Radical feminism has left women hopeless by pushing out the voices women need to hear the most.
By Carrie Gress
Two weeks after my 16th birthday, my father passed away. After nine months of dramatic decline from pancreatic cancer, he died surrounded by family.
I remember our last conversation. “Will you stay home from school?” he asked. “No,” was my reply. I explained that I needed to go to school because if I didn’t go, my friends would be mad at me. One of our teachers made a deal that if we all showed up for class, there would be no test. It was a sign of our estrangement in those adolescent years when I looked at him more as an object of rebellion than a source of love.
I left for school and then he slipped into a coma later that day and didn’t speak another word on earth. But he was not silent. Two days before his death, a priest came to give him last rites. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest started. Like a scene from Brideshead Revisited, my father lifted his thin, frail, veiny hand and blessed himself. It was enough for all of us present to know that the seal of faith was deeply embedded in him — that no matter what was happening to his tumor-ridden body, his soul was in the right place.
For many years, however, I remained stuck as that adolescent girl who rejected her father’s dying wish. Well into my 30s, while living in Rome, through prayer and a wonderful spiritual director, I faced my own failures, and I prayed to heal this wound in my heart.