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Post by hibernicus on May 19, 2014 17:53:24 GMT
Lazarus, drawing on his own experience of marriage and fatherhood and living with his pregnant wife, suggests that one virtue of traditional marriage is that it makes the male aware of the deep physicality of women's involvement in childbirth, and that the suggestion that gay-marrieds who buy babies "off the shelf" so to speak, via surrogacy, are having the same experience, discounts the specifically female element in a worrying way. (It might be worthwhile in this context recalling the late radical feminist Shulamith Firestone who used to maintain that women could never be equal to men until babies were conceived in test-tubes and gestated in artificial wombs - "equal" in this context meaning "identical") cumlazaro.blogspot.ie/2014/05/surrogate-parenthood-and-denigrating.htmlen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulamith_FirestoneEXTRACT In The Dialectic of Sex, Firestone synthesized the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Simone de Beauvoir into a radical feminist theory of politics.[13] Firestone also acknowledged the influence of Lincoln H. and Alice T. Day's Too Many Americans (1964) and the 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich. It became a classic text in second-wave feminism in the United States. Firestone argued that gender inequality originated in the patriarchal societal structures imposed upon women through their biology; the physical, social and psychological disadvantages imposed by pregnancy, childbirth, and subsequent child-rearing.[14][15] She advocated the use of cybernetics to carry out human reproduction in laboratories as well as the proliferation of contraception, abortion, and state support for child-rearing; enabling them to escape their biologically determined positions in society. Firestone described pregnancy as "barbaric", and writes that a friend of hers compared labor to "shitting a pumpkin". Among the reproductive technologies she predicted were sex selection and in vitro fertilization... END
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 6, 2014 20:28:44 GMT
Joseph Shaw criticises contemporary Catholic apologists for downplaying the complementarity of the sexes, including the authority of husband/father. Interesting debate in the combox. I post the link only for information and do not necessarily agree or disagree with the views expressed. www.lmschairman.org/2014/12/the-complementarity-of-sexes.html#more
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Post by Young Ireland on Apr 7, 2015 18:38:21 GMT
I remember a discussion that took place here about why no women post here. I think one reason is that women tend to be more devotional in their faith, while men seem to prefer a more intellectual or Thomist approach. As an example, I believe that women are over-represented in the charismatic movement and among devotees of apparitions (Medjugorje and MDM come to mind). Ranger, who I believe was involved with Youth 2000 would probably know more about the make up of that organisation genderwise, but I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern occurred there as well. Conversely, I notice that traditionalists seem to be disproportionately male. I would qualify this by saying that women traditionalists tend to be more passive than their "conservative" counterparts, so this might be rather skewed, but there is a pattern here. The sedevacantists appear to be all male, I've never heard of a women sedevacantist (not including the Palmarians). Is it the case that men and women are attracted to different spiritualities? What do you think?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 7, 2015 18:51:25 GMT
I don't really know any male sedevacantists, so I wouldn't know any female ones!
Women seem to be attracted to the visionary and apparition side of things a lot. I've noticed that.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 7, 2015 19:00:00 GMT
I would guess that men and women are attracted to complementary spiritualities, maybe. I think it might also be the forum. Internet-wise, I think women might be more into Facebook and blogging and stuff like that. (Certainly there is a profusion of female Catholic bloggers.) A forum tends to be a little more argumentative and formalised (though this one isn't, despite Young Ireland's best efforts to get something going today ), and I am guessing that women find that less attractive.
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Post by Ranger on Apr 7, 2015 19:17:35 GMT
Found that interesting article I mentioned the other day on Orthdoxy's comparative success at keeping men: www.antiochian.org/node/17069It does make me wonder how much we lost when the Church split East and West.
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Post by Ranger on Apr 7, 2015 19:30:49 GMT
Youth 2000 has definitely a majority of girls involved; I couldn't pin a number down exactly, but I'd guess roughly two girls for every guy involved. This is something I have noticed amongst a younger generation; in university Catholic societies, there tends to be either even numbers or else a majority of men. In almost all other groups I've been involved with women are in the majority, although the degree differs.
When it comes to visions etc., I think that one factor is also generational, with more older people being into them, and more women in the older generations are very devout I think (at least looking at the 65+'s who come to daily Mass just about anywhere). But definitely I think that women are more into Medjugorge, just thinking about people I know who are into it.
When it comes to a more Thomistic/Intellectual approach to the faith, I do know many women who have that kind of spirituality; I would have met many who attend events run by the Dominicans, for example, who are very into Aquinas, Edith Stein, both philosophy and theology. Thinking of those Dominican events, there's probably slightly more men than women involved, but this might be because the male religious are now more orthodox, whereas the female active religious have not reformed to the same extent (the cloistered Dominican nuns in Ireland are completely sound though).
I do think that Maolsheachlann's on to something though when it comes to different approaches to the internet. I think the issue is first of all that men and women have different ways of expressing their spiritualities, even when they share a spirituality, and second of all that more women are involved full stop.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 7, 2015 22:45:04 GMT
According to Michael Cuneo, there are quite a few women sedevacantists, but they tend not to be public defenders of the sede position, because sedes have extremely restrictive views of male headship which mean that sede women defer to men and sede laity defer to clerics - sedes are much more clericalised than conservatives or (to a lesser extent) traditionalists. Two examples of women activists on the loonier side of traditionalism who come to mind are Marion Horvat of Tradition in Action, whose nutty pronouncements I have noted in other threads (she's not an actual sede but very close to it) and Solange Hertz (who must be very old if she's still alive) who claimed amongst other things that electricity is a demonic force. Both go in for what might superficially be considered the "male" activity of producing ideological rationalisations for pronouncements of jaw-dropping fatuity; the sort of thing Richard Williamson goes in for.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 7, 2015 22:50:33 GMT
....Solange Hertz (who must be very old if she's still alive) who claimed amongst other things that electricity is a demonic force. She might be onto something!
