The inevitable clash between feminism and Islam is underway in Europe. So far, it’s no contest: feminism is losing ground fast. Not on abortion, but rather on more fundamental issues, such as the equality of the sexes before the law. So while abortion rights remain intact, more basic human rights are being eroded. Sad irony. Read this article to understand what I mean and get some concrete illustrations.
Feminism appears unable to successfully cope with Islam. Why? As the article explains, feminism is a movement of the Left, whose new religion in Europe is multiculturalism: Read the rest of this entry »
The National Post published two interesting articles last week on feminism, here and here. Both were written by women on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Both raise some valuable points about the benefits and problems engendered by feminism. Well worth a read. Here’s an excellent quote from the second article:
The result of this revolution has turned feminism on its head. The status of Western women today is still at odds with our aspirations, but in a different way. Instead of being liberated to do what we want, women now are not only free — but expected — to do everything, want it or not. Bring home the bacon, fry it up, drive the kids to soccer, and clean the house. We have become the harried Econowives of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale — or, increasingly, econo single mothers. At the same time, fewer women are having children, some by choice, but more by failure to find a mate, or to mate in time.
Ironically, feminism was originally all about choices, the lynchpin of which was the choice for women with children to work outside the home. Today, however, feminists paint this decision as mandatory, and children as optional. (Source)
If you’ve ever tried to find parking in New York, you’ll understand how big an advantage this is:
Women having difficult pregnancies would get special parking privileges under a proposal to be introduced this week, according to a New York City Councilman sponsoring the bill.
The bill suggests that pregnant women be allowed to park in no-parking zones and stand in no-standing zones, said Councilman David Greenfield, who plans to introduce the bill at a council meeting on Wednesday. (Source)
Sounds like a great idea, right? Who in their right mind could possibly be opposed? How about the radical feminists, specifically the infamous National Organization for Women.
The New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women said they liked the idea but worried about possible discrimination by employers and others who may be upset over the special privileges.
“If there’s any city in the country where a measure like this is reasonable, it is New York City,” said Sonia Ossorio, executive director of NOW’s New York City chapter. “But pregnancy discrimination is very real, and we always have to be cautious of anything that may fuel the perception that pregnant women and new mothers are less able.”
These feminists are such a nuisance. Always worried about the spin and never about the truth. Of course pregnant women are less able in some ways. They can’t undertake rough or strenuous physical activity. They can’t take most medications. They experience nausea, vomiting and other pains. They can’t smoke. They can’t drink alcohol. They should avoid saunas and hot tubs.
The solution to this discrimination is not to pretend that pregnant women are just as able as when they’re not pregnant. Don’t be ridiculous. The solution is to make employers understand that pregnant women can still do their job despite their physical challenges.
Providing a free parking spot in areas where other cars are forbidden to park is a great idea.
Isn’t feminism such a glorious thing? Have you ever heard a feminist speak out against pornography? Maybe they should give it some thought. Read the interview of former porn actress Jennifer Case.
She says she was traumatized, oppressed and abused, and was hooked on drugs and needed the money from porn to continue to afford them. Physically she had to deal with sexually transmitted diseases: “I had so many different infections all of the time. I left Hollywood because I became so ill from Chlamydia. My abdomen hurt so much I had to come back home,” she said. (Source)
My friends, the only thing that bishop Tobin is successful in doing is undermining his own credibility and the credibility of the hierarchy.
That’s the problem with the bishops today. They treat the truth like a cheap rag. And the faithful like useful idiots.
Just as well…like Voris says, these Orders are dying. This “investigation” should have happened…oh…say…30 years ago.
By the time the Vatican and the “investigation” finally get it right, the last Feminazi nun will be already dead and buried.
It would have been better for this sham investigation (gee, where have we experienced that before —> Development & Peace, maybe?) to never have happened in the first place. At least then the bishop(s) who are responsible for “sharing the Nuns’ pain”, would not have disgraced themselves and the offices that they hold.
Bishops are supposed to be protectors of the flock, but can anyone seriously say that with a straight face anymore? Give me a break.
The problem is that many of these bishops left their testicles back in Seminary….which kind of explains why we have feminist, lesbian nuns running the show in the Western church today.
It’s an unmitigated disaster.
These feminist tree-huggers need a good, strong, masculine man to put them in their place.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico, October 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Cardinal Archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, gave a speech Sunday in which he lashed out at the United Nations and other international organizations that he says are running a campaign to destroy the family.
