On Christian Influencer Culture, Femininity, and Catholic Feminism
Letter from Corynne Staresinic
Corynne as a teen.
This letter is a part of The Catholic Woman’s letter collection For the New Feminism. Each piece featured in this series will explore the different ways in which Catholic women are making sense of what it means to be a woman in light of her lived experiences and in light of the Catholic Church. The intent of this series is to explore that “‘new feminism’” St. John Paul II called women to cultivate. To learn more about what such a feminism means and could look like, check out our free video program Cultivating Catholic Feminism.
Y
ears ago on a Sunday morning in suburban Ohio, I stood in a dimly lit auditorium. The room was filled with grown adults, some laughing and falling to the floor, others waving flags, and many speaking in tongues I did not know. A worship band that shared the stage and spotlight with a white cross and an American flag had been playing for hours. I stood in the crowd, a skinny and angsty teenager, swaying uncomfortably back and forth, waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be told my fate.
A woman I recognized as one of the anointed ones glided through the crowd, backlit by the stage spotlight, while I anxiously waited for her to approach me, for her to tell me God’s will for my life.
Would I become the famous singer I had been told that I was called to be?
Would I prosper before the world?
Would I show forth God’s glory? Or would I fail and become something smaller?
The Glory
At the bright young age of 15 years old, I hoped I was destined to be great. I wanted that self-made life, one of independence and one imbued with prosperity – because the prosperous were the ones that God loved the most. And it was through those Loved Ones that others would truly come to know him, and save the culture from itself and the country from those who sought to destroy it.
I wanted to be one of the Loved Ones: a woman of God’s prosperity and power and, as any given 15-year-old Christian teen in the early 2000s might have been, I was obsessed with wielding whatever power I did have to attract a husband-to-be. So I religiously studied books like RU Dateable and Guys Are Waffles, Girls Are Spaghetti, underlining and memorizing passages, especially those passages that revealed the secrets of being an attractive young woman.
From these texts, as trite and as deeply troubling as they are in retrospect, I internalized the message that charm, mystery, and carefreeness were the markers of authentic womanhood that would ultimately lead to feminine fulfillment – markers which I constantly failed to live up to, with my inability to keep my mouth shut and my social anxiety, though I certainly had tried. But I truly believed that the obtainment of these ends would lead me to a life of prosperity and glory. I would become a woman who could attract those who were lost and lead them back to Christ, by virtue of my beauty and successes. So throughout my teenage years, I chose to be on the stage, despite experiencing extreme stress at times. I lead worship at my youth group, performed as a musician at local coffee shops, and spoke in front of crowds as an MC for a concert venue. I ultimately felt like this was a part of the fulfillment of my call as a Christian woman.
Because I internalized the message told by those well praised, male Evangelical writers that fulfilled femininity is merely a matter of marketability particularly to the male sex, and because I conflated my womanhood with unachievable ends, I absolutely resented being a woman.
I wanted to be in complete control of my body to make it “charming.” My body which, much to my embarrassment, bled every month and gave me routine acne. I swore off being a mother. The idea of giving birth seemed impossible to me, otherworldly and frankly, disgusting. It would work against that greater goal of mystery and beauty. After watching a video of a woman giving birth in my high school health class (which I imagine was intended to scare us into abstinence), and being forced to talk about it in small groups, I announced that if I were to ever, somehow, accidentally, one-day “fall pregnant,” I would never allow my husband to be in the room I gave birth in. I was certain that being in a physical state such as giving birth would make me the least desirable creature in the world. And I couldn’t lose that because being desirable meant garnering more influence over others, which I would use for Christ, of course. I wanted to use it to accumulate power, not to give it up and create other creatures who would be utterly dependent.
Independence and prosperity — through beauty, mystery, and charm — all for the glory of God. Through me, but back to him, or so I had imagined.
Those were my prospects, as I stood there in that noisy auditorium. Eventually, the prophetess approached me. Holding her hand over my forehead with her eyes closed, she spoke in one of those unknown languages and after a moment, told me she had heard the voice of God. He had made it known to her that I was to be a spokesperson of some sort. My life was to be spent in the spotlight.
This didn’t necessarily exclude the possibility of a calling to become a famous singer, I assured myself. But now I knew I was anointed, blessed, and called by God to prosper. I would make God’s glory known to all with my blonde hair and blue eyes and white skin and straight teeth, on televisions and billboards across America. He wanted to use me to do great things. My womanhood (or what I thought it meant then) for his glory.
“Because I internalized the message told by those well praised, male Evangelical leaders that fulfilled femininity is merely a matter of marketability particularly to the male sex, and because I conflated my womanhood with unachievable ends, I absolutely resented being a woman.”
Photo by Inga Seliverstova
The Realm of the Real
I would spend the years ahead aspiring to, wrestling with, and ultimately failing to fulfill that prophecy I received on that summer day in my suburban church. I ended up instead spending my young adult years deciphering the image of God hidden within that prophecy.
And it was amidst that bizarre evangelical landscape that Catholicism — Christ, really — abruptly stole the stage.
