Traversing a mall with a friend recently, we spotted a booth selling some crap in a bag with pretty ribbons (women love that shit!) over which was a sign that read, “Obey Your Body”. Most people don’t even notice such things, but of course, my response to it was to excitedly exclaim “OK!” and make like I was squatting to take a dump, complete with sound effects. Then I suggested we stand in front of it and piss, and when anyone complained, we could just say, “hey, I’m obeying my body – my body said I needed to piss!”
At this point I really did have to stop my comedy routine as my friend is eight months pregnant and belly laughter can be uncomfortable for a pregnant woman, so in deference to that I gave it a rest. The point is, just imagine if the sign had said “Obey Your Husband”. It seems I can hardly go anywhere anymore without seeing the absurdity of people’s comfortable obliviousness to the demonic, while at the same time knowing that they would react to anything hinting at Jesus like a vampire reacts to holy water.
So why dance around the obvious – they react because their hearts contain the Truth, put there by God. The state they must be in, numbed to God and immersed in what has become essentially a culture of death – one that simultaneously denies/avoids death (“that’s put a bit of a damper on the evening hasn’t it”) yet daily sacrifices hundreds of unborn babies in the name of convenience – cannot allow the light in, because it is too painful and it burns.
Being in the world but not of the world is not an easy path. It is heartbreaking, exhausting, galling, horrifying. But the path of rejecting God, of being numb to evil to the point where soaking the land in the blood of the unborn is looked upon as a right, where hideous demonic concepts that hide behind fluffy, feel-good catch-phrases are treated as Gospel, is the utterly terrifying path chosen by the multitudes.
As the Chinese philosopher Mencius wrote around 300BC:
To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one’s life without knowing where it really leads, such is the behaviour of the multitudes.
In other words:
Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matthew 7:13 (RSV)
My entry into the Catholic Church almost a year ago came about through a conscious decision, not because of an exciting vision or epiphany. I have written some about this before (here and here amongst other places), but I want to get into something that ended up being slowly catalytic for me, as these are some of the issues that continue to be difficult for Catholics both new and old and so I find it ironic that these are the very issues that led me to my faith.
With regard to abortion, I never cared much for it but took the easy default stance that it didn’t much matter if someone else wanted one, but I doubted I would go that route (although I didn’t go so far as to say ‘never’, not wanting my resolve to be tested, although who I thought would test it remained unclear). I witnessed a couple of my friends having unwanted pregnancies in their early 20s that they decided to terminate. Although I never tried to counsel them one way or the other but supported them as human beings, I did not care for the whole mess and they both seemed changed by the experience (unsurprisingly) and in both cases, they just drifted out of my life not long afterwards. I’m not sure if that was me or them or a combination, but they probably sensed my sadness and disappointment at their choices. One I talked with briefly on facebook a year or so ago and she never had kids; the other I haven’t seen since shortly after her abortion.
It wasn’t until I was pregnant at 30 with my first child that I discovered the true horror of abortion. Some things you can’t un-see. That sealed it for me; abortion is evil, bad for women in spite of claims to the contrary, bad for society. As for the ‘birth control’ pill, which really ought to be called pregnancy prevention or something, I had not taken that in years having discovered that it sometimes works as an abortifacient and the idea that I may have lost my child(ren) that way, unknown, was off-putting to say the least. I had other reservations about tinkering with my body like that and hadn’t taken them for very long in the first place (perhaps three years total, on and off) but the abortifacient possibility was the final straw for me (and of course, after each of my children was born I was presented with a prescription for contraceptive pills, which I never filled).
Any woman who pays attention knows that there is just something missing when one is rendered infertile by an artificially mimicked state of dry pregnancy. Similarly with condoms, there is a disconnect, although condoms are possibly even worse given the reduction of sensation and need for artificial lubricant that many people experience with condom use (hence that it is still difficult to convince people to use them consistently). So I started looking at alternatives and learned about NFP through naturist hippy channels and that seemed much more amenable than all the artifice. No loss of feeling, no loss of the peak at ovulation, and learning to listen to my body rather than fighting it. This was good!