“The family is being permanently attacked,” said the cardinal at a meeting of the international Catholic relief organization, Caritas. “And the organizations that are in charge of rearranging the family are powerful organizations, beginning with the United Nations Organization, the World Bank, the Interamerican Bank, the big leftist parties in the world.”
The United Nations Organization, said the cardinal, has been promoting a new concept of “gender” since 1995. “Gender isn’t something like [the sex of a person], but rather a relationship, with whomever I interact sexually,” he added.
“If we so decide, for example, bestiality, well that would be another gender, doing it with animals, fetishism, where men get excited by feminine dress and live that way.”
Sandoval Iñiguez observed that the same organizations are also vigorously promoting the legalization of abortion in poorer countries, promoting the idea of “the right of the woman over her body, and it is propagated everywhere, and they have required governments, because they are in debt, they have required governments to accept abortion in their laws.”
The cardinal’s comments come in response to an increasingly intense campaign waged in recent months by Mexican pro-abortion and homosexualist groups, often funded and coordinated by foreign organizations and governments, to change Mexico’s laws on abortion and gay “marriage.”
For years, pro-life activists would recoil as certain high ranking Vatican officials would extol the benefits of the U.N. While these declarations were no doubt well-intentioned, pro-life activists would shake our heads at such declarations, and wonder just what were our leaders thinking?
After Planned Parenthood, the U.N. is the greatest organizational enemy of the unborn and the traditional family – and it has been for decades.
Finally, we have a high ranking cardinal doing what us lowly bloggers have been doing for years now — calling out the elephant in the room.
Did you catch what the Cardinal said about the whole gender ideology gig? I found that most interesting.
For many years now, social conservative activists have been labouring long and hard to confront the growing encroachment of the culture of death on our society. The culture of death not only encompasses the societal annihilation known as abortion and voluntarily sterilization (aka contraception). It also includes the ever-expanding encroachments of government organs like the so-called Human Rights Commissions and our so-called places of “higher learning” (or rather, “permitted learning”) at our nation’s universities. Once the beneficiaries of very tolerant speech and expression codes when they were going through the system, these same people who now occupy positions of authority as Administrators are not so keen to grant the same rights to the kids who want their own opportunity to push the envelope. You see, for liberals, pushing the envelope only goes in one direction – right to left. Not vice versa. If you try to push the envelope the other way, you get your own envelope with a fine in it and handcuffs around your wrists for good measure. (“But hey man”, one Leftist once told me when we were discussing a similar situation, “you still have the right to your opinion.”) This is the new tolerance which Carleton University is now known for. As we have seen over the past number of years, our fundamental beliefs – and the freedoms associated with holding on to them – are being re-defined at every level, as I reminded the attendees at the March for Marriage in 2005:
If our government can redefine something so basic and timeless as marriage, they can also re-define our freedoms. If Bill C-38 becomes law, the fundamental cornerstone of our society will have been toppled. And when a nation fails to recognize the most basic objective moral and physiological truths, democracy itself will be emptied of its power so that only an empty shell will remain. And when a strong wind blows, I ask you, what will happen to that empty shell? My fellow Canadians, at this critical moment in our history when our country is on the brink of moral collapse, all of us are faced with the central question: Shall we defend marriage or shall we retreat? If we retreat to buy a little time, what will become of our freedoms when our opponents seek to dictate what is taught in our schools, our churches, and even our homes? And what will be left for our children and their posterity? What will become of their freedoms? Of their divine right to practice their faith and enjoy their civil liberties? Will we lie to ourselves today and say it won’t impact us because we fear the sacrifices that come with it? (Source)
Redefining freedom of speech and expression on a University campus, however, slices both ways. Carleton University can handcuff Ruth Lobo. It can shut down displays it deems offensive to its totalitarian and pro-abort sensitivities. It can jackboot its student into silence and intimidate them with boorish academic misconduct and possible expulsion when the kids insist on their inalienable right to express themselves on the most important moral issue of our era. Censorship U. can do all these things, but it cannot simultaneously pretend to be a university which values the search for knowledge and the free exercise of the pursuit of it. In short, the guilty and pro-abort feminists who run Carleton university can’t have it both ways. Carleton’s own proud history recoils at the conduct of Carleton’s current Administration which is making a mockery of the University’s motto (taken from Walt Whitman’s famous Pioneer, O Pioneers!), “Ours the Task Eternal”. Our opponents are oblivious to the fact that they are more offended at the display than the truth which the display points to. If they are offended at the picture, why are they not offended at the real deal? Because they are not offended at the pictures per se. They are offended at feeling guilty. That’s what they are offended at. Ruth Lobo got cuffed and booked because the feminists had their feelings hurt.
