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As we approach a new year, it is a fitting time for the pro-life feminist to consider realistic, effective ways to reduce and eliminate abortions in our communities. A prominent message among the pro-life community is that abortion is the single biggest social justice issue of our time. If this is true, it remains so no matter who sits in the Oval Office - and it compels us to incorporate pro-life activism into our daily lives.

But, the question remains: How?

Below are five ways we can support parents considering abortion and their unborn children.

1. Listen and learn.

When we listen to women who have personal experience with abortion, we learn that seeking an abortion is rarely an easy or simple decision. In the words of Sherry Weddell, we must never “accept a label in place of a story.” Before deciding what form our pro-life activism should take, we must listen to post-abortive women and learn from what they have to teach us. One place to begin is our 2018 article, “What Women Considering Abortion Need.” This collection of responses from women who are post-abortive highlights the issues that might influence a woman’s decision to seek an abortion: lack of resources, support, and/or education - and a culture of shaming or fear. 

Before deciding what form our pro-life activism should take, we must listen to post-abortive women and learn from what they have to teach us.

In addition to learning what women considering abortions need, we must also examine the relationship between poverty and abortion. The Guttmacher Institute stated in 2019 that 75% of women who received abortions in 2014 were living in abject poverty (meaning they were earning $15,000 a year or less as a family) and 59% of women who received abortions in 2014 had carried at least one pregnancy to term. These numbers show us that a majority of women who received abortions had a previous pregnancy that led to the birth of their child, and also lacked the material resources they needed to carry their current pregnancy to term. While education around the development of a fetus is important, these numbers also show us that the majority of those who receive abortions understand on some level what takes place during pregnancy. In these cases, then, we might point to ‘lack of resources’ as the catalyst for abortion.

That can be a hard reality for us to wrap our heads around, especially if we are surrounded by a strong pro-life community. What about adoption? What about crisis pregnancy centers? While it’s true that there are resources in place for a woman in poverty who wants to carry a pregnancy to term, the question is often not whether the mother wants to receive the help, but whether she is able to access these resources at all. For example, most minimum wage jobs do not offer paid medical or maternity leave, and working these jobs requires (paying for) childcare. Simply carrying a pregnancy to term could therefore mean a severe loss of income. Before birth, attending regular doctor’s appointments and/or coordinating with different agencies would mean requesting time off of work and losing hourly income that could tip the scale of survival. After birth, even if the mother decides to give her child up for adoption, she would still need some kind of medical leave to heal properly - and while FMLA offers unpaid, job-protected leave, the loss of income could be devastating to someone living in poverty. The stakes of these situations are even higher for women who have older children to feed, clothe, and house. In such cases, we can imagine why an abortion would seem like the option that allows the woman - and her already born children - to survive.

[I]t is important that we understand the very real logistical barriers that exist for most women who are pregnant and believe that abortion is their best (or only) option.

But what about healthcare? Shouldn’t that cover some of these costs? Those living at or below the federal poverty level either have state healthcare through the Affordable Care Act or no healthcare at all (Health Insurance Coverage of Adults 19-64 Living in Poverty). One visit to the ER could ruin a family financially, let alone the type of medical care required for prenatal care, labor and delivery, and the child after birth. Even in the best case health scenario, this level of medical care is not financially feasible for women living in poverty - and it becomes all the more difficult when complications or complex medical diagnoses arise.

In addition to healthcare, the next major financial hurdle is childcare. With childcare costs for multiple children totaling upwards of $400 per month (Childcare Costs in the United States), we can understand why the logistical and financial issues of parenting their children - along with the medical costs of pregnancy for those who live in poverty - contribute to a woman’s decision to seek an abortion. 

We can’t solve those problems overnight, and these issues are best handled on the legislative level. A national conversation needs to take place about the legislative steps we can take to reduce abortions - but that conversation won’t happen today, this week, or even this month. Even so, it is important that we understand the very real logistical barriers that exist for most women who are pregnant and believe that abortion is their best (or only) option. Listening to and learning about their experiences can help us support them with an informed mind and a compassionate heart.

2. Use your gifts.

Reach out to your local crisis pregnancy center with a phone call and ask how you can get involved. Be realistic about your availability: instead of committing to something you can’t do, see if there is a way you can use your gifts to support people who do daily work in the field. This could be as simple as dropping off diapers, making fundraising phone calls, editing articles, or sharing things on social media. You never know what a center might need or how you can use the gifts God gave you to support their mission. This website lists pregnancy centers by state and can help you find your local center.

3. Support pro-life organizations.

We all know about the organizations that focus their efforts on speaking engagements, protests, and/or legislative actions (such as DFL, Respect Life ministries, or Students for Life) - but how many of us know about the groups who do tangible work on the ground to support women and children? Allow me to introduce you to two of my favorite pro-life organizations: Rehumanize International and New Wave Feminists. I was blown away when I learned what these groups do for not just the pro-life cause, but for individual women and their children. Consider following them on social media, donating to their campaigns, and buying their merchandise - all of which can make a difference in the lives of the women and children they serve.

A great follow on social media is Catholic Bandito on Twitter. She runs a non-profit called Mercy Missions, does sidewalk counseling, and actively supports women who are seeking abortions and in need of assistance. She has an innate gift for connecting with the women she serves, and she posts regularly about how we can pray for and financially support individuals who are fighting for their survival and that of their children.

4. Train to become a sidewalk counselor.

This is a concrete way to help women who are considering abortion. If you feel compelled, take some time to become a trained sidewalk counselor and hit the pavement once the pandemic has passed. There are organizations such as Sidewalk Advocates for Life who provide training videos and support systems for people who feel called to this ministry. You don’t have to be perfect to be good at sidewalk counseling - you just need tough skin, a kind heart, and the ability to see Christ in the person standing in front of you.

Learn how to accompany women and their partners who are living these challenging situations. Make your passion for the unborn something beautiful by advocating for them and their families, face to face. Your supportive, loving presence could be the catalyst that empowers women and saves the life of another person.

5. Pray.

Pray regularly for an end to abortion, for all women seeking abortion, and for women who are post-abortive. Prayer is a powerful tool, and one that we must not overlook. We may not be capable of sidewalk counseling, making donations, or volunteering with our local pregnancy center - but we are always capable of praying. Prayer is the most important part of any Catholic’s activism. Servant of God Dorothy Day once wrote about this very idea when reflecting on criticism of her work:

“You people are impractical, they tell us, nice idealists, but not headed anywhere big and important. They are right. We are impractical, as one of us put it, as impractical as Calvary. [...] but there is a strong faith at work; we pray. If an outsider who comes to visit doesn’t pay attention to our praying and what that means, then he’ll miss the whole point of things.” 

Prayer may seem pointless or ineffective to someone who has not encountered the mystery of belonging to the Body of Christ; but our prayer matters more than we know. It is, as my friend Dorothy so concisely put it, “the whole point of things.”

We may not be capable of sidewalk counseling, making donations, or volunteering with our local pregnancy center - but we are always capable of praying.

♦♦♦

Friends, we don’t have to be in ideological lock-step with the pro-life movement as a whole to do the good work of supporting women and ending abortion. Unfortunately, we know that division exists within the pro-life movement, and it can be easy to look at the face of the pro-life movement, see people we don’t trust, and write the movement off as a whole.

We can also become overwhelmed by the heartbreak and evil of abortion, and then funnel all of our energy into fighting tooth and nail for our lawmakers to end it - once and for all. But, if this is indeed the biggest social justice issue affecting our society, we must understand it better and grapple with its complicated darkness. We must acknowledge that the issue of abortion is too complicated to be solved by reversing one or two SCOTUS rulings.

Our work needs to be consistent, authentic, and fueled by prayer.

We must see the individual persons who are affected by abortion, and take tiny, important steps each day to ease the burden of those who are suffering. Our activism needs to transcend the conservative and progressive politics of the “culture war” and focus on supporting just one more woman, saving just one more child. Our work needs to be consistent, authentic, and fueled by prayer. As Pope Benedict XVI said, “Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” The work of pro-life activism is necessary because each human person is necessary. Take a step, and be not afraid.

My little sister recently sent me some pictures of horses and told me that our hometown of Granjenal, Michoacán looks beautiful this time of year. Of course it does; the countryside in summer is always green, lush, and expansive. But it isn’t California, and right now, Mexico (where she lives with her husband) is too far away — not only in miles, but also in the duration of this pandemic and in the red tape of immigration policy that won’t allow them to live near me, my children, and our parents.

Just a few weeks earlier, her husband held up the phone and in silence I watched her writhe in pain after yet another surgery to clear out her uterus. I thought to myself, “Do they know what they’re doing in that cold little clinic?” She looked up at me through her foggy glasses, and I reassured her that one day, she would have babies. But right now, it’s important to heal.

Loving Our Neighbor

A passage from Pope Francis’ recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti gave me tremendous pause. In speaking of our common humanity, he writes:

“… We were created for a fulfillment that can only be found in love. We cannot be indifferent to suffering; we cannot allow anyone to go through life as an outcast. Instead, we should feel indignant, challenged to emerge from our comfortable isolation and to be changed by our contact with human suffering. That is the meaning of dignity” (68, emphasis added).

Pope Francis’ encyclical, like those of popes before him, is a gift for the Catholic faithful, intended to open a dialogue about the doctrines of the Church within the context of our current culture. The Church is not a relic of history but, rather, a living body composed of you, me, and the diversity of persons in which Christ is reflected — that is to say, in all people. And, just as the Church reaches all corners of the Earth, so, too, does Fratelli Tutti. It is a call for the bishops of South Africa as much as for the layperson in Paris and the politicians in Brazil. We cannot parse the teachings and admonishments from Fratelli Tutti in order to placate our desire to remain in comfort while our neighbors suffer.

Injustices in Women’s Health Care

Many women, like my sister, are suffering in silence, wanting to understand how their wonderfully-made bodies work and asking what is wrong. And they ask these questions under the weight of a manmade history and medical landscape that has kept most women ignorant of the inner workings of their bodies. This history and landscape have made words like “vagina,” “vulva,” and ‘urethra’ — never mind “uterus,” “fallopian tubes,” and “ovaries” — taboo to such an extent that many women remain unfamiliar with these terms, and that we trust the “experts” over our own knowledge.

