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masondoggy
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I agree it definitely happens in Catholic circles too.
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WhatMeWorry
Guest
Actually, I’m just reading between the lines. Especially when you see articles like this one posted by those of the same mindset. unlessthelordmagazine.com/articles/when_your_daughter_is_grown.htm
Granted, it doesn’t really talk about older widows here, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that if Grandma Duggar did want to step out on the town, her male friend would still have to get past Jim Bob. Maybe not so much to protect her in the way he would protect his daughters from hormone-raging young men, but to make sure she was safe and to keep any dirty old men (!) from getting near her.
There’s just this generalized idea in the quiverfull community that women and girls are to be “protected” from the big, bad world…and the best way to do that is to keep 'em at home, under the very watchful eye of a husband, father, brother, uncle…you get the idea.
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sailor28
Guest
Given the collective wisdom of the church, I am wondering if anyone has written a book addressing these issues and writing about the need for healthy,balanced spiritual direction. If anyone knows a good book addressing this general topic we have been discussing please share it.
I also came across this issue when reading up on Covenant Communities that were part of the charismatic renewal (ie people of praise, word of God, Sword of the Spirit). They also had a lot of problems with spiritual and emotional abuse. Women were treated poorly and had to do everything with their husband’s permission. Some of the ideology was similiar to what the Duggar’s have. I’ve read the stories of those who came out of this and the healing they needed. Including the kids who grew up in these communities. (see this book here if you want info on it www3.nd.edu/~areimers/Reliable.pdf)
I know that is starting a whole other topic. Just recognizing where I see this in the Catholic Church and wonder what current leaders do to learn from the past and guide these ideologies and movements into healthier places. If we had more wisdom or were more proactive perhaps the church could have prevented the Legionaries disaster or the fallout from these covenant communities. It seems that people get really zealous to live radically for God and loose their emotional health on the way.
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Xantippe
Guest
I’ll dip into your link a quote:
“Should she get a job and work until she is married or has children? If you believe she will one day marry and that God would be most pleased that she be a “stay at home” wife and mother … does it make sense to first give her a taste of working outside the home for an employer?”
- So her father is preparing to support her financially forever. I wonder what happens when he dies and she’s still unmarried and has no education and no career?
- I wonder how many young men are actually keen on having a wife who has never earned a dime outside her paternal home?
- Wouldn’t it be nice, if she finally meets the right guy and gets married, to have a nice little pot of savings available for such things as: baby stuff, a family car, a house downpayment, paying off her husband’s student loans, etc.? The longer she’s single and working, the bigger the pot will get. What a nice surprise for her future husband!
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Xantippe
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OK, now I’ve read the whole David Crank “When Your Daughter is Grown but Unmarried.”
I feel like there’s a lot of perversity in mentioning all of those caregiving and childcare volunteer and low paid duties, without noting that there are well-paid professional versions of them, for instance in teaching and nursing. With a few short years of education and training, one could become qualified to earn a real living in those fields.
I’m also reading Rabbi Labin’s “Thou Shall Prosper” right now and noting that Mr. Crank is unfairly denigrating paid commercial labor. I believe Rabbi Labin would say that in the business world, we pay people when they serve us or give us something of value and in effect, money is a sort of “certificate of appreciation” that we give people when they serve us or give us something that we value.
I feel like there’s a lot of perversity in mentioning all of those caregiving and childcare volunteer and low paid duties, without noting that there are well-paid professional versions of them, for instance in teaching and nursing. With a few short years of education and training, one could become qualified to earn a real living in those fields.
I’m also reading Rabbi Labin’s “Thou Shall Prosper” right now and noting that Mr. Crank is unfairly denigrating paid commercial labor. I believe Rabbi Labin would say that in the business world, we pay people when they serve us or give us something of value and in effect, money is a sort of “certificate of appreciation” that we give people when they serve us or give us something that we value.
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petitfleur
Guest
It is my understanding that if a woman was a stay at home daughter and her parents died she would live with a sibling, and help them around the house. As far as widows, I don’t know.
I would say that Jim Bob's parents are less conservative. Many of the quiverfull families started out with relatively normal upbringings. The parents convert, and become more and more conservative, often they themselves went to public schools relatively normal childhoods (at least fom appearances)
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DarkLight
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Another link that talks about similar stuff:
darcysheartstirrings.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-teachings-of-emotional-purity-and.html
There’s a quote in the article
darcysheartstirrings.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-teachings-of-emotional-purity-and.html
There’s a quote in the article
This fundamentally is both the draw and the error of such ways. What parent here does not fear for their children’s spiritual lives? The temptation is strong to shelter children and deny their choices, because no matter how good a parent you are you must face that your children could choose wrongly. Or even that they could choose well but something bad could happen to them. These plans offer a promise of safety. Keep your children at home so they never have to interact with the world, and never have to think about their faith or have it challenged. Live out neat little “godly” roles so you don’t have to face the fear of not knowing what to do with your life or how it will work out. Follow all these plans and God will bless you for living out all the right rules.
