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1. How patronising! How wrong! Close the lid and relax? Close the lid and then, attend to the ironing, the cooking, the companioning of family, the job at the superamarket, the parish volunteering.
   Washing machines are great, provide for family and public health, but I believe the remarks attributed to L'Osservatore Romano are mean spirited. Women's feelings about family planning relate to offering the best they can to their children, not to selfish desire to "relax".

   Posted By: Eileen Luthi

2. ...or possibly it was the spiritual maturity to read yet another monumentally insensitive comment from the Vatican and hold the institutional blindness prayerfully before an all seeing and all loving God...? Father forgive them. They know not what they say...

   Posted By: Margaret

3. So ABC Radio's (Kelly Higgins Devine) disrespectful and cynical summary of the story was, as usual based on bias and ignorance.
   
   Kelly is clearly incapable due to her demonstrable bias against the Catholic church, to use any other measure than short term selfish values ... no understanding of real freedom, or of what most women in the world do to clean clothes; just think about Western women as though that's all that matters or what the Catholic church should be concerned with. What about spiritual development Kelly .. does that figure at all ? ABC journo's ought do yourselves and your listeners a favour; do your job properly instead of grasping any straw to bash the Catholic church or push a PC feminist agenda.

   Posted By: Chris Saidou

4. I think they might be partly right on this one, though "put in the powder, close the lid and relax" is not quite correct. While the washing machine is doing its job, we're getting on with the rest of the household chores. However the washing machine does mean we can train the husbands and children to throw the clothes in & push a few buttons! We now just need a washing machine which also hangs the clothes on the line, folds or irons them and puts them back in the cupboard!

   Posted By: Alex Lyall

5. Might be a good idea for the un-named Vatican authors of this 'article'(?)to go back to college and enrol for 1st year units in Sociology, Politics and Social History!
   
   If that is considered beneath them, brief pastors everywhere(especially in the West)to ask for a show of hands by those MEN who do the washing these days. Might make a liturgically appropriate post-homily question for Holy Thursday Masses this year?

   Posted By: Dr Frank Donovan

6. Another enlightening insight into the place of women by the Vatican. Too bad that 85% of the world's women have never ever heard about or seen or used a washing machine let alone have sufficient access to water to use one!! Sell the Vatican and use the proceeds to buy a washing machine for the world's 85%. Money well spent in my opinion. More sense in the suds than what comes out of that place!

   Posted By: Michael

7. While the wording left much to be desired, I have to agree that the washing machine is pretty close to being the single most useful item in our household (apart from the hot water system)! As a relatively young mum of 7 I can't imagine not having it - I can remember my mother using the wringer (ergh!) and being thrilled to bits when she bought her first automatic washer. And, frankly, the Pill leaves me cold.
   
   The only thing is - what about the developing nations ? Where's their progress in Women's lib ? Obviously not the Pill or abortion, either, but there haven't been that many global gains for women.
   
   Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to at least point to access to education in answer to that question !

   Posted By: mrsd

8. The answer to the question is obvious. The Catholic Church contributed most to the emancipation of Western women in the 20th century. Sadly, most of them ignored her and have become slaves to the sexual demands of men.

   Posted By: Ronk

9. Chris Saidou
   
   What has ABC radio got to do with this article sourced from Calgary Herald and quoting L'OR and Betty Friedan?
   
   It was sufficiently silly all by itself. No ABC talking head could have committed any further injustice.

   Posted By: Richard Moore

10. What short memories some of you have. I remember my mother slaving over the washing each week for the five children she raised while my father worked at a job he didn't like but knew he had to have to support his family. When we were able to afford a better washing machine it did liberate her, now she had more time to care for her children in other ways and she got a job (which she also did not like much but we needed the money). In my time parents sacrificed themselves for their families not job satisfaction or self-promotion.

    Posted By: Markodan

11. My great-grandmother died when my father was 10 years old because she had to wash all clothes in the river, summer and winter with temperatures at freezing levels. And she was not the only one. My grandmother would still have spent at least a day a week doing nothing else but washing and ironing. How many women die today because they catch pneumonia doing the washing? How many spent the entire day washing and ironing? I have 5 kids and I never had to spent that sort of time on doing my laundry. Even if I left it all for the weekend and did 10 loads of washing, the hanging, folding and ironing rarely would have taken more than 4 hours! That leaves another 8 h for pleasure compared to my grandmother!

    Posted By: annemie

12. Has anyone actually read the article before jerking their knees? What is the OR to do? If they joke, you won't laugh with them, and if they weep, you make them the butt of your sneers. Lighten up!
    
    Nor is the pill a liberator of women. The sexual revolution which the pill made possible made women (and men) sexual slaves, destroyed relationships, universalized sexual distrust. One could go on.

    Posted By: Adeodatus

13. Dr Frank Donovan, your first sentence sums up my response.....except I'd add a couple of more years to the study. And would add a general science unit as well.
    Then I'd ask them to do some post-graduate work in group & organisational psychology where they might become aware of issues relating to the administrative structure of the Church....where, presently, women are only the subject matter for men to pontificate on.
    Thank the Lord for the influence of feminism in the world outside. Has led to improvements in legal status, education, and job opportunities for women.
    Yes, there is a moral connection. For example, research into young girls who become sexually active at an early age....reveals that the girls least likely to do so....are the daughters of women who value education & communicate with their daughters.
    

    Posted By: Marie H

14. I'm just mulling over the slide from the liberative value of the washing machine to that of the pill and "sexual slavery"-as-a-result conclusion.
    
