The Front Porch
Changing the distinctions of what makes gender has major ramifications for society.
By John Sondag
One of the great moral theologians who died a few years ago was Father William Smith from New York City. One of his phrases that I heard him say more than once was that social engineering is usually preceded by verbal engineering.
In other words, if you want to change how people act in society, then change the words which describe or define the action. For example, if you want to have abortion as an acceptable procedure, then don’t call it “abortion” but “removal of fetal tissue.” Who could be against the removal of tissue? That’s what the abortionists want—make the procedure be perceived as palatable and morally acceptable.
Or “euthanasia.” The term has been changed by many to “death with dignity.” Who’s going to object?
So, enter the social scene with the word “gender.” Let’s just expand the word’s definition to include not only male and female but words like transgenderism, transsexualism, transvestism, bigenderism, homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, polysexuality, and asexuality.
Sound familiar? It’s not only the fringes of society that are engineering “gender.” Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and other respectable groups are buying into this change in language.
But meet Sister Prudence Allen, R.S.M., Ph.D., a philosopher from St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. She’s “loaded for bear” with research and data disputing the popular and politically-correct approach of “gender” promoted by academics and the media.
I recently attended a luncheon at the University of St. Thomas where Sister Prudence gave a talk to some faculty members in the philosophy, theology, and Catholic Studies departments along with outsiders who are media types and activists. A true story she told gives an indication of the lengths that gender activists will go to make their point.
Back in 1972, a professor at John’s Hopkins University set up an experiment in which a set of twin boys were raised as a boy and a girl with the a sex change on the one little fellow to make him into a girl. The experiment failed, but the professor, John Money, was not honest with the results and the media published his false findings.
Professor Money was eventually pushed to the side academically, but the media had already done the damage of reporting that there was no difference between boys and girls.
Then, Marxist feminist Gayle Rubin introduced the sex and gender system in 1975 in which gender is determined by a person’s self-consciousness, not the sex. Do you see where this is headed?
If a person thinks he is female even though the individual has been biologically created as a male, then the individual can say his gender is female. Or if two persons think they are homosexuals, their gender is homosexual rather than male or female. And, of course, that means that we cannot define marriage as the union of male and female because such a union could oppress the gender orientation of an individual.
I asked Sister Prudence why people are so determined to make these gender changes—what’s their motivation? Her answer was that many in society have a false sense of freedom and desire to make themselves into what they want to become. Freedom, then, is looked upon as something spontaneous and pleasure-oriented rather than determined by objective reality.
Sister Prudence also talked about the importance that truth has in this cultural situation. She maintained that speaking the truth has its own power when lies have been spoken. She also pointed out that this clarification of gender is critical for the common good—the good of society.
Sister also talked about ransoming the word “gender,” because it’s a good word. The ancient roots of the concepts of sex and gender must be uncovered by going to theology and the Scriptures, especially the Book of Genesis.
The concepts of woman in relation to man must be studied in the works of philosophers such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Pope John Paul II. These concepts belong to us and must be ransomed from those who want to change the meaning of gender. What’s at stake is the identity of man and woman, marriage, the family, intergenerational families, the genealogy of Christ, and the integrity of the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and salvation through Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI has made it a point that we are living under the “dictatorship of relativism.” Those are harsh words, but when one thinks of them in relation to the understanding “gender” and the problems connected to the change of meanings, one understands better what the Holy Father is referring to.
To make up one’s own meaning for “gender” will enslave us and society. For gender tells who we are as persons and what our relationship to others is based on. To live contrary to the truth will enslave us, but to live according to the truth will set us free.
John Sondag is Director of Religious Education at the Church of St. Helena in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and publisher of “The Catholic Servant.”
May 2012: Book Review
The Truth of Catholicism
by George Weigel
Book Review by Eileen Love
A proposition: What do you say we spend the summer months really committing ourselves to fine-tuning our knowledge of Catholic faith basics? This would be a suitable preparation for entering into The Year of Faith which Pope Benedict XVI has declared will begin October 11, 2012 and conclude November 24, the Solemnity of Christ the King. The Year of Faith will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and is also a push to reignite Catholics to participate in the New Evangelization.
A perfect book to help set us on the path is The Truth of Catholicism by eminent Catholic writer, commentator, and papal biographer, George Weigel. The book is subtitled, “Inside the Essential Teachings and Controversies of the Church Today” and was written in 2001. Though we have advanced beyond that pinpoint in time, the essential questions remain and they deserve exploration.
