(LifeSiteNews) — The heterodox Jesuit-run America Magazine published an op-ed earlier this month that blamed Catholic Americans overwhelming voting for President-elect Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election on ‘misogyny’ in the Church.
The author, Kathleen Bonnette, in a November 21 article, lamented Harris’s loss and blamed “misogyny” in the Church that she claims goes back to the Church Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas and the lack of female authority in the Church. The article omitted any mention of Harris’s radically pro-abortion platform and anti-Catholic biases.
Trump outperformed Harris in the Catholic vote by a decisive 15 points, according to a Washington Post exit poll.
“I will be honest: I believe that misogyny—conscious or not—motivated the silence and moral equivocation of many Catholic leaders, as well as the willingness of so many Catholics to disregard the common good in pursuit of political power. To the extent this is so, Catholic consciences are being malformed,” Bonnette wrote.
She then underscored that this supposed misogyny in the Church goes back to the Church Fathers and even St. Thomas Aquinas, going so far as to argue that Aquinas and the Church Fathers were wrong.
“We can see the roots of this misogyny in some of the statements of our church fathers. Augustine, for example, blamed Eve for the fall of humanity, noting that the serpent targeted her because women are more easily deceived (i.e., less rational) than men. Thomas Aquinas, centuries later, called women “defective men,” and though there is some debate about his use of the term, it is clear that he held women as being subject to men because of inferior intelligence and “defective” because of their anatomy,’” Bonnette said.
Here, she cited Aquinas’s question 92 in the Summa Theologica, in which the saint reiterates the Church’s consistent teaching that women, as a result of the Fall, are to be subject to man. It’s worth noting that the Church has never condoned the hatred of women or taught that they don’t have dignity.
In fact, St. Thomas, in that same section of the Summa, defends the dignity of women by answering objections to their being created in the first place.
Bonnette then argued that the Church is “sexist” because women aren’t allowed to be ordained to the priesthood, and thus it lacks female leadership.
“In ‘Inter Insigniores,’ a pronouncement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1976, we read that women cannot be priests because ‘in such a case it would be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ.’”
“Absent female authority in the church, and given this theological throughline, it is not surprising that female authority is so often feared or despised and that many Catholic men (and women) consider it demeaning to follow the lead of a woman,” she wrote.
The papal document Bonnette cites, Inter Insigniores, reaffirmed the Church’s constant teaching that holy orders are reserved for men. Here, Bonnette again argues that the Church is in error.
While Bonnette blames “misogyny” for Trump winning the Catholic vote, the more plausible explanation is that the current VP opted to run an anti-Catholic campaign centered on abortion.
Over the course of her campaign, Harris vowed to sign a bill to legalize abortion nationwide, said she wouldn’t allow religious exemptions for abortion and even invited abortionists to take center stage during a campaign rally.
In her concession speech, Harris underscored how, despite her election loss, she would continue to fight for women’s “right” to abortion. Bonnette praised this speech in her article, stressing that it moved her to tears.
“I didn’t cry until Vice President Kamala Harris turned from the podium where she offered her concession speech and began to walk away—steady in her stilettos, head held high. Her speech exuded the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,” Bonnette wrote.
In addition to her radical pro-abortion platform, Harris’s campaign held a strong anti-Catholic prejudice. She notably skipped the Al Smith dinner and instead made a short video addressing the event, which drew no laughter from the attendees and was roasted for being “disrespectful.” The VP also kicked students out of a rally after they shouted, “Christ is King!” and “Jesus is Lord!” responding, “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally.”