{"id":1818,"date":"2006-05-21T21:13:43","date_gmt":"2006-05-21T21:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/mail-bag.html"},"modified":"2006-05-21T21:13:43","modified_gmt":"2006-05-21T21:13:43","slug":"mail-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/mail-bag.html","title":{"rendered":"Mail bag"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I am curious as to why a woman would have such misogynist attitudes toward women and marriage. I speak of you<\/strong>. Do you consider yourself defiled? Would sexual union with you be  a defiling act? You will of course deny that you have any such thoughts, feelings, or motives in writing what you have written. Yet, you were raised Catholic and have deeply imbibed the patriarchal anti-female bias and agenda of the Catholic church. You are so deeply steeped in it you are unable to see it. I know that when you were first confronted with the idea of Jesus being married and having sex with a woman your reaction was "Icky!"<\/p>\n

The NT does not tell us that Jesus blew his nose, defecated, urinated, sneezed, coughed, picked his nose, or burped. Why? These are universal to the human condition, hence there is no point in mentioning them. If you were educated about first century Jewish culture and religion (Surprise! Jesus was a Jew, not a Catholic!) you would know that being married was a universal part of the Jewish experience, and hence you would understand the reason for the silence on his marital status.<\/p>\n

You most likely already do know this, but your Catholic programming has locked you into a knee-jerk response to these facts. Please do not claim that the"Church Fathers are not anti-woman!" I have read most of the writings of the Fathers up to Augustine in the Western Fathers, and they are indeed misogynists. In your own subconscious you have imbibed these ideas, become steeped in these ideas and attitudes, that women are defiled, sinful, the source of human sin (Which in the interpretation of Catholicism, "original sin" is sexual union).<\/p>\n

Amy, you are a Divine Vessel! Marriage is GOOD! Women are GOOD! People are basically GOOD! The Western Church, so corrupted by the mental and spiritual ills of Augustine, sees people as basically bad. That’s tragic, it really is. <\/p>\n

You believe that for God Incarnate to have been married, to have had sexual union with a woman, would have defiled him. Deny it all you like, you and I know better about you. You are a Roman Catholic and cannot help but feel this way. If you would like help in breaking free of the ugly Augustinian bonds that shackle your mind and spirit, I can help.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am curious as to why a woman would have such misogynist attitudes toward women and marriage. I speak of you. Do you consider yourself defiled? Would sexual union with you be  a defiling act? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}