In September 2020, Dawn Wooten — a nurse working at the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)-contracted Irwin County detention center in rural Georgia — alerted the media that women were being inappropriately treated with hysterectomies without their full knowledge or consent (Government Accountability Project). According to Wooten, dozens of women in custody who complained of menstrual pains were seen by the “expert” gynecologist on staff, Dr. Mahendra Amin, who scheduled the women for invasive and unnecessary procedures — including uterine removal.

Immediately, as is wont to happen in the U.S., the news about these immigrant women was politicized. In particular, New Wave Feminists, which is working to provide practical and medical supplies to pregnant women detained along the U.S.-Mexico border — questioned why there was no pro-life outcry (@newwavefeminists). The response from many women in the world of Catholic celebrity and pro-life leadership was, “We need to wait for a full investigation and not jump to any conclusions.”

For those who have sought to live out the Church’s social teachings, this response might be as familiar as it is hollow. It is a polite, sanitized way of saying, “This isn’t important to me, and I don’t want to be made uncomfortable by it.” But like Pope Francis and countless saints and sinners before him, I am here to tell you that to be Catholic is to live in discomfort. If there is a dearth of proof for any one person’s suffering, perhaps it is because we have failed to look.

To be Catholic is to live in discomfort. If there is a dearth of proof for any one person’s suffering, perhaps it is because we have failed to look.

An Ugly History

The forced sterilization of women, especially of Black and Latina women in the United States, is nothing new. With population explosions in the middle of the last century, cultural tensions gave way to sterilization efforts among minority communities across the country. In March 2003, California Governor Gray Davis issued an apology at a Senate hearing in the State Capitol acknowledging that between 1909 and 1964, an estimated 20,000 Californians were sterilized under California law in state-run institutions (Alexandra Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America 211).

A 2015 documentary film titled No Más Bebés tells the stories of Mexican immigrant women who were permanently sterilized either without their consent or under extreme duress at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center hospital during the 1960s and 1970s. During this same time period, one-third of women of childbearing age were sterilized in Puerto Rico.

Between the 1920s and 1980s, the “Mississippi Appendectomy” referred to the legal and involuntary sterilization of countless Black women who were deemed “too promiscuous” or “too feebleminded” to have children. More recently, the Center for Investigative Reporting found that at least 148 female inmates in California received tubal ligations without their consent between 2006 and 2010. Even today, coercive sterilization continues to be offered as part of plea deals across the country.

The American government’s crimes against the female body extend well beyond our borders. Historically, the United States has been more concerned than any other country with spreading and imposing “family planning” abroad. For nearly 100 years, U.S. economic aid has been contingent on widespread sterilization of the masses. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations before it, has taken it upon itself to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having.

For nearly 100 years, U.S. economic aid has been contingent on widespread sterilization of the masses. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations before it, has taken it upon itself to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having.

U.S. missions have sterilized thousands of women in Amazonia, despite the fact that it is the least-populated habitable zone on our planet and also the richest in raw resources (Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America 6). This constant meddling — to use the kindest of terms — in other countries is at the root of our current transcontinental migration crisis. You have only to scratch the surface to see the truth in what happened in rural Georgia.

The Catholic Response

Given this context, there was a great deal of celebration when Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio was elected to the seat of Saint Peter. Here was a man who had lived out his vocation among people whose homes had been pillaged and whose governments had been systematically destabilized by so-called “developed” nations. Surely, he would be a voice for those having to flee the rippling effects of foreign action, for those men and women suffering assaults on their humanity.

When Pope Francis was called to the highest Office in the Church to lead the faithful, he did not forget his countrymen. He asserted that the immigrant culture in Argentina has served only to enrich society and called for migrants around the world to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated. When speaking of migrants, he states in Fratelli Tutti:

“No one will ever openly deny that [migrants] are human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable, since it sets certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith: the inalienable dignity of each human person regardless of origin, race or religion, and the supreme law of fraternal love” (39).

Haznos Valer, a nonprofit organization that runs a migrant shelter out of San Juan Apostol Parish in the Mexican border city of Juarez, works to live out the Church’s teaching on fraternal love. The founder, Karina Breceda, is adamant that immigrant advocacy should be considered a pro-life issue. And Pope Francis’ words resonated with her so strongly that she made them a cornerstone of her nonprofit’s mission statement.

Breceda and others in her organization identify and monitor pregnant migrants in the city of Juarez and then determine their medical and housing needs. Many women are not forthcoming about their pregnancies because they are the result of rape. (On a related note, it is estimated that 80% of the women and girls who cross Mexico into the U.S. border are raped along the way.) During a phone call, Breceda explained to me how she began Haznos Valer:

“I live in El Paso, but you can see the border fence from my house … I could tell you all the reasons [I do this], everything I saw, all the situations I saw that women were in, all the pressure they had to not have their baby. At the end of the day, if I’m going to be open to life, I have to be open to the life of migrants.”

Breceda finds the conversation around migrants to be dehumanizing and wants people to build on their understanding of what it is to be open to life. We Catholics are quick to chastise society for being “closed to life,” but we often demonstrate a lack of hospitality when it comes to the lives of migrants. Breceda and the other members of Haznos Valer are hopeful that, through dialogue and a spirit of encounter, we will begin to see our migrant brothers and sisters as fully part of the Church and better understand our role in helping them, whether it’s through a donation of time or money or an active pursuit in meeting migrants in our own community.

As Catholics, we cannot shy away from advocating for the needs of migrant women in ICE detention or elsewhere. An attack on women’s fertility is a grievous attack on an entire generation. And as a Church that values the fullness of our fertility, we are called to protect the dignity of all women — including those who are detained or imprisoned. But, as Breceda and others assert, we can see the dignity of others only when we encounter them, when we leave the segregated bubbles of our faith community, sit in the pews of the Mexican or Vietnamese or Black parish across town, and meet others face to face.

An attack on women’s fertility is a grievous attack on an entire generation. And as a Church that values the fullness of our fertility, we are called to protect the dignity of all women.

The Pope speaks of the suffering of being outcast, because how many of us have not felt the sting of rejection, even among our family and friends? I think of my sister often, in that small town in Mexico, waiting for an interview date to allow her and her husband to return to California. As women of the Church, many of us have struggled to find our role in parish life, in the midst of our fertility or infertility, and among our fellow sinners and sister saints. In discussing the unique attributes of women at the Bavarian Catholic Women Teachers Association in 1928, St. Edith Stein said, “[To] surrender to Christ does not make us blind and deaf to the needs of others — on the contrary. We now seek for God’s image in each human being and want, above all, to help each human being win his freedom.”

St. Edith Stein said, “[To] surrender to Christ does not make us blind and deaf to the needs of others — on the contrary. We now seek for God’s image in each human being and want, above all, to help each human being win his freedom.”

Stein saw women as particularly connected to the suffering of others and, therefore, well suited to demand justice for them. So, if you are looking for a call to action, here it is: Seek out the suffering members of your community. Do not wait for others to do the work while you sit in social isolation. Trust that the Lord will lead you, even in the midst of great personal discomfort. He has not abandoned you yet.

Whether you do stockings on St. Nicholas Day or Christmas, now is a good time to start thinking about what to stuff those stockings with this year! Here is a guide to help you both support Catholic small businesses and find inspiration for creative gift ideas that the family will love!

Baby’s First Rosary by Be a Heart Design

This beautifully crafted teether is made of 100% recycled beechwood. What better way for your baby to draw closer to Mary than with his or her very own rosary?

Plush Saint Dolls by Sieger Design Co.

What could be better than a snuggly saint friend for your little kiddo? With a prayer on one side and an image of a saint on the other, these plush dolls are a unique way to foster a devotion to a particular saint.

Future Saint Dry-erase Activity Cards by Annunciation Designs

Looking for a meaningful way to keep your kids engaged in Mass in an age-appropriate way? These activity cards do just that by encouraging your children to follow along and giving them a way to prayerfully participate. These cards really are an essential for any child’s Mass bag!

Peg Dolls by Grand Expression

We have made it a tradition to always put a peg doll in our daughters’ Christmas stockings, and it’s one of the gifts they seem to love most. With over 100 saints to choose from, you can find a peg doll that would mean something special to the person you give it to. The shop also makes adorable Marian peg doll keychains for mom or grandma!

Coffee by Zelie Beans Coffee

Not only will the recipient of Zelie Beans Coffee have found a delicious new coffee to love, but you can feel good about your purchase, which will support families in an ethical way. Adhering to Catholic social teaching, Zelie Beans strives to ensure that all its growers receive a liveable wage and specifically works with family farms rather than large-scale bean growers. Plus, their coffee is pretty darn good!

Temporary Tattoos by JustLovePrints

Have you ever thought about a tattoo but didn’t quite want to commit? These Catholic temporary tattoos are a fun way to try one out! With designs ranging from the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the Divine Mercy collection, you are certain to find one that fits your aesthetic. What a beautiful way to witness our Catholic faith in a visible way; they can certainly be a conversation starter!

Catholic Masks by Sock Religious

As much as we all wish this pandemic were over, it seems like it might be with us for a little while longer. So, when we mask up to do our grocery shopping or visit friends, why not do it with a Catholic mask? Maybe, as we grab our masks, they can serve as a reminder to pray for everyone affected by COVID-19.

Candles With Encouragement From Saints by Sword & Crown Candle Co

In my house, once it hits fall, we love to have our candles burning. Sword & Crown candles make an excellent gift! With encouraging quotes from saints on them, these hand-poured soy candles have seasonal scents that will keep your home feeling cozy.

Chrism Beard Balm by Catholic Balm Co

Any bearded men in your household? This is the perfect stocking stuffer for them! What better way to be reminded of your baptismal promises than a chrism-scented beard balm that also moisturizes and conditions?

I hope that this guide has given you a few new and creative ideas for your stockings this year! There are so many wonderful Catholic businesses to support, and these are just a fraction of them. Let’s put our purchasing power to good use this Advent season as we prepare for the birth of Christ.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing set the stage for one of the most contentious nomination and confirmation processes in history. The national dialogue has unfortunately centered not on now-Justice Barrett’s impressive record and demonstrated integrity as a judge but, rather, on whether and how her religious convictions would stymie her ability to independently interpret the law.

