Women In Catholicism

Times Writers Group: Don't believe everything you read

In a recent Times Writers Group piece, the author accurately wrote that in the past 20 years laws have been passed nationwide that emphasize prosecution of perpetrators of sexual assaults. He then stated these laws “have made male and female relationships more difficult.” I can’t imagine how. True, the laws make it easier to prosecute assailants who drug and/or kidnap their victims and those who commit date rape. However, unless your idea of romance consists of Rohypnol (“roofies”), beatings and involuntary confinement, these laws will have no effect on a couple. Aside from the fact that Planned Parenthood has categorically denied these types of claims for years, it makes no sense from an accounting standpoint. Imagine your doctor deciding to work on increasing the number of appendectomies performed so the clinic can afford to provide more flu shots. Furthermore, there isn’t a “profit” to be made on an expensive medical procedure that can be rolled over to pay for someone else’s health care. And then there is the report, commissioned by U.S. bishops and completed by John Jay College, acknowledging that there has been widespread sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests. The report was part of an investigation into the causes of the abuse and concludes that the rapist priests behaved that way because they were unprepared to deal with the freedoms generated in the 1960s by the “sexual revolution.” Were you there for that particular time of social upheaval? It was a time of great societal change because women had access to inexpensive, easily used, effective contraceptives (“the pill”). While we all know that forbidding women from controlling their fertility using contraception is a basic tenet of Catholicism, no part of the report mentioned this. Rather, it blamed the revolution for causing psychologically unprepared priests to rape children. Do you believe that women having access to oral contraceptives makes priests rape children?

On Wednesday, I read yet another news item with a questionable allegation. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board met to discuss options regarding revealing the names of donors who help finance campaigns for and against the proposed marriage amendment. Those who support the measure worry that donors will shy away from their cause.

Association of Catholic Women Bloggers: Thoughts on Recovering ...

When I used to debate on AOL boards, another debator and my comrad-in-arms, Eileen came up with the theory that a majority of Catholics who leave the church, don't know anything or very little about their Catholic Faith. In discussion after discussion the amount of basic knowledge of Catholicism that these people did not know was stunning. They in fact weren't recovering from Catholicism, because in fact they never knew what Catholicism really was, what it really taught, or how it was really to be lived. However, the more usual scenario was that they were bored to tears at mass, never took a religion class after first communion, unless their parents made them stick it out until confirmation, and the parents never practiced their faith and were nominal in every sense of the world. Then these poorly-formed Catholics experienced wonderful fellowship and community at their local Evangelical church and left. That's not really recovering from Catholicism either. It's a lack of religious upbringing, spiritual, catechetical neglect or apathy that they're recovering from, not Catholicism. When I first heard that term, about a decade ago , I thought it was mildly amusing. It seemed a clever self-designation for those who believed they had been scarred in some psychological, physical, or sexual way by ruler-wielding nuns and/or lustful priests, or simply from what they later came to believe were the precepts of a restrictive and guilt-inducing dogma. The label expressed their disaffection from the religion they grew up with, and "recovery" from its alleged harm was an allusion to the Twelve-Step movements whose adherents are committed to live free of destructive addictions one day at a time. When I heard Mary Karr's questioner describe herself as a "recovering Catholic," however, the term struck me for the first time as a smug, self-satisfied, self-pitying kind of whine that arises from our society's current canonization of self-proclaimed victims. Too many of us too often blame a range of factors, including substances, parents, and/or institutions (in this case the Catholic Church), for our own bad behavior, irresponsibility, and dissatisfaction with life.