“Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world.”
Click here to read the rest of this short but fabulous quote.
Books in 2012: unPLANNED
unPLANNED: The dramatic true story of a former Planned Parenthood leader’s eye-opening journey across the life line is — as of this afternoon — the eleventh book I’ve read in 2012.
The book (written with Cindy Lambert) is by and about Abby Johnson, a woman who worked for Planned Parenthood for years, until shortly after she assisted in an ultrasound-guided abortion. During the procedure, she held the ultrasound probe on the patient’s belly and watched the unborn baby react to the cannula (the tube used to remove a fetus from a uterus). Her life (and her values and career) changed instantly.
It says a lot about unPLANNED (and/or about my taste in books) that I read it in under 24 hours. I started it last night, slept with it in my hands and finished it today under the porch fan by the light of the afternoon sun. I found the book fabulous, as a Roman Catholic Christian, and as a woman, and as a writer, and as a mental health professional. Johnson shares her experience of becoming a Planned Parenthood volunteer and employee, of encountering the Coalition for Life (a pro-life organization a couple doors down from the Planned Parenthood where Johnson worked in Bryan, TX) and of discovering over time that the Coalition’s goals resonated more with her than Planned Parenthood’s did.
Some thought provoking excerpts (sometimes followed by commentary):
A talking point Johnson would use while employed by Planned Parenthood, to explain part of the organization’s purpose:
“The only way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. The only way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies is to provide additional funding for contraception.” -page 42
Um, I can think of at least one other way. (Just sayin’.) In the book, Johnson never said whether she is or isn’t still a proponent of the use of contraception to control fertility. The latter line in the above excerpt irks me. This is not solely because I am a proponent of chastity (which involves abstaining from sex before marriage), but because of all else contraception accomplishes. I haven’t discussed contraception much publicly, but for now is this: One of contraception’s purposes is to prevent the unprepared from becoming parents. It says “yay for fewer unfit parents!” loud enough that nobody hears the following over the noise: if you are unprepared to be a parent, maybe you are actually unprepared to be having sex.
What a great definition of integrity:
“…I particularly admired how his faith shaped his values and choices. I sensed a strength and consistency in his life—an integration of his beliefs with his practices…” -page 50
On being a churchgoer simultaneously as she worked for Planned Parenthood:
“On Sunday mornings, I felt like a spiritual misfit, surrounded by people in touch with God while I just felt left out in the cold. But I wanted to belong—really belong—among other Christians. I was careful to avoid conversations about where I worked.” -page 63
This passage is a great example of what Harriet Lerner wrote in The Dance of Fear, the book I blogged about yesterday: “The extent to which you hide something important about yourself or another family member is a good barometer of shame.”
A really good point (read it to the end):
“When it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere, I turned to head back into the clinic. But I’d only taken a step or two when I turned back to [a pro-lifer who often prayed outside the clinic] and said, ‘You know—‘ He looked taken aback, as if he thought I was going to get nasty. But I just thought he should see our point of view. ‘There have always been people like us—like Planned Parenthood—defending the rights of women and human rights in general. Isn’t that what the emancipation movement was about in the 1800s, and then in the early 1900s, the suffrage movement? In World War II, people tried to stand up for the Jews. And now there are people like us, standing up for the reproductive rights of women, just as the suffrage movement stood up for their voting rights.’
He listened respectfully, and then he simply said, ‘Abby, you don’t have to justify your job to me.’
What? Justify my job? ‘I’m not justifying,’ I said. ‘I just want to explain—“
‘And you don’t have to explain what you’re doing either. The truth is, you just cited two instances of injustice—[regarding] the slaves and the Jews—that could only exist because a whole segment of our population was dehumanized. Society’s acceptance of that is what allowed injustice to continue. And that’s exactly what Planned Parenthood does to the unborn.’ -page 84
On the pro-choice friends she lost, and other people — the ones who prayed at the gates of the Planned Parenthood in Bryan, TX, who — even before Johnson quit her job — became her friends:
“But the process of seeing previously close friends turn away from me because we now disagreed about the crucial issue of abortion reminds me of the very different brand of friendship I’m also seeing in action these days. I’m thinking of people like Elizabeth, Marilisa, some friends from church and even college days—people who befriended me and stood by me for years even though they did not agree with what I did at Planned Parenthood, even though they do not believe in abortion. Those people modeled for me something far deeper, far stronger than situational friendship: they loved and accepted me even when I was (or am) doing something they found morally objectionable. They didn’t just talk about love—they put flesh on that concept.” -page 220
And I think we can all learn from that.