Justice Barrett is abundantly qualified for her new position. Nonetheless, over the past several weeks, she has been brutalized for her deeply-held religious convictions — and it wasn’t the first time. At Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearings for her seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, California Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed her concern that Barrett’s faith would impede her ability to issue impartial rulings, famously telling her, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” Catholics have since reclaimed this expression of blatant anti-Catholic bigotry by stamping it on coffee mugs and t-shirts, but Feinstein’s statement reflects a reigning sentiment: A faithful Catholic cannot be trusted in a position of power.

The irony of Feinstein’s insult is that Justice Barrett’s demure character is anything but loud. But perhaps more pernicious than this normalized bigotry is how the mainstream media inserted itself into the narrative of Justice Barrett’s early October confirmation hearings. Blunt headlines crafted a sinister narrative that, as a practicing Catholic woman, Barrett is an incompetent jurist. After being questioned for three days about her stance on abortion and the Affordable Care Act, the media twisted her (appropriate and professional) responses as intransigence and evidence of a hidden, nefarious agenda to dismantle basic American rights. When Barrett responded that she could not opine on questions that might intersect with pending litigation and that she could not interpret a general question of law without reviewing the facts of a specific case, yellow journalism like this Forbes headline incited ire over Barrett’s fictionalized agenda to promulgate religious dogma from the bench. This type of reporting led to protestors’ donning “Handmaid’s Tale” costumes and gathering in Washington D.C. streets during Barrett’s confirmation hearings.

Opposition to Justice Barrett’s nomination based solely on political disagreement is one matter, but the indignation over her confirmation process indicates that such political disagreement is not the central issue. Based on the highly personal attacks on Justice Barrett’s character, it seems that a significant portion of opposition to her confirmation stems from a belief that a practicing Catholic woman couldn’t possibly pursue excellence in a non-religious profession. There exists an undercurrent of belief that Justice Barrett’s deeply-held religious convictions will make her unable to impartially apply the law.

Ultimately, a significant portion of opposition to Justice Barrett’s nomination forms a simmering brew of dangerous and damaging opinions about working Catholic women.

Ultimately, a significant portion of opposition to Justice Barrett’s nomination forms a simmering brew of dangerous and damaging opinions about working Catholic women.

These attacks suggest that religious women face an unresolvable conflict between personal beliefs and professional duties.

Central to the narrative underlying the confirmation hearings is the misguided idea that religious women can’t help but turn their offices into pulpits. The prominence of this idea was clear when several of the questioners castigated Justice Barrett before she even set foot on the high court. For example, California senator and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris accused Justice Barrett of “undoing” the late Justice Ginsburg’s legacy based only on an assumption that Barrett’s religious beliefs would make her bound and determined to overturn Court precedent on health care, abortion rights, and marriage equality (once again, revealing flawed logic about both the power and the role of individual justices within the Court). However, Justice Barrett’s record indicates that her intent is just the opposite. In her opening statement, she shared her judicial philosophy, saying:

“Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try” (emphasis added).

In other words, identifying as a person of faith does not and should not affect a judge’s ability to apply the law and to perform her professional duties. The track record of jurists like Barrett and her predecessors indicate that intelligent professionals believe and understand that their jobs have limits. For example, Justice Antonin Scalia routinely issued rulings that were not in accord with his personal beliefs. Notably, in the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, Justice Scalia opined that the Constitution protected a person’s right to burn the American flag, even though he personally opposed the action.

Identifying as a person of faith does not and should not affect a judge’s ability to apply the law and to perform her professional duties.

The Catholic Church teaches its members that we need to pursue excellence and virtue in every part of our lives — which includes doing our best to fulfill our professional responsibilities. Whether we are lawyers, doctors, contractors, teachers, janitors, or stay-at-home mothers, we are called to put forth our best efforts and to work with integrity. For a judge, that best effort involves impartially interpreting the law in accord with precedent and refusing to inappropriately marry personal conviction with professional duties.

In Justice Barrett’s case, however, few believe this to be true. To claim that she is unfit to sit on the nation’s high court because “the dogma lives loudly” within her is deeply offensive to religious women, and it perpetuates a fiction that faith unavoidably and unequivocally clouds our judgment and renders us incapable of professional integrity.

To claim that Justice Barrett is unfit to sit on the nation’s high court because “the dogma lives loudly” within her is deeply offensive to religious women.

Honoring JPII’s Call to Embrace a New Feminism

Embracing Catholic feminism is a remedy to the pathological, deep-seated problem that Justice Barrett’s nomination uncovered: normalized skepticism of religious women. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II defines “new feminism” as a movement that seeks to “acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation” (99). In other words, true feminism fights the mistreatment of women and promotes their inherent dignity at all times and in all places, from the home to the courtroom, boardroom, and judicial bench.

Embracing Catholic feminism is a remedy to the pathological, deep-seated problem that Justice Barrett’s nomination uncovered: normalized skepticism of religious women.

More significantly, though, Catholic feminism promotes the full, unadulterated truth about women: that they are valuable precisely for who they are. That their capacity to be mothers and their desire to prioritize family life does not stand in the way of professional excellence. That their faithful response to God’s call in their lives is a boon to society, not a personified dogma that threatens other people’s rights. That being a woman often involves artfully weaving a tapestry with threads of both work and family and that the two can inform and shape one another. That true respect for human dignity never involves reducing people to sacrificial lambs on the altar of politics.

Justice Barrett has done what so many women have fought for: She has a career. She has a family. She is a public servant. Tearing her character apart for the sake of political ideology, rather than affirming her feminine genius, is destructive. It tarnishes the message that marriage, motherhood, and faith are essential contributors to a healthy society. And it perpetuates the toxic idea that people of faith should be deemed suspect because they cannot be expected to think or act for themselves or in the best interest of others.

The assault on Judge Barett’s faith and character is an assault on women of faith everywhere. We can only hope that, when she takes her seat on the high court, her integrity, astuteness, humility, and grace will inspire other women to fearlessly embrace their personal and professional responsibilities. May her example empower other women to wear their “dogma” as a badge of pride as they use their unique gifts to respond to God’s call in their lives.

The assault on Judge Barett’s faith and character is an assault on women of faith everywhere.

It’s time that we discuss modesty in its proper and complete role. Modesty goes far beyond our choice of clothing: It is an interior virtue that men and women are equally responsible for cultivating within themselves.

An External Sign of an Interior Disposition

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines modesty as “an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity” (2521, emphasis mine). Clothing isn’t meant to protect someone else from our bodies; rather, it is to protect us from someone else’s lust.

Note that the Catechism makes only a passing reference to clothing when it says that modesty “inspires one’s choice of clothing” (CCC 2522). The Church allows the individual to discern, according to a rightly formed conscience, what kind of clothing is or is not permissible. Furthermore, the Church tells us that modesty is first and foremost an interior disposition, and one’s outward appearance and behavior stem from that disposition. Pope St. John Paul II writes in A Theology of the Body that “[St.] Paul considers purity not only as a capacity (that is, an aptitude) of man’s subjective faculties, but at the same time, as a concrete manifestation of life according to the Spirit” (201). (Note: I am here conflating purity and modesty to highlight the deeper point of both, as modesty is a mode of purity.)

The Church tells us that modesty is first and foremost an interior disposition.

Let’s look at the definitions of “disposition” and “modesty.” A disposition is “the predominant or prevailing tendency of one’s spirits; [or a] natural mental and emotional outlook or mood” (Dictionary.com). An interior disposition therefore concerns an individual and how she relates to others around her, not how others relate to her. How do you see someone? How do you treat someone?

Modesty can be defined as being “unassuming or moderate in the estimation of one’s abilities or achievements” (Oxford English Dictionary) and as “regard for the decencies of behavior, speech, etc.” (Dictionary.com). In considering both definitions, we see that modesty is closely related to humility (seeing ourselves exactly as we are) and meekness (being patient, gentle, and kind). I would therefore suggest that modesty primarily concerns one’s behavior and speech towards others. Examples of modesty could include accepting praise with gratitude and without self-deprecation or exaggeration; listening well to someone without inserting yourself into their experience; and refraining from drawing unnecessary or inappropriate attention to yourself.

How We See Others

In order to practice modesty as an outward sign of an interior disposition, we must know who we are and what our role is - and then make this visible to the outside world in a way that properly reveals who we are. Our bodies are part of our communication with the world and while clothing does play a role, it is not the only way in which we communicate. When discussing modesty, choice of clothing must be considered in the larger context of modesty being primarily an interior disposition.

Before all else, modesty compels us to see people according to their dignity. The interior disposition of modesty, in its fullness within the virtues of prudence and charity, guides clothing choice as one among many outward, visible signs of this interior virtue. Too often, we focus on a woman’s choice of clothing as the primary way of practicing modesty - and this narrow understanding can be dangerous.

St. Edith Stein wrote that “[a]ccording to the original order, [woman] was entrusted to [man] as companion and helpmate . . . But the relationship of the sexes since the Fall has become a brutal relationship of master and slave . . . man uses her as a means to achieve his own ends in the exercise of his work or in pacifying his own lust” (Essays on Woman 72). A master tells a slave what he must do to gain his owner’s favor - regardless of how it affirms or denies his dignity as a person - and, if that is not done, he will incur the master’s wrath.

When we reduce modesty to being only (or primarily) a matter of how a woman dresses, we shift the blame and responsibility for another person’s sin of lust onto women, opening the door to the possibility of enslaving women to the lust of men. Furthermore, when we are unnecessarily prescriptive about what modest clothing entails, we run the risk of telling women what they must do to be perceived as good, holy, and worthy, therefore enslaving them to the opinions of others. It is possible for us to create standards for others based on our own opinions, rather than according to Church teaching - and we must be wary of this.

We need to deepen our understanding of modesty and focus on its role as an interior disposition that we are personally responsible for cultivating within ourselves. And we need to remember that clothing is a part of, but not the fullness of, modesty.

You said your vows, had a beautiful wedding, and now, it’s your wedding night.

