Childless cat ladies and Catholic-school nuns

I wonder if JD Vance thinks about what he says before he opens his mouth. In that respect, he and Trump complement each other. Neither of them really thinks before he speaks. That was a golden rule in my house growing up--think before you speak. Another rule was--if  you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Both Vance and Trump could benefit from some introspection and reflection before they open their loud-mouthed traps. 

Much has been made of Vance's comments about childless cat ladies running the country. My first thought after his utterance was--WHO? Who is he referring to? Politicians? Teachers? Family members? Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, both powerful politicians, have children. Likewise Kathy Hochul, governor of New York State. In 2023, there were about 30% women in Congress; the overwhelming majority of Congressmen are men. Men run the USA, and that's true in pretty much any area of society you choose to look at. It's changed somewhat in scientific research and in the medical health field, thank God. So who is Vance referring to? Teachers? Grammar schools these days have many female lay teachers. Vance didn't grow up Catholic; he converted to Catholicism as an adult, so I doubt he meant Catholic school nuns, but in the rest of my post, I'll focus on them. 

If Vance had grown up Catholic, he'd probably have attended a Catholic grammar school, which in my day was governed by nuns (it didn't matter if they were Carmelite, Dominican, or Sisters of Mercy nuns). They ran the schools, often with an iron hand. They were disciplinarians, but also remarkably educated women, many with masters and doctoral degrees, who imparted their love of knowledge to us, or at least to those of us who were interested in gaining an education. I remember my senior year high school advanced biology teacher--Sister Margaret Costa. She is directly responsible for my choosing to major in biology in college, after having worked independently in her lab for one year, studying fruit fly genetics, learning how calculate chromosome loci, and studying population genetics and evolution. She provided instruction and the necessary supplies, and then left us on our own to get the intended results. If you made a mistake, you could start your experiment over, as long as there was enough time to do so. If you made a mistake, you learned from it. She didn't chastise us for making mistakes. And that's important, because in laboratory work, you make mistakes. You learn from them and you can start over. That was high school. In grammar school, girls were encouraged to open their mouths, to answer questions, to debate, to speak in front of the class. The female lay teachers were nowhere near as interesting as the childless nuns. Many of the nuns seemed to love children, in contrast to the female lay teachers, who were often uncaring and sometimes even mean. And that brings me back to childless cat ladies. I don't know if the nuns kept cats in their convents. If they did, I'm sure the cats had wonderful and pampered lives, with plenty of affection and love. 

Vance's assumption is that if you are childless, you don't understand family values or what children need, and that your childlessness makes you self-focused and selfish. He couldn't be more wrong. Just because you are childless does not mean you cannot or do not love children. It does not mean you cannot take care of children. It does not mean you don't value family life. I could not have my own children due to health problems when I was younger. But I have always enjoyed being around children. When I was a teenager, I worked at a daycare center for one summer, and loved it. I loved being around the kids, and several of them came to love me, one in particular. I will never forget him--Butch--who sought me out constantly so that he could sit in my lap. He felt protected by me, and of course when I was a teenager, I didn't understand that. I just knew that I felt great affection for him. He was an adopted child who later ended up on the wrong road and who died young. My heart twists with sadness when I remember him as a six-year old. When I was twelve years old, I started babysitting for the children in my neighborhood, and enjoyed that as well. And now I have a step-granddaughter whom I love. So it hurts when people say that childless women don't know how to raise children or how to care for them, or that they are selfish and not interested in promoting family values. It's simply not true. The nuns were childless (by choice of vocation) and were wonderful women, most of whom were good with children. If Vance has a problem with women like the nuns 'running the country' and being childless, he should push for changes in his church that allow priests and/or nuns to choose their vocation and to marry. But he won't. 