– – – – –
Click here to read about all the books I read in 2012.
Click here to learn more about unPLANNED.
Click here to learn more about Abby Johnson.
Death to self.
Lent is here.
Forty days of death to self.
Of discipline.
Of more You, less me.
Of empty, quiet stillness.
Forty days in the desert.
The new normal: births outside marriage — Part 2 of 2
In yesterday’s post, I wrote some commentary on a recent New York Times article. The story cited a study that says a baby’s birth to an unwed mom “used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.”
I don’t doubt the study’s results are legit. (In fact, I’m responsible for putting birth announcements in the newspaper for the county in which I work, and at least in that neck of the woods, babies with unwed parents far outnumber babies whose parents are married.) I don’t disagree that lots of people opt not to get married after conceiving a child or after giving birth. But, as I pointed out in Part 1, the story about this unintentionally implied that marriage and “a piece of paper” are one and the same when, in fact, they are not. Marriage is a miracle that helps us “to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one’s own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving,*”
Which is awesome.
But as awesome as that is, few people our age are interested in it. Few currently-married couples exemplify it. And so I was compelled to ask a question:
Why?
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that. For one, I don’t know (at least not with any kind of exactness), and for two, I do know the answer is so complex that I couldn’t do it justice if I tried. What I can do is list some factors that, in my opinion, contribute to why few people our age are interested in marriage, and why few married couples exemplify what marriage actually is.
1. People don’t know what marriage actually is.
Refer to Part 1.
2. People don’t think enough (some can’t, some won’t).
Part of the story says the following:
A woman, “27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant. A former nursing student who now tends bar, (she) said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. ‘It was like living with another kid,’ she said.“
Another part says this:
“In Lorain as elsewhere, explanations for marital decline start with home economics: men are worth less than they used to be. Among men with some college but no degrees, earnings have fallen 8 percent in the past 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the earnings of their female counterparts have risen by 8 percent.”
The point the story makes is that these women aren’t marrying the fathers of their children because to do so would be financially irresponsible and/or of no financial benefit. But if our focus is on deciding not to marry a man because marrying him is of no financial benefit, we miss a deeper point. The young woman in the story wouldn’t dare marry a man-child who can’t afford his own cigarettes, which is good, and I commend her, because she shouldn’t. But, then, I’m left wondering: if a dependent guy isn’t good enough to marry, why is he good enough to date? Why is he good enough to make a baby with? This points to the deeper point:
There are so many questions to ask before we promise exclusivity to someone and before we make babies with him or her — questions that few are asking.
Questions like is this person emotionally, socially, spiritually, financially fit to be my spouse? Would he or she make a good parent? Do I want kids to turn out like this person? Am I emotionally, socially, spiritually, financially fit to be a spouse? Would I make a good parent? Do I want kids to turn out like me?
We need to think about our answers to these questions, which implies we have to answer them. I think lots of humans are so generally horrified that the answer to any of them will be no that we neither ask nor answer them. But know that if an answer is no, it does not not mean it has to be no forever. It means somebody has some work to do — some growing to do. And that’s ok, and always will be.
Lots of other humans do think about their answers to the questions, but their thoughts backfire because they are are under the impression that if an answer is no, the act of entering into a marriage — or even just moving in together — will transform the non-marriageable half of the couple into a marriageable one. But that’s not how it works.
From the article:
“Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.”
This is because when a relationship isn’t working, doing something that complicates it never makes it work. We’re better off taking something out of the equation (such as one of the people, or sex) and seeing what happens.
Which brings us to a third factor that contributes to why few people our age are interested in marriage, and why few married couples exemplify what marriage actually is.
3. People treat the sacred (sex, in this case) like it isn’t.
In our culture, you hit a certain age and the assumption is that if you’re dating someone, you’re having sex with them. And in an overwhelming majority of cases, that’s a safe assumption. It’s the norm. Which is one of several reasons we know what the norm isn’t: treating sex like it’s sacred.
