Contents

Preface

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Introduction

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

PART TWO

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART FOUR

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

References

ENDNOTES

Preface

THE MAKER’S INSTRUCTIONS

Marriage and the family come from God’s creating hands. They are not invented by any man or woman. Human beings therefore do not have the power to re-define them much less try to re-invent them. The work, Betrothal Covenant, by Dr Ifeanyi Achebe helps us see the positive in many elements of Igbo culture. While some elements do not agree with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is clear that this culture is much nearer to the Maker’s instructions than some practices found in many places around the world today.

May the reading of this work strengthen healthy betrothal practices and proper preparation for marriage.

+ Francis Card. Arinze

S. Em. Card. Francis Arinze <fana@org.va>

22 August, 2010.

Foreword

I believe this approach to dating and betrothal covenant will be beneficial to young people everywhere, bringing balance to current secular patterns

Rev. Fr. Michael Scanlan, TOR.

Chancellor of Franciscan University, Steubenville, OH

Acknowledgments

I am very particularly grateful to His Eminence Cardinal Francis Arinze who perused the very first draft during one of his frequent but busy visits to Bloomingdale, OH at the home of The Apostolate for Family Consecration. I am also exceedingly grateful to Rev. Fr. Michael Scanlan for taking time out of his congested schedule to read the second draft of this work before the late additions My thanks also go to the prayer warriors on campus – the TOR Friars at The Holy Spirit Friary for their prayers and help. They remind me of the tacit support of Fr. Robert and Monsignor Mark Giordano during their tenure as parish priests at St. Gerald Magellan Church in Paterson, NJ in the late 1970s. I am also grateful to the EWTN for its many enriching and strengthening Catholic programs.

Again, I cannot thank Fr. Scanlan enough for rushing to the rescue of an innocent African and fully accredited priest that would have been deported by the Chancery and the new Franciscan University Administration in spring of 2005 for celebrating Holy Mass and helping out in a remote parish in Texas in summer of 2004.

Many thanks are due my friend, Mr. Hugh Owen of Mt. Jackson, VA for his invaluable help in editing the entire final draft and for kindly reminding me that the word Bible should be capitalized. And how can I forget the continuous generosity of Fr. Ray and Mrs. Ruth Ryland and his family? They have been more than kind neighbors and have been wonderfully helpful in many ways to my family.

In addition to the subject of dating, the sex culture, and the role of traditional betrothal covenant addressed herein, the author observes that divided as American Bishops and leaders are on what constitutes sexually immoral behaviors, they have yet to unite and openly discuss the affronts on the sanctity of sex, marriage, and the family that are enumerated all over the Bible -Lv.18 and 20.

I am grateful to my wife and family for putting up with me during the rough times this project demanded and for putting up with the deprivations from supposedly many fellow Catholics at the Chancery and the University since 1993. Because prayers work wonders, we continue to pray that God may bless them and theirs and open their hearts to the real meaning of Charitable love.

My gratitude goes to all the medical doctors that have been very helpful to me and my wife in the course of our recovery after a near fatal auto accident on Nov.8, 1995. Many thanks must go to late Mother Marie Majella Gaudreau and the Carmelite nuns of St. Joseph Monastery who rallied to our aid as need arose, and to our family friend late Fr. Donald Mantica. Their big hearts, like those of the individual priests at the Holy Spirit Friary at FUS were full of love and compassion for the poor and impoverished. Many thanks are also due to Mr. and Mrs. Bob and Andrea Klopin of Franciscan University for bringing us the Eucharist when we needed it most after our auto accident.

My gratitude also reaches our many friends in New Jersey especially the following for their undaunted and unflinching prayerful support over the years even in onerous and trying moments. Mr. Peter and Mrs. Obi and their extended families, Mr. Henry and Mrs. Mary Focacci of Paterson, former Dean Ruth Klein of William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., Dr. and Mrs. Chukwumba and family of Trenton Univ. in NJ, and late Mr. Vincent Mozie then of East Orange, NJ. May God bless all and those I cannot mention individually for lack of space. Their incessant prayers nourished and strengthened our faith as we journeyed from William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ through Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA for a few years before reaching Franciscan University in Steubenville in 1993.

Many thanks are also due the Steubenville Urban Mission Ministries for helping us when we needed service with compassion especially through their summer and various assistance programs.

Last but not least, my family and I thank God for being both invisible and invincible, no respecter of persons but rich in kindness and mercy; especially for saving our lives from a near fatal auto accident on Nov. 8, 1995, and more especially for His graces in every stressful moment of each day and for the gift of increasingly stronger faith in Jesus, His Son and our risen Lord. We thank Him for using many kind medical doctors in Steubenville and in Pittsburgh, PA to sustain us in fair health, for immersing and wrapping our families and friends in His love and unfathomable divine mercy, and for letting His Son die on the cross for our sins for the salvation of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the rich and the poor, the kind and the greedy, and most especially the sanctimonious.

For the other hasty additions, assumptions, inclusions and conclusions and the far- flung inferences in the final version of this study, I apologize for any inconveniences caused anyone. Nevertheless, for speaking out and for my shortcomings, I humbly take total and full responsibility.

Dedication

To my beloved parents Osmond Michael Nwaeke and Agnes Akubuilo Achebe who received me from God who gave me life. They raised and nurtured me in the oral tradition, custom, and discipline. A convert from Protestantism, my mother Agnes became and remained an indomitable Catholic mother under the hands of the Holy Spirit to her death on Jan. 29, 1992.

