“Are you a feminist?”
The no-brainer answer for the average American woman would be a resounding “yes.” This answer was mine too, until I realized that a simple yes wasn’t a decision to support women but a plea of ignorance.
In Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t Be Fused with Christianity, author Carrie Gress presents a well-researched argument stating that feminism has become an alternate religion responsible for most of the problems in today’s culture. Gress, who earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, demystifies, shocks, and educates about the history of feminism and how it directly opposes Catholicism.
Carrie Gress: Queen of the footnote and the ultimate hot take
Having read Gress’ The Anti-Mary Exposed and The End of Woman: How Smashing The Patriarchy Destroyed Us, I was primed for her academic dissertation in Something Wicked. While you don’t need to read Gress’ books in any specific order, both of these titles are great for further reading either before, during, or after Something Wicked. This book is not for the faint of heart but for one searching for real answers and clarity.
To those of us who pride ourselves on supporting women, Gress’ title seems extreme. Can’t the “good” parts of feminism be salvaged and repurposed? Part of my faith reversion came through female mentorship provided by Edith Stein (also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), and Pope John Paul II’s writings on women. However, Gress supports all her theories with intense research and copious articles and historical documents in her footnotes that are hard to dispute.
I highly recommend this book if you do consider yourself a feminist, are skeptical about the movement's origins, or are concerned about the state of our country and the culture war. This book is the insider’s track and academic equivalent of a female Orwellian warning.
How feminism poisoned the cultural well
Declining birth and marriage rates, gender wars, hookup culture, abortion, infanticide, the advent of the pill, the emasculation of men, and the overconsumption of porn all can be attributed to the feminist movement. Gress masterfully weaves history together with our reality.
She quotes and cross references the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary and Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, Margaret Sanger, and more. All these first-wave feminists were entrenched in the occult, practiced seances and free love, wanted to erase all differences between the genders, advocated for eugenics, and promoted Marxist ideology arguing freedom comes from rational thinking and victimhood. In brief, participants in the early conceptions of feminism were Satanists and wanted to eradicate God from society.
The early first-wave feminists were not just fighting for gender equality or the right to vote, they were organized radicals who wanted today’s modern reality.
Skeptical? Check Gress’ footnotes. The receipts track.
What about JP2, Edith Stein, the female doctors of the Church, and nuns?
Gress warns about this oxymoron; the sect of “Catholic feminism.” She posits that Catholics cannot be feminists because major tenets of feminism are participating in the occult and wanting to change the God-created supernatural order.
Practicing Catholics believe that a woman's fertility and motherhood are the unique gifts that make women female! Rather than seeing these gifts as the roadmap to female brilliance and success, feminists see them as reasons for victim status and mere obstacles to equality with men.
Gress offers alternative role models like the female doctors of the Church, Hannah More, Edith Stein, and Pope John Paul II as figures who uplift women. I’ll be so excited when Carrie Gress herself gets added to this list someday for her accomplishments.
Gress reminds readers that Catholicism has never been about oppressing women or oppressing one’s mind, like most first-wavers believed. Jesus treated women with dignity and respect always, no matter what her past looked like. Remember the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery? Or how God elevated a humble Virgin to become the Queen of Heaven and the new Ark of the Covenant?
The Catholic view of the patriarchy and the women who cried wolf
A rally cry from feminists is “Fight the patriarchy.” Nobody is excusing the serious failures and corruption that patriarchal structures have made in world history, but Gress provides an edifying description of what authentic patriarchy should look like.
Patriarchy comes from the root “pater” or father. Fatherhood is the base that provides order, stability, and protection mirroring God the Father. The goal is not to dominate a woman’s strength or inhibit her talents but to provide and protect in order to create thriving families and societies.
A brave and inspiring read
Something Wicked is the pinnacle of Gress’ body of work exposing feminism’s dark history. Buy it. Read it. You won’t regret it.