The Reckoning to Come: “The Rights of Women” by Erika Bachiochi

We recently had the privilege of attending a panel discussion on modern feminism at the Catholic Information Center. The event focused on Erika Bachiochi’s new book The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision that explores the development of feminist theory in the United States and critiques the movement’s current trajectory–but not without offering a new path towards women’s rights that rests upon our concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community.

As a panelist at the event, PC Contributor Mary Eberstadt has given us an exclusive to publish her statement that thoughtfully responds to the themes in Erika’s book.

“The Reckoning to Come”

Catholic Information Center, Washington, D.C., July 20, 2021

I’d like to begin tonight with a story that came to mind more than once upon reading through Erika Bachiochi’s crucial new book. It’s a story about herd behavior among intellectuals – and how that herd behavior is not foreordained, and can change.

Let’s go back a couple of decades in time. Before the collapse of Communism was ushered in by the Velvet Revolutions, academic and other polite society in the United States shared a near-consensus about the Soviet Union and its doings. It was that Communism was more benign than detractors in the West said it was; that Western nations were riddled with problems of their own; and that the biggest obstacle to social peace was not Communism, but rather, anti-Communism.