timeimmortal

Upwards of 70% of young people (presumably in Britain, where the survey evidently took place) — including co-habiting couples — still want to/plan to get married.

The aspiration to walk down the aisle to marry the man or woman of one’s dreams continues to be a very common one, even though the growing number of cohabiting couples may seem to prove the contrary.

Evidence of support for commitment came in a book recently published by the London-based Institute for the Study of Civil Society. “Second Thoughts on the Family,” by Anastasia de Waal, compiles information taken from a specially commissioned opinion poll, plus interviews with 27 “opinion makers.”

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The evidence found in the institute’s studies show that the real divide over the family today is one of economic class, due to strains that result in much higher rates of cohabitation and divorce for lower income families.

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In the book’s summary of the findings, de Waal cites data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a survey that examined the situations of families that began family life around the year 2000. The study found that:

– Among those who were single parents at the time of their child’s birth, 28% had no educational qualifications. For those who were cohabiting the level was 13%, while for those who were married just 8% had no qualifications.

– By contrast, 43% of mothers who were married at the time of their child’s birth had the highest level of educational qualifications. Among those cohabiting this fell to 24%, and among single parents it was only 10%.

– At the time of birth 68% of married parents lived in economically advantaged areas, while this was true for 56% of cohabiting couples and only 35% of single parents.

Faced with this sort of information, de Waal maintains that all parties on the political spectrum should be concerned about family structures and marriage. The combination of lower marital rates in low income areas, higher divorce rates and more single-parent families among the less well-off are strongly connected to structural poverty.

I suppose the question has to be asked: is poverty the causative force here, or the result? Is, say, the lack of educational qualifications among unmarried mothers, as compared to married mothers, a result of living in poverty…or is the poverty itself a result of poor life choices, including economic and sexual irresponsibility?

The Book of Numbers immediately follows the Book of Leviticus in the canon of Scripture, and in a way could be considered an extension of Leviticus. Almost all of Leviticus is comprised of Moses giving the law to the people, and Numbers consists in large part of Moses giving yet more ordinances for the people to observe. And much like Leviticus, the subject matter covered in each successive chapter of Numbers shifts and changes according to no discernable pattern, covering issues pertaining to all aspects of life.

A while ago, Brant Pitre pointed out a series of vows detailed in Numbers 30, which pertain to different categories of women within the population.

Numbers 30 begins with a discussion of vows which can be taken by an unmarried woman:

[3] Or when a woman vows a vow to the LORD, and binds herself by a pledge, while within her father’s house, in her youth,
[4] and her father hears of her vow and of her pledge by which she has bound herself, and says nothing to her; then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand.
[5] But if her father expresses disapproval to her on the day that he hears of it, no vow of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself, shall stand; and the LORD will forgive her, because her father opposed her.

Here, the vow hinges on the matter of whether the father of the woman hears the vow; unless he objects, his consent is implied and assumed, and every pledge the woman has made is binding on her in the eyes of the Lord. It should also be noted that the father is only afforded a limited window of response; if he has an objection to any vow made by his daughter, he must respond and object to it within the same day it comes to his attention.

Moving a bit further into Numbers 30, though, we come upon vows which can be taken by married women:

[6] And if she is married to a husband, while under her vows or any thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself,
[7] and her husband hears of it, and says nothing to her on the day that he hears; then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand.
[8] But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he expresses disapproval, then he shall make void her vow which was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips, by which she bound herself; and the LORD will forgive her.

Two things have shifted here. First, the scope of the woman’s utterance has been expanded — whereas the young, unmarried woman’s vows were what were binding, the married woman’s vows and careless utterances are both binding, if her husband does not object. And that is the second thing which has changed: it is not the role of her father to object any longer; her husband must do so. The terms of his objection, and its consequences, remain the same.

It is probable that the reason that young, unmarried women are not bound by careless utterances, whereas married women are bound thusly, is intended by the author and the Spirit to denote the shift in maturity between the young woman still living with her family and the older woman who has entered into marriage.

A third category of vows is found as we continue reading Numbers 30. In this case, the vows are those which can be taken my a widowed or divorced woman:

[9] But any vow of a widow or of a divorced woman, anything by which she has bound herself, shall stand against her.
[10] And if she vowed in her husband’s house, or bound herself by a pledge with an oath,
[11] and her husband heard of it, and said nothing to her, and did not oppose her; then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she bound herself shall stand.
[12] But if her husband makes them null and void on the day that he hears them, then whatever proceeds out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning her pledge of herself, shall not stand: her husband has made them void, and the LORD will forgive her.

