Scout Pride, the first news site Google listed on the girl boy scout story Earlier this year a controversy ensued over the question of phasing out altar girls at my parish. Many good and thoughtful Catholics could not understand why a pastor would think that sexual differences indicate different roles in the Mass. The heat generated over this question took me aback. How much of it, I wonder, is generated by our unconscious acceptance of liberalism’s mantra that personal autonomy is the supreme good? If that is so, then indeed we should be at liberty to choose our sexual identity, despite our natural bodies.
Last week five girls submitted applications to become Boy Scouts in Santa Rosa. I don’t think this was prompted by the girls themselves, because children generally appreciate the natural differences between boys and girls. Rather, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported in an article by Steve Rubenstein: “One by one, under the watchful eyes of parents, they trooped to the head table and plopped their applications in front of Council President John Carriger. ‘I’d like to be a Boy Scout,’ each girl said” (emphasis mine).
From my experience with youth programs over the years, I’m fairly certain that these gender questions are of little interest to children, but of pressing concern to adults. When I checked this story on Google, I found that every news site listed by that estimable search engine was reporting in lockstep with the prevailing gender-neutral dogma, and many of them were homosexual advocacy sites. I was surprised, on Halloween this year, to see how many adults dressed up in costumes. Halloween in my neighborhood was less about children than about adults. Children need us adults to consider their needs before our own, at least some of the time.
Girl Altar Boys? Some of my best altar servers were girls over the years. If redefining gender roles is of little interest to children, then who is really behind such things, and whose agenda are they advancing? So many of us have unthinkingly accepted liberalism’s mantra of “choice” but there are some things one simply cannot choose and simply cannot change no matter how loudly one says them or how hard one tries to choose them because they just are: boys can’t be girls; girls can’t be boys; marriage can’t be redefined; killing a human being is never not murder – all of these things just are because that’s how God defined them.
Libralism's creed of personal autonomy has been the air we breathe in the West at least since Francis Bacon wrote his treatises on man’s domination of nature. Liberalism’s creed is not going to go away any time soon, but at least we can bring a measure of reason to the controversy. We can calmly insist that our natures are greater than our wills, that Mother Nature is not mocked, and that she always wins in the end. (For a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, consider the Catholic Troops of St. George or the interdenominational Trail Life USA.)
Last week five girls submitted applications to become Boy Scouts in Santa Rosa. I don’t think this was prompted by the girls themselves, because children generally appreciate the natural differences between boys and girls. Rather, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported in an article by Steve Rubenstein: “One by one, under the watchful eyes of parents, they trooped to the head table and plopped their applications in front of Council President John Carriger. ‘I’d like to be a Boy Scout,’ each girl said” (emphasis mine).
From my experience with youth programs over the years, I’m fairly certain that these gender questions are of little interest to children, but of pressing concern to adults. When I checked this story on Google, I found that every news site listed by that estimable search engine was reporting in lockstep with the prevailing gender-neutral dogma, and many of them were homosexual advocacy sites. I was surprised, on Halloween this year, to see how many adults dressed up in costumes. Halloween in my neighborhood was less about children than about adults. Children need us adults to consider their needs before our own, at least some of the time.
Girl Altar Boys? Some of my best altar servers were girls over the years. If redefining gender roles is of little interest to children, then who is really behind such things, and whose agenda are they advancing? So many of us have unthinkingly accepted liberalism’s mantra of “choice” but there are some things one simply cannot choose and simply cannot change no matter how loudly one says them or how hard one tries to choose them because they just are: boys can’t be girls; girls can’t be boys; marriage can’t be redefined; killing a human being is never not murder – all of these things just are because that’s how God defined them.
Libralism's creed of personal autonomy has been the air we breathe in the West at least since Francis Bacon wrote his treatises on man’s domination of nature. Liberalism’s creed is not going to go away any time soon, but at least we can bring a measure of reason to the controversy. We can calmly insist that our natures are greater than our wills, that Mother Nature is not mocked, and that she always wins in the end. (For a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, consider the Catholic Troops of St. George or the interdenominational Trail Life USA.)
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