Catholic. Feminist. Woman.

On our first day of class this semester, a simple question awaited us: Is it possible to be both Christian and feminist? Easy, right? Not so much.

We quickly discovered that this seemingly straightforward question did not have a straightforward answer. The deeper we dove into readings and conversation, the more I realized that this philosophical question had morphed into one of identity for me. Is it possible, I found myself asking, for me as a woman, to define myself as both a feminist and a Catholic?

And because “women’s theologizing must begin with experience” (Schussler-Fiorenza 39), it seems only fitting that my own experience of consciousness-raising around this question be at the center of my project. And so to start, today I will be examining the three dimensions of identity I sought to reconcile this semester: woman, feminist, and Catholic.

I am a woman.

I state this simple fact because my existence as a woman undoubtedly affects my experience of both feminism and Catholicism. I view feminism through a particular lens because I am a woman. And by the same token, my experience of Catholicism is necessarily different than that of a man. Perhaps this is obvious, but understanding that context matters will be important as I move through my experience.

I am a feminist.

I state this simple fact because my existence as a woman undoubtedly affects my experience of both feminism and Catholicism. I view feminism through a particular lens because I am a woman. And by the same token, my experience of Catholicism is necessarily different than that of a man. Perhaps this is obvious, but understanding that context matters will be important as I move through my experience.

I am Catholic.

Much to my own surprise, this part of my identity proved hardest to reconcile. What does it mean to be a Catholic woman anyway?

At the start of the semester, we read Colleen Carroll Campbell’s spiritual memoir My Sisters The Saints. A journalist and former EWTN anchor, Campbell recounts her struggle to define and identify herself as a young woman torn between, as she sees it, the competing forces of Christianity and contemporary feminism.

At first Campbell’s story really resonated with me. She speaks about the dissatisfaction she feels as a college senior with the materialistic and shallow lifestyle of her peers. “Living with them, and living like them,” she writes, “no longer made me happy” (Campbell 3). This I could relate to. I, too, have felt the tension between perceived societal norms and my identity as a woman of faith.

As the story progresses, Campbell graduates from Marquette, takes a job as a reporter for the Saint Louis Dispatch and begins to chase her professional dreams. Again, all things that resonated with my own experience.

But then… she meets a man. And although she says that one of her life rules is to “Never date a man whose career ambitions could torpedo your own” (Campbell 57), she does just that. One year into a dream job as a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, Campbell quits, moves home to Saint Louis, and marries her now husband John.

Granted, this is not at all a simple decision for Campbell. Prayer and discernment play an important role. She confesses her struggle to reconcile how marriage “might mean shoehorning myself into the role of the dutiful doctor’s wife and losing my own identity in the process” (Campbell 58). She wrestles with what she will tell her colleagues, admitting that “merely mouthing the words mortified me, making me feel like one of those pitiable, pre-makeover characters slouching through the opening scene of a Lifetime TV movie” (Campbell 77). She explains that her desire to be a mother is a central factor in the timing of her move. The choice she makes to leave the White House in favor of marriage and children is not a cavalier one, but it is a choice she makes nonetheless.

But what really got under my skin here was not the choice itself, but the way she seemed to suggest that this choice to become a wife and mother was somehow an inevitable consequence of her Catholic identity. She writes:

“Was my desire for marriage and motherhood merely an outgrowth of my Catholic faith? Or had my Catholic faith reawakened a desire intrinsic to my feminine nature, one the world had convinced me to suppress for too long?” (Campbell 84)

This implication that marriage and motherhood are what Catholic women desire, by nature of their Catholic-ness, just didn’t sit right with me. If, as a thirty-two year old woman I did not feel a deep-down longing to become a wife and mother, did this somehow mean I wasn’t Catholic enough? Did this mean I was doing something wrong? What did it mean to be a Catholic woman anyway?

The Catholic Woman or a Catholic woman?

This question of Catholic womanhood raised by Campbell continued to haunt me as the semester progressed. Was there really only one right way to be Catholic and a woman? Was there something wrong with me because I wanted more than just a life as wife and mother?

The answer to my questions came from an unexpected place.

About two-thirds of the way through our semester, we read several essays from Roxane Gay’s book Bad Feminist. In “Bad Feminist: Take One,” Gay laments our culture’s essentialist view of feminism. In other words, Gay argues that women today are told that “there is a right way to be a woman” (Gay 303) and that “there are right and wrong ways to be a feminist and […] consequences for doing feminism wrong” (Gay 304). This push for an essential feminism, where only one way is the “right” way, “doesn’t allow for the complexities of human experience and individuality” (Gay 305). This plays out especially, Gay asserts, in the unrealistic pressure we place on public women to “be everything to everybody” (Gay 313).

To prove her point, Gay discusses Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, a book viewed by many as a new feminist manifesto. While certainly helpful for some women, Sandberg’s book is one that has “little to offer those who don’t fall within her target demographic,” a demographic Gay defines as “heterosexual women who want a wildly successful and a rounded-out nuclear family” (Gay 311). Gay herself adamantly does not fall into this category. But allowing that Sandberg’s book is aimed at a specific audience, and is not meant to apply to all women, Gay writes, “makes enjoying the book a whole lot easier” (Gay 311).

This was the moment in Gay’s essay where things clicked into place for me. What if Campbell’s book wasn’t supposed to be everything to everybody? What if Campbell wasn’t suggesting that there is one “right” way to be a Catholic woman? What if instead of trying to be “The Catholic Woman,” I just tried to be “a Catholic woman”?

My obsession with Campbell’s imaging of The Catholic Woman had gotten in the way of my hearing anything else we read over the course of the semester. When I took a step back and acknowledged that Campbell was writing to a specific audience (that very likely was not me) I was able to enjoy, or at least appreciate, her book. I was freed to listen to the voices of the many feminist theologians we’d been reading all semester and to define myself as Catholic, feminist woman on my own terms.

Sources:

Carroll Campbell, Colleen. My Sisters The Saints (New York: Image, 2012).

Gay, Roxane. “Bad Feminist: Take One,” in Bad Feminist (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

Schussler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth. “Saints Alive Yesterday and Today,” in Discipleship of Equals: a critical feminist ekklesia-logy of liberation (New York: Crossroad, 1993).

Originally published at https://moreindeeds.com on December 17, 2019.