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Sarcelle
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tskrobacz
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I never said you were solely defined by your ability to bear children…I said we should celebrate what is unique about Men and Women…how could you possibly disagree with that?
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sttcatherinefan
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Yes. I’ve never heard a priest criticize that either or at least a mainstream priest, but you will notice that I didn’t say that in my post. Please stick with what I actually said rather than accusing me of exaggerating or lying. I do think and have heard Catholic laymen say it quite often. I also think that Catholic schools do or did when I went there subtly encourage boys to pursue more difficult majors or apply to better colleges and subtly suggest women should be housewives and mommies.
And high school boys who think that they are going to get a submissive housewife deserve to be corrected sharply.
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sttcatherinefan
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Must have been a Chicago thing at the time although most schools that I knew of in the 1990s were coed.
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Xantippe
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Did they use the term “submissive” or “housewife” or are you just mentally adding the words in? Because the way you told the story, “submissive” and “housewife” weren’t actually in the remark you found so offensive.
Are you maybe doing a lot of that–mentally adding extra words and getting mad about stuff people didn’t actually say?
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Sarcelle
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Did I say that we should not celebrate the differences between men and women?
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Sarcelle
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So what do you mean exactly by men and women’s roles?
I have met far too many people who say that women’s roles are confined to marriage and motherhood. They use the same words you do. It is not the roles I object to, it is the assumption that all women are the same and they are to be used by men for housekeeping, sexual, childbearing and childrearing functions. I have met a lot of men who do say that. Some of them are even in the Church.
When I was a child, I met a man who said that sex is a masculine privilege and a feminine duty. He was a member of the local Catholic church. I was raised atheist as a child, so this was my impression of the Church, not knowing any better.
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Xantippe
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I think you and Sarcelle aren’t that far apart.
About celebrating uniqueness. Think about Yo Yo Ma or Michael Jordan. On the one hand, they are unique in obvious ways. However, the things that are unique in them (their particular musical or athletic talent) is not the whole person and either one of them would probably get sick of people only valuing them for that one unique thing.
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EasterJoy
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She is not a saint simply because she was a Catholic who resisted a rapist to the death prior to her first sexual experience. She is not a saint simply because she prayed for the redemption of her rapist. She tried to talk him out of what he was doing not just to save herself from a sexual assault–an entirely worthy goal–but also in order to preserve his soul from mortal sin, *which is a sanctified goal. *She was declared a saint because the sanctified goal that marked the end of her life was typical of her priorities and the overall motivation of her life.
I do not know why it is creepy to know that a person killed after a sexual assault was examined to see if the assault was attempted or realized, regardless of the victim’s age. Any secular law enforcement would do the same thing, whether the victim was murdered or “only” nearly murdered.
Do you think that soldiers who surrender to an enemy should feel as if they have “sinned” or “failed” because some other soldiers in history are honored because they fought to the last man? I would think not. To give your life in the resistance of evil is considered the highest form of courage, regardless of what sort of evildoer is trying to assault the good. That does not mean that resisting to the point of death is always the right thing to do (or even possible). It only means that courage of that magnitude is praiseworthy, particularly when it exemplified a life full of other acts of courage and a lifelong pursuit of excellence worth of imitation. After all, are the victims of rape not fully aware of the value of what was taken from them, whether they were raped as virgins or not? There are prostitutes who will resist a rapist to the death. Are they wrong to do so? Of course not. As valuable as life is, our inner sense of integrity and a willingness to defend our values even to the death, if that is required, is also praiseworthy. Martyrs are not suicidal, after all. There is not a one who would not have rather lived after defending what is right.
The Church doesn’t honor people simply for being sexually inexperienced. That is not what consecrated virginity is all about. The Church does honor people who recognize the value of a lifetime of sexual integrity and the value of dedicating one’s life to God without any distraction.
If you do not know what Albertina Berkenbrock did to rate beatification because “I’m not sure why exactly other than she died rather than submitting to rape,” you didn’t read the link you posted. There is every reason to believe she would have been declared a saint if she had lived to be 90 and died a natural death. She was well on her way; this is how the piece started off:
*At an early age she learned to pray with deep devotion and was strong in the practice of her Catholic faith. She spoke of her First Communion Day as the most beautiful day of her life and had special devotion to Our Lady and to St Aloysius Gonzaga, a model of purity and the Patron Saint of São Luís.
At school Albertina was a model for her peers and a cause of admiration to adults. Her teachers especially praised her spirituality and morals, superior to children of her age. She was a diligent student who knew her Catechism and kept God’s Commandments.
At home, when her brothers teased and taunted her, as siblings do, she would not retaliate. With her Christian upbringing, even the childhood games she played reflected her deep religious sense. She played happily with the poorest children and shared her bread with them.
At home, she was especially loving to the children of an employee of her father; while unknown to her, that man would become her future assassin.
