Yikes, my last post was in October. I've been busy with other writing projects, but this summer I'm going to seek out more women to interview.
In the meantime, here are some snippets of stories that have set me contemplating about the shifting meaning of the word "conservative." At a talk at the Catholic Worker in Manhattan, progressive theologian Roger Haight,
S.J., said that after he spoke at a university, a group of Catholic men who
styled themselves as conservative asked to meet with him. “They considered
themselves very Orthodox,” 70-year-old Fr.Haight mused, “Yet, one after the other was
living with a girlfriend.”(And, I assume, using artificial birth control.)
After Mass on a recent Sunday, I overheard a conversation between the 83-year-old pastor of a country parish we attend in the summer and a nineteen-year-old parishioner. The young woman, who has belonged to the parish all her life and always greets the pastor with a hug, was
telling him, apparently in answer to his question, that she wouldn’t be
marrying any time soon, that when she did she wouldn’t be having kids right
away and that when she did have kids she wouldn’t be staying home with them.
“Then who will?” asked the priest, who, based on his homilies I would label conservative.
“My husband, maybe,” she answered. Both were laughing, the good feelings between
them seemingly undisturbed by the chasm between her mileniall stance and his Orthodox training.
A friend my age described a young couple’s Catholicism as “very
conservative.”
“So, they don’t practice birth control?” I asked.
“Oh, they practice birth control. They’re not that
conservative!”
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