Donna Steichen

Who is Donna Steichen?

Donna Steichen is a Roman Catholic author and journalist. Born in Wadena, Minnesota to Margaret and Maurice Merrigan, she lived most of her life in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and later in Ojai, California.

In 1950, she married LeRoy Steichen, and they became the parents of four children.

Before becoming known for her writing, Steichen was a classroom teacher and religious educator, and was engaged in the pro-life movement from its inception. From 1980 to 1986, she served as vice-president and president, successively, of the Minnesota chapter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Donna Steichen is best known to the general public for her best selling and controversial 1991 book Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, a critical analysis of the impact of feminism on American Catholicism. During the 1980s Donna Steichen, like others within the Catholic Church, became alarmed by the manner in which many Church employees, including women religious, were expressing ethical values contradictory to those incorporated in such encyclicals as Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae. In the turmoil following the Second Vatican Council, many were open to new ideas and seeking untraditional ways to live. Among the main sources of such unorthodox ideas were "New Theology", feminism and New Age neopaganism. In particular, Steichen focused on what she perceived to be linkages between feminism and wicca, or as she commonly refers to it in her book, "witchcraft."