My sister is one of the good ones: 50 years working in one of the poorest areas in Philly. The nuns she lives with are all the same and share one major trait: stupidity. Because they received degrees handed out from their own colleges in a time when few women did, they are arrogant, read nothing, listen to media. But when such a modest mind with an often nasty soul leads our flock, what can one expect?
I built my own business, and it pretty well defined me in my working years. Now, I'm retired and, yes, I'm proud of what I accomplished. But what matters to me now is my marriage, my kids, my grandkids, and my one great grandchild, so far...
I'm a man. If anything, I've been castigated for spending too much energy on work, and not enough on family. Yet women are expected to do exactly that.
I have to admit that I was very surprised by the breadth and width of the negative reaction to the Butker speech. A Catholic professional athlete talking to Catholic graduates at a Catholic university (facts most in the Lame Street Media failed to mention). Who knew that the end of life as we know it in America could be brought to the precipice of extinction by a college commencement speech? But the negative reaction highlighted for me just how shallow and unserious the left continues to be - even as the pendulum feels like it is swinging away from them. Great piece! Thanks!
I’m so sorry for your friends’ loss. Before I had my girls I would read something like that and feel a bit sad in an abstract way. Now it genuinely hurts even though I don’t know them. Having children changes you as a man; I can’t imagine what it does to a woman, nor such a tragedy. They are in my prayers.
I join you in prayers for that family. As a mother, I find myself trying to avoid thinking about this type of horric tragedy (or any involving children, really) because I can't stop crying since it hurts too much. I am not an overly emotional woman, either. But the thought of the hope that that mother had, and the excitement, but then the realization that the baby wasn't moving and the fear and dread... I weep for her. May God give her peace.
Moira is in heaven and is blessed. Faith, is the only way to deal with such horrific tragedies. Thank you for sharing the Coke Ad, which was beautiful.
The controversy regarding Harrison Butker’s speech is from the same people that I don’t waste my time listening to. Their opinions do not matter. Their words and their actions do not matter. Women can do what they want. They can be housewives, nuns, or presidents( unless you’re Hillary Clinton). The unfulfilled white liberal women Biden supporters will not be happy with anything or anyone. Maybe they can find love in Gaza. I’m sure as Americans, we would be happy to donate to make their dreams come true. Thank you for a wonderful article.
I must also say as a successful surgeon in the twilight of his career, a career I loved, raising my children brought me my greatest joy and satisfaction.
I had a successful 46-year career as a lawyer but I'm much more proud to be the father of two great adult children. My wife stayed home with the kids, so she deserves a lot of credit.
My heart goes out to the family who suffered the stillbirth; that’s a devastating earthquake think it hard to walk back from 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. You make excellent points Ms Keenan, marriage, family, & children were the highest calling in the culture @ one point. That is until the social justice warriors (basically what they were) got going in the mid to late ‘60’s to present. While they tear down the foundations of Western Civ in lieu of some higher “progressive” calling, they are also intentionally destroying the family & men - in particular- seem to be center in the bullseye. Don’t see much in the culture in the way of pushback; think the Principles of Chivalry - the Code of the Chivalric Orders - might go a long way. Without them men have become entirely unmoored.
I'm an old post menopausal broad. I've made more mistakes in life than I care to count. One of them was a rather useless college degree, although it did allow me to teach high school for 13 years which I loved. The three best decisions I made in my life was having three children. If you don't have children it's almost impossible to express how you feel when they hand you that baby. My third came home from the hospital with a cold and he couldn't sleep lying down for about three days. I slept in a rocking chair for those three days with him upright on my chest. I had two other little boys under the age of five and my youngest was a c-section delivery. Sleeping in a rocking chair isn't particularly comfortable under any circumstances but it didn't matter, I didn't care. It was comfortable for my beautiful little son. I would have slept on a bed of nails if that would have made it easier for him to sleep with his cold. You don't do these things for your kids to be admired, you do it because it's all that matters, their safety, their, comfort, their happiness and then when they get older you make really hard choices that you believe will make them better people.
For too long in this country we have focused on the sacrifice and hardship of being a mother. I never felt hardship or sacrifice. I felt love, joy, value and a sense of mission to give my children everything they needed, love, safety, wisdom, character and faith. For me at least, raising my sons to be happy, kind, giving and successful young men was the most wonderful, challenging and rewarding career I could have ever had. By God's love and grace I now have three happy, successful adult sons and my first two grandchildren arriving this fall.
Maybe we could all be a little less dogmatic. Choose what you want to choose, just don’t coerce or bully people into carrying your water for you. And leave other people alone to live their lives as they see fit. You want to be a traditional Catholic, be one. You want to be a lesbian with a career. Be one. Just don’t ask me to validate all your choices. Not my job. The Left are basically lunatics at this point. Their ideas are irrational, destructive, stupid, and malicious. They find hatred and conflict at every opportunity. The ascendency of the hard Left in the West is a glaring, wasteful failure of our societies. But it won’t last.