To the family of Nze¹Ogbu Anyinya Nwakile of Ajakpani, Umunya, Anambra state, Nigeria. These great grand parents (my mother’s grand parents long deceased) gave me deeper insight into the rich and enviable native traditions and customs of the Igbo tribe during my early secondary school years at Christ the King College (C.K.C) Onitsha. My great grand father Nze Nwakile enjoyed my company as one of his grandchildren at several ceremonial functions and occasions though I did not then understand all that went on till years later. I was blessed to carry his antelope or deer skin shoulder bag which was a forerunner of today’s back packs or pocket bags. I also enjoyed small portions of his entitlements such as his share of the Oji after his blessings and invocations as the oldest of the elders in the particular assembly or in the community.

To the Zikora family (my mother’s parents) of Ezi-Umunya; to my grand mother Madam Salome Nwakume Zikora and my mother Agnes Akubuilo (Zikora) Achebe. Before her death at 77 in January, 1992, she had us catechized and brought up in the practical Catholic faith. Although betrothed to a Catholic husband, she took over and totally embraced the Catholic faith and made sure that we got it so as to pass it on to our children. Later in her life she led me personally into appreciating the rich benefits and rewards inherently available to the woman in the bride price betrothal tradition. Beyond that she opened my mind to the dignity associated with and neatly embedded in the bride price betrothal system for generations.

To the Osmond Michael Achebe family and my family, my wife Christiana and our children – Nkechi, Chinedu (Chin), and Ifeyinwa (Ify) for bearing with me and supporting me with their prayers and blessings as I struggled with the onerous task of completing this book. May the Lord reward them abundantly in return for their prayers, patience, and endurance.

To the Lord, for the resulting increase in our faith, hope, charity and the courage to call a spade a spade with love towards all, and for sustaining our family till today, we owe many thanks. We thank God for the gift of grace and unassuming humility in the spirit of St. Joseph who gave up his personal aspirations to follow His plan. We pray for the grace to humbly submit to His plan as St. Joseph did without equivocation. As Jesus warned "I am the vine, you are the branches… for apart from Me you can do nothing. (Jn. 15:5).

Introduction

Now that many serious Christians and non-Christians across the United States and the world are becoming increasingly aware of the carnage that casual and reckless sexual behavior is unleashing on the world community everyday, is it not time to fight back to regain our grip on the powerful traditional courtship and betrothal covenant tools used by our elders and ancestors to protect and preserve for generations the institutions of marriage and the family? Has one day passed in recent years and especially these days without a man killing his wife after a few week’s sexual encounter because the sex they believed in and trusted as the solid foundation of their betrothal relationship often called marriage went sour? Has it not been common knowledge that current secular dating practice begins with dependence on feelings that quickly flow into cohabitation and illicit ‘honeymoon’ even before any signs of courtship begin to emerge let alone betrothal commitment? To camouflage and cover their sexual escapades after deluding each other enough in their blindness, they fabricate consent as adolescents or adults and rush to the priest to get the blessing of the Church. In their delusion, the pretenders then proceed on ‘bogus honeymoon’ during which they begin to see cracks and crevices in their ‘pre-manufactured’ and contrived relationship. After satisfying their lustful desires, the man and the woman begin to engage in incessant violent altercations especially now that she is pregnant and their intense lustful desire for sex with each other has suddenly begun to erode and decline. They have already had enough of each other sexually and begin to see only the dim light that leads on to new partners, or separation and divorce even before the first child conceived during their illicit honeymoon is born because the requisite faith in God is totally lacking and absent. Rather, with their faith and dependence centered in the flesh and on sex alone without agape love, they fail to let God spiritually join their hearts together to become one flesh. Otherwise, why would a seemingly sensible and healthy couple make the most important decision to get married, the most important in a life time and decide to divorce just after four months.² Without delving into the logic of those involved or venturing any condemnation of the parties, that there are serious problems with the system that promotes such hurried hook-ups of so-called marriages cannot be denied. It has become equally imperative that the system ought to be confronted without equivocation because of its stench that translates daily into tragedies. This is the reason that this book ‘Betrothed’ is all about the Betrothal Covenant.

Even as this work is being completed, many bizarre killings are taking place especially around the ‘industrial and civilized’ world. For example, that a woman will kill her pregnant friend, cut open her womb and steal her 8-month unborn baby expecting to get away with the crime shows how far America’s ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ mania has drifted and has dragged to the nadir of human degradation or what is left of the dignity of human sexuality.³ It begins to show how low the human heart and mind in certain individuals can condescend to imagine, plan, and execute wicked thoughts when their devious and pernicious obsession with and for sex fail to yield desired results.The recent murder of former NFL star Steve McNair in his sleep on a sofa by his so-called girlfriend who then shot herself according to confirmation by police, augments the bad news that results when a man and a woman toy illicitly with sex which God created and placed at the disposal of legitimately betrothed persons that have freely surrendered their persons in authentic agape love to each other first for procreation and then for companionship within the bride price betrothal tradition.⁴.

McNair, 36, had been married to his wife, Mechelle for 12 years with four children but made the mistake of allowing another woman, Kazemi, who he really did not know or thought he knew to get between him and his betrothed wife with her own sexual problems. Is this not what happens when elders become mere bystanders in the drama of life when they observe that events are taking a wrong turn in the lives of young people? In the current American dating system, this ingrained and deeply-rooted inability of the man to choose one woman as a life partner or the woman to choose one man as a life partner as God commanded in Genesis (2: 21-24 and especially vs. 24) is at the root of the disaster that plagues the post-modern dating culture today.⁵ In America, generally, the engagement vows that appear as betrothal vows are often just taken for granted. The vows are entered into when the desire for sex is uppermost in their minds and they want to impress the public with the ceremonies while in actuality they do not even know the real names of each other nor do they really love each other intensely enough to the point of surrendering to each other sacrificially as in a betrothal relationship. If things begin to sour in this ‘engagement mood’, they cleverly cover it up with denial. Others retreat under the rubric or canopy of privacy rights that insulates and stifles meaningful parental counseling from reaching those that need it. That explains why the Catholic Church will not rush a marriage request just because some woman is pregnant. The Church wants the man and the woman to understand what they are asking of the Church just as the Church asks the parents of a child what they are asking of the Church in the application for Baptism.