    First, Betty Friedan argued in The Feminine Mystique that all recent household appliances - washing machine, vacuum cleaner, fridge, electric cooker, etc - liberated housewives from time-consuming drudgery.
    
    Second, although the negative side effects - physiological, psychological, social, etc - of the pill may be baneful, women's freedom to choose the kinds of relationships and the kinds of career and lifestyle they prefer has been enormously enhanced by the pill. I don't see how we can avoid this conclusion, even if we believe that women have often made the wrong choices and the negative side effects perhaps outweigh the positive.
    
    Third, although the availability of time- and labour-saving devices gives a housewife more time and energy to pursue her interests in or outside the home, her life choices as a result become more extensive rather than radically altered. She still lives in a patriarchal, matrifocal environment, in which the husband provides the income and the wife nurtures and creates greater quality of life for the family. The pill, however, gives a woman the option of choosing a life, if she wants it, that may be based on career, that is more mobile, more self-directed and less dependent. The question is: Does this kind of lifestyle satisfy her deeper needs and aspirations? The point, though, is that, since the pill, she is now able to choose for herself. She does not have the choices made for her by family or the expectations of her community.

    Posted By: Poppenhauer

15. Marie H, you're forgetting that the Catholic Church invented feminism.
    
    Poppenhuer, you list some of the lesser negative effects of the Pill but totally ignore the two central ones - firstly that it devalues womanhood and makes it possible, even inevitable, that men expect sex any time they want it from anyone they want it with, with no consequences; refusing to take ALL of a woman, including her fertility, but only the parts they want. So much so that tragically many a young woman today doesn't even have any hope or expectation that she will ever meet a man who wants to marry her for the rest of their lives and father her children.
    
    And secondly of course that the Pill leads directly to many murders - either caused directly by the massive hormone dose itself aborting an embryo by preventing him from attaching himself to his mother's womb lining; or else because the contraceptive mentality encourages concsiously and directly willed abortion in the almost inevitable cases when contraception "fails".
    
    I'm sure all parents of large families, like me, get an ironic laugh at the ridiculous assertion in your last sentence, having had to bear the brunt of hostility, ridicule, contempt, and condemnation from the community and even from our own families because of the choices we have made.
    
    Eileen Luthi, the Pill is not "family planning". It is a weapon of mass family destruction.

    Posted By: Ronk

16. Ronk, I can't have 'forgotten the Catholic Church invented feminism', because I know history & where the feminist movement had its roots.
    It was late 19th, early 20th century France....with the terminology 'feminism' spreading to Britain.
    Feminism grew out of the women's rights pleas at that time. Re matters such as equality under the law, education & the right to vote.
    Not surprising, the stirring was in France where in the previous century, a number of women welcomed the French Revolution as opening the way to such rights for women. Only to be sorely disappointed.
    It was later that the same aims arose again...& was a reaction against the way women were surpressed by the social order that included the Catholic Church. Tho' the Church was not alone....there were other components like the 'science' & medical establishments as well as the extent of sheer misogyny in the social mores.
    Ironically, when our present Pope quite rightly says that women should have equal access to education & work as well as equality under the law.....he's actually repeating the early aims that the feminist movements set out to win. Not with the help of the Church at that time, tho.
    Just goes to show how yesterday's heresy can become today's orthodoxy. ('Heresy' in a metaphorical sense.)
    Or, as Bernard Lonergan, a US theologian has remarked, 'the Church tends to arrive on the scene, breathless & a little late.'

    Posted By: Marie H

17. Richard Moore
    
    The article was silly because the original was taken out of context for the purposes of political correctness ie conning people with lies.
    
    The ABC joined that effort whilst even admitting that they hadn't seen the original article, so desperate were they to bash the catholic church.
    
    As numerous posters here explain the original article and idea is not silly as it makes the clear point that the usual PC alternatives for emancipating women were con jobs. Did you fall for it?

    Posted By: Chris Saidou

18. Ronk, you say that you and others have suffered from family opposition because of (marriage?) choices you have made, but think outside your own cultural square a little. Most young people (male and female) in the non-Western world still don't have the choice to oppose their family in regard to marriage choice, and the only way they can see themselves exercising choice in their post-wedding lives and careers is by access to contraception, now readily available in the urban centres of many non-Western countries. Most of these young people are not Catholic and are only seeking the kinds of choices in their lives that Western people, Catholic or otherwise, already have as a result of liberalism and feminism, both still anathema to many Catholics, it seems.

    Posted By: Poppenhauer

19. Poppenhauer, I can't imagine why you're going off on a tangent about arranged marriages. I said nothing about marriage. I said that parents of large families suffer from hostility, ridicule etc.
    
    Contraception is immoral; this has nothing to do with anybody's religion or culture. And please don't drag out the tired old myth that people in the 3rd world desperately want contraception but don't have access to it. They are swamped with contraceptives by the West, but they choose not to use them, and beg instead for genuine medical supplies which the mountain of contraceptives displaces.
    

    Posted By: Ronk

20. Marie H, I was not speaking of the TERM “feminism” to which you attach such importance, but the social phenomenon it describes, for which the Catholic Church is almost entirely responsible. Just look at the situation of women in places where the Church has had little influence. Even in supposedly “progressive” countries like Japan.
    
    The “history” which you and Mr Lonergan "know" is a revised politically-correct version which has arrived on the scene breathless and long after the events, and bearing little relation to them.
    
    See e.g. “Catholic Women: A case of Oppression?”
    http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9705fea2.asp
    

    Posted By: Ronk

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