One last point. Many women with children have done and are doing lousy jobs of raising them, usually because if they are married, they are married to men who are not committed to family life or their wives. The wives take out their frustrations on their children. I saw a lot of this when I was growing up in my neighborhood. Men who were fooling around on the side and barely saw their children because of their so-called important careers. Men who drank and abused their wives and children. Are these family values? Are you automatically enrolled in the 'family values' program simply because you have children? You are not. You shouldn't have children for the sake of having children or because peer pressure around you forces you to have children, or because your parents and siblings nag you to have children. You should have children because you are in a committed relationship, where both parties love children and put their interests ahead of their own. You should have children because you enjoy family life. And family life is often messy and unpredictable. I applaud many younger men who have prioritized family life at the expense of their careers. Vance should focus more on changing federal policies to make it easier for men to make these choices, such that women could again begin to rely on the men in their lives when children come along. As it is now, I don't see how high-powered Wall Street careers are conducive to anything but greed and more greed. They are certainly not conducive to family life. I always remember my brother, God rest his soul, who was fired from one of his Wall Street jobs because he wanted to spend more time with his children. He got his wish at the expense of his health and eventually his life. He never regretted his choice, and I got a chance to see how much he loved his kids. It's not just women who can love and take care of their children; men too do a great job too of raising children. Why don't we as a nation make it easier for both men and women to raise children? Why focus only on childless women? Why stigmatize a group in this way? Why is there so much unkindness and ignorance in politics, society, and the world? 

It never ends--now the Pope says that nuns were sexually abused by priests and bishops

How deep does the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church go? Very deep, as it turns out. It seems that every time I turn around, there is a new allegation of abuse. Now the Pope has acknowledged that nuns have been sexually abused by priests and bishops:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/world/europe/pope-nuns-sexual-abuse.html . I didn't see the statistics presented anywhere, but I'm sure they will be available shortly. It wouldn't even matter to me at this point what the actual numbers are. What appalls me is how the Church initially responded to the victims--by ignoring them, by supporting the abusers, or by sweeping all of it under the rug to be dealt with at a later time, or never dealt with. The latter was the modus operandi until the past few years when the outing of criminal priests became a reality and forced the Church's hand. One wonders if they ever would have dealt with the sexual abuse scandals had they not been forced to.

I am disgusted by the entire business and appalled by the hypocrisy. Here we grew up with all these strict ridiculous rules regarding sex--no premarital sexual activity short of intercourse, no intercourse, and no birth control. All were grievous sins. That's what we were told. Even married couples were made to feel that practicing birth control put their souls at risk. The truth is that most lay Catholics behave much better than many of the priests who have been preaching to them all these years. We grew up with the fire and brimstone sermons. We feared going to confession, feared being reamed out, but if you ask me, our sins pale in comparison to the sins of the sexual abusers, the pedophiles, and the rapists (all criminals) that were and are found in the Catholic clergy. I saw a comment in the New York Times to the above article that said, and I quote "The Pope does not seem to understand that the Church is burning to the ground. The credibility of the Pope's statements and the Church's actions are questionable." I agree with the commenter; it scares me that we may be living in a time where all the things that we took for granted were good and true, are in reality, quite the opposite, and are now being exposed for the shams they actually are. The question is--what remains when the dust and ash settle--when the fire is over. That's what scares me. I no longer believe that the Church is the road to heaven. I know that it is possible to honor Christ without having to believe that. Do I still go to Church? Yes, I do--because I like the celebration of the mass and that one hour a week to reflect on something other than the rampant materialism that characterizes the world. But the part of me that doubts, the part that is confused, the part that is furious--all those parts are growing stronger by the day. I don't know if I will be able to contain them. I am no longer patient inside. I would prefer a quiet mass without sermons. Sometimes I sit in the pew and listen to yet another uninspired irrelevant sermon and I feel like standing up and yelling--talk about the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, tell us what you are doing about it, condemn it and the perpetrators, talk about the misuse of power, the abuse of children and women. Talk about the inequity between men and women, talk about the patriarchies that have ruined the lives of women and children, talk about the refusal of the Church to take women seriously and to allow them to become priests, talk about spousal abuse (physical, emotional, psychological), talk about the brutality of the messages that many of us grew up with. But I don't think I will hear any of those sermons in my lifetime. So much of our childhood was about fear of authority, about instilling compliance in us, about having absolute power over us. I no longer have that fear, I am no longer compliant, and no one has absolute power over me. Those days are long gone. I rely rather on the fact that if God made us all in his/her image and likeness, that we were given a powerful brain by that same God, a god-like brain, that God intended for us to use wisely, humbly and gratefully. I for one, have chosen to use it in those ways.