What does Catholic/Christian femininity mean to you?

[DebChris]

Ahh, but you see it is not the woman who is giving her consent for the marriage per se but her father. This is why the father gives away his daughter during the wedding ceremony. I have met all kinds of Christians who have given this explanation as to why the father gives away his daughter.

This is also why I am puzzled why even Catholic weddings have the father escorting his daughter down the aisle, since this is not really a part of the Catholic wedding ceremony.

I wanted my father to escort me down the aisle. There is a certain amount of humility and respect when the man asks the father of the bride for his blessing. My father of course said, “You have to ask her?” Marriage is an adult decision. My family did not pay for the wedding. My family’s view was that if you were old enough to marry, you were old enough to pay for the wedding yourself.
Growing up meant watching cowboy movies. The man paid for the wedding gown, even if he didn’t get to see it until the wedding day. The wife took over the ranch when the husband died.

 

[Xantippe]

Although Sarcelle has pointed out this “woman as a child” attitude IS held by some Catholic men, I have noted that it is much more prevalent in conservative Protestant circles. I wonder if part of that is because the Church DOES have examples of holy women who certainly were NOT perpetual minors. The Virgin Mary did not ask either her father or her husband’s permission before giving her Fiat.

As I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere, the idea of “woman as child” is (very oddly!) often held in subcultures that encourage (or even mandate) homeschooling. That is an awful lot of responsibility to hand off to somebody who isn’t a fully functional adult.

My suspicion about this is that there’s a sort of double think at work here, where the men in these subcultures 1) wish to see women as inferior but at the same time 2) have expectations of women that would be unfulfillable if women were truly that inferior. If wives were that childish, they would be always a huge burden rather than any kind of blessing or help with the actual children. There really are adult women that are very childish (at least one older close relative comes to mind), but on reflection, a system that expects women to be childish is going to (surprise!) produce a lot of childish women, whereas a system that expects adult behavior from women is going to produce a lot more adult women.

There’s an interesting literary example of the expectation of childishness in Ibsen’s famous play “A Doll House” (1879).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House

Nora’s husband sees her only as a child. However, unbeknownst to her husband, Nora has a whole secret life that he knows nothing about. When he was very ill and doctors recommended travel to Italy to help him recover, Nora forged her father’s signature to fraudulently obtain a loan to pay for the trip, and has since been (with great patience and sacrifice and lots of lying) paying the loan off. So, on the one hand, Nora’s husband thinks of her as a child, but on the other hand, because of her husband’s illness, Nora had to bear full responsibility for her family’s welfare–which she could not possibly manage (even as badly as she did) if she really were a child.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Xantippe, what’s interesting about Ibsen’s play is that it came out in 1879 and tackled actual contemporary social issues, it’s not some feminist revisionist take on history. The idea of a “woman as a perpetual child” was accepted in some social circles but not others, even back then.

Dickens’ semi-autobiographical “David Copperfield” came out only 30 years before that in 1849. There he depicts SOME childish women, David’s mother as well as his first wife, Dora; yet Dora is contrasted unflatteringly with David’s second wife, Agnes, who is still somewhat of a stereotypical self-sacrificing woman, but she does have the moxie to help bring down Uriah Heep when he tries to force her into marriage. This is a big difference from the way David’s mother Clara winds up in a miserable, abusive marriage with Mr. Murdstone.

Anyway, the message I got from the Dora episode was, “Listen, young men who think your ideal wife should be like a child? THIS is what you’d be in for if you actually marry a woman like that”.

 

[Xantippe]

Xantippe, what’s interesting about Ibsen’s play is that it came out in 1879 and tackled actual contemporary social issues, it’s not some feminist revisionist take on history. The idea of a “woman as a perpetual child” was accepted in some social circles but not others, even back then.

**And come to think of it, it’s quite horrifying to think of having sex with somebody that’s functionally a child.

Blech!
**

Dickens’ semi-autobiographical “David Copperfield” came out only 30 years before that in 1849. There he depicts SOME childish women, David’s mother as well as his first wife, Dora; yet Dora is contrasted unflatteringly with David’s second wife, Agnes, who is still somewhat of a stereotypical self-sacrificing woman, but she does have the moxie to help bring down Uriah Heep when he tries to force her into marriage. This is a big difference from the way David’s mother Clara winds up in a miserable, abusive marriage with Mr. Murdstone.