For the most part the men and the women in a ‘betrothal’ relationship predicated on sex do not seem to understand or take their betrothal promises and vows seriously. Having started their life of self-deceit with sex before determining whether they are closely related and whether they really love each other, they grounded their faith in sex and find encouragement in the ‘No Fault Divorce Laws’ of the various states. As already pointed out infra, those No Fault Divorce Laws have no morally redeeming value. Moreover, they have almost always been the logic behind such tragedies and violence that take place in America between supposedly betrothed or married persons. And there seems to be no end in sight because our rich and powerful leaders pedal with impunity this urge and intense propensity for sex that is deeply engraved in American culture. They often take for granted the chances of imminent tragedies and attendant consequences until after the loss of many lives. The Tiger Woods sex scandal is no less tragic because the blood that is shed internally is not readily visible. The dents on the family both financially and as to other relationships especially the innocent children are more spiritual than physical. Nevertheless, the unfortunate incident and bouts with ‘gold diggers’ and the exploitation, alcohol, money and drugs that attend to such behavior further underscore the oversexed nature of our communities and society. It destroyed many slave masters and in our age many CEOs and there is no doubt that more rich men and leaders will be decapitated by these prostitutes because of their weakness and addiction to sex.⁶

American dating system has always exposed the hidden sexual addiction that begins early to control the lives of many men and women to the extent that with alcohol and drug some are ready to be violent or have been violent to their partners just for sexual gratification. Addiction to sex has destroyed the careers of many in Congress, many governors, state representatives, college presidents, and even college professors not to mention school teachers. Young adults place a high value on faith, marriage, and human life, but also embrace moral relativism. A recent observation in the Knights of Columbus magazine—Columbia - notes that Catholic milennials are significantly more likely than other Americans to say that abortion and euthanasia are morally wrong. On the other hand 4 out of 5 of them reject Church teaching about sexuality and claim that morality is relative.⁷ These millennials are less likely to judge issues related to sexual morality, such as premarital sex, same-sex marriage, and same-sex relations, as morally wrong. In fact, they commonly see these as either morally acceptable or not moral issues at all.⁸

But this is yet the beginning of coming attractions as this work tries to suggest an overhaul of the present oversexed culture and the media propaganda that capture and influence the minds of adolescents today. The media for the most time market immorality that misleads children, women, and adolescents. It is common knowledge that many parents moonlight to survive economically. In the absence of such parents and spouses, the ruthless media hold those at home hostage daily.

This work is only an attempt to begin to deal with the problem of the lost tradition that emphasized unadulterated faith in God and unflinching obedience to His moral laws of abstinence from sex with close relatives and the prohibition of sex or physical intimacy with a prospective suitor or spouse or sex with another male or female intruder. To avoid or tame the present insane insatiable obsession for sex, the lost traditional bride price betrothal system is being strongly reinvented and proposed as the right tool for taming if not eradicating this social mess entrenched by modern bizarre dating methods that is replete with infidelity and health risks. The system always involves the family to the extent that parents are there to help their children make the most important decisions in their lives for better or for worse. They are there to constantly encourage and remind their son and daughter now staring each other in the face that their betrothal covenant is final, and therefore, must be approached with deliberate speed and utmost caution .

The traditional betrothal system involves a process that pulls real persons and real families together. It is the tool that pulls out the real character of the individuals so that the real man is able to sincerely commit and exchange real love with the real woman before parents and elders. That the negotiated bride price that is paid by the suitor to the father of the woman with the woman’s full knowledge and consent clearly distinguishes a real suitor from a charlatan and there are many of these impostors around today. It also opens the spiritual eyes of the man and the woman to see that a betrothal covenant is not for carnal animals but for persons created in the image of God who is holy. The system also recognizes the hard work of the parents in raising their daughter within God’s moral standards. The suitor has reason to rest assured that this woman is from a good home.

Hence, this book is a call for a return to traditional bride price betrothal system that prohibits any sexual intimacy during courtship and betrothal negotiations. This is the tradition that dates back to the Ten Commandments handed down to the Israelites through Moses. So, this tradition promotes without reservation total abstinence and sexual sanity. Hence, this project is an attempt to examine and explain the rare but loaded word ‘Betrothed’ as used in the Gospel of Luke with regard to the relationship between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the man Joseph of the house of David (later St. Joseph ) to whom she was betrothed according to the inspired account of St. Luke.⁹

In the Old Testament, prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God’s passion for His people in living boldly erotic images. God’s relationship with Israel is described using the metaphors of betrothal and marriage. They also described idolatry as adultery and prostitution.¹⁰ Here, some effort will be made to give some cultural flesh to the bride price custom that required a man to demonstrate sincere interest in the woman he is considering to take as a wife in good faith with open commitment to the immediate family and elders of the community. Only after his open commitment, did the forefathers allow him to take the woman out of her parents’ supervision and home to become his spouse. Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh". ¹¹ The man’s eros or sexual desire for a woman is rooted in man’s very nature. Hence at the opportune time in his maturity, he must leave home as a seeker like Adam who abandons his mother and father in order to find a woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become one flesh. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature¹²

