Women and the Power to Change the World
A long time ago—when I was in law school—someone gently told me that he thought I had the gift of evangelism. I was horrified. I had a caricature in my head: The only evangelists I knew at that time were Protestants, and they looked a lot like the Bible preacher I encountered on the streets of New York. After my first year of law school, I interned for the summer at a law firm in New York City. Almost every day, I walked past a Bible preacher who stood on a corner near Penn Station, shouting, with a megaphone in one hand and a Bible in the other. It was the worst image you could present to a 20-something young woman. That was not what I aspired to be.
But things change. About that same time, Pope John Paul II ascended the papacy and in the ensuing years, we Catholics deeply embraced the truth that we are all evangelists. By virtue of our baptism, we are called to be “evangelical Catholics,” as my colleague George Weigel describes it.
Nearly thirty years ago, Pope John Paul II wrote the Apostolic Exhortation, “Christifideles Laici” (“On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and the World”). He wrote as one who profoundly understood the human person and the culture of his time. He wrote with a clear understanding of the “isms” of the day: communism, materialism, secularism, hedonism, and moral relativism. These “isms” continue to afflict our modern culture. They are the same challenges, by and large, that we face today.
In his Exhortation, the Pope reflected on the role of women in evangelization, saying that women in particular have two great tasks when it comes to evangelization. The first is to bring “full dignity” to the “conjugal life and to motherhood.” The second and related task is that women are called to “assure the moral dimension of culture … a culture worthy of the person.”
How Women Are Shaping the Culture
It is a charge I take very much to heart. And it is worth asking, nearly thirty years after Saint John Paul II wrote those words, how are we doing? How well are we women shaping the moral dimension of culture? It is a question we have to answer, because the culture that surrounds us shapes our evangelism. It cannot help but shape it. It shapes “who,” “when” and “how” we evangelize.
As I was thinking about this, I found myself asking if women are to shape the moral dimension of culture, then how is it that women—who will march for peace and campaign against violence, who are all about relationships—how is it that women now champion, as an expression of their personal autonomy, the right to violently end through abortion the most intimate relationship there is—that of a mother and her unborn child? How is it that women, empowered for decades by the mantra of “equality now,” can rant against male privilege and domination and abuse—and yet it is women who drove the novel, “Fifty Shades of Grey” to the top of the bestseller list? It is women who flocked to the theaters by the millions to see a tale romanticizing a woman’s abuse and degradation.
If women are to shape the moral dimension of culture, how is it that women—whose hearts naturally turn to the spiritual—turn now instead to New Age crystals or to some sort of vague spirituality of self, instead of turning to God? Women are raising children who do not know the vocabulary of belief, much less The Person who incredibly and unconditionally loves them. How is it that young women of today—who deep down truly desire to find a lifelong love—will exult in the “right” to be sexual objects, to claim, as in a recent “New York Magazine” article, that it is empowering to pursue meaningless sex, to be used and discarded after a night of hookups? How is it that women, who used to declare “I am woman,” have become so confused about who they are that they cheer when a very confused man named Bruce—wearing a new name, makeup and manufactured female parts—is named “Woman of the Year” by “Glamour” magazine?
And how is it that in Ireland—a Catholic country where the faith of Irish mothers is legendary—same-sex marriage was legalized on the power of the mother’s vote? Yes, the advocates of same-sex marriage celebrated that it was the Irish mothers who gave them the victory.
What is the takeaway here? The takeaway is that Saint John Paul II was right: Women do have the power to shape the moral dimension of culture. But it looks like the wrong women have been doing the job. The powers behind all the “isms” out there today realize the power of women—they know that women shape the moral dimension of culture. And the NGOs, governments, foundations, and international organizations know this too. That is why their campaigns promoting “sexual rights,” abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender ideology target women and adolescent girls. Their slogan? “Empower women, change the world.” Put differently, “Empower women, change the culture.”
The Urgent Work of Catholic Women
So what do we do about that? Here is the good news: Catholic women have not been idle for the past thirty years. There is a vibrant generation of women, particularly young women, who are well schooled in their faith, with hearts truly on fire for the Lord. Some of them are already hard at work, some of them are waiting to see where the Lord is calling them, and many more need our support to make a difference. In my work with the Catholic Women’s Forum, I have been in contact with hundreds of women leaders—leaders of different apostolates and leaders of efforts that, while secular, support a moral culture. I am struck by the wide range of efforts that women have undertaken to evangelize the culture—and so often with little support, little fanfare.
Some incredible efforts include Kathleen Eaton Bravo’s Obria Medical Clinics, which provide a full-service alternative to Planned Parenthood; CanaVox, where mothers learn how to reach their peers to support and defend marriage; and ENDOW, a program founded by Terry Polakovic that educates women in parishes about the nature and dignity of women. We see at the same time the brilliant work being done by female theologians—women like Margaret McCarthy of the John Paul II Institute and Sister Sara Butler, one of the first women on the International Theological Commission. They are contributing greatly to the Church’s theological and pastoral thinking. Then we have the leadership of journalists like Kathryn Lopez and legal scholars like Helen Alvaré —they are powerful voices in the culture, speaking up for the dignity of women and the importance of family and religious freedom.
