“Traditional Catholic Femininity” writes to invoke the authority of baleful Reactionary Trad sectarian Fr. Chad Ripperger:
“It is a mortal sin for a woman to work outside of the home without GRAVE reason” – Fr Ripperger
The only exceptions are single unmarried women, single mothers of young children and widows.
This is why we are seeing God’s judgment on society.
Marriages and children are paying the price and falling apart.
God’s chastisement is not because He hates us, but because He wants us to realise the errors of our ways and obey His commandments.
Until we do, we will continue to pay the price.
“Women simply will never be happy until they start rendering justice to their children” – Fr. Ripperger
This is what the Lord Jesus calls “tying up heavy burdens and not lifting a finger to help” (Matthew 23:4). The message of conservative Catholics to poor families is this: “You cannot work outside the home, Mom, on pain of mortal sin. Also, if your husband is not making enough money with one job. He must work two. If that is not enough, why aren’t you working too, Mom, instead of being a welfare parasite? Also, if you contracept you are in mortal sin, but if you have “too many” children, we will cap your benefits, you welfare parasite who should be working, but who must not work because it’s a mortal sin. And it’s not our fault if all this creates such intolerable economic stress that you feel you must abort rather than have the “too many” kids we forbid you to have, you filthy murderer.”
This is the ambient noise of conservative American “prolife” Catholics forever dinning in the ears of the poor and brown in America. This is why their witness is a ruinous catastrophe and a grotesque parody of a faith that is supposed to be the help and succor of the poor.
And it is exactly what Jesus is warning starkly against when he says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk 9:42). It is amazing how much the gospel has to say about the powerful who abuse their power over the powerless. Again and again, the gospel takes a communitarian, not an individualistic, approach to the use of power and again and again it holds the powerful, not the powerless, guilty when the powerless commit sins under the compulsion of the powerful.
So when the powerful “causes one of these little ones… to sin”, we don’t hear “everybody is responsible for his own sins and it’s not your problem if they choose to sin”. Instead, we hear the terrible warning of millstones directed at the powerful who force the poor to abort, to steal, to cheat, and to make terrible choices in order to survive. In antiquity, when women had so little power and men had so much, Jesus’ tells men who abandon their wives, “Every one who divorces his wife… makes her an adulteress” (Mt 5:31–32). The reason is not far to seek: an abandoned wife must eat and her two options for that are re-marriage or prostitution. Yet again, he places the burden, not on the powerless, but on the powerful. A stunning difference between the gospel and American conservative religion.
Meanwhile, quite distinct from the bizarre and deeply un-Catholic notion that a working mother is in mortal sin is the actual Catholic teaching, which holds that a living wage is one which is sufficient so that only one parent needs one job (at 8 hours a day and–at,most–six days a week with–at least–Sunday off) to support their family. If parents, for reasons of their own, deem it prudent to both work, that is up to them. What is absolutely contrary to Catholic teaching is precisely what voices like the ones above say; that the poor should be punished for being poor, for having children, and for being driven–by the rich and powerful–to have to choose which children they can save.
“Access to employment and to professions must be open to all without unjust discrimination: men and women, healthy and disabled, natives and immigrants. For its part society should, according to circumstances, help citizens find work and employment.”
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14 Responses
It would be perfect if it was possible to support a large family on a single income, or two part-time incomes and make employment a free choice. You might even make a theoretical argument that working beyond a single income is immoral when it seeks more possessions, and it could be a sin when it’s done without grave reasons. You could even add the argument that with adults of both sexes active in the workforce, it’s easier for a country to decide to go to war since it doesn’t immediately lose a sizable portion of the workforce.
As it is, the world is far from perfect, and in practice, a family living on a single income is constantly in jeopardy of losing their only source of income. In USA, you also get the added horror of losing your medical insurance alongside that.
But you gotta hand it to him: He’s got the PERFECT name to spew this kind of vile teaching.
