Posted on 02/24/2007 3:59:53 PM PST by GMMAC
Men of the church
Barbara Kay, National Post
Published: Saturday, February 24, 2007
In the early days of feminism's ascendance, a certain joke made the rounds -- its theme remained constant, although the particulars varied -- that never failed to raise a knowing chuckle. In it, a man and a woman explain the secret to a happy marriage. The wife, feigning subservience, says: "My husband makes all the big decisions, and I make the small ones." The amiable schlemiel of a husband then adds (ba da boom), "Yes, I decide whether God exists and where the universe ends, while my wife decides where we live, who our friends are, and what schools our children attend?".
Get it? Fathers -- the butt of the joke -- think they are important because their minds are filled with stupid abstract notions like the Meaning of Life, but in fact they are irrelevant to their loved ones' happiness, which depends on practical domestic choices that women are more competent to make.
On its face the joke is reality-based. Because yes, as soon as children enter the picture, mothers exert disproportionate sway over the family's accretion of social and educational capital. But are habitat, schools and friendships the only significant factors in guiding children into their full human estate? Hardly. Children's spiritual and moral development -- the formation of bedrock cultural values --is equally important. And thereby hangs a tale.
A statistical report from Switzerland in 2000, "The Demographic Characteristics of the Linguistic and Religious Groups in Switzerland," reviewed the results of a 1994 survey of Swiss religious practice, and arrives at a fascinating conclusion about the impact of mothers' vs. fathers' church attendance on the future religious observance of their children.
The detailed survey indicated that if the father attended church regularly, and the mother was non-practising, then 44% of their children became regular church-goers. But if the mother attended regularly, and the father was non-practising, then only two per cent of their children became regular church attenders.
Even when the father was an irregular attender and the mother non-practising, a full 25% of their children became regular attenders, while if a mother was a regular attender and the father irregular, only three per cent of the children became regular attenders.
In short, if a father does not attend church, it won't matter how dedicated the mother is in her observance, only one child in 50 will become a regular attender. But if a father is even somewhat observant, then regardless of the mother's practice, at least one child in three will become a regular church-goer. The disparity is too stunningly wide to be culturally insignificant.
The logical response to such conclusive figures would have houses of worship scrambling to create an ambience conducive to men's psychological comfort. But as any regularly attending member of a non-Orthodox congregation can attest, Jewish and Christian houses of worship have become quite feminized. Feminist thought privileges the flexibility, sensitivity and inclusivity (gay rights-deferential) that has characterized liberal pulpits for a generation. The "soft" PC template of emasculated liturgy and the "writing-in" of postmodern sexual values, however, do not offer men the "hard" authenticity they typically seek in religious observance.
The result has been a drop-off in church attendance, which, we can now predict, will continue into the next generation. As Anglican Vicar Robbie Low noted in reaction to the Swiss survey, "A Church that is conspiring against the blessings of patriarchy? flies in the face of the sociological evidence! No father --no family --no faith. Winning and keeping men is essential to the community of faith and vital to the work of all mothers and the future salvation of our children."
As it turns out, then, those "big decisions" about God and the meaning of life that preoccupy fathers in the joke are nothing to laugh at after all. The Swiss survey's results can reasonably be interpreted to suggest that in moulding a child's sense of communal and ethical identity -- for civic purposes the most important consideration of all -- it would seem that more than simply significant, a father's role is crucial.
Bkay@videotron.ca
© National Post 2007
The more you learn about who those bishops are (or were), the easier it is to understand.
"jah, nein mit das uber-frau krap und ein
homosexueller und ein Nazis und
der zeolological dumphkophen!
C'mon over, das veligion's varm!"
I taught Bible Study (like a Southern Baptist Bible-monger) in an Episcopal Church in the eighties ... the men filled the seats every Sunday. Our Priest was a God-fearing man who rode a motorcycle and prayed like he was speaking with his Boss. Things changed rapidly, didn't they!
This does not mean I approve of the "feminization" of our society. As I mentioned in a post in another thread, the matriarchy is responsible for the increase in teen pregnancy, fatherless gang members run amok and the welfare state. I am perfectly content to live in a patriarchy, but I don't see anything wrong with women reading from Scripture.
viva il papa! (that's great)
Very rapidly!
