(Wendy Cukierski is the mother of fourteen children, and lives in upstate New York where she and her husband Walt have a small farm and sell Catholic sacramentals online at www.cukierski.net. This interview originally ran in the January 2007 issue of Secretum Meum Mihi, when little Wilson (left) was the youngest.)

Kristen: Are you barefoot right now?
Wendy: Yes-- oh my gosh you caught me! But I’m not pregnant! I’m the crunchy Catholic mama.

Kristen: Were you and your husband always devout Catholics?
Wendy: I’m a cradle Catholic. Walt and I met in college and got married at 20. He was agnostic. The priest who married us told me, “Wendy, I feel in my heart that your husband is truly not agnostic. We’ll have a convert on our hands someday.” We did!

I Timothy 2:8-15
 
I desire then that in every place
the men should pray, lifting holy hands
without anger or quarreling;

also that women should adorn
themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly
apparel, not with braided hair or
gold or pearls or costly attire
but by good deeds, as befits
women who profess religion.

Let a woman learn in silence
with all submissiveness.

I permit no woman to teach or to have
authority over men; she is to keep silent.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve;
and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet woman will be saved through bearing
children, if she continues in faith and
love and holiness, with modesty.
(Revised Standard Version)