Links

I have a huge pile of links I've wanted to share with our readers, but I keep forgetting to post them. So here are seven* of them, just for you. Read, discuss, ignore, what-have-you:

1) A mother gives a frank assessment of "who's to blame" when it comes to body image problems.

2) Interesting look at what young adult Catholics are looking for when it comes to community.

Few young adults make such a swift and seamless switch to a new, vital faith community--which means many feel pangs of panic and loss. It's hard to replicate the built-in, tight-knit community of on-campus Catholics, says Elizabeth Moriarty, 32, who has worked as a pastoral associate and now serves as assistant director of the Gender Relations Center at the University of Notre Dame. "That structure is in place, and when it's not there and they have to do a little more work to get it, people don't know what to do."

That aimlessness is sharpened by a sense of isolation, says Paul Jarzembowski, director of young adult ministry for the diocese of Joliet, Illinois. "Can I find my peers? I don't see them in the office. I don't see them on the train, and they're out there somewhere."

Via OSV.

3) Joe Carter at First Things shares a Big Think article on sexual promiscuity and happiness here.

4) Noelle Daly writes for The American Interest on the Pill and fertility:

But even as the Pill alleviated fear of the unwanted pregnancy that would confine a woman to the home, it also dramatically heightened anxiety about the ticking biological clock. Thus the Pill sparked one revolution that led in turn to another: Infertility born of long-postponed pregnancy found a solution in assisted reproduction technology. The first revolution sped the disconnection of sex and marriage, the second the disconnection of marriage and childrearing. The Pill gave us first the joy of sex without babies, and then, in effect, the freedom and convenience of creating babies without sex.

Read it all here.

5) The Knights of Columbus have a semi-regular series profiling Catholic fathers, called Fathers for Good. I love this. Let us commend the great men we know who live well and serve as a witness to the Christian life for themselves, their colleagues, and most importantly, their families.

6) Pope Benedict XVI discussed the "special contribution" women make to the work of Theology on the feast of the Birth of Mary. via EWTN.

7) Skirts v. Pants. Referee: Simcha Fisher.

* I read once that to-do lists should never have more than seven items. I don't know why exactly, except that seven is an easily graspable number, and gives one a sense of doing something without being insurmountable. So, seven it is.

The Vocation of Motherhood: A Practical Take

Dear Readers,
My apologies for not posting this weekend...hosting my future father-in-law this weekend for a big time national college football game kept me away from my computer. But we did have a nice time, even though our team did not win the game. Anyway, I wanted to post just a quick tidbit before I head off to meet a professor. I was watching EWTN's The World Over last week, and was delighted to meet this lovely lady: Rachel Campos-Duffy. Rachel is a mother of 5, was on MTV's The Real World in the 1990's (before it was super trashy), and she almost had Elizabeth Hasselback's job on The View (which by the way, I despise, so I'm glad she did not get on that show!)

Anyway, she recently published a book about being a stay-at-home mom, and now posts a blog about parenting in today's modern world. She was very dynamic, and you can watch the reel from the show on the website linked above. I know we are not all mom's yet, but many of us do feel that vocation, so this might be a good resource as we develop our vocations in life. I do believe that women are called to motherhood in one way or another - spiritual or physical -- and both!! Hope you find it helpful and have a blessed day!!

No Sorrow Like My Sorrow

The words "There is no sorrow like my sorrow" have been echoing in my head for the last week or so. All weekend long, I have had that phrase in the back of my head every time I was tempted to indulge in self-pity, or weakness, or laziness.

Sunday's mass, then, was a great relief. I got there late (stupid metro), but they offer confessions at the beginning of the mass, so I was able to pop in during the homily. "I absolve you of your sins." Those are powerful words too, and bring so much peace. In the mass we enter into the sorrow of the Blessed Mother, and indeed of God the Father, who watched his Son die on the cross, and the sorrow of Jesus Christ, who wept for all our sins.

When I got home, I learned of a friend's miscarriage.

"There is no sorrow like my sorrow." It was said of the Blessed Mother. But what of all mother's who loose their child? I can't even begin to understand that pain. And I don't know how I'd bear it without the Cross.

Woman Warrior of the Month: St. Monica Part 1

Today we are each writing a post in honor of September's Woman Warrior: St. Monica, whose feast day was August 27th. This woman and sister in Christ is so incredible that she really could be every month's nominee. I could go on and on about her, but I will just tell you a little of why she is so important of a model to me.

We are taught by our Church that the pinnacle of femininity is reached in motherhood, that the "crown of a marriage" lies in children, or the visible fruits of the love between a man and a woman. I tend to stay in the shallow end of the teaching and focus on the procreative part of the feminine vocation and the married vocation...stopping at the conception and birth of children as if that is the fullness the Church is speaking of.

St. Monica's fruit was St. Augustine, but not Augustine as an infant. The fruit of her femininity was the same fruit of her labors of prayer, fasting, and modeling the faith - it was Augustine the man, the scholar, the preacher, the convert, and the saint. St. Monica is the exemplar of receiving the task that God has given you and laboring until you have made it worthy enough to glorify Him. How often do I do a mediocre job on things that are in front of me? How often do I fail to really work at my vocation of singleness? Will I accept a satisfactory job this school year as I prepare to teach young high school women, or will I pray, study, and fast so that their souls are opened to the Lord?

Thank you St. Monica, for your beautiful example.

And as a sidenote, thanks for teaching me that it's okay to love wine...just in moderation.

