More realistic Christmas Carols

Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone is enjoying this joyous season.   

One aspect I love about the holiday season is the singing.  However, I have to admit that it bothers me how unrealistic Christmas carols are.  They paint some romanticized picture of Jesus’ birth wherein Mary does not break stride or even a sweat to deliver her baby.  They conjure images that are absent the various bodily fluids or physical sensations of human childbirth.  Yet, many Christmas homilies will emphasize the very important theological facet of Jesus being fully human.  Why then do we sing songs that omit the human realities of birth and go so far as to paint a false picture of what it was like for Jesus to be born a human child?

The lyrics to Silent Night were written by Josephus Mohr, an Austrian priest.  Let us pause for a moment to estimate how many priests throughout history have witnessed human childbirth from labor to delivery.  Let us also estimate how many current Catholic hierarchy members have ever seen the inside of a delivery room.  Were we counting on our fingers, we wouldn't need to use both hands, possibly not even all five fingers of one hand.  Suddenly, the propagation of unrealistic, romanticized, sanitized lyrics of Christmas carols becomes clear.

Let’s also pause a moment to offer some contextual information regarding childbirth since some folks reading this might also be unfamiliar with the realities of childbirth.

• Bloody bodily fluids flow abundantly … to the point that many a modern day father who attends their child’s delivery must sit lest they faint from the shocking sight.
• Contractions produce varying amounts of discomfort from mildly intense pain to what is called “back labor” where the child’s head is turned where its skull scrapes along the mother’s backbone with every contraction.
• When the mother begins pushing for the ultimate delivery of the child’s head, it is called “bearing down.”  This carries similar involuntary intensity as having an urgent yet constipated bowel movement only it lasts much longer.  It is of small wonder that during this process, some mothers have a bowel movement which covers the child as it is being delivered.
• Most women delivering their first child will experience vaginal tearing; their flesh will rip open, sometimes all the way to the anal wall.  In modern times and medical facilities, this can easily be repaired with numerous stitches that will make sitting and performing excretory functions extremely uncomfortable for several days but prevent the mother from bleeding to death.  However, in Jesus’ time, this along with other common complications are what made childbirth a leading killer of women.
• The baby emerges covered in blood and a waxy substance
• Nursing a child for the first time is very painful for most women.  Though the little darling you just delivered is toothless, he/she has very hard gums and chomps down on the mother’s nipples with gusto.  Many mothers will bruise on their nipples, something they likely never knew was possible.
• Though now some of the pains associated with childbirth can be dulled, Mary did not have the benefit of these pharmaceutical marvels.

Instead of portraying these realities of the mess, pain and danger of childbirth, Christmas carols draw imagery of Mary without her veil or possibly dress ever moving out of place.  They also fail to acknowledge the physical danger into which God placed Mary by impregnating her whilst being betrothed.  In her times, betrothals occurred often when girls were quite young followed by fully consummated marriage around age of 14 or so.  Betrothal was a strong commitment as sort of a non-consummated marriage and a woman found to be pregnant by someone other than her betrothed was considered guilty of committing adultery, an offense punishable by stoning. 

As an aside, I find myself contemplating possible connections between birth control and abortion, and fixations on the Annunciation story where an angel tells the Virgin Mary she’s going to be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit which will impregnate her.  The story is often preached as Mary saying “yes” but if you read the actual scriptural text, there is no question presented to Mary.  The angel says, “this is gonna happen.”  Mary agrees but that does not seem to matter.  Her body is going to be exploited for reproduction regardless of her consent.  Herein seems to lie a foundational element of theology objectifying women by viewing them primarily as passive receptive vessels for bearing children.

Pope Francis’ annual Vatican Curia Christmas excoriation this year included his wishes for increased respect for women.  That needs to include revisiting and correcting centuries old theology which objectifies women as mere tools of reproduction.  It also needs to include stopping the dehumanizing propagation of unrealistic understandings of women’s key experiences such as childbirth.  Therefore, I decided it was a timely moment to write more realistic lyrics for a few songs associated with Advent and Christmas.  I hope you enjoy them.