When the man finds the woman he thinks he loves, he engages his parents to assist him in looking over the choice according to traditional rites. Only then does the negotiation and payment of the bride price in part or in full begin to give evidence of a seemingly sincere heart- to-heart commitment to take the woman for a bride and eventually into his tent. Her entrance into his tent takes place only after all the betrothal commitment rites are completed. This word ‘Betrothed’ that St. Luke used in Chapter 1 of his Gospel to describe the long betrothal and covenantal relationship between the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph and before Joseph decided to take her to be his wife has long disappeared from American courtship and betrothal vocabulary and culture.¹³ It is the determination of this author to reinvent it for its wealth and to remind America of the morally exemplary relationship that culminated in the betrothal until Joseph took her in as directed in his dream by Archangel Gabriel. During this time in the life of Mary and Joseph, the Law of Moses controlled every behavior in Jewish life. This included courtship and betrothal relationships. Advocates of the present sex-crazy dating system have since caused our society to relegate God’s Law on moral purity to the background. Rather they have advocated, caused, and encouraged people as often happens in Hollywood and in business and political circles and offices in the cities to begin to believe that unlimited and freewheeling sex life is normal. In the same vein, organizers of beauty pageants promote the notion of the woman’s physical beauty and marketability of her sexuality and nudity as the ‘in thing’ and everything. They want women to know that being beautiful is being good for men for dating and sex. To understand what it takes to be beautiful, we need to be very clear about what being beautiful means - being sexually appealing to men. ¹⁴ To be beautiful means that a woman must have a workable routine for maintaining her looks throughout her life time and avoid rationalizing slacking off –while she is seeking a man and after she has one. If you are banking just on beauty, you better not slack off on your beauty routine around the house if you do not want your man to walk out on you. So there is more to finding a compatible betrothal partner than just beauty. Beauty is all about external physical beauty, laser and cosmetic make-ups, and pre-betrothal sexual intimacy. Those that totally dismiss the existence of interior spiritual purity, the poise of virginity, and beauty and even the possibility of the return of the old authentic appreciation of virginity, courtship custom and glorious betrothal covenant will find the quest for beauty alone more stressful and unfulfilling. They also forget that time and money wasted on physical beauty amounts to colossal waste on human resources and flesh which is dust that is glorified by God for His purposes and must return to what it is, namely, dust.

Women seem to forget that standards of beauty are a plot to keep women politically, economically, and sexually subjugated to men – apparently by keeping them too busy curling their eyelashes to have time for political action and too weak from dieting to stand up for what they want in bed.¹⁵

Similarly, advocates of physical beauty, lust, and sexual promiscuity forget that even the attribute of physical beauty is also a gift from God that must be carefully guarded and used only for God’s purpose and glory and not abused as Hollywood and most American men and women do for personal satisfaction even without any regard to the fact that God is always in charge of the affairs of men. Consequently, a woman who, for selfish reasons, banked on her physical beauty and lost her gambles with other male ‘cruisers’ and flirts, tends to lose her mind when the man she put her faith in leaves her. Men are also equally peevish in that they often fall for the glitter of the packaging over content. Yet to be successful a man in desperate search for lifepartner must learn to love, balance, and accept a woman with superior interior attributes over another with just externally beautiful features. The woman will be blessed with some more fortunate and surprisingly responsible man who never gave up the genuine desires of his heart for mere beauty. Such a man not only knows to pray for a good partner, he knows and believes in God’s law that pride goes before a fall, that what goes up must come down. He knows that only being tenaciously on God’s side will get one his dreams. Moreover, he knows that those that merely and stubbornly show off their physical beauty while hoping that God may be on their side are in for an unpleasant surprise and a rude awakening because physical beauty that is not used for God’s purposes will not be a qualifier for heaven. Such a woman must consider herself blessed to find a reliable man that is drawn to God.

Participants in the various beauty pageants around the world that advance the cause of immorality in the name of beauty should always bear in mind the fact that their bodies are gifts from God for the purpose of worshipping Him. Their bodies belong to Him and should be treated with respect but not adored. Serious suitors are looking for real women not beautifully packaged objects or hollow statues that lack enduring virtues. They are not after mere flesh that will only be dumped as dust as often happens on the streets of Hollywood and theaters among competing and battling rich but lonely celebrities.Emulating and following the examples from Hollywood in the senseless and arrogant pursuit of sex for self-esteem has led to a great deal of painful stresses and depressions among many young women in various walks of life. Many adolescents that have excessive concern for beauty and body image whether it is preoccupation with weight or appearance or both are known to have developed eating disturbances. Dealing with the pressures of Hollywood as a Blackactress Kerry Washington comments on Being a Black woman in Hollywood and Battling an Eating Disorder and admits; I used food as a way to cope. It was my best friend. There was a lot of guilt and shame.¹⁶

Body image disturbance is a central symptom of both eating disorders (such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa) and of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) (a chronic and consuming preoccupation with one’s physical appearance.¹⁷ In a recent study of adolescents, 27% endorsed significant dissatisfaction with their body and appearance. To lose weight, some 8% of adolescents engaged in extreme weight control behavior such as vomiting or laxative use, while an additional 45% engaged in less extreme but still unhealthy weight control behaviors such as fasting, severely restricting food intake, and smoking to remain thin.¹⁸

In the case of Joseph, it makes a great deal of sense to assume that when the Lord put the idea of marriage in his mind and heart in answer to his prayers, as He always did, the young man began to desire a well brought up and interiorly beautiful woman for a wife. He soon began to notice the young beautiful woman called Mary. She was the daughter of some devout parents that were very well known by many in the community. As parents, they were blessings to Mary as she was to them because she had conducted herself accordingly before God and man and was a humble virgin as the Bible proclaims.¹⁹ They would not knowingly hand her over to just any suitor without checking if they were closely related. And like any serious suitor in those days of Mosaic Law, Joseph who was considered ‘a good and upright man’ and a successful carpenter had the good sense to turn to his family and elders and Rabbi for guidance and help when he became keenly interested in taking a wife and humbly sought the permission of the parents to ask for the hand of their daughter, the young virgin, Mary of Nazareth, in marriage.

