Category: Uncategorized

Violence Against Women: The Underbelly.

May 30, 2014 9:16 am May 30, 2014

2 min read

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Extreme violence has always bothered me. Forget trying to get me to watch a really violent film. I will have both of my ears stopped with my hands or a…

Extreme violence has always bothered me. Forget trying to get me to watch a really violent film. I will have both of my ears stopped with my hands or a nearby cushion. But violence against women seems to me particularly unseemly and not just in an ungentlemanly sense. The movie The Passion of the Christ gave me a clue about this inclination.

What Incarnation?

In the scene where Christ is being flogged, the character of the devil enters in a figure that mocks Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the birth of the Christ himself. That image stuck with me and then I realized that there’s a sense in which all violence against women mocks the Incarnation.

Hear me out. You can have your say in the com boxes below.

Each act of violence against a woman makes it harder to believe that God could be born of something so apparently worthless.

There’s a reason why the concept of courtly love developed in a Christian culture; it was a culture that deeply loved Mary and women were seen to mirror her.

There’s a reason why Christianity was the first major religion to have the same initiation rite for women and men, namely baptism, and why it was the first religion to allow women to have a say in whether or not they married, even whom they married. That reason is twofold: Mary and the Incarnation.

A recent CNN video reporting on yet another “honor” killing in Pakistan reminded me of this.

Farzana Parveen was stoned to death because she did not agree to an arranged marriage. She was three months pregnant when her family publicly and brutally murdered her. No one stepped in to help. Like many cultures, hers is reported to be one in which family actions are private no matter how public may be their execution [no pun intended]. Her husband (not the man her family wanted her to marry) talks about what a good wife she was. But as he tells his story, it also comes out that he killed his previous wife so that he could marry Farzana. Disposable wives. Fantastic.

In Pakistan alone, there were almost 900 honor killings last year. That doesn’t even begin to take into account other actions of violence against women in Pakistan, much less violence against women elsewhere.

Here’s the thing. If violence against women makes it more difficult to accept the Incarnation, then it also makes it even more difficult to believe that a God exists “who loved the world so greatly,” including each one of the perpetrators of these crimes.

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If only rabbis, scout leaders, nurses, and cops weren’t celibate…

May 22, 2014 9:26 am May 22, 2014

2 min read

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Oh wait, they aren’t. Then how to explain this recent child porn bust in the New York area? At least 70 people were arrested. The evidence collected included: [T]he seizure…

Oh wait, they aren’t. Then how to explain this recent child porn bust in the New York area? At least 70 people were arrested. The evidence collected included:

[T]he seizure of nearly 600 desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smartphones and other devices containing a total of 175 terabytes of storage.

The critique surrounding the clergy abuse scandals in the Catholic Church has been largely based on the celibacy requirement for priests in the Roman Catholic Church. The reasoning was somewhat Freudian (neo Freudian?), namely that if priests were ~~able~~ allowed to be sexually active, these abuses would not have occurred. Celibacy was seen as the problem, even the source of the abuse. Some defenders of the Church tried to rebut it. But there’s nothing like the ongoing review of the Catholic Church to witness how low is the rate of child sexual abuse in the Church. The 2013 Annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People reports that there were 9 credible allegations of abuse for behavior that began in 2013.

Nine.

Could there be other cases of abuse? Sadly, yes. But there is a comprehensive system in place to facilitate the protection of minors and the reporting of abusers.

Should there even be 9 cases of abuse? No, not given what we profess in our faith. But we have about 40,000 priests; so that means that that less than 0.0225% of all Catholic clergy (diocesan and religious) were accused of a credible allegation in 2013.

Sounds to me like the Catholic Church is doing something right. Other professions don’t have that rate. There was the famous government funded study in 2004 that concluded that nearly 10% of all public school students were the victims of “educator sexual misconduct.” To date, I’ve yet to hear of the Department of Education going through the extensive corrections that the Catholic Church in US took upon itself.

There are millions of children that come into contact with the Catholic Church every day. That there were only 9 credible allegations of abuse for 2013 shows that the system is working. Hopefully, it will work even better in the future.

But meanwhile, perhaps these other professions should take a cue from the handling of the abuse scandal by the Catholic Church in the US?

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JP2 on the New Feminism: Be Not Afraid.

