Spreading the faith through the home

Carrie Gress has long seen women as a transformative force in the Church and the world, whether they are evangelizing thousands or quietly caring for their husbands and children at home.

But it wasn’t until a few years ago that what had been an idea in the back of her mind began to take shape as she reached out to women through her writing and the online Theology of Home magazine.

Today, Gress and another author mom, Noelle Mering, are showing women how to use their natural gifts to spread the faith to those in their own homes and beyond through the magazine and books of the same name: Theology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday and Theology of Home II: the Spiritual Art of Homemaking. Each day, the magazine offers them constructive encouragement through links to organization tips, recipes, and articles about faith and culture in addition to a quote from a saint, reminders about the feast of the day and which rosary mysteries to pray, and the name of a bishop or cardinal to intercede for. Soon, a Theology of Home TV series will be added.

As she shared in a January talk to the Legatus Summit East 2022 in Amelia Island, FL, Gress considers women key to the Church’s New Evangelization because of their potential to influence men, their families, and others. But this thought, she said, requires broadening the typical Catholic idea that evangelization is strictly about apologetics. In other words, she said, “[Evangelization] is not just something coming through the chancery,” but an effort requiring real-life personal contact. And that, she pointed out, is where women thrive.

HEART OF THE FAMILY

Although many women may wonder what role they could play in such a vast mission, Gress makes clear that it is precisely by living out their vocation as the heart of the family that they have the most impact.

“They’re a fundamental piece of the family, and it’s the restoration of the family that we need,” she said, recalling Fatima seer Sister Lucia’s words, “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.”

Indeed, in a day when many in the culture seem bent on destroying the family, Gress wants to embed women back into the family, which she calls “that ordered place . . . where ordered children and citizens come from.”

Leila Lawler, whose books and blog, Like Mother Like Daughter, also encourage a renewed commitment to family life, concurs. “We need to recover our grounding in the gospel and in the Catholic world view, which is simply that God made men and women a certain way. This is just Scripture, and it’s also natural law.”

Lawler said that although men are meant to be in authority, women inspire them to virtue. “So, if women can recover our proper place in the hierarchy of life and our relationship with our husbands, we can really change the course of things,” she said.

Gress said her message has elicited a response from women of all ages. Additionally, she and Mering, both of whom are fellows at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, have seen it take off through a growing emphasis on the home among Catholic influencers, authors, and thinkers. Gress also has heard from women disillusioned with the contemporary cultural model of feminism, something she said presents a tremendous opportunity for outreach and evangelization. Some are older women who embraced the feminist movement’s ideas and now are questioning what they did. “[They] thought they were doing the right thing because that’s what the culture was telling them,” she said. “Now, they’re in their 60s, 70s, and 80s and don’t have anything to show for it.”

But younger women who grew up steeped in the feminist culture also have warmed toTheology of Home’s message, Gress said. “We have readers and followers who range from teens up to the 80s and beyond.”

RETURN TO THE HOME

Likewise, Lawler said she has found that younger women are very open to hearing that they don’t have to accept what the feminists have told them. Now 62, Lawler was a child in the early days of the feminist movement and was raised to believe that women can do it all. Hence, everything in her life from education to leisure activities was ordered to achieving excellence and taking one’s place in a man’s world.

“For women who were already adults when I was a child, this was an exhilarating thought. For me, it was a given and then something I had to consciously help my daughters reject,” she said. “And now, we’re getting on the fourth generation of women who have been oppressed by the burden of all of this and just want to take care of their children and make a home.”

When women do decide to turn toward home and see that it is worthwhile and honorable, Lawler said, “It’s a very wonderful and freeing moment. . . . Right away the connection between the pattern of life in the Church and life in the family resolves and comes into focus.”

Lawler said she has received hundreds of testimonials from women saying, “As soon as I just said, ‘Yes, this is what I want to do, and I’m willing to accept whatever hardships are involved,’ I discovered my faith and my importance in passing on the faith to my children.”

This is why, Lawler said, she included an entire volume on education in her three-volume Summa Domestica. “The fundamental mission of the family is to beget and educate children, to educate them in life by means of the affection and love the family uniquely lives,” she explained. “Nobody loves their children the way parents love them, and nobody cares about their well-being and salvation the way parents do. . . . This is God’s plan from the beginning. The family is His creation, and feminists have nearly succeeded in destroying it.”

REDEFINING 'WOMAN'

Radical feminism, Gress added, has created a masculine model that removes woman from the home, children, and service. “In the real model of womanhood, so much is hidden – serving, receiving, and giving of ourselves. This is why, when we transform ourselves into the masculine model, no one can define a woman. We’ve erased it. It’s like slipping-away sand, and it’s gone from our mental concepts because we have no experience of it.”

Gress believes women who are responding to the call to focus on home have a yearning for something deeper and are merely longing to do what women have always done – being hospitable and nourishing others. Showing them how to fulfill that calling is helping them get back to womanhood by redefining what has become undefinable in the current culture.

“Most women want their home to be a sanctuary, safe, welcoming. We can tap into that and say there’s a reason why you’re feeling this – and it’s not a bad reason,” she said. “Our homes are meant to be a foreshadowing of heaven, and we would love to help you grow that in your own home.”

Judy Roberts is a contributing writer for Legatus Magazine