With Mother’s Day just over, a sober reflection on motherhood and womanhood in our society might be in order. Certainly we know how inadequate just one day is, yet our mothers are very grateful for our show of love that day. So a journalistic bouquet to all moms, grand-moms, mothers-in-law, single or divorced moms, all kinds: we love you.
Now the sober part, which should speak for many moms and women of any state in life. A Cape May county women’s organization recently contacted clergy in these parts to inquire about its members’ finding that there is a silence in area pulpits about the God-given dignity of women. If ever there were a moral topic deserving religious scrutiny, it is this. An assumption, whether spoken or unspoken, seems to dominate a lot of thinking to the effect that males are superior. Because of it, women suffer, especially when circumstances of their lives have forced them to adopt this way of thinking of themselves.
In remote parts of the world there are 33 million chattel slaves, most of them women and children. This comes as news to most Americans. We tend to think the Emancipation Proclamation eliminated that a century and a half ago, when there were nowhere near as many slaves in the Confederacy. But today most of them are victims of the sex and pornography trade. We rely on the U.N. to conduct trade embargoes on offending nations for that kind of problem. It does, but for any of its life-saving work it depends on consensus among 200 nations.
Closer to home here, we have in front of our eyes the propagation of hate for women and the encouragement of anti-woman violence and disrespect. Of the above number, over a hundred thousand women are trafficked in the U.S. for the same purpose. All this is pumped like raw sewage into our homes by the frequenting of online porn. Some of the most respectable churchgoers have been known to seek this vicarious and in fact sad counterfeit version of the sexual enjoyment our Creator destined for married love and bliss, even motherhood.
Forgive my celibate naivete, but is sexual satisfaction and enjoyment so rare these days among married couples that such pathetic substitutes attract so many? What signal do we send our teens and pre-teens when they catch their father and or mother watching this material? Would we want to be known in our communities and parishes as voyeurs and peeping Toms?
Speaking of naïve, there is a sort of consenting-adults philosophy everywhere saying that promiscuity and pornography, fornication and adultery are permissible when the parties involved are not coerced. Therefore there should be no laws prohibiting or interfering with them, as there should be with, e.g., rape and battery. How childish this thinking is. Do we not document accurately what the last 50 years of the consenting Playboy mentality has gotten us: U.S. marriages lasting an average of seven years; 40 percent of U.S. females between 16 and 25 with some sexually communicable disease; their male partners likewise infected; 20 kinds of sexual diseases on the pandemic level; martial infidelity rampant with quack psychologists defending it; nearly the highest teen promiscuity, pregnancy, abortion and suicide rates in the world. This makes us happy?
There is enough ammunition here for the average preacher for a year of Sundays. It will not sit too well, however, when congregations are challenged from the pulpit. It might even make people formerly complaining about political or economic sermons to beg for them again, anything rather than embarrass them in front of their children, who are quite good at spotting hypocrisy.
Some churchgoers complained when a few brave preachers started on the eminently moral issue of racism back in the days of Selma and Birmingham. They begrudgingly gave in as they came to admit the humanity of racial minorities. They whined about anti-war sermons until they saw the emptiness of government arguments. Now they have to come to see the humanity and dignity of women, again with the help of courageous preaching in church. Maybe what it takes is more manly courage in the pulpit.
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