April 24, 2014 7:53 pm April 24, 2014

10 min read

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The picture below was taken early in the morning on November 9, 2001, the day after I received The Pontifical Academies Award for my dissertation on women, gender, and the…

The picture below was taken early in the morning on November 9, 2001, the day after I received The Pontifical Academies Award for my dissertation on women, gender, and the Church. In many ways, this picture was years in the making.

Most of my family and several of my friends came with me to Rome for the award. Unfortunately, they were not presented to the Holy Father when I received my award.

Later that day, due to the persistence of one of my friends, I waited on hold with the Vatican operator [worst musack ever, it alone would make one want to hang up] until a deep voice came on the line. It was Bishop Dziwisz, the Pope’s private secretary. He explained that there was no way that my family and friends could be added to the already large group of people attending the private Mass the next day, but that we could attend the private audience immediately following. In this picture, I was the first of our group to be introduced to the Holy Father. I then had the honor of introducing my family and friends to the Holy Father. As a result, I’m in most of their pictures… Instead of feeling like a formal, distant affair, the whole experience actually seemed quite intimate. I think this has to do with how he lived his priesthood. He truly lived his priestly fatherhood and many who encountered him had that same experience of intimacy. It wasn’t just what he did, it was who he was.

As I reflect upon it, I can see how he was the perfect person to start a new wave of feminism, one focused on being rather than simply doing.

When I decided to study in Rome, I was not experiencing any sort of vocational crisis; it made perfect sense that I should pursue graduate work in theology, given my interests and the opportunity. However, after a few years of studying with clerics and religious, I did start to wonder what I was doing in that group. I wasn’t a woman who struggled with the Church’s teaching on the all-male priesthood (even if I could be tempted to mentally edit some homilies that I heard…) and yet there I was, not infrequently the only woman in a class of collars and religious garb.

At the same time, John Paul II had been talking about a “new feminism.” Yet, it was not clear exactly what he meant by it. I came to realize that his first words as Pope, “Do not be afraid,” applied to the vocation of women, as well. In many ways, he was encouraging us to challenge our cultural notions about women so that we could be open to a broader understanding of the role of women, one based on the history and teaching of the Church, even if it has been forgotten at times.

"Do not be afraid." (Blessed John Paul's handwriting.)

"Do not be afraid." (Blessed John Paul's handwriting.)

A wise man, he gave some guidelines on the new feminism in his various documents, but I believe that he knew it was not his alone to develop.

In his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, John Paul II noted that the differences between women and men existed before the fall, therefore they had to be constructive differences intended by God. In other words women and men were meant to live together in some semblance of harmony. The tensions between women and men (what I would call battle of the sexes), he noted were a result of original sin.

Later, John Paul II set forth quite a challenge when he formally proposed his new feminism in the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, n. 99:

In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a “new feminism” which rejects the temptation of imitating models of “male domination”, in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation. [Emphasis mine.]

The whole point of my dissertation was to attempt to answer his call for a new feminism, one that I would call a feminism of complementarity (women and men are created to live happily together in marriage and in society at large) or an integral feminism (one which sees a woman in her entirety rather than simply in a role of some type, even as important of a role as mother.)

Throughout his pontificate, the Pope frequently recognized the situations of women who were abused or disadvantaged. In no way did he support an idea of patriarchy which required the domination of women. Rumor has it that when he saw a draft document of the UN Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, he dryly noted that a document that concerned itself so much with women’s fertility should at least concern itself as much with women’s literacy.

Rather than hash out a really tired anything-you-can-do-I-can-do debate that had been heard for decades, John Paul II shifted the conversation from doing to being. In particular he did this when discussing Mary. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this can be found at the end of the 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, n. 108. Instead of his customary pious invocation of Mary at the end of any document or event, he actively sets her forth as an example to philosophers (typically a male realm):

I turn in the end to the woman whom the prayer of the Church invokes as Seat of Wisdom, and whose life itself is a true parable illuminating the reflection contained in these pages. For between the vocation of the Blessed Virgin and the vocation of true philosophy there is a deep harmony. Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought”. (132) In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria. [Emphasis mine.]

For me, this pointed to a discussion of Mary’s being: who she was, who she is. As a woman who was willing to take on the reality of becoming the mother of God, John Paul II identified a capacity that true philosophers would do well to follow, a way of being open to the truth. The first words of the angel Gabriel to Mary (and to Zechariah) were the same as those first words of John Paul II. He was also saying, “Do not be afraid of the truth.”

