Blasphemous attributions of feminism to Our Lady, censorship – this is not what a women’s conference needs. Try this for a palate cleanser.
Editor’s Notes
In a moment I will tell you about four great conferences from a Women’s Day of Recollection a few months ago – the first of which is already linked above. But before getting into that, let me tell you what’s prompted sharing these conferences.
Last week, the organisation Restore Tradition held their 5th annual Women’s Conference, which was about how “to learn the meaning of true femininity through our speakers’ dynamic talks”.
It featured an array of popular speakers from the conservative / “recognise and resist” wing of the Conciliar/Synodal Church:
Michael Matt: Christ or Chaos (Keynote Address)
Fr Chad Ripperger: “The Sins of Eve, Feminism and Our Lady.”
Abby Johnson: “Why I became a Catholic” (A moving story of conversion)
Rachel Mastrogiacomo: “Out of The Darkness and into the Light” (How one woman overcame priestly abuse and found healing in the Traditional Latin Mass.)
Matt Gaspers: “Fatima and the Final Battle” (Sister Lucia spoke of the Final Battle which will be about Marriage and the family)
Fr Joseph Dalimata FSSP
Jodi Lacroix: Finding Order out of Chaos with Christ (Breakout Session)
Fran Pierson: Freemasonry – Lucifer’s useful Henchmen (Breakout Session)
However, this conference became mired in drama and controversy.
Michael Matt’s cringeworthy (and possibly blasphemous) comments
First, videos surfaced of The Remnant Newspaper’s Michael Matt ludicrously telling his female audience that it was their responsibility to “lead us back to sanity”, and (probably blasphemously) referring to Our Lady as “the ultimate feminist”:
Video clipped by Sede Picante (fair use).
There is little to be said about the potentially blasphemous quality of these words – and it’s already been addressed elsewhere.
We could note, however, the incoherence of Fr Chad Ripperger giving a talk which condemns feminism as “the curse of Eve on steroids” – whilst Matt attributes it to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A digression on AI, prompted by a slop defence of Matt’s comments
Matt’s critics were later referred to an essay defending his comments, by “₿enedict Schweizer” – a “Passionate and aspiring entrepreneur” based in Zürich, whose interests are listed as “#Fintech #Swiss #Bitcoin #MEGA.”
Schweizer’s X article (Mary, the “Strong Woman” — Why Michael Matt’s Point Is More Catholic Than His Critics Admit) counts in at around 3,000 words, and has all the style hallmarks of AI-generated slop. Take a skim of it yourself and see.
And indeed, when I copy/pasted it into Substack to run Pangram’s AI detector analysis on it, it produced the following result:
(I often find myself longing for opponents of greater credibility. What honour is there in being opposed to persons who publish such material, or who promote it, or who are responsible for speaking the nonsense that it defends?)
In my opinion, the problem is not strictly AI-generated content, but slop – which humans can produce without the assistance of AI. That said, I do object to the inequality imposed by those who expend no energy in writing their material, and yet expect readers to engage and refute what their chatbot has produced for them – as I said earlier in the year to someone whose essays reeked of slop, and yielded the same results:
Subversiveness of Matt’s topsy-turvy philosophy
What Matt expresses is completely topsy-turvy. Consider the following:
Archbishop Fulton Sheen is widely praised for claiming that the laity will save the Church, by making sure that the clergy and religious do their job properly.
Fr Chad Ripperger claims that “you get the leaders you deserve”, and that the crisis in the Church is caused and perpetuated by the fact that “a vast majority of the Catholics in in the Church are leading habitual lives of grave sin.” The way to fix that, he says, is to become “holy ourselves, so that we merit having leaders that we’re worthy of.”
Michael Matt claims that women will lead men through their “feminine power”
Subjects are made responsible for the actions of their superiors, victims are blamed, and impossible burdens are imposed. What next?
Will children be made responsible for women being good mothers?
Is the dog called to make sure the children are good?
Perhaps a bone or a rubber ball in the back garden is actually the ultimate “McGuffin” that will solve the crisis in the Church.
There is a truth to the idea that “we get the leaders we deserve.” But this is a perversion of it. The reality is that the problem is at the top. That’s what Roman Amerio said:
“The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing [this disunity] is the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”1
The Holy See is vacant, suffering a crisis of authority and it has its effect all down the chain, in every aspect of life.
Until that is recognised, everything else is pedalling a bike with no chain – and punching down, blaming those who are deprived of the exercise of authority.
Women have powers, skills and influence that are uniquely theirs, and they can be used for great good or for great evil. But Catholic women do not be fed the “purple pill” (or even outright “blue pill”) nonsense of it being their responsibility to lead and save men.
You can read more about this bizarre set of comments, if you so wish, over at Integrity Magazine:
Cancelling a speaker mid-speech
Rachel Mastrogiacomo was scheduled to give a talk on the Saturday afternoon, titled “Out of The Darkness and into the Light” (How one woman overcame priestly abuse and found healing in the Traditional Latin Mass.)
