Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, celebrated women and life at its commencement exercise Saturday.
Four women were awarded honorary doctorates at the college: Three attorneys who have been celebrated as “the three women who toppled Roe v. Wade;” and a sister of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who is the subject of the book Sister, Soldier, Surgeon: The Life and Courage of Sister Deirdre Byrne, M.D.
No one mentioned it at the commencement but the four women receiving honorary degrees each represented a different vocation in the Church.
The religious sister began by throwing two small footballs into the crowd.
Sister Dierdre said “last year’s commencement speaker is a tough act to follow. He put Benedictine on the map, for me anyway. But my brothers taught me to throw a football and to be competitive so here!”
She was speaking about Harrison Butker, the Kansas City Chiefs kicker. But then, like Butker, she spoke in praise of the married vocation.
“I have been a sister, a surgeon, and an Army officer all at the same time,” she said, but she knew of people who do more. “There are people who work jobs as chauffeurs, coaches, therapists, tutors, volunteers, nurses — all in one day. Then they get up and do the same thing tomorrow. … They are called moms and dads.”
She had parents stand, but she would return to the power of life again.
Sister Dierdre shared her incredible vocation story and how she learned that Jesus was asking her to surrender her life. But then she shared with the students their vocation story.
She told them they were planned long before their parents met each other. God was thinking of them “when he decided to light the sky and create the cosmos, so vast yet smaller by far, than him. That is why every life is precious, every embryo is intended by God even if he or she is not intended by us.”
Life — and vocation — took center stage in the other honorees, as well.
Benedictine College President Stephen Minnis introduced Denise Burke, Kellie Fiedorek, and Erin Hawley, attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom.
“These are brave women who have accomplished a lot for our nation and the most defenseless among us, the unborn,” he said.
They were all involved in various ways with the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in Mississippi that eventually went to the Supreme Court and resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“Without these three women,” he said, “millions of tiny voices would never be heard. We owe them a great debt of gratitude, and these Honorary Degrees are merely a symbol of our deep appreciation for their love of life and the law.”
What he didn’t mention were the diverse feminine vocations of the attorneys.
The three included Denise Burke, a senior council at Alliance Defending Freedom and a member of the Center for Public Policy. She helped write the Mississippi Gestational Age Act which was challenged in court — a challenge that resulted in overturning Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 24, 2022.
Her long career includes being awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and other high awards in the Air Force. But she is also a single mother, with a daughter in Benedictine’s graduating class.
Another was Kellie Fiedorek, senior counsel and director of Government affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom. She is a single woman who has litigated important cases advancing religious liberty, and contributed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Last was Erin Hawley, a Yale Law graduate featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News, USA Today, and other publications. She has three children, the youngest of whom accompanied her as she defended the Mississippi law at the heart of the Dobbs case. Her book about motherhood is called Lessons From My Little Ones About the Heart of God.
That rounds out the vocations of women.
In the second paragraph of his 1995 Letter to Women, Pope John Paul II thanked women in several vocations, saying that women are “present and active in every area of life — social, economic, cultural, artistic and political. In this way you make an indispensable contribution to the growth of a culture.”