For many years, pro-life activists have been warning and pleading with lay Catholics in the pews not to vote for pro-abortion politicians who create the laws and the culture which make abortion possible. We’ve even kicked it up a notch when necessary and confronted so-called Catholic politicians who “fully support a woman’s right to choose“. In addition to that culture of killing unborn children, it is also responsible for suppression of free expression and the rising religious persecution — because, let’s face it, although abortion is not a religious issue per se, the pro-life cause is held up by Christian (largely Catholic) convictions and constituencies. So not only is this confrontation a civil rights issue generally; it’s an issue of religious freedom specifically and confronting the anti-Catholic bigots who run Canada’s universities, particularly.
I don’t think that I have ever met Ruth Lobo, but the disgraceful event that happened this past week at Censorship U. has touched a personal chord with me nonetheless. Ruth’s brother, Rev. Father Simon Lobo, is the associate pastor at my home parish. Pictured above is Fr. Simon, Archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence Prendergast, and Ruth Lobo. The occasion of the picture is Fr. Simon’s ordination mass which occurred last year.
And so, now, we come full circle. With Ruth’s arrest, we see the cost of the ambivalence and indifference of Catholics who vote for representatives of the culture of death: their own priest’s sister is booked and apprehended like a common criminal in a scene of mock justice and petty intimidation.
You have to wonder if we have connected the dots yet, or is it still too theoretical for us to figure out that our constant Judasizing on this issue and, in particular, during election time, paved the way for Ruth’s arrest? Are the bells going off yet? There’s no point in clucking at the university if we put an “X” by Mr. Pro-Choice Politician, is it? We got Ruth arrested, as much as the Feminists who rule Censorship U. did. And the Church too must take responsibility for not speaking out in the past as forcefully as She should have. (The bishops of Canada should take the cue from Archbishops Prendergast (Ottawa) and Collins (Toronto) in their steadfast pro-life leadership on the abortion question.)
Let every Catholic and the bishops of the Church in particular take a good, long hard look at the two pictures of Ruth Lobo presented here. A good loooonnnnng look. Because those cuffs now around Ruth’s wrists will find themselves around the wrists of our priests and bishops in due course, if we don’t take corrective and bold action NOW, and turn this thing around.
A prominent Vatican consultant has encouraged Africa’s Catholic bishops to guard against the acceptance of a “gender ideology” that is being advanced by some international organizations.
Speaking recently to a meeting of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), Msgr. Tony Anatrella observed that some relief organizations and international bodies bring an unhealthy ideological approach to African problems, promoting ideas that are in conflict with the truth about human nature and natural law.In particular, he said, “the theory of gender is the most worrying sign of the current ideas about man.”
Msgr. Anatrella, a psychoanalyst who is a consultant to both the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, defined the gender ideology as the belief that “human nature does not exist because the human being is merely the result of culture.” This radical ideology, he said, has a revolutionary impact much like that of Marxism, except that “class struggle” is replaced by “the war of the sexes.” This approach, he said, cannot be reconciled with Christian thought. (Source)
For all our advances in “promoting women”, we live in one sick culture which actually promotes the destruction of women on so many levels.
Love your daughters? Pull them from abusive “school” environments. Don’t sacrifice your children on the altar of Moloch. Whatever the price is, pay it.
“Women’s Rights Not at the Expense of Human Rights”
NGO in SPECIAL consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
For immediate release
May 5, 2010
Feminists Deny the Reality That the Times have Changed
-30-
Feminists are quaintly arguing that recent funding cuts by the government are due to their promotion of abortion.
These groups appear to be blind to the fact that they are only a small group of women, whose numbers dwindle each day, and have no membership to support them. They don’t deserve to be bankrolled by the government for their outdated policies. Just because their government funding has been cut off, doesn’t mean they are “voiceless” as they claim. REAL Women of Canada has thrived for 27 years on membership dues and donations, without government funding and is by no means “voiceless”.
Instead of arguing for more abortion both here and abroad, these feminist groups should be arguing for desperately needed critical health care services. According to the April 2010 issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal Lancet, Canada, Norway and the USA have all experienced a rise in maternal mortality rate between 1980 and 2008 despite their liberal abortion laws. Abortion is no solution to women’s health care problems.
