Has feminism offered society a positive contribution? Or has it, as Carrie Gress says in her new book, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us, been so corrupt from its inception that it must be “slayed” as an “ideological dragon?” 

Is there such a thing as “authentic feminism,” or is the tree of “feminism,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” so rotten at its core that it must be cut down completely? 

Before I address those questions, let me begin by saying that the history and impact of feminism that Gress presents in her book, particularly the “second wave” of feminism that came forth in the 1960s as a push for women’s equality in the workplace and for reproductive rights, rang extremely true to my own experience.

Her account of that part of feminist history was, almost eerily, the telling of my family history. Gress accurately conveyed the story of my own mother morphing from a stay-at-home mama of 10 — a PTA president, Brownie leader, Boy Scout den mother, practicing Catholic and often daily communicant — into a political activist and feminist who worked long and hard to try to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed in Congress. 

By the age of 31, Mama had borne 10 children in 11 years. I was the sixth, born in 1960, five years before my youngest brother arrived and eight years before Pope St. Paul VI released the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Suffice it to say that, by 1970, my mother had left the Catholic Church, become agnostic and gone to work full time, ultimately becoming a high-powered lobbyist in Washington, D.C. She told me just before she voted for her personal friend Hillary Clinton in 2016, “I’ll always vote for a woman’s right to choose.” 

While I realize this is probably an extreme example of getting swept into the feminist movement, I believe my mother’s story represents the experience of many women who felt disappointed and abused by their own encounters with masculine authority in the home, the culture and the Church — and who felt called to do something about it. 

I can understand how Mama’s experience of an alcoholic father, a dominating husband and a priest she claimed “yelled at her” in the confessional for wanting to take birth-control pills, which she believed the Church was in the process of approving, fomented the ground of her feverish fight for women’s rights. 

I believe that she and other women in history were honestly seeking equity when they pushed back against what they experienced as injustice — and that we would be remiss not to affirm both the pain they felt and the many gains they fought for and won: the right to vote and the right to education, health care, property ownership and fairer treatment in the workplace, to name but a few. 

Having said that, and to the point of Gress’ book, it also seems that much of the “cure” that women concocted to address systemic inequality has become more deadly than the sickness they were trying to remedy. 

For example, when women try to both become and act more like men — which St. John Paul II called “imitating models of male domination” — they hurt not only women, but men, children, the family and society. During his pontificate, John Paul II repeatedly encouraged women to fight for equality and justice, but urged them simultaneously to resist the temptation toward “sameness with men,” or the impulse to gain power through violence or aggression. 

Tragically, obliterating their fertility through contraception, as well as the demand for the unlimited right to abortion, are but two examples of women operating under the misguided belief that they will escape suppression and violence through suppression and violence.

Are these outcomes the result of a clear trajectory in feminism that started with 18th- and 19th-century “first-wave feminists” such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Or did the more radicalized 20th-century “second-wave feminists” like Betty Friedan, Kate Millett and Gloria Steinem deviate from the good and worthy intentions of first-wave feminists? 

While Gress’ book puts forward a clear connection from first-wave feminism to the subsequent waves that followed, there is not a clear consensus on that matter among Catholic scholars.

However, what burned in my mind when I finished the book were other questions, including: What is the most helpful view of the feminist movements for Catholics today? More importantly, can a “new feminism” be built on the imperfect, and sometimes glaringly wrongheaded, foundation of the various waves of feminism that came before us?

For that answer, I dug for deeper insight into the teaching of Pope St. John Paul II. After all, he was the pope who called women to build “a new feminism” in his “Letter to Women,” which was written in anticipation of the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995. 

It was no secret that the conference was being held, in large part, to advance women’s rights to contraception and abortion around the world. The year of the conference, the Holy Father gave a series of addresses about women and also wrote several letters to women in the Church and to women who would be participating in the conference. A compendium of the Pope’s reflections and letters leading up to Beijing, along with key citations from several of his encyclicals, was released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1997 as a booklet entitled Pope John Paul II on the Genius of Women. I reread the short but incredibly powerful compendium last weekend. 

What I found in it was that the Holy Father repeatedly emphasized the “urgent need” for women to achieve “real equality” in all spheres of society today and heartily praised the efforts of women in the past who “devoted their lives to defending the dignity of womanhood by fighting for their basic social, economic, and political rights, demonstrating courageous initiative at a time when this was considered extremely inappropriate, the sign of a lack of femininity, and manifestation of exhibitionism, and even a sin!”

I noted that St. John Paul II never criticized either the women’s movement or what he called “the great process of liberation,” but, instead, admired the good various women’s movements have achieved, even if there were missteps along the way. 

The Pope repeated the below comment twice; once in his 1995 World Day of Peace message and again in his “Letter to Women”:

“The journey has been a difficult and complicated one and, at times, not without its share of mistakes. But it has been a substantially positive one, even if it is still unfinished due to the many obstacles, which, in various parts of the world, still prevent women from being acknowledged, respected and appreciated in their own special dignity.” (Emphasis added.)

What really got my attention was the Pope’s repeated and strong affirmations that women have indeed borne the brunt of societal exploitation, violence and systematic marginalization, often at the hands of men and, sadly, even the Church. He openly expressed regret for such wrongs and called on women to fight against all injustice, using especially what he called the “educational effect” of femininity and motherhood to humanize both men and society. 

What is the “educational effect” of femininity and motherhood, the “genius of women,” to which John Paul II referred? It is the gift of femininity and the call to motherhood that is “stamped” by God into every woman’s heart, mind and body because she is a woman. 

It is the call to nurture and communicate life, both spiritually and physically. It is the reality that women are inherently relational because their bodies are created to carry and bear another human being. And it is precisely these feminine gifts of love and relationality that will, as the Pope stated more than once, “force systems to be redesigned in a way which favors the process of humanization which mark the ‘civilization of love.’” This is the new feminism, in living color. 

St. John Paul II’s approach was not polemical; it was affirming, welcoming, hopeful and, where necessary, apologetic. He owned the wrongs done to women and simultaneously called women to live from their great dignity by being who they truly are. Was the saint familiar with the writing and thought of the various waves of feminists? I do not know. But what I do see is that his method was to bless the good that has taken place and call forth the great going forward, even as he acknowledged the problems that have occurred along the way. 

Can feminism be saved? I think John Paul II would say “Yes,” it already has. Many faith-filled Catholic women have both articulated and demonstrated how women can play an active, life-giving role in restoring our culture — and that by being both faithful to being women and faithful to Christ, they can and will bring forth not only the new feminism, but the New Evangelization of the Church and the world.

Judy Landrieu Klein, Ph.D., is an author, theologian and inspirational speaker who holds a license in clinical pastoral counseling. A mother of five, grandmother of 14 and great-grandmother of two, she works with her husband, Mark Gelis, Ph.D., at My Father’s House Counseling Services in Mandeville, Louisiana. Her books include Miracle Man and Mary’s Way: The Power of Entrusting Your Child to God.