Kathryn Lopez: Where are the women? They are the young leaders at Notre Dame.

In a recent article for the National Review, Kathryn Lopez writes about attending the 2012 Edith Stein Conference, hosted and organized by undergraduate women at Notre Dame. 

Lopez writes about the Conference:

A group of young women there invited me, among others, to speak about the “vulnerability” of all things, at their seventh annual Edith Stein Project conference. Stein — a canonized saint who was killed at Auschwitz —  was both a Carmelite sister and a philosopher and university professor. The women of Notre Dame find in her a role model in both the intellectual and the spiritual realms — a courageous, well-integrated life. 

These students were — to quote the title of their conference — “Encountering Vulnerability,” with a rare healthy, honest openness to tried and true models. They cited Pope John Paul II as saying, “No amount of economic, scientific, or social progress can eradicate our vulnerability to sin and to death.” In conference materials, the undergraduates commented: “This gives us good reason to guard ourselves carefully in situations where we could be harmed; however, in trying to protect ourselves, we often come to fear our vulnerability.”
The young women — who were joined by many of their male classmates — were interested not in political mantras but in practicalities: How do we confront reality rather than coming up with policies and pills to help us try to escape the inescapable? 

The task of the weekend conference was to ask, as its organizers put it: “Perhaps there is a flip side to vulnerability. In addition to examining ways in which it may be misused, we must also consider its value. If vulnerability is intrinsic to us as human beings, is there a proper place for it in our identity and our relationships?” 

The answer lies, in part, in Saint Paul, who recognized that “it is when I am weak that I am strong.” And the exploration of the “defenseless vulnerability of love” is a weekly task at Notre Dame, as part of the Identity Project, in which students meet each week to reflect on Catholic teaching on women, femininity, and masculinity. The answer, too, is in their identity as Christians who present themselves regularly for Mass and Reconciliation, seeking sustenance from Providence, which no earthly power or principality can match. 

The Edith Stein conference and the weekly related meetings attract almost as many young men as women — not surprisingly, inasmuch as their discussions are about the complementary nature of men and women. “Women and men have to understand femininity and masculinity if they are going to relate to one another in any kind of healthy way,” explains Margaret Kennedy, a junior and an accounting major. 

Notre Dame has been criticized for giving cover to the Obama administration, particularly through having awarded the president an honorary degree at its 2009 commencement. But there is something different happening there in the wake of the HHS mandate. One of the first people I heard from after the president’s faux “accommodation” was law professor Carter Snead, who has circulated a letter declaring the president’s position “unacceptable” — a letter hundreds of academics and other leaders have signed. 

The young men and women of the Stein Project have no illusions about the challenges they face on campus and beyond. “I understand that I am not living my life only for myself,” Kennedy tells me. “And I am making choices that reflect that.” Confronting vulnerability is at the top of the list. “What we typically think of as a negative is actually a positive,” she says: Feminism dictates that “we’re not allowed to be vulnerable, but we cannot escape that vulnerability. By hiding ourselves from it we don’t actually escape it.” 

“Contraception,” she says, “is but a mask,” covering up our vulnerabilities. It’s like alcohol, she adds: “a way not to confront our fears or take responsibility for our actions.”Claire Gillen, a history major graduating in May, is getting married to her high-school sweetheart that same month. “Adults, especially, tell me I’m too young, I should be established in a career,” she says. But as for the students, “Honestly, I know very few people who don’t want to get married. They’re happy to see someone truly happy.” They are tired of forced war-between-the-sexes hostilities. 

In reality, the answer to the question “Where are the women?” — which every abortion-advocating feminist group is now milking for fundraising — is: on the committee’s secondpanel. Those who asked the question the most, as an act of political showmanship, didn’t stick around long enough to meet the woman, Dr. Laura Champion, who runs Calvin College’s medical services. And the more long-term answer is: They are the young leaders at Notre Dame, who have a lot to teach those who have been suppressing or denying reality for all too long about who we are and what we need and want.

For Lopez's full article, click here.

To watch videos from the conference, click here

For more information about the Edith Stein Conference and IDND, click here.

Are 98% of Catholic Women on Contraceptives?

In a recent blog post, Lydia McGrew considers the statistic dominating recent discussion: Are 98 percent of Catholic women using contraceptives?

Statistical data from the Guttmacher Institute

Simply put: The claim that 98% of Catholic women are using contraceptives is a false claim, derived in a manipulative way from the statistics included in this post. Linda McGrew elaborates of this falsification in her post:

The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren't including the elderly, but it also means that the silly "percent of all Catholic women" thing should be chucked out right from the beginning. More strikingly, as Neil pointed out to me after looking up the study, itexcluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant! In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are "at risk" of becoming pregnant. Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It's also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman "at risk of an unintended pregnancy." 

Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not "at risk of an unintended pregnancy" for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won't fall into the "at-risk" category, and by the same token she won't have any use for the "services" that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?...

The statistics in the Guttmacher study appear to be okay for the purpose for which the study was originally intended. The intention of the study was to answer something like the following question: "Among women of various religious groups who are now sexually active but do not wish to become pregnant, what percentage use different methods of avoiding pregnancy?" But the purpose for which the statistic for Catholic women from the study is now being used is to argue, "A very high percentage of Catholic women (or, perhaps, Catholic women of child-bearing age) are currently not following the Catholic Church's teachings on sex and contraception and have a use for contraception forbidden by the Catholic Church." 

For that purpose, these statistics are bogus... 

Upon reflection, I have realized clearly an additional major problem with the 98% statistic. It is including all the Catholic women whoexpressly told researchers that they used "no method" to avoid pregnancy. In the table, that is 11%. The 98% statistic is apparently derived by subtracting only the 2% who said that they used NFP from 100%. So women who said they used no method of contraception are apparently being included in a statistic about how many Catholic women use contraception. How's that for crazy? And that's in addition to the problems discussed already in the original post.

To read her entire post, click here.