The Authentic Catholic Woman

By Genevieve Kineke and Christopher West

What does it mean to be a woman today? Is there a one-size-fits-all answer? How can a woman be truly Catholic and truly feminine, hard-working and creative, and yet be at peace within? How does she nurture life at home, at school, on the job or in the culture? In this profound yet practical guide, Genevieve Kineke invites women to consider the Church, the Bride of Christ, as the model for authentic Catholic womanhood. "The mission of women is inscribed in the mystery of the Church," Pope John Paul II said. The author explores facets of this mystery the Church as mother, bride, spouse and teacher, as sacramental, as font of wisdom, source of culture, and life-giving sanctuary and reveals how women mirror the Church in their core identity. Faithful to this authentic identity, women will play a critical role in rebuilding a civilization of love and life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781635824629

Genevieve Kineke

Genevieve converted to the faith as a young adult, and has written and spoken extensively on the topic of authentic femininity. For twelve years she edited a quarterly journal which highlighted the unfathomable riches that the Church offers to women. She has been widely published in periodicals including Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic World Report, and Inside the Vatican, and in 2008 she was asked to address the participants of a Vatican congress honouring the 20th anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem. Subsequently, she was asked by the Daughters of Saint Paul to compile meditations for a 25th anniversary edition of that Apostolic Letter. Widowed after 39 years of marriage, Genevieve is the mother of five and the grandmother of eight. She travels widely to give conferences to women on authentic femininity and forgiveness, and resides in New England.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Essence of Femininity

Among all of the challenges of our fallen world, in this generation the misunderstandings about the God-given gift of human sexuality are paramount, and correcting them is the preeminent battle of our day. Supermarket checkout stands, the offerings at the local mall and a sampling of the airwaves at any time of the day confirm the sad truth that sexual utilitarianism is flagrant, acceptable and well-packaged.

The human person—made in the image and likeness of God and capable of deep intimacy, heroic virtue and creative thought—is constantly reduced to his lowest appetites in the popular culture. He is stripped of most of his potential and asked to respond readily to his animal urges, tempted to see and use the people around him as conveniences and objects. While there is no possibility that this way of living can satisfy the human heart, its attractiveness has been systematically promoted to several generations with little significant opprobrium. The fallout has been massive. The loss of souls and the destruction of the family are the ultimate, unfortunate effects.

Few, if any of us, have escaped unharmed. Since the fall from grace of our first parents in the Garden, tension has been at the heart of human relationships, especially male-female relationships. With this tragic blueprint established and the original unity between man and woman breached, the ensuing lack of communion causes each to suffer the consequences in a unique way.

Adding more fuel to the fire in recent years are two rather unique things: the availability of certain medical technologies in the field of reproductive health and the predominance of a mass media that is efficient at spreading a variety of messages that weaken the family culture. Both of these elements have served to undermine the union between the conjugal act and its intended corollaries: lifelong bonding and procreation. With the dissolution of the natural link between the marital embrace and children, we see the inevitable destruction of the family unit and the disastrous consequences for women and children, who are more vulnerable without the stability of the family that God intended for their protection.

If we take a moment to consider the two-thousand-year history of the Church, which Jesus gave to us as custodian of eternal truths, it is evident that there have been constant misunderstandings, dilemmas and heresies to which her magisterium has had to respond with clarity and wisdom. In mission work and in exercising zeal for souls, the Church has always been proactive, stepping out with bold initiatives and inspired gestures of faith. But when it comes to the content of that faith, the Church is reactive, responding with prayer, great deliberation and a cohesive methodology of building on revealed truths and established dogma.

There have been many attacks—on Christ, the Trinity, the Blessed Mother, the hierarchy and the nature of the sacraments, to name some of the major areas of disagreement over the centuries. Each has brought about in its wake an ever-deepening awareness of God’s plan and its implications for His creatures.