It made me wonder why this wasn’t taught anywhere that I knew of – that a woman can get to her 30s and be unaware of such basic things about her own body is a poor reflection on our culture. When a bf once said he wished I would just go on the pill, that hurt my heart. I realised that this wasn’t what love was about at all, that this wasn’t what caring for someone else meant. The selfishness encouraged by artificial contraception knows no bounds. There is something written on our hearts that came through clearly that day and now I know why it had always been thus. I thought maybe I was being overly sensitive until I discovered that all my ideas and conclusions on these issues had already been neatly laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When I discovered that, my eyes widened and I read whatever I could find on Catholic sexuality and discovered that there was little to disagree with.
So I continued, thinking if they were right about something so central, that it had taken me years to discover for myself, what else were they right about? Enough right answers might convince me, finally, that there really is a God, that all this stuff was true and that faith was possible. It took me the whole of the RCIA course to get there, to get to a point where I could trust enough to stand publicly and declare my allegiance to the Church of Rome. I had faith that I could be given faith, and trust that whatever I didn’t know yet would turn out to be right. Since that time some amazing things have happened that have shown me that He is not deaf to my cries, as I had felt so many times before.
I have since discovered how similar this is for a woman learning to trust a man. This is the same pattern that I have followed with 7man. He has said things that I have been uncertain about, not sure if it made sense or not, but being open to what he had to say and wanting to find the truth there. As with the faith journey, with each thing that turns out to be true, trust is built. Of course I am not saying 7man will be right about everything or that he doesn’t also trust my judgement, but that his thinking is sound, grounded in faith, and he is trustworthy enough for me to be able to give him the benefit of the doubt since it usually turns out he is right.
In this case, I still have influence when I think he is veering off course and I know that he takes me seriously if I do voice concerns in that regard, as well as if I ask questions when I think he may have missed something; whereas with God, I have to listen and watch, to see how He corrects my course. 7man is patient and invites me to talk about my doubts and fears, even when I have no particular concerns. The exchange of communication allows us to understand things together that we would not understand separately, but my trust in him and his gentle patience are essential to establishing a permanent relationship.
The modern woman has a confluence of experiences that are unique in the history of civilization. These things have converged into a potent guilt stew for the Christian woman. The behavior of Christian women (especially in their 20s) is not appreciably different than secular women in matters of promiscuity, abortion and use of artificial birth control. Also there are many women with colored pasts that get married and come to identify themselves as Christians.
Often these women become Christian out of guilt and find the forgiveness message of Christianity assuages their past shames. While this may be true, the temporal aspect of past actions is not eliminated. It is often puzzling why many Christian women are so judgmental and vehement on male sexuality given their sordid pasts and the forgiveness message they proclaim.
The tendency of women to project their guilt onto others is not appreciably different in a Christian woman. In fact, the displacement of blame onto men is actively supported by most churches. Yet the secret sins of women and the ongoing effects are never talked about; after all, she is a child of God and forgiven. Nevertheless, her secret remains and continues to fester occasionally within her or weigh upon her mind when such a woman recalls the child that was aborted in her wanton days.
This is the basis for the irrational blaming of porn, the false accusations and the viciousness that comes out in a divorce. Many of these women are so guilt-ridden that they project it upon their ex-husband and he must be shown to be pure evil. She is a victim of herself, but cannot accept that, yet since she is a victim she is entitled to everything she can extract from him. She will double down again and again and her intense emotional projection will destroy herself, him and the children while bringing financial ruin, all because of the intense shame and guilt which she cannot escape.
Is this an exaggeration? Take 90 seconds and listen to what Archbishop Fulton Sheen says. Whether you are Catholic, Protestant or agnostic, there is something to be learned here. This is not to evangelize you but to reveal an aspect of human behavior (specifically of women). My application of this wisdom is a bit different than in the video.
