Joy encouraged viewers to think of themselves as gifts from God and to recognize the gifts they have been given. She said women have the ability to enter into what every heart yearns: a longing to be loved.
This is a potentially toxic belief I've seen Roman Catholic women push over and over again in their reflections on being Christian. While the emotional longing to be loved (or affirmed) is an important part of being human (generally more so in women than men), the desire to love at the rational level or alternatively, to love with all of one's being, is an even stronger and more important part of being human. This is how St. Augustine's point about the human heart should be properly understood, even though it has been misunderstood by at least one American Roman Catholic women writer. We all should remember what God has done for us and the love that we have received from Him, and to live the Divine Life which He has shared with us accordingly. It is not that great of a leap to go from the premise about the natural longing to be loved to a claim about women being naturally more spiritual than men--which the speakers do not claim, at least in the excerpts provided in the article, but other Roman Catholics have made that leap. Finally, nothing in the
Given Institute mission explicitly repudiates feminism; if anything it advances a spurious form of "Catholic feminism" taking the cue of Pope John Paul II. Benedict XVI did not reject the Catholic feminism of JP2, and Francis has been in continuity with John Paul II in that regard.
