Feminism As Antichurch [Pt. 1B]
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Part 1B
Dr. Gyula Mago
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Feminism is the true expression of modern godlessness. –Gertrud von Le Fort |
Part 1B Definition of Feminism
The enemies of Christianity deemed it desirable that at least one member of the family should eagerly embrace the "insane and impious" attempts to destroy this divine institution, instead of just reluctantly going along with its destruction. To anyone remembering what happened in the Garden of Eden, the obvious approach suggests itself: "Women have a very strong influence over man, so we can reform the world if we reform women."1 Or to be more explicit: "we can corrupt the world if we corrupt women."
The term "feminism" was apparently first introduced by Charles Fourier (1772-1837), an early French socialist, but began to be widely used only in the 20th century. (There have been many other terms on the way, such as "emancipation of women" and "women's liberation.") G. K. Chesterton in his Fancies Versus Fads explained the meaning of the term in 1923: "feminists (so called from their detestation of everything feminine)." Being an essential part of the attempt to destroy the family, feminism is a rebellion against the order established by God, both against the order of nature and the order of grace. Its all-encompassing nature is indicated by the question Elizabeth Oakes Smith asked in 1852, in a political speech at the Woman's Rights Convention:
My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?2
Feminism thoroughly rejects everything about the divinely established order (we shall discuss details below), but most importantly it rejects the family and motherhood. Feminists are militant in expressing this rejection. For example, according to feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon: "Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment."3And the right to abortion was always a central claim of feminism: acquiring the right of life and death over her child is the surest way to rejecting motherhood. To use the ugly modern newspaper language: the feminist is anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-children, anti-men, and anti-Christian. Homosexual men are perfectly acceptable to her, because they also repudiated the institution of marriage and the begetting of children.
Feminism knows exactly what it is against, but is much less certain about what it positively stands for. Thus it is useless to ask for a definition of feminism: there are hundreds of "definitions," and feminists themselves cannot agree on what they stand for. The only thing they are certain of is what they are against.
Convinced that God is no longer to be reckoned with, feminists consider the Christian family as the main evil. All feminists reject the idea that men and women were meant to complement each other, and reject the idea that men and women were not intended by nature to be rivals. Every feminist becomes livid when hearing "stereotyped roles" praised, e.g., that the most perfect man is the most manly, and the most perfect woman will be she who is most womanly. Or G. K. Chesterton's saying: "the important thing for a country is that the men should be manly, and women womanly."4
The Catholic Church has always expressed sympathy with the plight of modern women who are so unfortunate as to have to work for wages, and supported their fight for just wages.5 Pope Pius XII was most solicitous in addressing the problems of modern Catholic women.6 But the Church can never compromise with the basic tenets of feminism: rejection of the family and rejection of motherhood.
Feminism is an ideology, and its prototype, the example or pattern it follows is Marxism. Kenneth Minogue gives an excellent characterization of all ideologies in his book Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology:
The central idea of ideologies is so abstract that it is less a doctrine than a machine for generating doctrines, and its simplest formulation is that all evils are caused by an oppressive system. One of its more important corollaries is that truth is a weapon.7
Ideology is a form of theoretical conscription: everyone...is assigned to one side or another. In this battle, there are no civilians....Ideology rejects any claim of neutrality as an imposture.8
All ideologies are vehicles for attaining power.9
The ideologist distinguishes himself from the generality mankind in his role as a critic of society. Others are intermittently critical of vice, abuse and injustice, but the ideologist engages in a continuous process of criticism of the very rules and conventions [of society]...the ideological critic discovers oppression where the generality of mankind finds only an accepted condition of things.10
...[A] barrier to social transformation is belief in other-worldly religions. Christianity is a religion of this kind. Hence the very first move in any ideological train of thought must be the criticism of religion in any of its other-worldly forms. Ideology thus rejects the transcendental aspects of Christianity...The essential point is summed up in Marx's reversal: The fundamental position is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.11
Ideology...bent on...the utter destruction of everything that constitutes the modern world.12
Ideology is a dagger pointing to the heart of modern Western civilization.13
...Ideologies know only one form of critical encounter between beliefs: total war on all fronts.14
Two main trends of feminism can be identified: (1) equality feminism, the older version, clearly Marxist-inspired, which is vigorously promoted and which already had an important and disastrous effect in all but Third World countries; (2) woman-centered (or gynocentric) feminism, which is a more recent version with more interest in religions, including a penetration of Christianity.
