(LifeSiteNews) — “Make women more visible in the Church,” urges the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, which rallies against two millennia of Church teaching by calling for women’s ordination.

“The barring of Catholic women from the priesthood isn’t preserving their ‘womanhood’ — it’s just sexist,” lamented Katie McMahon in a 2022 op-ed.

These cries for greater visibility and more “powerful” roles for women in the Church are nothing new. Arch-feminist Simone de Beauvoir once complained that “St. Paul enjoined self-effacement and discretion upon women” and that “they could take only a secondary place as participants in worship.”

But now high-ranking clergymen are increasingly echoing these calls for more prominent, powerful, and “important” Church roles for women. But this rallying cry comes not from Christ and the true Catholic faith but from the world.

The world complains that women’s lack of prominence in the Church is a sign they are seen as inferior; that women’s inability to become priests means the female sex is less valuable spiritually; and that women’s tendency to stay home as they mother their children is also a mark of their inferiority, as well as oppression. 

These are the obvious conclusions of those who think as the world does, since the height of honor for the worldly involves fame, prominence, and tangible accomplishments.

And yet, by far the greatest creature to ever grace this earth was a woman who lived shrouded in obscurity: the Virgin Mother of God. She is holier, more beloved by God, and by far more powerful than all men, angels, and demons. And yet she was not publicly known and honored, as far as we know, during her life. Of course, neither could she become a priest.

The hiddenness of women

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the key who unlocks the secrets of woman, one of which is that woman’s hidden role is her very honor and privilege. It is a crude mentality that sees hiddenness as a mark of inferiority. We can know this in part because, as Alice von Hildebrand points out, veils — the very purpose of which are to shroud, to hide — “symbolize both mystery and sacredness.” This is why the Holy Eucharist is veiled in the tabernacle.

We ordinarily do not flaunt precious objects before all but keep them set apart from the world. This is all the more the case when the preciousness is not readily understood or safeguarded by the random observer. Hence, our Lord advised us not to “throw pearls before swine.” It is why what is mysterious and shrouded intrigues the penetrating soul; it signifies something of special value. 

We can see that this quality pertains to women by considering , as von Hildebrand notes, that the ascendancy of creation peaked at woman: from inanimate matter, to plants, animals, man, and finally woman. She also points out that whereas Adam was created from dirt, Eve was created from “the body of a human person,” a sign not of superiority but “of special dignity and preciousness.” 

The reference to the “hiddenness” of woman is not meant in an absolute sense — it is not at all to say that women should not be seen in public or participate in public functions or cannot take leadership roles in particular spheres. 

Rather, it refers to a general quality or tendency manifested in the fact that her role as mother is based in the home; that she is veiled during the traditional liturgy; and even in the design and necessities of her body. Von Hildebrand points out that women’s intimate organs are hidden, writing, “This fact is rich in symbolism. What is hidden usually refers to something mysterious, something that should be protected from indiscreet looks.”

There are at least three reasons women are designed to live relatively hidden: 

1. It helps to safeguard her from sexual exploitation by immoral men, protecting her from “indiscreet looks,” and it also helps safeguard her purity from potential liaisons.
2. Hiddenness is more conducive to humility, a virtue to which women are privileged to be especially called. Although it is usually aspirational, as it is for men, it is aided by her physical weakness as well as her natural receptivity and is a special adornment to her spiritual beauty when practiced. A woman is most beautiful when she is humble.
3. Woman’s feminine gifts, which are very precious to God, are unappreciated precisely by the worldly. One of her most profound secrets, then, is that her hiddenness protects her from the crude gaze of the world, safeguarding her dignity (no pearls before swine). 

It is precisely because the relative hiddenness of woman is meant most of all to protect her that this tendency cannot be used as an excuse to demean or abuse women. That the worldly demean women is evidenced by the fact that non-Christian cultures, like those of China, India, and Muslim countries, not only treat women as inferior to men, but too often hold them in contempt (Men who are Christian in name, but not in spirit, are occasionally guilty of this too).

In China and India, female infanticide is common, and in India, it is more prevalent among the wealthier classes. In India, dominated byHinduism, wives are frequently burned alive for not providing a satisfactory dowry or for displeasing their husbands in any manner, and since women are of such low status, they are hesitant even to accuse their husbands of such a horrific crime. And surveys show that in Islam-dominated areas like Egypt, Palestine, and Tunisia, at least one out of three women is beaten by her husband. 

This is because, when viewed without supernatural vision, women — who are preoccupied with childbearing, physically weaker than men, less commanding, more sensitive, and more vulnerable — will naturally be perceived as of lower status than men. And to the worldly, low status means low value. 

The feminine value

While bringing up children, women cannot match men’s monetary value. They are not physically equipped to conquer lands and nations or defend nations in wars. If all a culture values is money, power, conquest, and the grasping of concrete things, then a woman is not worth much, except insofar as she competes with men in the workforce or bears male children. Ironically, modern Western feminism largely grows from this attitude of scorn toward women’s very feminine role, and women have thus been thrust into the workforce to compensate.