Reality is undefeated and will eventually reassert itself. I think we are starting to see that. Moving forward we need to dismantle the leftist death grip on our society. And we need to figure out how not to let it happen again. At the same time we should try and realize the promise of the nation, which is individual liberty and responsibility for everybody.
Motherhood red pilled me away from the woke girlboss feminism of my 20s and early 30s. Sacrificing (career advancement and money) for my daughter and husband has been utterly worth it, and my only regret is that we didn't start earlier, have more kids, and trust God more. Ironically my own mother was a SAHM who made no apologies for it. Somehow I absorbed feminism from the 90s zeitgeist anyway. You can bet my daughter will get to see all sides so that she can choose for herself with a better inkling of the real tradeoffs. I figure when all her grandchildren are gathered around her, she won't regret not making partner (or whatever).
Nothing is more important than raising the next generation. My Mom stayed at home. My wife stayed at home. They both sacrificed for their children. I love my wife for that. H Butker spoke the truth against "conventional wisdom". My girls (and boy) are living proof of that truth. Keep up the good work...
I love how you say it can be done! We can have both career and children BUT it is really hard and will require some sacrifice not just of time and sleep, but of career prospects and money. That is the truth and what we should be sharing with young women. Not this nonsense that we Deserve the corner office because. Equality. Our jobs raising our children are just as important and valuable if not more, but doing this makes you by default, less able to devote time and energy into an out of home job. Unlike men who we also free up by our choices to be able to go full tilt into their careers. I know and my husband knows he would not have been able to be so successful without me managing the home.
You probably already knew this but . . . don't trust nuns who don't wear habits. ;)
100%. Theologian and Catholic convert Peter Kreeft has often echoed your comment.
That’s a fact! Plus, those broads smack of lesbianism.
****
That’s exactly what I thought
My sister is one of the good ones: 50 years working in one of the poorest areas in Philly. The nuns she lives with are all the same and share one major trait: stupidity. Because they received degrees handed out from their own colleges in a time when few women did, they are arrogant, read nothing, listen to media. But when such a modest mind with an often nasty soul leads our flock, what can one expect?
I was going to say something similar. Those are not nuns. Not in any sense of the word.
Here's a convent report from the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles.
Average age of 30 and nothing but habits. ("...we pray very hard...")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=korbAzDw2yw
No one, and I mean no one, is going to look back on their life and say, "If only I worked more/harder...".
Everyone who has children can look back & say "I was blessed!"
I built my own business, and it pretty well defined me in my working years. Now, I'm retired and, yes, I'm proud of what I accomplished. But what matters to me now is my marriage, my kids, my grandkids, and my one great grandchild, so far...
I'm a man. If anything, I've been castigated for spending too much energy on work, and not enough on family. Yet women are expected to do exactly that.
And I frequently now say, my only regret is not having trusted in G-d and welcomed more children.
*****
The jab against the Church of Nice was my favorite part. Most evil occurs because people are too afraid to say no.
I have to admit that I was very surprised by the breadth and width of the negative reaction to the Butker speech. A Catholic professional athlete talking to Catholic graduates at a Catholic university (facts most in the Lame Street Media failed to mention). Who knew that the end of life as we know it in America could be brought to the precipice of extinction by a college commencement speech? But the negative reaction highlighted for me just how shallow and unserious the left continues to be - even as the pendulum feels like it is swinging away from them. Great piece! Thanks!
*****
I’m so sorry for your friends’ loss. Before I had my girls I would read something like that and feel a bit sad in an abstract way. Now it genuinely hurts even though I don’t know them. Having children changes you as a man; I can’t imagine what it does to a woman, nor such a tragedy. They are in my prayers.
I join you in prayers for that family. As a mother, I find myself trying to avoid thinking about this type of horric tragedy (or any involving children, really) because I can't stop crying since it hurts too much. I am not an overly emotional woman, either. But the thought of the hope that that mother had, and the excitement, but then the realization that the baby wasn't moving and the fear and dread... I weep for her. May God give her peace.
Moira is in heaven and is blessed. Faith, is the only way to deal with such horrific tragedies. Thank you for sharing the Coke Ad, which was beautiful.
The controversy regarding Harrison Butker’s speech is from the same people that I don’t waste my time listening to. Their opinions do not matter. Their words and their actions do not matter. Women can do what they want. They can be housewives, nuns, or presidents( unless you’re Hillary Clinton). The unfulfilled white liberal women Biden supporters will not be happy with anything or anyone. Maybe they can find love in Gaza. I’m sure as Americans, we would be happy to donate to make their dreams come true. Thank you for a wonderful article.
