You don’t often see a headline that is titled Feminists and Faith and then goes on to say.
She believes abortion is morally wrong, the advent of contraception did a disservice to women and the priesthood should be reserved for men only.
But 20-year-old Hilary Rowe doesn’t hesitate to call herself a feminist.
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The more I was learning about feminism, the more I was intrigued by it, but I really struggled with the life issues," said Rowe, a devout Catholic who began studying feminism when she arrived at CU two years ago. "Finding that there was a feminism that supports the dignity of human life from conception and the dignity of women really struck me."
Rowe is among a growing number of young Catholic women who prescribe to what they call a "new feminism," one that not only strives for equality between men and women but also emphasizes the "true dignity of women" as mothers and caregivers.
As a volunteer with the new Denver-based Catholic feminist group ENDOW (short for Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women) she recently helped launch a new study group on the CU campus for young Catholic women seeking a feminism that is more in line with their Catholic beliefs. The eight-member group is one of 20 ENDOW groups now meeting across the nation, and proponents of the movement anticipate it will continue to grow.
"Everyone is just hungry for it," said Rowe, who believes that, in many ways, the secular feminist movement has done a disservice to women. "Instead of looking at what is truly feminine and valuing that, it asks women to change into the qualities that we see as masculine. That never appealed to me."
It then goes on with the normal feminist tripe from the President of the local chapter of NOW of how listening to the Pope will never get women ahead in the world.
8 comments
This “new” feminism is actually “old” feminism. The early american feminists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, also saw abortion as the ultimate form of oppression of women. They fought to make it illegal in this country and in the states.
http://www.feministsforlife.org
Check out the website for Feminists for Life.
http://www.feministsforlife.org/
She is what I call a Mulieris Dignitatum feminist – a group to which I am proud to belong.
Feminist or Catholic. You can’t have both. I wonder how we can find out when she cracks and chooses one or the other.
Catholicism is very compatible with the philosophy of Feminists for Life.
Just like how JP2 talks about a True Humanism, there can surely be a “true feminism”
Thanks! We live near Boulder & my wife just graduated from grad school there. She’s thinking about going to the meetings. Thanks for getting the word out about this!!
Another thing that the early women’s movement fought for was laws that restricted the number of hours that women could work and the types of jobs they could work at. They also fought for a family wage so that women wouldn’t have to work and could stay at home to raise their children, which they considered to be the most important contribution to society that a woman could make. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, �motherhood is the most important of all the professions.” Children are, according to Catholic teaching, “the supreme gift of marriage.” I think that the “new feminists” run the risk of losing sight of this.
Also, I wonder how Catholic “new feminists” reconcile being truly open to life with pursuing a career. It just seems to me that if you have more than a child or two, those kids start cramping your style, if say, you planned to head back to the boardroom as soon as they went off to preschool. (Not to mention the adverse affects of full time daycare on the little ones.)