Could you do an article in Romans 1:3 https://davesblogs.home.blog/2023/05/11/was-jesus-born-of-manufactured/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3L7lE0pI8Kow9asnISwMW_eAnWmZHjkuzbyQrUvBieKdEcRIOUrKn2Jec_aem_JUa4EEReIcjT7s0wr5PEBA
I had never heard of this idea before and hopefully not too many other people have, either!
Correct. This is an extreme position that very few Catholics would ever encounter. You have to dig to find such a hard line moral assertion.
I peruse variety of Catholic circles on the internet. A couple of my regular haunts are generally traditionalist, and several of my close friends who attend the traditional Latin Mass, although the Catholic online outlet I visit the most simply orthodox and mainstream, but quite active, with dozens of threads per day, so a wide variety of topics come up. This includes quite a few topics along the lines of, “so and so says X is sin / mortal sin, is that correct?”
In short, I’ve seen a wide variety of dubious moral claims. I’ve seen plenty of lesser forms of discouragement against women working. To be honest I do think a husband should generally assume first responsibility for earning the material needs of their family, although obviously not neglecting discussion with his wife about what is best for their family.
But this is the first time I’ve encountered the allegation that for a women to work outside the home without grave reason is a mortal sin.
I wasn’t aware this was being claimed but not surprising though. It’s good to know, because Fr R. is a name I hear mentioned among radtrad types in my acquaintance.
I’d lump it in the category with misunderstanding of a man’s and woman’s role in marriage, AKA “the marital debt”, as championed by some in that camp. That’s also a good item to debunk, in your copious free time, Mark
Simcha Fisher posted an article tangential to this ten years ago, titled “Don’t be a sex sponge”, you can look it up.
I can’t post links in a comment, or it gets stuck in moderation
I looked it up, good stuff there, thanks for sharing it.
I now recall why I thought of marital debt when I heard the Fr R name, and it’s because he apparently talks about that topic…I got into a discussion with rad trads on Reddit a few months back. They were quoting Fr R and “Prummer – Handbook of Moral Theology” on this topic. I don’t have words to describe how transactional and cheap even the term “marital debt” is. I guess it probably is part and parcel with the coercive integralist vision of the church championed in some circles…
It makes sense to call something marital a “debt” only in the same sense that we are indebted to Christ for redeeming us.
It then integrates well with Ephesians 5:22-33. Indeed, it’s the only way to read it for it to still make sense.
If wives are supposed to obey their husbands in the same way as they obey the Lord, the husbands must love their wives the same way that Christ loves the Church. That’s quite a high bar to clear, but it also means that nobody can expect a free pass. Husbands can’t expect their wives to blindly obey them if they’re unable to love them exactly the same way as Christ loves his bride (the Church). If a husband were to say it’s humanly impossible for a husband to even be capable of such love to his wife, the nature of the passage dictates that it’s likewise humanly impossible for a wife to be capable of such obedience to her husband. You can’t expect either without providing the other.
As for there being a marital debt, it’s an exceedingly tricky topic to navigate. Spouses who give and receive the sacrament of marriage with/to each other are entering a lifetime of commitment as expressed in their marriage vows. I think that some take the alternative words of the vow “to have and to hold” literally, as if their spouse is entering a contract of slavery, perverting it to apply just in one direction. (In a way, one could argue marriage is a contract of slavery — but it’s reciprocal and it applies to all spheres of life evenly, not just sexual).
Come to think of it, if the world wasn’t so sexualized and we weren’t exposed to sex and nudity on every corner, and if sex only ever happened in marriage and it would be unthinkable for sexual relations to exist outside of marriage, it wouldn’t even be a topic for discussion, let alone a public one. In a way it would probably be easier for some since people wouldn’t have unrealistic expectations of unlimited sexual pleasure in a marriage and it wouldn’t occur to them to think about whether they’re having the right amount of sex (more to the point: if they’re not having too little sex), since it seems that everyone around them hardly ever goes out of bed and “it’s juuuuust nooooot faaaaiiiiirrrr!”