This video will start at 1:40 and you should watch until 3:10
Men should remember that when a woman’s reaction to something is out of all proportion to the stimulus, there is something deeper that is troubling her. We have all observed the nasty accusations and blaming of men for porn, “taking advantage of women” thereby turning them into sluts, rape, abuse, or all manner of things. There is an ever present dark nature in women to control male sexuality and this was the Christian woman’s impetus behind prostitution elimination, circumcision advocacy, and the temperance movement of the past 100 or so years.
Do not pay attention to what she says, pay attention to why she says it. Her reaction is based on the fear of male sexuality and the guilt she carries within herself. Recently I fisked the comments of a Catholic woman. Her accusations and projections where all out of proportion to the stimulus. In fact, the stimulus was just a personalization of something not even directed at her. It is this kind of behavoir in a woman (or a man) that indicates a secret guilt, which is actively displaced by an exaggerated projection and accusation of sins onto another, typically men. This is deep shame and insecurity.
The rationalization hamster takes on a very important role in women that have had abortions. Remember the most critical purpose of this critter is to justify, forget, minimize, or excuse decisions and events after the fact. The critter exists to preserve the self-image of the host.
Can a woman with a sordid past be redeemed? Pechorin gives a qualified YES. While he talks about promiscuity, this post is about abortion. Throughout history women have exhibited a remarkable ability to overcome the trauma of rape. Yet in our society the definition of rape has been expanded so that the word is almost meaningless. Any sexual encounter a woman later regrets can be retroactively rationalized into rape. Rape victims gets so much sympathy that they are essentially rewarded for the allegation. Rape is seen as the absolute worst thing that can happen to a woman. IT IS NOT! An actual rape is out of a woman’s control. She may have acted suggestively or dressed seductively but a brutal rape is still out of her control (not that some prudence would not have been a good idea).
But abortion is an act of will by a woman. ABORTION IS THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO A WOMAN! She willingly parts her legs while a human life is sucked out of her. The sound of the vacuum machine will play in her ears for years. She will think about her potential child, the child that was killed, often when she sees children playing or often when she later interacts with her living children. The abortion is her secret and she will not tell anyone because of the deep shame that she participated in killing a human life.
She will selfishly guard her living children and will project the blame onto men; the man that knocked her up, the doctor that performed the abortion, all men and her subsequent husband.
These emotions will fester in her and her sorrow and contempt for men will often eventually lead to a divorce. In order to keep her secret, she will vent her venom on the husband she is divorcing by making false allegations. She will protect the lives of her living children by doing whatever it takes to keep control and custody from a “bad” ex-husband. This may mean accusing him of all kinds of domestic abuse, creating an environment of fear, sexual depravity, marital rape, or sexual abuse of the children. She believes that since he is a man, he is guilty of murder. Her fear is real, but it is self-inflicted and has grown due to keeping her secret.
Now her children and her ex-husband are the victims. She will raise fatherless children and financially and mentally destroy her ex-husband all because she cannot face the fact that she was an accomplice to killing a defenceless human baby.
You may think this is an exaggeration, but think about the millions of babies that have been aborted and the millions of women that have aborted their babies. As a society we do not realize the long standing consequences of this. We do realize the PTSD that soldiers have after witnessing and killing others in war, but we deny there is any similar trauma in a woman that aborted her child. How silly and naive. Could this be another reason for Doped Up Women?
When you hear the extreme divorce custody battle stories, THINK. If the woman’s actions are extreme, it is entirely likely that there is an abortion secret in her past.
The women that have had abortions should seek help through Rachel’s Vineyard or other places. She can find emotional healing and peace. If she keeps the secret, it will eventually destroy her, the lives of her children and anyone that gets close to her. This is a hidden cause in many divorces.
Other links: Project Rachel Silent No More In the Wake of Choice – A flim that interviews several women that have had abortions. They are speaking out and are not keeping their secret. They are accepted and have found peace and healing (but some sorrow will always remain).
CL
7man
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