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ToeInTheWater
Guest
DarkLight, your mention of fear as a motivator, really highlights to me, much of what I find disturbing about the “courtship” movement, and SOME homeschooling parents, that the main motivation appears to be fear, fear that unless every move their children makes is closely monitored, they will fall into sin. This topic has focused on romance and sexual sin, but I think it may apply to other sins as well.
Unfortunately, such fear-based parenting occurs in conservative Catholic circles as well. Not really in terms of the average Catholic I run across in my off-line life, but there is right now a post on CAF about whether Catholics should befriend non-Catholics, a post about whether infertile women should marry, whether a woman can licitly take OCPs for non-contraceptive purposes, etc.
I can also think of multiple past topics in which young couples discerning marriage were told that if they’re planning to use NFP from the start of the marriage, that this means they’re obviously not ready to get married at all. There certainly are Catholics who believe that mothers with children should NOT work outside the home unless absolutely financially necessary. There are even those who have suggested that a woman who wants to be a SAHM is just wasting time and money if she goes to college.
Xantippe, I also think that some who extol the virtues of the traditional homemaker are indeed denigrating the value of paid work with their standard spiel of “In the corporate world, you’re just a replaceable cog in a machine, no one would miss you if you quit today; but at home you are irreplaceable, your children will suffer if you let strangers raise them”.
Now, certainly, many, perhaps even most, paid jobs are indeed like this, and many people must work at jobs they dislike or even hate simply for a paycheck, so they can survive. But this is not the case for everyone. Many people feel a calling to certain professions, and not all business owners are greedy amoral secular people.
Going back to Jane Austen, now she depicts a society in which paid work is seen as demeaning even for men, and almost unthinkable for women. I think one of her characters who does NOT have a happy ending is Jane Fairfax. This is even without her private letters that hinted that her marriage was unhappy, and that her husband was unfaithful to her. (Won’t say his name to avoid spoilers, since this is supposed to be a surprise.) Jane is not a “fallen women” such as Lydia who “had” to marry or otherwise be “ruined”, but she “had” to marry or else become a governess, a profession she detests to the point of comparing it to the slave trade.
Jane is portrayed as quite intelligent, and I suspect that if she was in a society where she could work without being seen as a quasi-servant, she’d have had a successful career and eventually found a better man than the one she winds up with.
Unfortunately, I can see some of the Duggar daughters either becoming “old maids” (much as Jane’s aunt, Miss Bates) or “settling” for men they really aren’t that into, just to avoid that fate, which in quiverfull circles would actually be seen as a failure for the woman – very unfair, though, if it’s the fathers who control whether the women can start the courtship process in the first place!
Unfortunately, such fear-based parenting occurs in conservative Catholic circles as well. Not really in terms of the average Catholic I run across in my off-line life, but there is right now a post on CAF about whether Catholics should befriend non-Catholics, a post about whether infertile women should marry, whether a woman can licitly take OCPs for non-contraceptive purposes, etc.
I can also think of multiple past topics in which young couples discerning marriage were told that if they’re planning to use NFP from the start of the marriage, that this means they’re obviously not ready to get married at all. There certainly are Catholics who believe that mothers with children should NOT work outside the home unless absolutely financially necessary. There are even those who have suggested that a woman who wants to be a SAHM is just wasting time and money if she goes to college.
Xantippe, I also think that some who extol the virtues of the traditional homemaker are indeed denigrating the value of paid work with their standard spiel of “In the corporate world, you’re just a replaceable cog in a machine, no one would miss you if you quit today; but at home you are irreplaceable, your children will suffer if you let strangers raise them”.
Now, certainly, many, perhaps even most, paid jobs are indeed like this, and many people must work at jobs they dislike or even hate simply for a paycheck, so they can survive. But this is not the case for everyone. Many people feel a calling to certain professions, and not all business owners are greedy amoral secular people.
Going back to Jane Austen, now she depicts a society in which paid work is seen as demeaning even for men, and almost unthinkable for women. I think one of her characters who does NOT have a happy ending is Jane Fairfax. This is even without her private letters that hinted that her marriage was unhappy, and that her husband was unfaithful to her. (Won’t say his name to avoid spoilers, since this is supposed to be a surprise.) Jane is not a “fallen women” such as Lydia who “had” to marry or otherwise be “ruined”, but she “had” to marry or else become a governess, a profession she detests to the point of comparing it to the slave trade.