While the Church may provide us with a spiritual and theological understanding of marriage, there are some, let’s say, more “practical” aspects of a couple’s first night together and subsequent attempts at “renewing their vows” that no one in the Church ever quite talks about.

Enter Hollywood, where “the deed” occurs seamlessly, effortlessly, and with a fantasy-like quality, whereas the actual, lived experience is far more raw, funny, and intimate than it ever appears on screen. In real life, there are no makeup artists, lighting and sound specialists, body doubles, or crews of people to assist the moment.

Fortunately, we do have grace, humor, and patience. I therefore suggest, with humility, the following seven tips for your real Catholic wedding night, which I will explain by way of the following metaphor:

In real life, there are no makeup artists, lighting and sound specialists, body doubles, or crews of people to assist the moment. Fortunately, we do have grace, humor, and patience.

The Scene

Someone has given you a car. You don’t know much about it or what’s really under the hood, but after learning the theory of how to “drive,” you and your spouse are now about to embark on your first road trip together. You are nervous and uncertain, and, while you have a solid knowledge of what this adventure will entail, the following “roadside” tips may still be of assistance.

1. Sometimes, cars don’t start.

Especially the first time you learn to drive, you may not leave the parking lot before burning through all of your fuel. It happens — especially when you are getting used to the car — so don’t worry. As the old saying goes, “Try, try, and try again.”

2. Sometimes, cars break down mid-trip.

Breakdowns can occur for a variety of reasons, including performance anxiety, fatigue, and stress. No need to panic; you can’t always reach your preferred destination when you plan to, but the journey is just as important as the destination, and mishaps are part of the adventure. You can always laugh, hug, and talk about the future.

The journey is just as important as the destination, and mishaps are part of the adventure. You can always laugh, hug, and talk about the future.

3. You may need to adjust the front seats.

Yes, this tip is all about height, angles, and positioning the “seats” in order to get on the road. Trial and error might be involved, along with adjusting, readjusting, and sometimes resetting mid-trip. It’s human, it’s normal, and it’s nothing you can’t keep in perspective.

4. Sometimes, you need to oil the parts.

Just like a real car, sometimes, some parts need a little “greasing” to reduce friction. As couples familiar with NFP may be aware, the female body produces its own natural lubricant at certain times of the month to indicate fertility. What NFP doesn’t tell you is that, outside of that fertility window, a little lube can keep the road trip smooth.

5. You might be in different gears.

If one spouse is in fourth gear while the other spouse is still in second, the first spouse will arrive at his or her destination much more quickly than the other. Don’t worry; it takes time and practice for you both to reach the same destination at the same time.

6. Be OK with what’s under the hood.

We are not all Instagram models. Everyone has something under the hood that is imperfect: Some parts might be vintage, some parts might look different, some parts might make us self-conscious, and some parts might have been repaired and/or restored. Fears, shame, and vulnerabilities can be hidden from the outside world, but the gift of self in marriage means allowing someone to look beneath the shiny exterior. If you or your spouse is struggling to fire on all cylinders due to one of these reasons, don’t rule out seeking help from a mechanic (i.e., therapist, trusted friend, etc.).

Fears, shame, and vulnerabilities can be hidden from the outside world, but the gift of self in marriage means allowing someone to look beneath the shiny exterior.

7. Cars might get messy.

It’s a good idea to have an extra set of “car mats” (read: bed linens) on hand, especially the first few times, when there can be all sorts of spills. It never happens in Hollywood, but it does happen in real life, because bodies — like cars — can produce all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds and sight. A real road trip is very different from the rehearsed trips on screen, which is all part of the fun. A chuckle or two is highly recommended in these circumstances. You take each other for better or for worse, and that includes the sometimes-awkward stuff that bodies do!

You take each other for better or for worse, and that includes the sometimes-awkward stuff that bodies do!

Finally …

It takes time to learn how to drive. Like any new skill, it takes practice and, maybe, a few accidental speed bumps while you work out the practical aspects of driving a car together. Don’t be shy about communicating verbally while on the road. Like any good navigator, audible directions can help guide the way until you know the route like the back of your hand.

Hollywood may have conditioned us (without our even realizing it) to expect that sex is something that happens flawlessly — and without the slightest reference to the One who gave it to us.

But, just as you might place a rosary on the rearview mirror in your car, keep your faith and a sense of humor within easy reach on your wedding night (and all occasions of “renewing your vows” thereafter). This perspective will help make sex the loving and sacramental experience that God made it to be.

Just as you might place a rosary on the rearview mirror in your car, keep your faith and a sense of humor within easy reach on your wedding night.

This series looks at the corporal works of mercy through a feminist lens. You can read part one of the series on homelessness here and part two on women’s imprisonment here.

The phrase “give alms to the poor” always makes me think of someone holding out their hand, hoping for cash, or the lady feeding the pigeons in the park in Mary Poppins. The image of the “poor person” has been imagined in our literature, movies, and media representations. We all have an idea in our minds of “the poor.” Because of this, many of us have strong opinions regarding poverty, the government, and our own personal aid. Those in poverty become a caricature, a stereotype, or a policy debate. Our individualistic society and “bootstraps” mentality make it so that we blame the poor for their poverty and offer solutions about what they should do, rather than look at the systems in place that keep the poor impoverished.

Poverty, like homelessness and imprisonment, is experienced by women differently and in a more burdensome way than by men. There is even a term for this phenomenon: the feminization of poverty, which is “the phenomenon in which women experience poverty at rates that are disproportionately high in comparison to men” and “the social and economic patterns that keep women disproportionately poor around the world.”

In fact, women make up 70% of the 1.5 billion people in the world who live in poverty. The result of this “feminization of poverty” is not only that more women than men are poor, but also that women suffer more from less access to education, healthcare, property, job training, and capital. Furthermore, this result means that women face more discrimination, hardships, and obstacles to lifting themselves and their children out of poverty.

Women face more discrimination, hardships, and obstacles to lifting themselves and their children out of poverty.

In the U.S., we may be tempted to think that this global issue doesn’t apply to us because we have successful women in politics, medicine, research, and other fields. However, the data shows that these same issues also plague women in our country. In 2018, 16.8 million men (10.6% of the population) lived below the poverty line whereas 21.4 million (12.9%) of women lived below the poverty line. When considering single parent families, the numbers compare similarly: there are 6.5 million single dads (12.7% of the population), compared to 15.1 million single moms (24.9%). These numbers get even more compounded by race, age and ability so that those living in poverty are:

• 20% Black women 
• 18% Hispanic women 
• 22% Native American women 
• 10% Asian women 
• 29% women with disabilities 

And, around two-thirds of the elderly poor are women.

The “feminization of poverty” is rooted in several systemic issues such as the gender wage gap, low wage work being done primarily by women, a lack of affordable housing and daycare, and the stereotype of the “welfare queen” or “bad mom.”

Gender Wage Gap

The gender wage gap has been an issue central to feminism for at least the last 50 years. It is also a major contributing factor to the higher poverty rate for women.

According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW) as of Fall 2019, the typical woman in the U.S. earns $45,097 while the typical man earns $55,291, meaning that a white woman typically earns 82 cents for every dollar a white man earns in the same position with the same experience and qualifications. As expected, women of color suffer even more of a wage gap:

• Black women make 62 cents on the dollar
• Hispanic women make 54 cents on the dollar
• Asian women make 89 cents on the dollar
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander women make 61 cents on the dollar
• Native American women make 57 cents on the dollar 

The AAUW’s research also shows that the wage gap increases over the course of a woman’s career and that women’s retirement income is only 70% of men’s because they have earned less and therefore paid less into Social Security. This means that the wage gap is not only affecting women in their present lives, but can be harmful to their long-term and future security.

What causes this wage gap to persist? The AAUW suggests a combination of factors: “undervaluing of women’s work, implicit bias against working mothers and direct race and gender bias.”

Work associated with women tends to pay less, so much so that “when an influx of women enters a previously male-dominated profession, wages for the occupation as a whole decrease.” The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) found that "[t]here is a gender wage gap in 97 percent of occupations. Skeptics of the wage gap may also insist that the wage gap exists because of the occupational choices that women make. However, this argument ignores the fact that ‘women’s’ jobs often pay less precisely because women do them, because women’s work is devalued, and that women are paid less even when they work in the same occupations as men."

This wage gap also appears as the “fatherhood bonus” and “motherhood penalty.” Working men who are fathers are viewed as responsible, loyal, hard-working, and good providers for their families. Working women who are mothers, on the other hand, are typically seen as uncommitted, unfocused, and unreliable. Mothers are paid 69% as much as fathers and typically earn less than both men and other women. In the end, mothers are recommended for lower starting salaries, perceived as less competent, and are less likely to be recommended for hire.

This is a particularly disheartening bias considering that the majority of women in poverty are single mothers who are the sole wage earners and caretakers of their children. In her book Forget “Having It All,” journalist Amy Westervelt cited a study by researcher Michelle Budig concluding that “[f]or certain cohorts of women - namely white, never-married women without kids - the wage gap was nearly closed...but the parenthood wage gap was increasing.” Budig also found that “the lower your income, the higher the penalty” meaning that “the women who least can afford it pay the largest proportionate penalty for motherhood” (Westervelt 171-172).  Based on their findings, the AAUW argues that “at the current rate of progress, the pay gap will not close until 2093.”

[T]he majority of women in poverty are single mothers who are the sole wage earners and caretakers of their children.

Another cause for the gender wage gap is that “women are underrepresented in higher paying jobs and overrepresented in low paying jobs.” The NWLC found that in 2016, women made up about two thirds of low-wage jobs, defined as those paying $11.50/hour or less, even though women make up less than half of the overall workforce. When looking at minimum wage workers, six out of every ten are women.

In tracing the history of motherhood in America, Amy Westervelt found that this division of labor began with the Industrial Revolution when employers “took the view that all women were married and being supported by a husband, and thus could be paid less because their income was merely supplemental,” a view that informed labor laws which went on to view women as a “special class of employee,” inferior to the labor of men (Westervelt 68). She goes on to demonstrate that the prevailing opinion that women, especially mothers, should remain at home combined with the unpaid and undervalued caregiving work often assigned to women created the current situation demonstrated by the NWLC data.

