The Greatest Promoter of Women’s Dignity: The Catholic Church

The prevailing cultural belief is that the Catholic Church has been oppressive (or at the very least held back) women throughout history. This is simply not true and below are 8 ways that the Catholic Church has been the greatest promoter of women’s dignity throughout history.

1. The Catholic Church campaigned against polygamy which has always favored men over women. In polygamy, it was always men that had multiple wives and not women that had multiple husbands.

2. Due to the Church’s understanding of marriage, early church law required that the girl must freely give her consent to any marriage proposal. This meant that girls couldn’t just be bargained away by a family and that girls from Christian families were much less likely than those from pagan families to be married before 13 years old.

3. The Church defined adultery as not only a wife’s unfaithfulness to her husband but also a husband’s unfaithfulness to his wife. Pagan Romans defined adultery only as a wife's unfaithfulness to her husband.

4. Right from the beginning the Church elevated women as well as men to the highest rank in the Church, that of being a canonized saint. Flannery O’Connor once stated, “The Church would as soon canonize a woman as a man. And I suppose has done more than any other force in history to free women.”

5. Many of the early Christian male leaders had no problem having a woman as their spiritual director, leading them in their spiritual lives. Having a woman lead a man in the most important part of their lives would have been unheard of in the ancient world.

6. When the Church started the idea of educating children for free, women were able to go just as men were. Many women were just as educated as men due to the Church.

7. It was widespread in medieval Catholic France for women to vote in elections.

8. The Church’s reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary has been consistent and shocking to people throughout history, even to this day. The Church declared it was a woman, Eve, not a man, Adam, that was the crown of creation. The Church has always held up a woman, Mary, as the model of a Christian disciple.

To see more details on this, check out the book Heroism and Genius by William Slattery.