His name was Maneco Palhoça but he was also known as Indalício Cipriano Martins or as Manuel Martins da Silva. Albertina often gave food not only to his children but to him as well. Since Maneco was African and racism was still a grave social ill, the young girl’s goodness was especially noteworthy.*
Don’t tell me that you read that and have no idea what was praiseworthy about the life of this extraordinary young girl!
Maybe you ought to read the story of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. He also died young and was beatified. He did not fight off a rapist, so maybe you will not resist seeing his inherent goodness. Then look at how alike Pier Giorgio and Albertina were. It isn’t necessary to start a religious congregation to be declared a Servant of God:
frassatiusa.org/frassati-biography
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tskrobacz
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Ok, I can see you appear have a much deeper issue or concern that is probably not appropriate for this forum. I continue to be baffled by your need to make this confrontational vs a simple acknowledgement that we, men and women, are in fact different…and that difference is a gift of the creator.
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Xantippe
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Eh, because you really have to go beyond that and explain exactly how you see that difference, or else it does start sounding like an excuse for monstrous selfishness and steamrolling actual individual personalities and actual individual gifts.
There was an animated discussion on Dalrock (that’s a red pill “Christian” site) a week or so ago where an engaged female poster was asking about submission, and does it really mean that she might need to be the only one cleaning the toilet for the rest of her life? The guys all chimed in to tell her that, yeah, if that’s what her husband wants, she’s better be prepared to be the only one cleaning the toilet for the rest of her life.
You might ask, where are there toilets in the Bible? Where does it say that women need to clean all of them? Heck, where is the house-cleaning in the Bible? As I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread, you can search Sacred Scripture from beginning to end and find virtually no mention of it at all.
That’s exactly the sort of thing that’s at the back of these discussions–it’s not necessarily what you’re saying, but what you’re not saying. It might be nice to say something like, “I understand that the basic reproductive difference between men and women does not necessarily mean that women need to wash all the dishes or clothes forever.” There is no straight line between birthing all the babies and washing all the dishes. Those are entirely different tasks, and it’s not necessary that the same person does both of them.
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Sarcelle
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Of course men and women are different. I have never denied this. It is one thing to say that men and women are different and another thing to say that by this very difference women are more suited to housework.
I now realize that I may be reading things into your post that you may have not intended, so I apologize for my confrontational tone.
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EasterJoy
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The complaint that women all over the world have been victimized by the recognition that they are “babymakers” is very much like the complaint by some men that they are nothing but “salary-makers,” that their role condemns them to sweat for wages whether they like the job they can get or not, while a woman is free to either work outside the home because it helps her with her “self-realization” or stay at home with the children.
What part of these complaints are in the mind of Christ, this rebellion at having a role in which one is a servant to one’s family? To be a servant is not to be an object, a beast of burden, a possession–that also is against the mind of Christ. Nevertheless, if we are rejecting a life of service, if we are rejecting work because we think it is beneath us, if we are rejecting any position that asks us to submit to anyone else or to consider anyone else better than ourselves, we are rejecting the work of our baptism. Period. The New Testament could hardly be more plain on that point.
What works do women do in the home that a monk might not do in a monastery or a friar might not do in a hospital? What work do men of similar physical strength do that no cloistered sister would ever attempt? How, then, do we talk about this work or that work as work that has to be part of the role of one sex or the other, that it is beneath what one someone ought to stoop to beyond what one ought to aspire to, because of his or her sex? What is there in domestic work that would have been work beneath Our Lord to do? There was no such thing. As far as running a business, is the ideal wife in Proverbs not praised at the city gates of thousands of years ago for her industriousness and her head for commerce? No, there are things which are possible and things which are impossible, but where it is possible for us to serve, it is permissible and it may well be our duty.
I, as a woman, am a different person than I would have been if I were a man. My sex is not like my hair color; it is a more profound part of my identity in the world than that. Having said that, there is no more justice in holding a person down with sex as the excuse than there is justice in holding a person down for no reason other than that one is powerful enough to do it. How can it be part of the identity of a Christian woman to put down against her will when it is against the identity of any Christian at all to seek to be great in any other way except by being the servant of all?
Any time any person tells you: You should not accept the lowest place. God could not possibly want that for you, that work of putting yourself at the service of the needs of others belongs to someone else–that is evil talking. Whether you are a man or a woman, that is temptation, as surely as Christ was tempted after being in the desert. Some are less well-suited to the care of children than others, but any parent who tells himself or herself that it is some kind of a* put-down *to have a direct hand in the care of his or her own children is being lied to. Welcome a child, welcome Christ. That is in the red letters. Do not allow anyone to tell us otherwise.