I must also say as a successful surgeon in the twilight of his career, a career I loved, raising my children brought me my greatest joy and satisfaction.
I had a successful 46-year career as a lawyer but I'm much more proud to be the father of two great adult children. My wife stayed home with the kids, so she deserves a lot of credit.
My heart goes out to the family who suffered the stillbirth; that’s a devastating earthquake think it hard to walk back from 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. You make excellent points Ms Keenan, marriage, family, & children were the highest calling in the culture @ one point. That is until the social justice warriors (basically what they were) got going in the mid to late ‘60’s to present. While they tear down the foundations of Western Civ in lieu of some higher “progressive” calling, they are also intentionally destroying the family & men - in particular- seem to be center in the bullseye. Don’t see much in the culture in the way of pushback; think the Principles of Chivalry - the Code of the Chivalric Orders - might go a long way. Without them men have become entirely unmoored.
I'm an old post menopausal broad. I've made more mistakes in life than I care to count. One of them was a rather useless college degree, although it did allow me to teach high school for 13 years which I loved. The three best decisions I made in my life was having three children. If you don't have children it's almost impossible to express how you feel when they hand you that baby. My third came home from the hospital with a cold and he couldn't sleep lying down for about three days. I slept in a rocking chair for those three days with him upright on my chest. I had two other little boys under the age of five and my youngest was a c-section delivery. Sleeping in a rocking chair isn't particularly comfortable under any circumstances but it didn't matter, I didn't care. It was comfortable for my beautiful little son. I would have slept on a bed of nails if that would have made it easier for him to sleep with his cold. You don't do these things for your kids to be admired, you do it because it's all that matters, their safety, their, comfort, their happiness and then when they get older you make really hard choices that you believe will make them better people.
For too long in this country we have focused on the sacrifice and hardship of being a mother. I never felt hardship or sacrifice. I felt love, joy, value and a sense of mission to give my children everything they needed, love, safety, wisdom, character and faith. For me at least, raising my sons to be happy, kind, giving and successful young men was the most wonderful, challenging and rewarding career I could have ever had. By God's love and grace I now have three happy, successful adult sons and my first two grandchildren arriving this fall.
Maybe we could all be a little less dogmatic. Choose what you want to choose, just don’t coerce or bully people into carrying your water for you. And leave other people alone to live their lives as they see fit. You want to be a traditional Catholic, be one. You want to be a lesbian with a career. Be one. Just don’t ask me to validate all your choices. Not my job. The Left are basically lunatics at this point. Their ideas are irrational, destructive, stupid, and malicious. They find hatred and conflict at every opportunity. The ascendency of the hard Left in the West is a glaring, wasteful failure of our societies. But it won’t last.
Reality is undefeated and will eventually reassert itself. I think we are starting to see that. Moving forward we need to dismantle the leftist death grip on our society. And we need to figure out how not to let it happen again. At the same time we should try and realize the promise of the nation, which is individual liberty and responsibility for everybody.
They’ve always been that way. Since the early 70s.
Motherhood red pilled me away from the woke girlboss feminism of my 20s and early 30s. Sacrificing (career advancement and money) for my daughter and husband has been utterly worth it, and my only regret is that we didn't start earlier, have more kids, and trust God more. Ironically my own mother was a SAHM who made no apologies for it. Somehow I absorbed feminism from the 90s zeitgeist anyway. You can bet my daughter will get to see all sides so that she can choose for herself with a better inkling of the real tradeoffs. I figure when all her grandchildren are gathered around her, she won't regret not making partner (or whatever).
Nothing is more important than raising the next generation. My Mom stayed at home. My wife stayed at home. They both sacrificed for their children. I love my wife for that. H Butker spoke the truth against "conventional wisdom". My girls (and boy) are living proof of that truth. Keep up the good work...
Very sorry to hear about Moira and her poor family. Prayers and thoughts for them in their grief. They will be united in Heaven.
Seeing young men like Harrison speak up for the faith gives me hope. Seeing the reaction of these moral nitwits gives me joy.
Haha, I drink leftist tears for breakfast!
*****
I love how you say it can be done! We can have both career and children BUT it is really hard and will require some sacrifice not just of time and sleep, but of career prospects and money. That is the truth and what we should be sharing with young women. Not this nonsense that we Deserve the corner office because. Equality. Our jobs raising our children are just as important and valuable if not more, but doing this makes you by default, less able to devote time and energy into an out of home job. Unlike men who we also free up by our choices to be able to go full tilt into their careers. I know and my husband knows he would not have been able to be so successful without me managing the home.
*****
Another wonderful piece. I am heartbroken for their baby who is even now with Jesus.
I stand with Peachy and all the ladies who cherish courage, and love, and life!
Know what you believe and why you believe it, and laugh and be happy--commies hate happy warriors. :)