The National Catholic Register, the flagship propaganda organ of the conciliar sect, reports on a forthcoming conference in Rochester, New York, entitled “A Better Way Forward for Women,” orchestrated by Erika Bachiochi, a laywoman presented as a “Catholic scholar” and professor at the secular Arizona State University. The event, scheduled for September 17–19, 2026, purports to “reclaim the philosophical roots of the early women’s rights movement” through a “Declaration of Interdependence” signed by an eclectic coalition of “British radical feminists, Catholic theologians and gender-critical scholars.” The Register hails this gathering as a “radical alternative to modern progressive feminism” rooted in “natural law, human dignity and mutual interdependence,” citing the symbolic resonance of Rochester as the home of Susan B. Anthony. This enterprise is not a restoration of Catholic order but a calculated surrender to the spirit of the age, masquerading the poison of feminism as the antidote to its own excesses.
The Feminist Chimera: No “Reclamation” of What Is Intrinsically Disordered
The fundamental deceit of the Bachiochi project lies in its premise: that the “women’s rights movement” possesses “philosophical roots” capable of being purified and baptized. This is a categorical lie. The movement inaugurated at Seneca Falls in 1848 was the political arm of the revolutionary triad—*Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité*—whose explicit aim was the overthrow of the *ordo christianus*. Pope Pius IX, in the *Syllabus Errorum* (1864), condemned the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15), and that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). The “women’s movement” is the direct historical fruit of these errors: the demand for female suffrage, property rights independent of the husband’s authority, and access to the professions was the battering ram used to shatter the *potestas domesticus* of the father and husband, the divinely ordained image of God’s authority in the family. To speak of “reclaiming” this movement is to seek to “reclaim” the French Revolution for the Church. It is the heresy of *americanism*, condemned by Leo XIII in *Testem Benevolentiae* (1899), which sought to reconcile the Church with modern liberty by silencing the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ.
The “Declaration of Interdependence”: A Masonic Parody of the Social Order
The centerpiece of the conference, the public signing of a “Declaration of Interdependence,” is a deliberate, blasphemous inversion of the American Declaration of Independence—itself a document steeped in deistic naturalism—and a usurpation of the Church’s sole authority to define the bonds of human society. The language of “interdependence,” “bodily integrity,” and “radical autonomy” is the vocabulary of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, not the *Corpus Iuris Canonici*. The declaration’s stated principles—“It is unjust for children to be poisoned or dismembered… or for adults to place their own desires ahead of the needs of children”—while materially true regarding abortion, are framed entirely within a *naturalistic* anthropology. They invoke no authority higher than “justice” abstractly conceived, severing the moral law from its Divine Legislator. As Pius XI teaches in *Quas Primas*: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” A declaration that does not explicitly confess *Jesus Christ as King of Nations* and the *Catholic Church as the sole Ark of Salvation* is not a Catholic document; it is a secular humanist manifesto signed by collaborators.
False Ecumenism in the Academy: The “Fairer Disputations” Coalition
The article boasts of the “eclectic coalition” assembled by *Fairer Disputations*: “British radical feminists, Catholic theologians and gender-critical scholars.” This is the *ecumenism of the truth* condemned by Pius XI in *Mortalium Animos* (1928) and the very essence of the *Lamentabili sane exitu* errors. Proposition 58 of *Lamentabili* condemns the idea that “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” Proposition 65 condemns the transformation of Catholicism into “a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” By placing Catholic theologians on equal footing with “radical feminists” (who deny the ontological distinction of the sexes ordained by God) and “gender-critical scholars” (who defend a naturalistic binary while rejecting the Creator), Bachiochi constructs a *pan-Christian* (indeed, pan-theistic) platform where the *depositum fidei* is just one “voice” among many. This is the *collegiality* of error, the *synodality* of the conciliar church in its purest form: the Church reduced to a dialogue partner in the marketplace of ideas.
The Laywoman as Theologian: Usurpation of the Magisterium
Erika Bachiochi is presented as a “legal theorist, Catholic scholar and author” who “sees the conference as a vital moment of renewal” and speaks of “the work of the Holy Spirit being present at all times and all places.” A laywoman, teaching at a secular state university, presuming to launch a “new women’s movement” and to define “women’s flourishing” for the Church and the world, is the embodiment of the *laicization* of the Church prophesied by St. Pius X. The *Catholic Encyclopedia* (pre-1958) defines the *Magisterium* as the teaching authority of the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him. A lay professor possesses *no* teaching authority *ex officio*. Her reference to the Holy Spirit as a vague immanent force guiding her “hope” and “building anew” is pure Modernist immanentism (*Lamentabili*, Prop. 20: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God”). She usurps the role of the hierarchy, not to defend the Faith, but to negotiate a surrender to feminism on “better terms.”