Lack of Affordable Housing, Daycare, and Benefits

Women in poverty must make tough financial decisions regularly, often choosing which basic necessity to pay for when they have the money to do so. Major factors in this decision making include a lack of affordable housing, affordable daycare, and benefits such as paid time off and medical insurance.

The YWCA “believes that safe, decent, affordable housing is vital for women’s successful participation in the workforce,” which is necessary for them to attempt to alleviate their poverty. Affordable housing allows women to find and retain employment, attend education classes, and participate in job training programs, most of which require a permanent address in order to participate.

Within the larger poverty cycle, there are many smaller cycles, such as the need to have a house to get a job and the need to have a job to pay for the house. When housing is not affordable, it can no longer be paid for, and women either lose their jobs or pay for housing to the detriment of other necessities. “According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a full-time minimum wage earner cannot rent a typical one bedroom apartment in any county in the United States . . . without incurring a housing cost burden,” meaning that they have to spend 30% or more of their minimum wage income on housing (“A Gender Lens on Affordable Housing”). This means that 75% of households living in public housing developments or receiving Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance are headed by women, many of whom are single mothers. One reason for this is the large numbers of women in low or minimum wage jobs.

Another reason is housing discrimination. For women, especially single mothers, “[a]ffordable units may remain beyond their reach because fair housing laws are not consistently enforced, and landlords have proven themselves wary of female-headed families due to stereotypes that include ‘lazy’ welfare recipients; poor housekeepers;  unsupervised, destructive children; and male friends and relatives that get embroiled in physical altercations and engage in illicit activity.”

The policies surrounding government aid are complicated and hard to condense into this article, but to learn more, read this report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As mentioned in that report and by the YWCA, when assistance or affordable housing are available, they are typically far from city centers where most jobs can be found, adding on burdensome transportation costs. The unreliability of transportation can also cost workers by causing tardiness, which often leads to termination.

Due to a variety of factors outlined by the YWCA, women in poverty end up being steered toward neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty and crime, and lower quality schools, which only serves to continue the poverty cycle for them and their families.

[W]omen in poverty end up being steered toward neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty and crime, and lower quality schools

Aside from a lack of affordable housing, mothers in poverty must also factor in childcare. For those living in poverty, the cost of childcare is typically around 30% of their income. Combined with the average housing cost burden, mothers lose over half of their income. Mothers often have to make the difficult choice between paying for more expensive daycare but not paying other bills, paying for low quality, less safe child care, or not being able to work at all. If a woman tries to take classes in order to find a higher paying job, this choice becomes all the more expensive and difficult. Like with housing, there are federal aid programs, but they are severely underfunded and leave many women without support.

As mentioned, many women work low to minimum wage jobs, which means that they do not have paid time off or sick leave, health insurance, or other benefits. Some states also limit unemployment insurance to full time workers, leaving part time workers with no assistance if they lose their jobs.

Women who are pregnant or mothers often have to choose between work and things like prenatal appointments or caring for their sick child. Without insurance, many women have to decide between paying for necessary health care or food, rent, and other bills. According to the APA, this leads many poor women to neglect or delay attending to their health care needs. As a result, they end up with more chronic conditions, undiagnosed diseases that would benefit from early intervention, obesity, and diabetes. Women in poverty also suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety and are more likely to develop substance abuse problems.

Without insurance, many women have to decide between paying for necessary health care or food, rent, and other bills.

Factors contributing to and sustaining poverty for women are complex and layered. It is hard to condense them all into a summary piece like this one. As of the writing of this article, we are starting to see these issues emerge even more through the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the questions being raised as we begin to confront the racism in our country.

Maria Shriver wrote in The Atantic that “[t]his nation cannot have sustained economic prosperity and well-being until women’s central role is recognized and women’s economic health is used as a measure to shape policy.” The issue of poverty is often the catalyst for the previously examined issues of homelessness and imprisonment, so fighting for women who live in poverty ultimately means alleviating several injustices and creating an overall healthier nation.

This series will continue with the command to “Visit the Sick,” looking at the ways in which the medical field often fails women.

I am weary. I have to be honest about that. As my hands tap on the keyboard, each word feels like a weight pressing on me. But I know God is here; so, I can continue.

Let me start by saying that I am no one important. I am just a lay Catholic woman with too much time on her hands and too much grief built up. So, this is my way of saying, “Help me, I’m drowning under the weight of all of this.” Let those of you who have an ear, listen.

I am a convert. I hail from ol’ country Tennessee, a place that makes me think of fireflies and porches, Sunday dinner time, my grandmother with her kind eyes, and skinning my knees as a kid. Tennessee reminds me of the other pains I experienced there, but also of the joys. It is the place where I first almost fell in love, where I went to prom, and where my father and my grandfather are buried. It is my home.

It is also the place where the Ku Klux Klan was founded, in the city of Pulaski. I‘ve never been there and I don’t think I will ever go there. I’m too afraid of what I might find: that, in all of those abandoned hollers, there will still be Klan marching.

I am no stranger to the scourge of Racism. Not now, and not years ago when the man at the grocery store called me a “f*ck*ng n*gger” over a parking spot. That moment still burns in my mind when I think of it - and it hurts in my heart, too. There is scar tissue where that man and his Racism left their mark.

But that is Tennessee, which has always held the worst and the best things all at once. It is where my family has lived since the time of slavery. It is also where I found God, decided to convert to Catholicism, and attended Mass, clumsily saying the responsorial psalm before I really knew what it was. Tennessee is where I fell to my knees in front of a stunning crucifix and, looking at Our Lord, understood for the first time what it cost for me to have eternal life. I am still reckoning with that truth.

The Church is home, too - she is home and hospital for my sick and weary soul. She is where I go to seek beauty and peace. She is where I run to be with Our Lord, the only man who has ever loved me unconditionally. And yet, I have struggled to find community within the Catholic Church. I have struggled with the lack of representation I’ve noticed within her walls and among her congregants. I have labored to find a place where I felt my Blackness was not a target, but rather something to be celebrated.

I have labored to find a place where I felt my Blackness was not a target, but rather something to be celebrated.

I find myself wondering where the representations of Black saints are or why the priest in my home parish posted “all lives matter” on his Facebook page. Or why, when I spoke in opposition to that, he unfriended me without a word. That felt like a cold knife in my stomach. He was the man who baptized and confirmed me - my shepherd. And he said, with those three words, that my life did not matter. In his homily one weekday, he didn’t speak on the sanctity of George Floyd’s life; rather, he defended the Racism that policing is steeped in.

Suddenly, the place where I once sought solace became a place that felt as foreign to me as if I were in another country. I have wasted many a sin on this anger. I still don’t know how to let go of it, though I am trying. Forgiveness has always been difficult for me. I find it hard to forgive someone when they keep doing the same things over and over again. But that’s what Jesus tells us to do, so...I’m trying. I’m being gentle with myself in the process and I’m trying to be gentle with others, too. 

Forgiveness feels like a knife when Racism is not acknowledged by those in the Church who have platforms from which to speak.

Forgiveness feels like an impossible task when I turn on the news and see people who look like me, like my mother, like my brothers, like my kin, dying at the hands of police. Forgiveness feels like a knife when Racism is not acknowledged by those in the Church who have platforms from which to speak. Forgiveness is grief that feels like fire when I hear all of my people saying, “I can’t breathe.” I have to check my own breath.

I’m not sure that I can breathe when I see a litany of names of the dead go across my social media feeds.

I’m not sure that I can breathe when I see Gloria Purvis’ show cancelled on the same day that Abby Johnson posts a video saying that my culture needs to be “redefined.” It feels like an affront to me, who grew up without my birth father in the home, not because he was “running around on my mother,” but because he served in the Army for twenty years of his life, and that was ultimately what contributed to his death.

I’m not sure that I can breathe when I think of my little brother walking down the street and looking “intimidating” to someone, simply because he was born Black.

I’m not sure that I can breathe when I think of Abby Johnson’s son and how he might grow up with that kind of message coming from the mouth of his own mother and father - those who the Catechism says are the “first heralds” of the Faith to their children (CCC 2225). I can’t stress enough how important these “first heralds” are to the sustainability of a child’s life. For those of us who have struggled to have a family that reflects the Holy Family, Jesus and Mary mean so much. And having the Church as the place where we can commune with them means just as much.

It feels hard to breathe just writing these words and thinking that someone who reads them may not see what all the fuss is about, or understand why we’re speaking about these issues.

Quite frankly, I am trying hard not to slip into despair. I know that the tomb is empty, as the rapper Lecrae reminds me. I know that this can’t be solved only by human means, but damn it, do I want my white brothers and sisters to say something. I want them to say, “What’s happening is wrong and I don’t support it.” I want them to say, “I stand with you,” “I stand with Gloria,” and “Abby Johnson does not represent pro-life activism.” 

It is in times like these that I feel that the Church isn’t my home, that I didn’t inherit the same things as my white brothers and sisters in Christ, that there is something wrong with the way I was made, that I am just another statistic waiting to be cited in an Abby Johnson video, or that I am George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, or Elijah McClain. 

It is in times like these that I feel that the Church isn’t my home, that I didn’t inherit the same things as my white brothers and sisters in Christ

It is in times like these that I feel that it doesn’t matter that my kin’s blood is crying out from the ground, that so many of us are deaf to it, and that if I don’t see myself reflected back to me in the Church, it’s because I'm not meant to be there.

I know that all of these are lies from the enemy, but faith can be hard to hold onto when I see yet another body, yet another unjust killing, and yet another casually racist tweet or Instagram post.

I love the Church. I subsist off of her sacraments, off of the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord, and off of the prayers of Our Lady. And I have fought for every inch of my faith; I’m still fighting.

The question I have is, who will fight with me?

“No justice, no peace.”