Anyway, the message I got from the Dora episode was, “Listen, young men who think your ideal wife should be like a child? THIS is what you’d be in for if you actually marry a woman like that”.

Yes.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

And come to think of it, it’s quite horrifying to think of having sex with somebody that’s functionally a child.

Blech!

I wonder if the ickiness of the “woman as child” approach when it comes to the topic of actually having sex with your “child-wife”, also leads to some traditionalist types diminishing or even essentially denying the existence of female sexuality, and essentially stating that all women in their natural states are meant to be sexless much like children.

And yet, God makes it clear they still have a duty to fulfill the marital debt, right? So, it doesn’t really matter if a woman has sex even when she’s not actually capable of being a full and equal participant, or doesn’t really want to, that’s the way God designed them. Only men are meant to be sexual beings. Women are just the necessarily receptacles for them to express their sexuality, and to propagate the human race.

Of course, this line of thinking can even lead straight into rape apology, at least in the context of marriage. “Enthusiastic consent” is just a concept promulgated by those eeevil Godless lesbian feminists. Women aren’t supposed to be enthusiastic about sex in the first place! Truly disturbing.

 

[Xantippe]

I wonder if the ickiness of the “woman as child” approach when it comes to the topic of actually having sex with your “child-wife”, also leads to some traditionalist types diminishing or even essentially denying the existence of female sexuality, and essentially stating that all women in their natural states are meant to be sexless much like children.

**Again, I think there’s a lot of double think and a lot of eating cake and having it too going on:

1. Women are supposed to be childlike permanent minors.
2. But not so much that it would be wrong to have sex with them or unreasonable to have huge expectations of them. **

And yet, God makes it clear they still have a duty to fulfill the marital debt, right? So, it doesn’t really matter if a woman has sex even when she’s not actually capable of being a full and equal participant, or doesn’t really want to, that’s the way God designed them. Only men are meant to be sexual beings. Women are just the necessarily receptacles for them to express their sexuality, and to propagate the human race.

**Some probably do.

The approach that I’ve seen more of on Dalrock (for my sins) is more like this: wives are supposed to be sexually available and interested whenever their husbands want them to be. Or, they at least need to put on a REALLY good show.

Again, there’s some double-think going on (or at least some very unreasonable expectations):

1. Wives should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to at all, when it’s the last thing they want, and when it makes their skin crawl with revulsion.
2. They should be enthusiastic about it.

No way that could backfire. No sirree!

(I have to add that #2 is weirdly extra-Biblical. St. Paul said “Do not deprive each other.” He didn’t say, pretend to enjoy sex with your husband even when you hate it. I have to assume that #2 is largely inspired by “Christian” men spending a lot of quality time with porn.)
**

 

[ToeInTheWater]

I think the main point of the patriarchal approach to women isn’t REALLY that they’re actual children, but that they are, essentially, not independent people with their own dignity and value, but essentially objects designed by God to be useful to men. Whatever worth women have is merely in their usefulness to the men in their lives, whether it be their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers.

Of course, people can even find Biblical justification for this. “But that’s ordained by God, he created Eve specifically to be Adam’s helpmeet, because none of the animals in the Garden were fit for it!” Hence, women are apparently somewhere in-between animals and men. But of course, not SO much like animals that it would be wrong to have sex with them.

1. Women are supposed to be childlike permanent minors.

1. But not so much that it would be wrong to have sex with them or unreasonable to have huge expectations of them.

The doublethink about this reminds me of the doublethink that many slave-owners engaged in regarding slaves, or even racist thinking regarding African Americans, Native Americans, and other non-white women even if they weren’t slaves; they weren’t quite human, but not so much that it would be wrong to have sex with them.

It’s usually NOT a good thing when your mindset regarding women can be compared to the mindset of slave-owners.