To begin, Weigel allows that many outside the Church consider the choice of one’s religion to be something not unlike their choice of car, or pet, of favorite restaurant. Of course, it is infinitely more than that. He explains that the Catholic Church insists that faith involves truths and truths carry with them obligations, since once we encounter truth, a response is called for.
Some of the truths he lays out in this remarkable book – relatively brief at 188 pages but packed with neatly wrapped summations – have to do with the big questions. Chapter 1 asks: “Is Jesus the Only Savior?” Weigel tackles the world’s hostility to “the unambiguous claim that this is the truth and that all other truths incline toward this truth as iron shavings incline to a magnet…” (pg. 6). As women learning all the time to speak the truth in love, every gem in this book teaches something we need to know.
His chapter on “How Should We Live?” takes us through the moral laws and helps us see that freedom, not exactly the license to do whatever we want, is more perfectly understood as the freedom to do what we ought.
When it comes to the question of suffering, count on Weigel to offer his own tidy wrap-up of this difficult topic in Chapter 7, “Why Do We Suffer?” He says the Church has always believed that the answer to this question “takes us directly into the Heart of the Church which is Jesus Christ” (pg. 114). Suffering cannot be understood apart from love. Weigel also knows plenty about the human sufferings of John Paul II, which he shares in his acclaimed biography of the late pope, Witness to Hope and which surface again here in this chapter.
Weigel cautions at the outset against skipping ahead to the sexy stuff, but that is just because the question dealt with in Chapter 6, “How Should We Love?” is best understood in the context of the bigger picture. Weigel devotes five chapters to that bigger picture so when he gets to the bedrock of what sex teaches us about God and ourselves, we are better situated to receive that information in a truly Catholic way. He reminds us that the Catholic position is far more than an exhaustive list of long-faced prohibitions, but a loving and life-affirming exhortation to order our lives according to our Creator’s design. Topics like contraception, divorce, annulment, and homosexuality are treated with reason and compassion.
So let’s get ready for October 11, 2012. In declaring the Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI released would-be evangelizers (who, us!?) from undue fear, by reminding us that God is the prime mover in our apostolic activities, and “it is God and not the evangelist who touches hearts.” How true. But well-informed women, desiring to do the work of evangelizing a weary world, have a big role to play. Let Weigel’s book help prepare you.
Catholic women welcome HHS controversy as chance to speak ‘truth’
By Hillary Senour
As debate surrounding the HHS mandate continues, some Catholic women have hailed the controversy as a chance to present the “fullness of truth” the Church offers through its teachings on contraception.
Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M. of the Saint John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colo. said that the “great gift of this discussion” is that people are speaking about “whether contraception helps or harms women.”
In an interview with EWTN News, Sr. Prudence observed that many Catholic women “are really trying to speak about the fullness of truth” offered by Church’s teaching on human sexuality, but that it’s “going take a little time” to get the message across.
As part of the effort to spread that message, her order, the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, recently launched a website featuring information about the medical risks associated with birth control and abortion.
The move comes amid the Health and Human Services mandate, announced on Jan. 20, which will require almost all employers to provide insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs.
Although the Obama administration has billed the mandate as an increase in “preventive care” for women’s health, the rule has caused conscience problems for Catholics and others who have moral and religious objections to providing the required coverage.
Despite the Church’s stance on the issue being characterized by some in the secular media as part of an overall “war on women,” Sr. Allen said that “throughout history, the Church has always tried to defend the great dignity of woman as a whole integral being.”
This can be easily seen in Church writings, she added, from St. Augustine, the fourth century Doctor of the Church who sought to show women as individuals with a free will rather than sexual objects, to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, “Humane Vitae” which highlights the cultural and moral dangers of contraception.
Terry Polakovic, founder of ENDOW – an non-profit women’s organization based on Pope John Paul II’s papal “Letter to Women” – said that much of the debate centers around “the idea that people are seeking freedom.”
However, what many women fail to realize is that birth control and abortion is essentially “seeking freedom from biology, from the way God made them.”
“What I have seen is the greatest freedom you have is within the Church,” Polakovic told EWTN News, “I would look at people who don’t have a clear understanding of this as almost being in bondage, I don’t know that they can conceive of the freedom that (the Church) gives you.”
The two made their comments after a recent Huffington Post blog post gained national attention when author Soraya Chemaly was featured on National Public Radio explaining why she left the Catholic Church.
In her post, Chemaly said her decision to leave the Church was because “the Catholic hierarchy … believes that women’s bodies are the living manifestation of their inferiority.”
She also said that the recent opposition to the HHS mandate is just another example of the U.S. bishops “refusing to accept women as fully human.”