Malaria, cervical cancer and HIV coupled with the lack of clean water, proper nutrition and skilled birth attendants have long been the enemy of women in the developing world. In Canada, obviously we too have problems with maternal and child care, which have to be addressed.
Since 1973, feminist groups have complacently sat back, greedily taking taxpayers money to promote their left-wing agenda.
Times have changed. Women have moved on. It is only reasonable that the government would move on to, and curtail funding of these obsolete groups.
…As an economist, Reichart thinks in the language of marketplaces. His most pertinent and helpful observation is that there used to be only a “marriage market” for both men and women, to which all their sexual thinking was directed, and in which sex and morality were inextricably linked. Reliable contraception, however, created a separate, morality-neutral “sexual market,” which all young men and women now feel bound to explore before marriage, resulting in a decline in the marriage market and therefore a decline in women’s and children’s well-being.
In the marriage market, the costs and benefits are equally divided between men and women. But in the sex market, while young women flourish for a while, men’s benefits eventually rise and women’s fall. That’s because women in their thirties defer to their biological clocks and actively seek to enter the marriage market, while men have no such constraints.
So, forced by their biological clocks (one of nature’s few remaining trump cards in the battle between technology and natural law), women leave a market where they had bargaining power to enter a market of male scarcity, where marriage-minded women are in oversupply. The competition for available men is intense, which results in women striking bad deals at the margins in order to satisfy their need for children. Reichart argues that such marriages, embarked on with a lower level of commitment than pre-Pill days, leave little wiggle room for disappointment, which, coupled with greater opportunity for infidelity, especially for men (women in the sex market like older men), in turn produces higher divorce rates. All observers agree that divorce hurts women and children more than it does men.
Only one institution stood, and stands, foursquare against the Pill. The Roman Catholic Church predicted that foolproof contraception would lead to the classic “tragedy of the commons”: family breakdown, the early sexualization of children, rampant abortion and women’s disinvestment from the home….(Source)
The fact is that the old guard feminists of today don’t really believe in true emancipation or happiness for women much younger than they are. The feminists want their “daughters” to drudge through the same misery, bitterness, and loneliness that they are now experiencing. Their goal has never been about true gender rights. If it were, they would oppose abortion on the basis of gender – which they don’t. And they would be disburbed by the fact that contraception is really for irresponsible men and not ultimately for women who have to settle for some loser later on in life because that’s the “sex economy” which contraception has created. Why would a heathen man want to get married with all of the responsibilities and duties that that entails, when he can get sex for “free”, by playing the younger market now? And when he gets older, he can parachute into marriage with a younger woman in her mid to late 30s because the 20-year olds won’t look at him any more. As we see in society today, there are more and more marriages between an older man and a younger woman. This confirms Reichart’s thesis in spades. If it wasn’t for lads like yours truly, there wouldn’t be any equitable marriages around. What the feminist fools did not realize is that marriage was there to protect women, not men!
So, why do the feminists keep droning on about “women’s rights” when they really don’t care about happiness for their “sisters”?
It’s a simple answer: justification. They bought into the lie that feminism was the ticket to happiness. They might have had one or two abortions. They’ve never been successful in a long term relationship. They’re pushing 55 or 60. They are now alone. They have no kids. Their only consolation is the internet and pounding into a key board or yelling at a computer screen. It’s about justifying the poor choices they’ve made in their lives. The ideology serves their own self righteousness. It’s all they’ve really got left. And it’s really very, very sad.
Even now, though, they have an opportunity to turn and accept healing and forgiveness. But sadly for most, their hatred and pride is too great for God’s love to reach them.
Daddy, when you leave for work, some of my heart breaks off and it doesn’t feel right and when you come home the part of my heart that broke off is filled again. I Love you. Love Emma”
My daughter wrote the above “love message” on the Saturday grocery list that I take me with me on Saturday morning errands.
If you want to know why radical feminism has taken hold in our culture, you don’t need to understand complex movements or patholigies. You need look no further then my 10 year-old’s note to me…and the absence of its message in families.
Husbands and fathers!
Be true to your wives and do not let your hearts wander. Marriage is a sacrament and a vow. Stay true to your word. Sacrifice for them and place them on the pedastal that they deserve. Never forget that they are your helpmates and not your servants.