 

[Xantippe]

I think the main point of the patriarchal approach to women isn’t REALLY that they’re actual children, but that they are, essentially, not independent people with their own dignity and value, but essentially objects designed by God to be useful to men. Whatever worth women have is merely in their usefulness to the men in their lives, whether it be their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers.

**Yes.

Of course, on the Catholic view, women are allowed to not marry and to not live under the authority of male relatives when single, so the patriarchal view is not one that fits very naturally with Catholic tradition.

Part of the trouble comes from the fact that the fringy Protestants we’re talking about want to go straight to the OT for inspiration on how 21st century American Christian women ought to live. There’s no reflection on the fact that there have been two millenia of Christian civilization and tradition already and that we can draw on THAT for inspiration on how a Christian woman ought to live.

And frankly, the fringy Protestant approach really isn’t that true to the OT, either. I’ve talked before about Proverbs 31 and how little overlap there is between that and a lot of people’s beliefs about “traditional” life. There’s a lot of reading stuff back into the Bible that really isn’t there. For example–house cleaning. As I’ve mentioned before on CAF, while housecleaning occupies a huge amount of mental real estate for 21st century homemakers, you can look and look and not find it in the Bible. Or take for example household help. There’s a persistent contemporary idea that good Christian mothers ought to be able to do everything by themselves and it’s shameful not to be able manage everything by yourself (housekeeping, childcare, even homeschooling), whereas if you look at the Bible, everybody that can afford it has servants.

By the way, I’ve learned a lot from this blogger:

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/**

 

[Xantippe]

It’s usually NOT a good thing when your mindset regarding women can be compared to the mindset of slave-owners.

The comparison does just leap to mind.

Although I don’t venture into those parts of the internet to comment, I’ve often wanted to ask, “How is your ideal submissive wife different from a slave?” (And they can’t really say, because you can’t sell her, because (at least in the OT) it wasn’t allowed to sell a Hebrew slave wife to a new owner–she had to be either kept or set free–see Exodus 21.)

 

[DebChris]

I don’t have a vehicle which means carrying my groceries home. It is a task that I am capable of performing. As I was walking from the bus stop to my apartment, I was thinking about the difference between how I am treated as a woman in the states versus how I was treated as a woman living in the Middle East for 5 years.
Same scenario–as I would be walking home carrying groceries, it was not unusual for a man to offer his assistance and carry the groceries the rest of the way to where I lived. Femininity includes the humility and courtesy to accept this gesture.
Today as I walked home, two men crossed my path. The first was younger and just kept walking. The second greeted me, asking how I was doing doing and then continued his conversation on his cell phone as we passed each other.
Femininity, in other words does not mean that one is unable to do what is necessary. It does however involve courtesy and humility, as well as a sense of who I am as a woman.

 

[Xantippe]

I don’t have a vehicle which means carrying my groceries home. It is a task that I am capable of performing. As I was walking from the bus stop to my apartment, I was thinking about the difference between how I am treated as a woman in the states versus how I was treated as a woman living in the Middle East for 5 years.
Same scenario–as I would be walking home carrying groceries, it was not unusual for a man to offer his assistance and carry the groceries the rest of the way to where I lived. Femininity includes the humility and courtesy to accept this gesture.
Today as I walked home, two men crossed my path. The first was younger and just kept walking. The second greeted me, asking how I was doing doing and then continued his conversation on his cell phone as we passed each other.
Femininity, in other words does not mean that one is unable to do what is necessary. It does however involve courtesy and humility, as well as a sense of who I am as a woman.

I had a man offer to help me load groceries into my car when I had a baby with me and frankly, it creeped me out and spooked me.

There are certain situations where I really do not want to have strange men offering help (or “help”).

 

[DebChris]

I had a man offer to help me load groceries into my car when I had a baby with me and frankly, it creeped me out and spooked me.

There are certain situations where I really do not want to have strange men offering help (or “help”).