Her remarks contrast sharply, however, with Polakovic’s experience educating women about the Church’s teaching on what she called their undeniable and innate dignity.
When presented with the Church’s view on women, especially found in Pope John Paul II’s “Letter to Women,” people “really respond,” Polakovic said.
Far from relegating women to a subhuman category, the late Pope “underscored our dignity” of being “made in the image and likeness of God.”
In her piece, Chemaly also charged that the Church promotes “systematized misogyny,” as seen by the lack of female priests. This, she claimed, is due to “early Christian doctrine formulated by men, obsessed with dualism, who hated women and despised their own sexuality.”
In response, Sr. Allen acknowledged that often times in history, some vocations tend to gain more prominence than others.
But the idea that one vocation, such as the priesthood as Chemaly asserts, is more important than the others, is “just false” because all vocations, lay, clerical and religious, have equal dignity in the Church.
In her own experience as a Religious Sister of Mercy, Sr. Allen said she has been able to see the “richness” of the three types of vocations “being in service to one another.”
For her part, Chemaly recognized that women have opposed the mandate but claimed they all belong to the same category of “conservative lay women fighting (the bishops’) battle.”
Polakovic said that many secular people who attempt to speak on behalf of the Church “are just ill-informed” which is why her organization works so hard to spread awareness about the Church’s true teaching on women.
Since the mandate was announced, over 26,000 women from nearly every sector of the workforce have signed George Mason University law professor Helen Alvare’s Feb. 17 open letter telling the Obama administration, “Don’t claim to speak for all women.”
Defining Moments: Planting Seeds
I’ve always defined myself as Catholic— even when I was the kid sitting in the back seat of the car with my arms crossed on the way to Mass.
My defining moment came when the spiritual seeds planted in my youth took root in my heart and my faith began to grow.
That’s why I’m passionate about girls today getting to experience the youth program with Endow— so that seeds are planted in their hearts too.
I would sit in the back seat of the car with my arms folded, and maybe a little pout —staring out the window and letting my parents know that I wasn’t pleased.
My parents were very involved at church, and so I was right in step with them whether I wanted to be or not. Especially in my ‘tween’ years—it was just sit . . . stand . . . kneel. My faith was detached.
When I was a freshman in high school, my parents sent me on a bus trip to a university that hosts summer conferences on living the faith. And that’s where I really experienced Mass in a new way.
That Saturday evening I broke down crying as the Eucharist passed by. I was on my knees—and I had this profound experience of Jesus. I said, “Okay, Lord. I believe.”
For a long time I was analyzing and struggling—where I wanted to be and how I wanted to fit in. That was a defining moment when my faith moved from my head to my heart.
Now that I’m a mom, I feel a pull toward the school my children attend. I offered to volunteer, so the principal invited me to a meeting about Endow’s Girl Genius program.
She saw the potential for a more evangelistic approach to the faith.She wanted the middle school girls to have the small group experience with discussion.
The Girl Genius material is so rock solid. It does an amazing job of integrating activities that really are on their level and jump off the page for them.
I don’t expect to walk in and bedazzle these eleven-year-olds, but I want to connect with them. I’m going to meet them where they’re at, because once upon a time, someone met me where I was.
I always go in armed—I take my rosary bracelet and pray it on the way there. The girls don’t need me. They need Jesus. I’m just there as a rep, and having this little reminder rattling on my wrist keeps me mindful that I’m not alone.
I also take my Bible and show the girls—it’s like my spiritual scrapbook. I encourage them: “Make your Bible a place you want to spend time.” It’s so important to plant those seeds.
JENNIFER BAHAM FACILITATES AN ENDOW GROUP FOR CATHOLIC MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS STUDYING GIRL GENIUS AND IS THE RECIPIENT OF ENDOW’S 2012 JULIA GREELEY AWARD FOR HER SERVICE.
Directions From Denver International Airport
1300 S Steele St Denver, CO, 80210-2526
| 1. Start out going north on Pena Blvd. |
| 2. Turn slight left toward Terminal West. |
| 3. Stay straight to go onto Pena Blvd. |
| 4. Merge onto I-70 W / Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Hwy / US-36 W via the exit on the left. |
| 5. Merge onto I-225 S via EXIT 282 toward Aurora / Colorado Springs. |
| 6. Take the Alameda Avenue exit, EXIT 8, toward Community College of Aurora. |
| 7. Turn right onto E Alameda Ave. If you reach I-225 S you’ve gone about 0.4 miles too far |
| 8. Turn left onto S Colorado Blvd / CO-2 S. S Colorado Blvd is 0.2 miles past Leetsdale Dr. If you reach S Harrison St you’ve gone a little too far |
