The Catholic Spirit: Religious freedom and the equality of women

There is an untruth circulating rather widely in the public square these days — and gaining speed. We need to derail it. The falsehood that is spreading is that somehow, because the church refuses to conform to the default position of practically everyone in contemporary society — that sexual promiscuity is the only authentic sign-post of human freedom — that she, the church, is waging a war on women.

The evidence of such a “war,” it is said, is found in the fact that the church refuses to waver in her teaching that human fertility is not a disease state, that the use of birth control and abortifacients compromises the sacred nature of the sexual act, and that abortion — portrayed since 1973 as the linchpin of a woman’s right to choose the kind of life she wants for herself — takes the life of an actual human person and is therefore akin to murder.

And so, the argument goes, the church’s insistence that the HHS mandate poses a serious threat to religious freedom is a position in direct conflict with the hard won right of women to use any means necessary to avoid unwanted pregnancies, the signature freedom of the so-called women’s movement.

From the ‘women’s movement’ to today

Over the last 50 years, this distorted view of what constitutes human freedom has spread everywhere in our society. It has infiltrated our families, our schools and the media. It has become an unspoken assumption in public discourse and a premise of our legal system.

In the meantime, our children are being told they are constitutionally unable to govern themselves, that they are at the mercy of bodily desires that cannot be refused and that therefore the only “choice” they have is to use artificial means — often the cause of disease states themselves — in order to avoid the natural consequences of an act undertaken without thinking about it.

Only animals have sex without thinking about it.
continue at The Catholic Spirit

great article, and a great paper!

HT BBach

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