I recently saw an Instagram reel in which a content creator asked, “Is the Catholic Church misogynistic?” She then flashed images of popular women saints to prove that, no, of course the Catholic Church is not misogynistic because Catholics honour and venerate these saints.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that response works. Not only does it fail to answer the question, it ignores the reasons people ask it in the first place.
Part of the problem is misogyny is often defined too narrowly. Misogyny does not always appear as explicit hatred of women. Sometimes it appears as dismissiveness, suspicion toward women’s authority, or a refusal to take women’s experiences seriously. There are also deeply ingrained attitudes about women throughout our culture that many of us absorb without even realizing it, and Catholics are not automatically immune to those influences simply because we are part of the Church.
The Art of Deflection
The reel is an example of deflection: redirecting attention away from a difficult question instead of addressing it directly. Someone asked a painful, uncomfortable question, and rather than engaging with that pain, the response offered a cheerful reassurance that avoided the issue entirely.
Imagine a woman telling her husband, “I’ve felt really alone this week because I’ve done all the dishes every night after dinner.” He replies, “Well, I vacuumed the living room last week, so you shouldn’t feel that way.” That response misses the point. Instead of listening, he shifts the conversation away from her experience and toward defending himself. The result is that she feels even more unheard.
We see the same pattern in public life. In Off With Her Head, Eleanor Herman shares an example of a politician criticized for misogynistic remarks toward a female colleague. His defense is, “I have a wife and daughters.” But loving or respecting some women does not automatically mean he treats all women with dignity. Admiration in one context does not erase harmful attitudes or behaviour in another.
When someone says, “I’ve been hurt by the Catholic Church,” responding with “Well, look at all the women saints we love!” often has the same effect. It may be intended as reassurance, but it can feel dismissive to someone describing a real experience of pain or exclusion.
If Catholics want to respond well to concerns about misogyny, we have to begin by listening instead of immediately defending ourselves. Ask why the person sees the Church this way. Admit misogyny can exist within Catholic spaces. Be willing to examine yourself and your parish honestly and consider how things could be done better.
Does Honoring Female Saints Disprove Misogyny?
My second concern with this argument is that venerating a handful of exceptional women does not necessarily demonstrate a broader respect for women as a whole.
The Church does, in fact, honor many remarkable female saints. Women like Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Saint Catherine of Siena are beloved precisely because of their holiness, wisdom, and devotion to God. But the existence of admired women does not automatically answer questions about how ordinary women are treated within the Church today — or how many women were treated while they were alive.
Even some of the women now celebrated as saints were dismissed, silenced, or condemned in their own time.
Saint Joan of Arc is a striking example. She was tried as a heretic in the 1400s by an English-backed ecclesiastical court and burned at the stake. Among the accusations against her were wearing men’s clothing, claiming to receive divine visions, and refusing to submit her actions to Church authorities. Her conviction was overturned 25 years later, but she wasn’t canonized as a saint until 1920.
That history complicates the argument that female saints prove the Church cannot be misogynistic. In Joan’s case, the institutional Church did not initially recognize her courage or holiness. Instead, many powerful men within the Church dismissed and condemned her, and her status as a young woman claiming divine authority likely made her even easier to discredit.
Saint Hildegard of Bingen, now recognized as a Doctor of the Church, also experienced skepticism and resistance during her lifetime in the 1100s. She was a theologian, writer, composer, and mystic whose visions formed the basis of much of her work, yet as a woman claiming spiritual authority in the medieval Church, she faced skepticism and had to seek approval from male clergy before publicly sharing her visions and writings.
Today, the Church honors her brilliance and holiness, but during her life her voice was treated with caution and suspicion simply because she was a woman speaking with authority on theological matters.
Saint Teresa of Ávila faced similar challenges centuries later in the 1500s. Though she would eventually become one of the most influential spiritual writers in Catholic history, Teresa lived during a period when women mystics were viewed with deep suspicion. Her mystical experiences and reforms attracted scrutiny, and she wrote with noticeable humility and self-deprecation to protect herself from accusations of pride or heresy. Teresa understood the dangers of being a woman who spoke too confidently about spiritual matters.
The Church now celebrates her wisdom and recognizes her as a Doctor of the Church, yet her life reveals how difficult it could be for even deeply faithful women to be heard and taken seriously within the institution.
While these are historical examples, we must ask ourselves if the Church’s attitude towards women has really changed. Do we now give women’s voices within the Church the same attention and respect we give to men’s voices?
Catholics do not need to deny women’s pain in order to defend the faith. In fact, honesty about institutional failures is part of moral credibility. The existence of female saints is beautiful and important, but it cannot substitute for listening carefully when women describe experiences of dismissal, exclusion, or misogyny within the Church today.
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