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EasterJoy
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Their contention that a wife might have to be willing to pick up the slack for a husband unwilling to ever clean a toilet would wither or bloom with me on their answer to one question: If your wife likewise insisted that you do it, would you be willing to be the only one cleaning the toilet for the rest of your life? Would your devotion to imitate Christ, who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” (Phil 2:7) be equal to your devotion to the idea that your wife ought to be submissive? A husband is to be to his wife as Christ is to the Church; that is a life that recoils from no service and accepts any suffering required to bring His Bride before the Throne of the Father without spot or blemish or anything of the sort. Remember, Christian men, and tremble: the one who does not enter by the one True Gate is not the shepherd, but a thief and a robber.
Of men who lay heavy burdens on women that they will not lift themselves, would the red letters of the Bible not say this:
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to carry, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them." Matt. 23:1-4 To lead as Christ lead is to lead with a cross on one’s shoulders.
To lead with the mind of Christ is to lay no burden on those who submit to you that you would not first lay on your own shoulders. For Christ also says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Matt. 11:28-30
This is why St. Paul advises: “Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? What accord has Christ with Beliar? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” 2 Cor. 6:14-15; that is, do not imagine that you can realize the mystery that is to be both the domestic church and the Church, the Body of Christ, with those who do not understand or devote themselves to conforming the mind of Christ. It cannot work. When we consider what we mean by the role of this person or that person, we have to keep the mind of Christ as our guide, or we will be lead astray by the Liar, the one who seems permissive but who always accuses us and seeks our deaths after luring us into the pit of destruction.
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Sarcelle
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You are misrepresenting my position. I objected to the view that all women must be mothers and wives. Just because I am not a wife and mother does not mean I am rebelling against God.
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EasterJoy
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If we marry, we are to be open to the blessing of children. That means that someone who chooses to be a wife is to be open to being a mother. As for those who do not marry, St. Paul said he thought they would be spared anxieties in this life, and held it open to both women and men to imitate him in remaining unmarried. He did not differentiate at all between men and women in that. He may have seemed to have done that in insisting that young widows marry, but that was because widows were more or less automatically enrolled in the care of the faithful, who took over, as it were, in the care of women left without husbands to care for them. In contrast to widowers, who were presumed capable to continue in their self-supporting occupations, women who were widowed after a relatively short married life instead had this way of making themselves a bit of a nuisance when they went from living within the mutual support of husbands to living on the support of the Church. That idleness was why he urged young widows to re-marry, not because they had a role as women to be wives. He would have had no problem with an unmarried woman who was industrious–mutually supported and was supported by the Church–and did not unfairly rely on the charity of others, whether she had ever been married or not.
We have to remember that St. Paul also implied that the life of a Christian is to be dedicated to God. The primary reason to prefer to remain unmarried was not to be free of the responsibility of children and husband, but to be free from how the care of husband and family might distract from submitting oneself to the other work of the Christian life. If you are using your unmarried state for dedication to God that is all that much more total because you are not married, then St. Paul would say you are surely to be praised for it!
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EasterJoy
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Let me clarify, too: I was not objecting to your position, but to the complaint that it is somehow demeaning to be expected to take care of children, who are one of the goods of marriage. It isn’t any more demeaning to be expected to bear or to take care of children than it is demeaning to be expected to be the main person in the family responsible for bringing home a paycheck–and neither side of that equation is always a load of fun, as we can all agree. Some mothers don’t find stay-at-home-parenting “meaningful,” but some fathers don’t find driving a truck route to be particularly “meaningful,” either. It is great when you can find a way to contribute to your family that you also enjoy, but the duty to provide comes before the goal of finding a “fulfilling” occupation.
At any rate, whether it is working for a wage or taking care of the children, parents with children at home usually have to choose to do one or the other, because there are so few occupations that allow either parent to do both at the same time. The Church has never said that a father cannot stay at home with his children while his wife brings home a wage. The Church does defend the care of one’s children as worthy and entirely dignified work, even though it is not always easy.
Let me clarify in another way: Being willing to take care of your own children but finding you are entirely unsuited to it is not the same as being unwilling to demean yourself to care for your own kids. It is no sin to admit the areas where your aptitude is not up to the duties you need to carry out.
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Sarcelle
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Where did I say that it was demeaning to take care of one’s children?
I did mention that women were sometimes chiefly defined by their ability to bear children but that does not translate into saying that caring for children is demeaning. I spent parts of my childhood in the third world. I have seen how women who cannot produce children, preferably sons, are treated. They are not treated well. This is what I am objecting to.
My own mother quit her own high-powered job as a financial analyst to be a housewife ever since she found out that she had a special needs child (me). I honor her a lot and she is one of the most intelligent people I know.
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Xantippe
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But it’s very, very ugly when husbands say “I’m making the money, so what I say goes.” And that continues to be a very popular approach in some quarters. In fact, in some quarters, having the wife SAHM is attractive largely because it makes it possible for the husband to say that. In that case, the traditional labor split is demeaning and abusive, because it is intended to be demeaning and abusive.
Hopefully, none of us are married to one of those guys (or destined to marry one), but they do exist, and it’s right of the single ladies in this thread to be wary of anybody who looks or talks like one.
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