A response to the International Women’s Day article from last week
According to last week’s article featuring women and female representation at UD, the culture of our campus does not correspond with what the university wishes to support. However, if I have understood correctly, it seems that what the article claims to be “the mission at UD” differs from the actual university’s vision and mission statement.
Since the language of the article is ambiguous, the readers are left to assume the mission referred to is a “celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD),” “supporting women” and “all types of femininity,” accepting “diversity and non-traditional women” and having “strong female figures as role models of everything a woman can be.”
But UD’s official vision and mission statement, as found on the school’s website, say nothing about these things listed in the article. The website says, “[UD’s vision is] academic excellence embodied in a rigorous Catholic education dedicated to a lifelong pursuit of wisdom, truth and virtue.” As for mission, I think it’s important to address is the following:
“The University is dedicated to the recovery of the Christian intellectual tradition, and to the renewal of Catholic theology in fidelity to the Church and in constructive dialogue with the modern world […] It thus seeks to provide an academic and collegial community which will help students acquire a mature understanding of their faith, develop their spiritual lives, and prepare themselves for their calling as men and women of faith in the world.”
UD is committed to the Church’s teachings, which do not support secular ideas of feminism. The Church is very clear when stating there is one true understanding of femininity, which is inherently complimentary to masculinity. The truth can be negatively viewed as narrow because it does not allow for other definitions of femininity. God made man and woman in His image, not in whatever the world wants them to be.
Regarding our complimentary existence, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 369 states, “Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman.” The Church teaches that men and women are equal, but also that we have special dignities in our respective sexes.
Regarding being the “men and women of faith in the world,” as described in UD’s mission, CCC 2331 states, “Creating the human race in his own image […] God inscribes in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.” The Church also teaches us that each man and woman has a unique and beautiful vocation under God.
“Vocation” comes from the Latin verb “vocare,” meaning “to call.” God made us in His image, and in His image He calls us to return to him. This call is different for men and women, as we are given an individual dignity which we are called to fulfill.
And so, as CCC 370 states, “the respective ‘perfections’ of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband. ‘Each for the other’ — ‘A unity in two.’” Men are uniquely men, and women uniquely women, but both are made in God’s image. Thus, they complement each other.
This complementary nature is seen in our biology: women are made to bear, to feed, to care, to mother. Men are built to protect and provide, allowing the woman to take care of their children.
But the secular view, which pushes for female representation in the same areas as men, tells women that they will not be happy unless they put motherhood second to their career. But this is against the teachings of the Church. When you divorce the woman from her biological purpose, you reject that she is made a mother in God’s image. The “perfections” spoken of in the Catechism of women lie in our being made in the image of God.
IWD was initially interested in campaigning for the improvement of women’s working conditions and suffrage, but it has evolved into a series of ambiguous statements such as “Mobiliz[ing] action for equality through encouraging individuals… to take steps toward creating a more inclusive and equitable world for women” (from IWD’s website).
The celebration of secular holidays such as IWD does not aid in “the recovery of the Christian intellectual tradition,” nor does it engage in “constructive dialogue with the modern world.” It has nothing to do with the advancement of the university’s mission, nor does it affirm the true definition of femininity given to us by the Church.
Nowhere in UD’s mission statement or in the Catechism does it call for “a celebration of diversity.” These are the words of godless activists against the Truth revealed to us by God. Women are created by God to be mothers, in the spiritual and biological sense, and as UD Catholics, we ought to advocate for and embrace this beautiful truth.
“A List of Women Who Never Voted,” a poem published last week by Christi Bales, simply illustrates this idea of our Catholic culture. Bales portrays how the female Saints were granted blessedness from God despite not having the rights gained by women today in the political sphere.
In times when women did not participate in the workforce, there were humble, patient and persistent young women who sought to live solely in service of God. They answered the Lord’s call to be wives and mothers to Him and the Church proving that our happiness lies in following God’s will alone. It is a Godless culture that tells women their happiness depends only on the worldly standard of “gender-equality”.