And for your daughters: remember that this is a battle for their hearts and their allegiance so tie that string tight around their hearts and never let go. Value modesty in your speech and their attire. Never make them feel less than boys, defend their honour, love them always. Give them an example for a future husband. Be a real man and take the hit when necessary.
If you do these things, radical feminism will fade away like a bad dream. For there rarely ever was a feminist who had a healthy relationship with her father.
Thank you for your continued support. We have one week left and we need your continued prayers. I am sad to report –but not surprised- that there is a very strong and overt anti-Catholic/Christian message being spread here at many of the side events. We have ordained priestesses present- Catholics for Choice made a direct attack against the US Bishops -to a packed house-accusing them of manipulating the political system and harming women . Planned Parenthood is also espousing the general message -along with many other like minded groups- that the moral voice –especially the Catholic Church – must be eliminated and everyone will attain freedom. In their speak freedom translates into abortion and sexual rights. This is not my opinion. This is what these people are stating as fact.
My daughter attended a session where she was given a pamphlet instructing that sex is a ‘right’ for young people. T he pamphlet instructed that if a young person is infected with HIV sex becomes even more pleasurable once they become comfortable with their status. Plus an infected person is not obligated to report this to their partners, rather it is the partners responsibility to know the health of the sex partner.
On a positive note, my daughter was interviewed for a documentary to be shown at the UN tomorrow in Conference 1. She promotes a positive message on motherhood and shared her experience attending the sessions promoting sexual rights for minors-or young persons.
The Canadian Cabinet Minister for the Status of Women, Helena Guergis presented Canada’s General Statement. Part of the message affirmed that Canada will support Third World Nations with clean water and similar projects that will minimize or eliminate the causes for maternal mortality in Third World countries. This is a positive step in the right direction. She was hissed and booed at by feminist Canadians in attendance-very inappropriate behavior in the gallery- quite an embarrassing face to demonstrate for member nations as Canadians- another story for another time.
I, my daughter and another young lady on our team had approximately five minutes with the minister. This is very positive because we were able to express our support and encourage the Canadian government to continue their direction to help women attain freedom, supply money to alleviate or eradicate real health issues that cause them to die in child birth and reduce infant mortality rate. She was very responsive and interactive with us. This is the fruit of your prayers.
Please do not forget about us this week. This is the week of negotiations. We need prayer at this time more than ever.
Over the past several months, Catholics across North America have been shocked by stunning revelations that the Church’s development and aid agencies have been funding pro-abortion, pro-contraception, and anti-Catholic groups. In Canada, the Canadian bishops’ official foreign development and aid agency, Development & Peace (D&P), was caught funding over 40 of these groups. Evidence comes from these groups’ own websites, audio interviews with their employees, credible third party reports, and even eye witness reports. A short documentary video of the scandal can be viewed here. It got so bad that even the Peruvian bishops rebuked their Canadian counterparts. In the United States, of course, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) was caught doing much the same thing except on a domestic scale.
Now, there are more questions about yet another Canadian Catholic poverty relief organization called Save A Family Plan (SAFP) based in London, Ontario engaging in questionable initiatives. In its 2007-2008 Annual Report, for instance, we read:
Gender considerations have been mainstreamed in all SPED II activities, with results indicating less discrimination against women, and increased acceptance of women as decision-makers and participants in the community and in the home. Significantly, SAFP was invited to make a presentation at a CIDA Roundtable on Gender Equality at the Canadian High Commission in Delhi, India in March 2008. (Source)
In and of itself, there is nothing very problematic in the above paragraph, but it’s the euphemisms that need to be picked out and examined to ensure that there is no advancement of radical feminist and pro-abort agendas. The report makes mention of “gender” being “mainstreamed”. This is a very akward sounding initiative, at the very least, and it could smack of a certain feminist agenda, at worst. As a minimum, it deserves further investigation. In their program called “SPED-II: A Community Driven Initiative for 2006-2009, they engage in funding an initiative called “gender mainstreaming”. Their Spring 2006 newsletter tells us that one of their objectives is:
“to empower and strengthen the capacities of community and their grass root organizations for improving access to local resources and for addressing local socio-cultural, gender, environment, and other development issues by participating in local governanace process and networking.”
Although this agency does much good and is even funded by well-meaning but ignorant Catholics, there could be a serious problem with the initiative of “gender mainstreaming”, which they list in the same newsletter:
It has long been the project of the radical feminist and homosexual movements to change the understanding society has toward men and women. This was the reason the word “sex” to define men and women was changed to the more malleable “gender.” If gender is a social construct and has no basis in nature then there is no basis for sex roles. It means that any girl can be trained to want to be a fighter pilot and any boy can be raised happily as a girl.