Jane is portrayed as quite intelligent, and I suspect that if she was in a society where she could work without being seen as a quasi-servant, she’d have had a successful career and eventually found a better man than the one she winds up with.
Unfortunately, I can see some of the Duggar daughters either becoming “old maids” (much as Jane’s aunt, Miss Bates) or “settling” for men they really aren’t that into, just to avoid that fate, which in quiverfull circles would actually be seen as a failure for the woman – very unfair, though, if it’s the fathers who control whether the women can start the courtship process in the first place!
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Lost_Wanderer
Guest
This just might be a bit of psychosis talking but I think an attitude like that is only going to inspire those of us who belong in the ‘big, bad’ sector of humanity.
It’s also funny how the protective approach has an irregular percentage chance of charming a woman. Some women think it’s patronizing. Other times they take it the usual, bashful way.
But in any case, I can imagine a Big Bad would only stare at any form of defiance or obstacle and say, “Aww. How cute. B)”
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Xantippe
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Yes, indeed.
It’s so unfair to eliminate nearly all of the normal venues for meeting a person of the opposite sex.
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sailor28
Guest
"Unfortunately, such fear-based parenting occurs in conservative Catholic circles as well. Not really in terms of the average Catholic I run across in my off-line life, but there is right now a post on CAF about whether Catholics should befriend non-Catholics, a post about whether infertile women should marry, whether a woman can licitly take OCPs for non-contraceptive purposes, etc.
I can also think of multiple past topics in which young couples discerning marriage were told that if they’re planning to use NFP from the start of the marriage, that this means they’re obviously not ready to get married at all. There certainly are Catholics who believe that mothers with children should NOT work outside the home unless absolutely financially necessary. There are even those who have suggested that a woman who wants to be a SAHM is just wasting time and money if she goes to college. "
I am a fish out of water here at CAF. I mostly read out of curiosity and sometimes disbelief. Most of the Catholic authors I read and that challenge me to grow in my faith are silenced/shunned/talked about in derogatory ways on this site. This thread is of great interest to me because in recent years I have read a lot about those recovering from spiritually abusive churches. I am amazed at the number of intelligent people drawn into unhealthy practices and the reasons why that happens. Overall, CAF is extremely conservative and (IMO) offers narrow advice. (ie you shouldn’t be beaten over the head if you need to use BCP for medical reasons) In addition, the advice I mentioned earlier that anything more than a peck on the lips before marriage is a sin. That is straight from a priest on this site, not a random poster. I know a lot of people who graduated from very conservative Catholic colleges and even they don’t believe or practice this.
That said, I did a google search today “banned from CAF” and realized there are a ton of traditionalists banned from this site who think it is the most liberal Catholic site out there. LOL. I guess it all depends on where you come from on the spectrum. I do think it is good for people with different perspectives to come together. But it seems more like a lot of infighting about all these topics versus drawing people into the church or a deeper relationship with God.
Again, I have found this thread to be very valuable with so many excellent points raised.
I can also think of multiple past topics in which young couples discerning marriage were told that if they’re planning to use NFP from the start of the marriage, that this means they’re obviously not ready to get married at all. There certainly are Catholics who believe that mothers with children should NOT work outside the home unless absolutely financially necessary. There are even those who have suggested that a woman who wants to be a SAHM is just wasting time and money if she goes to college. "
I am a fish out of water here at CAF. I mostly read out of curiosity and sometimes disbelief. Most of the Catholic authors I read and that challenge me to grow in my faith are silenced/shunned/talked about in derogatory ways on this site. This thread is of great interest to me because in recent years I have read a lot about those recovering from spiritually abusive churches. I am amazed at the number of intelligent people drawn into unhealthy practices and the reasons why that happens. Overall, CAF is extremely conservative and (IMO) offers narrow advice. (ie you shouldn’t be beaten over the head if you need to use BCP for medical reasons) In addition, the advice I mentioned earlier that anything more than a peck on the lips before marriage is a sin. That is straight from a priest on this site, not a random poster. I know a lot of people who graduated from very conservative Catholic colleges and even they don’t believe or practice this.
That said, I did a google search today “banned from CAF” and realized there are a ton of traditionalists banned from this site who think it is the most liberal Catholic site out there. LOL. I guess it all depends on where you come from on the spectrum. I do think it is good for people with different perspectives to come together. But it seems more like a lot of infighting about all these topics versus drawing people into the church or a deeper relationship with God.