This ordinance confirms the perpetuity of a woman’s vows; if her husband had previously consented to a vow she had made, then that consent — and, by extension, the vow — extends past the time when the husband has died or sought a divorce. The vow is binding on the woman in the eyes of the Lord. Only her husband may overturn the vow, and then only within a limited time period; if the vow was allowed to stand until such time as the husband passed away or left, then the vow would remain binding, in the Lord, even after the departure of the husband.

In other words, the vow would be perpetual.

Now, the Reader should note that in all these cases, the vows are of a general nature. Fortunately, reading still further in Numbers 30, we are given some context regarding the types of vow each category of woman might make.

[13] Any vow and any binding oath to afflict herself, her husband may establish, or her husband may make void.
[14] But if her husband says nothing to her from day to day, then he establishes all her vows, or all her pledges, that are upon her; he has established them, because he said nothing to her on the day that he heard of them.
[15] But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them, then he shall bear her iniquity.

Here we see all the previous ordinances given context; these vows concern, principally, a woman’s oath to “afflict herself”, whether as an unmarried woman, a married woman, or a widow. Citing Jacob Milgrom, a preeminent Torah scholar, Brant Pitre notes that the idea of self-affliction “was interpreted by ancient Jews as referring to fasting and refraining from sexual intercourse. Similar terminology is used in descriptions of the Day of Atonement, when Jews were expected to fast and refrain from sexual intercourse (see Milgrom, Harper Collins Study Bible n. Lev 16:29; citing Targum Pseudo-Jonthan; cf. also Exod 19:15). Once this terminology is clear, the whole chapter makes sense. It is discussion three kinds of vows:

1. Vows of sexual abstinence taken by a young, unmarried woman.
2. Vows of sexual abstinence taken by a married woman.
3. Vows of sexual abstinence taken by a widow or divorced woman.

In all three cases, the binding nature of the vow is dependant on whether the male party (whether father or husband), upon hearing of the vow, said nothing and in thereby consented to it. In each case, if he heard the vow and accepted it, the vow is perpetually binding.”

And notice something else, O Reader. Numbers 30:15 is the odd note on which the giving of these vow-related ordinances ends, and it provides a final measure of permanence to the vows. All through the ordinances pertaining to the vows in Numbers 30, it is noted that the responsible man — the woman’s father or husband, depending on circumstance — has only a day in which to object to the vow. If he does not, the Lord considers the vow binding, and in his silence the responsible man gives his assent to the vow made by the woman to “afflict herself.”

Numbers 30:13-14 does technically give the responsible male the option of wiping away a previously-made vow, or at least would seem so to do. However, Numbers 30:15 sounds the final note on the matter, by noting that if the husband of a woman should compel her to abandon a previously made vow which, according to the law, became binding in the eyes of the Lord, he shall bear her iniquity. The sin of breaking a vow with the Lord, in other words, would fall not on the woman, but on the man who compelled the breakage.

And as Pitre notes, “Matthew’s Gospel tells us: Joseph was a “righteous man” (Matt 1:19), and obedient to Torah. If Mary took a vow of sexual abstinence — and her words “How can this be, since I know not man?” in Luke are evidence that she did (Luke 1:34) — and if Joseph accepted this vow at the time of their wedding, then he would have been bound by Mosaic Law to honor her vow of sexual abstinence under the penalty of sin.”

A common objection to Mary’s perpetual virginity that I have heard, although not recently, is simple disbelief that a Jewish woman living 2,000 years ago would have been able to remain celibate even in a marriage; what husband would allow it? And yet, the idea of a consecrated virgin was not alien to the ancient world (both in Hebrew religious tradition and in several pagan Religions as well). Moreover, in the New Testament, Paul offers several teachings on the matter of celibacy and abstinence (c.f. 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Timothy 4) — clearly, even over two millennia ago, there was ample room in religious traditions for women to elect to remain virginal all their days, and for husbands to accept that reality.

Possible Objection #2: could the vows referred to have been temporary in nature? Nothing in the text of Numbers 30 specifically states that they are perpetual.

Response to Objection #2: As Pitre notes, one cannot deny “that the text could be applied to temporary vows, but there are two things that make me think the primary context is permanent vows…First, what meaning would a temporary vow of sexual abstinence have for an unmarried virgin in her father’s house?!! This is the first category, and as far as I can see it must primarily refer to a permanent vow of abstinence, of which the father approves. To suggest otherwise would mean that Numbers envisions the unmarried woman having sexual relations outside of marriage. This makes no sense…Second, what meaning would a temporary vow of abstinence have for a widow? If she was taking a vow of temporary abstinence for sexual relations with her husband, she would obviously be automatically be released from the vow by his death!

