feminine-genius: Commitment crunch

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.

My husband was an officer in the Navy so I understand military discipline. I am a mother of five so I understand the demands of young children. I also recognise that there is an inevitable clash between motherhood and the military -- especially when the mother is single and the one being deployed.

An Army cook and single mom may face criminal charges after she skipped her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her infant son while she was overseas.
Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, claims she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.
Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson's superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

It's not fair for her to get a pass when deployment is rough on everyone, but what to do when a large component of our fighting forces is comprised of single parents? This is where the rubber hits the road and Army as "jobs program" rather than Army as "fighting force" has taken precedence. The military makes sure that each soldier has a plan in place for dependents (especially for situations like this) but the grandmother of the baby was overwhelmed -- being caretaking for her own mother, another elderly relative, a special needs daughter and a housing a day-care for 14 children in the home.

I blame this fallout on the feminists' demands that have shredded families and insisted that mothers caring for their own children is oppressive. Sure -- but someone has to raise the next generation. Alexis has found that delegating that task while slopping chow overseas isn't such a good deal afterall. Any ideas, Betty Freidan?

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My hubby became a Navy JAG officer after law school. I had graduated as well (we married after our first year there together) and both of our families wondered why I did not enter the program as well. "because we want to have babies and they need someone to raise them while Daddy is on a carrier, sub or overseas!" Such a silly June Cleaver I am! Btw, I now have a private partTime law practice and 6 children, 17 to 7 months, baby comes to work with me (as you can probably tell by my nursing-while-typing mistakes)!

Posted by: Carla | Tuesday, 17 November 2009 at 06:30 PM

WTG, Carla! I was thinking, as I was reading your comment, "She can always go back to her law practice," but I see you've adopted my, "You're going to see, hear and smell babies. They come with the package," approach. I'm a stay-at-home mom and graphic designer with four children from 19 to 2. Mingling children and your job doesn't work for folks in the military.

Posted by: Teresa | Wednesday, 18 November 2009 at 06:55 AM

+JMJ+

I read somewhere that the US air force had a policy against single parents--male or female--for precisely this reason. That is, they believed a person's first responsibility was to immediate family members.

On the other hand, there are also stories of servicewomen who deliberately get pregnant in order to avoid deployment. It's really not fair for them to sign up for military service and then refuse to deliver. I'm not saying that this is what happened here, but it's another example that highlights the dissonance we feel when we see mothers leaving their infants to enter combat zones and then see women using babies to cheat the system.

Posted by: Enbrethiliel | Saturday, 21 November 2009 at 09:34 AM

1. There could be women who get pregnant to avoid deployment or sea-duty.
2. There is a perception that any woman who gets pregnant, or finds out she is pregnant, when a deployment is impending, did it to get out of deploying.In my branch, the Marine Corps, this perception can be pretty strong.
3. If it is true that one of SPC Hutchinson's superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway (and leave th child home alone?), that person, and whoever trained and educated him/her to do his job, should be relieved.

Separating her for the good of the service, as apparently later happened, is perfectly reasonable. The immediate response shuld have been to sit down with her, clarify what the family situation was, and either help her find someone else, or move her to a non-deploying billet, and source someone else to go on the deployment. Now, the Army has no legal obligation to put the soldier with the family problem in a non-deploying billet so that she can complete her enlistement and receive an honorable discharge, but they probably could have arranged it. If not, then separation for the good of the service should have been the next step - not giving her bum scoop that led her to (apparently) make a scatterbrained decision to commit a court-martial offense by failing to show up for deployment. Of course, she was right to put her child first. She probably could have requested to speak to the CO and a couple other things rather than just miss the movement. She likely didn't know what those other things were.

Posted by: Sue Murphy | Sunday, 01 August 2010 at 02:35 PM

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