feminine-genius

Bangladesh given six weeks...

... to justify its acceptance of technologies that facilitate sex-selection abortions. Catholic World Report says:

The Bangladesh High Court has given government officials six weeks to respond with an explanation of why they believe prenatal gender detection procedures to be constitutionally acceptable. The Feb. 4 court order addressed the Directorate General of Health Services and the secretaries for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Social Welfare, and Ministry of Women and Children Affairs.

A representative from the Catholic Church says adherents of all major religions (Hindu, Muslim, and Christian) prefer boys for cultural/economic reasons. 

Rita Roselin Costa, who works in women’s ministry for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh, applauded the court ruling, but added that the real challenge lies in changing a cultural mindset. She expressed hope that the ruling will lead people to reassess their views toward women. 

“Often parents think that if they educate daughters up to master’s degree level, they will be married off one day and may earn money but they will spend it on the family of the in-laws,” she said. “Our society at large has yet to consider in most cases that daughters can get education, prosper in life, earn money and support their parents as well.”

Zika, the Congo, and Humanae Vitae

UPDATE: this old post has been updated to consider the current question about contraception as it relates to the Zika virus and the pope's latest comments.

There was intense discussion about the 2007 statement of the Connecticut Bishop's in regard to the availability of Plan B at Catholic hospitals, which is as follows:

The Catholic Bishops of Connecticut, joined by the leaders of the Catholic hospitals in the State, issue the following statement regarding the administration of Plan B in Catholic hospitals to victims of rape:

The four Catholic hospitals in the State of Connecticut remain committed to providing competent and compassionate care to victims of rape. In accordance with Catholic moral teaching, these hospitals provide emergency contraception after appropriate testing. Under the existing hospital protocols, this includes a pregnancy test and an ovulation test.  Catholic moral teaching is adamantly opposed to abortion, but not to emergency contraception for victims of rape.

This past spring the Governor signed into a law “An Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault,” passed by the State Legislature. It does not allow medical professionals to take into account the results of the ovulation test. The Bishops and other Catholic health care leaders believe that this law is seriously flawed, but not sufficiently to bar compliance with it at the present time. We continue to believe this law should be changed.

Nonetheless, to administer Plan B pills in Catholic hospitals to victims of rape a pregnancy test to determine that the woman has not conceived is sufficient.  An ovulation test will not be required.  The administration of Plan B pills in this instance cannot be judged to be the commission of an abortion because of such doubt about how Plan B pills and similar drugs work and because of the current impossibility of knowing from the ovulation test whether a new life is present.  To administer Plan B pills without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act.

Since the teaching authority of the Church has not definitively resolved this matter and since there is serious doubt about how Plan B pills work, the Catholic Bishops of Connecticut have stated that Catholic hospitals in the State may follow protocols that do not require an ovulation test in the treatment of victims of rape. A pregnancy test approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration suffices. If it becomes clear that Plan B pills would lead to an early chemical abortion in some instances, this matter would have to be reopened.

What to do about the potential birth defects related to the Zika virus has caused many to appeal to the situation in the Congo 60 years ago:

A recent debate concerning the use of contraceptives in rape protocols has brought up the often-cited case of the “Congo nuns.” As the story goes, nuns in the Belgian Congo during the 1960s were given permission by the Vatican to take contraceptives in situations were it was clear that guerilla soldiers might sack their convents and force themselves upon the sisters. This story is regularly used as a lower-level support of the now widespread practice (enshrined in the USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives #36) of allowing women who have been raped to be treated “with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization.”

I think that highly respected ethicists have seen varying angles to what happened in Connecticut, but in all honesty, neither case (CT or the Congo) relates to the recent comments by Pope Francis.

Jimmy Akin offers some good analysis

Let’s look at the Congo nuns story. In that one, the argument was made that it was legitimate for the nuns to use contraception because they did not will the sexual act. It was being imposed on them by force, and so their lack of consent to the sexual act means that they were not consenting EITHER to its unitive OR its procreative aspect.

Thus it is argued that it was just for them to do what they could to avoid the procreative aspects of the act just as much as it was just for them to do what they could to avoid the unitive aspect of the act. The use of contraception, in their case, would constitute a form of legitimate defense against the consequences of an act that were imposed on them, not the frustration of the consequences of an act in which they freely engaged.