It is no different in our present age, when the contemporary attack happens to be in response to the fact that, from the dawn of creation, male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). The Church’s response, which we have the privilege of witnessing, is a flowering of our understanding of human sexuality, the theology of the body, and the richness that it provides as a reflection of both the nature of God and the nature of man.

Pope John Paul II pioneered much of this deeply satisfying study. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to him for his generous response to the grace of God in providing for his flock critical and penetrating insights into this subject. But he is not alone in this new springtime of understanding. We are witnessing a growing treasury of wisdom concerning the nuptial foundations of all of creation, the nuptial meaning of the human body and the great joy that is inherent in our dignity as participants in God’s communion of love and redemption.

WOMAN’S ROLE IN THIS STRUGGLE

The implications for women are of great importance because, whether we like it or not, the choices we make are pivotal in the battle over the human heart. Throughout history, societies have tried myriad ways to construct familial and tribal patterns so as to build a larger, functioning society—but with varying degrees of justice toward the human person. Where these solutions do not apply the light of revealed truth and the effects of grace, it has proven impossible to build a stable and lasting civilization.

It is through families everywhere that culture is received, enriched and passed on from one generation to the next, primarily through the work of women. The woman is the very heart of civilization, and hence she—every woman—is the direct target of the enemies of a healthy family culture. The sexual revolution and the culture of death could not exist without the cooperation of women (through their willing adoption of ideologies contrary to the truth or through their unwilling corruption).

In reverse, the restoration of women to their proper dignity will have the critical effect of restoring the culture of life that our world so desperately needs. This was made clear at the Second Vatican Council in the closing message addressed to women:

As you know, the Church is proud to have glorified and liberated woman, and in the course of the centuries, in diversity of characters, to have brought into relief her basic equality with man. But the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect, and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the gospel can do much to aid mankind in not falling.¹

This restoration of authentic feminine dignity must have as its foundation a way of living for women that is based on certain truths about their vocation. If this foundation is based on externals, on a shallow understanding of woman’s worth, on false definitions of love or on humanly constructed stereotypes, women will not be able to stand against the lies and temptations that challenge them on a constant basis.

TEMPTATIONS

Indeed, there are three temptations that face all of us as we look at what it means to be women.

One is the tendency that we have to look backward, idealizing a particular bygone generation that seems to have avoided the excesses of the present age. Some who lament the corruption of the family look fondly at the era right after the Second World War, before children were prey to all sorts of modern influences, when divorces were few and parish life seemed strong. Some prefer to muse about the Victorian period, when mothers were queens in their homes and there was a rigorous moral code to which (at least externally) popular culture paid homage. There are even those with a broader grasp of history who idealize the medieval era or even the early centuries of the Church for their simplicity of life, certain freedoms of ministry for women and the Catholic culture established throughout Christendom.

Each age, it is true, has many strengths, and it is more than nostalgia that hearkens to a time that accepted without question the basic truths we are so weary of fighting for. Yet time is a continuum, and the temptation to slip backward is not good. We are personally called by our loving God to live in this particular generation—for better or worse. He offers us the graces to wage the war with sin in this place and under these circumstances. We have the potential to build the kingdom in our very midst. We must look squarely at the present and the future in order to live a vigorous and timely faith.

On the other hand, there is the temptation to abandon the past—the riches of the Church, the treasures of our culture and the wisdom of the ages—denying that anything that has gone before us can have any possible meaning for this generation. One might ask, for example, how could the teachings of the Church Fathers have any bearing on reproductive technologies when the early Christians had no grasp of our scientific techniques and extraordinary advances in medicine? Some, in fact, would see the challenges of our era as so unique that past models—especially of womanhood—are irrelevant and completely unhelpful in directing meaningful lives.

This tendency is as dangerous as the former. It overlooks the truths that endure throughout all generations and the timeless nature of man with his innate inclinations and needs. It robs the human person of the richness of experience, which confirms to the faithful that God is stronger than any lie, no matter how prevalent or well disguised.

