Depending on our employer or our own personal tastes, we will live anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world. We don't go back to the old neighborhood very often, in part because the old neighborhood isn't there any more. We worry about where we will send our children to school, how to pay for their college education and how to protect them from drugs and pregnancy. Orders from our pastor, our bishop, even the Vatican plus a dollar and a half will get us a ride on Rich Daley's subway. Divorce is a seriously considered option often in our marriages.
Women have careers too.
Choice, choice, choice. Sometimes we make wise choices, sometimes unwise, but we cannot escape the obligation of choice. The Catholic Church has yet to make its peace with the inevitability of the freedom of its laity. It does not like one bit the laity's assumption of the right to make its own decisions, and of its demand that it be persuaded instead of ordered. Many pastors still assume that they have the same influence and power that their role models from a generation or two ago had.