Susan B. Anthony: The False Patroness of a False Movement
The choice of Rochester is explicitly justified as “the historic epicenter of the 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights movements — and the home of pioneers like Susan B. Anthony.” Anthony was a Quaker-turned-Unitarian, a suffragist who campaigned for the *total* political equality of women, rejecting the divine hierarchy of the family and the Church. She opposed the 15th Amendment because it enfranchised Black men before white women, revealing the movement’s racist, elitist core. To hold her up as a symbolic patron for a “Catholic” conference is to canonize a heretic and a revolutionary. It violates the First Commandment and the Church’s law against *communicatio in sacris* with non-Catholics in matters of faith and morals. The *Syllabus* condemns the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18); honoring a Unitarian feminist as a “pioneer” of a movement Catholics should “reclaim” is practical Protestantism.
Natural Law Without Grace: The Pelagian Trap
Bachiochi claims the conference is rooted in “natural law, human dignity and mutual interdependence.” This is the *naturalism* condemned by Pius IX (*Syllabus*, Error 3: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil”) and by Leo XIII in *Humanum Genus* (1884) against Freemasonry. The “natural law” invoked by the conciliar church is a truncated, rationalistic shadow of the *lex aeterna* participated in by rational creatures. St. Thomas teaches (*Summa Theologiae* I-II, q. 91, a. 2) that the natural law is the participation of the eternal law in rational creatures; it *cannot* be known or fulfilled apart from the supernatural light of faith and the grace of Christ. A “vision of women’s flourishing” built on unaided reason—shared with “radical feminists” and “gender-critical scholars”—is a Pelagian illusion. It promises a City of Man without the City of God. As Pius XI warns in *Quas Primas*: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” True harmony exists *only* under the Kingship of Christ.
The “Pro-Life” Bait: Sacrificing the Crown for the Sceptre
The declaration’s opposition to abortion and “chemical or surgical castration” (transgenderism) functions as the bait. The conciliar sect has for decades used “pro-life” activism as a pressure valve, channeling Catholic zeal into political lobbying within the Masonic framework of the secular state, while abandoning the *integral* Faith. Bachiochi’s rhetoric—“neither the pro-abortion left nor the increasingly misogynistic online right speaks to the needs… of modern women”—positions her movement as the *via media*, the “Third Way” of the Antichurch. This is the strategy of the *Sillon*, condemned by St. Pius X in *Notre Charge Apostolique* (1910): a Catholic movement that adopts the language of the Revolution (“interdependence,” “dignity,” “autonomy”) to “Christianize” it, resulting only in the Catholics being absorbed by the Revolution. The article notes the conference aims to be a “launching pad for a lasting cultural shift.” *Cultura* without *cultus* is idolatry.
The Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Church as the Handmaid of the World
This conference is not an anomaly; it is the *modus operandi* of the conciliar sect since Vatican II. The *Gaudium et Spes* anthropology—man as the “center and crown” of creation, the Church as “servant of humanity”—finds its logical terminus in Erika Bachiochi. The “theology of the body” of John Paul II (the antipope Wojtyła), with its phenomenological focus on “the nuptial meaning of the body” and “self-gift,” has displaced the Thomistic theology of the *sacramentum matrimonii* as a sign of Christ and the Church, ordered to the procreation and education of children for heaven. Bachiochi’s “interdependence” is the secularized residue of this personalist deviation. The speakers—Mary Harrington (author of *Feminism Against Progress*), Louise Perry (*The Case Against the Sexual Revolution*), Abigail Favale (*The Genesis of Gender*)—are the *useful idiots* of the hour: secular or “conservative” writers who critique the *excesses* of the sexual revolution while accepting its *premises* (autonomy, consent, equality). The conciliar “Catholic” scholars provide the sacramental veneer. The result is a *syncretic* anti-culture that leaves the *Social Kingship of Christ* entirely unmentioned, unproclaimed, and un-defended.
Conclusion: Return to the Integral Faith, Reject the Gilded Cage
The “Better Way Forward” is a cul-de-sac. It offers Catholic women a gilded cage of “dignity” and “interdependence” within the City of Man, while the King of Kings remains dethroned in the public square. The only “way forward” for women—for all men—is the *via crucis*: submission to the *Sweet Yoke of Christ* (Matt. 11:30) through the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation (*extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*). The true “Declaration of Interdependence” is the *Credo*: *Credo in unum Deum… et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum… et in Spiritum Sanctum… unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam*. All else is *vanitas vanitatum*. The faithful must flee these assemblies of compromise, *cum timore et tremore*, and cleave to the Tradition of the Fathers, the Mass of All Time, and the bishops who retain valid orders and jurisdiction to feed the flock in the catacombs. *Non praevalebunt.*
Source:
‘A Better Way Forward’: Scholars Gather to Reclaim the Origins of the Women’s Movement (ncregister.com)
Date: 26.08.2026