Another inspirational saint for working mothers is Saint Edith Stein, also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish convert to the faith and brilliant philosopher who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although Stein had a vocation to religious life instead of one to marriage and family, and thus only experienced spiritual motherhood, she was a gifted academic and philosopher who penned a large volume of work and gave many lectures regarding the nature and vocation of women.
In her Essays on Woman, she notes in a 1931 lecture titled “The Separate Vocations of Men and Women According to Nature and Grace,” that “the question whether women should enter the professional life or stay at home has been controversial for some time.”
Later in this particular essay, she discusses the economic situation that has made women in the workforce a reality and asks, “On the whole[,] does woman’s professional life outside of the home violate the order of nature and grace? I believe that one must answer ‘no’ to this question.”
She continues:
Wherever the circle of domestic duties is too narrow for the wife to attain the full formation of her powers, both nature and reason concur that she reach out beyond this circle. It appears to me, however, that there is a limit to such professional activities whenever it jeopardizes domestic life, i.e., the community of life and formation consisting of parents and children. It seems to me a contradiction of the divine order when the professional activities of the husband escalate to a degree which cuts him off completely from family life. This is even more true of the wife. Any social condition is an unhealthy one which compels married women to seek gainful employment and makes it impossible for them to manage their home. And we should accept as normal that the married woman is restricted to domestic life at a time when her household duties exact her total energies.6
Here Edith Stein reiterates the teachings of the popes: It is not inherently wrong or sinful for a mother to work outside the home, but such work should not cause the neglect of home and family — and that goes for the husband as well. She decries social conditions that compel women to seek gainful employment — the implication being that they do so against their will, due to economic conditions — AND (not “or”) make it impossible for them to manage their home.
Additionally, the last line of this quote makes the case for extended maternity leave long before such policies were even proposed, let alone enacted.
I would love to reprint her essay (not to mention several others) in its entirety, but it would make this chapter entirely too long. I highly recommend reading her works, especially the essays in this particular volume, as they are brilliant discourses on theological issues that are pertinent to Catholic women, whether they are single, married, or in religious life.
Of course, no book about working mothers would be complete without discussion of our patroness: Saint Gianna Beretta Molla.
Saint Gianna was born in 1922 in Milan, Italy, into a devout Catholic family. Her solid faith and dedication to prayer led her to devote her life to the service of others. She realized this vocation by studying medicine, becoming a doctor, and opening her own pediatrics practice, while also serving the poor and elderly through volunteer work. She discerned a vocation to marriage and family, and was wedded to Pietro Molla, an engineer, on September 24, 1955. Following her marriage, she had three children in four years while continuing to work as a pediatrician.
In the first trimester of her fourth pregnancy, Gianna was diagnosed with a dangerously large fibroid tumor in her uterus. Per Catholic teaching, a therapeutic hysterectomy was a morally licit option under the principle of double effect, but Gianna chose a riskier surgery to remove only the fibroid in an attempt to save the baby.
The surgery was successful, but the remainder of her pregnancy was fraught with anxiety as it was unknown what effects or complications the surgery might have had on the baby, and the early surgery also made her subsequent delivery riskier as well. Throughout, Gianna insisted that, if a choice had to be made, she wanted her husband and medical providers to save the baby, not her.
“[H]opefully, in addition to the working moms already canonized, WE can be the people our Catholic friends hold up as examples of someone who is a good Catholic and working mom, doing good work, and being a good mom.”
— Katie F.
Her fourth child, a girl christened Gianna Emanuela, was eventually born safely, but the delivery included complications that claimed Saint Gianna’s life one week later. She died on April 28, 1962. On April 24, 1994, she was beatified by Saint John Paul II, and canonized by him on May 16, 2004. Her husband and children were present at her canonization.
Gianna did not undertake work outside the home due to financial necessity; her husband was an engineer, and his income would have been more than adequate for his family’s needs. Instead, she worked outside the home because she felt she had been called by God to serve the members of her community as a doctor, while also serving her husband and children as a wife and mother. Per her biography on the Vatican website, “with simplicity and equilibrium she harmonized the demands of mother, wife, doctor, and her passion for life.”7
It is true that Gianna had made the decision to give up her medical practice once her fourth child was born, but her decision was not because she had come to the conclusion that working outside the home was somehow wrong or inappropriate. As her husband, Pietro, said in a biography about his wife:
Already during our engagement, Gianna had asked me about continuing her profession at least as long as her obligations as wife and above all as mother allowed it. I did not oppose that because I knew well how enthusiastically she practiced medicine, how attached she was to her patients. Later, by mutual agreement, we made the decision that she would stop at the birth of our fourth child. In this understanding, she continued her profession until her last confinement.8
A study of Saint Gianna’s life, including the letters she wrote to her husband, reveals a devout woman who had been immersed in the teachings of the Catholic Church from childhood, and who was devoted to serving God in all aspects of her life. She lived a life of heroic virtue, as is evidenced by the fact that she was canonized as a saint.
May we all be so skilled as Saint Gianna in managing our varied vocations as wives, mothers, and working women!
Chapter 3
Finding Peace When You Don’t Want to Work
When my husband and I married, he did not have a college degree, and he was working as an independent contractor for an IT staffing firm. I had just started my junior year of college and was working part time. Our plan was for both of us to obtain our degrees before we started a family. Then, we figured, we’d have three or maybe four kids. Once we were done having kids, one of us would get sterilized.
Our carefully laid plans were completely upended by our conversion to Catholicism two years later. For the first time, we learned about the Church’s teaching regarding the gift of children, responsible parenthood, and discernment of family size. We also were introduced to Natural Family Planning. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, NFP “represents the only authentic approach to family planning available to husbands and wives because these methods can be used to both attempt or avoid pregnancy.”9 To our surprise, we felt a call to become parents much sooner than we’d originally planned — after I had earned my degree, but before my husband had earned his.
Because I had a college degree, I had more earning power than my husband. I became a working mother; and as events transpired, I was a reluctant working mother for approximately thirteen years. I wasn’t working because I felt a calling to be in that particular field, or in that particular profession, or at that particular company. I worked only because we needed my income to help pay our bills.
Yes,