Immaculate Mary II (to the tune of “Immaculate Mary”) – a song sung during Advent, especially for the Feasts of Our Lady of Gaudalupe and the Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing

But they want women docile so turned you into a wimpy thing

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave Ave Maria

You got impregnated while you were betrothed

Though you knew you’d be stone if ever exposed

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave, Ave Maria

But you’ve been reduced to a dainty little vessel

Despite being tough as a mortar and pestel

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave, Ave Maria

“Stressful Long Night” (to the tune of “Silent Night”)

Stressful long night, holy night

Push baby out with all of your might

Vaginal tearing to thy anal wall

Lots of pain with no Demerol

Pleas for this pain to cease; Pleas for this pain to cease

Stressful long night, holy night

Shepherds quake at the sight

Blood just streams as if hacked with an axe

Holy Infant covered in blood and wax

Christ the Savior is born; Christ the Savior is born.

Stressful long night, holy night

Son of God nurses with a bite

Radiant pain from chest to bottom

Shooting pains you previously did not fathom

Jesus Lord at thy birth; Jesus Lord at thy birth

“Away in a Stable” (to the tune of “Away in a Manger”)

Away in a stable, no hospital bed

Mary labors ‘mongst critters instead

The stars in the sky are the only light

By which to deliver her baby that night

The cattle are lowing and wafting their smells

But who really notices as Mary yells

She squats and bears down and out comes some dung

Along with the baby from her which is sprung

Be near her Lord Jesus, I ask you to stay

To re-humanize her and aptly portray

Your mom as a person of strong grittiness

And not a docile vessel who simply said “yes.”

A day that will live in irony...

75 years ago yesterday, Franklin Roosevelt said it was a “date which will live in infamy.”  However, yesterday in Catholic hierarchy land was a day which will live in irony.  Here are a few highlights:

• The Vatican began its first organization for female workers in the Vatican.  
• Pope Francis begged media outlets to be responsible and not spread disinformation.
• The Vatican updated its guidelines for priestly formation.

Since it first emerged in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the Vatican never had an organization for female employees – a group currently numbering around 750 or 20% of the Vatican population.  I’ve not found many details on the new organization’s activities but I suspect they do not include grooming women for executive positions in the Vatican.  In general, women are not groomed for anything in the church other than obedience and servitude.

However, boys and men willing to consider the priesthood merit volumes of guidelines, programs and efforts to support their development.  The latest in the lot was published yesterday. 

Reading the updated priest formation guidelines kind of reinforces my sneaking suspicion about the Vatican’s women’s organization lacking executive leadership development.  The document is a masterpiece of self-admiration for clergy calling themselves “diamonds” and emphasizing how grateful we all should be that priests are better than other humans.  It is a truly bizarre document feigning humility whilst reeking of hierarchical arrogance.  It scorns clericalism but is so very clerical itself.  It says priests should be shepherds that smell like sheep but then extols priests hanging out with other priests.  It says priests should learn how to interact with women but then suggests myriads of clerical figures to help, etc.... 

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, who leads an organization which sometimes makes stuff up and declares it “truth,” appeals to media outlets not to spread misinformation or disinformation.  He thinks the media shouldn’t just make things up and pass them off as factual news. 

Though I agree that spreading disinformation is reprehensible, I found the pope’s plea rather ironic.  I can provide a litany of examples where hierarchy members spread disinformation…from various hierarchy members’ lies covering up for abusive priests, to rejecting scientific understandings about human physiology and psychology, to pretending women were never ordained as deacons though they were for centuries, to made-up “facts” about women and their roles, to a September, 2015 US bishops’ smear campaign which propagated false news that a US social service organization sold aborted baby parts. 

However, the pope’s disinformation concerns carry exceptionally exquisite irony due to his timing expressing them…the day before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception…a feast day honoring a doctrinal belief spun from pure myth yet one of the two beliefs the Catholic hierarchy declares absolutely infallible.  The Assumption of Mary, the other doctrine declared infallible, equally rests upon a mountain of myth. 

Maybe the pope would be more at ease if the various fake or shoddy news outlets declared themselves infallible?  Or maybe the pope doesn’t like news outlets competing with clergy for making shit up?  Perhaps the pope is ok with the hierarchy telling what my mother used to call “pious fairy tales” because he thinks they are happy and positive but fake news stories are downers?  Maybe he’s ok with clergy playing fast and loose with facts if it leads to reinforcing some happy myth the hierarchy wishes to promote?  I don’t know. 