Admittedly, the question of being v. doing is complex, especially when talking about women and the priesthood. Face it, women do a lot to keep parishes going. Sometimes they’re braver, smarter, etc., than the pastor. (And sometimes they’re not…) But let’s keep it simple. Men are not ordained priests on the basis of what they can or can not do, but on the basis of who they are: baptized adult males who have a bishop that will confer the sacrament of ordination on them. As one of my priest friends has pointed out, the canonical requirements are pretty basic, even though a bishop hopefully has higher standards. And yet it can be difficult to understand if we simply look at the priesthood, indeed any vocation, simply in terms of what women and men do. It has to be considered in terms of who they are.

As a man, the priest stands in the person of Christ and relates to the Church in a specifically male role, that of groom and father. The relationship between Christ and the Church is the most profound spousal relationship in existence, from which the human notion of marriage borrows, and the sex of each party matters a great deal – it is part of the reality. But like any relationship, it takes work. It’s not simply enough for a parent to be a parent to a particular child, the parent also has to be for the child, making decisions that not infrequently involve sacrifice to provide for the child so that the child can grow in health. Similarly, it’s not enough to simply be married. Both spouses must work at being groom or bride. And that plays out differently in each marriage. In some marriages, the wives will manage finances. In others, the husband. In yet others, it will be both spouses together. The division of labor probably won’t pass muster for every other observer of that marriage, but the important thing is that it works for that family. [Aside – So, too, with questions of family size – neither John Paul II nor the Catholic Church ever said that a family has to have a particular number of children, as many children as possible, or indeed any children at all.]

As you see, I digress a bit. The topic is broad and unwieldy, needing to be directed by principles rather than social constructs and societal rubrics. At World Youth Day this past August, Pope Francis noted that we need a theology of women. I couldn’t agree more. Fortunately, John Paul II left us with some guidance that will require input from many women and men before we have a body of work that we can call a theology of women. Ideally, we would be looking at a theology of women and men…

But back to the picture above. In my left hand, I’m holding a copy of the dissertation which the Pope had signed the day before during the presentation of the award. I had no idea that it was a breach of protocol to ask the Pope for his signature. Ignorance is bliss. Had I known, I probably would not have asked for his signature which, as you can see, he graciously gave me…

For the record, I know the title is sleep inducing. And, yes, the cover was vastly improved for the second publication.

__________

This piece was originally posted at CatholicVote.org. For additional comments click here.

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2 Essential Resolutions For Lent

March 17, 2014 10:29 am March 17, 2014

3 min read

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Ok, at this point in Lent, our resolutions are not unlike our New Year’s resolutions. We start out with good intentions and, well, you know the rest. Sometimes the ashes…

Ok, at this point in Lent, our resolutions are not unlike our New Year’s resolutions.

We start out with good intentions and, well, you know the rest. Sometimes the ashes on our foreheads last longer…Nevertheless, I’m offering two that each one of us can embrace and which will serve the Church and the world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This past weekend, I attended the LA Religious Ed Congress. I know, many of you thought people like me should either not attend the REC or would not survive the REC. Here’s my advice: attend the REC next year.

Did I agree with all of the content offered? Nope. But people are allowed to have different opinions, even in the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, there was a lot of really good content. And the exhibit hall is a must for anyone involved in anything Catholic.

But the strongest take away came from a place that I wasn’t expecting: John Allen’s talk, “The Francis Revolution: The Papacy at the One-Year Mark.” Don’t get me wrong, I admire John Allen’s expertise immensely. In fact, that’s why I went to the talk. I was looking for his analysis of the Francis papacy. He gave that. Superbly. But his analysis provided the basis for two Lenten resolutions that we can all take to heart. [Full disclosure – I know John and really appreciate his description of me in his book Opus Dei, which was something like, “an intelligent, sometimes brash, young woman.”]

Allen is a fan of Francis, as he was a fan of Benedict. And he will strongly dispute the Francis good, Benedict bad narrative. He gave some vignettes to demonstrate the Francis effect. Simply put, the world is taken with Francis. Consider his effect in the US alone. Allen cited a recent CNN poll that puts Francis’ approval ratings at 88%. Almost 90% of Catholics in the US agree upon something. That in itself, as Allen noted is huge. When was the last time 90% of Catholics in the US agreed on anything?