Equality Feminism
This version asserts that there is no inherent difference between men and women. All apparent differences are results of "cultural conditioning," they are "socially constructed" and subject to change. By denying human nature and denying the complementarity between man and woman, this kind of feminism is in fact masculinism.15 It is based on the mistaken conviction that the only really valuable achievements are the ones our society designates as masculine. G. K. Chesterton in 1910 dedicated a third of his book What's Wrong with the World16 to this subject, the relevant part being entitled "Feminism: Or the Mistake About Woman." The complete abolishing of the idea of the feminine, implied by equality feminism, leads to an androgynous (and therefore manipulable) world, where men and women would become virtually indistinguishable. This trend is dominant in secular feminism, and corresponding ideas are being implemented by "social engineers." Cardinal Ratzinger elaborates on the consequent fictitious "right to determine one's own sexual identity":
It is not by chance that among the battles of "liberation" of our time there has also been that of escaping from the "slavery of nature," demanding the right to be male or female at one's will or pleasure, for example, through surgery, and demanding that the State record this autonomous will of the individual in its registry offices. Incidentally, one must realize that this so-called sex change alters nothing in the genetic constitution of the person involved. It is only an external artifact which resolves no problems but only constructs fictitious realities. Nor is it by chance that the laws immediately adapted themselves to such a demand....But one cannot struggle against nature without undergoing the most devastating consequences.17
Marxism has been a most important, and clearly acknowledged, inspiration for this version of feminism. August Bebel (1840-1913), a German Socialist, wrote a book entitled The Woman and Socialism, which earned him the title "the Emancipator of the female sex from family bondage." For Marxists, private property is the source of all oppression, and the family results from that; for feminism, the family structure is fundamental to all other forms of oppression and domination. Mimicking Marxism, feminism is based on the macabre hallucination that the oppressed are ALL women, and the oppressors are ALL men. It uses the basic liberatory image of the prison and, identifying happiness with being in the labor force, argues that only male oppression over the centuries had confined women to the domestic sphere. But feminists prefer not to draw attention to their close affinity with Marxism:
We recognize that, to achieve real socialism, change in the economic spheres would not be enough, but that new social, political, cultural and religious values and institutions would be necessary....We recognize that the use of words like "Marxism" and "Socialism" present a problem in certain countries.. We recommend that a work group set up acceptable forms of communication with these countries....18
The words of Pope Pius XI condemning communism apply equally well to feminism:
Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and to the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man.19
In 2002, this "dream" is close to being accomplished in Sweden, in communist and former communist countries, and the industrialized West is not far behind. Kenneth Minogue comments on the consequences of the doctrine that women could and should do everything that men do:
It has succeeded mainly through government officials enforcing legislation mandating "equal opportunities." The dogma is that 50 percent of all desirable jobs belongs to women, though the reality of quotas is always denied. Today, throughout Western nations an occupying army of equal opportunity officers are entrenched in personnel departments up and down the country.20
By now, the change of women's role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined professionals, can be seen as a complete social disaster. The movement of women away from the family and into most areas of the male side of life such as industry, commerce and politics is the descent by increasingly disconnected individuals into social chaos, while an evermore bureaucratic and despotic central government is gaining control of the lives of these individuals. An Orwellian doublespeak permeated public discourse: "free choice in reproduction" being a code for abortion on demand, and "lifestyle" a codeword for homosexuality, lesbianism and other forms of non-marital sexuality. The state increasingly interferes with the family (child protection in response to vaguely denned "child abuse" being just one excuse for it). The government regulations being implemented eventually plan to deny women even the option of devoting themselves to work in the home or the care of their children. Feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, in an interview with Betty Friedan, admitted that the aim is a totalitarian system:
No, we do not believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.21
Minogue, a secular, conservative thinker, states the obvious: if this "dream" is fully accomplished, it will mean "nothing less than the destruction of our civilization."
