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Petaro
Guest
Your friend really needs to put more cards on the table in order to play this game…
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jmcrae
Guest
I think at first glance, it’s a little distressing to see how many pale, tragic, 20-something nuns who died of some kind of wasting disease get canonized, but when you dig deeper, you find these tough old ladies who talk back to, say, the Spanish Inquisition, or to the Pope, etc., and not only get canonized, but are recognized as Doctors of the Church (people whose writings are pretty much required reading for those who wish to be taken seriously as Catholics).
And then of course there is Mary, who walked the length and breadth of the nation of Israel, not just once but, it seems, at least twice, before finally settling down to raise and educate the God Man. She also reached a healthy old age before being assumed into Heaven in her body, if the oral history is to be believed.
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pensmama87
Guest
Something you might also point out is that submissiveness to God is considered good for men AND women, and lots of male saints particularly exhibited those traits as well.
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Medical_Student
Guest
Men are not celebrated as “virgins.” Perhaps this is what she meant. Men cannot hold the title “virgin,” unlike a woman. Since most female saints were indeed virgins, perhaps she mistook virginity as a necessity for canonization.
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Sarcelle
Guest
Okay so she led warriors.
She still was not the helpless, fragile, passive flower that Anti-Catholics think is what the Church teaches women should be.
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PJM
Guest
Milarky!
Gender has NOTHING to do with Canonization
Living a life provable to have been extraordinarily meritorious for Christ is the KEY:thumbsup:
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Tarpeian_Rock
Guest
This, and the somewhat bureaucratic matter of a “paper trail.” For lots of historical and cultural reasons, women in history - generalization here - have tended to leave less of a paper trail than men. From everything I’ve read of the canonization process, such a paper trail tends to be a major factor (but certainly not the only one) in considering candidates.Milarky!
Gender has NOTHING to do with Canonization
Living a life provable to have been extraordinarily meritorious for Christ is the KEY:thumbsup:
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pianistclare
Guest
The formal canonization process was not always as it is today. Many saints were declared by “acclamation” and their cults’ promotion. And the majority of them were women. Here’s a good article:
catholic.com/quickquestions/when-did-the-custom-of-canonizing-saints-start-and-is-it-true-that-canonizations-are-
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HelenRose
Guest
Saint Catherine of Siena told the Pope what to do. Not the other way around.
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HelenRose
Guest
It was also her brains and strategies that led her warriors.
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HelenRose
Guest
I often think of Our Blessed Mother.
She lived in a world where it was unthinkable for a woman to make a covenant with God on her own. Without approval of her husband-to-be, a brother, an uncle or a father she said “Yes” to God.
Imagine this. She said “Yes” to face a world that would stone her for being found with child.
Talk about strength and courage. Her “Yes” changed everything for women. Her “Yes” was the defining moment in time when women were given the freedom to make a decision on their own.
She said “Yes” without permission or submission to a man.
The same can be said of Mary that was said of Saint Joan of Arc “She still was not the helpless, fragile, passive flower that Anti-Catholics think is what the Church teaches women should be.”
She lived in a world where it was unthinkable for a woman to make a covenant with God on her own. Without approval of her husband-to-be, a brother, an uncle or a father she said “Yes” to God.
Imagine this. She said “Yes” to face a world that would stone her for being found with child.
Talk about strength and courage. Her “Yes” changed everything for women. Her “Yes” was the defining moment in time when women were given the freedom to make a decision on their own.
She said “Yes” without permission or submission to a man.
The same can be said of Mary that was said of Saint Joan of Arc “She still was not the helpless, fragile, passive flower that Anti-Catholics think is what the Church teaches women should be.”
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HelenRose
Guest
I know what you are talking about because I am sorely tempted to feel the same way.
But, I have tried to think my feelings through on this and have decided to take the position a of good guide in a museum, cruise or something of that nature. Sure, a guide will hear the same questions, the same jokes, the same ignorance every day-in and day-out but… in order to be a successful guide they have to be patient and interested in each person. They have to love the trail traveled and love teaching those who stumble across their path.
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HelenRose
Guest
St. Rita wasn’t a virgin.
