One of the more surprising pieces of news in recent days comes out of Phoenix:
An Arizona Catholic high school forfeited a shot at a state baseball championship on Thursday rather than compete against an opponent that had a 15-year-old girl on its team.
Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in Phoenix had been due to play Mesa Preparatory Academy in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship.
But the team pulled out rather than face the Mesa squad, which fielded 15-year-old Paige Sultzbach at second base.
A school official noted:
Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.
Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.
Our Lady of Sorrows is run by traditionalist, conservative priests who do not agree with Roman Catholic Church reforms enacted by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s and who broke from the Church in the 1980s.
The girl's mother noted: "It wasn't that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it's that (they believe) that a girl's place is not on a field."
That's right.
Because a girl's place is to get ready to have babies!
Lots of babies.
And out of respect, of course, these girls, when married, will be denied birth control.
And, heaven forbid, access to abortion.
Because a woman's purpose in this life is nothing more than having babies.
Athletic pursuit? Don't think so.
Careers? Don't think so.
Write books and climb mountains? Don't think so.
Do research? Don't think so.
Lay flat on your back and let some eager Catholic Boy, who respects you, have a go at ya'. Yup, for sure ... that's what God wants, that's what the Bible says, that's what the "real" Catholic Church teaches - just like Mary, "our Mother of Sorrows," compliant and ready to open her body to the only purpose a woman's body has - bearing children.
And if she doesn't want babies, then no marriage either - off to a Convent, to be trained as a nun, a teacher, removed from life and married to the church for a life of service to the priests of the church.
This version of the Roman Catholic Church, rocked as it is with sexual scandal, is trying to recover its balance by trying to recover the heart of its traditional sexual ethics: women bear children!
If only the Church can return to this purpose, if only women would pay attention to how God created their bodies, if only women would hush up (and all those uppity nuns, for crying out loud, shut them down, please) then everything else will work out - or, at least, maybe the world won't pay so much attention to what these horrible men are doing if only the women of the church stand up, I mean, lay down, and have tons of babies.