9. Turn right onto E Mississippi Ave.
If you reach E Arizona Ave you’ve gone about 0.1 miles too far |
| 10. Turn left onto S Steele St. S Steele St is just past S Adams St. If you reach S St Paul St you’ve gone a little too far |
| 11. 1300 S Steele St. is on the left. Your destination is 0.1 miles past E Arizona Ave. If you reach E Arkansas Ave you’ve gone about 0.1 miles too far |
April 2012: Book Review
The Catholic Girl’s Survival Guide for the Single Years
By Emily Stimpson
Book Review by Eileen love
A few years ago, recording artist Beyoncé made a big splash with “All the Single Ladies.”
The track tells the story. A girl nurses a broken heart by going to a club where
she meets a new man who’s into her. In her mind the old boyfriend is lurking jealously in the background and she scolds him for trifling with her, wasting her time, not appreciating what he had. Then comes the kicky refrain:
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.
Sassy lyrics and a bouncy tune made the song a hit – but the story stings. It acknowledges that the single life can be a minefield of exploding drama, duck and cover maneuvers, missed opportunities, and always, shattered dreams. There isn’t a woman who can’t relate.
But while Beyoncé is entitled to her artistic take on relationship woes, her version is only one view, and a little warped at that.
There is another way to live your single years and in The Catholic Girl’s Survival Guide for the Single Years, Catholic author Emily Stimpson spells it out. It involves class, grace, style, and yes, virtue. It envisions not so much a life lived in the throes of romantic despair but a more balanced life that welcomes a potential mate but doesn’t collapse if he is absent.
At 35 years old with a background in theology and political science, Stimpson is certainly well-rounded. And well-connected. Her book mentions lots of Catholic favorites: saints and authors, popes and poets, and there is even a feature called “Hip Single Sisters in History” where readers will meet the likes of Florence Nightingale and Flannery O’Connor.
In fact, this book is a little like a backyard barbeque to which all your best friends have been invited. Everyone is hanging out, laughing, trading ideas, and offering wisdom and encouragement, all in the most positive setting. Best of all, these people really get you – a modern day intelligent and involved woman who happens to be single.
Listen to Stimpson recalling the words of Dr. Janet Smith speaking to singles at the 2010 Theology of the Body Conference in Philadelphia:
If all we wanted was marriage – any marriage to anyone – most of us would be married by now. If we were willing to widen the pool by forgetting about our faith, abandoning our morals, and lowering our standards, the majority of us could scare up some kind of spouse. But that’s not what we want. We don’t want a spouse. We want the right spouse, a spouse who loves Christ, desires our ultimate good, and is capable of entering into a healthy, holy Catholic marriage.
Emily Stimpson assumes your dream is to have a Catholic marriage and she’ll remind you that finding a true soul mate means first being the woman God calls you to be.
There is some exploration of “feminine genius”, along with ways to expand your intellectual horizons by reading good books; she has a whole section of recommended reads – all good. Stimspon shares some gems from Theology of the Body and has tips on dealing with married friends – and their kids – as well as helpful career advice and wardrobe tips (yes, style can happily co-exist with modesty).
This book is easy to read and a lot of fun. It is packed with sage advice, not the kind an eccentric relative gives you in front of everyone at the dinner table, but the kind you’ll actually welcome. Read great books, take long baths, nurture your friendships, travel foot loose and fancy free.
And, if you take this advice to heart, you’ll likely craft a life that is a thing of beauty and a gift to all who know you. Who knows, you might even find your married friends envying you.
March 2012: Book Review
To Know Christ Jesus
by Frank Sheed
Reviewed by Eileen Love
Quick! Pop Quiz: At the Transfiguration Moses and Elijah spoke with Christ. What were they talking about? There is only one spot in the Bible where we are told that Christ was joyful. Where is this? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks about hell how many times?
If the answers didn’t leap off your tongue, you are not alone. Leave it to Frank Sheed (1897-1981) the stellar career catechist and legendary founder of the Catholic publishing house, Sheed and Ward, to preface his book To Know Christ Jesus with questions that arouse our curiosity and draw us into discovery.
He supposes we might have a vague sense of Christ’s life with perhaps a few parables standing out here and there, but we are dogged by an inability to connect the dots and plumb the depths of biblical meaning. He plans to rescue us from our ignorance and he is just the one to do it.
Sheed is renowned as one of the 20th century’s most ardent Catholic apologists, a man who got his start soapbox preaching at a London Park. He and his wife Maisie shared a love for the Catholic faith and produced numerous books on theological themes throughout their lives.