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HelenRose
Guest
I have often wondered why “feminine attributes” (what ever that means) are considered inferior to so called “masculine attributes”. It seems to me many if not most modern day
feminists are anything but feminine. They extol the virtues of masculinity while despising anything remotely feminine. They despise and attack womanhood with more self righteousness than men ever have. They look down on womanhood as some what diseased and unclean. No religion has attacked womanhood with a harsher title that that given by feminists.
To be a gentle, understanding, loving and kind mother, wife or religious is not an inferior goal to seek.
Good point.
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Gorgias
Guest
No, it is not. Yet, to the OP’s friend, these are inferior goals, since they ‘trap’ women into particular gender-based pigeonholes. (I’m thinking more about ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ than about ‘religious’, although one can make a ‘separate but equal’ argument against women religious, in this context.) Her argument would be that, inasmuch as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ were the only roles afforded to women (or, more to the point, that other roles weren’t open to women), and there exist saints who were exemplary wives and mothers, that therefore, the status of ‘saint’ in the Church can be seen as simply a means of inducing women to (submissively) follow gender norms and not press for other roles.
This would seem to be an unwarranted conclusion. The presence of mothers and wives and nuns among the saints isn’t an indication that the Church – as a contemporary presence in the world – demands that all women be either mothers, wives, or nuns. The counter-examples, of course, are the ones given here – women throughout history who rose above the roles that society was willing to give them, and who gave heroic witness to their faith in ways that might have been considered scandalous in their days!
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HelenRose
Guest
I agree with what you have said so my comments are not in opposition to that.
I am now thinking about the roles our modern society has to offer women and are these roles necessarily freer than to roles of the past? I am not sure. I suppose I come to my way of thinking that freedom is not dictated by the constraints or should I say parameters that society places us. Freedom comes from God and is something that is in our soul. It is not exterior but an interior gift.
But back to “modern” feminists: My grandmothers considered themselves feminists. Both were born in the late 1800’s, prior to the right to vote. They firmly believed that women were morally and spiritually superior to men. They firmly believed that if women were free to vote the country would become a more civilized society. My paternal grandmother,a widow with three children was an extremely strong, intelligent and resourceful woman. She would have never thought of herself as a victim.
It is on the shoulders of such women that feminism was created, They did not whine, they did not hate men, they protected their children. And unfortunately they were wrong about the spiritual and moral superiority of women. Somehow things have not worked out the way my grandmothers had hoped. It seems as if many women have equated equality with men as a right to misbehave in the same manner that men have often misbehaved. This is not freedom for women anymore than it has been freedom for men. It certainly has not been proven to be freedom from neglect, want, abuse and death for our children.
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AKDee
Guest
You might give her a copy of the Big Book of Women Saints which has a 1 page summary of the lives hundreds of women saints. Some were submissive, many were not. Many were leaders who started their own convents. Some became hermits. Some were martyred- some for refusing to marry the man they were told to marry which is hardly submissive. They’re as different from one another as the male saints are from one another.
That’s assuming she’s genuinely curious and willing to set her pre-judgments aside and to learn.
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Gorgias
Guest
I’d been taught that there have been three distinct ‘waves’ or ‘phases’ of feminism, at least in the ways that it has been experienced in this country. Lumping them all under the heading of ‘feminism’, and then expecting them to be similar by virtue of this label, gravely misunderstands these different times in our history. Each have had distinct factors that gave rise to their formation, as well as distinct goals and means by which women sought to achieve these goals.
The ‘first wave’ in the U.S. was a movement largely characterized by the suffrage movement; it did not attempt social reform or address politicized issues surrounding women’s reproductive health.
The ‘second wave’ is generally identified as having started in the 1960s, and was concerned with a wider range of issues, including reproductive health concerns, and equality in the workplace and in society at large.
The ‘third wave’ is generally considered as arising from issues raised in the 1980s or 1990s. Gender roles, stereotypes, and gender-conditioned social expectations tend to be identified as characteristic of the third wave.
I’m thinking that your grandmothers are from ‘first wave’ feminism; I doubt they would have expected feminism to take the turns that it has taken in the late 20th and early 21st centuries…
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Walking_Home
Guest
It really needs to stop – painting all feminists – with the same brush of radical feminism.
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