This is the protestor’s chant in the marches against systemic racism and police brutality. Some Catholics may be uncomfortable with the idea that the protestors are right: we cannot have peace without justice. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says as much:

“Peace is the fruit of justice, . . . understood in the broad sense as the respect for the equilibrium of every dimension of the human person. Peace is threatened when man is not given all that is due him as a human person, when his dignity is not respected and when civil life is not directed to the common good. The defence and promotion of human rights is essential for the building up of a peaceful society and the integral development of individuals, peoples and nations.” (494)

The Compendium continues by adding that “Peace is also the fruit of love. True and lasting peace is more a matter of love than of justice, because the function of justice is merely to do away with obstacles to peace: the injury done or the damage caused. Peace itself, however, is an act and results only from love” (494). Peace begins with recognizing the dignity of all human persons and the basic rights that flow from that dignity. It begins with the recognition that all persons are made in God’s image and that we look at Christ when we look at our neighbor - any neighbor.

Peace begins with recognizing the dignity of all human persons and the basic rights that flow from that dignity.

Justice demands that each be given his due, and peace cannot be achieved until that demand is met. As Christians, what drives the fight for justice can and should only be love: the love of Christ. Jesus tells us that “whatever you did for these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Loving Christ necessitates turning to the least of us in our society and loving them enough to remove the obstacles in the way of justice, the obstacles that obscure their dignity and threaten their rights, the obstacles that keep them from flourishing as a beloved child of God.

To do this work is to be a peacemaker, a task Pope St. John Paul II called on women in particular to live out in his 1995 Message for the 28th World Day of Peace. St. John Paul II calls on women to be “teachers of peace with their whole being and in all their actions” and asks us to “be witnesses, messengers and teachers of peace in relations between individuals and between generations, in the family, in the cultural, social and political life of nations, and particularly in situations of conflict and war” (2). We find ourselves in such a moment of conflict and, arguably, of war against the systemic injustices that plague our country.

Reflecting on John Paul II’s understanding of the feminine genius, it is no surprise that he calls on women in particular for this task of peacemaking, of fighting for justice through love.

“The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.” - St. Edith Stein

Women are particularly skilled for this work of peacemaking because of our inherent capacity to “see persons with [our] hearts . . . independently of various ideological or political systems. [Women] see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them” (John Paul II, Letter to Women). Women were created to see into the depths of the other beyond any ideological or political systems. Sin blinds us to this part of our feminine identity and allows political loyalty to deafen us so that we don’t hear the cry coming from the hearts of the afflicted. The cry for racial justice is one that should be firmly rooted in our hearts as women because we see the hurt in others and we are made to help them.

Women were created to see into the depths of the other beyond any ideological or political systems.

For Edith Stein, this capacity is rooted in empathy. She writes in "The Ethos of Women’s Professions" that “[w]oman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.” As women, we are especially inclined to be empathetic, to see the living and personal, and to recognize dignity in humanity. Stein argues that it is this capacity that allows women to focus on the person rather than on the material, to value human life over capital or property.

Building off of Stein’s work, John Paul II argues in Mulieris Dignitatem that “our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that ‘genius’ which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human” (30). It is in light of this genius that he calls upon women to be peacemakers, because God has entrusted the human being to her in a special way: the way of maternity.

“Mama.” - George Floyd

Social media posts have pointed out that we should hear George Floyd's call for his mother as a call for all mothers. As Catholics, we know that all women are mothers by virtue of their feminine genius, and so all women are called to respond to the cries of those who suffer from injustice.

Maternity, whether biological or spiritual, is the capacity to be moved in response to another person and to act in self-giving love to help and console them. It is the capacity to love another simply because they are human. It is a call to take responsibility for the other and to accompany them in their suffering.

John Paul II’s 1995 message on peace argues that working for peace “cannot be concerned merely with the external conditions of coexistence; rather, it must affect people’s hearts and appeal to a new awareness of human dignity” (1). By placing this idea within the context of his writings on women, it becomes clear that he sees the peacemaker role as being led by women because of our maternal hearts that are ready to love fiercely and to make the fight for justice truly personal.

Education in the ways of peace

By tapping into her maternity, woman is better prepared to be a teacher of peace. John Paul II sees this role primarily from the standpoint of raising a family, which stands as “the first and fundamental school of peace.” However, he calls women to bring this work into society: “When women are able fully to share their gifts with the whole community, the very way in which society understands and organizes itself is improved, and comes to reflect in a better way the substantial unity of the human family” (Message on Peace 9, emphasis added). To be a peacemaker is to be a unifier. This requires women to teach others how to look beyond differences and to redirect us towards the one principle - the image of God in all - that is the core of our unity as the Family of God.

Woman’s capacity for others helps her recognize the injustices in society that threaten the dignity of others. Margaret Harper McCarthy writes in her essay “The Feminine Genius” that “a woman is always a mother, whether physically or spiritually, and that all of her activity, private and public, ought to be pursued from the point of view of her motherhood, her ‘genius’” (Promise and Challenge 120). McCarthy points out that it is this maternity that serves to counterbalance “disturbing trends that are ultimately the expressions of a less human world” in order to “recall us to the essentially human” (Promise and Challenge 113).

In our capacity for relationship, women have a duty to reconcile those broken relationships in our society that result in a lack of justice and a lack of peace. When your child is hurting, you do all you can to comfort them. The Body of Christ is currently hurting in so many ways related to the deep wound of racism: police brutality, prison industrial complex, maternal/infant mortality rates, poor educational opportunities, redlining laws, and others. As women - as mothers - we must recognize this wound, care for those who are hurting, educate society, and lead the way to justice so there can be peace.

In our capacity for relationship, women have a duty to reconcile those broken relationships in our society that result in a lack of justice and a lack of peace.

John Paul II put this monumental task before women in 1995 and would continue to urge us towards it now. So how do we go about answering this call?

First, we must know that we are loved by God and desire to respond to His love. This requires a life of prayer and dedication to continuous growth in our relationship with God. In order to love others, we must first know that we are loved.

Second, we must embrace “truth, justice, love and freedom” (Message on Peace 2). We must first become educated in order to educate others. This compels us to learn what truth, justice, love, and freedom are, and to listen to those who suffer from a lack of truth, justice, love, and freedom.

Then, with a firm grounding in what we must work towards, we need to do the work. This will take different forms among women based on our various gifts, talents, and personalities. We ought to let the Holy Spirit guide us in recognizing the obstacles to justice and let Him fill us with the divine love we need to defeat them. This is hard work, requiring supernatural grace to sustain us. Pray, listen, then act:

“The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.” (Pope St. Paul VI, Address to Women)

Fellow peacemakers, let’s get to work.

I remember the phone call I received from my sister the first night of the Ferguson, Missouri, riots in late summer of 2014. I was away at college in Nashville, Tenn. She was a high school senior, on her way home from a Miley Cyrus concert. As the story goes, 25 police cars flew past her on the highway, sirens blaring. “They’re getting off on Lucas & Hunt,” she gasped. “They’re heading to Ferguson!”

I remember the following days, when my mom, the principal of a nearby high school, had to keep Good Morning America from interviewing anyone at or around her school, afraid that a change in the direction of the riots and destruction could put her staff and students in danger.

I remember watching North St. Louis County crumble, seeming to almost implode. Another young Black man had been killed at the hands of a police officer. The topics of race and injustice were brought to the forefront. The Black community cried out in pain, asking their peers to listen and understand that Black lives matter, too. I remember wondering where it was all coming from.

On a national level, not many people knew of Ferguson or North St. Louis County before the death of Mike Brown. Still, today, not many people know of St. Louis’ stark case of White Flight in the 80s and early 90s and the redlining that occurred before it in North St. Louis City.

I have always considered myself lucky because of the diversity of my hometown. I grew up in a multicultural school district only a few miles from Ferguson, where 40% of the district’s population was a minority demographic and 20% of the students were Black. We weren’t an affluent neighborhood compared to other areas in St. Louis County, but we had the resources and teacher investment needed for success. Our school district’s families were heavily invested in our education, even passing a tax increase to provide each high school student with his or her own laptop. On top of that, the teachers were paid well, and the district ranked No. 1 as the most diverse school district in Missouri.

Hauntingly, I always knew the disparity between my Black friends and me. Nobody has to tell you, but the bias grows and mutates, and you realize that as a White classmate, you are going to have an easier time. When you’re growing up, you can’t put your finger on why things are different. My Black friends never addressed it, and it wasn’t until the conversations began after the Ferguson riots that I understood what I was seeing: systemic racism.

I deeply ached from my years of ignorance.

I deeply ached from my years of ignorance.

Six years later, and the fight still continues. As we mourn the losses of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, many of us have awakened with a new and deepened sense of awareness toward our society’s racial injustice. As our country rises to fight against police brutality and systemic racism, it leaves someone like me wondering where I am called to serve.

The social justice teachings of our Catholic Church are special and something I think we often overlook. When we claim to be pro-life, it is a battle for the protection and dignity of all life, from conception to natural death. No life has more dignity than the next, which is why it is important that we discern our specific battlefield for allyship with our brothers and sisters of color, especially in a society with a proven favoritism for the White majority.

No life has more dignity than the next, which is why it is important that we discern our specific battlefield for allyship with our brothers and sisters of color.

As I prayed over this topic, I realized that my own battlefield is not through front-line activism or direct political involvement (although they are greatly needed) but through intentional relationships with my peers. Over time, a desire had grown in my heart to be a bridge that connects my local White and Black communities, who seem to live in two different Americas.

So, I did some research. Many don’t realize that there is a long history of segregation and systemic racism within the St. Louis area, and the local Catholic Church was not immune. It was Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter in 1947 who desegregated the St. Louis Catholic schools, with much pushback from White parishioners.

Because of the segregation in our churches, there are a handful of historical, and still predominantly, Black parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Louis today. There is even an office for Black Catholic ministries called the St. Charles Lwanga Center. The Center itself has been overwhelmingly supportive of and regenerative for the local community. In fact, one of its recent successes has been with Community Women Against Hardship, a Lwanga Center honoree that created a Family Support Center for the North St. Louis community, including a library, computer lab, music lab, clothing boutique, food pantry, youth enrichment program, and entrepreneurship classes.

With further research, I found that almost every diocese in the country has multicultural offices, from Black to Hispanic to Asian/Pacific Islander to Native American ministries, and all of them have direct ties to the local community.