Feminism and the war against the family carry their own punishment. As feminism makes inroads into society, a corresponding, inexorable decline in the birth-rate results. Since women in Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States stopped having large families, the consequent demographic collapse is now so far advanced, that it is quite clear that these regions will gradually and inevitably be populated by people with higher birth rate: Muslims, Indians, Chinese, Africans, Mexicans and South Americans.
Woman-centered Feminism
This more recent version has grown out of the original equality feminism, and has many names, including woman-centered feminism, gynocentric feminism, radical feminism or goddess feminism. This version goes to the other extreme: instead of de-emphasizing the differences between man and woman, it deliberately magnifies them, and attempts to reshape and redefine the female nature. It praises the "strong" woman, the "wild" woman, the licentious woman, generally the unfeminine woman. This version also rejects the idea of the complementarity of men and women with equal vehemence.
This kind of feminism is not interested in equality any more: it militantly declares that women are far superior to men. The ideal is the completely autonomous female. Male is a mere divergence from the basic, female sex. According to the title of a German feminist book "male is a blunder of nature"; according to other feminist sages man is "an obsolete life form" or "a deficiency disease." The manifesto of the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) explains the means by which annihilation of men is to be effected. Feminist concerns about their own survival may have motivated a slight relaxation of these highly principled plans: one might allow a few men to remain alive so that they could be put on display in zoological gardens.22
The enthusiasm of neither side is cooled by the fact that these two positions are irreconcilable. They call this split in feminism a mere "quarrel among sisters." But the following commonality is most revealing: "From the beginning, lesbians played a central role in the women's movement: they were usually its sustaining and driving forces...feminism is the theory, and lesbianism is the practice."23
Although not every feminist is a lesbian, the connection between feminism and homosexuality is inherent, as the next section will show.
Denying Human Nature
According to Aristotle: "Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and also when unequals are treated equally."24 This explains why feminists are straining to deny what is obviously true, i.e., that men and women were meant to complement each other. They do this by denying the feminine nature (either by saying that there is no difference between men and women, or by vastly exaggerating the differences). Feminism attacks the very conception of the feminine as something that had been imposed upon women by the superior force of a hostile patriarchal system and had been reinforced by a culture of romance found in European art and literature.
If women refuse to regard "human nature" as something created by God and therefore given and unchangeable, they are threatened by dehumanization, and that is exactly what studying the nauseating details of the feminist movement reveals. Josef Pieper explains the dangers involved in this:
It becomes impossible for us to conceive man as liberated from his nature and past, as Roger Garaudy puts it. Indeed we cannot regard such a "liberation" as either meaningful or desirable. This notion of liberation would imply a view or an ideal of man as a being who was not designed and summoned into existence by God, but who, on the contrary, designs and invents and creates himself.25
Indeed, "self-definition" is a favorite expression of feminists: "The limitations placed on your sexuality are central to the limitations that patriarchy wants to place on your own self-definition."26 ("Limitations placed on sexuality" means things like obstacles to abortion or lesbianism.)
These ideas can be traced back to Simone de Beauvoir, and through her to Sartre. If God exists, then man has been created by Him and is responsible to Him. Thus Sartre preferred to be an atheist: "There is no human nature because there is no God to conceive it."27 Simone de Beauvoir applies her companion's ideas to women: "One does not arrive in the world as a woman, but one becomes a woman."28
It is ironic that not only this error, but all other important errors of feminism can be traced back to "dead white males"–such as Marx, Engels, Jung, Sartre and Tillich–a species feminists are so fond of despising.
