Wedding Traditions and the Catholic Church

So while researching things for my own wedding I came across many common traditions for weddings. Now while growing up I didn't attend many Catholic weddings surprisingly (they were mostly Protestant) so I was surprised to learn the Catholic Church doesn't like to follow some of them and discourages them. Here is a list and some explanations!


First, the unity candle. This custom actually started in non-religious weddings to show unification in the couple. The couple becomes one after marriage which the candle symbolizes. It somehow transferred into religious ceremonies. This custom is not something found in The Rite of Marriage in the Catholic Church, so some priests will not allow it. The decision is really up to them if you can have the custom in your ceremony. Unification is already celebrated in a Catholic wedding because of the liturgy, prayer and the administering of the sacrament. 


Next we have "The groom not seeing the bride before the wedding". Really this is a superstition more than a custom or tradition. In ancient times a marriage was basically a business arrangement for families so the bride and groom never even met before then. The groom was kept from seeing her so there would be no disapproval before the marriage. (So basically you couldn't run away if you didn't like what you saw) This has been more often then not abandoned in the current wedding trends.  A Catholic ceremony is something the couple administers to each other so it must be of mutual consent. Not seeing the bride before on purpose would symbolize the opposite. 


Then comes the brides procession. Most weddings I have been to the bride is escorted by her father, and only her father down the aisle to meet her groom at the altar. The mothers are seated before the procession starts and all of the brides' and grooms' attendants go down the aisle together before the bride and her father enters. This goes back to a time when women were the property of men, so essentially the father was transferring his property to another man. 


The Catholic Church discourages this kind of procession. In a Catholic ceremony the procession includes the priests, deacons, the bride and groom escorted by both of their parents, and their wedding party in any assortment. The Catholic church holds that the bride and groom enter marriage mutually and as equals, as complementary partners. The song "Here Comes the Bride" or variations of it are not usually allowed since it only focuses on the bride. This surprised me, and being that it sounds highly feminist to me, we might do it. Mutual agreement and equality is a huge theme in a Catholic ceremony and I LOVE that!


Then we have the veil. The veil really started out as something totally different then what it symbolizes today. Like I mentioned earlier women sadly used to be property in our society (and still considered so in some countries and societies today) , so marriages were arranged and the couple did not meet beforehand. The veil was a way to guard the groom from viewing the bride until after the ceremony to again avoid disapproval. I find it funny that these things were created to stop a man or woman running away from each other so they did't have to marry! It also was used to guard the bride from evil spirits on her wedding day. 


The veil has transformed to symbolize chastity and modesty and still does today. The Catholic church does not require a bride to wear a veil to be married. It is up to the bride and her preference. I at first was very against wearing a veil, however I tried some on with dresses for fun- and alas, I want one. But my reasoning has nothing to do with what I talked about here, I just thought it looked nice. 


The last tradition I want to talk about is the devotion to the blessed Mary. This is only a Catholic tradition but one I was not aware of. Mary is a role model for the Catholic bride so a bouquet of flowers is usually laid by the statue of Mary in the church as a devotion with some prayers. This is not in The Rite of Marriage but it is seen as a more personal touch that can be added. 


Planning a Catholic wedding has been an adventure so far. I find it so funny that while being Catholic I never really knew about this stuff since my family barely attended Catholic weddings. I love how feminism is found in little places like planning a wedding, it makes me smile! 

Natural Family Planning

A few weeks ago my partner and I attended a few marriage classes we are required to take in order to get married in the Catholic Church. One class focused on sex and touched on natural family planning. I know what you are thinking, a couple who has 10 children practice natural family planning because they pay no attention, do not use any birth control and let themselves get pregnant. Am I right? Or maybe something along those lines? I guess I also thought this myself before I took the class. It turns out its not the real case.

The Catholic Church supports the use of natural family planning which is used to avoid pregnancy and to get pregnant. The most common method and most effective method is Sympto-Thermal. In this method you chart the primary signs of fertility which are: cervical mucus, basal body temperature, and cervical changes as well as secondary signs. Doing this every morning at the same time will give you data, the real numbers to show you your cycle and which exact day you move from being not fertile to fertile- when you release an egg. The huge indicator is when your temperature increases and decreases. You do not have to have a "regular cycle" in order to chart and make this method work. It allows you to work with your own cycle and body.

This method is also known as Fertility Awareness to physicians, however it is not looked at as a  good method to avoid pregnancy alone. In order for this to work you must abstain from sex during the fertile period and be very strict with it. According to a report in Europe's Human Reproduction Today journal there is a study that was done with results published in 2007 on the effectiveness of natural family planning. The rate of unplanned pregnancies was around 0.4% per year meaning out of the 900 women who took part of study, 1.8 per 100 became pregnant. For something to be rated just as effective as the hormonal birth control pill, there should be less than one pregnancy per 100 women in a year.The rates in the study translated to one pregnancy per 250 women per year, which then in this study makes natural family planning just as effective. I found this piece of information pretty awesome to say the least. There are certain factors going into it, like only having sex when your temperature changes correctly to avoid pregnancy and the period of abstinence- but that can be true of the pill. You have to take it the same time every day, and it doesn't work well when you are super sick; there are still small risks of getting pregnant. However, it must be noted that this method is not easy. You must be very studious and stay on task with charting everyday because your cycle can change from month to month. If you become lazy, the effectiveness goes out the window.I think this is a misunderstood method and can be a great option for some couples.