Pope Francis also speaks about a sickness in the media feeding people’s desire for scandal.  I agree some media outlets feed some people’s attraction to scandal but some news organizations practice what is called “good investigative journalism.”  For example, Marty Baron, current editor of the Washington Post and former editor of the Boston Globe who guided that paper to investigate the extensive abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese, should be canonized as a living saint, not portrayed as a sinner feeding people’s fetish for scandal.  The Globe’s hundreds of stories shed much needed light on a very dark corner of the church.  Thank you. 

Francis also commented that some media sources seem to never let scandal die.  I agree with him that one should not indefinitely live under a shroud for past sins.  However, I also believe that if we do not remember and discuss candidly the facts surrounding unfortunate historical situations, we are destined to repeat them. 

Francis provided no specific examples regarding unrelenting fixation on scandalous stories.  Ironically, one of the shoddy news sites – a favorite amongst many US Catholic clergy – must have used its mind-reading abilities or just made shit up to say that Francis obviously referred to excavating stories about US President-elect Donald Trump.  However, Francis actually stated that scandals should be relinquished after penance and restitution.  I’m uncertain if penance or restitution have occurred for any of those scandals.  Alas, I digress.

It is ironic too that many Catholic hierarchy frequent some fake news sites though Francis condemns such sites.  It is ironic but not surprising.  There is a high degree of alcoholism amongst the clergy and alcoholics live dishonesty to a point they normalize it in their lives.  About 50% of priests are sexually active and thus live dishonest lives regarding sexuality and relationships…again normalizing dishonesty within their lives.  Many priests will teach things they do not believe but do so to remain in good standing with the church…again normalizing dishonesty within their lives.  Maybe this is why I personally have not found the clergy to be any more truthful than any other demographic group.   A few have actually turned out to rank amongst the most dishonest, unscrupulous people I’ve ever encountered.   

Yet, the clergy formation document tells us they are “diamonds.”  Well, the saying is “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and the clergy formation document does say priests need to learn to be friendly with women because they are the majority within parishes…after 2,000 years they figured it out!  However, it kind of discusses women as though they are unique non-human creatures so it’s hard to see us becoming “besties.”  Reading the clergy formation guidelines’ description of women, I felt a little like a wild creature that Marlin Perkins of “Wild Kingdom” might have discussed…”here we see the female human operating in her natural habitat…notice how she….”  

Kudos for realizing most priests do not work well with women.  However, in the litany of human resources to teach future priests how to work with women, we mostly find richly diverse categories of priests…folks who ya just said don’t tend to work well with women.  Isn’t that like having an anti-Semite teach Jewish culture appreciation classes to other anti-Semites to help them be less anti-Semitic?

Anyway, from the three topics we see:   

1) Priests need to work better with women and thus should entrench themselves amongst clergy to learn how to do this.   

2) As part of the “we love women” campaign, women in the Vatican can have a club.   

3) Don’t make shit up and spread it around unless you are ordained.  

 4) If you are ordained, you’re a diamond and we all know diamonds don’t shit. 

Just a side thought…could they mean priests are diamonds as in hard, impenetrable entities that are expensive to keep and merely glittery ornaments? 

How to discuss sexual formation without discussing sexual development ... or... how not to teach sex ed

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Family, an organization absorbed into the new Vatican dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, recently issued a sex education program entitled, "The Meeting Point - project for affective and sexual formation."  The first curious aspect of this sexual formation program’s material is the absence of any content on human physical sexual development. 

Inspired by Pope Francis’ pontifical exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, as well as other comments by the pope, such as ones from his May, 2015 general audience in which he criticized “intellectuals” who “silence” parents in an attempt to protect youth from harm…such as bullying…the curriculum offers an alternative approach to teaching sex education...one that promotes sexist stereotypes and omits biological development information.    Pope Francis evidently scorns "intellectuals" who think kids should be armed with facts and shouldn't have to deal with good old-fashioned sexism, bullying, harassment or abuse.

The sponsoring hierarch, Archbishop Paglia also feels parents are being shafted by, “Cultural, legislative and educational projects..." which use silly tools such as science and facts to teach sex education.   He expressed concern that such fact-based approaches "directly or indirectly challenge the Christian vision of the body, of the difference and the complementarity between man and woman, the exercise of sexuality, marriage and the family."  It seems he prefers contorting allegorical writings into scientific truths rather than allow scientific advancements to call into question centuries old hierarchical stances about marriage, sexuality and women written by unmarried men with classically unhealthy sexual identities and relationships, especially with women.

