Opinion

Pope Leo chooses to honor secular International Women’s Day

Pope Leo's recognition is liable to be understood by feminists and liberals as an indirect sign of support for their efforts.
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Pope Leo XIVShutterstock

Peter
Michaels
Peter Michaels
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(LifeSiteNews) — International Women’s Day has its roots in socialist and Marxist political movements in the early 20th century. One of the main targets of the agitators was the family unit, which the Catholic Church teaches is the “domestic church” led by the husband.

Officially adopted by the United Nations in the 1970s, International Women’s Day was scandalously honored by Pope Leo XIV earlier this month. On May 8, he published a post on social media drawing attention to the day.

“Today marks #WomensDay,” Leo said. “Let us renew our commitment to recognize the equal dignity of man and woman. Unfortunately, many women, from childhood onward, are still discriminated against and suffer various forms of violence. My solidarity and prayer go to them in a special way.”

While calling attention to the “violence” that women undergo is good and all — especially in this day and age when so young girls are trafficked by the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — the rest of Leo’s comments are rather vague, and liable to be understood by feminists and liberals as an indirect sign of support for their efforts.

On March 8, Leo seemed to honor the day in another way when he was assisted at Mass by two female altar servers. This was the second time he welcomed female altar servers. Progressive Catholic influencer Christopher Hale noted the significance of the gesture in an X post.

Leo’s statement on X was not the first time he made comments praising women. During a trip to the Islamic state of Turkey last year, Leo said, “Women, in particular, through their studies and active participation in professional, cultural and political life, are increasingly placing themselves at the service of your country and its positive influence on the international scene. We must greatly value, then, the important initiatives in this regard, which support the family and the contribution that women make toward the full flowering of social life.”

With these words, Leo amplifies the original talking points of the feminists and Marxists who sought to establish International Women’s Day in the first place. What he should have said was that women have been given a unique role by God to be caretakers of the home and that, following in the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they are best suited for the caring and upbringing of children and loving and supporting their husbands.

What’s more, LifeSite’s current editorial director, Dorothy Cummings-McLean, was thrown out — literally physically carried out — of an International Women’s Day March in Toronto in the 1990s for carrying a sign that read, “Pro-Life is Pro-Woman.”

Blogger Chris Jackson did not fail to notice the scandal of Leo’s praise for International Women’s Day. In a Substack post on his Hiraeth in Exile blog, Jackson argued that Leo’s honoring of the day was “another small but telling act of surrender to the categories of the modern world.”

“Women do indeed suffer grave injustices. But that is exactly how the game is played in our age,” he said. “A revolutionary symbol is baptized by extracting one abstract moral principle from it and ignoring the ideological freight that made it famous.”

Jackson continued, “International Women’s Day emerged from socialist agitation and revolutionary politics, and its modern symbolic force was sealed by the women workers’ protest in Petrograd in 1917, one of the sparks of the Russian Revolution. For decades, it belonged especially to the political liturgy of socialist and communist regimes. In the modern West, it has become a banner under which feminism, abortion politics, gender ideology, and anti-family resentment often march together. In many places the day is explicitly tied to causes no Catholic authority should dignify for even five minutes.”

“That does not mean every woman honored on that date is a Bolshevik,” he added. “It does mean the symbol is not neutral. And Rome knows how symbols work. This same establishment can spend years fretting about liturgical signs, ‘exclusionary’ language, male vesture, preconciliar gestures, and rigid attitudes. Then suddenly it becomes woodenly literal when faced with a modern revolutionary holiday. We are told to ignore the context, ignore the pedigree, ignore the movement, ignore the street politics, ignore the fact that the day has often functioned as a civic feast of ideological feminism. Why? Because the rulers of the conciliar apparatus instinctively prefer the symbolic world of the modern left to the symbolic world of Catholic tradition. That instinct shows up again in Leo’s X post. Leo did not merely endure the day in silence. He marked it. He hashtagged it. He joined the ritual.”

Jackson’s comments hit the nail on its head. Leo could have opted to not have female altar servers. He could have said anything in his social media post. Instead, he chose to mark the day with clear overtures designed to act as a head nod and a wink to those who hold it up as sacrosanct. This is all too common in the hierarchy. Gone are the days of following the traditional liturgical calendar and marking the lives of holy virgins who died for the faith and who were martyrs in other ways. In their place, the clergy today honor secular “holy days” that originate with opponents of the Church who strove to destroy the true holy role of women in the Church. Leo’s decision to honor International Women’s Day is the perfect encapsulation of the crisis currently afflicting the Catholic Church.

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