So complementarity of men and women is the decisive issue which inevitably causes the parting of ways between supporters and opponents of feminism. Hauke states the Catholic position:
...marriage is always inherently linked to the complementarity of one partner with the other. Men and women are dependent on each other, not simply interchangeable. A warning sign of broken human existence is the...encouragement of lesbianism. The inability to view man and woman as a mutually complementary couple results in existences without futures, condemned to extinction on biological grounds alone. Whoever tampers with the institution of the family effectively deprives mankind of its future. Maleness and femaleness were conceived by the Creator, not as suspect components of a class-war structure, but as sources of an inexhaustible richness of mutual complementarity. Men have need of women, and vice versa.29
The feminist position is also stated:
"The abolition of forced heterosexuality is one of the most urgent tasks facing feminist theology." This advocacy, or at least tolerance, of practical lesbianism is no mere coincidence resulting from some external situation but derives instead from the very core of feminist anthropology. Doris Strahm gets right to the point: "Women and men should, once and for all, stop complementing each other."30
Already St. Paul explained where willfully rejecting God's truth leads:
The anger of God is being revealed from heaven against all the impiety and depravity of men who keep truth imprisoned in their wickedness. For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain....That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet refused to honor him as God or to thank him; instead they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened.
That is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have turned from natural intercourse to unnatural practices and why their menfolk have given up natural intercourse to be consumed with passion for each other....
In other words, since they refused to see it was rational to acknowledge God, God has left them to their irrational ideas and to their monstrous behavior....They know what God's verdict is: that those who behave like this deserve to die–and yet they do it; and what is worse, encourage others to do the same (Rom. 1:18-32).
Feminist Rhetoric Is Dishonest Speech
Feminism makes use of the theory of Jean Paul Sartre that the essential purpose of speech is persuasion or seduction by a sophistical misinterpretation of language. One commentator has described Sartre's theory as follows: "Language consists in expressive stimuli through which I seduce the other person to adopt my point of view and attempt to dominate him."31 Put simply, at the heart of feminism is dishonest speech.
Sophistry is a famous example of dishonest speech from antiquity. "The sophist is a fabricator of fictitious reality."32 Both versions of feminism are certainly fabricators of a fictitious reality, especially about the nature of the female human being.
According to Maritain: "Sophistry is not a system of ideas, but a vicious attitude of mind...the aim and rule of their knowledge was no longer that which is, that is to say, the object of knowledge, but the interest of the knowing subject."33 This description also applies to feminism: when a feminist speaks, her "truth" is whatever serves her interest (as is the case with Marxists).
One difficulty with feminism is its incoherent position on "experience" implying that men are incapable of having anything to say about female concerns,34 as if only drug addicts were qualified to speak about drug addiction, and only prostitutes are qualified to speak about prostitution. Yet nobody questions the judgment of the famous art critic who never produced one single work of art; nobody questions the eminent physician who can cure diseases from which he himself never suffered; nobody questions judges who pass sound judgment upon crimes which they themselves have never committed.
Another difficulty is the feminist use of private language, taking words with well-established meanings and redefining them in arbitrary ways. Many feminists redefine the concept of virginity: it has nothing to do with abstinence from sex, rather it means female autonomy, female independence, "not being defined solely through her relationship to man."35 The feminist likes to describe any opposition she encounters as "rape," hoping to arouse sympathy for her cause: "To submit to the guidance of traditional religion is to become subjected to a kind of spiritual rape...."36 And since this cannot be applied to women, the feminist likes to call women who effectively oppose her as "female impersonators."
