What the Catholic Church Really Thinks of Women: Saint Catherine of Alexandria Edition

Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler's snare.

Had not the LORD been with us– 

When men rose up against us,

then would they have swallowed us alive. // Psalm 124:2-3

(from the Readings for the Optional Memorial of Saint Catherine of Alexandria)

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Not much about her life is left to us in the historical record. But her story, found in the book The Golden Legend, speaks volumes.*

According to the legend, Catherine was born at the end of the third century, the pampered daughter of the governor of Egypt, which was then part of the Roman Empire. She converted to Christianity at the age of fourteen and devoted the next few years to studying apologetics and theology. 

The story goes that in the midst of the persecutions under Emperor Maxentius, she sought an audience with him through her father, and rebuked the emperor for his cruelty to Christians. In response, he summoned his fifty greatest pagan scholars to debate her, hoping to disprove Christianity once and for all. She bested them. Several of her adversaries professed themselves Christians right then and there and were immediately put to death. 

Catherine was arrested. During her imprisonment, she was visited by two hundred members of the emperor’s court, including Maxentius's wife, Valeria Maximilla. Each converted to Christianity and was subsequently martyred. When Catherine couldn’t be swayed by torture, Maxentius tried proposing marriage to her—as the position of his wife had recently become available—but she declined.

She was eventually sentenced to death by torture on the breaking wheel (now known as a Saint Catherine’s wheel), but it shattered at her touch and she was beheaded instead. She was nineteen years old. Over a thousand years after her death, she was one of the saints who spoke to another self-confident nineteen-year-old, Saint Joan of Arc.

Saint Catherine’s is a great story. I hope every word is historically accurate. But even if it’s not, this is a story that has been told to Catholics for at least a thousand years. This is how our Church sees women, holding up Saint Catherine to us as one of the many different examples of perfect Christian womanhood. 

So, perhaps God and His Church are calling you to be a kick-butt debate team champ girlboss. Or maybe it’s something a little less dramatic? But He has a plan for you.

*Compiled by Blessed Father Jacobus de Voragine, this collection of Saint stories was the second most-read book in medieval Europe, after the Bible.