It is with some trepidation that I approach, for the first time in many months, what might be considered a “woman’s issue.” Last spring I more or less resigned from my informal position as this blog’s women’s issues editor, finding that such topics tended to provoke a small amount of intelligent discussion and a large amount of frenzied, unreasoned (even, dare I say it, unchivalrous!) vitriol poured down upon me personally. In part this is my own fault; I like to use personal anecdotes to illustrate my points, and so naturally readers conclude that my personal life is the main topic of discussion. In this thread, I will avoid making reference to personal experience, and in exchange I will ask our readers please not to take this thread as an invitation to chastise me publicly. If you truly feel it your Christian duty to scold or enlighten me about my personal deficiencies, I invite you to send your thoughts to fraternalcorrection@yahoo.com. I may not answer your email, but I’ll see it. In this public forum, please keep your comments civil, and directed to the discussion at hand. Those who disregard this request will find their posts deleted without comment.

But now, I really think some intelligent discussion is needed on the subject of women’s education. Bishop Williamson’s missive on this topic has been recognized by most of our contributors and guests as thoroughly silly, and by bothering to write a respectable reply, I may be giving it too much credit. But at least two among us have quite seriously declared themselves to be much in sympathy with his “sentiments”, and this disturbs me. I find the Bishop’s words pernicious on several levels, particularly if they are finding sympathetic ears. They make a mockery of natural law arguments (one can hardly blame contemporary philosophers for refusing to take teleology seriously, if this is their paradigm!), they encourage husbands and fathers to disregard the genuine spiritual needs of their wives and daughters, and they confuse women by teaching them to identify a natural and wholesome desire as disordered and sinful.

Unfortunately, as is always the case with insidious words, Williamson blends truth with falsehood in such a way as to appeal to his intended audience. It is recognized by many that modernity, in its zealousness to win new opportunities for women, has distorted our understanding of the feminine to the detriment of both sexes. Some people are so eager to combat this trend that they delight in almost any argument that emphasizes woman’s submissive nature, or diminishes her opportunities for participation in the public sphere. I suggest that more careful consideration is needed. Egalitarianism may not be the answer, but recognition of that fact is only the beginning of the conversation, and it is still entirely possible to treat women unjustly by depriving them of opportunities that they ought to have. Therefore, I will undertake to detail the philosophical errors of this document, after which I will reflect on some of the more practical advantages and disadvantages of sending women to universities. Because Bishop Williamson is so sloppy in his argumentation, some reconstruction may be required on my part in order to render his thoughts intelligible. But I will sincerely try to exercise (intellectual) charity, and to capture his views as accurately as possible.

Turning first to the more directly philosophical questions, it seems that the Bishop is attempting a natural law-type argument, using St. Thomas as his primary source of support. The central claim is that, given their natural orientation towards family and motherhood, it is against a woman’s nature to develop intellectually. It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which he thinks this pursuit unsuitable for a girl; indeed, it almost seems as if His Excellency thinks it unnatural for women to think discursively at all. So unsuitable is the mind of woman for abstract thought that he presumes to put the point into neat syllogistic form: “true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.” So different is her mind from a man’s that, “no husband can understand how the mind of his wife works!” Even while listening to her teachers, she is not engaging in critical thought, but rather “learning by osmosis.” And if a woman does succeed in developing her powers of discursive reasoning, she then “will not be properly thinking as a woman. The dilemma is inescapable: she cannot do what is properly men’s thinking or work without cutting across her deepest nature.”

How far do the writings of St. Thomas, on which the Bishop depends, support this view? Well, on my best reading, St. Thomas does appear to think women somewhat less suited than men for the pursuit of higher learning. And, though the Angelic Doctor is always deserving of respect and deference, I would venture to say that the nature of women is not one of his strongest subjects. In marking women as inappropriate candidates for ecclesial authority, he can offer scriptural support, but insofar as he awards them a more restricted and passive role in society at large, he seems to depend heavily on two ideas: first, that women have a limited capacity for acquiring knowledge to an advanced degree, and second, that they are passive agents biologically (or, in other words, that it is the man who provides a child with human form, while the woman provides only the ground in which a baby can take shape.) Both of these are merely asserted without argument (see ST 1a, 92,1). The former claim might be defended, but a wealth of empirical evidence renders it implausible. Though not the precise equals of men in every field, women have shown themselves capable of sustained, serious academic achievement. The latter claim, as embryology has shown, is straightforwardly false.

