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– Aurelio Porfiri
One of the great questions of our time is the role of women. We are now looking at the struggle between a certain feminism (not all) and … men. What can be an answer to this? According to philosopher, author (and Mom) Carrie Gress, the solution to this problem is the Blessed Virgin Mary. She has devoted several books to this topic, one of them being The Anti-Mary Exposed. Rescuing the Culture From Toxic Femininity (TAN Books).
Can you tell us a little about your background?
I was raised in Oregon, one of the least churched states in the US. My father died when I was a teenager and I started asking a lot of questions about life and its meaning. From there, I was drawn more and more into the Catholic Church, but was poorly catechized. I also had a grandmother who was involved in New Age religion and introduced me to many aspects of it, such goddess worship and astrology. Looking back now, I can see why it was such a struggle for me to find the faith given these impediments, but God is faithful, and eventually reached me in a profound and clear way.
After college, I left Oregon and eventually received a doctorate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., while working both in DC and then in Rome as a journalist. I’m now a stay-at-home-mom to four children, writing whenever I can find the time.
“Anti–Mary”: why a title so shocking?
The original idea started several years ago when I was working on my book The Marian Option. When I considered the ideal woman in our own culture, it quickly became clear to me that the women we are told we need to become is actually not anything like Mary. In fact, this ideal woman and Mary are worlds apart – holding contrary values. Mary, long the model of all Christians, is known as Virgin and Mother, neither of which are popular goals in modern western culture.
The more I looked, the clearer it became that there seems to be a spirit, a demonic spirit, that has affected so much about the way women think and behave in the culture today, but revolving again around the female attributes of motherhood and virginity.
In the cover of your book we also find this definition: “toxic femininity.” What is that?
Toxic femininity is a reflection of the effort to make the vices of women – narcissism, rage, anxiety, effort for control and power – into virtues. These are the vices that are turning culture upside down, and yet all we generally hear about is how toxic masculinity is. Part of the radical feminist agenda has been to try erase gender differences. The rationale for vilifying what is properly masculine is try to get men to become more like women. It is an odd thing to see that while women are trying desperately to live like men, they are also telling men to not live like men.
What is the “long battle” you are referring to in part I?
The long battle refers to the conflict that we see bookending Scripture – first where after the Fall of Adam and Eve, God tells them that he will put enmity between The Woman and the serpent, the devil. We later see this same woman in Revelation, again doing battle with the devil. The battle is really over the hearts of humanity: her children and his.
History is comprised of this battle between faithful Judaism and Christianity, and when they are weak, like fast growing weeds, paganism and idol worship always enter back in. This is what we are witnessing again today. A recent study showed that there are more people practicing witchcraft in the US than Presbyterians, so it shouldn’t surprise us that the attributes of Our Lady are being suppressed.
Right at the beginning of your book you have said: “There is much confusion today about what it means to be a woman and even more confusion about how to treat them.” Why are you convinced of this?
For roughly 50 years, women have been told that in order to be happy, they need to behave like men (and not necessarily good men), and that our children are a major impediment to our happiness. Our happiness is premised in our careers. What is striking about this, however, is that no matter how close we come to reaching this ideal of female liberation, the levels of happiness for women are not rising. In fact, the opposite is true – women are incredibly unhappy today. All the telling metrics, such as rates of suicide, depression, substance abuse, and so on, paint a sad picture. But this mantra about our happiness and how to get it has been controlled, by and large, by an elite group of women (and men) for decades now. Meanwhile many women are soul searching and realizing that perhaps this ideal isn’t so ideal after all. Sadly, a lot of women, well past their childbearing age, are realizing this and are overwhelmed with grief and regret when they find themselves alone. This is not supposed to be part of the feminist dream, and at yet that is where the ideology has led so many.
But on top of all this confusion, men are left wondering how to respond to women. From things as basic as knowing if they should open doors for women, to the big questions of how engaged they should be in their partner’s abortion decision, have left them without firm footing. Men are not hardwired to fight women – we can see this even with Adam in the garden. Even before the fall, Adam would rather defy God than argue with Eve. Our culture pits men against women and vice versa, but good men end up with the short end of the stick because they simply don’t know how to respond to this chaos and confusion that envelops women (meanwhile, bad men enjoy the fruits of it and perpetuate it).
You support the idea that the Blessed Virgin Mary is an antidote for this toxic femininity. How?
Mary has been hailed as the most powerful woman in the world. Even the secular outlet National Geographic made this point. No woman has been more influential, more photographed, painted, and honored throughout human history. And yet, in our own age, she has been complete abandoned as outmoded, saccharine, unapproachable. Much of this, again, has to do with the anti-marian spirit that has made her seem foreign to us – it is the natural result of vilifying virginity and motherhood.
But we can see in Mary that she too like all women lives out the three different desires of the female heart. These desires are first, to be known and loved, second to do good, and third, to be beautiful. Of course, because of her purity, she lives them out perfectly, while the rest of us grasp at them in various ways. Mary knows to the core of her being that she is known and loved by God, the Father of all creation. She also knows that whatever she does is good, because it is in accord with the Father’s Will. And finally, she is beautiful because she reflects perfect beauty – the beauty of God. Her beauty isn’t vanity, or sensuality, but the beauty of a soul who “magnifies the Lord,” who helps us to see him through her goodness, beauty, and the truth of who she is.
Women have the capacity to grasp all of these things, to have their restless and discontent spirits wrapped in peace. The answer is very simple. It is Mary’s answer – yes, to the will of God. We like to complicate things, but all of these desires women have are met when we draw closer to God.
When we understand who Mary is, we can then see that our desires are not far from hers. That we want what she has. But when we draw closer to this spiritual mother, we are not just following her lead, but she in turn, reaches out to us as a true mother. She knows what it cost her Son on the Cross when he died for us – and she knows how precious we are to him.
It is, actually, something remarkable to consider just what the Catholic Church has to offer women, and yet because we have been told unceasingly that our happiness couldn’t possibly be there, women don’t even know to look at the Church. Meanwhile, research is showing again and again that practicing Catholic women – especially those married to practicing Catholic men – are incredibly happy and fulfilled.
Who are three women that you would present as good role models?
A lot more than three incredible examples come to mind. We can look back at any of the female saints and see them as examples to follow. These women are remarkably diverse, from different countries, background, life circumstances, but what all of them have in common is that they sought out the will of God. When we look for that and live it, then women have the capacity to do great good – to bear incredible fruit that benefits the whole world – and to become truly liberated. It is one of the many Christian paradoxes – to find freedom we must abandon our own will for the will of God. And in order to change the world, the secret is truly to find and follow God’s will for our lives. Like the woman at the well, everything else will just leave us thirsting for more.
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