Nuns at the college where an NFL player said women should be 'homemakers' denounced his comments for not reflecting their values

Sisters affiliated with Benedictine College said Harrison Butker's commencement remarks both divided the school and did not represent its mission.

• An NFL player said women should be homemakers in a commencement speech he delivered this week.
• Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker addressed the graduates of Benedictine College, a Catholic school.
• Nuns affiliated with the school issued a statement denouncing Butker's remarks. 

Nuns affiliated with the college where an NFL player said women should aspire to be "homemakers" aren't fans of his controversial comments.

On Saturday, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker addressed the 2024 graduating class at Benedictine College, a small Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas. In his speech, he told women in the audience that they have been fed "diabolical lies" about pursuing careers, quickly sparking widespread backlash.

The most recent critique of Butker's remarks comes from the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, who called themselves as "a founding institution and sponsor of Benedictine College" and posted a statement on their website Thursday.

"The sisters of Mount St. Scholastica do not believe that Harrison Butker's comments in his 2024 Benedictine College commencement address represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested," the nuns' statement read.

The sisters said that Butker's comments "seem to have fostered division" "instead of promoting unity" and that they disagreed with his suggestion that "being a homemaker is the highest calling" women should aspire for.

"Many women whom we have taught and influenced during the past 160 years," the nuns said in their statement, "have made a tremendous difference in the world in their roles as wives and mothers and through their God-given gifts in leadership, scholarship, and their careers."

The sisters also said that they have taught both women and men to "create a compassionate home" — "not just how to be 'homemakers' in a limited sense."

"We reject a narrow definition of what it means to be Catholic," the sisters said. "We want to be known as an inclusive, welcoming community, embracing Benedictine values that have endured for more than 1,500 years and have spread through every continent and nation."

The graduation speech has received widespread backlash

The nuns aren't the only ones to critique Butker's stances.

The NFL distanced itself from his comments in a statement that said the body is committed to inclusivity.

Butker also got flak from Swifties for using a Taylor Swift lyric to make a dig at Pride Month elsewhere in his speech. Butker prefaced the lyric by calling Swift, who is dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, his "teammate's girlfriend."

Some fans highlighted the irony of Butker's choice, given Swift's success in music, and called him "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" on social media, a reference to one of the tracks from her newest album.

"I actually think that Harrison Butker quoting Taylor Swift in his dumpster fire of a speech is hilarious when you consider that the song he quoted (Bejeweled) is about a successful woman telling a mediocre man to step aside so she can shine," one user wrote on X in a post that has over 33,000 likes.

One social-media user compared the speech to "The Handmaid's Tale."

The sisters of Mount St. Scholastica didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Butker's representative didn't respond to previous requests for comment from BI.