St Teresa and the Joy of Female Saints

Sig. Porfiri points out how ridiculous it is to say that the Church is "misogynistic". There are thousands of female Saints and four female Doctors of the Church.

From One Peter Five

By Aurelio Porfiri

One of the accusations most often made against the Catholic Church is that of being misogynistic—that it does not appreciate women enough or give them their rightful place. Now, it can be admitted that, throughout history, there may have been instances of inappropriate behavior. But to label the Church as a misogynistic institution seems, at the very least, an exaggeration.

In the Church, there are tens of thousands of saints. Yet who has always been recognized as the greatest among them? The Blessed Virgin Mary—a woman. And among the most renowned and venerated saints, are there not also women? I think it is fair to say that what truly troubles some people is not that the Church fails to value women, but that it has traditionally viewed them in a way that does not align with certain modern ideologies steeped in a toxic feminism that, in the end, does not benefit women themselves.

Take, for example, Saint Teresa of Ávila, whose feast was celebrated earlier this month on October 15. Looking at the greatness of this saint, we may draw a first conclusion: the Church is not against women; rather, it seeks to exalt in them those qualities that make them truly who they are—and among these qualities is certainly that of being mothers. This is not a secondary element of femininity but the exaltation of all those virtues that make women extraordinary creatures.

From her youth, Saint Teresa of Ávila lived in great intimacy with God, which led her to become a Carmelite nun. Within this religious order, she was both a great foundress and reformer, contributing also to the reform of the male branch of the Carmelites together with another great saint, John of the Cross.

Teresa of Ávila possessed remarkable leadership qualities, as we would say today, yet she never renounced being a woman—indeed, she was a mother in the most spiritual sense. Nor did she believe that women needed the priesthood to draw closer to God. How many priests have known God as intimately as Teresa of Ávila, Anna Maria Taigi, Rita of Cascia, Catherine of Siena, Veronica Giuliani, and so many others?

A Carmelite vocation website offers this description:

The most distinguished theologians of her time were astonished to see how this woman gathered into one body of writings the highest principles of mystical theology, handed down by the Fathers of the Church. After her last foundation, that of Burgos—the most difficult and contested of all—her life drew swiftly to its close. Arriving one day in Alba de Tormes, she peacefully closed her eyes on October 4, 1582, consumed more by love than by illness. She was sixty-seven years old. Considered by the Church the ‘Mother of the Spirituals,’ that is, of those who seek deep union with God, she was canonized on March 12, 1622, and later, on September 27, 1970, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Paul VI. 

She was, in fact, the first woman ever to be declared a Doctor of the Church.

Benedict XVI, in 2012, described the great saint with these words:

We can say that in her time the Saint evangelized without mincing her words, with unfailing ardour, with methods foreign to inertia and with expressions haloed with light. Her example keeps all its freshness at the crossroads of our time. It is here that we feel the urgent need for the baptized to renew their hearts through personal prayer which, in accordance with the dictates of the Mystic of Avila, is also centred on contemplation of the Most Holy Humanity of Christ as the only way on which to find God’s glory (cf. Libro de la Vida, 22, 1; Las Moradas [Interior Castle] 6, 7). Thus they will be able to form authentic families which discover in the Gospel the fire of their hearths; lively and united Christian communities, cemented on Christ as their corner-stone and which thirst after a life of generous and brotherly service.

Two years later, Pope Francis echoed this sentiment, saying:

Teresa of Jesus asks her Sisters to “go cheerfully about whatever services you are ordered to do” (The Way of Perfection 18, 5). True holiness is a joy, for “an unhappy saint is a pitiful saint”. Saints, before being courageous heroes, are the fruit of God’s grace to mankind. Every saint shows us a feature of the multifaceted face of God. In St Teresa we contemplate God, who, being the “sovereign Lord, of majesty supreme” (Poems 2), reveals himself close and a companion and feels joy conversing with men: God becomes joyful with us. And feeling his love, a contagious and unconcealable joy was born in the Saint that she radiated around her. This joy is a journey that must be followed throughout life. It is not instantaneous, superficial, tumultuous. It must already be sought by “at the beginning” (Life 13, 1). Express the inner joy of the soul, it is humble and “modest” (cf. The Book of Foundations 12, 1). It is not reached by an easy shortcut that bypasses sacrifice, suffering or the cross, but is found by enduring labour and pain (cf. Life 6, 2; 30, 8), looking to the Crucifix and seeking the Risen One (cf. The Way of Perfection 26, 4).

Saint Teresa of Ávila stands as the most radiant example that to be a Catholic woman does not mean being less of a woman—it means being a woman in her fullest and truest sense. Unfortunately, even within the Church, we have been conditioned to view Catholicism through the distorted lens of a modernity infected by ideologies that are, at their roots, anti-Christian. We should instead reclaim a pure gaze—one that allows us to drink, ever ancient and ever new, from the clear spring of holy tradition.