Then he reminds us that the language has been badly garbled in translation:

Here’s the Latin original:

Item quivis respuendus est actus, qui, cum coniugale commercium vel praevidetur vel efficitur vel ad suos naturales exitus ducit, id tamquam finem obtinendum aut viam adhibendam intendat, ut procreatio impediatur.

I’ve highlighted the words that the English translation gives as "sexual intercourse." Even if you don’t have a background in Latin, the meaning of these words is pretty clear via their cognates in English. They literally mean "conjugal commerce" or–to make them slightly more idiomatic–"marital exchange."

In any event, they don’t mean simply "sexual intercourse." They mean a specific kind of sexual intercourse: Sexual intercourse which is conjugal or between married persons.

Thus, Humanae Vitae only deals with marital intimacy, not with promiscuity or rape. The waters are very muddy at this point, but the Congo case doesn't relate because it doesn't involve marital intimacy. Humanae Vitae still seems to stand, since the only people who need to legitimately fear the Zika virus are those who are engaging in the conjugal act [read: married couples]. Everyone else -- those who engage in sexual relations outside of marriage -- are already outside the realm of Catholic morality.

ADDENDUM: John Kippley offers a wonderful summary here http://nfpandmore.org/wordpress/?p=3757

"Medicating women's feelings"

Don't miss this stunning piece by Julie Holland in the NYT, which may signal a slow return of sanity to [some fringy corners?] of the social sciences. It begins:

WOMEN are moody. By evolutionary design, we are hard-wired to be sensitive to our environments, empathic to our children’s needs and intuitive of our partners’ intentions. This is basic to our survival and that of our offspring. Some research suggests that women are often better at articulating their feelings than men because as the female brain develops, more capacity is reserved for language, memory, hearing and observing emotions in others.

The writer is a psychiatrist, who notes that "at least one in four women in America now takes a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men ... This is insane."

And MercatorNet's Carolyn Moynihan has written an excellent follow-up, which brings to light the other "pills" that have been used for decades to mask a normal dimension of femininity:

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

Both articles deserve a thoughtful reading, and kudos to Carolyn for her consistently great work.

ADDENDUM: One paragraph in this tragic story of a suicide caught my eye, and seems to be vaguely related to the above. Concerning the death of the vivacious 30-year-old:

Both Aguiar and Milner agree that their friend was suffering from PTSD and think more needs to be done for women coming home from combat missions overseas.

“I think women are just more emotional creatures as it is, and I mean that’s just my opinion,” Aguiar says. “When you are enlisted in the military, You have to have some sort of built-up emotion guard, and you have to kind of amount to the male aspect of it and be just as tough. So I think that they kind of put up walls to be strong as maybe their male counterparts. There needs to be more of a focus on women in the military.”

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals. - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals. - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals. - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals. - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

What is really interesting in all this is Holland’s assumption that human biology has an ethical meaning: if you feel bad physically or mentally your body is telling you something and you had better listen and perhaps change, not just get a script for Prozac and carry on as before. This stands in contrast with the trend of treating the body as a lump of matter attached to the mind that we can tinker with and reshape to fit with our desires or the demands made on us.

If women are now being medicated for depression and anxiety at twice the rate of men it is because, over the past 50 years, they have suffered most from this cavalier attitude to the body. Let’s remember that before the drug-industrial complex got onto medicating women’s feelings they had already been medicating women’s reproductive chemistry. And for the same reason: to make sure women’s bodies did not get in the way of social and economic goals.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/our_emotions_our_bodies_ourselves#sthash.tzFh89k0.dpuf

 

 

Thoughtful moment

 

spread the word!

Where are the icons?

Jen Fulwiler and I are both converts, and for some reason this particular week, we both referenced our grandmothers as reminders of how the lives of women have changed -- and not for the better. In her reflection on Humanae Vitae, she notes:

I pulled up another stack of glossy rags and pushed them around my bed so that I could see all the covers at once. Something I had always wondered, but had never articulated, came to the forefront of my mind:

When, exactly, did the standard of beauty become a dictate that we must all look like Barbie dolls?

When I saw pictures of my ancestors, the women always looked beautiful, but in a way that didn’t overwhelm the senses with their physical beauty alone. The faded photographs of my grandmothers and their grandmothers showed clothing styles that left some attention for their faces, that didn’t detract from the subtleties of their expressions. The draping of the material smoothed over details, so that a few extra pounds could be smoothed into graceful curves.