As the spiritual stirring started, and I was beckoned unexpectedly toward Catholicism, I stumbled out of the bright spotlight and off of the sumptuous stage I had been told I was to devote my life to and found myself staggering into the dark, mysterious, wooded realm of the real. The realm of Christianity.
The sparkling, spellbound stage and its transfixed audience now stood behind me, looking small to the great forested realm that it dwelt within. The realm where the white, plastic cross of my former church looked like a cartoon to the wet, red wooden cross with my bloodied, broken savior nailed to it. He hung somewhere more deeply in the wood, hidden from me still, as my eyes were adjusting from the years-long gleam of the spotlight. It would be several years until I encountered him though. I studied the maps drawn by those who had walked the path before me when one day, I finally spotted the trail of blood myself.
Six and a half years later, I was newly married and newly graduated from college. I had just walked through the door of our apartment after coffee with an acquaintance. I was texting a friend or my beloved husband Nick – I don’t remember – in one hand while changing my clothes when I looked down and saw it. The blood. There wasn’t much of it, but I was 11 weeks along in a surprise pregnancy. I sat down and began to shake.
Within six hours, an emergency trip to the hospital confirmed that there was no heartbeat. Our first child, Alex, was dead. We waited for the miscarriage to finish on its own, but after three weeks, nothing had progressed. Surgery was scheduled and I waited and went, reckoning once again with the course of events, searching for the God who stood somewhere amidst the mess.
There was no glory, no newborn, no congratulations. There was little sleep and long bouts of time spent silently in bed. There were, in fact, probing questions about what I might or might not have done to have caused the loss.
My body had failed, and I felt utterly alone. I spent those days quietly considering the mystery that my womb had been the tomb of my unborn child. I watched the endless clots of blood and wondered what each one of them meant.
It was in those moments, when I stared at the post-surgery blood in the toilet, unable to make sense of what lay before me, that things changed. It was in the emptiness of my womb — in the emptiness of myself — that I found him: the God of the poor.
When life was nailing me to a cross, I looked over to finally find my bloodied Jesus. My savior, my dearest friend, hung there in the darkness of the realm of the real, right next to me. And he hung amidst a crowd of fellow sufferers, who each bore their own cross. [1]
He wasn’t distant, decked out in some rich sky-mansion and looking down on me from his throne of gold, wishing I had done better, done differently, so I could one day join him in His ranks. He was present with me. He was present within my brokenness — my loss, my blood, my emptiness.
“It was in the emptiness of my womb — in the emptiness of myself — that I found him: the God of the poor.”
Photo by Lisa via Pexels
The Blood
My miscarriage revealed to me the deeper character of Christianity and a truth about human persons which I had never been able to recognize before.
The blood I lost then, and now, the blood I bleed every month is no longer a shameful sign of being a woman that ought to be hush-hushed, so as not to detract from my ‘feminine’ mystery and charm. Nor is it a sign of feminine weakness or an unintended vulnerability that must be taken care of – dominated and controlled – so that I can have the full freedom to do what I want.
The blood now reminds me of life.
Of the life of the child I lost, who now lives behind the veil just beyond me.
Of the life of the people I love most dearly.
Of the truth that human life ought to be deeply revered and cherished.
It reminds me of the blood of Christ.
My period has strangely become a symbol of a truth about human nature that seems to be lost today: that we, as human beings, are not independent individuals, but interdependent persons made for love of God and love of one another.
When we consider our bodies as women, or even when we simply look to the persons who each of us has come from – our mothers and fathers – we can see that it’s just a lie that we are not made to be autonomous, boot-strapping beings. We came into this world through another – through a mother. We didn’t just show up one day. To accept the reality of our bodies as women is a radical reminder that every person – woman and man – is to be recognized as family, as one of God’s children. This is what spiritual parenthood is all about: seeing the stranger as sibling.
So to be a woman is, in a way, to be a living sign against the individualism of our age – against the idolatry of the self – and a sign of the truth that we belong to each other as God’s children. And mental assent to this truth isn’t enough: we are called to create societies and cultures that recognize this as such.*
I am aware here that some would use a version of this line of thinking to argue for a woman’s role as exclusive to or at least primarily in the home. That the only proper vocation for a woman is to spend the rest of her days producing children and pleasing her husband. This sort of chokehold-take on the Catholic faith tends to see woman as inferior and weaker to man, as lacking his leadership skills, his rationality, and level-headedness, and only good for creating more humans and tending to their needs. It echoes many of the sentiments of those Evangelical writers I read as a teen.
Here’s one of the distinctions between this line of thinking and ours. Women are not necessarily the “social sex,” only good for reproduction, pleasing men, and called only to tend to matters of the home. No, we are the sign that each sex is fundamentally social, created for communion with one another. This, I think, is the feminine genius that Pope St. John Paul II wrote extensively about -- a genius which is needed in all spheres of life, a genius which he saw as having the potential to humanize our world.