Hear, hear! My wife is a Lay Eucharistic Minister at our Episcopal Church, which is led by a female priest. I have no problem with female participation or leadership in the Eucharist at all.
However, I do have a deeply and sincerely held belief that consecrating an abomination as bishop and having a Presiding Bishop who questions Christ's divinity is not the proper approach to leading a Christian denomination. I don't understand why they have to screw up everyone's religion. If they want to be Hi Church Unitarians, well then, go buy vestments and incense and joint the nearest Unitarian coven and leave us Episcopalians to worship the Lord Christ.
Excellent idea. The new Presiding Bishop is beyond a druid. She is a heretic, plain and simple. And it's not just women. Bishop Spong and men of his ilk are heretics also.
I have a big problem with women taking the lead in worship...Paul says women should be silent in the church.
Get over it....
Easy for him to say. Paul wasn't married.
Sorry. Every dam that bursts starts to fail with one small leak. I'm a co-founder of a continuing Anglican parish who left the Episcopal church after 57 years - my whole life, in other words. From altar girls to women in the deaconate, from feminists as priests and bishops, to the disposal of our Prayer Book and the ordinations of who knows how many Gene Robinsons, you simply cannot say, this far and no further. Once it starts, you're doomed.
Women can be perfectly good lay readers, chalice bearers, maybe even priests. Never the less, those jobs were not given to them. Who are we to question? There are many important jobs in the church the women do that are vital. Accept the responsibilities God has given you and be grateful.
So what? and you were never an apostle either :-P
Some men also take Paul's words to say that women should be silent everywhere. That we shouldn't be doctors or lawyers or professors or whatever. God gave us brains too, and it seems to me that we should not waste that gift.
You obviously understand the problem. I'm suggesting what I think of as obvious: Women reading the lessons is an example of the feminization of our society. Not that I think there are bad intentions involved in the readers themselves. I also know many altar girls who are devout and good. They are just young girls who want to do something for God, and that's all they are offeredsince no one asks them to visit the sick or make clothes for newborn babies at pregnancy centers, or a hundred other things, many of which the world despises, but which are more powerful and important than many more visible services.
These girls are being cheated. Sending them down the "priest" track of altar service not only leads to a dead end, it thwarts their understanding of the power of womanhood. (There is a whole world to be explored here.)
Why not have women read the Lesson or Epistle? Heck, why not the Gospel, too? It doesn't sound powerful, no matter how good a reader you are, and I'll bet you're good. It's intended to be the voice of God, and God is male, with no apologies. Our bodies are part of our faith, and when we hear a woman's voice, we don't hear "God." We might hear "saint," but not God.
The ancients understood this. The modernists understand it, too. Their goal is to cast down God, because they have a father problem. That's why they look for ways to de-throne patriarchy. Masculinity makes them afraid and resentful, and they try to undermine male authority and maleness itself, wherever they see or hear it.
Again, this has nothing to do with your personal actions, which I'm sure are good. The problem is that the liturgy belongs to God, and is not an equal-rights proposition. We listen with our bodies as well as our minds, and it's proper that Mass be magisterial and impressive. If it falters as a performance presented to all our senses, it eats away at the faith of the hearers, especially those whose faith is less strong than yours.
One of the reasons that women converted to Christianity in those early days is that Christ treated women better than the Jews did. Paul didn't seem to like women very much, but Christ sure seemed to.
I'm not sure where you're going with that. Are you suggesting that St. Paul the Apostle's sections of the New Testament are not divinely inspired? You have some editing suggestions? Psychological advice? I don't want to be unfair, but if you have a problem with St. Paul, you have a problem with Christ.
I think it's a mistake to try to sit in judgement on the apostles, even the "least" of them. As far as wisdom and sanity go, they are our teachers; they had advantages, to put it mildly, that we lack.
The reason that women are not to assume positions of leadership in the church is that the woman represents humanity and the man represents God.
Women are easier to deceive than men, they are more lenient and will approve things that men will not just as 'there is a way that seems right to a man, but leads only to death'.
Women in leadership is the natural manifestation of the spiritual reality of humanity taking control of worship and becoming its own God. Why does feminism, homosexuality, abortion, promiscuity, divorce, etc follow female leadership? Because women represent humanity sitting in judgment on the commandments of God and bringing humanism into the church.
What else does the woman on the beast in Revelation represent?
Bullseye.
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