F.A.O. Baelor
Dear Baelor,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou again for your response on page 11.
First, let me say by way of reply that the traditional Catholic Catechisms (teaching on the Fourth Commandment), uphold that the vocation of the married woman is best fulfilled within the home. Now, dear friend, that may not carry a great deal weight with you, but I think it does, nonetheless, demonstate that these Catechisms did reflect the consistent teaching of the Church throughtout the ages. This teaching has only been seriously challenged since the emergence of radical aberrant feminism and, I am sorry to say, the subversive ideology of this anti-Christian movement has been embraced, either wittingly or unwittingly, by not a few Catholic women (and some misguided men also).
An obligation is laid upon a woman to provide for the formation of her children and her exclusive concern is to be a helpmate to her breadwinning husband and to be a mother to her children. Thus her proper palce is within the home, as Sacred Scripture clearly states (Titus 2: 4,5).
This Christian teaching has also been reinforced in Sacred Tradition by the Popes when the woman’s emancipation movement began to gather momentum in the 20th. century. It is almost as if, by the divine providence, they anticipated the full-blown radical femenism of the 1960’s - the sad legacy of which we are having to contend with today, even within the Church.
Already in 1917, Pope Benedict XV warned that a revolution was making a particular effort to snatch women from the home and into the world of work.
“With the decline in religion, cultured women have lost their sense of shame along with their piety. Many, in order to take up occupations ill-befitting their sex, took to imitating men. Others abandoned the duty of housewife, for which they were fashioned, to cast themselves recklessly into current life” (Letter Natalis trecentesime 1917).
Poe Pius XI refered to the movement to liberate women from domestic home life and the rearing of children:
“It is the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffers the loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the whole family of an ever watchful guardian. More than this, this false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raises within the wall of the home by means of the Gospel, she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery and become as among the pagans, the mere instrument of man” (Encyclical *Casti Connubii *1930).
Pius XI also points out opportunely that the best way to destroy Catholic family life “is to withdraw the wife from the family and the care of the children” and “thrust her instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as the man”.
This, dear friend, ultimately leads to a materialist collective society and actually to the degradation of true womanhood.
Pope Pius XII frequently addressed what he termed “the temptations of our day” for women to be lured by a “false independence” away from the family hearth and “the task assigned her for the good of society, by nature and by marriage”.
He insists that to take a woman away from the family is to extinguish the flame in the hearth of the home:
“The atmosphere of the home cools, the family circle ceases to exist…and the centre of daily life will be found elsewhere for her husband, for the wife herself and for her children” (Allocution to newly-weds 1943 in The Woman and the Modern World, pp. 79-81).
The Pope was only too well aware that some women - both then and now - will protest rebelliously against this life of sacrifice, thus he wisely responds: “Do you really believe, however, that there is any true solid happiness here below not won through sacrifice and self-denial?”. For the wife and mother, it is those daily sacrifices for husband and children - "in an offi****ce given her by nature" - that will ensure the life of all to develop and flourish, and win her sanctification" (Allocution to newly-weds 1942, added emphasis mine).
These Popes being dead yet speak jolly forcefully to the present generation, plagued by radical aberrant feminism and could well have been written for today. Moreover, dear friend, if these excerpts do not give a good idea of what a grand and glorious vocation it is to be a full-time Catholic mother and wife, then I do not know what will.
The extracts cited above on the role of a wife at home need no elaboration from me, for they are perfectly clear in their meaning. The Popes are very rigorous in stating that a mother should remain at home. You will observe, dear friend, that they also considered the modern tendency to want to “emancipate the mother” to be bad. Therefore, any person seeking orientation need only apply those teachings - they have not become obsolete or irrelenvant, on the contrary they apply more than ever, given our present plight.
God bless, dear brother, and may you and all other contributors to the present thread have an enjoyable weekend, whatever you plan to do.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax:tiphat:
