Sr. Mary Madeline Todd: Women are ‘privileged bearers of life’ and their bodies are not ‘burdens’

Last month, Live Action held its first ever Women’s Summit: Return to Eden, where numerous speakers encouraged women to defend life and truth. One of them, Sister Mary Madeline Todd, spoke about the need for women to find their identity in Christ.

Sr. Mary is a Dominican Sister of Saint Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, and earned her doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, as well as a Master of Arts in English from the University of Memphis. She wrote her dissertation on the theme of Christ, the Liberator of Woman, and currently teaches philosophy at Mount de Sales Academy in Baltimore.

Key Takeaways:

• Sister Mary Madeline Todd spoke about women’s identity, which is ultimately rooted in Christ above all.

• She said all women are beloved, not because of anything they do, but because they are loved by God.

• All women are mothers, whether through biological or spiritual motherhood.

• Our status as daughters of God is the most important status we will ever hold.

The Details:

Sr. Mary began with prayer, and then urged listeners to consider what it is to be a woman.

“How could we have come to a place where, individually and as a society, we question what a woman is or who we are? How can women crafted in the eternal loving design of our good God to be the privileged bearers of life, see our own bodies and others as a burden or as a threat or as a problem?” she asked.

“I would argue that… [t]he way we live, the things we do, do help to identify who we are. But long before you do anything, you are someone.”

Finding Our Identity In Christ | Sister Mary Madeline Todd at the Live Action Women's Summit

While the world often reduces women to just numbers like height, weight, salary, or follower count on social media, these are not what really matters.

“Who you are is because of whose you are. And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Nothing,” she said. “… Nothing you’ve done, nothing you haven’t done, nothing anyone has done to you can change who you are in the eternal Father’s eyes. Who you are, my sisters in Christ, is beloved. You are beloved, and you were beloved before you did anything.”

Sr. Mary admitted that, in choosing to commit her life to God, she had to let go of her desire to have a biological child of her own. Instead, she has embraced spiritual motherhood, which is something that every woman obtains. “My sisters in Christ, our spiritual motherhood is real. It’s real,” she said. “Whether you are gifted with a child, whether you are not, every woman is mother.”

But first and foremost, women are daughters of God. No matter what women experience in life, whether it is disappointment from earthly families or sky-high achievements, women are “each uniquely made in God’s image and likeness, each uniquely loved into existence,” she said.

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