As von Hildebrand put it, “the glorification of strength and the denigration of weakness has become the shallow core of modern thought and feminist belief.” She attributes the distortion of the hierarchy of values, by which “male accomplishments became overvalued,” to original sin, which blinds us to the fact that feats and success, in and of themselves, “have no value in the light of eternity.”

Moreover, if according to a non-Christian worldview, a woman’s value is less than that of a man, then her exploitation or abuse — made easy by her physical vulnerability — can be justified. Hence, the frequent violence inflicted upon Muslim and Hindu women.

In non-Christian milieus like the secular West or secular Japan, which have taken pains not only to treat women as equals to men but to homogenize their roles, women are still devalued through sexual objectification. Women disturbingly embrace and affirm this tendency, and in our post-feminist era, tend to see their own value either  sexually, or in the degree to which they can imitate men, or both.

The value of woman as woman — we could say, the feminine value — is, then, another “secret.” That is, it is known only to those with spiritual eyes to see.

The gifts that especially, but not exclusively, belong to woman and largely comprise her feminine value include receptivity, gentleness, warmth, compassion and nurturing, wisdom, and love. These gifts must be cultivated to be truly embodied.

READ: Young men giving up on marriage: ‘Women aren’t women anymore’

Receptivity

The woman’s gift of receptivity is inscribed in her very body and role in the procreative act. At its highest, it embodies a virtuous posture in relation to God. Von Hildebrand calls receptivity “a religious category par excellence.” It requires humility and reverence. Receptivity means one acknowledges the “other” has something of value one can receive, whatever or whomever that may be — knowledge, wisdom, a glimmer of God Himself. Insofar as it is an act of reverence, receptivity can also be an act of love.

But just as it is with earth that receives a seed, true receptivity bears fruit. The greatest kind of receptivity — to God Himself — bears, most importantly, spiritual fruit: greater charity, greater humility, greater gratitude, etc. This helps explain why von Hildebrand called receptivity “the way to holiness.” She said the receptivity of women explains why the liturgy calls women the “pious sex.”

The receptive soul also has the advantage of seeing more clearly. Not just because it is more focused on understanding and less on imposing itself but because it is less likely to be constrained by preconceived ideas of a thing and so is more likely to see a thing as it is. By enabling one to see things from another’s point of view, it also fosters humility. The Blessed Mother of God embodied receptivity perfectly: “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19) 

Gentleness

Gentleness is something that, sadly, our feminist world scorns in women. It is seen as weakness, an impediment to getting what we want, an indication we are not “empowered” enough. This is evident from a brief perusal of modern film and television — far from being gentle, the overwhelmingly preferred American female character is hard, sarcastic, and abrasive. This is her way of showing she is “strong” and smart and should be taken seriously.

Yet gentleness is a perfection, one that Our Lord Himself embodied. It is the proper response to what is tender and delicate and, I would argue, to souls in general. In its own way, it fosters an even greater power than forcefulness: that of influence. To use a simple example, a request made gently will often move a person to comply willingly and change their point of view, whereas a blunt or harsh command causes the recipient to resist or comply only begrudgingly.

Similarly, a gentle correction has the potential to pierce and sensitize the conscience, whereas a harsh correction fosters resentment. 

As von Hildebrand points out, the power of influence is greater than the power of force, insofar as influence shapes hearts and minds, while force does not. 

The perfection of gentleness does not preclude the necessity of assertiveness at times, especially when needed in defense of others, in defense of a moral good, and even in defense of self. However, such assertiveness does not imply aggression or harshness.

Warmth, compassion, and nurturing

These qualities are critical for mothers to raise happy and healthy children, especially young ones, for whom warmth and nurturing is their lifeblood. But these traits also give life, encouragement, joy, and healing to all people of all ages. Our souls are all in need of these gifts, especially today, when people are so deeply wounded by secular modernity, and when forces conspire to isolate us from each other and the warmth of human interaction. These qualities are not luxuries, since we are not machines. 

At their core, warmth, compassion and nurturing are about taking care of others in both body and spirit. These gifts show a beautiful glimpse of the love of God, and they have always been part of the great power of active religious orders and missionaries. And to practice these gifts is often as simple as a word or a smile, which can even change the trajectory of a person’s life! As St. Thérèse of Lisieux said, “A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul.”

Wisdom

Von Hildebrand has pointed out that women especially, on the whole, possess wisdom. She attributes this to the fact that “the female nature is structurally geared to what is metaphysically higher,” that is, to people instead of things. This has been shown to be the case from infancy, and by the fact that although feminists urged women to work in a wide variety of fields, engineering and STEM fields remain overwhelmingly populated with men while social fields — teaching, social services, etc. — are dominated by women. 

Von Hildebrand points out that here “women are right.” That is, they have chosen what is infinitely higher: souls. And, indeed, one definition of wisdom is to know what is truly important, to know the hierarchy of value.

