Respecting Women
By JOE SIXPACK
Time was, all practicing Catholic women held up Mary as a model to imitate in terms of virtue, modesty, and womanhood. They all saw her as a standard that was to be lived up to. Such an impact did that have on society and culture that nearly every non-Catholic woman wanted to be and live as a Catholic woman, because men of every stripe (especially Catholic men) would treat women as the special people they are.
Men had such great respect and admiration for the fairer sex that they would tip their hats and open doors for women, something rarely seen today. Men saw women imitating Mary as desirable for marriage, and no young man would even consider marrying a woman who was less than modest and virtuous.
But in the ’60s, radical feminism crept into culture and society, infecting all women to some degree. Radical feminism has done its level best to convince women there is no difference between the sexes, that marriage is a form of slavery, and women shouldn’t want “a bunch of kids.”
Indeed, all of us have seen the pitying looks and heard the condescending remarks of others when a young wife announces she is pregnant the second time. (You’re pregnant again? Poor thing.) And the woman who is satisfied with being a wife and mother they pity and criticize because she’d rather do that than pursue a career.
The feminism of the ‘60s brought with it a disdain for human life. I’m not talking about abortion; that’s the natural progression in the culture of death, not its beginnings. I’m talking about the one taboo topic that simply isn’t discussed today: contraception. That’s the origin of the culture of death. Without contraception we could never have had abortion on demand, test tube babies, selective abortion on the basis of birth defects, euthanasia, rampant adultery and fornication, a high divorce rate, and STDs run amok.
Feminists began by brainwashing us with changes in our language. For example, when a woman is pregnant, she is carrying a fetus or product of conception, not a baby. Changing the language is very dishonest. Don’t think so? Then tell me when was the last time you went to a fetus shower or a product of conception shower? Who considers a fetus or product of conception a precious little human being? Language change dehumanizes babies.
Again, this sort of ridiculousness couldn’t have happened without the introduction of easy and certain contraception. An unfortunate reality of modern times is that the vast majority of people — Catholic and non-Catholic — see no problem with contraception. Admittedly, during my conversion process, I thought the Church was wrong about contraception. It bothered me that the Church would tell married people they couldn’t determine themselves just exactly how many children they would have.
But a deeper understanding of the topic led me to two conclusions: that contraception is selfish, and its being condemned by God and the Church is merely upholding natural law. There are perhaps lots of Catholic bishops, priests, and theologians who favor contraception (I pray not), but they must admit (if they’re honest) that it is God and not merely Church law prohibiting contraception.
We actually see God’s prohibition of contraception all the way back in Genesis. What was the very first command God gave humans? “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). He also showed us the consequences of contraception in Gen. 38:8-10 when He struck Onan dead for its practice. Hence, contraception is sometimes called onanism.
Then we have to consider human nature. Look, when people violate nature, they end up with virtually insurmountable problems. There is such a thing as natural law and it’s not just a theological concept. Law schools the world over used to teach natural law, but very few do anymore because society now enjoys violating it for self-indulgent pleasure. But man intuitively knows it’s wrong to lie, wrong to steal, wrong to unjustly take an innocent human life, and when we violate this natural law we end up paying the consequences one way or another.
Since the nature of men and women is to procreate, we violate nature, and thus natural law, when we contracept. In other words, contraception is a perversion of our nature. In fact, contraception is every bit as much of a perversion of nature as homosexual activity. The reason homosexual activity is a grave violation of divine law is because procreation isn’t possible in the act. It stands to reason, then, that contraception perverts nature.
Contraception has also led to the breakdown of the family. Do you realize statistics show that men and women married in the Church who don’t practice contraception and pray together only divorce at a rate of one out of 1,426 marriages in a society boasting a 50 percent divorce rate?
Earlier I said that contraception is selfish. It’s called procreation because God allows our cooperation in transmitting life. When we close off our acceptance of the gift of life that God wants to send us, we’re being selfish in rejecting that gift and selfish in rejecting the children that could have been. Besides, we now know all chemical contraceptives are abortifacient. Since statistically at least 90 percent of Catholics contracept, how many babies do Catholic women flush down the commode every year? (NB: You may not be as pro-life as you thought.)
It’s long past the time for us to reject radical feminism and Catholic women need to return to an imitation of Mary in terms of virtue and modesty. Men find women imitating Mary to be much more desirable as wives than their immodestly dressed and behaving counterparts. It’s the responsibility of you fathers, by the way, to actually be men and make sure your daughters are modest in their dress and behavior, and you mothers should instill Marian modesty and virtue in your daughters; you can begin by setting the example.
But you’ve got to understand that this can only be done when contraception is abandoned in your family, as the hypocrisy of maintaining it will surely show.
Let me invite you to listen to The Cantankerous Catholic podcast. It’s free! You can listen at https://cantankerouscatholic.com/episodes/.
