of who is it I'm meant to be. And then of course, the couple themselves have to work that out with God. As life presents. I know my husband and I are constantly, you know, discerning in different ways, different seasons, different stages. What is it that we should be doing here? How do we pull back? What do these children need? Navigating all of that, but within the set of gifts that we both have instead of, you know, trying to make ourselves interchangeable. So I think that's what really the, the key piece that we need to keep in mind as we navigate all of these different issues is who are women and what are we meant to be and who are men and what are they meant to be? And then how do we work that out on a practical level as a couple? [00:40:02] Speaker A: So I want to come, I want to circle back because this is something that I thought about a lot lately is the pro life movement. And so I have said on this podcast in other places that I think it's a problem that basically all pro life organizations these days are led by women. When I first started, they were all led by men in the late 80s, early 90s. I mean there's a few exceptions and now with very few exceptions, they're led by women. And a lot of these women are explicitly call themselves feminist and they will often talk about the, they, they make it very much like the woman is always a victim in an abortion. And I'm like, there's definitely situations the 16 year old girl who's forced by her parents get abortion. Clearly she's a victim in a lot of ways. But I'm sorry, but a lot of the abortions are, you know, 25 year old women who are just doing it at a convenience, they, they sleep around, then they just get an abortion act and convenience. I have a hard time to be blunt, calling them victims. Yet we're supposed to look at them all as victims. And, and I, I, I feel like that harms the pro life movement in some way. But I, so that's my very strong opinion about this. But I just kind of curious your thoughts then based upon what we're saying, like the, the infiltration of feminism in the pro life movement. Like do you, do you think more men should be in leadership positions or do you think they're, it's okay for women as long as they don't by the feminist slop or kind of what are your views on it? [00:41:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a great question because I. I think the real issue is just the feminism that is the real distorting factor. And I think it's just this. You know, it's actually kind of nuts, like to be a. Call yourself a feminist and, and pro life, because all you're doing is adding more fuel to the fire. You know, this has become a. You know, it's a huge problem in the church. It's a huge problem. Just the kind of confusion that's sown by feminism across the board. And again, because of that, that victimhood mentality, I don't think it's a male, female thing per se. I think it's. It really does come back down to these distortions and the, the problems that we're. We're trying to sell. You know, it just feels like you're not gonna. You. How can you use the very thing that's created the problem that you've trying to solve and heal it? Anyway, I'm. I hope that. I hope that makes sense. But I think that's the fundamental issue, because if you look at someone like Phyllis Schlafly, I mean, this was a woman, did an amazing job of, you know, very David Goliath kind of thing of stopping the era. And so I, I don't think it's a matter of. Of it being male, female. I'd love to see more men involved. I think this is really why feminism is also dangerous, because it makes men feel like they don't have a voice and, and intentionally so, you know, you can't talk about this. You don't have a womb, you don't have a uterus, you know, as if men and women are live in this. These separate realities, which, by the way, is very much not part of John Paul II's vision. John Paul II's, you know, obviously could speak of women in an abstract way, but he very much couched them within the family and relationships and, and with children and his mothers. And I think that's a real key piece that we need to get back to. So, yeah, I think the problem is, is again, this ideology, this idea that women are victims, we just need to get away from that and just start treating people as people and really recognizing it's that, you know, the ideology that's. That's driving this and creating the. The very problems that we're being tasked to solve. [00:43:24] Speaker A: So I, One, One last thing I kind of want to cover is the most important woman who ever lived, the blessed mother And I want to just ask you about what is her like, role as model? I mean, it's kind of funny. I was just, I'm just reading rereading To Know Jesus Christ, To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheeding. He talks about the fact that the Holy Family. People talk about wanting to model their families, the Holy Family. He was like, well, you don't have a divine child, a sinless mother and a saint for a father, so your family isn't going to be like the Holy Family. And so it's like, how can Mary though really be an antidote, the antidote against feminism and secular feminism, but also like Catholic Christian feminism? How is she. How should we look to her as really the model for moving forward? [00:44:18] Speaker B: No, I think that's a great question. I cover that in my book from nine years ago that the anti Mary