To Clarify. . . -or- The Angry Momma Post

My last post was intended primarily to raise a couple of issues: that when a married Catholic female decides to "live her marriage," as it's called, according to Church teaching, there is the possibility of unplanned pregnancies, whether because of miscalculation, lack of self-control, liquor, whatever. In the event of an unplanned pregnancy, particularly one that is "too soon" if you will, the intellectual class will wonder, particularly if she is in their midst, why she allowed this to happen to her. While it is true that certain professions are less supportive of frequent procreation than others, this was not the primary motivating factor behind my post. The reason my question of whether married Catholic women belong in the workplace was rhetorical, and the reason I clarified that I thought that married Catholic women do indeed belong in the workplace, is that I anticipated being told that when God blesses one with children, it is one's duty to stay home. I didn't really want to get into that. My real question was, how does one deal with the inevitable sneers in the event of an "oops" (or blessing)? Does one ignore and rest secure in the knowledge that one is doing God's will, and if so, how does this enter casual conversation? Does one try to raise consciousness and assert that children are not incompatible with careers? What I am hearing instead might run something like this. . .

HEADLINE: "GOD PLAYS DIRTY TRICK ON CATHOLIC WOMEN"

After allowing her to pursue her interests and develop intellectually for the better part of two decades, in the hope that she can make a livable wage using her God-given talents, God decides that the archetypal Catholic woman is not meant to pursue that path anyway, and instead blesses her with a large family. Unfortunately, her husband, in order to support her efforts, has been working in a job that is insufficient to support the large family economically rather than searching all over the country to find a livable wage for the large family that they didn't know they were going to have. Obviously, this is her fault for not being aware of her calling before she entered graduate school.

As one friend was told (jokingly, I assume) by her husband, she's just going to have to take this one up with God.

Gotta tell you, friends, if I really thought that this was the essence of Church teaching on the role of women in the family, I would probably have been a deathbed convert. As it stands, I do not believe that unplanned pregnancies are a signal to change vocation.

But what if they were? There is a definitive test for the vocation of motherhood. When you look at the little stick and see two lines instead of one, it means that God wants you to undertake the vocation of motherhood. It's a pretty easy sign to read, especially when you consider that there are digital ones nowadays that say "pregnant" or "not pregnant" instead of leaving it up to the women to interpret a "+" or "-" or the single- or double-lines. So that's good, no mystery there.

But what about you single women? I don't think a litmus test has been invented yet that you put on your tongue and it says "career path," "religious life," "marriage and kids in your future." God's calling may show itself a lot more subtly in your lives than in ours, I think. And when the time comes, you may not want to choose "either-or," but both. I, for one, believe that God made us capable of serving him in multiple ways, even within one person's lifetime.