Why young Catholics are rejecting feminism, Pt. 3: The feminist echo chamber

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 11, 2025

This is the final part of a three-part essay. Part 1—Part 2

Having examined some of the major areas of disagreement between Catholic feminists and their opponents, I want to take a step back and look at Catholic feminism as a movement. I fear that Catholic feminism is something of an echo chamber, and that indeed, the very notion of “feminism” is so one-sided that its failure to create a healthy world for both sexes is inevitable.

Take for instance the University of St. Thomas’s new program offering a Master of Arts in “Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies”. The program offers four graduate certificates, in “Catholic Feminism”, “Women’s Health and Wellness”, “Gender and Family Policy”, and “Catholic Approaches to Sexuality and Gender”. No doubt this program will have some good to offer in teaching women’s health and preparing students to critique gender ideology, abortion, and contraception. But a few problems immediately stand out.

The description of the “Catholic Feminism” certificate advertises a course of study in mostly non-Catholic women’s rights advocates of the past, culminating in three contemporary Catholic feminist thinkers, two of whom are on the faculty. The only past Catholic figure cited is St. Edith Stein, who is claimed as “feminist” despite the fact that Stein explicitly disavowed the feminist movement of her own time (Essays on Woman 171), said that woman’s “subordination to man” is “God-willed” (190), and that man’s “preeminence” and “rank of priority” were divinely revealed by Adam being created first and God becoming a man (61, 65). What Catholic feminists today would speak like this? If this course happens to cite any Fathers and Doctors of the Church, will they, like Sts. John Paul II and Edith Stein, be fit to the Procrustean bed of feminist ideology, in effect turning history itself into an echo chamber?

The certificate in “Catholic Approaches to Sexuality and Gender”, meanwhile, aims to teach students to “communicate the Church’s understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman”. That sounds better, but for a conspicuous problem: the entire faculty of the UST program is female. I have no doubt that each of these professors has something of value to offer in her own field, but even if they collectively avoid all theological error, the fact remains that a bunch of ladies are purporting to teach “what it means to be a man”. Given that this would be off-putting even to normal men, I hardly see how this is going to win over the groypers and red-pillers!

If we step into the online world of Catholic feminism, things are little different. The pro-life movement is now run by feminist women who blame abortion on men while treating women who have abortions primarily as victims. While male Catholic influencers commonly debate one another and publicly criticize the failings of their fellow men, female Catholic influencers generally coddle women with “you go girl” rhetoric. The Catholic manosphere is no less zealous than Catholic feminists in urging fellow men to get off pornography, yet you will seldom hear female Catholic influencers publicly admonishing their peers to dress modestly—rather, the very mention of the subject is met with extreme defensiveness or the outright vilification of any man naïve enough to think his sisters in Christ might care about his immortal soul.

Again, this is unlikely to deradicalize young men. But that is the nature of a movement called feminism—it is not interested in speaking to men, except to tell them to be more feminist, just as the worst elements of the manosphere are preoccupied with how wives can serve their husbands. Those who understand that one cannot coherently philosophize about or advocate for woman without constantly keeping in mind her relation to man (1 Cor 11:9) will see immediately that the very framework of feminism (or “women’s studies”) is incomplete by design—any philosophy that passes the Bechdel Test must fail the reality test. It makes about as much sense as a mathematician specializing in odd numbers.

Timothy Gordon, with whom I have serious disagreements, recently remarked that older Catholics have no idea what young men today are going through. I think he is right, and I think Catholic feminism is myopic on this point too. Young men today are constantly demeaned and demonized while the world rushes to attend to the slightest complaint from women. When men try to be strong and assertive, they are told they are dangerous and need therapy; when they are vulnerable about their sufferings in today’s society, they are derided as weak by the same feminists who just a moment before encouraged men to be sensitive and cry more. Young men then turn to radical online voices because they will at least acknowledge the problems men are facing, however bad the solutions might be.

A divisive dialectic

Of course, the world’s constant discussion of women’s problems has not actually helped them; modern life is a horror-show for young women as much as for young men. But that in itself suggests that focusing on the problems of one sex has been counterproductive. Thus in 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger warned against “approaches to women’s issues” which “emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men.” This consequence follows regardless of intent: Whether or not Catholic feminists want an adversarial relationship, their “strong emphasis” on female victimhood “gives rise to antagonism”.

