feminine-genius

God's permissive will

Amy Julia Becker shares her experience of being the mother of Penny, a child who happens to have Downs Syndrome. While the diagnosis was a jolt to her and her husband, the learning curve has been one of joy and grace:

Penny is twenty-six months old. She says “no” with the gusto of any of her peers. She uses speech and sign language to communicate, and has an expressive vocabulary of more than two hundred words. She tells me what she did at school today, and the names of her friends, and what she would like for her afternoon snack. Penny loves music. She eats with a spoon and fork, albeit messily. She knows her shapes and colors. She gives lots of hugs. She says “sorry” after a time-out for pulling the cat’s fur or throwing her drink on the floor. Her facial features are distinctive. Beautiful, I think, but different. She’s very short, and she wasn’t able to walk steadily until a few months ago. In other words, she has Down syndrome, and she is developing, in many ways, like any other child. Asking whether I am at risk for having another child with Down syndrome (and statistically speaking, the answer is yes, my “risk” is 1 in 100), is akin to asking whether I am at risk for having another child with brown hair, with gorgeous green eyes, with her father’s hand-eye coordination or her mother’s love for books. It implies that Down syndrome is something separate from Penny, something that could be extracted if only we had the proper tools and procedures. But that extra chromosome is intrinsic to Penny’s being. To take away Down syndrome is to take away Penny.

And yet, as her thesis reveals, the medical community would take away Penny in a heartbeat -- according to their "standards of care."

I heard a report on NPR about a new ethics recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. ACOG has stated that doctors unwilling to provide abortions have an obligation to refer their patients to another physician who will provide the procedure. In the words of the spokesperson on NPR, “if a physician has a personal belief that deviates from evidence-based standards of care . . . they have a duty to refer patients in a timely fashion if they do not feel comfortable providing a given service.” [snip]

As a result, I am somewhat skeptical about the standard of care offered to these mothers. I’m also skeptical when “personal beliefs” are pitted against evidence, therefore implying that a physician who is unwilling to perform an abortion has defied (“deviated” from) the evidence. I understand that many women face unbearably difficult choices in regards to the health of their babies. Some choose to terminate pregnancies because they have been given information about the near certainty of physical abnormalities leading to their child’s early death. And yet many women choose to terminate a pregnancy based upon probabilities, fear, and misinformation.

Seems to be the standard fare in women's health, considering many reproductive issues. All under the banner of freedom.

Ultimate freedom

The question may strike you as irreverent. How dare I suggest that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Co-Redemptrix of mankind, could have left us in the lurch like that?

But what if she had? Could she have said No? You might say that of course she couldn’t, she was far too holy — but you would be guilty of demeaning and dangerous sentimentality. It is demeaning because it turns Our Lady from a free human being into a sanctified automaton. The whole glory of the Annunciation is that Mary, the second Eve, could have said No to God but she said Yes instead. That is what we celebrate, that is what we praise her for; and rightly so.
This sentimental view is dangerous too. If we believe that the most important decision in the history of the world was in fact inevitable, that it couldn’t have been otherwise, then that means it was effortless. Now we have a marvellous excuse for laziness. Next time we’re faced with a tough moral decision, we needn’t worry about doing what is right. Just drift, and God will make sure that whatever choice we make is the right one. If God really wants us to do something he’ll sweep us off his feet the way he did Mary, and if he chooses not to, it’s hardly our fault, is it?

So Mary could have said No to Gabriel. What if she had? He couldn’t just go and ask someone else, like some sort of charity collector. With all the genealogies and prophecies in the Bible, there was only one candidate. It’s an alarming thought. Ultimately, of course, God would have done something: the history of salvation is the history of him never abandoning his people however pig-headed they were. But God has chosen to work through human history. If the first attempt at redemption took four thousand years to prepare, from the Fall to the Annunciation, how many tens of thousands of years would the next attempt have taken?

Even if the world sometimes makes us feel like cogs in a machine, each of us is unique and each of us is here for a purpose: just because it isn’t as spectacular a purpose as Mary’s, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. When we fail to seek our vocation, or put off fulfilling some part of it, we try to justify ourselves by saying that someone else will do it better, that God will provide, that it doesn’t really matter. But we are lying. However small a part I have to play, the story of the Annunciation tells me it is my part and no-one else can do it.