But it is not enough. We need to do more. We need to amplify within the culture the voices of Catholic women who do support the teachings of the Church; women who see the Church’s teachings as the path to women’s happiness, equality, and authentic freedom; who know that women flourish when they live according to the truths of our faith. These are the women whose voices need to shape our culture. These are the women we need to raise up.
Thirty years ago, Saint John Paul II wrote in “Christifideles Laici” that there is a particular urgency for the laity to act. He wrote, “If lack of commitment is always unacceptable, the present time renders it even more so. It is not permissible for anyone to remain idle.” His words, true then, are even more so in our own day. It is not permissible for anyone to remain idle. Similarly, Bishop Robert Barron recently wrote, “If intellectually serious believers absent themselves from the wider conversation and retreat to their libraries and classrooms, the public space will belong to the atheists and secularists.”
That is the challenge we face: to reclaim that public space, to ensure that within our culture faith and virtue have room to grow. So it is time for men and women within our Church to bring the efforts and the witness of women to the foreground.
Catholic Women’s Secret Weapon
We Catholic women have a secret weapon: we do not have to be like feminists pretending we are doing it all by ourselves. We embrace complementarity. We value—and count on—the collaboration of men and women. And that is a secret weapon, because we need the voices and the talents of both men and women in order to make a difference in the culture. Women must be brought to the foreground— but not just for strategic reasons, that is, because women are half the population or because we need women speaking to women or because women can shape the most effective messaging for women.
Women must be front and center in evangelizing the culture because, as a Church, we must live that truth of complementarity. We believe that there is something of value created when men and women work together, and we know that the Church needs us—men and women—to witness to the love of God in a powerful way, together. The world needs that witness from us as much as, if not more than, it needs the actual work that we do.
Saint John Paul II wrote of women’s specific sensitivity toward the human person. That sensitivity, that focus on relationships, is one reason why women are particularly called to shape the culture. Relationships are so central to the “culture of encounter” that Pope Francis calls us to create. It is within the culture of encounter that evangelism will flourish.
“The feminine sex is ennobled by virtue of the Savior’s being born of a human mother; a woman was the gateway through which God found entrance to humankind.”
-Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
I will leave you with a quote from Pope Francis, who wrote in “Evangelii Gaudium,” “The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation, which urges us to ever greater love of Him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved? To point Him out, to make Him known?”
In other words, evangelism is nothing to be afraid of. Evangelism is simply introducing our friends to the One we love, to the One who loves us, the One whose love will never fail. If your heart is saying, “I don’t know if I can do that,” then ask God to help you love more, to experience His love more deeply. Because it is in that deeper love of God—when we see that treasure, when we know His love—that we will discover that we cannot help but want to share it. Introducing others to those we love, and particularly to our beloved, God, is something that we women know how to do. We do it all the time in our relationships—we cannot wait to introduce others to people we love.
I am going to take this moment to introduce my husband, Seamus Hasson. I want to honor him first for something he might not say himself—for being a man who said “yes” to God, even when he did not really know what God was asking. All he knew was that the Lord was saying, “Do this work. Create this religious liberty organization that litigates on behalf of all believers. Do this.” At the time when he was thinking about this, when the Becket Fund was merely an idea, we had no idea where the culture was going to go. None at all. None of us did. The lesson I tell our kids, and the thing that I would say to you and to honor Seamus, is this: Say yes to the Lord, even when you do not know—and maybe especially when you do not know—what comes next. When all you know is that you have heard that question, “Will you? Will you serve? Will you do what I ask? Will you go out?,” then say, “Yes.”
Mary Rice Hasson is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she is the founding director of the Catholic Women’s Forum. She is editor of the book, “Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity and the Church.” On October 29, 2015, Mary Rice Hasson and her husband, Seamus, were together honored with the Saint John Paul II New Evangelization Award, presented by the Catholic Information Center. This essay is adapted from her remarks upon receiving the award. Originally appeared in “The Public Discourse” (www.ThePublicDiscourse.com). Reprinted with permission.
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Books were a luxury in 13th-century Italy. Hence, when someone went to the trouble of writing a book by hand, they treasured it beyond measure. Father Anthony had a book of Psalms he had copied by hand, with personal notes he referred to while teaching. Once, a young novice left the community and took the treasured book with him. The priest was crestfallen, realizing his years of work were lost. No one knew where the novice had gone, so there wasn't even a remote possibility of recovering the book. But Father Anthony did not lose heart; trusting in God's providence, he prayed for the novice to have a change of heart and return the book. Anthony's prayer was soon answered, for the novice returned with a contrite heart. Asking for forgiveness, he gave the book back to the saintly priest who forgave him and accepted him back to the seminary. After Father Anthony's death, together with the many stories of his holiness, this story became quite popular. Thus, Saint Anthony of Padua came to be constantly invoked for finding lost things. Over the years, his reputation became so widespread that the Church officially declared him the patron Saint of lost items. Saint Anthony had deep faith in God, enough to surrender his worries and trust His will. The next time we invoke the Saint to find our lost things, let us pray that he asks the Lord to grant us the kind of faith that led and strengthened him in Christ.