Irish Catholic writer Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1861-1931) succinctly characterized feminists: "Women generally make up in heat what they lack in debating power."37
Yet another difficulty of countering the inflammatory rhetoric of feminism resides in not detecting that it is based on fallacious reasoning. Feminists argue for doing away with the divinely ordained order based on the Ten Commandments, but their arguments describe how undesirable a society is that has already rejected the Ten Commandments. This is an invalid reasoning, usually called the fallacy of the false cause.38
Feminists describe the divinely ordained order as "patriarchy" or "male supremacy." Then they say (among many other things) that "patriarchy is rape," "patriarchy is wife-beating," "marriage is a male ploy to enslave and exploit women."39 Here they obviously describe men and women who already stopped obeying the Ten Commandments, and use this to plead for doing away with the institution of the family. Simply put, from "some families fail," they want to conclude that "all families fail." From the failure of some families because of sinful human behavior they want to conclude that the family is deficient as an institution. This is a deliberate misuse of logic in order to deceive.
Kenneth Minogue supplies another example:
Kate Millet, for whom the oppressive system is called "patriarchy," takes the view that those who do not know that they are oppressed have been deeply conditioned by society. "It is interesting," she remarks, "that many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against; no better proof can be found of the totality of their conditioning." A better proof than this, of course, ought certainly to be found, since the conclusion of the argument is taken for granted in the premises, and we thus have a petitio principii40 [i.e., begging the question].41
And finally, we do well to remember the advice of a French feminist, Monique Wittig: "Remember. Make an effort to remember. Or failing that, invent."42 Feminists take this very seriously and use it often: one should not be surprised to find the most baseless fabrications used in feminist "scholarship."
Feminism Is a Religious Problem
So far we have discussed what is usually called secular feminism, because the world believes that the issues raised by it have nothing to do with religion. The Catholic should know better.
Utopian schemes always assume (mistakenly) that some new arrangement in society can be devised which will protect everybody from the consequences of human sinfulness. But all such attempts have been miserable failures so far, and necessarily so. The institution of the family is of divine origin, and thus it is the best possible for fallen humanity. All failures of the family come from the sinfulness of men and women, none is caused by a defect in the divine plan. The human race cannot be perfected, only the human person can be perfected and only by the grace of God coming through the Catholic Church.
Pope Leo XIII clearly explained a long time ago why our civilization is disintegrating:
To exclude the Church founded by God Himself from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A state from which religion is banished can never be well regulated.43
Feminism is both a cause and a symptom of the disintegration of our civilization. The great Benedictine abbot, Dom Anscar Vonier (1875-1938), in his book The Divine Motherhood, wrote these prophetic words:
True civilisation is easily tested by its attitude towards motherhood. There can be no real refinement of human feeling where man's heart is not full of delicacies for the dignity of motherhood; therefore there can be no true civilisation where motherhood is either shunned or degraded.
Feminism, by rejecting and degrading motherhood, is truly a destroyer of Western civilization.
The proper understanding of the nature and mission of women seems to elude those who repudiate Christianity. Only Christianity, more exactly an uncontaminated Christianity, is able to counter all the errors discussed so far. Peter Wust (1875-1940), a German Catholic philosopher, writing about Woman's Metaphysical Mission appears to have understood this:
The "feminist movement" that has been going for the past forty or fifty years appears to me to be simply part of the general upheaval of Western culture...but there is something in it that is extremely disturbing and painful–there is something about contemporary woman that suggests a revolutionary tendency which attacks the very essence of being....There is an element of emancipation, of "letting loose," in the feminist movement that is disquieting, and from a metaphysical point of view, definitely dangerous....This element may be discerned beneath her every gesture of demand, a gesture which by itself sweeps aside real femininity and manifests that specific deformity of soul which we call "mannishness," corresponding to the male deformity of "effeminacy."