In the UN system, the idea of “gender as a social construct” comes in the guise of “gender mainstreaming.” According to a paper issued by the UN Special Advisor on Gender “mainstreaming the gender perspective in all types of activities is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality. Mainstreaming involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities – policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation and planning, implementation and monitoring of programs and projects.” (Source: C-FAM)
Here is some more information about “gender mainstreaming”:
“Gender mainstreaming,” an ideology that proposes to erase the foundational unit of western society, the natural family, is being infiltrated into laws and institutions around the world under the rubric of “equality” legislation and guidelines, says author Gabrielle Kuby.
Kuby, the author of a 2003 book, endorsed by the former Cardinal Ratzinger, warning Christian parents of the danger of the Harry Potter book series, has written on the threat of the work of ideologues on the far left who are working to create a “new man” who can arbitrarily decide whether he is a man, a woman or some other “gender” unrelated to the natural distinctions of biology. “According to them,” she writes, “there are not two sexes, but six or more, depending on sexual preference.”
“Behind the facade” of equality, “lurks the general attack on the moral standards to which we owe the Western culture. Without it, neither the family nor Christianity can survive.”
In her article, “Gender Mainstreaming – The Secret Revolution,” to be published in German in this month’s edition of Vatican magazine, Kuby warns that the new ideology is being carefully inculcated into international law and particularly into the materials made available to educators to create school curricula. Kuby writes, “This view of freedom and sexuality, according to the will of the UN, EU and most European governments is to be imprinted onto the minds of children from the nursery onwards.”
In the case of one national government, Germany’s, the “gender mainstreaming” ideology is part of the guiding principles of every ministry of the government. The homepage of the German government’s Ministry of Science says, “The Federal Government has established an equal opportunities policy based on the political strategy of gender mainstreaming as a universal guiding principle.”
Kuby’s contention is supported by John Smeaton, head of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who wrote this weekend that people in Europe who adhere to traditional Judeo-Christian values and ideas are under threat by anti-family ideologues working to enforce their anti-family policies and silence dissent.
“Pro-life and pro-family campaigners,” he wrote, “must expect to see the publication of documents, funded by the European Union, which promote abortion, euthanasia and other anti-life and anti-family practices – with a special emphasis on zero tolerance for dissent.”
Kuby’s thesis also corresponds with that of Babette Francis, a long-time campaigner for life and family at the international level who in 2004 told LifeSiteNews.com that the fight over the definition of “gender” has become the cornerstone of UN and other internationalist ideology. This ideology also links closely to the efforts of the international agencies to impose legal abortion on countries in developing nations.
Francis said that the gender ideology was first raised at a seminal conference on women, Beijing +5, in 1995, when delegates argued that gender was a socially malleable concept and that human beings could not be restricted to the mere biological categories of male and female. The argument was that there is a “continuous spectrum and that there were all kinds of genders.”
Kuby also relates that the gender ideology first found fertile ground when it was brought forward by a powerful group of feminist and lesbian NGOs at the Beijing conference. Since then gender mainstreaming has been pushed into international law with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of Nice (2000). As a negation of the traditional values of the family, Kuby writes, “abortion follows automatically as part of the global agenda” of the gender ideologies.
Kuby concludes with an admonition that Christians fight the incursions of the new ideologies.
“At this stage of history, the main attack of evil is in the field of sexuality. Christians need to meet the enemy there, otherwise they will have lost. If the young generation is pushed into moral degeneracy, the human condition of family and faith will be further destroyed and abortion will never be overcome.” (Source: LSN)
It is unclear, however, whether the “gender mainstreaming” funded by SAFP is identical in nature to the “gender mainstreaming” promoted by the U.N. More pointed and specific questions need to be asked, and an investigation of SAFP needs to be conducted to answer this question.
There are, however, some indications that strongly suggest that the “gender mainstreaming” referred to in SAFP initiatives are indeed synonymous with those used by the anti-family, globalist forces.
In SAFP’s 2007-08 Annual Report, we learn about some of the conferences and workshops SAFP staff attend. One of these conferences was called Women and Social Change: Perspectives from Canada and India, May 2007, Montreal, sponsored by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and McGill University. One of the speakers at this conference was the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality at Alberta University, Dr. Cressida J. Heyes. The title of her talk was ”Feminist Work on the Self and the Work of Social Change (Source). In and of itself, this might not be that significant, but it does raise questions about the themes and messages conveyed at these training sessions which SAFP staff attend, and the influences these sessions have on the eventual policies promoted by SAFP.
