The Church has more than 2000 years of wisdom to draw upon and doesn’t actually need a twisted ideology propped up by lies to help it lead women to happy and healthy lives. It was truly Christ, the Church, and our Lady who brought to light the equal dignity women have to men. This was not a gift of feminism. One only has to look at what is happening to women in Afghanistan to see how very different things could be. Or to consider the erasure of womanhood in our own culture, leaving most stumped when asked what it means to be a woman.

More-satisfying ways to live do exist, ways where dignity is honored, health is truly valued, body parts aren’t ignored or rendered useless, and relationships — which are at the true heart of most women — aren’t fleeting or shallow, useful or convenient, but deep, abiding, and life-giving. If only we could find a way to tell this to every woman.

What we have forgotten is the idea of fruitfulness. It is no accident that fruitfulness is now missing on the spiritual level. It has been all but abandoned by the culture and even the faithful. With some exceptions, Catholic couples generally contracept and abort right along with the rest of the population. But fruitfulness isn’t just about having babies. Fruitfulness is about leading souls to God, seeing a manifestation of God’s grace here on earth and, ultimately, leading souls home to heaven.

It is a curious thing that whenever Christianity recedes, paganism ascends. It is like a jungle that knows no boundaries, pushing its way into where ever there is a vacuum created by the absence of the Truth. Our new paganism has steady characteristics that took root in the 1960s.

Fly-over women are the moms and daughters and wives and sisters and friends the media overlooks because they are religious or frumpy or don’t have sexy day jobs. They are considered uneducated doormats. Their bodies are often tired, hair not always perfectly coiffed, and nails rarely manicured. Their homes may not be camera-ready, their meals probably aren’t gourmet, and talking points aren’t ready on their tongues. But mostly, the issue is that they don’t believe in abortion and they do believe in the sanctity of marriage.

The project of the 20th and now the 21st century has been to chart a different course. We all would escape the crude and course, the rancid and sour, and forestall the instant turns of fortunes. The unspoken but very real goal has been to make life “tidy, elegant, and long.” It seems a noble goal. The problem is that the pirates are still with us. They’re still stalking the children, still selling them (or their body parts) into a new kind of slavery.

We have dismissed womanhood and all its attending realities, like having children and raising them. Meanwhile, we’ve encouraged women to become so men-like that we can’t tell the difference anymore. If we can, we aren’t supposed to say that part out loud. We have scarcely any idea what true womanhood or manhood is anymore.

Our recent confusion didn’t start with what was beautiful, but over questions about function and what something is. If we spend decades telling women that the feminine is a useless construct, then it should come as no surprise that the masculine form is idealized. If we spend years denying the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and trying to make our churches into happy meeting-places where no one ever sins, then the building will reflect that too. We have been trying to rip the heart and soul out of these vital vessels and finding, regretfully, that the heart and soul of civilization has been ripped out along with them.

But what feminism forgets, like all rebellious adolescents, is that relationships are essential. Without them, there can be no flourishing. Women can never be happy without healthy relationships with fathers, husbands, children — and not just the kind that conform to her will, but that are in accord with human nature. Feminism has pushed out the voices we need to hear the most, silencing and disqualifying their importance in our lives. The voice of our fathers, who offer confidence and encouragement. The voice of our husbands, who offer protection, assistance and admiration. The voice of our priests — and through them, the voice of Jesus Christ — who offer absolution and wisdom. The voice of all of those who give us their unconditional love.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has filled our social media feeds with images of the iconic Supreme Court Justice. Scrolling through her photos was a reminder that no one has worn black robes with such style and savvy. The second woman to be a Supreme Court justice exuded a sense of quiet confidence, deep intelligence, and an unmistakable panache. But what if there was a crack in RBG’s thought? What if, despite all the trappings, she missed something fundamental?

What if women start looking for answers beyond themselves and to start asking instead, What is God’s will? We have plenty of evidence of what it looks like when we flout His will. But history also shows that a return to obedience is powerful. Mary’s obedience produced more fruit than Eve’s disobedience.

As talking heads scramble to both help explain and remedy this situation, one question hasn’t been addressed: Are we doing the messaging wrong when it comes to educating women about the Catholic faith? Reaching Catholic women is a vital issue. As the heart of the family, what the mother values will largely imprint itself on the whole family. Satan knew of this influence when he targeted Eve and the pattern has repeated itself ever since. If you get the women, you get everyone.

What is interesting about this rise in the domestic arts is that it is not necessarily springing from an equal rise in our appreciation of homemaking. This can be interpreted in different ways. Maybe we are inadvertently seeking the comfort represented in caring for home, perhaps because that comfort was denied to us. Maybe it is just an acknowledgement that convenience has come with a cost.

What is missing and from what have we cut ourselves off? As we march forward into a new progressive future of our own making, what are we jettisoning along the way? From churches to families, from our historical and literary patrimony in the humanities, to our common mores — more and more often, we have been saying “no.” For many not raised with any connection to the richness of such things, the “no” is not of protest, but of apathy. It is a shrug, a resounding “meh” to things the depths of which we have not penetrated, a rejection without an understanding what it is we reject.

The idea for my book The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity (TAN, 2019) first started when I looked at the elite women of our culture and compared them to Our Lady. The Virgin Mother is the woman who has rightfully been called “the most powerful woman in the world,” even by National Geographic. And yet the elite women who hold so much sway over our culture have very little in common with Mary. These elite women – whom I’ve come to call the matriarchy – control much of the way women in America think today. Their influence saturates journalism, academia, Hollywood, politics, and the fashion industry.