U
UbiCaritas
Guest
OP, you may find the site No Longer Quivering to be helpful in understanding where some of the other posters are coming from. Though many of the posts are virulently anti-Christian, one can understand (if not agree with) the perspective of the posters who grew up in such situations. (If one is beaten multiple times a week as a teenager to “drive Satan out of you,” for the most minor offences such as “having an insufficiently humble spirit,” one is unlikely to be able to understand the idea of God as love.) You might also look at Homeschoolers Anonymous, which details the sort of educational, emotional, and spiritual abuse rife in movements which believe that every aspect of a woman’s life must be kept under the tightest possible control.
I grew up in a Catholic community which imitated in many ways the situations described in those blogs. To be blunt, it is difficult to understand just what scars are left on a person who grows up with that sort of concept of God and His place in family life.
Women in communities like this are treated very, very badly if they don’t follow the dictates of the men who put themselves above them.
I remember one woman who attended our church who was (gasp of horror) divorced from her kids’ father. No one knew her well enough to know why (who would associate themselves with such a terrible sinner?), but she lived, to all appearances, a perfectly ordinary life. No boyfriends, no dating, her life revolved around raising her kids and working hard to support them.
Because of her divorce, she and the boys were openly shunned by virtually the entire parish. The boys attended the youth group, but were treated very badly by the leaders–not being allowed to go on trips that everyone else was going on with no other information than “they can’t come,” etc. At the coffee and donuts hour after Mass, I never ONCE saw another adult speak to her. She presumably attended because a few of the kids would (defying parental authority) play with/hang out with her kids from time to time. I was one of them.
At some point, it became obvious that she was pregnant. Gossip ran riot. No one cared that she had a couple of family members to help her and no one else. No one gave any thought to the kids. No, “everyone” knew that That Was To Be Expected from Women Like That. The nastiness towards the existing kids, if anything, increased.
According to her oldest kid, who confided in me, someone jumped her mom after work and raped her. Mom chose to keep and raise the baby. She hardly felt inclined to inform all and sundry of her rape when they’d never so much as spoken kindly to her before.
That woman was one of the bravest women I ever knew. I still don’t quite understand why she continued to attend that church; the only guess I ever came up with was that it was the only church in the area with the Tridentine Mass, and perhaps she was very attached to it. I don’t know.
I do know that when another member of the congregation decided to leave his stay-at-home wife of 25 years (and mother of his seven kids) to “marry” a woman young enough to be his daughter, though they’d been mainstays of the congregation, exactly one family stepped up to help the mom who’d been left with a houseful of kids, a degree that was twenty-odd years out of date, and no work history. I’m sure there were two sides to the story–there always are–but I fail to see how anything could excuse abandoning one’s wife and kids to shack up with a much younger woman. Why did no one else help? Because if he left, she must have done something to deserve it. She must have been a bad wife. She must not have been (insert quality here) enough, so it wasn’t his fault he left!
Insofar as chastity goes, I note with dry amusement that though I was considered the parish “slut” (and I quote) for attending public school my last two years of high school (long story), I was one of the minority in that youth group who waited to have sex until marriage, if evaluating only by the marital and offspring status of other former member on Facebook.
We were indoctrinated to obey all parental direction without question, to never ask “why,” to accept what we were taught at face value and think about it no further because that was an example of a “prideful spirit,” to shun anyone who didn’t measure up to our standards as “worldly” and “sinful”–and it certainly didn’t serve us well when we hit the real world, did it, judging by the number of single moms and unmarried dads I see from this group on Facebook.
I grew up in a Catholic community which imitated in many ways the situations described in those blogs. To be blunt, it is difficult to understand just what scars are left on a person who grows up with that sort of concept of God and His place in family life.
Women in communities like this are treated very, very badly if they don’t follow the dictates of the men who put themselves above them.
I remember one woman who attended our church who was (gasp of horror) divorced from her kids’ father. No one knew her well enough to know why (who would associate themselves with such a terrible sinner?), but she lived, to all appearances, a perfectly ordinary life. No boyfriends, no dating, her life revolved around raising her kids and working hard to support them.
Because of her divorce, she and the boys were openly shunned by virtually the entire parish. The boys attended the youth group, but were treated very badly by the leaders–not being allowed to go on trips that everyone else was going on with no other information than “they can’t come,” etc. At the coffee and donuts hour after Mass, I never ONCE saw another adult speak to her. She presumably attended because a few of the kids would (defying parental authority) play with/hang out with her kids from time to time. I was one of them.
At some point, it became obvious that she was pregnant. Gossip ran riot. No one cared that she had a couple of family members to help her and no one else. No one gave any thought to the kids. No, “everyone” knew that That Was To Be Expected from Women Like That. The nastiness towards the existing kids, if anything, increased.
According to her oldest kid, who confided in me, someone jumped her mom after work and raped her. Mom chose to keep and raise the baby. She hardly felt inclined to inform all and sundry of her rape when they’d never so much as spoken kindly to her before.
That woman was one of the bravest women I ever knew. I still don’t quite understand why she continued to attend that church; the only guess I ever came up with was that it was the only church in the area with the Tridentine Mass, and perhaps she was very attached to it. I don’t know.
I do know that when another member of the congregation decided to leave his stay-at-home wife of 25 years (and mother of his seven kids) to “marry” a woman young enough to be his daughter, though they’d been mainstays of the congregation, exactly one family stepped up to help the mom who’d been left with a houseful of kids, a degree that was twenty-odd years out of date, and no work history. I’m sure there were two sides to the story–there always are–but I fail to see how anything could excuse abandoning one’s wife and kids to shack up with a much younger woman. Why did no one else help? Because if he left, she must have done something to deserve it. She must have been a bad wife. She must not have been (insert quality here) enough, so it wasn’t his fault he left!
Insofar as chastity goes, I note with dry amusement that though I was considered the parish “slut” (and I quote) for attending public school my last two years of high school (long story), I was one of the minority in that youth group who waited to have sex until marriage, if evaluating only by the marital and offspring status of other former member on Facebook.
We were indoctrinated to obey all parental direction without question, to never ask “why,” to accept what we were taught at face value and think about it no further because that was an example of a “prideful spirit,” to shun anyone who didn’t measure up to our standards as “worldly” and “sinful”–and it certainly didn’t serve us well when we hit the real world, did it, judging by the number of single moms and unmarried dads I see from this group on Facebook.