Under the Jewish betrothal process, as in Igbo culture, a young man does not embark on the task of knocking at the door of a woman’s parents’ home without the backing of his own parents. To avoid the embarrassment of being treated as a nonentity, or a worthless person, he had to be accompanied and escorted by people that are well known in the community, namely, his parents who will establish his identity and show that he is their son or the son of some otherwise, respectable elders and some elders. He also needed his Rabbi with whom he often consulted for advice on various customary and religious matters such as marital issues Without this identification and parental backing, Joseph would have gotten nowhere with his desire to court and attain the betrothal to Mary. The Holy Bible is replete with such genealogical identifications which Jewish custom considers a necessity. For the same reason, the Bible gave us the genealogy of Jesus Christ in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew as required by Jewish Law. ²⁰

American theologians long forgot the morally exemplary relationship that culminated in the betrothal and the cold feet that Joseph developed when the gossip reached him that Mary while still leaving with her parents was pregnant and had left him. Gravely disappointed and humiliated as he was in the Jewish culture, he pondered how to save his face and whether or not to repudiate Mary publicly which would have meant that the men of the town would stone her to death at the gate of her father’s house. But swallowing his pride and in utter meekness and unparalleled humility, Joseph took Mary into his house in total obedience to the directive of the Archangel Gabriel. This just act of Joseph and total attention to the Holy Family as Mary’s husband and the foster father of the Son of God has earned him tremendous honor from the Church.

During this time in the life of Mary and Joseph, the Law of Moses controlled every behavior in Jewish life. This included courtship and betrothal relationships. No one dared disobey this Law about courtship and betrothal agreements and violators were stoned to death. If a man betrothed to a girl complains that the girl betrothed to him is not a virgin and counteracting evidence of her virginity is not found and adduced by her parents, …the elders shall bring her to the entrance of her father’s house and there her town’s men shall stone her to death because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father’s house. Thus shall the evil be purged from the people to avoid defilement of the land. ²¹

Having resolved to their satisfaction the issue of the genealogy of Joseph, and his parents, also from a distant Davidic root, the elders moved on to the next most important matter that had to also be promptly cleared by investigation of whether Mary and Joseph were related by blood. Were they closely related even though they were distant descendants of David? The elders investigating the matter must have found them outside the prohibited degree of kindred and closeness for them to legitimately proceed with arrangements for the betrothal covenant. Under the law, God gave the Rules for conjugal relationships in Lv. 18: 6, He forbids any intimacy between close relatives:None of you may approach a woman who is closely related to him, to uncover her nakedness. I am Yahweh.²²For those who feared and obeyed His laws, He poured out abundant blessings²³ For the wicked who chose to stuff their ears and would not listen and obey His laws, He poured curses that will come upon them and overtake them.²⁴ It was therefore imperative for Joseph and Mary, being Jews, to obey the law to the letter by observing the laws of courtship and betrothal established in accordance with God’s laws. Thus He prohibited any intimacy between closely related brothers and sisters because that would defile the land . Violators were stoned to death to stamp out the sin and prevent pollution of the entire land.²⁵

After clearing these two initial critical hurdles as above – the identity of the man and the woman and the matter of whether they are closely related by blood - the brief courtship began that ended in their being betrothed according to the account in the Bible²⁶. Yahweh had expelled the nations and the Canaanites from their land because they would not repent but reveled in those forbidden acts.²⁷. For years they defied Yahweh’s laws against immorality. Defiant industrial nations may learn from this that only humility, repentance, and charity can turn away the wrath of God before it is unleashed on its destructive mission.²⁸

In our oversexed American society, however, our politicians, judges, and people have so mortgaged their consciences that they do not have the back bones to stand up for just marital and sex laws. Under pressure from lobbies they quickly succumb to feathering their own nests, and in their rhetoric mislead and scandalize their constituents into believing that sex before marriage is healthy and has no spiritual consequences. They lead young people to believe that because sex was ingrained into American culture since the colossal abuse of Blacks (men and women) during the slave trade, it has become a desirable virtue to emulate. They delude themselves when they pass laws or allow laws to pass that lead the people to believe that same sex union is in God’s will and in the Bible, that incest is innovative, healthy, and good for development when God condemns those acts as despicable and as abominations that defile not just the soul but also the land. The truth is that God condemned such union as an abomination. Hence, He ordered such offenders stoned to death because they defiled the land and so that they will not be remembered by generations to come.²⁹

But with the advent, the birth and death of Jesus Christ who brought salvation to mankind by taking upon Himself the sins of the whole world, He opened the floodgates of God’s ocean of mercy and the gates of heaven for all repentant sinners who truly believed in the name of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son. As the Bible puts it: Those who believe in Jesus will not be condemned but whoever does not believe in Him is already condemned.³⁰ Therefore, the Blessed Virgin Mary was betrothed to Joseph as the Law of Moses and Jewish tradition dictated. After so many centuries, most African peoples like the Igbo tribe and its communities still follow this tradition tenaciously. In spite of foreign influences in Africa, most of the other tribes still follow it in varying degrees.