On the other hand, sexuality is the only sphere of marital life that is meant to be shared exclusively with your spouse. If you love swimming and your wife hates it, you can go to the pool or to the beach alone to have a swim. There’s no problem taking a friend or a group of friends with you and having fun with them with your wife absent. Even if the friends are of the opposite sex. Same if your wife loves cycling and you don’t. She can go on a bike trip, she can go with a friend, and she can enjoy her time with you absent. None of this is a problem in and of itself.
But it’s just not possible with sex. Neither spouse can just say “Look, I’m not interested in having sex, do it alone, or find somebody who’s interested and have sex with them.” That’s where the concepts of bodily autonomy and consent as they’re understood by the society at large today are not compatible with Christian marriage. The only object of desire for the husband is his wife, and for the wife, her husband. Neither spouse can just go and decide his wife/her husband is just so gross and vow to never have sex with her/him again.
But restoring proper order is something that’s meant to be worked on and not forced or coerced. And certainly not by calling upon the authority of the Church or Christ’s words.
To anyone who stumbles across this post and thinks you’re having too little sex, look up “Is Abstinence Hard On A Marriage?” by Jennifer Fitz on Patheos (again, I can’t provide a link). It’s an excellent read and she writes about the topic a lot better than I ever could.
It seems everyone forgets Ephesians 5:21 and goes right into “Wives should be subject…”
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Eph 5:21
Thus, I read Eph 5:22-33 as a *responsibility* not a *privilege* for the husband. It is a call for servant leadership.
Husbands make the decisions and execute for family unity and direction, but with family input, and out of love and respect and consideration for the family.
And yes, it may call for compromise and sacrifice for the husband. This was never meant to be about ego and pleasure for the husband at the expense of the family.
I couldn’t finish the YouTube.
Doesn’t this man realize how many women would love to have the economic freedom to be stay-at-home-mothers?
The rich simply don’t care that they have created vastly disordered economic structures, and the religious fanatics cling to their weird obsessions to the point that I sometimes wonder if Jesus disapproves of the way they feishize the faith. When the rich and the fanatics join forces, it’s a strange beast to behold.
As for “mortal sin”?? Wow. Perhaps Fr. R can only we absolved of his rudeness by babysitting for years and years, and possibly from purgatory as well. I once read in a TAN book on Purgatory that some people have been known to appear to be regular living humans but come back to the earth to serve others as their means of expiation. I don’t know if I believe that, but it would make sense. All I can say is that he is bringing on some heavy judgement upon himself.
> I sometimes wonder if Jesus disapproves of the way they feishize the faith
No need to wonder. Look no further than what Mark wrote (reprinted) here last year: https://markpshea.com/2023/03/07/ten-commandments-the-1-5-commandment/
Also take a look at my comment under that article (written as Yahoo).
I mean, it’s literally the first commandment. And it even carries a lengthier exhortation of what happens when you trespass against it.
I want to thank you very much for this and the link you provided.
*Also, when an injustice upset me, I am not good about proofreading what I have written 🙁
Right Wing Catholics seem to be obsessed with sex. Yes, it’s important, but hardly the only important thing. Perhaps they should focus more on helping the less fortunate and less on other people’s sex lives.
Have you shared this with Fr Ripperger? I don’t agree with a lot of what he says by my friends say he’s a real charmer and doesn’t hold grudges. Unfortunately, black & white statements like this feed a caricature of the church as being run by frustrated celibates cheered on by bloggers living in their parents basements who can’t get a date.
Try this thought experiment: Suppose a couple is getting by in an expensive American city on $100k/yr. He makes $50k, she makes $50k. When his pay is doubled to $100k she says “I’d like to stay home and look after the home and kids’.’ Many would say yes. Now, imagine the genders are reversed.