Much more troubling evidence, however, comes from their own newsletters. In their Winter 2006 Newsletter, for instance, SAFP covers their “gender equality” objectives and activities. While there is nothing overtly anti-Catholic or anti-family in the newsletter per se, the euphemisms and jingos employed are the same kind of language used by the secular feminist NGOs to advance the anti-family agenda. They also point to the idea that gender is a socially malleable concept, being “socially constructed”. Here are a few selections:
This is not exactly the kind of development and aid work conducted by the Sisters of Charity, is it? And we have to ask the question whether SAFP’s “gender mainstreaming” objective is really interested more in changing or confusing a family rather than saving it. We also have to ask whether Save a Family Plan (an ostensibly Catholic organization) and Development & Peace look more like satellites for CIDA or the Feminist NGOs that stalk United Nations ”women’s empowerment” conferences than they do authentic Catholic relief agencies.
This represents, once again, another instance of the Church hierarchy, whether bishops or influential priests, not being fully informed about how the feminist/abortion juggernaut works. The mere sound of the phrase, “gender mainstreaming” should have bells and lights going off with faithful Catholics. Are we not to expect AT THE VERY LEAST the same reaction and alarm from our superiors? Are faithful Catholics to believe that Development & Peace or Catholic Campaign for Human Development was not just a one-time controversy, but could be indicative of a much more fundamental problem with the episcopacy in the West; namely, that their pastoral orientation to fighting the culture war is largely muted and impotent?
It sure looks like it.
In the future, it would be advantageous and prudent for the bishops of North America to consult with pro-life organizations and individuals who might provide them with relevant and important information when making decisions concerning issues impacting the protection of human life and family. It would also be prudent for them to reserve an afternoon with pro-life activists at their next Plenary Assembly to assist them pulling their collective heads out of the sand and be educated on the culture war, and our opponent’s tactics and their euphemisms. I respectfully submit that it would be the best few hours they will have spent in a very long time at these conferences.
That’s because it is feared such tests will trigger many abortions, if they indicate the unborn baby is a girl. A preference for boys exists among both men and women across almost all cultures, and it is especially strong in some Asian countries, where sex-selective abortions have already given rise to serious demographic imbalances.
However, it’s hard to see how anyone with a pro-abortion mentality can come up with a coherent case against sex-selective abortions. If you believe abortion is a legitimate “choice” that ultimately rests only with the mother, then how can you object to any reason she has for wanting to abort?…(Source)
It’s now open season on baby girls.
Another wonderful example of how feminism emancipates its own.
The nature of man is intrinsically ordered to create and to sustain. This paternal drive, of course, is tangibly reflected in the relationship of marriage. In marriage, man has essentially two roles: first, to focus his attention and sacrifice in serving his wife and, second, to join with her in participating in God’s creation by the raising of their children. If man’s drive is directed towards these goals, his marriage and the society around him flourish into a healthy and prosperous civilization of love. Through his sacrifice of love, his service to his family magnify God’s paternal care for his creation and provide the necessary blueprint for generations to follow.
By showing his complete and total abandonment to his wife and his children, he becomes, what is by today’s standards, a radical man. He becomes a revolutionary against a self-serving and narcissistic culture which seems bent on its own destruction. His self-sacrifice is a repudiation of its values. He is the figurehead of new Christian counter-culture – a living and growing culture which is at war with its decadent sibling.
In giving up time consuming endeavours which are not central to his vocation as the head of his family, the husband shows his wife that her role as his lover and mother to his children have inestimable worth. He is more willing to spend his time, his energies, and his focus on his family more than any other interest in his life. In choosing to order his life around her and the children, he shows them tangible love by devoting his time and effort to them, thereby devoting his paternal devotion and fidelity to the familial covenant. His love abounds and becomes a beacon to his wife and children as something to emulate and follow. As he accepts and is open to his wife’s fertility, he affirms God’s creation and his responsibility in it. Through his sacrificial love which he manifests in countless ways, all aspects of his life appropriate a new meaning and vitality so that even his sexual experience is more meaningful and even more physically gratifying.