Unfortunately, for more than nearly six decades, America that used to be known as God’s own country has been stubbornly veering off from God’s Ten Commandments or moral mandate that is inscribed in the heart of every man and woman in the world.³¹ God directed Moses to hand down to the Israelites (Jews) the Ten Commandments before Joshua led them across the River. These laws still forbid certain immoral conduct. One such form of conduct is reckless sexual behavior; particularly, sex before the betrothal covenant. The Jewish punishment for such violation is death by stoning to avoid defilement of the land. The sin also offends the institution of marriage as detailed in Leviticus Chap.18 and Dt. 22.

Under the Laws of Moses, a woman ought to be a virgin when she exchanges promises during courtship and the betrothal oath with the suitor. The requirement for men is no different. If the man reports soon after consummating the betrothal vows or marriage that the woman was not a virgin, and if it is proven to be true, the consequence for the woman was death under the Laws of Moses³² The parents of the woman had to refund the bride price he paid or deposited as part of the bridal rites for the bride. The Catholic Church, drawing from the Old and New Testaments, has always taught, teaches, and warns Catholics that playing with sex before the betrothal covenant is a very serious sin that ought to be confessed³³and avoided. She is the only Church that has consistently taken this prohibition seriously although it was not really enforced in America. Actually some of the Bishops are learning the hard way today that watering down the teachings of the Catholic Church from the Bible on the ban on sex before marriage, same-sex union, and divorce to conform to the tyranny of American media’s liberal agenda is counter productive.

They are learning the hard way that sexual immorality ought not to be encouraged by being silent because it still draws down dire spiritual consequences. However, heeding instead the voices of ultra liberal humanistic Free thinkers, Freemasons, and atheists from Europe who found residence and audience in her prestigious institutions of higher learning, the American elite group that was steeped in scientific materialism or scientism, learned to adopt and spread among the people that antagonistic part of her culture that sees the Catholic Church and her moral teachings from the Ten Commandments and the Gospels as oppressive. Science, reason without Truth, and the Industrial Revolution had become the new Western ‘god’.

The current debate over stem cells and embryonic cells is an example of how some dishonest scientists pedal their lies for money at the expense of human life. These scientists do not want to admit and believe that adult stem cells are doing very well according to various reports and testimonies on television and on radio from those who were treated with their own adult stem cells. In addition to the tissues that would have been discarded, they still want embryonic cells or cells from babies in the womb and that means killing unborn children to get such cells and that meant more money for them. Although the effectiveness of embryonic cells has not been proven, these researchers are playing in the same league as Planned Parenthood Inc. that specializes in destroying unborn babies and selling their tissues for money. If they would satisfy their appetite with the normal disposable tissues picked up after a baby is born, no moral or ethical problems would arise and Americans will not be torn apart as it is today on the battle over the Culture of life and the Culture of Death.

The Catholic Church’s opposition to embryonic cell research and treatment and her support for adult stem cell treatments have also been dubbed oppressive. So the antagonism that started in France long ago during the age of Voltaire, the skeptic, and his followers joined forces with unfaithful Puritans to marginalize God and His Commandments. Admittedly, it was a hard time for the Church in France because of attacks from philosophers financed by the Freemasons.

According to Will and Ariel Durant in The Age of Voltaire, Religion, beneficent in thevillages, disgraced itself at the top by anointing men like Cardinal Dubois and Tencin with high honors, so losing the respect of the emancipated intellect. ³⁴

Despite positive changes in the Church over the years, the intellectuals have continued to turn our soon-believing young people seeking the Truth, into atheists and haters of the One Catholic (Universal) Church. This has been especially the case in the so-called Ivy League and public Colleges that promoted Scientism while claiming to promote scientific freedom, and a lifestyle without God that leans on sexual promiscuity. In the process of promoting gluttony, concupiscence, and free sex, cultivated and advanced by ‘European civilization’, the traditional custom and concept of courtship and betrothal covenant inherited from Moses were damaginglyderailed. However, young students today are beginning to discover that this decadent immoral behavior was mostly imported from the brothels of Puritan England, ancient Greece, Imperial Rome, and France and assimilated into the central fabric of American life and slave culture. Till today, America still holds fast to gluttony, lust, and debauchery that plague our representatives and politicians, colleges, institutions, offices and families by way of binge drinking, and sexual immorality even in religious institutions. These immoral habits came from a mélange of European cultures.

Under Divine Augustus Caesar, Imperial Rome had flexed her powers around the world and the ports and major cities of ancient Greece such as Corinth. Roman deposits of immorality also reached Jerusalem, the City of King David when Rome annexed it. These brothels that were the homes for loose women were often the ports of call for Greek leaders, philosophers, and athletes. Roman leaders, generals, consuls and politicians that were obsessed with sex and physical fitness found the brothels to be pleasant joints for debauchery.

These cultural relativists also promoted the immoral sexual habits perfected by Imperial Rome that abused men and women as chattels or property to be used and sold, or discarded. Imperial Rome at this time became spiritually dead since Divine Caesar was her god among their numerous other gods. Hence today, many Americans learned to worship not God but their bodies and maintain them at enormous financial expense. These have also made physical fitness or bodybuilding their god or idol. There are also some people who want to cater only for their bodies and bellies (the flesh) while ignoring the soul that makes man a human person. The women will without scruple scramble their own wombs to strangle their unborn babies and even their young children that they think stand in the way of their pursuit of personal pleasure.

However, there is the other more numerous group of courageous men and women that have pursued and insisted on a modest mode of living that is consistent with God’s Commandment of Love. These do their utmost to defend our modest life style and the unborn from the abortion clinics and mills. They are not intimidated by the tyranny of cultural relativism that strives to continue to polarize and tear the country to shreds and from the authentic moral freedom and culture inherited from Mosaic culture. It was the sincere embrace of that moral mandate in her early years that earned America recognition as God’s own country in which true freedom of choice reigns. The person exercising this freedom has the duty to make the right selection with an informed conscience. The written Constitution of the United States whose principles of separation of powers the Founding Fathers derived from the Holy Bible also stood out for world acclaim. It also supported the notion of this freedom long before moral relativists began their assaults on it.