Faced with the enormity of her choice, how was Mary able to decide? If she said No, unredeemed generations would toil on under the burden of sin. If she said Yes, she herself would suffer, and so would her Son; but both would be glorified. Millions of people not yet born would have Heaven open to them; but millions of others would suffer oppression and death in her son’s name. The stakes were almost infinite.

You might say that Mary didn’t worry about all this, just obeyed God; but I don’t believe it. What God wanted was not Mary’s unthinking obedience but her full and informed consent as the representative of the entire human race. The two greatest miracles of the Annunciation are these: that God gave Mary the wisdom to know the consequences of her decision, and that he gave her the grace not to be overwhelmed by that knowledge.

When we come to an important decision in our lives, we can easily find our minds clouded by the possible consequences, or, even more, by partial knowledge of them. How can we ever move, when there is so much good and evil whichever way we go? The Annunciation gives us the answer. God’s grace will give us the strength to move, even if the fate of the whole world is hanging in the balance. After all, God does not demand that our decisions should be the correct ones (assuming that there even is such a thing), only that they should be rightly made.

There is one more truth that the Annunciation teaches us, and it is so appalling that I can think of nothing uplifting to say about it that will take the sting away: perhaps it is best forgotten, because it tells us more about God than we are able to understand. The Almighty Father creates heaven and earth, the sun and all the stars; but when he really wants something done, he comes, the Omnipotent and Omniscient, to one of his poor, weak creatures — and he asks.

And, day by day, he keeps on asking us (From Universalis).

This is chivalry, folks

The primary goal of this priest is to save souls, naturally, but in taking on the absurdities of Islam -- many of which degrade women -- he manages to offer hope to those subjugated by it's widely-observed tenets. Speaking both Arabic and classical Arabic, Father Zakaria Botros has a wide audience in the Middle East and can use the Koran and writings of Koranic scholars to make his points, such as the following.

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Er, they cannot be serious. Who makes this stuff up? When God limits conjugal relations to those validly married, that should be the end of it. What sort of religious tries to add emphasis to the commandments by forcing women to expose themselves to this indignity. What part of "no" don't they understand? Unless perverted minds are thinking up the rules. But then we find that conjugal relations aren't limited to marriage under Islam after all:

The most dramatic example of this occurred on another famous show on the international station, Iqra. The host, Basma — a conservative Muslim woman in full hijab — asked two prominent ulema, including Sheikh Gamal Qutb, one-time grand mufti of al-Azhar University, to explain the legality of the Koranic verse (4:24) that permits men to freely copulate with captive women. She repeatedly asked: “According to sharia, is slave-sex still applicable?” The two ulema would give no clear answer — dissembling here, going off on tangents there. Basma remained adamant: Muslim youth were confused, and needed a response, since “there is a certain channel and a certain man who has discussed this issue over twenty times and has received no response from you.”

The flustered Sheikh Qutb roared, “low-life people like that must be totally ignored!” and stormed off the set. He later returned, but refused to admit that Islam indeed permits sex-slaves, spending his time attacking Botros instead. When Basma said “Ninety percent of Muslims, including myself, do not understand the issue of concubinage in Islam and are having a hard time swallowing it,” the sheikh responded, “You don’t need to understand.”

No, my dear Sheikh, we understand all too well. And we salute our brother and protector, Father Botros, who knows that his faith is not only true, but the true emancipator of women. For if an angel came from heaven with another Gospel, let him be anathema. And if that "angel" claimed that women were chattel and sex toys, it's all the more evident that he is from the Dark Lord himself.

Bumperland

Simcha shares my disdain for this bumper advert for imbecility ("COEXIST" written with religious symbols), though she phrases it far better than I ever could:

I guess it wouldn't be so grating if it just spelled out its little one-word sermon in regular letters, although I realize the message would lost some of its putative punch that way. I see what they're trying to do by using symbols as letters: they're trying to say that all of these ideas, Christianity, Judaism, Peace (which is separate from Christianity, dontcha know), Yin Yangitude, etc., all fit together into one large, overarching shelter called "coexistence." [snip]

By using meaningful symbols as mere letters in a word, this bumper sticker subsumes the significant and specific into a suffocating mass of indiscriminate acceptance. Don't use the cross as a T, okay? And don't use the star of David as an X. They're not, like, logos for "Jesus Brand" and "Judaism, Inc."

Drop by to read the entire argument, or revisit my old crabby report on another set of bumper art.

