“Virginity refutes any attempt to enclose women in mere biological destiny. Just as virginity receives from physical motherhood the insight that there is no Christian vocation except in the concrete gift of oneself to the other, so physical motherhood receives from virginity an insight into its fundamentally spiritual dimension: it is in not being content only to give physical life that the other truly comes into existence. This means that motherhood can find forms of full realization also where there is no physical procreation.“18Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, May 31, 2004
My Friend Flicka–Ch. 2
“It had amused Nell at first to be addressed as the Missus, but it had not taken her long to learn that, here in the West, it meant ‘the woman,’ with all that the word signified of gentleness and motherliness. Here, in her world of men, husband and sons, hired men, haying crew, horse buyers, to be the Missus meant to be that before which they could remove their hats, and bend their heads. In the cities a woman could turn into a driving machine, or harden herself to meet difficulties, but the Missus on a farm or ranch, though she might be milker of cows or trainer of horses, must be more and not less woman for all of that, or she would rob the men around her of something which was as sweet to them as the sugar in their coffee.”Mary O’Hara
“I began as an Episcopalian, then moved into the wilderness of older Hindu religions before a return to Christianity, this time into the Roman Catholic Church. When people ask me why I took that last step, I tell them it was because I love the saints, who in the Protestant church seem to attract so little attention. It is as if a musician should pay little attention to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach.” Mary O’Hara, from Flicka’s Friend: The Autobiography of Mary O’Hara, creator of My Friend Flicka
Ten women reading Catholic women authors 