For example, in a recent story at the National Catholic Register, Erika Bachiochi is cited saying that Catholics should appropriate the feminist label as a way to show solidarity with young women in the face of a rise in online “red pill” anti-feminist ideology. She says, “We have to tell young women today, ‘I’m with you, not with them.’”

I know that by “them” Bachiochi means not men in general, but misogynists. But if instead of lifting up men and women together, the response is to drill further down into feminism (which is definitionally one-sided), it ends up amounting practically to “I’m with women, not with men.” And this is precisely how we got reactionary masculinism in the first place.

Feminism and masculinism are two sides of the same coin. One reduces the difference between the sexes in order to have equality, the other reduces equality in order to save the difference. I have been writing mainly about the former error, but to give some examples of the latter: some masculinists say woman is fundamentally inferior to man (which exceeds the truth that she is inferior in authority), or reduce women to the “role” of wife and mother while denigrating their other gifts (which exceeds the truth that wives and mothers must prioritize the home above other things).

Even in their “Catholic” forms, feminism and masculinism exacerbate division between the sexes. This can happen by open hostility, but also more subtly, with the drifting apart of concerns and mutual defensiveness that result from excessively prioritizing the advancement or the self-protection of one sex. As Ratzinger wrote, “The proper condition of the male-female relationship cannot be a kind of mistrustful and defensive opposition. Their relationship needs to be lived in peace and in the happiness of shared love.”

Feminists don’t want masculinism to exist, and masculinists don’t want feminism to exist. Yet no fair-minded person would support a movement that focuses exclusively on the problems of women in opposition to toxic masculinity, while forbidding a movement that focuses on uplifting men in opposition to toxic femininity. But an equality of self-centered activism is no solution either—if the men’s and women’s movements continue to exist separately, they will always be trapped in the same dialectic, reacting to one another’s errors while Satan laughs. What we need, then, is not a “Catholic Women’s Studies” program, but something integrated in its focus and faculty so that the sexes can build one another up, like Franciscan University’s new Institute for the Study of Man and Woman. Far more urgently, we need holy and selfless marriages.

The real solution is not self-protection but vulnerability, not only of men to women and women to men, but of both to the Gospel. And not ideology but faith—yes, docility to Scripture and the tradition of the Church requires vulnerability too. We must trust that the full truth, even when it includes aspects of inequality and dependence, never leads to a place of domination and cruelty. We must trust that self-abnegating love, even in a world that does not reward it, does not make a man a sucker.

Evaluating the legacy of “women’s liberation”

But I should not conclude without addressing the title of Bachiochi’s Wall Street Journal piece, “John Paul II, the Feminist Pope.” In this article I have been more concerned with ideas than with labels. However, I agree with the excellent 2008 article by Dawn Eden, who argued that people have made far too much of St. John Paul II’s positive use of the word “feminism” only once in his writings (in scare quotes), once in a speech, and once reportedly in a private meeting. I believe that when he called for a “new feminism”, he was not calling for us to adapt a Catholic version of that secular ideology, but to realize that the faith itself already provides ample basis for the advancement of women and “their own special dignity”, as he put it.

Bachiochi cites St. John Paul II’s 1995 speech in which he called “the great process of women’s liberation” “substantially a positive one”, though “not without its share of mistakes”. She adds, “The pope might not regard as positively the ‘process of women’s liberation’ as it has unfolded over the past 30 years. He might regard feminism in its current form as unredeemable.”

Despite my best efforts to mold my mind to the saint’s, I cannot see how it could have been true even in 1995 to say that women’s liberation had been a “substantially positive” journey. Saying some mistakes had been made along the way was an understatement. By that point there had already been three decades of legal abortion, which alone would seem to outweigh all advances for women, real or imagined—not to mention that women have reported themselves to be less happy every decade since the 1970s. Like Dawn Eden, I can only conclude that St. John Paul II, ever the gentleman, was taking his characteristic approach of appealing to the best in everyone, and so we should not read this phrase too literally.