But today, in order to win votes and sometimes a share of the promiscuity, many .American politicians, the courts, public policy makers intoxicated with the freedom to do what one chooses with his or her body without the moral limitations imposed by the Creator in his Commandment of Love, have continued to bastardize that constitution in the pretext of interpreting it. They watch and turn their own ways and so do nothing when their constituents look up to them for decisive positive leadership on moral issues. The Middle ages had placed its faith in a nature and society subject to God’s will fully knowing that God is by His nature a God of Love that bestowed on man the inalienable right to be able to reason and Choose right from wrong. He gave mankind the freedom to be able to choose between good and evil. But he also warned us to choose good’ and be blessed or choose evil" and inherit the curse that follows it.³⁵ But with advances in science, the leaders dumped their reliance on philosophy, theology, and God. Instead, they decided to put their Faith in Reason ³⁶ believing that they did not need the Church on which their attacks were directed to tell them about God. By veering of from the rule of Truth and Reason founded on God who is Truth and Love, many Westerners began to believe in the arrogance of power that has become man’s nightmare today. Man got so puffed up to believe man can do anything without God; that man armed with science can do everything without God. They disregarded the Church’s teaching that real freedom is in willingly obeying and doing the will of God and that only then will the Truth set the believer free.

Moreover, the politicians ignored Pope Paul V1’s encyclical - Humanae Vitae ³⁷ which reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s condemnation of Artificial birth control and the Church’s teachings sequel to it that continues to stress the dignity of human person and human soul, the dangers of artificial contraception, and abortion.

They also brushed aside Pope John Paul 11’s affirmation of the Church’s teachings and especially his letters to all the families on The Rights of The Family, 22 October 1983,³⁸ which declares the rights of the family and especially the rights of the unborn. He also, inter alia, stressed responsible fatherhood and motherhood and last but not least, his teachings that finally became known as The Theology of the Human Body. This is the teaching that the human body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit and therefore ought to be treated with proper reverence from conception and through marriage and marital life to natural death.

Furthermore, the human body belongs to God and not to the individual persons who are only custodians and trustees. Thus no one is free to do whatever he or she wishes with his or her body since each person is a member of the body of Christ. As such a man who joins with a prostitute becomes one body with her. Therein lies the mystery of sex which many people do not understand. Thus the human body ought to be treated with proper respect and modesty as the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit.³⁹ Those who prefer the evil of abusing their bodies, and those who sincerely do not understand what they are into in a betrothal covenant, especially women who forget to be ladies and men who fail to be gentlemen slowly surrender to one addiction or another in the name of ‘freedom’.

By parading their bodies for public view on billboards, tabloids, and TV, and the Internet as objects for material gain, these men and women thread the path of the culture of death. However, it is possible that some are sincerely ignorant. There are others who know what they are into and desire all the glamour of this world. These are steeped in the secular culture and its greed (cf.God’s Call to Holiness 2002 by Familia, Fathers and Christian Faith, 1999, by Familia, and Fathers and Christian Marriage, 1999, by Familia, Minneapolis, Minnesota).⁴⁰

In the search for fame and wealth, many women like men learned to indulge even in criminal behavior to get rich. The jail houses have the statistics. Many desperate women will vehemently fight other women and are ready to eliminate any woman perceived as a competitor for the rich men or rank they are after. It has become a very brutal cut-throat competition and has pit feminists against feminists in a brutal war. This war over sex and money cost lives. It not only creates scandals today, it also makes the workplace a very unsafe and dangerous environment. With the Feminist support and ambitious pressure on the Barak Obama administration, this Feminist war will get worse in the days ahead if the president chooses to be pressed to help promote the decimation of more lives instead of saving them. He knows that the impact of the killing of unborn babies is worst in the Black community and the developing countries. Hopefully he also knows that the knowing decimation of innocent babies is a spiritual battle that King Herod waged against innocent children and baby Jesus and lost. Playing politics with the lives of innocent children is a serious sin that has social inevitable consequences. Therefore, we pray to God to open the heart and eyes of president Obama to learn his lessons quickly and turn away from the abortion league for the good of the families in America and the world. The curse that follows the sin is spiritually enormous. The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has no redeeming value. But it piles up the chastisement that is coming soon on America like a thief in the night as it did with the flood in the days of Noah⁴¹ and the sulfuric coal and smoke that engulfed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah⁴². America at this point should be repenting and making peace with God instead of aggravating Him the more now that time is of the essence. Enough of this arrogant clenching and throwing of the fist before the Creator of the universe.

Many other feminists clearly use men as their ladder to top positions and ranks. They even break up marriages as they ascend the ladder swinging their swords to the right and to the left unconcerned about who they hurt in their pursuit for sex, wealth and fame. It is not news that this sex war among Western women has been getting worse in the news rooms of the media industry. It is simply pathetic for journalism in all respects. Journalism has never looked so bad.