Sex is not kept sacred when it’s something we do with every person we date. It’s not kept sacred when we participate in it selfishly. It is not sacred when we decide to have sex because we believe we can’t not have sex.
“It’s impossible to wait” is a lie. Humans, in my opinion and experience, are stronger than that — we can control our appetites. A couple of my favorite quotes about this are as follows:
“Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will’s mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable. The temperate person directs the sensitive appetites toward what is good and maintains healthy discretion.*”
and
“The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.*”
There are far fewer people who believe that than who simultaneously a) believe marriage is a piece of paper, and b) are currently unfit for a piece-of-paper-marriage, let alone for a real one, who c) are so unwilling or unable to acknowledge that they are currently (and probably temporarily!) unfit for marriage that they d) date while they e) are completely convinced they cannot date without having sex.
And that, over time, combined with a lot of other factors, results in new normals like the one in the article.
– – – –
To read Part 1 of this post, click here.
To read the New York Times story in full, click here.
*This quote comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The new normal: births outside marriage — Part 1 of 2
In a New York Times article from Friday, a study the writer cited says a baby’s birth to an unwed mom “used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.”
The story is well written and worth the read. But what it points out is not so much “study reveals a new relationship trend” as much as “study reveals that what most people think is marriage is still not actually marriage.”
The story says:
“Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.”
and
“One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.”
and
“Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.”
and
“Over the past generation, Lorain lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families. More women went to work, making marriage less of a financial necessity for them. Living together became routine, and single motherhood lost the stigma that once sent couples rushing to the altar. Women here often describe marriage as a sign of having arrived rather than a way to get there.“
I understand these points.
Marriage does have economic and social rewards. Most women do find men whose paychecks can pay bills to be more marriageable than men whose paychecks can’t. Many women who work don’t need a husband to pay for her stuff. A stigma once did (and sometimes still does) send couples to the altar with haste and without much thought. But these are just words that distract us from what we really ought to discuss.
The story goes on…
“‘Women used to rely on men, but we don’t need to anymore,’ said Teresa Fragoso, 25, a single mother in Lorain. ‘We support ourselves. We support our kids.’
a) This says marriage is about money. (i.e., “I don’t need a husband because I can support myself and my kid.”)
“Fifty years ago, researchers have found, as many as a third of American marriages were precipitated by a pregnancy, with couples marrying to maintain respectability. Ms. Strader’s mother was among them.”
b) This says marriage is about image. And this still says that when a couple today rushes into marriage because they’ve found out they’re pregnant. (i.e., “We’ll be treated better if it looks like we didn’t get pregnant before we tied the knot.”)
“Even as many Americans withdraw from marriage, researchers say, they expect more from it: emotional fulfillment as opposed merely to practical support. ‘Family life is no longer about playing the social role of father or husband or wife, it’s more about individual satisfaction and self-development,’ said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.”
c) This says marriage is about self. (i.e., “Marrying this man/woman will complete me!”)
And then, like in the story, people — among them, ones who live like they believe a, b and c are true — say…
“‘I’d like to do it, but I just don’t see it happening right now,’ … ‘Most of my friends say (marriage is) just a piece of paper, and it doesn’t work out anyway.'”
When the goal of a wedding revolves around money, image or self, I don’t blame women or men for a second for not wanting that stuff. I don’t want that stuff, either.
That stuff is a sheet of paper.
That stuff is not marriage.
Marriage is the miracle in which two become one. (Note: It is not 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, but 1 + 1 = 1. A spouse cannot and will not complete you, nor should he or she be expected to.) It is the mutual gift of self, given in love, which is patient and kind, neither boastful nor proud nor rude. It doesn’t demand its own way or act pissed off about and/or keep track of it every time it doesn’t get its way. It stands for justice and truth, it doesn’t give up or lose faith and it sticks around, with hope, regardless of circumstances*.
Marriage helps us “to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one’s own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving,**”
Which is awesome.
So why, then, are few folks our age interested in it? And why do so few married couples reveal this in their relationships? I’m of the opinion that it’s pretty complex.
Check back tomorrow for part 2.
– – – –
To read the New York Times story in full, click here.
*Within reason. If, for instance, you live with an abusive spouse, hope won’t cut it. Your spouse needs help, and you need a safety plan. Click here for more information.
**This quote comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.