Again, I have found this thread to be very valuable with so many excellent points raised.
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Xantippe
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Great! Take the good, leave the bad.
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ToeInTheWater
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I realize CAF tends to attract more conservative Catholics, I’ve also noticed many converts on this site and it seems many do fit the stereotype that converts to a faith are often much more rigid and dogmatic than the “cradle Catholics”; I suppose this might be due to the Catholic Answers ministry itself being headed mostly by converts who became apologists. There also seem to be many who use Truth as an excuse to be very uncharitable toward others, such as referring to homosexuals in very derogatory ways, and unfortunately some posters really seem misogynistic. (Though I realize some of the more uncharitable posters are trolling, and likely would act this way on a secular web site as well).
Of course, many “real world” Catholics reject even clear Magisterial teachings such as those relating to the Real Presence, contraception, homosexuality, etc. But I have also met Catholics who were quite conservative in that they found it scandalous to live together before marriage, or even take a vacation together as a couple prior to the wedding, but had no problem with a woman leaving home and going to college, pursing a career, etc. So “commitment to chastity” and “patriarchal attitudes toward women” certainly do NOT need to go together.
I wonder, perhaps the Catholic tradition of women as nuns and religious sisters, plays a part in this, for certainly Catholics do not believe that “wife and mother” is the sole vocation open to a woman. And I know many sisters did/do work as teachers, nurses, etc. Despite all the secular claims of how Catholics don’t treat women well because they’re not allowed to become priests, I certainly find even the more conservative Catholics here to mostly avoid the pitfall of treating women as always requiring a man’s “protection”.
Of course, many “real world” Catholics reject even clear Magisterial teachings such as those relating to the Real Presence, contraception, homosexuality, etc. But I have also met Catholics who were quite conservative in that they found it scandalous to live together before marriage, or even take a vacation together as a couple prior to the wedding, but had no problem with a woman leaving home and going to college, pursing a career, etc. So “commitment to chastity” and “patriarchal attitudes toward women” certainly do NOT need to go together.
I wonder, perhaps the Catholic tradition of women as nuns and religious sisters, plays a part in this, for certainly Catholics do not believe that “wife and mother” is the sole vocation open to a woman. And I know many sisters did/do work as teachers, nurses, etc. Despite all the secular claims of how Catholics don’t treat women well because they’re not allowed to become priests, I certainly find even the more conservative Catholics here to mostly avoid the pitfall of treating women as always requiring a man’s “protection”.
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Xantippe
Guest
There’s also the concept of “consecrated virgins,” who are women who live in the world.
As I think I mentioned upthread, we have so many traditional stories of women who went against their parents’ wishes to become religious (St. Clare, for instance, and St. Catherine of Siena) that it just goes against the DNA of Catholics to embrace a heavy-handed view of parental authority (although obviously, that won’t stop some people).
There’s also the very important point that this type of Protestants envisions an ecclesial structure where each patriarch is essentially the all-powerful head of a tiny denomination. (Ever notice how often these guys just can’t find a church good enough for them?) This is incompatible with normal Catholic practice, because Catholics of course are interacting frequently with a larger ecclesial structure, and a Catholic husband is not the pope of his family (although we do talk about the domestic church). A well-informed Catholic wife does not assume that her husband is infallible in matters of faith and morals and there’s always a strong possibility that she will turn to a priest for advice in doubtful matters and find support.
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DarkLight
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I think this is one of the giveaways that there’s a lot of American nostalgia being passed off as Biblical. Their golden age is when a man had his farm and his wife and sons and daughters worked the farm without all this need for booklearnin’. And in many ways that age is what they’re trying to recreate.
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Lost_Wanderer
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Yet even in that same age, many people fornicated, robbed coach wagons, and the best of them went on to forge empires from steel, railway, and electric industrialization. Jim Bob and his wife might very well be financial geniuses but I’d still sooner watch History Channel’s The Men Who Built America than even a few minutes of the Duggars.
Kudos to the parents for wanting to invest in a large family. But frankly, I’d sooner make the worldlier investments of creating larger fortunes and skills to render things like their dating rules to be but a paper-thin defense.
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WildCatholic
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Err, I would have to agree with those priests. Granted a definition of passionate kissing would be helpful. If you kissed each other on the lips out in public then yeah thats okay, but if your making out on the sofa and basically having sex with clothes on then yeah thats not okay. I always assumed making out was considered passionate kissing
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Rau
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Funny, I’d have thought making out in public to be worse!
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Xantippe
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I’d assume that “passionate kissing” means passionate kissing, and the other thing is the other thing.
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