Let there be no mistake. Woman's great privilege consists in her right to be able to serve, and this quintessential service, is in its deepest sense called motherhood. I know quite well what objections will be hurled at me by partisan theorists when I hold up service and motherhood as the essential womanly ideal. Anybody who dreams of such a thing in these days is at once reviled as an ignorant country-cousin or an antiquated romantic, at least hundred years behind the times.
...Man must continue to hold first an authoritative place in the family as in public life. He represents the eternal paternitas Dei on this earth. Man's mind is continually plunging him into the "endless unknown," and by virtue of her own quality woman's historical mission is to draw him out, to bring him home to the holy altar of life, to save him from the centrifugal movement of will and intellect. In fact, there is a centripetal movement as well, that tendency to move in a circle whose center is inwardness, homeliness, continuance, security, which determines the greatest qualities of woman's soul, above all, her metaphysical and universal motherhood.
So woman is mankind's guide. She can lead us to fulfillment of our noblest possibilities, and she can also lead us hopelessly astray–if she alters an hierarchical order which in history has never been tampered with without dire results. The beginning and the turning-point of history are both marked by a presentation of alternatives between which a woman had to make her choice. In the beginning woman, given to man as a helpmate, sided with the powers of evil and contributed to lead him astray. Later on woman reappeared, this time in her most heavenly form–Fra Angelico of all painters has represented this perfect creature the most delightfully. The angel brought his message to Mary from on high, and in that little room the course of human history was stayed for a second time: God himself was listening (I speak after the manner of men), listening for the "Yes" of his handmaiden that would enable him to change the destiny of mankind; all life, from the heights of Heaven to the most remote corner of earth was listening for that saving answer. The answer came, and in it is contained the essence of womanhood: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word."44
Gertrud von Le Fort (1876-1971), another German writer, in her book entitled The Eternal Woman, eloquently states the timeless Catholic position on womanhood:
Surrender to God is the only absolute power that the creature possesses.45
Wheresoever woman is most profoundly herself, she is not as herself but as surrendered; and wherever she is surrendered, there she is also bride and mother. The nun dedicated to adoration, to works of mercy, to the mission field, carries the title of mother; she bears it as virgin mother.46
Whenever woman...no longer desires surrender, but seeks self-glorification, a catastrophe is bound to ensue. The most profound surrender has as its opposite the possibility of utter refusal, and this is the negative side of the metaphysical mystery of woman...woman's refusal denotes something demoniacal and is felt as such.47
If one wishes to find the source of great personal endowments one must not proceed from sons to their fathers, but to their mothers. To this fact a great number of gifted men and their mothers bear testimony.
...[e]xtraordinary men frequently have insignificant sons....man spends his strength in his own performance, while woman does not spend but transmits it.48
The holier a woman is, the more she is a woman.49
A culture that is no longer turned toward God in reverence and with a sense of responsibility has, if viewed according to a deeper insight, also foregone the presence of woman.50
To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully to every small and weak thing upon the earth.51
The recognition of the fact that there is no right on the part of the woman to a child, but only a right of the child to a mother, corresponds to the recognition of another fact that is pertinent to the present, namely, that there is in the world no woman's right, so called, to a profession or vocation; but the world has a child's right to the woman....There is nothing that denotes the condition of the world today more profoundly and tragically than the complete absence of the maternal attitude of mind.52
Times of upheaval easily succumb to the danger of surrendering not only outmoded but also timeless possessions. It is here that by her spiritual motherliness woman is primarily called upon to establish a balance. The timeless woman is the keeper of the timeless possessions of her people. On the other hand, there is nothing that contributes so effectively to the downfall of culture as the decline of woman's spiritual motherhood.53
The religious mother concept of the Church is indissolubly bound to her who as Virgin is Mother and as Mother is Virgin.54
And exactly fifty years later, Cardinal Ratzinger echoes her words:
With her destiny, which is at one and the same time that of Virgin and Mother, Mary continues to project a light upon that which the Creator intended for women in every age, ours included, or, better said, perhaps precisely in our time, in which–as we know–the very essence of femininity is threatened. Through her virginity and motherhood, the mystery of woman receives a very lofty destiny from which she cannot be torn away.55
[So ends Part IB. Part 2 is promised for October 2002 which will look at "Religious Feminism."]