St. John Paul II hoped that as women took a legitimate place in the world of work and public life, without emulating “models of male domination”, their authentically feminine genius, attentive to compassion and interpersonal values, would positively influence those fields. We might imagine a world in which those virtuous Catholic women who have a genuine professional calling bring their incredible gifts, both human and specifically feminine, to their work. I have the privilege of knowing such exceptional women, some single, some married, all willing to put their careers aside for the sake of their families, knowing that this would not be a denial of their gifts. Their contribution to the world does not make them feminists—they are simply being themselves, and it’s beautiful to see.

But in a world built on the unwarranted assumption that most women should have careers, we must confront a very different picture. Women “taking their place” as 55% of professionals has been enabled primarily by contraception, which is used by 65% of women aged 15-49. From a Catholic perspective, how can women bring their authentic femininity to these sectors if they are alienated from that femininity not only morally but on a literally chemical level by personality-altering contraceptives?

Yet even a woman with many children, if she compromises family life for the sake of career, is thereby abandoning the very femininity that we are told will benefit public life. Likewise, if a wife is motivated to work by a prideful fear of dependence on her husband, then by this refusal of vulnerability she has renounced her feminine genius, not brought it to the wider world.

But contrary to the Catholic masculinists, it is not a question of barring women from professions. It is simply a matter of course that there would be far fewer women professionals in a non-contraceptive society in which young men and women had the spiritual maturity to marry, and mothers placed their family duties first. Social structures should facilitate this.

A similar question arises about politics. In the society we actually live in, has politics improved women, and have women improved politics? (Was Hillary Clinton less apt to wage unjust wars than George Bush?)

In an interview with Lila Rose, Bachiochi admits that our public life has become unbalanced, dominated by a kind of toxic femininity and thus creating a reaction of radical anti-feminism. Interestingly, it is not married women who are the most aggressive drivers of this trend. Young liberal white women, the majority of whom are unmarried, consume professional mental health services more than any other demographic; unmarried women overwhelmingly vote for a leftist politics based on the therapeutic worldview—more than unmarried men, married men, or married women.

Could it be that the feminine traits of nurturing and emotional sensitivity to persons, so essential in the home, are apt to metastasize pathologically when unleashed in public life without the governing influence of a male authority in the home (or, at least, the patriarchal authority of the Church), and without finding a healthy outlet in the intimate personal relationships that exist in one’s own family?

Eighty years ago, Pope Pius XII delivered a message on women’s duties in social political life. Reading this text, it is clear enough that St. John Paul II and Ven. Pius XII shared the same principles. Yet in making an assessment of the “great process of women’s liberation” from the vantage point of 2025, we might find that the skepticism of 1945 resonates with our experience more than the optimism of 1995:

It is beyond dispute that for a long time past the political situation has been evolving in a manner unfavorable to the real welfare of the family and women. Many political movements are turning to woman to win her for their cause. Some totalitarian systems dangle marvelous promises before her eyes; equality of rights with men, care during pregnancy and childbirth, public kitchens and other communal services to free her from some of her household cares, public kindergartens and other institutions maintained and administered by government which relieve her of maternal obligations towards her own children, free schools and sick benefits.

It is not meant to deny the advantages that can accrue from one and the other of these social services if properly administered. Indeed, we have on a former occasion pointed out that for the same work output a woman is entitled to the same wages as a man. But there still remains the crucial point of the question to which We already referred. Has woman’s position been thereby improved?

Equality of rights with man brought with it her abandonment of the home where she reigned as queen, and her subjection to the same work strain and working hours. It entails depreciation of her true dignity and the solid foundation of all her rights which is her characteristic feminine role, and the intimate co-ordination of the two sexes. The end intended by God for the good of all human society, especially for the family, is lost sight of. In concessions made to woman one can easily see not respect for her dignity or her mission, but an attempt to foster the economic and military power of the totalitarian state to which all must inexorably be subordinated.

…To restore as far as possible the honor of the woman’s and mother’s place in the home: that is the watchword one hears now from many quarters like a cry of alarm, as if the world were awakening, terrified by the fruits of material and scientific progress of which it before was so proud.