There are boundaries. I never let men past the doorstep of the apartment building, for instance. Sometimes in today’s society, as women, we no longer accept a gentleman’s offer to carry a suitcase upstairs, for instance.
There is a lot of emphasis placed on countries that require women to wear the hajib or nijib. I was in a Gulf state with much freedom, and no such requirement. I rode the city bus. The front seats were reserved for women, and men had to sit in the back.
The offer to help load groceries into your car probably spooked you because it is something you are not used to, at least not in the states. I would maybe have allowed him to load the groceries into the trunk of the car, but not into any of the seats.
Again, it is a matter of culture. You do need to listen to instincts, if you genuinely sense something is wrong. We can also become overly protective and lose a sense of adventure. I guess I learned from my mother that femininity includes a certain amount of self-confidence.

 

[alphawoman]

The “feminine” attributes you listed are all culturally sanctioned and are all superficial.

To me, Proverbs 31:25 sums up Catholic womanhood: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.”

Catholic womanhood creates a state of confidence through determination, action, and power over one’s life from living in truth and the good use of one’s talents. Mary is the consummate example: she holds the power of heaven in her hands, she is the literal nexus between this world and the spiritual world. It was through her fiat–an independent and empowered decision-- that God was born as Man. She arms Catholics for battle, pours out super abundant graces upon her children, and crushes the head of Satan with her foot.

Catholic women are powerful, vital, and valiant champions of God! That is my definition of femininity, not someone who applies makeup delicately, plays the harpsichord, or sits in the corner and lets her husband call the shots.

 

[alphawoman]

I think it is sad that we have gotten to a point where SAHMS are put on the defensive and feel they need to justify their life choices in some pragmatic manner such as “if I went to work all the money would just go to daycare” or “I need to be involved in my children’s schooling” or whatever, and I certainly find the idea that SAHMS are “lazy” to be ridiculous.

And of course there are St. Joan of Arc and St. Gianna Molla, who both were definitely feminine, even though St. Joan wore armor into battlefields and St. Gianna gasp worked for pay as a pediatrician, even after becoming a mother, even though her husband was wealthy himself and she didn’t “need” the money. As I recall, both wore pants – though I do know “Sola Skirtura” is NOT Catholic doctrine.

Sola Skirtura…LOVE it!

 

[SWolf]

The “feminine” attributes you listed are all culturally sanctioned and are all superficial.

To me, Proverbs 31:25 sums up Catholic womanhood: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.”

Catholic womanhood creates a state of confidence through determination, action, and power over one’s life

from living in truth and the good use of one’s talents. Mary is the consummate example: she holds the power of heaven in her hands, she is the literal nexus between this world and the spiritual world. It was through her fiat–an independent and **empowered **decision-- that God was born as Man. She arms Catholics for battle, pours out super abundant graces upon her children, and crushes the head of Satan with her foot.

Catholic women are powerful, vital, and valiant champions of God! That is my definition of femininity, not someone who applies makeup delicately, plays the harpsichord, or sits in the corner and lets her husband call the shots.

Interesting. How do you interpret the following verses?

1 Peter 3
3 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4* but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.*

Ephesians 5:22-33
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, …

1 Corinthians 11:2
Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

1 Corinthians 11:8
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

Colossians 3:18
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

 

[DebChris]

The “feminine” attributes you listed are all culturally sanctioned and are all superficial.

To me, Proverbs 31:25 sums up Catholic womanhood: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.”

Catholic womanhood creates a state of confidence through determination, action, and power over one’s life from living in truth and the good use of one’s talents. Mary is the consummate example: she holds the power of heaven in her hands, she is the literal nexus between this world and the spiritual world. It was through her fiat–an independent and empowered decision-- that God was born as Man. She arms Catholics for battle, pours out super abundant graces upon her children, and crushes the head of Satan with her foot.

Catholic women are powerful, vital, and valiant champions of God! That is my definition of femininity, not someone who applies makeup delicately, plays the harpsichord, or sits in the corner and lets her husband call the shots.

