University and Women: A Fair Combination?

Posted: 21 March 2012

A new university year has just begun and thousands of fresh faces are sitting in lecture halls being prepared to one day step into the world and make their mark in their chosen career path. The necessity of the journey through university and into a well paid career is almost an unspoken law. Yet I wonder if we are placing young people, especially young women, into what will one day be a difficult position that compromises their potential for genuine happiness.

From their earliest years children hear the mantra that men and women are equal, and while they are certainly equal in dignity they are not equal in ability. I do not mean that one sex has more ability than the other; I mean that each sex has a different ability, each sex has different strengths. The complementarity of the sexes is the reason that the natural family of father, mother and children is the best model; it is far better to have a loving father and a loving mother than to have two loving mothers or two loving fathers. However preferring to ignore all evidence to the contrary and in the push to describe gender as no more than a social construct, society tells us that men and women must achieve the same level in all things. If men can drive a tractor, women must be able to drive a tractor; if men can run a corporation, women must be able to run a corporation. It seems to focus though on women being able to achieve in traditionally male roles, not the other way around.

And so with this as the foundation, young women, believing that their happiness is to be found in a successful career path, dedicate some of the best years of their lives to studying law, business and economics. They do well (which is no surprise) and they move out into the workforce with a massive potential to achieve anything they set their sights on.

But then as they begin to make real progress in their field, a new challenge approaches…the call to marriage and family. These very talented women were told to make something of themselves through their chosen career path; they have sacrificed and worked as hard, if not harder, than their male counterparts. In all the talk about being whatever you want to be, no one made much mention of the distinct and unique role of motherhood. Certainly these women sense the importance of raising their children and being a good wife and mother, but they have also invested all their energy (and a great deal of their money) becoming highly educated and a genuine asset to their particular industry.

One recent article attempted to explain why it was that so few women were making it into senior executive positions. With the average career spanning thirty or so years, the article found that “five years of ‘career interruption’ due to family responsibilities [i.e. having children] should hardly be a disqualifying penalty”. And this idea demonstrates the actual problem; the task of full time mothering can supposedly be over within a few short years allowing the woman to get back to her career with minimal disruption.

There will be some that will disagree with me citing themselves or women they know as fine examples of balancing a successful career and a happy family all at the same time. My point however is not to make a statement about any particular situation but rather to question the wisdom of a society that pushes its women into an academic and career driven world when at some point many will be asked to make a choice to leave it or attempt some sort of balancing act between raising a family and raising the company profit margin.

While true feminism seeks to uphold the dignity of women and their particular gifts, our secular Western society parades around a false feminism. It is one that makes little girls think they have to be better than boys and women think they need to achieve in all the same fields as men. The truth is that men are not women and women are not men. A successful life is not necessarily one that ‘juggles’ between family and career. Motherhood is a respectable and vital role that should not be seen as an afterthought that can automatically attach itself onto a career. Society would do well to remind its young women of bigger realities rather than pushing them to be like men in all that they do.

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The Stations of the Cross and the Marital Bed

Posted: 11 March 2012

This Lent, as you pray the Stations of the Cross and recall the Passion and Death of the Lord, you might add to your reflections the connection between Christ’s act of love for his bride the Church and the love of a husband and wife. The great spiritual writers have long spoken about the comparison between the Cross and the Marital Bed but in bringing it to mind again we can undergo a renewed appreciation of these two great life-giving realities.

The 10th Station recalls that after the arduous walk to Calvary, Christ is stripped of his garments. It is not often that one finds a Crucifix in which the Saviour is completely naked; we usually leave a conveniently-placed loin cloth to protect our somewhat prudish sensibilities. Let us not be confused though, Our Lord was stripped of all his garments; he hung upon the wood of the cross in the same way that he came into this world, naked. At Christmas we often speak about the humility and simplicity of the baby Jesus, but in this season we would do well to recall the utter humility which was forced upon the man Christ as he lay before his tormentors with nothing between him and them. This nakedness is not only a historical fact though. The first Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he understood he was naked; his disobedience brought forth death and the feeling that his nakedness was shameful. Christ, the second Adam, would return to the tree once again, but in his nakedness he would bring forth life and redeem mankind from the curse that had been laid upon him through Original Sin. Is it not also in nakedness that a husband and wife continue to this day to overcome the sin of our first parents? Where but in the marital embrace can a man and woman experience that pure and beautiful gaze which Adam and Eve knew every day before the fall? It is in their nakedness that man and woman approach the marital bed to make of themselves a gift in the way that Christ makes himself a gift to his bride.

The 11th Station sees the Lord nailed to the Cross. We picture him writhing in agony as the long cold nails penetrate his flesh. Yet he freely took up the cross and all that it would entail. In this scene, Christ is made one with that piece of wood as much as a person could be. It is through this free and total union that life will come forth for the entire world. Christ did not go to the cross and withhold anything. He is the final lamb of sacrifice. And here too, can we not make a genuine analogy between Christ upon the marital bed of the cross and a husband and wife joined in union upon theirs? In this most intimate embrace the man and the woman are called to give completely of themselves, they share their whole bodies, including the intimate gift of their fertility, with each other and they become truly one flesh.

The 12th Station announces Christ’s death on the Cross. His last words were “It is consummated”. Everything that the life of Christ had undertaken was sealed in the act of the cross; without his death his life would have been empty. Similarly it is in the act of union between a husband and wife that their marriage is made complete. Like a wax seal pressed upon an envelope, the sexual union seals the vows made at the altar. Those vows were to love with a love that will ever be free, total, faithful and fruitful. These are the qualities of love because these are the qualities of God’s love; these are the qualities of Christ’s love from the cross. Our Lord went to his death freely; he gave himself totally to his bride to the extent that out flowed blood and water; he is every faithful to the Church and from that faithfulness flows the sacramental life. And just as Christ’s death on cross is renewed at every Mass, the wedding vows between husband and wife are renewed each time they consummate their marriage.

As we then reflect upon the Stations of the Cross this Lent, let us not only see in them a tale of woe from 2000 years ago, but rather the rich gift that they are to all people, and especially the important example they leave each married couple of the model and pattern for their own lives as an imitation of the ultimate act of love on the cross.

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