On June 5, what would have been Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday, I called the St. Louis Office of Black Catholic Ministries and spoke with Father Arthur about the recent riots in St. Louis City. I wanted to help this ministry strengthen its impact on the community. I told Father Arthur I felt the tides were starting to change and that we were watching history before our eyes. “It makes me so happy to hear you say that,” he told me. “We’ve been saying it here for a long time, and it’s exciting to hear from you, a stranger, who wants to stand up for change, too.”

Here is a battlefield that may be right for you: becoming an ally to the organizations, specifically in the Church, that are already influencers of positive change in the Black community. Why reinvent the wheel? In our own steps toward anti-racism and systemic change, we can partner with organizations within the Catholic Church that understand their local communities deeply and have taken the time to build relationships with people who need support.

The global Catholic Church is our family, and we have a duty to protect her and love her well, just as we love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Here, we have an opportunity to make great societal change through our bonds in the Eucharist. No difference in our race or culture can change the gift of God’s son to the Mystical Body of Christ.

If this is your battlefield, I encourage you to follow the links below and get involved in the multicultural ministries in your own diocese. If you do not see multicultural ministries available for the parishioners in your diocese, that may be a good place to start. We have a tremendous opportunity to build a bridge to systemic change through our own Mother Church.

No difference in our race or culture can change the gift of God’s son to the Mystical Body of Christ.

Black lives matter.

Region I

• Archdiocese of Boston
• Diocese of Bridgeport
• Diocese of Burlington
• Diocese of Fall River
• Archdiocese of Hartford
• Diocese of Manchester
• Diocese of Norwich
• Diocese of Portland
• Diocese of Providence
• Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts
• Diocese of Worchester

Region II

• Diocese of Albany
• Diocese of Brooklyn
• Diocese of Buffalo
• Archdiocese of New York
• Diocese of Ogdensburg
• Diocese of Rochester
• Diocese of Rockville Centre
• Diocese of Syracuse

Region III

• Diocese of Allentown
• Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown
• Diocese of Camden
• Diocese of Erie
• Diocese of Greensburg
• Diocese of Harrisburg
• Diocese of Metuchen
• Archdiocese of Newark
• Diocese of Paterson
• Archdiocese of Philadelphia
• Diocese of Pittsburgh
• Diocese of Scranton
• Diocese of Trenton

Region IV

• Diocese of Arlington
• Archdiocese of Baltimore
• Diocese of Richmond
• Diocese of Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands
• Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA
• Archdiocese of Washington (District of Columbia)
• Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston
• Diocese of Wilmington

Region V

• Diocese of Alexandria
• Diocese of Baton Rouge
• Diocese of Biloxi
• Diocese of Birmingham
• Diocese of Covington
• Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux
• Diocese of Jackson
• Diocese of Knoxville
• Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana
• Diocese of Lake Charles
• Diocese of Lexington
• Archdiocese of Louisville
• Diocese of Memphis
• Archdiocese of Mobile
• Diocese of Nashville
• Archdiocese of New Orleans
• Diocese of Owensboro
• Diocese of Shreveport

Region VI

• Archdiocese of Cincinnati
• Diocese of Cleveland
• Diocese of Columbus
• Archdiocese of Detroit
• Diocese of Gaylord
• Diocese of Grand Rapids
• Diocese of Kalamazoo
• Diocese of Lansing
• Diocese of Marquette
• Diocese of Saginaw
• Diocese of Steubenville
• Diocese of Toledo
• Diocese of Youngstown

Region VII

• Diocese of Belleville
• Archdiocese of Chicago
• Diocese of Evansville
• Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend
• Diocese of Gary
• Diocese of Green Bay
• Archdiocese of Indianapolis
• Diocese of Joliet
• Diocese of La Crosse
• Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana
• Diocese of Madison
• Archdiocese of Milwaukee
• Diocese of Peoria
• Diocese of Rockford
• Diocese of Springfield in Illinois
• Diocese of Superior

Region VIII

• Diocese of Bismarck
• Diocese of Crookston
• Diocese of Duluth
• Diocese of Fargo
• Diocese of New Ulm
• Diocese of Rapid City
• Diocese of Saint Cloud
• Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
• Diocese of Sioux Falls
• Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Region IX

• Diocese of Davenport
• Diocese of Des Moines
• Diocese of Dodge City
• Archdiocese of Dubuque
• Diocese of Grand Island
• Diocese of Jefferson City
• Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas
• Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph
• Diocese of Lincoln
• Archdiocese of Omaha
• Archdiocese of Saint Louis
• Diocese of Salina
• Diocese of Sioux City
• Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau
• Diocese of Wichita

Region X

• Diocese of Amarillo
• Diocese of Austin
• Diocese of Beaumont
• Diocese of Brownsville
• The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter
• Diocese of Corpus Christi
• Diocese of Dallas
• Diocese of El Paso
• Diocese of Fort Worth
• Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston
• Diocese of Laredo
• Diocese of Little Rock
• Diocese of Lubbock
• Archdiocese of Oklahoma City
• Diocese of San Angelo
• Archdiocese of San Antonio
• Diocese of Tulsa
• Diocese of Tyler
• Diocese of Victoria

Region XI

• Diocese of Fresno
• Diocese of Honolulu
• Diocese of Las Vegas
• Archdiocese of Los Angeles
• Diocese of Monterey
• Diocese of Oakland
• Diocese of Orange
• Diocese of Reno
• Diocese of Sacramento
• Diocese of San Bernardino
• Diocese of San Diego
• Archdiocese of San Francisco
• Diocese of San Jose
• Diocese of Santa Rosa
• Diocese of Stockton

Region XII

• Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau
• Diocese of Baker
• Diocese of Boise
• Diocese of Fairbanks
• Diocese of Great Falls-Billings
• Diocese of Helena
• Archdiocese of Portland
• Archdiocese of Seattle
• Diocese of Spokane
• Diocese of Yakima

Region XIII

• Diocese of Cheyenne
• Diocese of Colorado Springs
• Archdiocese of Denver
• Diocese of Gallup
• Diocese of Las Cruces
• Diocese of Phoenix
• Diocese of Pueblo
• Diocese of Salt Lake City
• Archdiocese of Santa Fe
• Diocese of Tucson

Region XIV

• Archdiocese of Atlanta
• Diocese of Charleston
• Diocese of Charlotte
• Archdiocese of Miami
• Diocese of Orlando
• Diocese of Palm Beach
• Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee
• Diocese of Raleigh
• Diocese of Saint Augustine
• Diocese of Saint Petersburg
• Diocese of Savannah
• Diocese of Venice

Region XV

• Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg in Glendale
• Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh
• Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma
• Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic
• Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Holy Protection of Mary of Phoenix
• Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit
• Chaldean Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego
• Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn
• Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles
• Melkite Greek Catholic  Eparchy of Newton (Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston)
• Romanian Catholic Eparchy of Saint George's in Canton
• Syrian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark
• Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Chicago
• Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of Saint Mary, Queen of Peace in the USA and Canada
• Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia
• Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saint Josaphat in Parma
• Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saint Nicholas in Chicago
• Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford

As our country and the world have wrestled with the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few months, I’ve found myself reading about and reflecting on pre-quarantine life and its “normal” aspects. What I discovered was our culture’s troubling obsession with busyness and productivity. I simultaneously discovered my own complicity in the culture of busyness and its detrimental impact on my spiritual life. As states begin to loosen restrictions on our activities, it is more important than ever to reevaluate our priorities and explore ways to keep God at the center of our lives. Part of exploring this is identifying the things that come between us and God or distract us from keeping Him at the center of our lives.

The Culture of Busyness

The culture of busyness is a pervasive aspect of modern, American culture. Some people wear it as a badge of honor: The busier you are, the more important you are. The culture of busyness allows us to define our self-worth by our calendars and planners, as opposed to by our inherent God-given dignity. “Hustle culture” also plays a role here, encouraging us to constantly increase our pace of life. If we aren’t hustling, what are we really accomplishing, anyway?

The culture of busyness allows us to define our self-worth by our calendars and planners, as opposed to by our inherent God-given dignity.

Against the backdrop of capitalism and individualism, it’s easy to accept busyness and hustle culture as natural parts of life. Even during school closures, record unemployment, and the shuttering of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, we were bombarded with messages to make the most out of this time. Clean your closets, bake a sourdough bread load every day, and become a world-class knitter: These are your quarantine goals. Don’t get me wrong — if these activities bring you peace, then by all means, forge ahead. (I’ll admit to cleaning out closets over the last few months). However, the messaging that an economic shutdown must translate into acquiring a new skill, taking up a new hobby, or hustling in a new way is problematic. When we should have been focused on taking care of ourselves and simply showing up to the best of our abilities, we were told to start hustling in a new way (Paul Ollinger, “Your Only Goal Is to Arrive”). To what extent do we fill our lives with activities and tasks we don’t necessarily enjoy, simply because we feel like we should?

When to Say “No”

The obsession with productivity and the constant need to be busy is physically and mentally harmful, because it overstimulates our body’s stress response systems and produces stress hormones (Lisa Quast, “Here’s Why You Should Stop Boasting About Always Being Busy”). In her book Live Big, Love Bigger: Getting Real with BBQ, Sweet Tea, and a Whole Lotta Jesus, popular blogger and author Kathryn Whitaker recounts the story of how the premature birth of her fifth child helped her reevaluate her priorities and ultimately rediscover happiness, authenticity, and freedom. At one point in the book, Whitaker discusses her family’s controversial and criticized decision to suspend all of their commitments: volunteering, school sports, etc. She advises using the following metric when deciding on activities to include in your life: “If it’s not a ‘hell yes,’ say ‘no’” (Whitaker 118).

Whitaker’s metric helped me realize how overcommitted I was and the number of activities I was doing simply because I felt like I should. Work happy hours? I’d really rather go to the gym. Networking events? Hard pass. The beauty of rediscovering the power of “no” (especially when the choice is made for you courtesy of a pandemic) is the ability to reorder and reprioritize your life. As Whitaker explains, saying “no” allows us to embrace “the purposeful act of being” and be fully present in those spaces where we say “hell yes” (118). Trimming activities in this way not only frees up a remarkable amount of time; it also allows us to reincorporate important activities which have fallen by the wayside. At least for me, these past few months have revealed the extent to which my busy schedule prevented me from (or at least was my excuse for) praying regularly. The first Sunday following our state shut-down, I turned to my husband, David, and said, “I feel so lazy — I haven’t gotten anything done today.” He looked at me quixotically and replied, “What do you mean? We did morning prayer, live-streamed Mass, and even went to (social-distance approved) Adoration. I think it’s been one of our best Sundays ever.” That realization stung.