If a permanent vow of sexual abstinence is in view in both these cases, it makes sense to me to suggest that the primary meaning of the third category is the same: a permanent vow of sexual abstinence. In Mary’s case, it is only a permanent vow that explains her response to Gabriel while she is betrothed to Joseph: “How shall this be, since I know not man” (Luke 1:34; present tense).”

At any rate, as the Reader can see, we are verging into New Testament territory here. Coming up next we will take a closer look at Mary, especially as related to us by Luke, and also at Joseph.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

John C. Wright has the details, linking to an article at First Things by Mary Eberstadt that looks at modern evidence, gleaned from sociological and sociobiological research and studies concerning the course and state of society, which demonstrates that the predictions of Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical have all come true.

Unfortunately.

Let’s begin by meditating upon what might be called the first of the secular ironies now evident: Humanae Vitae’s specific predictions about what the world would look like if artificial contraception became widespread. The encyclical warned of four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.

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Consider, as Wilcox does, the Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof. In a well-known 1996 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Akerlof explained in the language of modern economics why the sexual revolution — contrary to common prediction, especially prediction by those in and out of the Church who wanted the teaching on birth control changed — had led to an increase in both illegitimacy and abortion. In another work published in the Economic Journal ten years ago, he traced the empirical connections between the decrease in marriage and married fatherhood for men — both clear consequences of the contraceptive revolution — and the simultaneous increase in behaviors to which single men appear more prone: substance abuse, incarceration, and arrests, to name just three.

Along the way, Akerlof found a strong connection between the diminishment of marriage on the one hand and the rise in poverty and social pathology on the other. He explained his findings in nontechnical terms in Slate magazine: “Although doubt will always remain about what causes a change in social custom, the technology-shock theory does fit the facts. The new reproductive technology was adopted quickly, and on a massive scale. Marital and fertility patterns changed with similar drama, at about the same time.”

To these examples of secular social science confirming what Catholic thinkers had predicted, one might add many more demonstrating the negative effects on children and society. The groundbreaking work that Daniel Patrick Moynihan did in 1965, on the black family, is an example — along with the critical research of psychologist Judith Wallerstein over several decades on the impact of divorce on children; Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s well-known work on the outcomes of single parenthood for children; Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur’s seminal book, Growing Up with a Single Parent; and David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America, another lengthy summarization of the bad empirical news about family breakup.

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In sum, although a few apologists such as Stephanie Coontz still insist otherwise, just about everyone else in possession of the evidence acknowledges that the sexual revolution has weakened family ties, and that family ties (the presence of a biologically related mother and father in the home) have turned out to be important indicators of child well-being — and more, that the broken home is not just a problem for individuals but also for society. Some scholars, moreover, further link these problems to the contraceptive revolution itself.

Consider the work of maverick sociobiologist Lionel Tiger. Hardly a cat’s-paw of the pope — he describes Religion as “a toxic issue” — Tiger has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of the sexual revolution to today’s unique problems. The Decline of Males, his 1999 book, was particularly controversial among feminists for its argument that female contraceptives had altered the balance between the sexes in disturbing new ways (especially by taking from men any say in whether they could have children).

Equally eyebrow-raising is his linking of contraception to the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood. Tiger has further argued — as Humanae Vitae did not explicitly, though other works of Catholic theology have — for a causal link between contraception and abortion, stating outright that “with effective contraception controlled by women, there are still more abortions than ever. . . . Contraception causes abortion.”

Catholics, and the Pope, were poo-pooed from pretty much every quarter for speculating that elevating birth control to the status of a social norm — or even a social expectation — would ultimately cause many more problems than it would solve. The opinion of the Church was considered to be one of ignorance, backwardness, and fear.

Instead, it has been shown to have been nigh-prophetic…which, unfortunately, means that society has indeed suffered a great detriment that it could potentially have spared itself.

As if birth control and abortion weren’t indicators enough, perhaps the actions of Canadian feminist author Alice Walker toward her daughter, Rebecca Walker, can be taken as indicative of the deep level of animosity that modern feminism has for children, childbearing, and indeed the whole concept of motherhood.

Alice Walker’s contempt for the idea of motherhood, in spite of having had a daughter herself, is so deep and complete that she has in essence disowned her own daughter, and seeks to undermine Rebecca’s career as a writer at every turn as well. Rebecca’s offence? Getting pregnant and having a child.

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from ‘enslaving’ me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late — I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.

I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.

As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.

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Although I knew what my mother felt about babies, I still hoped that when I told her I was pregnant, she would be excited for me.

‘Mum, I’m pregnant’

Instead, when I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I’d never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed — she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that?