Where wisdom is defined by the power of discernment, women also have their own edge because of their grasp of the hierarchy of value, their grasp of human dynamics, their greater reliance on their intuition, and even at times on their emotions, which when rightly ordered are a metric of value. Examples of such value-driven emotion include joy at the conversion or baptism of a soul; sorrow at the loss of a friend; and anger over the sullied innocence of a child. 

Alice’s husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand, masterfully vindicated the importance of such emotions, which he calls “intentional,” in his book The Heart, pointing to Christ’s own displays of perfectly ordered emotion as a model. 

Father Chad Ripperger has likewise noted that the emotional nature of women is a perfection, not in the sense that women have perfectly ordered emotions but in the sense that emotions are actively willed by God as a part of the fullness of our faculties and mission. They even constitute one of the “spiritual centers” of man, according to Dietrich von Hildebrand. 

Men tend to a wisdom of their own that is aided by emotional detachment, which is also critical. As postlapsarian women, our emotions are subject to disorder and defects, and so we more or less need a more detached viewpoint for guidance. But the kind of wisdom to which both men and women tend are important. 

Love

The most precious “secret” of woman is the value of her capacity for love, aided by her heart, which Alice von Hildebrand says “symbolizes the whole person” and is “where love resides.”

While the seat of love is in the will — and Dietrich von Hildebrand emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between emotions, or affectivity, and the will — the will is interconnected with the heart. “Let us admit that in man there are three spiritual centers — intellect, will and heart — and that they are ordained to cooperate with and fecundate one another,” Dietrich writes. 

If we reflect upon this, we can see how these relationships are indeed bidirectional. Emotions often drive our will (e.g., we delight in the company of a person and thus will a relationship with them); and acts of the will can in turn intensify our emotions  e.g., we do a service for someone and feel more warmly toward them as a result.)

This means that a more intense emotional life, something women are more predisposed to on average, will tend to strengthen not just love in the sense of affectivity, but love as an act of the will. I believe this is another key reason the liturgy calls women the “pious sex.” Our affections can drive us to adoration of God and to acts of love toward Him, which women most vividly exemplify in the Gospels.

But the heart also has importance all on its own. While morally speaking, the true self is found in the will, in the realm of human love, the heart is “more the real self of the person than his intellect or will,” according to Dietrich von Hildebrand. He cites as evidence of this the fact that if we love someone, we are not satisfied if that person merely wills to love us but only feel that we possess his true self if we possess the love of his heart. He further points out that higher-level emotions such as love, which are responses to value, are gifts from God, and become our “own” only when we sanction them with our will.

The Gospels describe beautiful examples of women’s tender gestures of love toward Jesus Christ that are an outpouring of their heart, unparalleled by men in the Gospels except for, perhaps, St. John the Beloved:

• A sinful woman wipes Christ’s feet with her tears and hair and anoints his feet with costly ointment
• Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
• Women stay with Christ at the foot of the cross

Notice that in Matthew’s account, when the woman at Bethany pours precious ointment upon Christ’s head, Christ praises her gesture as “beautiful,” while his disciples complain that the costly ointment was being wasted. In her overflow of tenderness, gratitude, and adoration, she lavishes her love on Christ, so to speak, with a gesture that honors, in the best way she knows how, His immeasurable value as God-man.

As St. Thérèse of Lisieux said, “Our Lord does not look so much on the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.” This is what is valuable in the sight of God. This love is centered in the will, but it also involves a disposition of the heart. All this is confirmed by Scripture, which declares:

“If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing. 

Charity is patient, is kind: charity envies not, deals not perversely; is not puffed up; Is not ambitious, seeks not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil; Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices with the truth; Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:3-7)

Through great love, St. Thérèse became a great saint, even without performing deeds considered great in and of themselves:

Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.

Prayers and sacrifices when done with love — even when “little” — are powerful to save souls. They can help move a soul to small steps towards God, or even to total conversion, with the help of the sacraments, or in extraordinary cases even without the sacraments. St. Thérèse has written of how, when she learned of an impenitent murderer on death row named Henri Pranzini, she began “a very rigorous fast and vigil for his soul”:

“The day after his execution I hastily opened the paper…and what did I see? Tears betrayed my emotion; I was obliged to run out of the room. Pranzini had mounted the scaffold without confessing or receiving absolution, and… turned round, seized the crucifix which the Priest was offering to him, and kissed Our Lord’s Sacred Wounds three times… I had obtained the sign I asked for, and to me it was especially sweet. Was it not when I saw the Precious Blood flowing from the Wounds of Jesus that the thirst for souls first took possession of me? … My prayer was granted to the letter.”

All this—especially St. Thérèse’s story—considered, it is clear that a woman need not be envious of men, even the priest — though his own vocation is unfathomably sacred, precious, and sublime. We do not need to minimize the great privilege of the priest in the slightest to esteem the precious privilege a woman has to love greatly, and to do so in a manner hidden to the world, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the Blessed Mother herself did.

READ: Statue of black woman in Times Square reflects progressive reimagining of heroism