A week ago, I was eager to jump into the fray and weigh in on Harrison Butker’s much-discussed Benedictine College commencement address. (If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading the full transcript.) I had strong feelings on the topic, since my personal experience has made me passionate about the intersection of faith and sport and the women-motherhood-work question. So, I was furiously typing on the airplane as my family and I set off for a beach vacation. I didn’t quite finish the piece on the plane, and I resolved to set aside work for the rest of our trip (family first!) and revisit the piece after vacation. I’m so glad I did.
Over the past week, I’ve had the opportunity to read different takes on the speech and talk to people about in in real life (not just on the internet), and my reaction has shifted a bit. A few days ago, a man plopped down next to my husband and me at the hotel bar and, gesturing to the Kansas City Chiefs on the TV, demanded, “Isn’t that the butthead who hates women?! I’d like to punch him in the face!” This remark reflects the quality and spirit of much of the online “discussion” of Butker’s address, and the last thing I want to do is add to the noise or heap more knee-jerk criticisms on a man who seems to be a devoted husband and father and sincerely faithful Catholic. At the same time, Butker’s speech clearly touched a nerve, both with secular society and with faithful Catholics, and I think there are some important lessons we can draw from the speech itself – particularly Butker’s comments on women – and the public’s reaction to it. Amid the din, I’ve encountered a number of insightful takes on this topic, so, rather than adding my voice to the cacophony of adulation, condemnation, and everything in between, I’d like to highlight some really great pieces that have already been written and share my own experience dealing with this fraught issue.
My friend Portia Berry-Kilby wrote this thoughtful essay for The European Conservative. (If you don’t already, follow her Substack!) I admit that her interpretation of Butker’s meaning is more generous than mine, but she makes a number of important points and challenged me to think more deeply about why I was interpreting his comments in a particular way and entertain the possibility that my interpretation could always be wrong!
LuElla D’Amico picked up on the theme of giving the benefit of the doubt and offering grace in her outstanding piece for The Current. Whether you agree with Butker or not, she offers sound advice for responding with Christian charity (something that the discourse has largely lacked).
Finally, Lane Scott, a fellow TAC alumna, wrote this (in my opinion) nuanced and balanced piece for Fairer Disputations. Her piece captures the complexity of the topics Butker tackled, particularly the women-motherhood-work topic, and the corresponding complexity of any fair, non-ideological response to his address.
The more I’ve reflected on Butker’s speech and the varying reactions to it, the more I’ve been struck by two things:
1) People with very similar values and opinions interpreted (and therefore reacted to) Butker’s comments on women in very different ways. Some commentators I really respect and generally agree with thought he was just reiterating Catholic teaching on the importance of family and the value of motherhood, while others interpreted him as saying that mothers should never work outside the home and should constantly be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
2) I’ve found myself torn between these two interpretations and bouncing around everywhere in between. I don’t have one, simplistic take on this, but many interrelated thoughts and reactions.
My conclusion: Butker stepped in a hornet’s nest when he addressed the women of Benedictine College, and, unless you’re a master rhetorician with a lot of life experience and a great editor, a Commencement address probably isn’t the best place to address the complexities that surround the women-motherhood-work question. As Lane Scott writes in the piece above, “the devil is in the details.” At the very least, I wish Butker had been more nuanced in his approach and left less room for interpretation, but I also suspect it’s just very difficult to do that in the short time allotted for a commencement address.
So, if a commencement address that will be picked up by every major news outlet isn’t the most effective place to address the women-motherhood-work question, what is? I’m all too familiar with the “good Catholic mothers should never work” and “a woman’s career is just a placeholder until her real life begins” ideas prevalent in certain traditional Catholic circles. When I first encountered them, they drove me nuts, and on some level they still do. My strong belief that God does call some mothers to some sort of “career” and that Catholics should be supportive of women who are trying to heed that call while also prioritizing family earned me a reputation as “the feminist” among many of my Catholic friends and acquaintances – an irony that was not lost on me, given that most “feminists” would hastily disown me. Honestly, disagreement on this topic has at times threatened to upend relationships, even with close friends.
However, I also know from experience that the best way to deal with these disagreements is to talk about them (preferably in real life, not online). These have been some of the most difficult conversations of my life, but they have also been some of the most productive, and they have challenged me to hone my ideas and articulate why I believe what I do. Sometimes those conversations led my interlocutor to become more open-minded about the ways women can live their vocations or to gain a deeper appreciation of women’s desire to use the gifts God has given them at the service of others, both inside and outside the home. Other conversations have ended without either of us budging on our positions. Either way, I’ve learned that a shared love of Christ and the Catholic faith is quite a lot of common ground to work with. (A shared background in a Catholic liberal arts education and experience discussing ideas using the Socratic method is an added plus.) I’ve learned to be friends with people I disagree with, and even with people who have never understood why I feel called to both motherhood and some form of career.
Even with those who do not share my faith or my educational background, I think this approach holds promise. When that man asked me if the guy on TV was “that butthead who hates women,” I responded that I’d like to think that if I sat down and had a conversation with Butker, we’d find more common ground than you would expect. That response didn’t please my barstool neighbor, but I meant it. And guess what? At the start of the conversation, my interlocutor was expressing anger that Butker was telling his daughter to be a “f***ing homemaker.” When I gently expressed my belief that staying home with kids is a perfectly worthwhile decision, however, he readily agreed with my statement and clarified that he thought it should be a choice. By the end of the conversation, he was thanking me for talking to his daughter about my past internship experience at the State Department. What can I say? More common ground than you would think.
I hope that by embracing these tough conversations and sharing thoughtful, well-informed takes like those I’ve linked above, Catholics can use this brouhaha as an opportunity to move forward together and better support young women and mothers in their vocations. When Butker said that his “beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” I hope he simply meant to convey the incredible joy and sense of purpose that come with marriage and motherhood. Unfortunately, I’ve found that some Catholics mean similar statements all too literally, and I’ve seen firsthand the damage that is done when young Catholic women believe that their lives and vocations only start once they become wives and mothers. (Funny how young Catholic men don’t hear this message about marriage and fatherhood, right?)
So, I’ll end with another reading recommendation that addresses this issue head-on and is the single best treatment I’ve found. Reading this speech that Meg McDonnell gave at Notre Dame’s Edith Stein Conference a number of years ago literally changed my life, and sharing it has opened the door to some really productive conversations. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it and embrace the message that, whether or not you’ve entered your primary vocation of marriage or religious life, your life and your work matter. Your vocation is whatever God is asking you to do right now. And yes, even if you are a Catholic woman who is already married with children, God might be asking you to pursue some form of work in addition to the important work of raising your kids. If the fallout of Butker’s speech can somehow lead us back to that simple truth, then I’ll deem it a success.