For some reason, reportedly, the MC interrupted Mastrogiacomo’s talk twice, with the second cutting her talk short. Apparently this took place when she was talking about the defects of the Novus Ordo rites.
Mastrogiacomo later gave the full talk on the YouTube channel Pitbulls of the Lord Spiritual Warfare, run by Eira Wulfnothsson. Wulfnothsson describes herself in the following terms:
“Ave Maria-- as an ex-occultist of 4 decades and now a traditional Roman Catholic and consecrated Marian, I serve The Lord through a Mandated Catholic Exorcist. I am no stranger to evil ‘past or present.’ And yet I am no stranger to grace as The Lord shows his mercy, love and peace with each breath I take. On this channel I share my journey, the joys and crosses, and share the aspects of Spiritual Warfare which have been the backbone of The Liberation Ministry of The Catholic Church since its inception. I will shine a light on the magickal rites used against you from the world stage. I’ll decode the public rituals so you might recognize them and inoculate yourself against them. I’ll share with you the reasons symbolism and psychology matter to our evil overlords. You'll learn of fallen angels and demons and the protocol and prayers which counter them. All, In Jesus Name.”
Whatever we might think of all this, it’s difficult to imagine Mastrogiacomo saying something more offensive or absurd than Michael Matt (who was not censored at all).
Conclusion
What is there to say?
Who needs this kind of drama?
Not me – and not Mrs Wright either.
I am not aware of everything said by the other speakers said at this conference, and I am sure that many of the women had a good time there. It’s a shame that it has become surrounded in drama, as those organising it will have had the best of intentions – even aside from the mainstream “Recognise and Resist” angle of the speakers (which did indeed come up at points). But from what we’ve seen, I can say this with confidence: if I had paid money for Mrs Wright to endure all this, I would not be happy about.
This is why I am sending readers these four conferences by priests of the Roman Catholic Institute, at a Women’s Day of Recollection at Queen of All Saints chapel in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The event took place in March 2026.
The first two talks are by our friend – who should be familiar to readers of The WM Review by now – Fr Reid Hennick. Fr Hennick was ordained in 2016, and was a member of the Society of St Pius X until February 2025. Earlier this year, he joined the Roman Catholic Institute.
On the subject of the RCI: Sister Mary Savio’s fundraiser for her really complex surgery is currently sitting at $84,452 out of the $92,000 needed. That means they’re just 8% away. I’m so proud of the response of The WM Review’s readership – can we help them raise that last $7,548 needed?
Both of Fr Hennick’s conferences are based around the concept of the “virago” – the courageous woman:
The first conference takes the somewhat negative-sounding word virago, and uses it to crack open a question the ancient world couldn’t answer: if virtue etymologically means “manliness,” then what does a virtuous woman look like? Working through Genesis, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr Hennick explains why feminine strength isn’t a watered-down copy of the male version, and that although the Romans couldn’t even conceive of it, it was present in Genesis from the beginning.
The second conference builds on the first, by showing how grace elevates feminine nature’s traditional “weakness” – her affective, empathic constitution – into a source of extraordinary spiritual strength, and he shows where the definitive model of the virago is found. But Fr Hennick soften what he’s saying for the audience: as well as naming the “weakness” which weaker speakers would avoid, he identifies four obstacles to feminine fortitude, namely inconstancy, mercy without truth, vanity, and the temptation to control.
The second two conferences and the short final comments, were given by Fr Hennick’s colleague Fr Tobias Bayer. Fr Bayer, an American and Colombian by nationality, was ordained in 2022 by Bishop Donald Sanborn.
The third conference lays out six duties of a Catholic wife. Fr Bayer talks about what to when your husband walks through the door after a bad day, the impact you have on your children when you convey disapproval, and what to think about the cooling of marital love.
The fourth conference names the remaining six duties, and drives at the most important one, which is getting your children’s souls to heaven. Everything else is worthless, if it costs them their faith. Fr Bayer is blunt about what this looks like in practice.
The final exhortation turns the series of conferences into a mission and a challenge.
Perhaps next year, Restore Tradition could invite Frs Hennick and Bayer to their conference.
First Conference: Virago – The Call to Feminine Fortitue (Fr Reid Hennick):
Second Conference: Virago – The Call to Feminine Fortitue (Fr Reid Hennick):
Third Conference: For Catholic Wives (Fr Tobias Bayer):
Fourth Conference: For Catholic Mothers (Fr Tobias Bayer):
Final Exhortation (Fr Tobias Bayer):
And if you liked these talks from these two RCI priests, then please consider helping out with Sister Mary Savio’s fundraiser. They have so far raised $84,452 out of the $92,000 needed.
At just 8% away, can The WM Review readership help them raise that last $7,548 needed?
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Romano Amerio, Iota Unum – A study of the changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth century, pp. 143. Sarto House, Kansas City MO, 1996.