When I set out to write about my friend Kate O’Beirne on my phone, we are immediately in emphasis mode, as she was KATE THE GREAT in my address book. So when I go to write her name, it’s ALL CAPS, all the time. So let me tell you about KATE. Because in the way she died, she put one final spotlight on what’s most important in life.
Kate O’Beirne, first of all, died on April 23, which this year happened to be Divine Mercy Sunday, a relatively new feast day in the Catholic Church, treasured by Pope Francis and Pope Benedict and by John Paul II before them. Three years ago on the feast, we were in Rome with mutual friends, praying and playing together as pilgrims at the canonization Mass of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. As always, there was about her a peace and grace and wisdom and wit that I prayed I might acquire through osmosis.
And great she was. I don’t know that she’d take to our canonizing her, and that’s above my pay grade and not what I seek to do here. But she was someone who tried to make the world better for others, starting with the person right in front of her, or standing in the corner, or quiet at the meeting table. She reached out to people not as blessed as she was with family and resources. She gave whenever the opportunity presented itself, and looked for ways to create opportunities. She was sanctifying the world with her prayerful — and fun and wise — presence.
She was perhaps best known for being Washington editor of National Review and a panelist on CNN’s Capital Gang. But to so many who were blessed to know her off the page and off screen, she was a source of advice, support, and ideas galore.
Some years ago when two friends of mine and I set out to start Catholic Voices in the United States, seeking to help people articulate the faith with love in all situations, Kate was the No. 1 supporter of the effort, donating her own time and roping in her family, too. She would pitch it to bishops and cardinals in the highest offices of the Church. This, despite being known as a conservative pundit. Because how she handled the debate shows was different. She’d articulate and defend her conservative views with substance, grace, wit, and wisdom. She treated people as people, not opposing talking points. So she established and maintained long-term relationships that grew into friendships. That made her views more compelling, inspiring and helping people see the beauty of the Catholic faith, which was the treasure of her life, along with her family.
This despite — or because of — being the author of a book called Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. I say “despite” because the book certainly puts feminism as we conventionally know it on the defensive. But I say also “because of” because in many ways her book and her faith partook of the same spirit. If feminists truly believed in empowering women for freedom and choice, they’d rejoice in the example of Kate O’Beirne, pro-life, supportive of the traditional family, and determined that you might see that being a woman does not mean that you are part of a monolithic political vote in any given election. (Had Hillary Clinton been reading Kate O’Beirne, she might have changed her gender-privilege position — I am woman, I am inevitably president — years ago.)
Kate O’Beirne treated people as people, not opposing talking points.
Kate’s book exposed the “modern women’s movement” as “totalitarian in its methods, radical in its aims, and dishonest in its advocacy.” As she lays out her case — which was published in 2006 and stands the test of time — she shines an authoritative and motherly light, to stop the bloodletting in a culture that tends to pour salt onto open wounds and add misery upon miseries.
Her book is also resplendent with gratitude. “Long before NOW [the National Organization of Women] held its first organizational meeting, there were female role models who exemplified initiative, intelligence, and independence. America’s first large network of professional women was Catholic nuns. In the 1900s, they built and ran the country’s largest private school and hospital systems. These women were nurses, teachers — and CEOs.” She would have loved that the Washington Post took the hint and mentioned these trailblazers in the first paragraph of their obituary of Kate.
In recent years, she spent more of her time with her beloved family and treasured her time with her grandchildren in a particular way. She was awed by their beautiful personalities and sensitive souls. Once described in a newspaper column as the “crème de la crème of Washington insiderdom,” she was every bit the same woman regardless of the environment. You may have encountered her sharp political analysis, but what was life-changing was her confident, radiant faith. That was her greatest of great gifts. And as she lay in her hospital bed in her last hours, although she could not speak, the message was clear: All is gift, all is grace. Make the world better, and fall into the arms of the Creator who made all that is good in love. And so she did and has.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and an editor-at-large of National Review. Sign up for her weekly NRI newsletter here.
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