Sometimes you run across such a unique piece of stupidity that you don’t even know what to do with it. This one had me stumped.
It is a startling mix of
- Plain ol’ stupidity.
- The kind of ahistorical stupidity reserved for 3rd graders, PhD candidates, and Salon writers.
- A complete misunderstanding of the Catholic teaching on contraception.
- A healthy dose of anti-Catholic bigotry.
- And boobies!!
That no additional commentary could add anything.
The Catholic Church forced wet nurses on French women because lactation acts like birth control and the backwards Catholic Church hates birth control, or something…No kidding.
I mentioned wet-nursing yesterday, and that has a fascinating history all its own. Before wet-nursing died a slow, rubber-nipple-assisted death, it was common practice across Europe for centuries, especially in Catholic countries like France. Why there? At least in part because the Catholic Church effectively encouraged people to use wet nurses. Since lactation was a form of birth control, the Church, which taught that the only legitimate purpose of sex was procreation, frowned on intercourse for as long as a woman was nursing. The prohibition was, not surprisingly, widely ignored. But there was a way to comply with it: If a woman stopped nursing altogether and hired a wet nurse, it would be impossible for her to violate the ban—or to be suspected of violating the ban. Having mothers not nurse was the only way the church could be sure that mothers were not having sex while nursing. It was a very clever doctrinal end-run, as long as everyone involved avoided thinking too hard about the sex lives of the wet nurses.
March 25, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Nicolas Day's reasoning is perfectly clear to me, at least when I'm sniffing glue and doing LSD.
March 25, 2013 at 6:57 pm
I don't even want to give something that stupid another hit count. What , pray tell, does he cite as evidence for his claim? And why only France?
March 25, 2013 at 7:17 pm
I thought men were not allowed to have opinions like the author's because he's a man (and cannot understand the faculties/emotional toll of being a woman)?
March 25, 2013 at 8:35 pm
Actually the Church discouraged west nurses. Women, who prefered that their breasts not look like pears that had gone too long unpicked in the tree, ignored this and if they could afford it they hired a wet nurse.
March 25, 2013 at 8:58 pm
What Dymphna said. The Church encouraged women to nurse their own children. There's a painting out there of a French noblewoman wearing a gown in a style that, to those in the know, signaled her deep Catholic piety and devotion to her children: its style permitted her to nurse her children
March 25, 2013 at 10:38 pm
Ridiculous! I've read that wealthy French women used wet nurses more than most other European countries, but because it was supposed to be healthier to live in the country with them.
March 25, 2013 at 11:48 pm
The male in me feels compelled to point out that you've used the wrong terminology in your heading.
"Breasts" are for babies. "Boobies" are for men.
What?
March 26, 2013 at 2:15 am
Why?
I'm reminded of the following quote…
"There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church." -Archbishop Sheen
Does anyone have the quote that mentions just outright making crap up to hate the Church?
March 26, 2013 at 2:25 am
Proteios1,
42% of all statistics are made up. When it comes to statistics about the church, that number jumps to 86%.
This post notwithstanding…
March 26, 2013 at 1:04 pm
The morality of the Church is the morality of natural reason – God created women with a natural infertile period after giving birth and while baby is breast feeding only and the Church teaches that we respect God's creation, nature.
March 26, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Does that mean that all wet nurses were Protestants?…
March 26, 2013 at 8:31 pm
So,really, you found this in The Onion, right? Seriously?