This Sunday’s Gospel identifies Jesus as promoting women’s liberation. He does so by promoting communion. Communion is a life-giving power. It the relationship model Mary witnesses for Jesus and Jesus passes on. The life-giving power of communion as a relationship model can be misunderstood or perhaps feared. Thus, when Jesus witnesses life-giving communion in today’s Gospel, “many of Jesus’ disciples returned to their former way of life.” The former way of life to which those disciples returned was Militarism. Militarism’s relationship model is domination / subjugation. The relationship model spans history and systems. For example, its systems span means that in the same way military commanders dominate over lower ranks who they subjugate, so too rich dominate over poor who they subjugate, CEO’s dominate over subjugated workers, priests dominate over subjugated laity, men dominate over subjugated women and so forth.
In the matter of the sexes, Militarism devises patriarchy’s masculine stereotype of domination / subordination which hinders women’s liberation. There have recently been three examples of militarism’s domination-subjugation model errantly applied to women’s liberation thus hindering it. Two women were championed as the first of their gender to complete a killer 61-day military course. It is a course in small-unit warfare, Army Ranger School. These women and their supporters errantly believe they become liberated when they subjugate themselves to Militarism’s deadly domination / subordination relationship model. Another example of errant women’s liberation surfaced recently from Amnesty International (AI). AI supports “the full decriminalization of all aspects of consensual sex work … to ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking and violence.” Granting the necessary decriminalization, for AI to call sex work consensual is to have already accepted Militarism’s normalization of women’s exploitation, trafficking and violence that it standardizes through its sexism, poverty, and raping that precede and co-exist with sex work. A third example also plundering women of their humanity while errantly promoting it as liberating, is Militarism’s patriarchal abortion industry. Recently released unedited transcripts described how Planned Parenthood employees could crush a woman’s aborted fetus in such a way as to harvest the baby’s financially lucrative body parts. Planned Parenthood’s abortion industry was devised by patriarchs as an extension of Militarism. It promotes Militarism’s dominant / subordinate relationship model between a woman and her growing baby. Abortion justifies a dominant person inflicting suffering on a subordinate being. In abortion, women’s communal and life-giving sexuality, life-giving power, is exploited, trafficked, and violated. The domination / subjugation model is practiced equally by Duggar Family Values and Hugh Hefner Hedonists alike. They subjugate in different ways but both subjugate women, particularly to abortion. Family value types subjugate women to abortion through overt domination along with hypocritical shame and abuse. Hefner types subjugate women to abortion through indirect coercion as a sex object. The military model is worshiped by Duggar types and made pajama-clad cool by bunny loving Hefner types. Both constitute two sides of the one same coin of Militarism. Army Ranger School, sex trafficking, and abortion are evidence of a culture of domination / subordination promoted by Militarism and its patriarchal values.
Militarism’s domination/ subjugation model surfaces routinely in Old and New Testament readings, for example today’s. Paul, violating Mary and Jesus’ model of communion, promotes it when he teaches, “Wives should be subjugated to their husbands.” Women are subjugated through the military, through capitalism’s sex trade, and through the abortion industry. How peculiar that women supporters of these groups should find themselves in good company with Paul, who also promotes the subjugation of women.
Prayer: Spirit of Communion, we commit ourselves to being fully pro-life.
Question: How can I encourage women’s communal life-giving power?
August 23, 2015 Gospel John 6:60-69 Twenty-First Sunday In Ordinary Time
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