Poor Mao

Yes, poor little Mao. Someone was saying that we are all supposed to feel sorry for the first wife of Chiang Kai Shek who was cruelly cast aside to make room for a second wife, someone considered better than she, someone more intelligent, more wealthy, more well educated, better connected to the United States, a Protestant, or to be more precise a Methodist. Yes, poor Mao, not that I was talking about her or even knew of her existence. Just look at what the powerful and mighty U.S.A. did to that poor mother of the dictator's son! Yes, these Catholics all want us to host a big pity party feeling sorry for poor Mao, as if it was the Protestants' fault that the dictator cast aside his first wife to marry someone more politically advantageous for his purpose. As if it was our fault that she, meaning Soong May-ling, for some reason did not mind dating a married man in that polygamous society because it suited her ambitions. As if these Catholics do not have their whopping share of horror stories about cruelties imposed on women against their will, as for example the wholesale slavery of single women confined to nunneries because obviously it was not their decision to make. Yes, divorce sadly was part of the founding of the Protestant faith. It was not for Anne Boleyn to decide whether her head would be chopped on the block. It was a man who made that decision, obviously Henry VIII as we all know. Nevertheless, given the apostate condition of the Catholic faith, perhaps it was appropriate in some sense that we divorce ourselves from the burdens of medieval superstition to embrace a more pure and Biblical faith. Even when Puritans did not get everything right, they at least were not bogged down by all of these distractions. I am not unaware that some relatives would prefer us all to revert to Catholicism but the truth is that it is not their decision to make. Why would we want to trade the joy of salvation for the dreary oppression of medieval Catholic times? It just would not be worth it.