The beauty of rediscovering the power of “no” is the ability to reorder and reprioritize your life.

Reprioritizing Prayer

Needless to say, that conversation was a wake-up call to my own complicity in hustle culture and the manner in which I used it to avoid stillness, silence, and prayer. From that point forward, I made a more concentrated effort to prioritize prayer. I moved my Magnificat to our coffee table, where it would be conveniently within reach every morning. David bought me an “Every Sacred Sunday” Mass journal that I started using as we live-streamed Mass in our living room. David started leading us in Evening and/or Night Prayer for the Liturgy of the Hours. There are plenty of days where we don’t meet these prayer goals; however, prioritizing them has brought me peace and comfort when the world outside my windows is anything but those things.

Now that our state has partially reopened, I find myself worrying that I’ll be sucked right back into the culture of busyness and putting prayer on the back burner. So I’ve been asking myself the following questions:

1. Which spiritual practices brought me the most peace during quarantine?
2. How can I restructure my day to prioritize prayer?
3. What are my “hell yes” activities? Which activities should I decline?
4. Is there anything else I should eliminate from or add to my life to grow closer to God?

Now that our state has partially reopened, I find myself worrying that I’ll be sucked right back into the culture of busyness and putting prayer on the back burner.

As we establish a new “normal” and create new routines, I encourage you to reflect upon this time in quarantine. See what lessons you can take from it as we move forward and reenter society. Rather than using this time as a covert opportunity to reengage with the culture of busyness, ask yourselves the above questions, and embrace your honest answers. Take a hard look at your spiritual life, and see where it needs to be nurtured. I truly believe that refocusing on being rather than doing will not only improve our well-being in these difficult times but also lead to a stronger relationship with God.

When first married, I resolved to be the best wife in the history of wifedom.

(I once moved a stranger’s full-size oak desk from their trash pile into my efficiency apartment using my own two arms and a Chevy Malibu, so I know something about the power of resolution.)

My pursuit of marital bliss imitated a model of Christian marriage that I read about in a book.

(Not the Bible.)

This book guaranteed its strategy could turn the worst of any marriage to gold through extreme selflessness.

(Nevermind that the selflessness was mandatory for wives in every circumstance, while an optional, but welcomed, surprise from husbands.)

So I was a newlywed on a mission, armed with the alchemy secret for perfect marriage, perfect family, and perfect salvation.

(And my new husband was the unfortunate victim.)

We tried so hard to fit the mold -- me, biting my tongue and feeling like a failed Christian mother as I worked my full-time office job with family health insurance. And my husband, filling out hundreds of job applications while holding down three part-time jobs on evenings and weekends, and watching our baby during the day.

I couldn’t speak that I was unhappy.

(The book said to always be happy.)

I couldn’t say that I actually liked my job and my coworkers.

(The book said I should be a stay-at-home mom.)

I couldn’t ask my husband why he had been home all day but not started the laundry.

(The book said keeping the house was my responsibility. The book said not to challenge my husband.)

Even as I criticize this book, I recognize I wasn’t just following a fringe book club. Based on my upbringing within American Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic -- a subculture filled with beautiful marriages and families -- I was convinced that the will of God for my family depended on our ability to achieve middle-class financial stability with a working father and a stay-at-home mother.

I was convinced that the will of God for my family depended on our ability to achieve middle-class financial stability with a working father and a stay-at-home mother.

This model might work for some families, but it sure wasn’t working for ours.

I became silently angry and bitter, blaming myself and postpartum depression as the cause of our family’s unhappiness, instead of a symptom of something bigger than all of us. I kept persevering in what I thought was the solution: more selflessness, more generosity, more prayer that God would make us like all those other families.

Oh, how we struggled to contort our non-traditional work schedules, skills, children’s needs, and finances into what we believed was a proper Christian family model.

I began to wonder if the burden of successful marriage really depended on our ability to fit into the prefab molds of white-collar working father, stay-at-home mom, and all the expectations therein.

In my searching, I found increasing common ground with the values of a movement that to this point, I’d viewed as unnecessarily loud, and frankly, unnecessary altogether. Feminism was for angry women in pointless marches and women who hated babies so much they wanted to legalize killing them.

And yet, I began to find kindred spirits among them, especially with pro-life feminists, who pursue solidarity among any who are marginalized or forgotten -- those who are sick, social minorities, disabled, poor, refugees, immigrants, unborn… In a country that values diversity, in a faith that values the dignity of every person, I saw strong people amplifying the voices of those who are weak in pro-life feminism.

Up to this point, I thought diversions from the American Christian cultural norm meant diversions from the Lord's will for us.

But as we embraced the more complicated reality of life, based on our family’s giftings, personalities, and needs, a peace that had evaded me for some time settled into our home. It confirmed that God is at work in unique ways.

In Salt of the Earth, Pope Benedict is asked by a reporter how many ways there are to God. “As many as there are people,” the pope responds.

As many as there are people.

When I read Pope Benedict's response in light of the new feminism referenced by Pope John Paul II, I heard: my salvation is not dependent on how well I can force myself into the mold of another woman's success story as wife or mother.

I need to pause, to give voice to the idea that this isn’t an exclusively feminist idea. Much of feminist thought is just common sense. Plenty of people who would never identify as “feminist” still experience the freedom and joy of living as their true selves in unique callings within a marriage relationship.

For some, this could look like a working father with banker’s hours and a stay-at-home mom who takes full charge of house and children.

For others, like St. Gianna, a mother might work outside the home.

For others, like Sts. Louis and Zelie, a married couple might run a family business together, balancing home and family into that work.

Some people’s choices might be limited by circumstance, like St. Helen, whose husband divorced her for a younger woman, or St. Gemma’s father, a failed businessman and widower forced to raise his children in poverty, alone, or St. Jochebed, the mother of Moses, who was pressured by the politics of her day to choose between the death of her child, or allowing her child to be raised completely outside the sacred culture of her people by the Pharaoh's daughter.

For most, like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton -- who ran a society for the poor, while raising five kids and adopting six more, ran a boarding house to support her children after her husband died, went bankrupt with a failed school, and eventually joined a religious order, once her children were older -- roles and responsibilities will be as variable as the variable seasons of life.

For me, it took months of eavesdropping online to Catholic feminist conversations to realize family roles are flexible, and furthermore, the Lord has not mandated, through scripture or any official Church teaching, one way for all families.

The Lord has not mandated, through scripture or any official Church teaching, one way for all families.

This realization gave my husband and I peace in making choices that are best for each other and best for our family, no longer living under the pressure to achieve somebody else’s story.

I no longer felt the need to follow a wife formula that worked for a well-intentioned author and her family. I could just be me.

And with that, I stopped expecting my husband to act the part of a formulaic husband following a mold that worked for other husbands. I just saw him for him. And oh, how I loved him.

To his credit, my husband made space for this newfound activism. He held a celebratory lunch date when I was invited to become a regular contributor for FemCatholic.

As I found my voice again, emerging from my attempted role as quiet wife, my husband responded to concerns I was finally willing to speak.

I felt overwhelmed by the needs of children 24/7. We carved out alone time for me each week. It turned out, he felt overwhelmed by family life too. We also carved out alone time for him each week.

My husband has always been present and involved with our kids. But I often tried to shelter him from the astounding load of all of them -- five kids, ages eight and younger -- at once. I was operating from the misconception that a father’s role is to enjoy his children, not experience them in totality at their worst. As I let my husband share more of the load, not only did caring for the kids become easier, it became more enjoyable. I liked my kids more.

I realize I’m blessed in having a husband who is committed as an active, daily presence in his kids’ lives. For some reason, our society -- Christian and other -- has assumed that children are women’s work, and it’s a shame, for our children, for our fathers, for our communities, and even for our mothers, among whom it’s commonly shared that months or years pass by without a break. That will burn out anyone, feminist or not.

Time with dads shouldn’t be “special.” It should be everyday and boring, from doctor’s appointments to meal preparation to wiping butts to helping with homework to taking out the trash together.

Thanks to our family’s non-traditional work schedules, and my husband’s present heart and mind, our kids have a dad who truly knows them and is an integral part of their daily development.

Realizing that “working mother” isn’t an oxymoron, I’ve picked up outside-the-home work again that gives me a mental outlet from diapers and laundry, and also gives our family a little more financial stability. (I recognize it is a privilege, impossible for many, that my work outside the home is optional.)

Our most recent Valentine’s Day was celebrated with a build-your-own-taco dinner, set up at our kitchen table, after the kids went to bed. Talk somehow turned to politics, and I poured myself a second glass of wine. I feared that getting tangled in the hopelessness of our current political stalemate -- and all the voiceless victims affected -- would ruin our romantic evening.

I know that feminism has opened my heart to see more people who are hurting around me. And I know it can be a real downer to be around someone who’s constantly thinking about those who are marginalized, easily overlooked or forgotten, born into less privilege and opportunity, those who never even make it to birth, for fear of the imperceivably difficult life that would follow.

Feminism has opened my heart to see more people who are hurting around me.

I know I’m not always a fun person to be around since becoming a Catholic feminist.

And yet, this past Valentine’s Day, my husband wrote me the most sincere, meaningful note. He set it on my desk, so it’d be the first thing I read when I set up for work the next morning.

The note referenced how he loved my heart for “what’s best for all people.” And it meant the world to me that he interpreted the sadness, activism, anger, and hope that have grown in my life, since becoming a feminist, as motivated by a desire for the good of all people.

My husband definitely wouldn’t call himself a “feminist.” The truth is, he doesn’t need to. His openness to our family caring, praying, and working toward the good for every person, regardless of gender, health, age, citizenship, religion, desirability, skill level, or income, and his involvement in raising our children to see and care also, means more than any label.

For me, I’m a committed Catholic feminist. It has changed me irreversibly. It has changed my marriage. It has changed our family.

And we’re going to change the world.