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Through this void, someone reached out to me, an unexpected ‘someone!’ Yelling at God The Rosary used to be a daily prayer through high school and early college, but once I got married and the kids started coming, I put the rosary up on a shelf and thought: “That's a prayer for people who have a lot of time and I certainly have none; so maybe later, when I get a little older, I'll take it back down off the shelf.” But in the deep darkness, I began feeling a call back to praying the Rosary. It felt totally ridiculous because I was still very very angry at the Lord, and I had no desire to pray. With four little kids, I didn't have the time. So, I kept pushing it off and out of my mind, but the Lord began to get more and more persistent. 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I marched into the church, straight up to the altar, and flopped down all my excuses—I couldn't find the time to pray the Rosary, most times I couldn’t even find any of my rosaries, and if I do manage to find time AND find the rosaries, my kids would keep interrupting me, I had trouble picking up where I left off…not to mention, my kids would have probably already broken all the rosaries that I have! I didn't even wait for a response from the Lord, I just spun on my heel and marched out of the church, feeling: “See, I told you, it's ridiculous to pray the Rosary.” Nothing Better Than This Within a week of that, I was inspired to design a rosary bracelet which literally solved every single one of those excuses that I had given. It's always right on hand so I never forget to pray, it's super-sturdy so my kids can't break it, but the really life-changing, revolutionary part was the movable crucifix charm that works like a little bookmark which enabled me to pick up from where I left off. I’d pray in the quiet moments that were hidden through my day. In between taking care of the kids, doing chores, and running errands, I could always find a minute here or 10 minutes there to get a couple Hail Marys or sometimes even a whole decade in. Little by little, throughout the day, I began to get an entire Rosary in. I was still very angry and broken and did not have a lot of hope that the Rosary would fix it all, but I was just so tired that I knew this couldn't hurt. I was desperate—there was nothing better to do, so I felt I might as well try this. Healing didn’t just happen. It wasn't a tele-evangelist healing moment where the skies just parted and glory came down. It was this very slow journey, the same way we pray the Rosary, bead by bead, step by step, prayer by prayer. Little by little, Our Lady began to really be a mother to me. What I began to see in that darkness was not the Mary that I grew up seeing—the Nazareth Mary or Christmas-card, 20-something-Mary with flawless skin. Instead, I found Mary at Calvary, a tear-streaked, blood-stained, road-weary mother who knew what it was like to suffer and lose someone that she dearly loved. This woman, I could relate to! This mother, I so badly needed in this season of my life. Afterall, she wasn’t the one I was angry at. But she, as my mother, ever so gentle, came into this raw and broken place I was in and walked me slowly out into the arms of my Heavenly Father. But that was just one part; there was another part of my life that was still in chaos. A Conversation Ensues The third miscarriage had been physically and emotionally too difficult; since it was the second trimester, we had to go to the hospital, go through labor, and deliver our son. From there, my husband and I took different paths of grief. I shut down and withdrew, and he poured himself into work, drinking, and overindulging in a lot of ways. Our relationship became fractured. When I began praying the Rosary and started on my road of healing, I tried to encourage him as well, but he pushed it off. I slowly opened the shop back up, put the rosary bracelet that the Lord inspired into the shop and that began to really take off. I kept asking him to join me; I gave him a rosary bracelet that he began to wear, but he wasn’t praying with it. That was when I began very intentionally to pray my Rosary every day, for him. I would intentionally use those quiet moments to pray and let my family see that I was praying amid and between my chores. My husband began to see not only this but also the change in me. Slowly, he gave in and our whole family began to experience this reconversion through Our Lady. But you see, that was not the happy ending. An Embrace Follows In came another miscarriage! The same hospital room, the same nurse…I’d ask Him: “Lord what are you doing? Why are you adding salt to the wound by replaying the most horrible day of my life?” This was deeper and worse than before because I was also living through the trauma of some of those other losses. But in spite of this, I began to slowly see through that incredibly awful day in so many ways. As I was laboring and delivering, I was totally overwhelmed with grief and helplessly sobbing. But this time, instead of feeling completely alone, I felt the physical presence of Our Lady holding me like a mother would as I was crying. In the most painful part of labor, I felt Our Lady physically hand me over to God the Father and put me in His arms like His child. I felt, in that moment, God the Father sobbing along with me. I felt His chest heaving along with mine. I am not exactly ‘there’ yet. In some ways, I'm still on this healing journey, with this wound and all the anger that I carried…Our Lady came in as my mother to help heal my relationship with Our Father. For her to show His heart to me was just this incredibly healing and restorative process. A day which would have been one of the worst days of my life, because of her goodness and gentleness, became a healing day for us in a way that I never could have imagined.
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