Dr. Gyula Mago was born in 1938 in Hungary and raised a Catholic. He lived under Communist rule for 20 years. Dr. Mago obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, in 1970, and was a professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1970-1999). He presently lives in retirement in Durham, NC, and assists at the Latin Mass at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Raleigh, NC.
1. C. M. Kelly, ed., Feminism v. Mankind (Family Publications, 1990), p. 54.
2. Mary Daly, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Beacon Press. 1984), p. 277.
3. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 1991, p. A14.
4. Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 1943), p. 532.
5. A. Rossler, and W. Fanning, "Woman," The Catholic Encyclopedia, (1912); E. Cahill, SJ., The Framework of a Christian State (1932; repr. Roman Catholic Books, n.d.), Chap. 22.
6. M. Chinigo, ed., The Pope Speaks: The Teachings of Pope Pius XII (Pantheon, 1957), pp. 54-60; R. C. Rollock, The Mind of Pius XII (Crown Publishers, 1955), pp. 171-178.
7. Kenneth Minogue, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (St. Martin's Press, 1985), p. 1.
8. Ibid., p. 5.
9. Ibid. p. 34.
10. Ibid. p. 41.
11. Ibid., pp. 52-53.
12. Ibid., p. 22l.
13. Ibid., p. 226.
14. Ibid., p. 227.
15. Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church (Sarto House, 1996), p. 204.
16. G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World (Sheed and Ward, 1956).
17. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (Ignatius Press, 1985), pp. 95-96.
18. Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (Ignatius Press, 1991), p. l94.
19. Pope Pius XI, Dimni Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism), March 19, 1937.
20. Kenneth Minogue, "How Civilizations Fall," New Criterion, Vol. 19, No. 8 (April 2001).
21. Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? (Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 257.
22. Manfred Hauke, God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does It Lead? (Ignatius Press, 1995), pp. 35-36.
23. Ibid., p. 41.
24. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.3. 23, 24.
25. Josef Pieper, Problems of Modern Faith: Essays and Addresses (Franciscan Herald Press, 1985), p. 163.
26. Steichen, Ungodly Rage, p. 155.
27. Hauke, God or Goddess? Feminist Theology, p. 29.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., pp. 106-107.
30. Ibid., pp. 94-95.
31. Pieper, Problems of Modern Faith, p. 130.
32. Ibid., p. 251.
33. Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy (Sheed and Ward. 1955), pp. 65-67.
34. Hauke, God or Goddess? Feminist Theology, p. 100.
35. Ibid., p. 184.
36. Caitlin Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God, Quest Books (Theosophical Publ. House, 2001), p. 338.
37. John Chapin, The Book of Catholic Quotations (Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1956), p. 921.
38. Daniel J. Sullivan, Fundamentals of Logic (McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 251.
39. Steichen, Ungodly Rage, pp. 128-129.
40. Minogue, Alien Powers, pp. 41-42.
41. Daniel J. Sullivan, Fundamentals of Logic (McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 249.
42. Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Spence Publishing, 1998), p. 85.
43. Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei (Christian Constitution of States), Nov. 1, 1885.
44. Peter Wust, "Woman's Metaphysical Mission," in Body and Spirit (Longmans, Green and Co., 1939).
45. Gertrud von Le Fort, The Eternal Woman (Bruce, 1954), p. 14.
46. Ibid., p. 7.
47. Ibid., p. 9.
48. Ibid., p. 17.
49. Ibid., p. 49.
50. Ibid., p. 60.
51. Ibid., p. 78.
52. Ibid., pp. 88-89.
53. Ibid., p. 9l.
54. Ibid., p. 106.
55. Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 108.
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