If you're a real Catholic (to those baptized liberals out there, a "real Catholic" is one who is faithful to the Magisterium), this book is a must-read to get an understanding of just who is behind the bad catechesis, bad liturgy, and "pot-stirring" that besiege our Church. In chapters with titles such as "From Convent to Coven" (no exaggeration!) to "Daughters of Lilith," Steichen describes the mindset and agenda of those women who are, outside of mere sentiment, in no way "Catholic" but who retain positions of "authority" in the Church, refusing to leave it in spite of their hatred for it and/or total disagreement with it. These are the women who teach in Catholic schools, attend Women's Ordination Conferences, act as vocations directors, and push for "inclusive language". These are the women who conduct doctrinally foul RCIA classes and invade the sanctuaries of our parishes. You know them -- they are so busy "dialoguing," "celebrating," "centering," and such that they haven't taken the time to look around and realize they're in the wrong Church. If only America's Bishops would read this book and set them straight about that...
Donna Steichen, you've done your job. Let's just hope the Bishops will do theirs!
Donna Steichen has done a tremendous service to faithful Catholics everywhere in writing this book...Her objective in writing this book isn't to do an in-depth study of feminism for its own sake. Instead, she focuses on one aspect of feminism - Catholic feminism - and the damage that this ideology has done to traditional Catholicism (especially in the United States) and how it has been allowed to fluorish unchecked by those who have been entrusted with the safe-keeping of the Church's Magisterial teachings. ...as I read, there were simply too many echoes of my own experiences with the parish I attended for those echoes to be merely coincidental. Steichen describes in chilling detail how the various dissenting groups are often connected with one another and the influence that Catholic feminism exerts on the ideologies and activities of these groups. Most appalling is the explanation of how so many Catholic nuns - long a symbol of piety and obedience to the Church - have been converted to feminist ideology and shunned their vows of obedience as a perceived "symbol of patriarchal oppression." And yet these nuns (who by their actions clearly show that they are not operating in good faith) not only remain in the Church, but have exploited the trust and the awe in which they are held by faithful Catholics - who still see them as pious and obedient to the Church - and used it to turn many of those faithful away from the Church's teachings without their ever realizing it. And for those who see this as some kind of conspiracy theory that Steichen has spun out of her imagination, it should be noted that she doesn't simply clump all the stereotypes together; instead, she goes to painstaking efforts to separate the nuns, clergy, and laity who have remained loyal to the Church from those who have been seduced by Catholic feminist ideology, and it is the latter group that she focuses on in her book. As Steichen's title suggests, their actions truly are born out of an ungodly rage!
