Woman as Companion and as Mother | Sr. Elinor Gardner, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Sr. Elinor Gardner explores the vocation of women as companion and mother, drawing on Edith Stein’s philosophy to highlight the natural ethos of femininity as a gift received from God, characterized by a unique capacity for nurturing and companionship that shapes both family and professional life.

This lecture was given on February 22nd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Sister Elinor Gardner, O.P., is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. Prior to arriving at UD, she taught at Aquinas College (Nashville, TN) and at The Catholic University of America, and spent one year assisting in formation at her Congregation’s Novitiate. She has a PhD from Boston College with a doctorate titled “St Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty.” Besides the ethical and political philosophy of Aquinas, her other research interests include the Christian anthropology of Robert Spaemann and Edith Stein.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Catholic Theology, Complementarity of Man and Woman, Culture, Edith Stein, Ethos of Woman’s Vocation, Feminism, Genesis, Motherhood, Virtue Ethics

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.0	To learn more and to attend these events,
0:21.6	visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:24.6	So, woman as companion and mother,
0:27.6	I'm assigned here to talk about the feminine part of the equation,
0:32.6	and I'm going to frame our reflections this afternoon
0:36.6	in terms of the vocation of woman
0:38.7	and the ethos of that vocation.
0:43.5	And this is for a couple of different reasons.
0:47.3	One is I found this way of thinking about it very fruitful.
0:51.4	I'm getting it from Edith's Shine and the article that has been circulated. Don't worry if you haven't had a chance to look at it, but I will refer to it a couple of times in this first part of the talk. I found her way of thinking about femininity very helpful, both for myself, but also for explaining and teaching to others,
1:16.2	talking with others about this. For one thing, it could avoid some confusing language. It's language
1:25.1	that we do find in the tradition, but I think especially in our context,
1:29.6	it can be very confusing. So when, you know, like St. Catherine of Siena talks about manly
1:35.3	virtue, just came up in one of Dr. Cudaback's talks later one this afternoon.
1:42.5	Today, I think that just sounds differently and it can be confusing to people to talk about women having manly virtue or men having feminine virtue.
1:52.6	It has a meaning, of course, and it's not nonsense.
1:56.6	But I found it more fruitful to think through this in terms of a calling and the ethos of that
2:04.4	calling, which is particular to a woman, which we think about this afternoon.
2:12.6	And second, we know there's so much variety in women and in men that it can be difficult to, you know, as soon as you say, oh, that's a feminine virtue, then you start thinking about, oh, well, what about this woman who's fully a woman but doesn't really have that virtue or has a different virtue or a man who exemplifies this virtue. So it could be confusing for that reason. And then finally,
	...

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