I think there is room, then, for being a bit circumspect about the Angelic Doctor’s views on the capabilities of women. I suspect Bishop Williamson thinks so too, which is why he deviates from St. Thomas’ argument in order to offer a somewhat different, and much sillier, view which Thomas himself would surely have rejected. St. Thomas merely thought that women were, generally speaking, less able to attain high levels of intellectual development. In light of evidence to the contrary, the Bishop agrees that they are able, but contends instead that it is unfitting for them to do so. Girls who attempt to develop their minds in this way are “distorted” and acting contrary to God’s will. If we fit this into the mold of a natural law argument, it would seem to imply that girls who develop (or even use?) their capacities for discursive thought are sinning.

This conclusion is radically at odds with the Thomistic view, according to which discursive reasoning is a deep and integral part of the human mind. According to St. Thomas, such reasoning is vitally necessary to us, since we need abstract reasoning (particularly concerning effects and causes) in order to gain a basic familiarity with the world. This kind of mental activity is the primary thing that distinguishes human beings from other sorts of creatures. Animals have instincts, allowing them to function without any understanding of causes, while God himself knows all things simultaneously, without any need for discursive reasoning. But between these two levels lies rationality, the form of understanding proper to beings who are not God, but are made in His image. And indeed, St. Thomas takes the intellect to be the very thing that distinguishes us as being, unlike the beasts, in the image and likeness of God. It is through our intellectual acts that we most nearly imitate God’s perfections.

So, if abstraction is incompatible with womanhood, what sort of creature is the woman? Not God, obviously, nor an angel. So she has not moved beyond discursive thought. But if she has not acquired it either, this will put her on a level with the beasts, operting on instinct because she lacks the sort of intellect that can reason about causes. Such a being is not made in God’s image, in the way that a human being is made in God’s image. Such a creature is not, properly speaking, human. And if this the right description of a woman, it would seem that she is a creature utterly different from a man. Can we even be certain, in that case, that she can be saved by Christ’s redemptive act?

To my mind this argument should be enough in itself to dismiss the Bishop’s essay as offensive and absurd. But just to be sure, let’s try approaching his Excellency’s position from another angle. What would lead him to suppose that intellectual activity is, for woman, contrary to the natural law? His argument plays on a supposition of complimentarity of the sexes. He contends, in essence, that men are disposed to worry about their dealings with the outside world, while women devote themselves to caring for the family. Now, this basic picture does not seem entirely implausible to me, and it finds echoes in many other places. CS Lewis suggests that, within the family, the woman should be the special advocate of the family’s interests, while the man worries about dealing fairly with others. We can see in experience that men tend to feel it their responsibility to protect and materially support the family, while it is more often the women who sit up all night with a sick child or a dying grandparent. In contemporary ethics, many philosophers have described this same divide; female philosophers, they say, gravitate towards an “ethics of care” while males are more preoccupied with justice.

Much more could be said about this, but for the sake of argument I will grant Bishop Williamson’s conjecture that the sexes are naturally disposed towards these different areas of concern. How does this relate back to education? To the Bishop, it is apparently obvious that concern can only be expressed through sheer outbursts of irrational emotion. It isn’t obvious to me. Neither Aristotle nor St. Thomas would be at all sympathetic to the Bishop’s argument here; both agree that a virtuous person should experience emotions, but regulate them appropriately through the intellect. And there is no reason to think that masculine virtue and feminine virtue should be different in this regard. It is evident in any case that intense concern for the needs of others is not incompatible with a strong intellect. If his Excellency thinks it is, I would ask: which of these characteristics did Our Lord lack?

Perhaps the best thing the Bishop could do for himself at this point would be to remark that, even if a trained intellect is not incompatible with a woman’s nature, it is less necessary for her than it is for a man. Men are more likely to pursue careers, and therefore education may be a practical necessity. This is a more promising avenue, and it might really be possible to argue that, given the different natures of men and women, it is more expedient to educate boys than girls. (On the other hand, given traditional Catholics’ strong advocacy of homeschooling, it would seem that women may also need a serious education to fulfill their roles. But we’ll leave this point aside for now.) But if St. Thomas is right that the trained intellect will better regulate the emotions and work towards virtue, then it seems that that both sexes are likely to be improved by a good education. And I think experience bears this out to some degree. A man, if he does not understand justice properly, is inclined towards the unjust domination of others. But a woman is inclined towards concern of the perverted, malicious sort – gossip, meddling in others’ affairs, and wasting time with such frivolities as fashion or women’s television. These defects are likely to be avoided or lessened by a solid education. The educated and refined woman will learn to occupy her mind with more uplifting things, which may well help her to improve in virtue. She will be less likely to be insipid and petty, and, if her schooling is good, will have learned through it the value of work and of discipline. The effects of her intellectual improvement are also likely to be seen in the sort of upbringing and education she gives to her children. As Newman argued so eloquently, a proper education allows the human mind to grasp the truth more perfectly, which cannot but be an advantage for any human creature.

In any case, the most important point is that Bishop Williamson has departed radically from St. Thomas’ position. Thomas appears