feminine-genius: Trojan goats

Available now from Servant Books

Set Free—The Authentic Catholic Woman's Guide to Forgiveness (due out, October, 2012)
From Fr. Christopher Mahar: "In her previous book, The Authentic Catholic Woman, Genevieve Kineke describes with brilliance the vocation of woman as icon of the Church, called to image the Bride of Christ in all Her splendor through everyday living and total self-giving. In this richly theological and disarmingly personal book, Set Free: The Authentic Catholic Woman’s Guide to Forgiveness, Genevieve enunciates anew that call of woman to be, like Holy Mother Church, a bridge facilitating reconciliation between fathers and children, and between God and all of creation."
Genevieve's first book, The Authentic Catholic Woman, is available from Servant Books now by calling 800-488-0488. With a forward by Christopher West, this work offers a spiritual and practical outline to help all women understand God's plan for their lives.
From Father Roger Landry:
"Genevieve Kineke does all of us a great service in this important new book. Through her profound yet clear exposition of the authentic femininity of the Church as the paradigm for Catholic women today, she not only provides concrete, practical help for women seeking holiness amidst the joys and struggles of married, religious or single life, but provides all Catholics, men and women, with a much deeper understanding of what the Church is and how we, in the Church, are called to respond to Christ and others. This book will nourish every disciple."

Pope Benedict's Monthly Prayer Intentions

General intention:“That the Eastern Catholic Churches and their venerable traditions may be known and esteemed as a spiritual treasure for the whole Church.”
Missionary Intention: “That the African continent may find strength in Christ to pursue justice and reconciliation as set forth by the second Synod of African Bishops.”

Comments

From Benedict XVI
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
Anger and Patrimony (from Donna)
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
Excellent, Dom! (from Teresa)
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Find the logic (from "me")
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
Find the logic (from Mary)
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.

From Sudan, we have a nice story about help offered to women in Sudan, with a hint that many women are abandoned by their menfolk and have need of financial sustainability. Maybe, maybe not:

[Linda Ferdinand]: “We have two agricultural projects at the moment. We have a project called the Seeds Business Project. We are working with progressive farmers in six locations. One is in Wau and the other five are outside Wau. We train farmers to produce seeds in that project. We also have free seed distribution to the IDPs and the host communities. We also have vegetable gardening where we train women on how plant vegetables which are important to the health of their children and from which they also get some income. The Ministry of Agriculture sends us advisers who train our project members. We also have goat-restocking program where we give women outside town goats on a revolving basis. 150 women have benefited from this goat-restocking program.”

One of the beneficiaries, Juleta Mario, is in her sixties and lives in Momoi village, five miles from Wau town. Sudan Radio Service visited her in her grass-thatched tukul, where she takes care of her goats.

[Juleta Mario]: “These goats were given to us women who are abandoned by our husbands. My husband left me and bringing up my children was very difficult. So WOTAP gave us these goats to help me in bringing up my children, saying that when the goats deliver more goats they take the ones they gave us and leave us with the ones they delivered. WOTAP gave us these goats in 1994. They delivered twelve more goats. They took their parents and I remained with mine. When I have problems I sell some of them and now I remained with 8 goats. They are still delivering.”

This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of poverty. A goat could make the difference between living and dying (or at least a miserable existence begging). While I'm trying to be postive, something doesn't sound quite right. Women's groups who have the backing of the UN usually aren't so benign, and any group that opts for a "women only" clientele may have a trick or two up its sleeve.

With a little digging, we find that the group promoting this program, WOTAP (Women Training and Promotion) has another dimension, promoting its agenda through "Women's Advocacy Network for Women's Issues," which has been busy advancing the availability of contraceptives and abortions in Turkey.

In order to better track progress and evaluate improvements in the quality of family planning services in Turkey, the USAID Turkey program has implemented an innovative M&E system. The M&E plan incorporates several accepted best practices in monitoring and evaluation. The plan utilizes simple data collection and analysis techniques to encourage the use of data at all levels for the continuous improvement of services. The M&E plan was designed to be a user-friendly tool for health facilities and local program managers, in order to improve prospects for sustainability.

Likewise in Egypt, there is more "assistance" for women and girls:

Local teams in six governorates spent up to six months working with youth participating in CEDPA’s life skills courses to mount a theatrical performance or puppet show advocating for girls’ and young women’s issues related to health, education and the environment. Topics covered included women’s social and political participation, water pollution, illiteracy and reproductive health. The Theme Day performances were well attended by youth, families, community leaders, NGO members and religious leaders.

Let me guess, it's probably not ecological breast-feeding or natural family planning that they're promoting. Beware NGO's bearing gifts. It may not be quite what the family really needs.

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