Apologetics and Women

[CB_Catholic]

Well, I think that apologetics is actually a rather flawed enterprise. It’s necessary, but I think it’s unhealthy for it to be anyone’s main preoccupation. Certain kinds of geeky men are drawn to argument in an excessive way, and these (I’m one of them) tend to be interested in apologetics (if they are believers). Women are less prone to this particular disorder.

Edwin

Perhaps the key is “geeky men” I personally know very few women (and I am a woman) who don’t like to argue more than men. Ask their husbands and boyfriends.

 

[Genesis315]

But maybe a Franciscan? A Poor Claire, perhaps? (any of whom I would nominate, were I in a position to do so).

How about the recently canonized St. Angela de Foligno? She was a third-order Franciscan.

St. Angela has been known as the “Mistress of Theolgians” and the “Angel of Great Counsel,” and the friar who gathered her words of wisdom when she was alive called her a “great doctor”, whose teachings and wisdom “are like nothing in all the earth.”

Back in the 1870s, the translator to the book I’ve read describes the “great authority of her doctrine” throughout the Church.

She seems like a good bet to be given this title someday.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_of_Foligno

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Of course, as other posters pointed out above, there have been great women apologists in the past and there is no reason why women can’t be apologists, but I think you hit the nail on the head in bold above. In my experience,** women like to argue less than men**. Apologetics involves arguing a lot. Therefore, less women are interested.

I’d add that women have been (and continue to be) something much more important to the Church than apologists, evangelists. Of course, mother’s evangelize their children, we all know that. But even down through history, you’ll see wives evangelizing their husbands and female friends evangelizing each other (and male friends too). Remember, apologetics is just a means to evangelization and it is neither the only nor the best one. Peter Kreeft, one of the best apologists around, compares apologists to trash men. They clear the garbage out of the way for evangelization. I love apologetics, but we must always keep first things first.

Plenty of women love a good argument.