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Debora123
Guest
If I may ask, how many children do you and your wife have?
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edwest2
Guest
Not at all. This is all well documented.
amazon.com/Extreme-Makeover-Transformed-Conformed-Culture/dp/1586175610
Peace,
Ed
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Calliso
Guest
Well I guess my point is is that what you experienced in life isn;t what everyone experienced you know what I mean? I mean maybe I am wrong about the majority of families back then being like my parents were but you may be wrong about the majority only having a couple kids as well. Sure I bet most women didn;t have abusive womens and many that did did have support networks and families to support them after, but alot didn;t still. I mean Athenas experience happened to other women as well.
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Portrait
Guest
Dear Debora,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well.
May I just say that I pleased to hear of your decision to be a worker at home, dear sister. A woman truly does find her fulfillment in being a wife and mother.
What are termed the ‘good old days’ really were good in comparison to the confused and deeply troubled times in which we now live and move and have our being.
The notion of a bread-winning husband and home-making wife is a family pattern firmly rooted in Sacred Scripture (see Titus 2: 4,5). This gave stability to both the family and the wider society and by forsaking this model we have reaped a bitter harvest in terms of family breakdown and unmanagable children. Only by the the diminution of Christian principles could our present situation have obtained, dear sister, - a situation in which children come home from school to empty homes (‘latch-key children’), where mothers are no longer present as full-time guides and carers, always on hand to counsel and console, to share the daily ups and downs of young life in sympathy and understanding.
Radical aberrant feminism has succeded in convincing multitudes of women, including not a few Catholics, that it is no longer necessary to suffer dependence on a wage-earning husband any more. However, unless we look at the present age with eyes totally blinkered to the experience of past generations, we are bound to alllow that millions of women of high intelligence and indomitable spirit have been quite prepared to be dependent upon their husbands for their living. In any case, dear sister, for a woman what is the alternative to financial dependence upon a husband for whom she has freely chosen to run a household? There is only one alternative, and that is to be financially dependent upon an employer who graciously accepted her supplication for employment. To be at the beck and call of an employer is certainly no more dignified than managing a home for a husband and the children. Moreover, the worker at home has all-round advantages in terms of personal freedom.
There is no area of experience in which people are today more susceptible to self-deception than in the matter of what constitutes true dignity and freedom in the ordering of responsibilities between husband and wife. Some of the ironies were noted decades ago in an earlier phase of the women’s movement, when G.K. Chesterton observed that thousands of women had declared ‘We will not be dictated to’, and then promptly took up jobs as short-hand typists!
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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Baelor
Guest
Allow introduce facts instead of isolated anecdotal evidence.
The birth rate increased in the 1950s from its levels in the previous two decades, as documented here.
In addition, your claim that the average number of children approximated two is absurd and demonstrably false. The CDC explicitly states that the average number of children is absurd. The average number of children per family peaked at 3.7 in 1957, as explained here. Note that the average number of children per family in 1800, before major medical breakthroughs, was less than twice that (seven children).
Let us cease with the sixth grade research methods, please.
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Dale_M
Guest
During the past 100 years in the US, 1957 marked the high point in the average number of children per family. It was a bit less than four kids.
cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4847a1.htm
(click on picture to make bigger)
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Portrait
Guest
Dear Baelor,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well. Thankyou for your response.
True, motherhood is not the calling of every woman, but it is the normal calling and there is a jolly big difference in a consecated single life and a single life chosen for unspiritual selfish reasons.
The very term ‘homemaker’, dear brother, implies certain domestic functions and duties that are necessarily womanly, for example, cooking, cleaning, sewing and nurturing children.
A so called ‘househusband’ is a non entity and is the invention of modern day political correctness, occasioned by the deliberate blurring of the roles of men and women. We Catholics ought to give this nonesense a wide-berth, old chap.
When altar rails were common in our churches, the bride always stood before the rail during the wedding service.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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Portrait
Guest
Dear Ed,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well. Thankyou for your response.
Indeed, many are making great sacrifices and I know of at least one chap and his family who has done so. These are truly the unsung heroes, dear brother.