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 8, 2015 8:10:13 GMT
As per the Remnant, she was 94 last year and moved to a hospice: remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/911-a-grand-catholic-lady-needs-our-prayers. I have a friend who knows her personally and tells me she is a woman after Dickie Williamson's heart. Intelligent, but anti-intellectual. This is a quandary we are in. I know that there is a status quo in academia, and that much of what they present as fact is opinion. But to react against it as blindly as Williamson and Mrs Hertz would wish is irresponsible. Mrs Hertz believed that electricity was known when the pyramids in Egypt were built but kept secret; that native Americans had contact with Europe long before Columbus, Leif Ericsson or even St Brendan reached the New World; that Atlantis existed; that Hitler was not near as bad as believed; and if I'm not mistaken, that Bacon wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. She enjoys huge influence in the traditional Catholic world - I have even seen it in some posts on this forum. Sometimes I really get the impression that trads rush in where fools fear to thread.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 18:58:28 GMT
I have noticed with many Christians that they feel the need to be "anti-intellectual" because they are led to believe that science and (actual) progress are the fruits of the labours of atheists alone, and feel that acknowledging such work is some how conceding to atheists. It doesn't help that many atheists think the same thing I suppose.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 8, 2015 19:44:51 GMT
Antaine, I totally agree. (With you, I mean.)
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 9, 2015 16:56:52 GMT
I agree with Antaine - there is a worrying tendency for some conservative/traditionalist Catholics to take the claims of Dawkins and Co that reason and faith are incompatible and to go for faith over reason, with all sorts of dodgy propositions being classed as "faith". Redmond's views on Galileo, where he treats "Galileo was wrong" as an irreformable doctrine of the faith and therefore will not listen to any argument against it, is an example. Another would be the tendency for some trads to pick up concepts like the premillennial rapture or young-earth creationism, sometimes but not always from associating with Evangelicals. (CHRISTIAN ORDER has had creationist leanings for a very long time, and I am sorry to say I was taken in by them when I was a teenager. I remember some years ago they published a piece complaining that John Paul II did not consult the Flat Earth Society before apologising for the treatment of Galileo!) There is also the phenomenon of "rejected knowledge" - people whose beliefs are outside the mainstream consensus are more likely to be attracted to eccentric views on other subjects (often theories which were once intellectually respectable but have been disproven by later developments, such as the Phoenician descent of the Irish or the concept of pre-Adamite races of humanity), on the grounds that if the mainstream is wrong on one subject it is more likely to be wrong on others, and also from a certain distrust of "experts" (a tendency which can be wholesome in small doses but if it gets out of control can bleed into madness). I get the impression, for example, that a disproportionate number of Ricardians (those who think Richard III was hard-done-by) are Catholics (this is not inevitable BTW, although it partly reflects dislike of Henry VIII whose father defeated Richard - the great C19 English Catholic historian John Lingard was very anti-Ricardian because he believed accepted traditions were likely to be correct in history as well as religion, Richard's arch-enemy Lady Margaret Beaufort was the patron of St John Fisher who spoke remarkably highly of her, and of course the archetypal portrayal of Richard as classical tyrant is by St Thomas More.) In a slightly different manner, I recall Fr Paul Crane used to hold forth in editorials on the superiority of British weights and measures and of £ s.d. over decimal currency and to defend capital punishment; these are all arguable in isolation but the fact that he held them all suggests a particular turn of mind (though I should add that I can think of some issues, in foreign policy and the role of lay activists, where Fr Crane was very much on the "left"). From Alasdair's post it appears that Solange Hertz is even nuttier than I realised. The secrets of the pyramids, alas! I might add that nuttyism can go both ways - there are occultists who promote Marian apparitions (even authorised ones) with some twists intended to fit them into their own belief system, rather like those pagans of late antiquity who included busts of Jesus among their private collections of deities for the sake of comprehensiveness.
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jock
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Post by jock on Apr 12, 2015 2:11:15 GMT
This is an interesting discussion and I notice an image of Joseph de Veuster above at the moment.
Can I ask how many women have featured on the heading of this website and how many in proportion to men?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 13, 2015 8:01:14 GMT
This anti-intellectualism is the hallmark of a cult. When you posit an alternative history and science which goes well outside the dimension of faith and morals, you are in trouble.
I know that there are many problems with the sort of philosophy most people accept as unadulterated fact, be it scientific or historical. For example, many people don't realise that evolution is a theory and has not been established as a fact as of yet. There is no harm in being a little sceptical before the academic establishment. No progress would be made without it, which is a point missed by many of our atheist friends. But Williamson takes healthy scepticism to another plane and in the process, sets up a situation where he can tell his followers what and how to think. This is dangerous.
I have met traditional Catholics who are in this mindset. Mainly in the US, but I've seen a few in Europe too. And in Ireland. Now this is a case where I understand what has brought them to where they are, what they are reacting against. However, the point is that this frustration with the times we live in is being used to serve another agenda. One which goes well outside the boundaries of what Catholicism ever was over 20 centuries. And they have problems with Catholics like us, even if we go to the EF Latin Mass.
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