Now, a century and a half later, society says a woman can hardly consider herself truly beautiful without a tight abdomen, slender physique, wrinkle-free face and, even, to quote one of the magazines in front of me, “ultra-sexy upper arms.” Upper arms? Did our ear canals now have to be sexy, too?

This was not a standard of beauty built on respect for women. In fact, it seemed like an outlook spawned by a society that demanded that women make themselves objects for men’s pleasure.

And when I considered when the standard of beauty began to change, I realized that it was right around the time that everyone started using contraception. Pope Paul VI wouldn’t have been surprised.

Paul VI was precisely right in saying that the acceptance of artificial birth control would negatively impact marriages and undermine respect for women. I note that in my latest column as well:

What are those doctrines that are so challenging? The Church teaches — and has always taught — that one reserves sexual intimacy for marriage, and that once married one stays married. Our grandmothers would have been distressed to know that these ideas were controversial, so the question must be: “What has changed in the fifty years since our grandmothers’ generation?”

In a nutshell, the sexual revolution wreaked its havoc on the world, making intimacy sterile and vows hollow. The ability to separate sex from babies shifted the fundamental meaning of the sexual embrace from a commitment with consequences to a frivolous pastime. Après ça, le deluge.

From that initial question, two follow. The first is, “Are these changes for the good?” Any mere glance at the sociological data in the last thirty years would indicate a firm No. Divorce rates have skyrocketed, sexually-transmitted diseases have multiplied, abortions have proliferated, fatherless children are ubiquitous and the promiscuity trends among children are shocking. While there is a single-mindedness among those who separate the actions of any individual from the wider drift of culture, prudent people cannot ignore the connections in these affairs. Those who care about children must acknowledge that their lives do not benefit from the disintegration of the family that has accrued in the last fifty years.

The second question is, “Should the Church follow the trajectory of the world?” This is where most of the confusion lies, because the population that has become accustomed to current trends has no collective memory of another way of life. In the 1992 court case, “Planned Parenthood vs. Casey,” the decision given noted that people “for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” Although Catholics have cause to deplore the decision, which rejected various proposed restrictions on abortion, the ruling indeed distilled the fundamental mindset of our age: sterile, uncommitted intimacy is sacrosanct.

Thankfully, most of us can remember our grandmothers' generation -- but that reality is morphing quickly, with the emerging generation detached from their traditional forebears at astounding rates. That means that WE must hold fast, keep the truth close to our hearts, and BE the icons that the world so desperately needs. Words on a page are one thing, homilies and exortations another, but the truth enfleshed in the lives of faithful people are most helpful.

And of course, enfolding all of us is God's grace -- pray for one another and trust that God will bring the truth to light!

Great! "Illumination and Support"

This is the most helpful address I've seen so far at the Synod:

Arturo and Hermelinda As Zamberline, married for 41 years with three children, addressed the Synod during the morning session Oct. 9. The designated subject for the session was the "pastoral challenges concerning an openness to life."

"We must admit without fear that many Catholic couples, even those who seek to live their marriage seriously, do not feel obligated to use only the natural methods" of birth control condoned by the Church, said the Zamberlines, leaders in their country of an international Catholic movement, Teams of Our Lady. "We must add that generally they are not questioned by their confessors" on the subject.

The Zamberlines, who are participating in the Synod as non-voting auditors, said the "rhythm of life" today makes it difficult to find time to learn natural methods of family planning, which they said have acquired an "unjust reputation of being unreliable," because they are badly explained and thus badly practised.

"The great majority of couples do not reject the use of contraceptive methods. In general, they do not consider them a moral problem," the Zamberlines said.

The Brazilian couple concluded with an appeal to the Pope and the Synod to help Catholics understand and obey Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI that affirmed Church teaching against contraception.

"If couples, as well as clergy, could at least find illumination and support, that would already be a great encouragement! Often, contradictory advice only aggravates their confusion. We ask, may the magisterium hasten to give priests and faithful the major lines of a pastoral teaching program to help people adopt and observe the principles laid out in Humanae Vitae," the Zamberlines said.