“Women are not necessarily the 'social sex,' only good for reproduction, pleasing men, and called only to tend to matters of the home. No, we are the sign that each sex is fundamentally social, created for communion with one another.”
Photo by Lisa via Pexels
A True Christian Feminism
This genius sets the foundation for that “new feminism” which St. John Paul II called for not just once, but repeatedly up until the final years of his pontificate. It was a call that seemed quite dear to his heart and at the forefront of his mind. To quote one of those declarations:
“The importance of true Christian feminism is so great that every effort must be made to present the principles on which this cause is based, and according to which it can be effectively defended and promoted for the good of all humanity.” -Address of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to a Group of Bishops From the United States of America (1988)
Any attempt at a Christian feminism today must recognize and honor this genius. We must strive to create societies that treat women, the female body and woman’s particular genius, not as other, as it so often is, but as half of the population. As accounted for and a part of every decision made. If we truly believe that women are in fact distinct from men and have something particularly unique to offer, then we should, as Catholics, promote and cultivate women’s inclusion and contribution in the world. United in that shared promotion of women’s dignity and equality, we can also stand against those ideologies that promote men as superior to women, and against the ones that discard and misconstrue femininity, as well.
And any attempt to cultivate this sort of feminism must fight against the temptations to domination and to power. Our feminism must look much like Christ on the Cross, as Fr. André Daigneault describes here in his spiritual work, The Way of Imperfection:
“Any attempt at true reform in the Church must aim at rediscovering the God of weakness, the God-child, the God who descends and offers himself to us, helpless; the God whose authority consists in choosing the last place, losing his life, and kneeling at the feet of the poor and little ones; the God with open arms who allows his heart to be pierced in a gesture of offering and love; the pierced Lamb which, in its weakness, offers its afflictions and its wounds like a Source that is seeking the person who is thirsty.”
A Christian feminism must take us to the margins. It must lift up the lowly and stand with the oppressed. It must call to cast down the mighty from their thrones and aim to fill the hungry with good things. It must be emblematic of that eternal truth that we belong to one another.
And the heart of a true Christian feminism must be a hemorrhaging heart. One that images those of the Sacred Heart of Christ and the pierced heart of Mary. And one that, in a certain sense, reminds us of the meaning of our menstrual blood: that life is worth living, bleeding, and dying for.
“And the heart of a true Christian feminism must be a hemorrhaging heart. One that images those of the Sacred Heart of Christ and the pierced heart of Mary. And one that, in a certain sense, reminds us of the meaning of our menstrual blood: that life is worth living, bleeding, and dying for.”
The Crucifix
When we are talking about how to save the Church from losing its members today, there is a temptation in these conversations to consider the stage – influence, riches, and power – as potential solutions to the problem at hand. To think of the spotlight as our saving grace: if we can just show them how happy real, practicing Catholics are, if we can just get our messaging and marketing right, if we can just have successful Catholic influencers, magazines, television shows to show everyone how great the Catholic life is, then we will save the Church. Then we will bring others – the country even– back to God.
But what God would we be leading them to?
God does not dwell in the dollars. He does not dwell under the spell of the spotlight of the platformed stage. He does not want to use us as evangelizing billboards or mouthpieces on television networks. He does not want to use us at all. He just wants us: me and you. We must start there before mapping out our evangelization strategies and parish programs.
In our efforts toward a Catholic feminism and toward healing in the Church, we must return to the realm of the real, the realm of the Crucifix. We must hold tight to the truth that Christ meets each of us here, in our suffering, greeting us with open, bloodied arms and holed-hands of love and empathy, just as he did for me when Alex died. And we must open our eyes to those around us, who hang in the darkness on their own crosses. We must look for the trail of blood.
Because it is at the end of that trail where Christ dwells. So let us return to one another, bloodied and open-armed, and love each other as Christ loves us, rejoicing in this vale of tears together.
Corynne
[1] Image described here inspired by a passage in Pope Francis' Let Us Dream: “It was precisely here that the Church was born, in the margins of the Cross where so many of the crucified are found. If the Church disowns the poor, she ceases to be the Church of Jesus; she falls back on the old temptation to become a moral or intellectual elite. There is only one word for the Church that becomes a stranger to the poor: 'scandal.' The road to the geographic and existential margins is the route of the Incarnation: God chose the peripheries as the place to reveal, in Jesus, His saving action in history."
*The ideas articulated here were shaped and influenced by Plough Publishing’s panel Illiberal Feminism: A Conversation with Leah Libresco and Jenn Frey and Marc Barnes’ video course The Meaning of Gender.
About the Writer: Corynne Staresinic is the founder and director of The Catholic Woman, a nonprofit multimedia platform dedicated to illustrating the many different faces and vocations of women in the Church today to inspire young Catholic women to embrace their own unique paths in the Church. Corynne is passionate about promoting the equality and dignity of women, and exploring the meaning of womanhood through Catholic theology and women’s stories. She is a convert to Catholicism from Evangelicalism and lives in the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky area with her husband, Nick, and their toddler and infant. Keep up with her work here, but mostly here.