My next thought after learning all the scientific data about this method was, is this a feminist method to go about planning a family and avoiding pregnancy? You are working with your body, listening to it. It tells you exactly when you can get pregnant and when it's less of a risk. You are not ignoring your body and letting a pill control your cycle. Being one with your body to me is very feminist. You also respect your body in a sense that you trust it to do what it was made to do, let you know what is going on. I feel you take control of your body and reproductive system in a very intimate way that you cannot do otherwise. Do you think it is a feminist method?

Child Care Costs More Than College?

This recently surfaced a few days ago and caught my eye. Now, I knew child care was expensive but it has been stated from the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies that child care in the U.S. for one year is equal to or more than one year of college! Is that not crazy?! The topic came out on Good Morning America. Click Here to see the article and watch the video about it.

This is a huge issue for families and women who have children. Who can afford such a thing? I mean, parents try to save for college and it turns out sending their children to school is the same as sending them to college...which isn't supposed to happen in 18 more years or so. What happened from the time child care was affordable to the present time where child care seems more like a luxury than a need?

I was researching online and rummaging through random websites that providers made or discussion boards and it seems one needs to understand what makes child care so expensive. First off providers need to pay for the rent or building and all things that would go into a normal budget- so utilities, insurance, pay for employees and insurance for employees. Then the equipment comes in. When taking care of children you need cleaning supplies, craft supplies, food for every age, safe toys and things like tables and chairs. It doesn't help either that a majority of child care providers are non-profit and do not have any extra money as well. Parents do not realize that when they pay for child care they have to pay for everything their child does- so it's like paying twice, once for being in your own home and another time for your child eating and playing somewhere else. If the costs for all those individual things have gone up, then so does rates for child care.

Child care providers are not paid well by any means and take many beatings just to make sure that children are cared for during the day. Most are barely getting minimum wage for roughly 12 hour shifts without any breaks other than nap time. Child care workers are saints in my book.

The other issue is when single mothers have low paying jobs or no jobs at all and on unemployment childcare is literally impossible. This is a huge strain on every family matter. Money is always a strain. Single mothers are prone to slipping into poverty and having low paying jobs, and once you slip in its hard to get out. If you work long hours for barely anything how do you feed your child and who takes care of it during the day? If you are looking for a better job who takes care of the child when you are applying places and interviewing? These questions are more easily answered when you have a partner or spouse but what happens when you don't have that?

I will leave you with this stack of information. Here is a website that gives a weekly rate of what child care costs in MN in the Twin Cities counties which is broken into cities on the chart. You can find charts like this for every state. In my home town it averages to be about $162 a week for an infant, $150 for a toddler, $138 for preschool and $128 for school age. Keep in mind when you go deeper into the city like Minneapolis it can be $200 or more for one week.

I would love to see more innovative ways to lower the costs of child care in the future for my generations future children. The way things are going right now, there is no way I could afford child care on top of my other bills. I'm sure it is like that for most people.

History Lesson

I really am sorry about my tardiness this summer. I can not find time to do anything let alone write every day or every week. However I confess when I write I am a happier person, so I have definitely missed writing blogs. Let's try to stay on top on this, shall we?

I just recently have acquired a new book called Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women's History of the World. That is such an intriguing question is it not? My assumption is a woman cooked it, but I am still in the introduction of the book...I will tell you what I find out. This book in general got me thinking about the real fact that women in general have a very small place in history books. It's only been about 3o or so years since women started really diving into things and been written into history hard-core, or at least as hard-core as you can get in our still sexist world where women still don't get equal pay. With the thousands of years of history that exist, I'd say we have a really long way to go to say women are represented enough in our history.

The part that annoys me the most is that women have existed since the beginning of time (When ever that happened) yet there is rarely a mention of them. You know they existed because babies were born, and without women there would be no babies. I have a separate book that just gives random women's history facts called 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Women's History. Now I do admit that while growing up I did learn about important women in history, but there are not many past 1850 that you hear about. It was mainly the same ones too, Betsy Ross, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale...you know what I'm talking about. But in this book I have read about women I have never heard of, and even if their experience was small to say the least it was nice to read about it. Sometimes I learn things that were untrue from what I thought I knew, like Joan of Arc. Apparently she was burned at the stake because she was wearing pants, men's pants at that, not because of heresy.

