Tea at Trianon: Women and the Church

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, September 22, 2014

Women and the Church

From the NCR:

Recent claims that the Catholic Church disregards women fail to acknowledge the Church’s critical work to support women and families around the world, say leaders in medicine, academia and global relief work.  

“Anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church doesn’t support women doesn’t know much about the Church, its mission and its presence around the world,” said Joan Rosenhauer, executive vice president of U.S. operations for Catholic Relief Services.

“Every day, the Catholic community supports women with opportunities to strengthen their families, become better educated and build their economic and food security. Our presence across the globe, including in some of the most remote places on earth, allows us to help many women the rest of the world has left behind,” she told CNA Aug. 27.  

A recent “Poverty Matters” blog post in the British daily The Guardian criticized the Church as being anti-woman. Entitled “Pope Francis has done little to improve women’s lives,” the blog post argued particularly against the Church’s stance on human sexuality.

Rosenhauer pointed to several initiatives Catholic Relief Services has started to help alleviate poverty, particularly for women and their families.

For example, the Savings and Internal Lending Communities program has provided loans to more than 1 million people — more than 80% of them women — to help start small family businesses or help women to become financially independent.  Additionally, Rosenhauer said, “Thousands of girls and women are being helped around the world every day through Church-run programs focusing on maternal and child nutrition, girls’ education and livelihoods for women, to name just a few.”

CRS runs programs that both distribute food in times of need and teach farming techniques that aid with food production and nutrition.  

The Catholic Church, she continued, also provides programming, such as The Faithful House in sub-Saharan Africa, that helps strengthen families and relationships between spouses in order to help families find their basis in loving, respectful relationships.  

Participants in the Faithful House, she said, “report decreased alcohol use, better management of household finances, improved budgeting and savings and the ability to pay for essential items such as school fees, household repairs and transportation.” One participant commented, “By the time our children have their own families, society will be better than it is now, because children learn from watching their parents in a loving and respectful relationship.”  

The Church’s sexual teachings also help support women and families, Rosenhauer said. Catholic Relief Services’ work to teach natural family planning methods help “women adopt life-affirming ways to space births in order to reduce the risk of the mothers dying during labor and improve the chances that babies will be born healthy and thrive.”  

Other organizations corroborate the Church’s emphasis on providing life-affirming development policies. In 2009, Dr. Donna Harrison, president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, briefed the U.N. commissioner on human rights on the risks of promoting abortion as part of attempts to aid international development or address maternal mortality.

The provision of abortion in developing countries, Harrison wrote, “increases, not decreases, maternal mortality and morbidity in resource poor nations,” increasing the “risk of hemorrhage, infection and incomplete abortion” in such areas.

The promotion of abortion as a development policy, she continued, also diverts funds and attention from interventions that have been proven to help reduce maternal mortality and increase overall health, such as “prenatal care, skilled birth attendants, antibiotics and oxytocics.” (Read more.)