The work assumes most parents disagree with science-based curriculum foisted upon them by governments and educational institutions.  Maybe it's less an assumption than a hope that parents scorn institutions operating in facts rather than unquestioningly adulate whatever proceeds from the mouths of clerical men.  A recent Pew Research study found most U.S. Catholics do not agree with the hierarchy's long held views on sexual sin.  So, it seems actually the majority don’t feel harangued by educational institutes' pesky science and facts.

The curriculum uses standard misinformation tactics such as intermingling valid points with wildly absurd ones.  For example, it tries to promote healthy relationships, which is laudable.  However, the Unit 2 educators' manual blatantly promotes the notion that men and women have intellectual differences wherein, "man is more analytical and has a greater capacity for analysis" than woman. 

It's hard to believe, I'm sure, but I as a woman was capable of analyzing that statement and realizing it is unsubstantiated, degrading, damaging sexist bullshit.  I also have a university degree in computer science, an engineering curriculum based upon logic and analysis.  After reading the Vatican's sex ed curriculum, maybe we should all be amazed that I successfully completed an engineering curriculum.  Those darn intellectual elitists!  They must have both silenced my parents and fed my delusions of analytical capabilities by permitting me into the program and placing me in the top quartile of my graduating class. Is it too late to get a refund on my tuition?  (By the way, my success as an engineer would be called a "primary source" of evidence invalidating the Vatican's sexist stereotypes.  And, I am not the only female engineer on the planet...more data points invalidating the sexist stereotype. We can add in the many other women doctors, analysts, teachers, moms and basically any women capable of problem-solving too.)

Instead of having intellectual capacity, the curriculum asserts that, "Women tend more toward what is transcendent, while men are more pragmatic," when it comes to spirituality.  I am again going to step into this scary, scary analytical land for women, but if women are more capable of spiritual transcendence, then why are men leading the Catholic spiritual organization?  Why would anyone take a shred of spiritual guidance from a man?  Based upon the Vatican’s curriculum, it would seem they are less capable, if capable at all.

Some of the curriculum’s more blatant sexist stereotyping involves side by side comparisons.  For example, one lesson presents various social situations and asks which type of bag a man or woman would use.  In the man column, every situation from school, to vacation, to picnics, to beach activities is best accented with a black backpack while in the woman column a wide array of pink specialty bags for each occasion are presented as the norm.  Oddly, this portrayal of women as impractical fashionistas is promoted by men who wear different colored ornate silken gowns for every liturgical season.

I confess I do not own a single pink bag and I use the same brown backpack whether heading to a school, office, resort, or beach...because it's practical....  Oh, darn again!  I can both analyze and be practical! Clearly the intellectual elite have created a monster in me!  I'm happy to report that I have a master degree in theology so as to at least fulfill that stereotype of spiritual transcendence.  Without that we might start to wonder if I am actually a cross-dressing, gender-confused person who had to adopt children since conceiving them in my body should have been impossible.  After all, how could I have both a uterus and a critically analytical, practical brain?

My favorite sexist side-by-side "the differences between men and women are so blatant" set of comparisons involves showing isolated body sections of men and women.  For example it shows a person wearing a sports bra working out compared to a picture of a person with biceps the size of a cantaloupe.  Another comparison is between the mouth of someone wearing lipstick and the mouth of someone with razor stubble.  The text explains that differences between male and female should be obvious.

My analytical mind found that statement so interesting that I decided we could play a short version of that game here, right now.  I'm going to show some pictures and you decide if it is a man or woman.

1.

2. .

The answer key is:

1.  No, that is not a grandmother bedecked in her latest Easter bonnet; it is a man - Cardinal Raymond Burke.

 

2.  No, that is not a female bride in her extravagant wedding gown; it is a man - specifically Pope Francis.

 

See how easy this game is?  Men who dress counter to gender attire stereotypes like to impose gender stereotypes on everybody else.

Folks, let's call this curriculum what it is.  An attempt to get more parents to join the "blind obedience club" so that church hierarchs who are increasingly losing their secular power might regain it.  And nothings seems to heighten their sense of losing power more than women achieving their full God-given potential.