We were taught something else in elementary school to protect us from what really was sexism and oppression because of crossing gender boundaries. Why wouldn't you want to teach what that is? That to me seems like something fundamental to teach to elementary kids, why some people get treated badly, and include women in that list since I know things like slavery are already taught as oppression in human history. Also, use the real facts. Example, Christopher Columbus did not discover America per se, he discovered the Bahamas. However I remember being taught that he did discover America. ugh.

My message today is simply, find out a story or some history about a woman. Everyones' stories are history so the more you talk to people the more knowledge you gain.

I am a Symbolist, Revisionist and Liberationist. How about you?

Not sure if anyone reads this or checks back. Sorry I have been absent for about a month or so. Life with a job is busy! Funny how that works.

As of recent I have been reading many more books on Christian feminism and the movement in America. The first book I read was called Beyond Anger. Now, most of the books I have been reading are about Catholicism. One chapter was naming examples of categories or groups of catholic feminists. There were: marginalist, loyalist, symbolist, revisionist, and liberationist. The marginalist is said to be one to hold all anger inside until all energy is used to destruct rather than to be creative. They spiritually have nothing and do not know what they want to believe. The loyalist is just what it sounds like. They like tradition and need to be involved in the community. If they ask too many questions, or be too feminist that may threaten their needs. The symbolist focuses on symbols and feminine imagery in the bible. They are thought to be introverted, mystical, impractical and dreamy. The revisionist believes the judeo- christian traditions are more history and culturally based, not theologically. They like to "read between the lines", telling history from the perspective of a woman; reminds me of The Woman's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The end goal is reform. Finally we come to the liberationist. They want to transform society through conversion, liberate them. They want society to be able to claim their own lives and claim their experience of God and their place in the church.

I know that is a quick explanation but it's so much longer than that and I have no other idea how to condense such good stuff. I feel like I am a combination of the last three types: symbolist, revisionist and liberationist. I love the whole "have a voice" attitude and claiming your own experiences. I also feel I try to read between the lines of many things, and I definitely am dreamy and spacey and loves symbols and signs in life. I think it is like feminism, there are many different kinds. There are many different kinds of christian feminism, and it just keeps on getting more diverse every day.

What's in a name?

Identity. That is the plain and simple truth. A name to anything identifies it. Names are very important in our society; they were one hundred years ago and they still are important today. Parents spend sometimes months pondering names for their children while they wait for them to arrive and sometimes they still don't have a name when the child is born.

We have a primary identity from our name that which people call us but we also have other identities, other words that explain who we are and sometimes give more information than a name can. Some for me are: woman, catholic, feminist, liberal, human, singer and dancer. Those are lumped together but really I see myself as two things, as Amanda and as a feminist.

When I say I am a Christian Feminist, the main word is feminist. It is something that will always be involved in every part of my life. I am a feminist who believes in a god and chooses the Christian Catholic faith to play that belief out. I am a feminist who chooses to be liberal in my thoughts and actions. I am a feminist who is human and vulnerable to things like free will. I am a feminist who is a woman. I am a feminist who expresses emotions through singing and dancing. I am always first a feminist. Who are you?

Men and Feminism

The word feminist has usually been thought of as a feminine word describing a woman. A well known stereotype is the man hating femi-nazi woman. (which to my knowledge does not exist) However, in these modern times the term has also been used to describe men. The term "pro feminist" also is used for those who argue against using "Feminist" for men. I personally think it is okay to use the term feminist for men. I feel if one believes every one, no matter gender or sex, is equal then they can use the term. I do not want to exclude someone from something so important. It's like saying a white person can not be a civil rights activist, obviously that is ridiculous because like civil rights, feminism is a social movement.

In My Red Couch, the book you all know I am currently rereading, there is a story about a couple who meet in college and start dating. The woman is Lutheran and the man is Presbyterian. They had very different upbringings. Their hometowns are different in size and politics. She is conservative and he is more progressive. The man claims himself as a feminist.

Starting out the woman did not really call herself a feminist. She thought men were the head of the household, they drive the car, and the people in her hometown are basically afraid of feminism. As the two dated the woman realized her own feminism through him. They also grew together in their Christianity. The man grew up asking questions about Christianity and it was a family past time to have large theological discussions, but not so much for the woman and her family. She learned how to openly discuss everything, so much that she was almost living in two worlds when she would go home and when she returned to college.

They also learned that being in a feminist relationship means finding the right balance between being individuals and also as a team. One quote I liked was

"This balance might be the product of a healthy relationship between two Christian feminists that emphasizes trust, equality, and regard for each other. And the communication skills that serve our relationship also serve us well in our other relationships."

That right there to me is what a feminist relationship is about. I find it so awesome that the man was a feminist and helped the woman realize she was too. It's not the normal set up you would think of. Stories like this prove to me that feminism is not a women only club, it is open to all sexes, genders, races, ethnicities and orientations. This is where I see feminism going, and really where it has been going in the last ten years or so. I have a feeling that the wonderful women of the second wave of feminism in the 60's did not see men included in this, but times change and generations have new ideas and new theories.

Some cool links on Men and Feminism:
XY Online
Jezebel Article
Fbomb Article