To Know Jesus Christ is a real gift of a book: 380 pages of spellbinding stories, fascinating history, intimate glimpses of the people on the pages of Scripture, all written in the scholarly, dependable prose of a true modern disciple. Sheed spent a lifetime getting to know the One he loves and he’d like readers to know Him too. As he says in the book’s foreword, “The object is not to prove something but to meet someone–that we should know Christ Jesus, know him as one person may know another. As Christians we love him, try to live by his law, would think it a glory to die for him. But how well do we know him?” Sheed the lecturer brings us through the gospels translating words and phrases and exploring the levels of meaning they contain. The background he offers on the miraculous events of the early life of Christ as experienced through Mary at the Incarnation, the Annunciation, and the Visitation is one reason this book is considered among Sheed’s finest.
Here is the author offering commentary on St. John’s gospel 12:23-28:
“Father,” he cried, “glorify thy name.” We note that he does not say glorify my
name but thine. The Father was to be shown glorious in the Son’s glory. And a
voice came from the sky: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Our
Lord’s next words were all of triumph. The moment of crisis was at hand the
supremely decisive moment for the whole world, never one like it before, never
again to be one. For Satan’s time as ruler would be ended, with Christ raised on
the Cross to be the vital center of all humanity. “Now is the judgment of the
world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, lifted up from the
earth, will draw all things unto me.”
My suggestion is to make this book your spiritual reading for Lent. Not only will it sharpen your knowledge of Scripture but it will do much more. It will transport you to Bethlehem where the night sky is illumined to announce the arrival of the Infant King; it will bring you to Gethsemane where you will struggle to stay awake during the agony; and it will bring you to the foot of the Cross as the earth trembles and the curtain in the sanctuary is torn in two.
In other words, Frank Sheed’s book is designed to quicken your heart and awaken your spiritual fervor. It is written not to make you pass a test, but to fall in love. And if you find yourself getting smarter in the process, so much the better.
By the way, there won’t be a test so you won’t need the answer key to the opening questions. But just for fun: see Luke 9:28; John 15:11; Matthew 5: 1-48.
February 2012: Book Review
Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
By Immaculee Ilibagiza
Book Review by Eileen Love
Imagine standing in a 3×4 bathroom for 90 days. Now imagine that in this tiny cramped space, there are five other women with you. The space, concealed behind a wardrobe, is the only sanctuary from the violence that threatens on the other side of the wall. Imagine holding your breath, nearly passing out from terror as only a few feet away, you hear the shouting of blood thirsty criminals wielding machetes, taunting that your parents have been slain and now it is your turn.
Welcome to Rwanda, 1994.
Left to Tell is the autobiographical account of a young Catholic woman, a 22 year old college student, who miraculously lived through the genocide that gripped Rwanda for four horrible months. Following the plane crash death in April of the country’s president, old tribal rivalries between the dominant Hutus and the minority Tutsis re-emerged. Hatreds burned hotter than the African sun and in the mind of the Hutus old scores begged to be settled. Where previously the tribal heritage of the townspeople seemed incidental, it now became the defining measure of who would live and who would die.
With the Hutu regime in power, Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. A kindly pastor from the Hutu side risked his life to offer Immaculee and five others a safe haven.
In desperate times, the faithful drop to their knees and that is what Immaculee did. The rosary was her saving grace: over and over during the tortuous months in hiding, Immaculee withdrew to a place in her heart and prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Exhausted, famished, and ridden with lice, the women endured daily horror. She speaks of holding the bible to her mouth as if she desired to literally consume the words.
She emerged from the ordeal with only the clothes on her back and her dead father’s rosary in her pocket. Her heart cried to God as she surveyed the carnage and with God’s help she found the strength to lay the dead to rest and move on to another life. Immaculee concluded that God spared her for a reason. Her job was to discover that and preach the gospel of love, peace, and forgiveness.
Eventually she took up residence in New York where she found a job at the United Nations. She fell in love with a man she calls her soul mate and they now have two children. Another prayer answered.
Her message today is one of forgiveness. For her, it did not come immediately and initially she prayed for God to do the forgiving that she felt incapable of. At one point after the genocide, Immaculee was given a chance to identify men she knew to be murderers, but she refused. She says in her book, “If Jesus was dying for everybody, he was dying even for the killers.” She held fast to the words of Christ on the Cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). For any reader who struggles with forgiving a painful injustice, her words will hit the spot.
Because of the content, this is not the easiest read. But precisely because of the content, it is one you shouldn’t miss.