Guest post: The Christian Challenge to Reactionary Feminism
In which Sr Carino Hodder says I don't go far enough
Not long ago I published an essay testing the limits of reactionary feminism, by
, from the perspective of non-elite women who don’t inhabit the high-tech, cyborg world to which most of my work addresses itself. Today I’m pleased to publish another piece testing those limits, this time from the perspective of Christian faith, by Catholic religious sister .Can we reconcile feminism and faith?
I found out about reactionary feminism in an unusual way. I am a Catholic religious sister (brief working definition for the uninitiated: like a nun, but not) who, among other things, helps run a parish youth group for teenage Catholics. A few months ago, I was asked to help plan a session in which the teenagers would be introduced to a few basic principles for discussing contentious ethical issues with their non-Catholic friends. As part of the session, one of my fellow sisters played YouTube clips of debates and podcast interviews with contemporary thinkers whose views on these issues are founded in the natural and social sciences, yet remarkably similar to Catholic teaching. They included clips of Mary Harrington, Louise Perry et al speaking on pornography, artificial contraception, and the good of marriage.
The aim was simply to show the teenagers that they shared a common ground of natural reasoning with non-Catholics. But it also had the unintended effect of reigniting my interest in feminism. Nowadays I am Very In Choir rather than Very Online, but I still know how to effectively carry out an Internet deep-dive when I need to - and so I discovered reactionary feminism. But not only reactionary feminism; I also discovered the fascinating, necessary, but at times frustrating dialogue between reactionary feminists and Christians.
I say frustrating because there are, I think, two challenges to our respective worldviews - the Christian on one hand, and the reactionary feminist on the other - that arise from this dialogue, and I rarely see them being confronted. (Forgive me for talking of Christians and reactionary feminists as two separate blocs; I appreciate that, in practice, there is an overlap.) I think there is a challenge to Christians from the idea of human nature, and a challenge to reactionary feminists from the idea of divine grace.
Firstly, the challenge from human nature. Christianity, and Catholic Christianity in particular, has always ascribed great importance to natural reason - the same natural reason that underpins the reactionary feminist understanding of human sexuality. But there are many Catholics who view Christian anthropology, and the teachings on sex and sexuality which flow from it, as embarrassingly anti-rational. This embarrassment tends to manifest itself in one of two ways: vocal opposition to these teachings, or a cringing reticence to talk about them at all.
In both cases, the idea that Christian sexual ethics could actually be fruitful common ground for dialogue with non-believers is unthinkable. Within this particular type of Catholicism there is simply no place for women who, using the gift of natural reason, have begun to question the ideological tenets of the sexual revolution. (Certainly, there is no place for me; I converted to the Christian faith in my late teens from an entirely faithless background, in part because Christianity offered a view of femininity and feminine sexuality that, over time, simply became more appealing to me than modern secular society’s.)
If Christians make the effort to understand the natural law foundations of our anthropology, this will open up new areas of common ground for dialogue, collaboration, and mutual understanding between Christian and non-Christian women - and will strengthen their own faith in the process. But if Christians simply allow ourselves to feel pleased that there’s a brand of feminism that has a bit more of a positive attitude towards Christians, and avoid asking some tough and open-minded questions about exactly why and how this has happened, we run the risk of becoming intellectually complacent. We might find ourselves entrenched in our (possibly quite wrongheaded) ideas about how the teachings of our Christian faith speak, or don’t speak, to common human experience.
Secondly, there is the challenge to reactionary feminists from the concept of divine grace. Natural reason, as I’ve said, is important for Christian ethics; but it is by no means the whole story. The natural law foundation to Christian ethics works its way up to a summit, and that summit is grace.
The concept of grace is of indispensable importance both for understanding and - more importantly - for living the Christian life. It is defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the ‘gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul.’ This process of grace entering into and abiding in the human person, healing our nature of the wounds of sin and raising it up to God, normatively takes place through the sacraments of the Church.
I make no apology for discussing grace in straightforwardly theological terms. Grace does not translate easily, if at all, into a secular analogy. It can’t be approached satisfactorily through other intellectual disciplines such as sociology or evolutionary psychology. But at the same time, it cannot be left out of any discussion of Christianity. The Church has always understood that it is impossible to live by its moral precepts purely using natural human abilities. Instead, it is possible only through grace.
When we talk, for instance, of the sociological benefits to women and children of monogamous marriage - despite the prevalence of polygynous marriage as a historical social norm - we can’t sidestep the fact that monogamous marriage is very often Christian marriage, which is not merely a socially useful bond, but a sacrament. In other words, Christian marriage - lifelong, monogamous, and open to the possibility of children - is a relationship that, by definition, requires additional help from God in the form of His grace in order to be actually lived.
To praise or affirm Christian beliefs is to play with fire. Christian beliefs might have sociological benefits, but the faith of the Church is not in itself merely a socially beneficial ethical toolbox. It can only be seen as one if the reality of God’s grace is minimised or even ignored - and that, of course, is to fundamentally misunderstand what Christianity is. But I am not going to let my fellow Christians off the hook here; we have a responsibility to our secular interlocutors to halt this misunderstanding in its tracks, and be entirely, brutally honest about the centrality of grace to Christian ethics, and the impossibility of seeing Christian sexual norms as merely socially useful.
Discovering reactionary feminism has prompted me to re-examine my own ideas about nature and grace: to ask myself if I am truly confident in understanding and articulating the natural law foundations to my Christian beliefs, and if I am assertive enough in insisting on the primacy of grace when I speak about them with others. I hope this post will be an opportunity to continue that dialogue.
If you enjoyed this, you can find more of Sr Carino’s writing at The Lamp.
“…we have a responsibility to our secular interlocutors to halt this misunderstanding in its tracks, and be entirely, brutally honest about the centrality of grace to Christian ethics, and the impossibility of seeing Christian sexual norms as merely socially useful.”
This was fantastic. The whole thing put to words some of the itch I’ve felt, as someone in that overlap you describe. Thank you.
Excellent post. Thank you.
Sr. Carino prefaces one observation with a crucial "if": "If Christians make the effort to understand the natural law foundations of our anthropology . . ." Aye, there's the rub: many Christians cease their intellectual development at a very early stage, which leads them to treat the faith as a childish thing, even if held sincerely. 2,000+ years of intellectual engagement by some of the greatest minds, and they are not part of it. So, when challenged, they tend to concede.
Elsewhere, she correctly observes: "The Church has always understood that it is impossible to live by its moral precepts purely using natural human abilities." Thus, I get the willies whenever I hear someone speak of "Christian principles".