Pope Honors Women at Papal Mass in Jordan

Pope Benedict XVI: Respect For Women Can Make an Important Contribution to Advancement of Culture

Pope Benedict XI made special mention about the importance of women to culture today (Mother's Day in America) in his homily in Amman.  Pope refers to Mulieris Dignitatem

An important aspect of your reflection during this Year of the Family has been the particular dignity, vocation and mission of women in God's plan. How much the Church in these lands owes to the patient, loving and faithful witness of countless Christian mothers, religious Sisters, teachers, doctors and nurses! How much your society owes to all those women who in different and at times courageous ways have devoted their lives to building peace and fostering love! From the very first pages of the Bible, we see how man and woman, created in the image of God, are meant to complement one another as stewards of God's gifts and partners in communicating his gift of life, both physical and spiritual, to our world. Sadly, this God-given dignity and role of women has not always been sufficiently understood and esteemed. The Church, and society as a whole, has come to realize how urgently we need what the late Pope John Paul II called the "prophetic charism" of women (cf. Mulieris Dignitatem, 29) as bearers of love, teachers of mercy and artisans of peace, bringing warmth and humanity to a world that all too often judges the value of a person by the cold criteria of usefulness and profit. By its public witness of respect for women, and its defence of the innate dignity of every human person, the Church in the Holy Land can make an important contribution to the advancement of a culture of true humanity and the building of the civilization of love.

The Pope's message is true for every culture starting with each family.  

A Very Important Question For Our Culture to Ponder

A must-read essay by Lacie Dodd, (from the First Things.com webpage) an alumna of Notre Dame asks Fr. Jenkins, the President of Notre Dame the following question:

Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama—the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?

This is the type of question that must be asked today of those who will  not stand up and say that we can not legitimize the topic of the instrinsically evil practice of killing the developing baby in the mother's womb.  Until it is seen as the evil that it always is, women will always be at risk to bear the burdens of justifying what is always the right decision to bring life into the world.  Rather than being assured that what she is doing is noble, she must justify herself and find her way to seeing her needs and the baby's needs are met.  One certainly hopes that people in leadership positions such as Catholic colleges would know that they have a responsibility to foster a welcoming community for the expectant mother.  That is not the case when abortion is an accepted part of the culture.  The students at Notre Dame need to hear from the Mary Ann Glendons about how a Catholic professional must foster a culture of life, not an explanation how we need to dissect lessor evils.  St. Paul points out that we must fight evil by doing good.  That is the Christian way.

This essay says it all.