God bless and thankyou for your excellent (name removed by moderator)ut to the current thread. Keep up the splendid work, old boy.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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LucyLight
Guest
Portrait,
So women who don’t marry and don’t become religous are ungodly feminists(that f word again
). What about men who don’t marry and don’t become religous? Do you have similar words for them?
So women who don’t marry and don’t become religous are ungodly feminists(that f word again
). What about men who don’t marry and don’t become religous? Do you have similar words for them?
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prosecutor
Guest
Dear portrait:
Thank you for reminding me why I am a feminist.
Thank you for reminding me why I am a feminist.
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Baelor
Guest
When were the good old days? Before or after slavery? Enfranchised blacks? Enfranchised women?
There is also a difference between the unconsecrated single life and the single life chosen for selfish reasons. You made no distinction between any of them.
None of those duties are inherently womanly. The Church does not teach this. Only nurturing children can reasonably be considered a biological product of womanhood.
Note that the world-famous chefs, designers, etc. are all male – a testament to societal determination of gendered roles.
We as Catholics ought to follow Church teaching. Church teaching does not mandate housewives or househusbands. And househusbands exist – they are entities. Stay-at-home-men exist – they are entities. I fail to see why we should give such men a wide berth. The lack of a vagina does not make a man a bad housekeeper. If you have evidence disproving this at a biological level, please enlighten us so that we may fall in line.
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Portrait
Guest
Dear Baelor,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.
Whilst it is possible to look back to former times and regard them with unfounded favour, it is also possible, my dear friend, to be blinkered with respect to what is seriously amiss in the present. Since the Sixties and the sexual revolution, far too many Catholics have shown a near-sightedness and optimism concerning modern social mores; they have practically gone out of their way to be very affirming of the new sense of values. This is a tragedy of the first rank, for there has been a monumental failure to provide a robust Christian counter-culture, out of a morbid fear of being thought intolerant and uncharitable.
Of course, dear friend, not everything was rosy in the good old days, but it is undeniable that in complete contrast to our present times they were happier and morally superior. For example, you did not have the avant garde clamouring for acceptance of perverted lifestyles, you did not have people pressing for homosexual ‘marriage’, you did not have have couples openly living in sin without any apparent sense of shame, you did not have youth insubordination and ungovernable conduct on such an uprecedented level as you have today. Need I go on, old chap. Positively, the good old days were less brash and gentlemanly behaviour was much more evident, as aberrant radical feminism has not yet raised its ugly head. There was more courtesy and people knew their place and role in society and what was expected of them. Thus men were the breadwinners and women rightly remained at home in the sphere that was proper to them, unless they were single and had to support themeselves. Nevertheless, marriage was the norm (and bedrock of society), unless a woman had been called to the religious life or she was a consecrated virgin.
An ‘unconsecrated single life’ is an anomally, dear friend, at least according to St. Paul - “the unmarried woman or virgin is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit…”, in other words the single woman commits herself to the pursuit of holiness and living a consecrated life. Again, dear friend, this is poles apart from a career orientated woman who selfishly chooses that way of life and deliberately shuns marriage, since that gets in the way of her plans.
The Church does not need to spoon-feed us as regards the natural tasks undertaken by a woman. Do we really need, dear brother, to be instructed after all these centuries as to what are womanly domestic tasks? Only those imbued with feminist ideology would ever stop to ask what these tasks are and then go on to challenge the accepted norm.
Chefs and designers are professions in which males work and their is nothing feminine about such occupations.
Forgive me, dear friend, but you seem to have an idee fixe about the Church having to teach about what is patently obvious. It surprises me that you think that our Church should have to “mandate” housewives, but perhaps I have misunderstood your meaning and if that is the case I apologise in advance. In any case St. Paul has already ‘mandated’ in Sacred Scripture that married women should be “workers at home” (Titus 2: 5) - in other words, housewives and mothers.
‘Househusbands’ are a non-entity, at least in the eyes of God, since they are tacit denial of masculinity and the roles ordered by the divine providence. Of course there will undoubtedly be occasions where a husband must take on such a role, ethier temporarily or permanently, because of a wife who is very unwell, or because there is very little likelihood of him ever working, perhaps because of a physical or mental illness. However, dear friend, these are exceptions to the norm of a breadwinner/homemaker model - rare cases make bad law.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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Debora123
Guest
Haha, some of these replies are outrageous. 
