No faith that believes man is an eternal being can fail to exalt motherhood. Indeed, the Christian faith has done this almost to embarrassment in its regard for the Mother of its Lord. Whether the Christian believes all the traditional stories told of her, behind the faith of all who call her blessed lies the instinct of the greatness of her vocation and office that so easily flows into belief about her person, the hindrances to that flow lying (I believe) not in the progression of Marian logic, but a conservative and fairly unimaginative interpretation of the biblical narrative. In a sense Protestantism is very un-Christmaslike (Christmas being the most imaginative of our feasts) and we Protestants should remain at least as suspicious of its proclivity to unbelief as we are about Catholic efflorescence.
This darker kind of interpretation is very unpopular with most of the faithful, and understandably so, not necessarily because they are irresponsible or enthusiastic, but because a good instinct moves them to fear what would, failing in exaltation of Mary, take away blessed motherhood at whose head she stands. They believe, with all Christians, that every mother is the human wellspring of an undying universe and all its potentialities, and that her bearing and nurturing of her children is the crèche-laying of an eternal foundation.
Feminism does not believe in God, at least not the God of Christians. In its fathomless vanity it wants women to fulfill their potential in secular occupations, especially those in which they can prove they are as good or better than men. In doing this it not only denies the principal glory of womanhood, but also what good men know: that all vocations, including motherhood, have meaning and value only so far as they labor to see the will of God done on earth as it is in heaven.
Merry Christmas to you all--to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
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