(Picture found here)

Reading List: Kay Hymowitz

I first encountered Kay Hymowitz in the Winter 2008 Issue of City Journal. She wrote a fantastic essay exploring the problem of permanent adolescence of 20 something men. Since then, this author of Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age and Liberation's Children: Parents and Kids in a Postmodern Age has published half a dozen penetrating articles which all explore the culture of sex, marriage, child-rearing, and the culture at large.

Meanwhile, in the Winter 2009 issue of City Journal, she discussed the explosive article from NY Times Magazine, Her Body, My Baby, about a Southhampton trophy-wife and the woman who carried her baby. The article caused a huge amount of controversy, especially with regards to questions of class and wealth. Ms. Hymowitz, interestingly, looked to the culture (there is a culture?!) of surrogate moms to point out:

...The truth is that surrogates—Americans, at any rate—show few signs of feeling exploited. On the contrary, these proletarians pity their managers. Many working- or lower-middle-class women who become surrogates already have three or more kids of their own. These women don’t just love children; they adore the whole leaky, clumsy, achy mess of pregnancy and childbirth. On surrogacy website forums, “surro-moms” download sonograms, post pictures of their bellies, muse about their IMs (intended mothers), and decorate their posts with rainbows and butterflies.

In other words, despite their radical line of work, surrogates tend to be profoundly conservative when it comes to their female identity. They experience the sort of visceral fulfillment in pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood that their better-educated and wealthier sisters find somewhat alien.

A fascinatng angle on a controversial and by no means simple question.

Read more from Ms. Hymowitz here.

What About the Little Ones?

I recently attended a dance recital for my boyfriend's 8 year-old niece. She was fabulously cute in her pretty pink and white ballerina outfit. However, the recital included the whole dance studio, ranging from little 5 year-olds to high school age girls. My boyfriend and I were outraged because in almost every single dance piece, young girls ages 10 to 16 were coming out scantily clad in fishnets, knee-high dance boots, and mid-drift tops (or slashed up leotards) and dancing to dirty rap music or trashy Britney Spears songs (yes, the trashy ones). I mean, just imagine your 10 year-old daughter in a ripped-up leotard that barely covers her chest, and exposes all the rest of her body except her intimate parts, dancing like a stripper complete with straddles and other seductive 'dance' moves, and you'll get the idea of what we witnessed.

Anyway, we were the only people who were outraged. Even the grandparents of the children teased us for being prudes and said, 'Well, that's just how they do things here.' My boyfriend promptly replied that he deals with cases putting men in jail for looking at pictures of girls dressed like that. We just could not believe that parents could allow their daughters to participate in this with a clear conscience. We vowed to each other never to let our future children to participate in a dance troupe like that.

Is it wrong to want your children to remain innocent in a world so inundated with sexuality? Why were my boyfriend and I (two twenty-somethings) the only people in an entire auditorium who found the recital offensive, not just to us, but to those girls?? Why would we want to over-sexualize our children, instead of nurturing them in love?

About the same time, I discovered that there were others out there who are outraged at stuff like this recital. I heard about the work of a beautiful mother named Marybeth Hicks. Marybeth Hicks writes about raising children in today's society. Her book, Bringing Up Geeks is acclaimed for its advice on how to bring up children as Genuine, Enthusiastic, Empowered Kids (hence *GEEKS*). She writes on how to combat what she calls the 'culture of cool,' or the media-saturated, hyper-sexualized culture we find ourselves in. And parents accept that culture. I call it the 'they're-gonna-do-it-anyway-so-as-long-as-they-do-it-under-my-supervision-it's-okay' attitude. I knew those parents, and they weren't mine, that's for sure. But everyone wanted to go to those kids' houses, because they had 'cool' parents who let them get drunk at their house.

Hicks seeks to promote 'innocence over exploitation.' What she emphasizes in her books is that she is not trying to raise prudes who really cannot handle the culture. It's important for kids to engage the world and the culture, but not to have to lose their innocence either. That's pretty hard to do, and something I want for my future children. I will definitely read what Hicks suggests when the time comes for me!! Here's an excerpt from the book, part of a longer one linked here.

Ever since Glenn Close boiled a bunny over her love for Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, I don’t go to scary movies with suspenseful soundtracks. It’s not that I stand on moral high ground. It’s that I stand in the lobby, where it’s safe. I don’t like to be made afraid recreationally.

On the other hand, my husband Jim enjoys frightening films so he occasionally goes with a buddy. One such night found Jim and his friend sitting in the theatre watching trailers for upcoming releases while waiting for the evening’s feature presentation to begin. Into the theatre walks the mother of one of our daughter’s classmates. Behind her is a group of 12-year-olds from Betsy’s seventh grade class, giggling excitedly and taking their seats as the theatre dims.

Just what film did my 40-something husband and a row of pre-pubescent middle schoolers enjoy together? Matrix Reloaded, starring Keanu Reeves – rated R. An online review service, www.screenit.com, says the movie is “heavy” in blood, gore, frightening and tense scenes, profanity, sex and nudity; and “extreme” in guns and weapons, violence, disrespectful or bad attitudes and scary or tense music.

My husband’s review: Uncomfortable. “I’m watching these graphic scenes, but the whole time it’s really awkward knowing Betsy’s friends are a few rows ahead of me. I felt like the girls should have covered their eyes,” he said. “Since they didn’t, I covered mine instead.”

What possible benefit could there have been in taking those girls to see a movie starring sex, violence, profanity, terror and gore?

Here’s a radical thought: Parents have the power to decide the content to which their children may be exposed through TV shows, movies, music and Internet sites, and these decisions help to either preserve or destroy childhood innocence.

Just in Case...

You were thinking the birth control pill is a good option....check out what the inventor of the pill has to say about it. Oh what a world we live in....