St. Pope John Paul II states in his Theology of the Body that man did not recognizes he was made in God’s image until the creation of woman.
When we hear Jesus call his mother “Woman” in scripture, it is not an insult but a reference to back to creation, and to the promise in Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Mary is listed in the John’s Gospel about the Wedding at Cana before Christ indicating at her Son and His disciples are only there because she was invited first. She does not back, but steps forward in telling the wine stewards to be obedient to her Son. I think you will find this article on the “Woman” as interesting as I did.
catholicexchange.com/the-mystery-of-the-woman-at-cana?mc_cid=9dbc055d49&mc_eid=70ee7bc5b8

 

[alphawoman]

Swolf: I interpret it in the context of Christ’s relationship to the Church. The perfect subjection of both spouses to each other empowers them, respectively, and ensures maximal respect for and use of their faculties. Christ gives himself in totality to the Church, and the Church does the same for Christ, as your partial Ephesians quote expresses.

 

[alphawoman]

St. Pope John Paul II states in his Theology of the Body that man did not recognizes he was made in God’s image until the creation of woman.
When we hear Jesus call his mother “Woman” in scripture, it is not an insult but a reference to back to creation, and to the promise in Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Mary is listed in the John’s Gospel about the Wedding at Cana before Christ indicating at her Son and His disciples are only there because she was invited first. She does not back, but steps forward in telling the wine stewards to be obedient to her Son. I think you will find this article on the “Woman” as interesting as I did.
catholicexchange.com/the-mystery-of-the-woman-at-cana?mc_cid=9dbc055d49&mc_eid=70ee7bc5b8

Great share, thanks DebChris! I enjoyed reading it.

 

[SWolf]

Swolf: I interpret it in the context of Christ’s relationship to the Church. The perfect subjection of both spouses to each other empowers them, respectively, and ensures maximal respect for and use of their faculties. Christ gives himself in totality to the Church, and the Church does the same for Christ, as your partial Ephesians quote expresses.

But that’s not actually what it says.

Christ *sacrificed *himself for His Church.
The Church *submits *itself to Christ.

Christ does not submit Himself to His Church, as it is Christ who dictates the Divine Law, and the Church submits to Christ.

So the dynamic is actually:
The Husband sacrifices himself to his family.
The Wife submits herself to her husband.

Outside of marriage, there are plenty of strong, independent women whom the Bible praises. Judith comes to mind. However, that is not the dynamic between Husband and Wife.

 

[alphawoman]

swolf: Perhaps you’d like to read Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter " Mulieris Dignitatem" for more insight into the spousal relationship.

Specifically, "In the “unity of the two”, man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist “side by side” or “together”, but they are also called to exist mutually “one for the other”.

Source: w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html

In particular, see section VII (“The Church- The Bride of Christ”), 24 and 25.

From 24:

The author of the Letter to the Ephesians sees no contradiction between an exhortation formulated in this way and the words: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife” (5:22-23). The author knows that this way of speaking, so profoundly rooted in the customs and religious tradition of the time, is to be understood and carried out in a new way: as a “mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ” (cf. Eph 5:21). This is especially true because the husband is called the “head” of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church; he is so in order to give “himself up for her” (Eph 5:25), and giving himself up for her means giving up even his own life. However, whereas in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife the “subjection” is not one-sided but mutual.

And 25:

This is easily seen in regard to the person of the “bride”. According to the Letter to the Ephesians, the bride is the Church, just as for the Prophets the bride was Israel. She is therefore a collective subject and not an individual person. This collective subject is the People of God, a community made up of many persons, both women and men. “Christ has loved the Church” precisely as a community, as the People of God. At the same time, in this Church, which in the same passage is also called his “body” (cf. Eph 5:23), he has loved every individual person. For Christ has redeemed all without exception, every man and woman. It is precisely this love of God which is expressed in the Redemption; the spousal character of this love reaches completion in the history of humanity and of the world.

** Christ has entered this history and remains in it as the Bridegroom who “has given himself”. “To give” means “to become a sincere gift” in the most complete and radical way: “Greater love has no man than this” (Jn 15:13). According to this conception, all human beings - both women and men - are called through the Church, to be the “Bride” of Christ, the Redeemer of the world. In this way “being the bride”, and thus the “feminine” element, becomes a symbol of all that is “human”, according to the words of Paul: “There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).**