In remarks introducing the couple to the assembly, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris, one of three Synod presidents appointed by the Pope, said Catholic couples "often do not believe that the use of contraceptive methods is a sin and therefore they tend not to speak of them in confession and so they receive Communion untroubled."

"It is necessary to encourage a mentality of openness to life to thwart the contraceptive mentality and the spread of an individualist anthropological model that in certain countries has led to a strong demographic drop whose social and human consequences are not sufficiently considered today," the cardinal said.

This address outlines clear and concise challenges:

• natural methods of spacing children are not being taught;
• couples don't know that contracepting is a serious sin;
• a mentality has accrued that separates married love from its natural fruitfulness.

Fine -- that's one of the primary reasons for this Synod -- to see how mammon has confused the faithful, who are called to be lights amidst the darkness. Too  much of that confusion has seeped into the Church, and it must be resisted with the light of Christ. As I note in my latest column (not yet online):

Scripture makes clear that the Church cannot bow to secular conventions, as Saint Paul cautioned: “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2) or as Chesterton pithily remarked, “those who marry the spirit of this age will find themselves widows in the next.” So what do we do for a generation that insists that Church teaching is too demanding, uncharitable, and unlivable? We reject capitulation and insist on that transformation which makes all things possible.

Just as a parent doesn’t coddle a child who finds algebra “impossibly hard,” the Church should lovingly but firmly explain the foundational principles that make authentic chastity entirely possible. Just as reviewing the groundwork for equations—the nature of constants and variables—prepares a student for success in math, reminding the faithful about divinely revealed truth and God’s passionate love for humanity will allow them to “renew their minds” according to his purpose. And in that equation, while there is nothing so variable as the whims of man to live in a world of his own making, there is nothing so constant as divine grace which restores him to reality, drawing him back to the love that will set him free.

My prayer is that the Synod proposes concrete ways to "illuminate and support" married couples so that they can live the fullness of their vocation, and provide inspiration to those who want something more than what the world offers. Illuminate the darkness, support the good, and remind people of their inherent dignity!

Achingly sad

Few people who didn't come of age in the 1980's understand the power of Fleetwood Mac, and this news item underscores the dark, sad side of our generation:

Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks has confirmed that she was once pregnant with Don Henley’s child. The Eagles singer has said in interviews that Fleetwood Mac song ‘Sara’ was dedicated “to the spirit of the aborted baby” they conceived together.

The lyrics (and the song) are at the site, so that you can see that what you were singing and dancing to back then was a death saga. For little Sara and millions more, who paid the price of our wantonness. Poor dears, and poor parents who never got over the choices they made.

The father of lies

Since healthy societies are inclined to share love and life, it would only stand to reason that the easiest way to change their culture is to simply lie about your intentions. UNICEF has been accused of doing that in the past, and may have another lie in the making:

The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops is demanding answers about a national tetanus vaccine campaign that they say is suspiciously like campaigns run in other countries where a birth control agent was covertly mixed in.

Run by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, the Kenya campaign exclusively targets Kenyan women of childbearing age (14-49), and excludes boys and men and younger girls who are also at risk from tetanus infection.

The bishops’ statement notes that in the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Mexico, the tetanus vaccine was “laced with Beta human chorionic gonadotropin (b-HCG) sub unit … to vaccinate women against future pregnancy.”

When injected as a vaccine to a non-pregnant woman, this Beta HCG sub unit combined with tetanus toxoid develops antibodies against tetanus and HCG so that if a woman's egg becomes fertilized, her own natural HCG will be destroyed rendering her permanently infertile, the bishops explain. In this situation tetanus vaccination has been used as a birth control method.

How very wicked. Imagine the distress in the years following the vaccinations in each of these places, when young married women fail to have children. The bishops have several concerns:

• Is there a tetanus crisis on women of child bearing age in Kenya? If this is so, why has it not been declared?
• Why does the campaign target women of 14 – 49 years?
• Why has the campaign left out young girls, boys and men even if they are all prone to tetanus?
• In the midst of so many life threatening diseases in Kenya, why has tetanus been prioritized?

The Kenyan bishops also question why the campaign has had limited public input, unlike other national health initiatives where the public can ask questions, and no consultation with the Catholic Church at all, despite the Church being heavily involved in the provision of medical services.

God bless these vigilant shepherds, and may they spare their flock from this gross indignity.