He is willing to give more of himself because he trusts that God will show him that he is more of a man than he is now. He will allow God to increase his love, his sacrifice, and his selflessness in supporting and guiding his family. Through man’s fiat, God will not only magnify man’s masculinity, but He will touch and heighten his wife’s femininity so that she too may understand her distinct, irreplaceable, and glorious vocation in creation.
In contrast to this man of God, modern man has long abandoned this sublime vocation of sacrificial fidelity. Instead, his attention is directed at a crass and destructive materialism which has, at its core, only one goal: self-gratification at the expense of the other. This capitulation to his lower nature relegates all of his relationships to a base level of utility. Even his most sacred union to his wife is tragically obscured so that he begins to see his wife, no longer as an end unto herself, but merely as a means – an instrument – to hisown self-fulfillment. Indeed, this degradation begins to drown his intellect and reason. Because he fears the loss of his material advantages, he begins to see his wife’s fertility as a threat. Sadly, he begins to consider his offspring as a disease to be contained. Invariably, he avails himself of means to thwart creation and the conception of his children. He needs to contra-cept his sexual act in order to maintain his selfish lifestyle. As his sexual desires are fulfilled through the separation of the procreative and pleasurable elements of intercourse, he is able to rear fewer and fewer children. This mentality leads to a further erosion through a smaller and more decadent subculture known as “DINKS” – “double income no kids”.
As this culture begins to erode his vocation as a husband and a father, his wife’s vocation as a wife and mother is also undermined and perverted. Since she begins to see her role as merely one of utility to him, she needs to recover her sense of worth. But her sense of worth can now not be considered in terms of her intrinsic femininity. Instead, she must recover this worth through a descent into the materialism that her husband has accepted. In other words, she must show her worth through material utility and superficiality in order to be valued in his eyes. So she seeks worth by leaving the home in search of something which he values: money. In such a situation, the destruction of the family is only a sad inevitability. As husband and wife seek something other than their vocation to one another, the children are the casualties of their pursuits as the State assumes its role as surrogate mother. The disintegration of the family is all but complete. The substance of their bond has been mortally weakened with only the gaunt and pitiable form of their covenant remaining.
As society witnesses this dysfunctional and distorted family structure, it subconsciously gravitates to its logical sexual corollary. If the contracepting man can have licit sexual intercourse with his wife, then why cannot he gratify himself without his wife? If a husband and wife insist that they have a moral right to mutual masturbation (i.e. contraception), then there can be no objection to self-masturbation or a host of other deviant sexual behaviours. In fact, the next logical progression to a contracepting culture is a homosexual culture. Indeed, from an ontological perspective, since his wife has been effectively neutered and her procreative power sterilized, contraception renders the woman another man within the sexual act. Indeed, since the woman’s unique contribution to the marital embrace has been removed from necessity, there becomes less of a demonstrable difference between a man having sex with a neutered woman and a man having sex with another man. In fact, the purpose of the sexual act in both scenarios has the same goal: sexual orgasm with a person who will not procreate.
In societies where consumerism and materialism dominate, contraception is the sexual opium of its people. This is the reason why there is such a divergence of opinion over contraception between the first and third worlds. Where a materialistic or consumerist ideology is not as inculcated into the culture, contraception and deviant sex simply do not sell. The majority of the third world population, particularly those in Christian communities, oppose contraceptive sex as something foreign and unnatural. Indeed, that is precisely what contraceptive sex is and, in order for its propagation to be successful, it requires a compatible underlying ideological foundation to support it. This foundation is none other than the atheistic, materialistic, and consumerist ideology of a dying Western culture whose precepts it borrowed from Marxist Russia. The cancerous spread of these errors, long ago predicted by Our Lady at Fatima, were not simply the facile form of autocratic government that some supposed. No. Rather, it was the rejection of the dignity of the human person and the promotion of a God-denying, soulless monster who can do business in either economic currency.
And this fact really serves as the key to understanding how our culture is to recover from its self-destructive path. The attack on this culture of death must be focused on the atheistic supported consumerism which feeds its ravenous appetite. This consumerism can be defeated, but it must start with man whose focus must turn from adoring material idols. He must focus his life and his love on His God by finding meaning in serving others. In marriage, that means man must turn back to his wife and children and serve them faithfully. This is the path that men must take. There is no other option. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matt. 6:24)
Simon Lobo, is the associate pastor at my home parish. Pictured above is Fr. Simon, Archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence Prendergast, and Ruth Lobo. The occasion of the picture is Fr. 
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