Worse was to follow. My mother took umbrage at an interview in which I’d mentioned that my parents didn’t protect or look out for me. She sent me an e-mail, threatening to undermine my reputation as a writer. I couldn’t believe she could be so hurtful — particularly when I was pregnant.

Devastated, I asked her to apologise and acknowledge how much she’d hurt me over the years with neglect, withholding affection and resenting me for things I had no control over — the fact that I am mixed-race, that I have a wealthy, white, professional father and that I was born at all.

But she wouldn’t back down. Instead, she wrote me a letter saying that our relationship had been inconsequential for years and that she was no longer interested in being my mother. She even signed the letter with her first name, rather than ‘Mom’.

That was a month before Tenzin’s birth in December 2004, and I have had no contact with my mother since. She didn’t even get in touch when he was rushed into the special care baby unit after he was born suffering breathing difficulties.

Alice Walker is, I gather, something of a feminist icon. Maybe I’m just an unenlightened neanderthal, but I don’t think she deserves the accolades she gets. She comes off as less of an enlightened champion of women, instead seeming to be more of a petty, vindictive asshat.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

In some respects, it means less, now, to be a mother than it once did. I do not mean, in saying that, that those women who are mothers are possessed of less worth than their own mothers were; no, their worth is the same, and their “act” of being mothers equally noble and dignified.

I mean, instead, that so much which would have at one time been thought of as a nigh-unthinkable antithesis of motherhood — no-fault divorce, abortion-on-demand, the proliferation of birth control — has become nothing more, nor anything less, than a series of common commercial products in our society, as easily obtained as a pack of cigarettes once was (one could glibly note that today, in stark contrast to obtaining an abortion, one must still present convincing proof of age in excess of 18 years in order to obtain cigarettes legally).

And to an event and “product,” each of those things in some way flies in the face of motherhood. Divorce deprives it of its logical, biological, necessary opposite — fatherhood. Abortion abruptly ceases the natural course of nurturing and, in due time, birthing a child — it prevents one entirely from becoming a mother. And birth control attempts to circumvent the possibility that, through allowing the sexual act between one man and one woman to run its natural course, motherhood might result from the conjugal act.

But I wonder…could all this have been predicted, say, from some distant moment in history?

David Warren reflects, in his usual oblique way, on Mother’s Day through the lens of she who is the mother of us all: Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of God:

In a sentence, the veneration of Mary is an inevitable extension of the worship of Christ: for if there is God the Son, there must be a Mother of God. Or to be plainer still, in line with the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. — the human “Jesus,” and the divine “Christ,” are not two different persons. They are one and the same, and He was the Son of God, and of Mary.

Hence the extraordinary veneration of Mary, from the earliest Christian times, and through the centuries — so powerful that even the Muslims, appearing from the 7th century A.D., also venerate her. And long, long before even Christianity dawned upon the world, she is anticipated in every “Mother Goddess” known to anthropology.

A Darwinist, or a Jungian, or sociobiologist, or whatever, may hold that this is all merely a projection of the big raw fact of human motherhood — onto a cosmos that is fearfully beyond the comprehension of the primitive human mind. This hypothesis has the glib plausibility that is required to monopolize teaching in the academy, today. It is itself a view of considerable antiquity, and the anthropologists have discovered essentially atheist primitive tribes.

This is a “secular” newspaper and I am only dealing with the pragmatic consequences of religious beliefs. What is the consequence of Marian “idolatry” (as my Protestant ancestors would call it, while turning in their graves), or as I would characterize it, the veneration of “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei” that has animated so much of this world’s most magnificent art and poetry?

Its practical effect is to found all our intellectual and emotional ideas about motherhood, deep as they are, in something still deeper. It is to believe that real substance and significance underlies our natural love for our own human mothers, that it is not simply a biological quirk to be explained away by a few material causes. That it is instead the profoundest echo of what Dante finally called, “l’ amor che move il sole e l’ alter stele” — “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

Buy into that, and one’s own human mother is not reduced to a mechanism of “sexual selection” (to quote a zoological sage of the century before last), nor arbitrarily salvaged with the tearjerk posturing of a card. She is rather enlarged to her true proportions.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Were I of a combative mindset, I might speculate that one could have reasoned, from the first moment Protestant thought began to turn against Mary and Marian adoration (it serves to note that the first Reformer, Luther, was a devoutly Marian in his personal practice of Christian faith), that all this secular nightmare would come to pass. It is a tenuous thing to suggest, and not easily defensible.

But I wonder if there isn’t, inherent in that historical rejection of Mary as the Mother of All (and, indeed, the Mother of God) that so infused Protestantism during its formative decades, to be found the seeds of modern secular society’s rejection of motherhood on principle.