I debated whether or not to say anything about Phyllis Schlalfy’s passing. I have never held her in high regard and certainly anyone who has paid the slightest attention to my writings over the past three decades should know where I stand on the issues on which she and I disagreed. Violently disagreed at times.
But as her death follows upon the heels of the canonization of Mother Theresa, I find a certain symmetry which prompts comment.
These two women shared one attribute in common that has come to define them for the ages: an obdurate dedication to a special kind of ignorance. They have become icons for people who prefer their views of how the world should be and see them as in some ways martyrs to the cause of defending beliefs that require the most tortured of logics to maintain as viable.
Both apparently took as models their own examples as standards and arguments against those they opposed. Schlafly never (she claimed) understood the feminist argument about the oppression of the patriarchy and Bojaxhiu never understood the utility of situational beneficence. Consequently both could proceed with programmatic movements that blocked progress and flew in the face of realities neither could accept as valid.
Schlafly was instrumental in blocking the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Her rhetoric before and after was stridently right wing, as if the very notion of women wanting opportunities as human beings was somehow a threat to civilization. She herself apparently never suffered resistance to anything she wanted to do. She essentially told women less privileged than herself to be satisfied with their stations in life and give up ambitions of being more than wives and mothers, even as she lived a life that was anything but an acceptance of such limitations. Her inability—or refusal—to come to terms with the fact that human beings deserve to be treated by each other as individuals cost her, but she has never once publicly acknowledged that she might be wrong.
Bojaxhiu set up shop in one of the poorest areas in the world to, ostensibly, minister to those poor. Normally we hear that and believe some form of relief of suffering is involved, but apparently not. She elevated the suffering of the dying to some form of divine gift, gave them aspirin, and prayed while they died in misery. It wasn’t lack of money, either. Her order has received many millions—which she used to open convents and wage a campaign in opposition to the one thing that might make a difference in those poor districts she held in such high esteem: birth control. Of all the things she might have chosen to name as the most significant enemy of our times, providing women, especially poor women, the means to control their fertility, reduce family size so what resources they had might go further and do more, is a perverse choice. Catholic, yes, but it’s not like other Catholics haven’t seen reality for what it is and did something—anything—that might constructively alleviate suffering. From the evidence, all she did was put a noble gloss on it and exacerbate it.
It could be argued that both were “of their times” and therefore exception should be made before too harshly assessing their legacies, but I don’t accept that. In Schlafly’s case, she was educated, moved among the best minds when she wanted to, had more than ample opportunity to understand what she was doing. It didn’t matter. She had picked a side and stuck with it, reality be damned. In Bojaxhiu’s case, the daily exposure to those she supposedly ministered to should have served to snap her out of whatever quasi-Freudian obsession she had with sex and start acting like a human being. (Unless you wish to argue that she was indeed “out of her time” and would have been right at home in the Middle Ages as a flagellant.) She was not stupid, she was the head of an international organization. She put on the sackcloth of the humble village girl with simple values, but she was anything but.
That the Church has canonized her is no surprise. In Dante’s Paradiso we meet many saints and upon reading about them and their character we begin to wonder why these people are where they are. Dante makes the case—among others—that the price of admission to this paradise is a lifetime of obsessive devotion to a view of divine truth that is essentially selfless. In other words, in the consequences of their lives, the Paradisiacs are not much different than the Infernals, other than they are selfless rather than selfish. Both share a conviction that their view of the world is right, but for very different reasons.
Of course, Dante’s Paradise is not really a place anyone rational would care to spend eternity.
That Schlafly has devoted followers is also no surprise. One of the curious similarities between her and the so-called “New Woman” of the post-liberation era is the image of someone who does it all. Wife, mother, lawyer, political organizer, mover, shaker. Whatever roadblocks might have been thrown in her way, she went around, over, or through them. If she could do it, by gum, so can anyone, and we don’t need no damn ERA to do it!
Except for the privilege. No, she wasn’t born to money. But she got the advantages of a college education at a time women weren’t going to college much. She also married money. Draw your own conclusions, but without that her later ability to do all the things she chose to do would have been absurdly more difficult. However, she has the background to appeal to the self-made, the education to talk constitutional law with the best, and the security to assert herself in ways women traditionally do not. However you want to spin it, she was privileged.
Both women offered ideologies that overlooked or flatly denied certain inconvenient realities. But they had their lives, their callings, their successes. What is this reality that makes any kind of claim on the conscience of the visionary that either was obliged to respect?