Bully for them

I've blogged before on this numerous times, and cannot but applaud this group and their billboard for awareness. Of course anyone who rattles this sacred cage will bring the wrath of women upon them, regardless of the facts.

Nailing the goddess

I was surprised to see the prominence that "Starhawk" has maintained, but then I don't get out much. I remember her from the heyday of Father Fox, but of course, she's moved on to the pages of the Washington Post, which is evidently interested in the thoughts of Wiccans. She's responding to a question about racism and sexism, but has managed to point out the glaring error in goddess worship a topic I touched on here.

In the Goddess religions, we see the divine as immanent in every human being. Each of us has an inherent worth that cannot be quantified, denied, or compared to the worth of another. If we restrict one portion of the human race from full participation in society, we limit our collective intelligence and potential...When spirit is split from nature, when God is removed from the world, then this world and all that we associate with it become devalued: the body; those who bring life into the world; the earth that sustains life; and darkness, the color of soil and the womb. Spirit, light, pure mind, intellect, maleness and detachment from the body are seen as closer to God. Within that split universe, we denigrate women, people of color, and those who work with the earth, who till the soil, clean up the messes, rear the children and do the physical maintenance of life.

She attempts to give dignity to the feminine by divinising it, as though being God is the only righteous alternative to, um, not being God.

Well, no. No one is God except -- God. The rest of us are His creatures. The reason God asked us to call Him Father was so that there would be no confusion about the nature of the Divine. Fathers create apart from themselves; mothers create with their very flesh and blood. Fathers do not confuse their identity with that of their children, because the flesh is distinct. Mothers usually have a far more difficult time letting go -- witness the tears with the cutting of the cord, the first day of school, the trip down the aisle, etc. Each event of independence is a wrenching experience for the mother.

Thus, God knew, that if we referred to Him as "mother," then the next thing would be to blur the line between divinity and creature, leading to exactly what Starhawk has done, renouncing the Christian faith for pantheism -- God present in all her creation.

If she would return to the Christianity of her roots, then she could see that the gritty "physical maintenance of life" that falls to women is transformed by the Incarnation, and the restoration of spirit and flesh would be given glory in the hypostatic union present in Jesus. It's all there, if we simply had the vocabulary and catechesis to respond.

[As for her thoughts on women in the ante-bellam South, and the vocation of women, a far better treatment is found here. This was written before the conversion of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, but it's excellent.]

Time to simplify

Pamela has pointed out a marvelous resource. For those of you in the Northern Virginia area, this woman will give talks as well. WOG has a similar workbook here. Do yourself and your family a favour. Everyone benefits!

A house divided

Certainly, there are landmines and chasms in the Episcopalian world, which the members have to navigate regularly, beginning with finding a parish priest who has similar religious beliefs, and then finding a bishop who will dispense his authority in a way consonant with the Gospel. Those who hold to that confession (as opposed to "poping") have all sorts of headaches, but imagine the divide coming right down the center of your own dining room table.

A recent obituary highlighted by Get Religion showed that the family of Bishop Ronald H. Haines (a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C) had just such a chasm, that his wife was forced to deal with, considering his support of all sorts of causes with which she disagreed.

Bishop Haines ordained the Rev. Elizabeth L. Carl, an open lesbian who was pastor at Church of the Epiphany in Washington. The move sparked a period of protests and internal examination, and the matter still has not been fully resolved within the church.

During the ordination ceremony June 5, 1991, Bishop Haines asked whether there was any “impediment or crime” to prevent Carl from becoming a priest. Two people, including a priest of 50 years’ standing, came forward to declare that homosexuality was inappropriate in a church leader.

He ordained her anyway -- making the question almost frivolous. (Better not to ask, then to ask and then ignore the answer, no?) But evidently his pro-abortion stance was also problemmatic in the family.

According to a 1992 article in The Washington Post, one of the bishop’s most vocal critics was his wife, Mary, an antiabortion activist who was vice president of the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life. She even favored her husband’s censure, which he narrowly avoided, at a national gathering of bishops.

“All our family opposed the ordination, except maybe one,” Bishop Haines’s son Joshua said in 1992.

(To follow that link above is to discover that there are all sorts of elements in the pro-life movement that one might not expect, proving that the Holy Spirit goes where He will.) But to the subject at hand, it must be admitted that a plethora of families suffer a philosophical divide, which gives impetus to our need to pray for marriage, and remember that the suffering at its very heart must be offered for ultimate union with Christ one day. Difficult. Very difficult.