Allen went on to lay out why he calls Pope Francis the Pope of Mercy. Francis lives mercy, preaches mercy, communicates mercy, and – not for nothin’ – has emphasized the sacrament of mercy, namely confession/reconciliation. [An audio recording of Allen’s complete talk can be ordered here. You may have to wait a few days/weeks for them to be posted online. The talk was Workshop 7-01.]

So what to do with this “missionary moment”? Here are his suggestions:

Stop using the Pope as club to beat up on other members of the Church. Give it up for Lent.
Despite the age of social media, we don’t have to have an opinion on something the Pope says or does minutes after it happens. Give it up for Lent. Instead, sit with it, meditate on it, pray with it. Try it for Lent.

The whole world is looking at the Church. We need to be a Church that the rest of the world wants to be part of, not a Church that they just want to watch for entertainment or scandal. Almost every lapsed Catholic (or other person who’s decided not to become a Catholic) can point to an experience where they saw, even encountered, a Catholic behaving badly.

In the words of Bob Newhart, “Just stop it.”

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White Smoke!, Women & the Church, Shoe Leather Evangelization, and Pope Francis’ Pontificate

March 13, 2014 6:08 am March 13, 2014

2 min read

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This post is going to be a bit rambling as I want to mention several different things. But most importantly, happy anniversary to Pope Francis on the first anniversary of his…

This post is going to be a bit rambling as I want to mention several different things.

But most importantly, happy anniversary to Pope Francis on the first anniversary of his pontificate. I was out for a walk, convinced that I didn’t need to be glued to the television because it would be quite some time before the cardinals reached a consensus. (Shows you how dialed into the Holy Spirit I was/am…) I was on the phone talking to Teresa Tomeo and suddenly she kept repeating, “White smoke! White smoke!” Well, my walk turned into a run at that point. I made it home in time to see some of that smoke myself.

My initial inclination was that this would be the Pope of shoe leather evangelization. John Paul II reminded the world that the Church was still here and as relevant as ever. Benedict XVI made clear that Church teaching was the same as always. He was also one of the great reformers, even if he received few accolades for his effort. Francis is building on his predecessors and making our faith as alive as possible, encouraging us to live it. He doesn’t focus on “issues” that Catholics of various stripes would prefer. He encourages us to meet Christ in the person before us, whomever God has put in front of us, whether it’s a hungry person, someone in prison, a woman in a crisis pregnancy, a friend, or a family member. The point is to see this person’s humanity, their need, and in so doing to see Christ. Joan Desmond at National Catholic Register did me a lovely courtesy by picking up on this theme of shoe leather evangelization for her current post.

I also have a piece at Patheos’ “Public Square” on the role of women in the Church. I think we have to listen carefully to what Pope Francis has been saying. Yes, he’s said that women need a greater role in the Church; but we can’t limit our thoughts on women as to what offices they might hold in the local chancellory (where they already tend to have a significant presence) or try to fit them into clerical boxes. My thoughts here. As always, non-troll feedback is welcome and enjoyed!

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Fifty Shades of Gender

February 27, 2014 8:30 am February 27, 2014

7 min read

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It’s old news that Facebook now offers 54 new gender options for users to describe themselves. 54. Who knew? Last week, I commented on the gender agenda in Poland and…

It’s old news that Facebook now offers 54 new gender options for users to describe themselves. 54. Who knew?

Last week, I commented on the gender agenda in Poland and the criticism of the Catholic Church’s opposition to it. In the gender discussions that will no doubt continue, I want to continue to emphasize two points:

Gender is a fluid concept. Sex is not. The sex of an individual is determined at conception. Either the human person is born with two X chromosomes or an X and Y chromosome. That fixed combination determines one’s sex. Obviously, it does not determine how one uses, expresses, or lives one’s sexuality. But it is a scientific fact, not something determined by popes, bishops, or any other type of religious authority. We don’t believe it. We know it. It’s basic science and it’s really, really significant, which bring me to my next point.
We are engaged in what may very likely be the biggest social experiment in the history of humanity. Can we at least have a conversation about it, what it means, its implications, etc? I don’t deny that people experience their sexuality in very different ways. I’m just asking, can we have a calm and rational conversation before we dismiss the essential significance of a scientific reality?

I was interviewed for a National Catholic Register article about the FaceBook changes.