The Holy Spirit always leads the Church, and what He has revealed to those who preceded us provides an essential and firm foundation for us and for those who will follow. Technology and innovation are often helpful, but they will not change either God or man. Often they suspend the need for people to face the most basic questions concerning life and death, of which the Church reminds us both in season and out.

Beyond these two extremes, the final danger for women is to create for themselves unrealistic images of piety that no mortal can imitate. Often, with an overdose of false humility and an entrenched stereotype of the perfect Catholic woman, a well-meaning woman will imagine that the ordinary shortcomings in her personal life prohibit her from achieving personal sanctity. Many wrongly assume that authentic femininity means a blissful marriage, abundant pious (and well-mannered) children, a husband to rival Saint Joseph, an orderly home, a variety of community and parish activities, an even temperament, ample time for spiritual and corporal works of mercy, cheerful generosity toward an extended family (also pious, of course) and a prayer life patterned on that of any number of saints or mystics. This sort of conjecture can indeed be a woman’s worst enemy.

Reason, human nature and original sin beg us to reconsider. Popular culture has significantly affected our understanding of holiness—and reality. Beautiful magazines, model homes and airbrushed media role models combine dangerously with our Calvinistic tendencies to link struggles and defects with God’s disfavor. The foundations of much of our history, especially in the United States, are colored by a misreading of grace and redemption, which offered clean living and the Protestant work ethic as the path to comfort and success.

Where does this leave the woman with an alcoholic husband, fallen-away children or a chronic illness that limits all of her visible contribution to society? Only the fullness of faith—with its understanding of the economy of grace—and a realistic paradigm can give us a path based on truth and authentic femininity.

THE ESSENCE OF LIVING THE FAITH

Before considering this paradigm, it would be best to establish the essence of living a holy Christian life—for men and women. In brief, our Christian commitments fall in three categories.

A faithful Catholic is loyal to the magisterium. This requires an ongoing formation that takes us beyond childhood catechesis and establishes an adult understanding of our faith. Assent to the basic outlines of the faith—such as the nature of the Trinity, the need for redemption, the sacraments and the hierarchy—leads to discernment of the perpetual struggle between our wayward will and the will of God, as revealed through Holy Scripture, an active prayer and sacramental life and loving service of neighbor.

There is a certain docility that allows us to accept what we have yet to understand. This trust is founded on the virtues of hope (recognizing what we have seen and learned as evidence of a loving God true to His promises) and faith (knowing God will meet us on this journey toward understanding and provide the graces we need to persevere).

Secondly, since our God is a God of love and the natural outcome of love is fecundity, a faithful Catholic must be open to life according to his or her state in life. This openness is based on the dignity of the human person (being created in freedom and endowed with a rational nature), on his or her circumstances and on the recognition that life is a continuum from conception until natural death. Hence there are abundant possibilities as to how this fruitfulness will play out in individual lives.

Finally, an authentic Catholic should have a personal relationship with the Blessed Mother. Mary is the first pilgrim who trod this path of faith, the first fruit of our redemption and the most perfect image of the Church. She is more than just the woman on the greeting cards at Christmastime: She is the mother of our Savior, the very mother Christ gave to us as one of His most beautiful gifts just before He died (see John 19:26–27). She is a real companion to each Catholic in his or her life of complexities and challenges. Though a Catholic can achieve heaven without ever saying a rosary, focusing exclusively on Christ, we can find a greater depth of understanding and relationship to God through study of and affection for Our Lady, our tainted nature’s solitary boast.²

AUTHENTIC WOMEN

With all of these foundations established for living out a rich faith, it remains for us to find the model for women, which will help us not only to be truly Catholic but also to be truly feminine and distinct from men. This requires a template with two important attributes: It must be universal (that is, pertaining to all women) and tangible enough to have firm meaning for every woman. It must highlight both the fundamental equality of the sexes and their complementarity without being limited culturally. It cannot exclude any corner of the globe; thus it must be able to separate essential characteristics from accidentals. Neither is it limited spiritually. Two thousand