exposed Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity. And I actually have about three chapters, I think, where I talk about this in terms of why Mary can be a model and why it is that the desires of our hearts are, are actually fulfilled in her, that she's kind of a model of them. The different things that women want so people can pick up that book. But I think that's the. We have another model that's we're actually all very, very close to, that we pay very little attention to as a mother. And that's of course, the, the church itself. This has been one of the things that's been really interesting to look at is ecclesiology and the role of, of the feminine in the church. I actually, in the end of my, this book, Something Wicked, I talked, I used some quotes from Duncan Strike about talking about architecture and the, the way, what it's meant to do. And I think if you look at our churches, what are they meant to do? They're meant to nourish us, feed us, comfort us, provide a place of home and, and solace. Well, that's what women do. This is what we're supposed to do in our homes as well. We have this capacity to do that with our personalities through the gifts that, that we've been given. And this is why it's, you know, Holy Mother Church. This is why St. Peter's Square is not actually a square. It's, you know, it's two big arms that are, embrace people when you, when you come into it. So I, I think that there's a lot of different ways that just are beautifully built into the Catholic Church and, and that we start looking at them for them with the eyes of understanding. What does it mean to be a bride? What does it mean to be, you know, holy mother Church? These dynamic ways, you see, these are sort of. I think we tend to think of the feminine as something of the social construct that we can just shift at will. But when you start looking at it through this deeper lens of church, the church, church history, the witness of the saints, and then of course, through the who the Blessed Mother was and her witness, then things become much, much more three dimensional. It doesn't feel so, you know, flatter or hopeless because you're not perfect. Your child's not perfect. You're, you know, your spouse is St. Joseph. I think that things get. Then you can start really forming a much more, you know, rich moral imagination about what womanhood is and, and the, the vital importance that it has from the very beginning that this is the ordering of God and not just, you know, some awful men who want to push women in a bad direction. [00:46:48] Speaker A: What was the name of that older book that you wrote? [00:46:51] Speaker B: It's called the Anti Mary Exposed. [00:46:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I remember that book. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was great. It came out and did really well and then it got canceled on by Meta and it. The sales doubled and it was all over Russia times and Eastern European media and anyway, it was really fascinating to watch. You know, the big question, why would the Biden administration or why would Meta cancel this? It was. Right. It was four days after Biden was inaugurated. So. Yeah, yeah. [00:47:20] Speaker A: That's amazing. I mean, that's great for sales. I mean. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. [00:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah, but I, I mean, it was great to see a kind of new life to that. But I. But, you know, that's been the great thing too, is just. I've been writing on this topic now for 10 years and to see the conversation shift the way that it has, such that I could even publish this book, much less get people to, to read it. I think it's been really heartening. I think a lot of people are really realizing that, that there's something deeply wrong with, with women and the civilization and, and we've got to do something about it. And, you know, trying to just keep pushing more feminism, maybe just a different kind of feminism. You know, that's been the kind of the endless, you know, effort, like we'll just shift the feminism without really realizing, like, no, maybe the feminism is, is. [00:48:05] Speaker A: Actually we just haven't tried feminism hard enough the right way or something like that. Yeah, it's something I like Communism. We just didn't do communism. Right. We didn't do feminism, right? No, you just need to scrap the whole thing is basically your point, so. [00:48:16] Speaker B: Exactly, Exactly. [00:48:18] Speaker A: So your book is something wicked from Sophia. And so I'll put a link to in show notes. How is there a place that people can find, like, your other books and kind of what you're up to? [00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah, probably theology of home.com is the easiest place. Or my website, carriegress.com too. [00:48:33] Speaker A: Okay. And I'll put links to that also in the show. [00:48:37] Speaker B: Instagram is probably the most active. [00:48:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:48:41] Speaker B: So. [00:48:41] Speaker A: Okay. That's one place I do not go on, is Instagram too much. But I know a lot of people do, so. Well, thank you very much for coming on the program. I really do appreciate it. [00:48:51] Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate all of your questions and interest. [00:48:55] Speaker A: Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you.