Pia de Solenni, a Catholic theologian living in Seattle, argues that these values are finding traction in social media for practical rather than philosophical reasons.

“It’s part of the business model,” she said. “Social media needs to constantly generate attention; otherwise, it can’t function as a connecting medium. Shock value is an easy way to get attention.”

De Solenni says Facebook’s move demonstrates that social “progressives” tend to be “much savvier about communicating their values and their vision” using newer mediums used by a younger audience, but she says Catholics can fight back by learning the tools of the trade.

“There’s a great opportunity here for people of traditional values to be reaching out to the younger generation to offer something different than what they’ve experienced all of their short lives,” she said.

Register journalist Jonathan Liedl was kind enough to follow my comments immediately with the following:

Some are saying that’s what Comedy Central personality Stephen Colbert did on his Feb. 18 episode. Colbert, a Catholic who was the keynote speaker at last fall’s Al Smith Dinner in New York City, often mocks socially conservative talking points, but in this instance, he directed his humor at progressive values, joking that Facebook’s plethora of new gender options “make [my] brain broke” and weren’t inclusive enough because they didn’t include “pirate.”

The Catholic comedian also took direct aim at one of Facebook’s most ill-defined gender choices, which is listed as “Trans*” on its “Diversity” page. Quipped Colbert, “I believe that’s when you’re born an asterisk but deep inside you believe you’re an ampersand.”

Colbert’s performance was called “nasty” by John Aravosis, a LGBT activist, but it had the audience in stitches.

It’s basic. We all need to engage in society and in civil discourse. Advocates of gender theories have been very active in engaging the culture (though not always civilly). For those who see things differently, speak up. If you don’t speak up, you allow others to speak for you regardless of whether you agree with their thoughts.

Here’s an example of one man who engaged society with careful thinking, particularly in this Christmas Address from 2012, which may very well be one of the most significant public addresses he ever gave. (Hint – he was likened to a rottweiler, he wears white, and still lives in Vatican City State. He was recently seen greeting Pope Francis.)

The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man. [emphasis mine]

Agree or disagree, but I think we have to have a substantive conversation about the implications of choices we make now, even something as simple as selecting an identifying option on Facebook.

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No Discussion, Please. We Want Diversity.

February 13, 2014 1:42 pm February 13, 2014

5 min read

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Oh that ignorant Catholic Church. Once again, it has a different view from those who preach “diversity.” The Catholic Church in Poland has come under attack for apparently challenging “gender…

Oh that ignorant Catholic Church. Once again, it has a different view from those who preach “diversity.”

The Catholic Church in Poland has come under attack for apparently challenging “gender workshops,” a type of sex-ed class in the schools that present children with “alternatives” to permanent monogamous heterosexual relations. According to an article in Our Sunday Visitor, the circumstances are not quite clear. Nevertheless, in a column for the theguardian.com, Agata Pyzik attacks the Church in a way that makes it seem that she, the Church, and other critics of the Church are at least agreed upon the subject of the dispute, namely the “gender workshops” and accompanying topics like abortion and contraception.

Think about it. The gender agenda, inclusive of same-sex marriage, is probably the largest social experiment in the history of humanity. And it’s being driven by anything but science. Gender is a fluid notion despite the scientific fact that the human person’s sex is determined at conception.

It’s interesting that at the same time that most European countries won’t stand for altering the integrity of food produce with genetically modified organisms [GMOs], the integrity of the human person is discounted insofar as one’s sex is considered to be arbitrary, changeable, even mistaken, not an integral and essential part of who we are even though…again…it’s determined at conception. That’s pure science. Not religion, not the Bishops, not the Pope. There is no human being created who is not male or female and yet the significance of that seems to count for very little in some circles.

Obviously people are going to have different thoughts and feelings about policies impacting society in such a profound way. At the very least, differing view points ought to be discussed, pondered, and explored. Instead, any suggestion that perhaps this experiment needs some rethinking or perhaps children should not be the guinea pigs of a vast social experiment (an EXPERIMENT!), results in an attempt to shut down the dissenting voice[s]. Then again, this is Poland we’re talking about. Perhaps the decades of Communism have left a deeper impact than we thought, namely that a voice that challenges a questionable and potentially harmful idea should be shut down, especially if it’s the Catholic Church. After all, a 2,000 year-old institution has no experience to draw upon…

Pyzik ~~discusses the issue~~ assaults the Church for its actions to stop the “gender workshops.”[A quick internet search turned up this bio which describes her as a writer whose primary interest is “(post) Communist Eastern Europe.”] She refers to a recent comment by actress Meryl Streep to Polish politicians:

“I thought that after years of communism you’d caught up with the west in a social-cultural sense.”

