In late 19th century America, the cultural dialogue was about whether women should have the vote and independent legal status. The ability to own property and manage their finances independent of their fathers or husbands.
After that, it was whether women should be able to function in society outside of the family. Going unaccompanied in the public forum. Being independently employed. Marriage to a partner of her own choosing. Participating in higher education.
It wasn't until the 1920s that reproductive rights became an issue. Condoms had been introduced to American society by the military in World War I, because of the high rates of venereal disease among troops frequenting prostitutes. Birth control devices, for their own sake, were not legal in any form in this country until 1936 and then only for married women, with a doctors prescription. It would be decades yet before birth control would be freely available to all. Margaret Sanger and her physican husband were outlaws.
Fundamentalist Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in America, most particularly, have actively opposed every single effort by women to get out from under the subjugation imposed upon them by society, from the discretionary beating of women within the family to the active role of women in the Church hierarchy. The Church is inflexible but not stupid. They never admit defeat but they do move on.
In the 1950s, after divorce had become a common fixture of American Family life, it was a battleground the church fought upon. In the 1960's, when huge Catholic families became an anomaly instead of the rule, they vigorously opposed birth control. In the 1970s, as Catholic families stopped sending their young boys off to catechism, parochial schools, and into service as alter boys, in recognition of a growing culture of homosexual pedophilia in the priesthood, the church refused to admit there was a problem and railed instead against permissive parenting.
By the 1980s, the church was too busy maintaining its image of times past to notice that young Catholic families, having developed cultural and sexual lives independent of the church were reclaiming the local churches and schools for themselves, walling the priests off in their rectories and allowing them out only for ceremonial purposes. Parents were present in the schoolyards and classrooms at all times, to protect their young and began to dictate curriculum and school rules. Church activities and charities were planned, scheduled and administered according to the direction of the laity. Nobody consulted the priests. Not for leadership, spiritual or otherwise. Not for personal counselling or lifestyle advice. It was then that children of the previous generation came out and began to tell their stories of abuse. As the legal and moral judgements against the Church began to pile up, the clergy was driven further out of any meaningful contribution to mainstream life in America. Nuns under the age of eighty have almost completely disappeared from the American scene as women distance themselves from a Church that finds no value in them. Priests are far fewer and rarely share the values of the communities they serve, as families encourage their brightest sons to find secular vocations.
While they haven't changed their official stance on anything, the Church doesn't talk much about premarital sex, divorce, or birth control anymore. They are decreasingly active against abortion, the law of the land now for thirty five years. They are focusing on euthanasia and gay marriage. These are not issues many of the laity expend much energy on, especially those engaged in increasingly long, active, heterosexual lives.
The Church will soon have to come up with something better than this. They might want to think about how the clergy can re enter the daily lives of the Catholic community in a meaningful way, rather than sit alone in their rectories.
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