March 8th is International Women’s Day – which I am at least glad to read they have not (yet?) modified to ‘Womxn’s’ Day – is an international disaster. Born at the dawn of the twentieth century, the day has its roots in the atheistic philosophy of Communism, which has amongst its many evil intents not just the destruction of the Catholic Church – and any religion that opposes complete subjugation of man to the state – but also the annihilation of the family. Hence, as Pope Pius XI pointed out in his 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris, the Communists also wanted to ensure that women were ‘emancipated’ from the home – from that noble task of raising and educating children – so they could join the ‘workforce’, thus atomizing the family. Of course, the bereft children would then all be raised by the State, and sexualized and corrupted early, so they could never return to any semblance of stable family – to say nothing of Christian – life, nor ever begin and raise their own families. The destruction would be complete at the very root.
Here is the Pope’s summary:
Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man’s relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement.
Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.
Well, they’ve mostly succeeded in that. But we may hope not irrevocably, for the tide is slowly turning.
The first official women’s day was celebrated at the instigation of the Socialist Party in New York, in 1909, and Vladimir Lenin, after the revolution a decade later, made it an official holiday in Soviet Russia. Is it a coincidence that the same Russia soon had the highest abortion rates in the world, for every baby fortunate enough to be born, two were cut to pieces in the womb. Russia, like most other nations, continues in its downward demographic spiral, as most women, infected with the communistic spiritual virus to some degree, now see motherhood and ‘homemaking’ as sheer drudgery. It’s all about a ‘career’, which in general means enslaving oneself to some sort of career track, often in some sort of governmental or institutional employ.
And this, before we get to the transvaluing evils of transgenderism, which overall just denies the very idea of what it means to be a ‘woman’.
There are far better ways to honour the fairer half of the human race than banging drums, hollering and protesting and berating the bête noir of ‘patriarchy’. All women, created in God’s image, in whatever path they follow, are called to be ‘mothers’ in some way; and the same with men, who are meant to fulfil a fatherly role. For the family – not individual men and women – is the foundational and primordial society, in which happiness, freedom and fulfilment are truly found, without which the rest of society quite simply falls to pieces. We need to rediscover romance, chivalry and the love of home, hearth and children.
Providential, that Our Lady appeared at Fatima just after the onset of the Bolshevik revolution, warning that Russia would spread the errors of Communism throughout the world, not least her errors about women and the family.
Pope Saint John Paul’s masterly Mulieris Dignitatem offers a true glimpse into the dignity of women, and perhaps a women’s day could be held to celebrate its promulgation on the solemnity of the Assumption in the Marian year of 1987. As he put it, as the family goes – which in a very deep sense means as women go – so goes society. And all too many women – and I don’t exclude the men – are sadly going the wrong way.
May the truth truly set them, and all of us, free.