Pyzik notes, however,

“… it was during the People’s Republic when women in Poland enjoyed civil and reproductive rights.

“Enjoyed”? Last I checked, the flow of traffic, had the borders been open, would have been out of Communist countries, not into them, precisely because human rights were not acknowledged and supported by law. The rates of abortion in Communist countries have been notoriously high, due to factors like population control, economic conditions, and a basic lack of hope for the future.

Let’s talk about contraception for a moment. Back in 2005, the World Health Organization repeated its 1999 finding that hormonal contraception is a Group 1 carcinogen for humans, in other words hormonal contraception creates a serious cancer risk for women who use it. Yet, Pyzik is not alone in mistakenly seeing it as a part of women’s “rights” or “health.” The current HHS mandate in the U.S. makes the same assertion, apparently without any thought to women’s health.

Given that we’re talking about a very serious drug with dangerous side effects, shouldn’t doctors and pharmacists be able to make the decision to refuse to expose a patient to the danger of a particular treatment? It’s not as if a patient has a right to any medication that she deems necessary. That’s left to the doctor’s discretion. Ethical doctors don’t automatically write prescriptions without first diagnosing the patient and then considering the effects (good and bad) of the treatment. Doctors who are driven by an agenda rather than the health of the patient, well they’re unethical.

But this abortion+contraception = women’s rights formula is all part of a tired, albeit all too successful trope. If something is repeated often enough, it seems true no matter how dubious it might actually be.

I’ve listened to women who have had abortions. Many women. I’ve only had one tell me years after that it was a good choice for her. I’ve met with and researched doctors who work in the developing countries who would like to provide safe maternal care. Instead they are provided with contraceptives…even though their patients want safe deliveries and healthy babies.

With regard to the gender issues, Pyzik complains:

Even scientists speak in one voice with the church: the Polish Academy of Sciences published a letter in which they called the gender workshops an attempt at “unseating children from their own sex”.

I dunno. When I question a scientist, it’s about methodology, not whether or not the scientist agrees with the Catholic Church.

How about measuring progress in terms other than abortion, contraception, and how one chooses to use one’s genitalia? And while we’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt to have an open discussion about a major, major, major social EXPERIMENT.

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Ready to Rumble: Discussing a Theology of Woman.

September 16, 2013 1:10 pm September 16, 2013

2 min read

2054 views

I’ll be on the Drew Mariani Show, hosted by Wendy Wiese at 4.30 ET today to discuss the theology of women. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece prompted by…

I’ll be on the Drew Mariani Show, hosted by Wendy Wiese at 4.30 ET today to discuss the theology of women.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece prompted by Pope Francis’ implicit call for a theology of woman. Generated a variety of responses. Check them out and guess which is my favorite…

Simcha Fisher offered some much appreciated support, too.

As did Elizabeth Scalia on Facebook. I’ll just post her comment here. She cites Simcha’s article:

Look, Catholic women are in a very peculiar position in the 21st century. Many of us have, like de Solenni, rejected the radical feminism that the secular world offers. We are horrified that the feminist movement devolved into a parody of itself, and almost instantly turned from its sorely needed goal of promoting respect and justice for women, and became ugly and strident, rejecting fertility, scorning self-sacrifice, devaluing men and damaging women and children.

But most of the Catholic women I know are just as disgusted with the sissifcation of the Church. We have no desire to replace the sacraments with weaving classes and yoga. This is stupid stuff. This doesn’t tell you what woman can offer, any more than a stroll down the porn and firearms aisle of your local porn and firearms store tells you what men have to offer.

I do not want to be a man, and I do not want to be like a man. I also do not want to turn the Church into a hand-holding, feelings-sharing warm bath of emotion. That’s a parody of womanhood, and it’s just as offensive to women of faith as it is to men of faith.

This is precisely why we need a theology of women: because we’re tired of the parodies, the clownish extremes that purport to represent womanhood.

Brava, Somechop Fisher and Pia de Solenni. These extremes are killing us.

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