The Feminist pursuit of careerism also propels them in their competition for the rich and wealthy men they want to ride and milk to attain top administrative positions in colleges, corporations, and other establishments. The competition just became more brazenly notorious, and deadlier. It has gotten worse in the media industries and especially on TV. They call the madness careerism about which many other respectable women and committed housewives could care less because the family takes priority. There are, of course, other women who have chosen real careers to contribute to the sustenance of the family. These have been the unsung moral stalwarts that continue to prop this country behind the scenes. They deserve many thanks. These are the legendary women and house wives behind every great leader. There are also the strong and faithful widows and women abandoned by irresponsible men and husbands. Among these are diligent, responsible and courageous mothers who for one good reason or another held their families together alone. But for these single parents, mothers, and grandmothers the human species would be extinct. Some may have made some wrong decisions along the way but dutifully faced the consequences with love for their children. They did not seek an escape route. They kept faith with their children instead of killing them in the abortion clinics for the sake of social parties and pleasure. But the French philosopher Simone De Beauvoir, known by some as the Mother of Feminism, who learned to disassociate herself from her Catholic beliefs and her Catholic mother for being a mother of two girls and the pivot that held the fort at her modest middle-class family home while her not-so-Catholic father and lawyer struggled with the then common disease of the gentry - alcoholism. She grew up to disagree with and detest her Catholic moral teachings and family life and would have nothing to do with being a house wife and a mother in those rotten" days in the French Church. ⁴³ She had excelled in the study of philosophy at the Ecole Normal where she passed her examinations with flying colors. While studying Philosophy, she met Jean-Paul Sartre, the only more brilliant male in their group that bested her in their exams. She soon found the he was of superior intellect in her own characterization of him. He was a match that she chose not to marry because she rejected the notion of a traditional marriage. In 1931, Sartre did suggest that they marry, but de Beauvoir refused his proposal, arguing that they were not being true to their own principles of not having children. Since she joined his circle of friends, she never stopped using him as a prop and ladder to the top. Essentially they remained lovers for the rest of their lives while occasionally allowing for contingent love affairs whenever each desired.

Though brilliant in her own right, she stood out as a good example of a Western woman that chose cohabitation instead of marriage as a way of life with different men as her way of attaining her inordinate ambition to the top in her quest for fame. With Jean-Paul Sartre and his circle of friends, she soon joined him in attacking the Catholic Church which was then the sport of French philosophers like Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire) and his adherents at that time.

She was very religious from her Catholic upbringing and her mother’s training. However at the age of 14 under the immoral influence of her friend Elizabeth Mabille (Zara), with whom she shared an intimate and profound unnatural Friendship, de Beauvoir denied the existence of God after her friend’s untimely death of broken heart in 1929 in the midst of a struggle with her family over an arranged marriage. Simone never stopped her criticism of the rigidity of the bourgeois attitudes towards women. Although never marrying (despite Sartre’s proposal in 1931), having children together, or even living in the same home, Sartre and Beauvoir remained intellectual and romantic partners until Sartre’s death in 1980 ⁴⁴ In addition to her unique relationship with Sartre, Beauvoir had intimate liaisons with both women and men. Some of them include Jacques Post, the American author Nelson Algren, and Claude Lazmann the maker of the Holocaust documentary, Shoah. "As if her exploits with men were not enough, after the death of Sartre in 1980, she officially adopted her latest companion, Sylvie le Bon, who became her literary executor. On April 14, 1986, Beauvoir died of pulmonary edema, an attenuated, practiced and certified atheist.⁴⁵

Borrowing from Sartre’s existential philosophy, Being and Nothingness, she wrote her The Second Sex in which she contends with unremitting energy throughout a long and tedious book that the man is associated with transcendences while the woman is locked into immanence (as housewife, mother, domestic, etc.): This is the lot of the woman in the patriarchate. Men are at least partly responsible for women’s immanence because they view them specifically as the Other. For de Beauvoir, there is certain inevitability in men regarding women as the Other (and hence, as the second sex),. She claims that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. Thus for de Beauvoir, men enjoy transcendence. Women are trapped in immanence. Therefore, man becomes the role model for the modern and independent" woman. The Second Sex becomes in reality a protest for being feminine and leads de Beauvoir to conclude, unfortunately, that the pregnant woman is a degraded human being and a public laughingstock ⁴⁶ The Second Sex explains her hatred for her mother, her family, the idea of marriage and motherhood and why she chose her deviant sex life.

It is not surprising that during her intellectual pursuits, she saw French women, beginning with her mother as oppressed and in bondage. But neither that nor her writings and her novels that bared her frustrations with life relieved her disappointments with men and sex. Her view that a woman is not a woman flows out of her inability to tolerate the position of women in the French economy as house wives and mothers of children. For example, during her teaching career in Rouen in 1932, she was officially reprimanded for her overt criticisms of the situation of women in France and her pacifism. But she was also fired from her teaching job because she was considered an immoral influence on one of her students according to a parent who brought the complaint against her. In 1940, the Nazis occupied France and in 1941, she was dismissed from her teaching job. But what really broke the camel’s back as her immoral life style which cannot be passed on as progressive by any stretch of imagination. She was dismissed for corrupting one of her female students. She was seen as a bad influence on her students because her sexual perversion and promiscuity were simply out of control and unacceptable: Following parental complaint made against her for corrupting one of her female students, she was again dismissed from teaching in1943. She was never again to return to teaching.⁴⁷ She also was venting her hatred for the French bourgeois class. Nor did her decision to join the liberation struggles and protests against General Charles de Gaulle at home and in Algeria alleviate her frustrations about womanhood.

Emerging as a sexual pervert and disaster to her students in the classroom, she now turned her attention to her next career opportunity - writing, politics, and writing about her philosophy of life. She became more aggressive in the political arena and during her travels, she visited America, and saw the women as oppressed as in France and in need of liberation. The life of "oppressed women in France and the hold of the bourgeois class over them consumed her.⁴⁸ As she hopped from one man to another, she bared her inner frustrations by veering into politics in pursuit of her chosen career in the women liberation and Feminist