The Defeminization of the church

Evangelical churches report a record low in church attendance among men, due, according to some analysts, to a trend toward femininity in worship. Apparently, church has become too girly for most men. Granted, with worship songs that sound like top 40 love songs, the "Jesus is my boyfriend" genre as some detractors call it, and an increased emphasis on feelings and emotions in the discipleship programs in the churches, the analyists may be correct. Among Catholics, critics cite the opposite problem, that the Church is still a male hierarchy that is two steps behind society. Adamantly opposed to the ordination of women, and insistent that women do not have a fundamental right to artificial contraception, or abortion on demand if the contraceptives don't work, the Church is certainly not keeping up with what is, unfortunately, still called progress. I would posit that while these matters of dogma are often presented as barriers to the equal rights of women, they are in reality, a means of preventing the rapant defeminization that characterizes the view of women in modern society from taking root in the Church.
"Defeminization you say?" I do indeed. It begins with contraception. Contraception robs women of their greatest power, reproduction. What every ancient pagan knew, and celebrated, was that the power of woman lay in her ability to bear children. While women were often subjugated socially, in popular religion, the ubiquitous fertility goddess was, in every culture, a goddess most powerful, worthy of many sacrifices. By making it acceptable, even obligatory, for a woman to alter that proclivity, society has made her to be less than woman. The natural extension of contraception, abortion, not only devalues the life of the mother, but desecrates the life of the child as well. By denying women these two wonders of contemporary medicine, the Church does not subject women, but frees them to glory in the gift that is alone theirs.
The issue of ordination is more subtle, but potentially more destructive. The Christian faith affirms that God created man in His own image, male and female he created them. Both masculinity and feminity are facets of the personality of God, that He has chosen to reveal in creation. Indeed, every individual represents some facet of God's mind it pleased Him to share with the world. This reality is the foundation for the inherent difnity of the human person. Abortion denies the reality of that dignity by granting one generation the right to slaughter the next, but more subtly, the arguments offered in support of the ordination of women ultimately begin to deny the unique distinction between the genders that is a picture of God Himself. The Church's primary argument against the ordination of women lies in the understanding of the priest as a living icon of Christ, a living picture of Christ ministering in the Church. Because Christ is a man, His icons must also be men. The theology is much more involved than that thumbnail suggests, but my concern is for the denial of gender that tends to accompany most rebuttals.
Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (the one built on Peter), and I am confident that the Holy Spirit who leads the Church into all truth, will keep her on a steady course in the troubled waters that are gender issues in today's world. I am also convinced that to capitulate to these fads will ultimately do a great diservice to the women these trends purport to help. With the firm assurance that we are made in the image of God (who called Himself Jehovah Jireh,the image is of a nursing mothers full breasts), both male and female, let us celebrate womanhood. In a couple of weeks, we observe one of the great Marian feasts of the year. It speaks volumes that the key mortal player in the Gospel story was a woman, and a young woman from a small town at that. Far from subjecting the fairer sex, I think the Church rightly honors all women in encouraging them to live the dignity for which they were created.