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CountrySinger
Guest
I know. I have several friends who are single (not their choice), and it is a huge insult to them. This kind of extreme talk just pushes me to the other side. I’m no hard-core feminist (in fact, I’ll be a housewife soon), but to say a single woman is selfish rubs me the wrong way.Haha, some of these replies are outrageous.
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Debora123
Guest
Yep.
I don’t agree with extreme feminism whatsoever and am pretty traditional in my view of the family, but reading some of these posts reminds me why a certain level of feminism is obviously necessary.
PS - weren’t most women saints single?
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AthenaC
Guest
I like how edwest2’s experiences are evidence that we should go back to the “good ol’ days” but my experiences (and those of many, many other women) are “feminist scare tactics.” Cute, really.
It was not feminism that caused my personal crisis; it was my husband abusing a man’s status in a traditional marriage. It was not traditional values that saved my life; it was feminism. No other way to slice it, and (curiously) I have yet to see any response to me actually adressing these indisputable realities. (But cosidering the only intellectually honest response would be “Hey! You’re right! Maybe feminism has done some good after all!” I’m not holding my breath.)
But as much as I enjoy talking to walls, I have things to do. That is, 8 years after being homeless and destitute with a baby in -30F weather, I am a homeowner and the breadwinner for my family of four. I am providing security for my family where a traditional marriage model straight out of the good ol’ days was nearly the instrument for my destruction and death.
So:
- Thank you, feminism, for the right to vote
- Thank you, feminism, for the right to get an education
- Thank you, feminism, for the right to professional respect in the workplace as I work alongside men
- Thank you, feminism, for the right to own property
- Thank you, traditional values, for showing me the value of feminism.
- Thank you, traditional values, for providing the motivation to navigate the public welfare system
- Thank you, traditional values, for valuable lessons about how awful traditional values can be
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Portrait
Guest
Dear LucyLight,Portrait,
So women who don’t marry and don’t become religous are ungodly feminists(that f word again
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.
Incontrovertably, radical aberrant feminism has had a profound negative influence upon the thinking of both men and women, more perhaps than many are willing to concede and Catholic women have, alas, not been immune from its godless ideology. The many threads here at CAF surely testify to that fact, dear sister.
Men or women should not deliberately shun marriage to selfishly pursue a career or enjoy a feckless life of gaiety, for that sort of outlook hardly sits comfortable with the whole spirit of Catholicism, which is to marry and raise godly offspring for the next generation.
Married women claiming high career profile for themeselves have only succeeded in eroding their husbands sense of responsibility as breadwinner, as this now tends to be shared in the name of equality. Moreover, unemployment bears heavily upon men and they go to pieces more readily under its weight than women. Naturally, the more current secular feminism persuades women of the superior status and rewards of work outside of the home the more married women will seek it, and this will inevitably have an impact upon men’s opportunities.
What is so very sad, dear sister, is the prevalent aggressive disparagement of the domestic work traditionally undertaken by women within the home. Another tragic legacy of radical feminism. Being a worker at home is very undervalued nowadays and yet is of greater importance than any career, for, as the old adage puts it, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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Debora123
Guest
I think it’s funny how a couple posters here are entirely blaming women for the “fall” of the family. That in itself is ironically sexist.
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Portrait
Guest
Dear AthenaC,
Cordial greetings and a very good day.
Whilst I do not deny that you had a jolly rough passage several years back, dear sister, you cannot use the case of your husband to traduce traditional values, for the two are not synonymous. Your husband may well have exploited his status, and no one would defend that, but that does not render traditional values bad, worthless or oppressive. It simply means that your husband was a rotten apple and not the best of examples for traditional values with respect to being a good caring husband. However, dear sister, your bad marriage, and the unfortunate events that resulted from it, cannot be used as a template to discredit the traditional marriage paradigm, for other traditional marriages work exceedingly well with the husband as the breadwinner and the woman as a keeper at home.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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AthenaC
Guest
Indeed - my parents have one such exceedingly successful traditional marriage. But the success of traditional marriage in some cases cannot be used to dismiss the necessity of feminism and the great good that is has wrought for many people.
- Status