The duality of male and female is basic to human life. People find it inscrutable, suggestive, frustrating, necessary, and sublime all at once.
That’s why it has given rise to so much great, not-great, and sometimes downright objectionable literature: comedy, tragedy, lyric, epic, drama, and farce. Not to mention all the other genres, from epigram to soap opera.
It’s also why, like other basic features of human life, it is difficult to talk about directly in an age that pretends to supreme enlightenment. The nature of the issues makes us all seem a bit silly. Who can pretend to special enlightenment?
But we should try, even with likely failure staring us in the face. To organize discussion of an unmanageable topic, I’ll defend the view that feminism makes no sense. At bottom, I’ll claim, it’s a rejection of serious discussion of the sexes and their relationships because they can’t be rationalized on simple principles.
In the case of the feminism now legally institutionalized, the claim seems clearly correct. This version of feminism holds that no differences should be recognized between men and women, so there is nothing to discuss on the topic. The conclusion is that men and women should, as a matter of justice, be equally represented and successful in all social roles.
An obvious response is that the assertion there are no differences worth recognizing is just wrong. As such, it leads to pyramiding insanities, most recently transgenderism. The whole package should be scrapped.
That response is considered ignorant, retrograde, and what not else. Such objections are based more on prejudice than argument. People “know” feminism is right and criticisms are out of place, because that’s the view respectable people and institutions insist on.
Probably the best way to consider the dispute is to look at whether feminism has improved women’s lives. And here we come to what is called “the paradox of declining female happiness”. Today’s women have far more of the rights and opportunities now officially valued (the right to be treated as economic resources, the right to short-term sexual connections, the right to abort their children) but they are less happy both absolutely and relative to men.
For some reason, that surprises people. It also surprises them that young people don’t think feminism has worked as advertised. Young men increasingly want to scrap it, young women to double down. The effect, of course, is to increase mutual blame and mistrust.
The blame and mistrust may be deserved for all I know. There’s always plenty to go around. But the result of all this is that men and women don’t establish normal family relations, their lives lose direction, and the next generation—if it arrives at all—is raised badly. Until the coming of second-wave feminism net fertility in the West—births less early deaths of children—was generally stable at about three babies per woman. Since then it has collapsed, along with marriage.
So to all appearances, feminism has hurt men, women, children, families, and (if anything’s left over) the world in general. But what now? Something’s gone wrong, and complaining about crazed females or creepy incels won’t solve the problem even if all the complaints are justified.
What would make women happier? On the whole, what’s called “benevolent sexism”—the view that men and women are different, and that’s a good thing—seems to help. That makes sense, since “benevolent sexism” is simply non-feminism along with an attempt to create good relations between men and women that take their differences into account. The “scholarly” responses to that finding, of course, are variations on “why don’t women know what’s good for them?”
What does all this mean? The purpose of a system is what it predictably and reliably does. The unsurprising consequences of feminism, along with its monolithic support by all rich and powerful institutions, demonstrate that it’s based less on concern for women’s well-being than the industrial preference for orderly systems with interchangeable parts, along with utter indifference to things like family life that fall outside bureaucratic and commercial competence.
That, of course, is not good. But I’ve been talking about establishment feminism.
Maybe a different kind of feminism is needed. Here the question becomes what kind, and what does it tell us to do.
Years ago I wrote something on feminism that quoted a couple of intelligent definitions from Catholic women. One said “the core of feminism lies in the simple demand that women receive the same respect as men as independent, capable human beings,” the other “a feminist is always someone who feels some distress or dissatisfaction with the way women are treated.”
These apparently very sensible and straightforward definitions turned out to become less clear the more they were considered. For example: men and women have a somewhat different attitude toward arms’ length connections. In particular, men find respect as an independent, capable human being—as a man among men—more important.
Some instances of that tendency are uncontroversial. People agree that men are more reluctant to ask for help or consult a doctor. And women are less likely to organize themselves into groups with a clear accepted hierarchy—that is, to turn arms’ length respect into an organizational principle.
Are these isolated quirks, or part of something bigger? If the latter, and men really do care more about arms’ length respect, how can they be stopped from pursuing it and getting more of it than women? Or people prevented from expecting that result? And why think that the effort to force everyone—men and women alike—to act against natural inclinations that have always been basic to human life, with some evident benefits, would make life better for anyone?
The other definition, about distress and dissatisfaction, is plainly correct: feminists don’t like the treatment women receive. A masculine response might be “we’ve all got problems, but women complain more.” But that won’t do. If men have a stronger preference for establishing a functional order, and women feel more strongly about close personal relations, that will sometimes mean that men push women around and women swallow it.
A man might note that if women have longer lists of detailed requirements, men more concern with whatever works and keeps the peace, men are also going to get pushed around sometimes. But nagging seems a relatively minor form of abuse. Men might have other complaints they could make, but the basic point remains that relations between the sexes sometimes go wrong to the disadvantage of women.
But how should we handle situations in which intrinsic human tendencies cause problems? Constant nagging about the way people are doesn’t help: we have to look at how human relations actually work. If women are the more vulnerable sex, which everyone seems to believe, then abolishing settled order in the relations between the sexes is going to hurt them. That is what we see all around us. So what’s needed is something stable that helps keep human conduct sane and functional in a more-or-less self-governing way.
The obvious answer with regard to the sexes is to turn their pairings into functional arrangements based on fundamental common goods, and govern them by social conventions that evolve in a decentralized way, so they reflect broad practical experience of life, and enforce standards that keep the pairings stable and functional. In other words, something very much like the traditional approach to marriage.
But that depends on the legitimacy of general expectations regarding sex roles—that is, on rejection of anything recognizable as feminism. It therefore depends on rejection of our entire public orthodoxy, along with the social arrangements that demand and enforce it.
In short, something very much like a revolution. But it would be a revolution in how people live and understand their lives that we can all start to live out in ways that benefit those involved. The future belongs to those who show up, so ways of life that promote productive and satisfying family life are likely to last. If people take these issues seriously there is good hope we can arrive at something better than what we have now. May it be so.
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No.
That sums it up, Graham.
🙂
I second you, Mrscracker. Invoking the “traditional family”? Please define it. The Christian family is supposed to be one man, one woman, permanently united for “fides, proles, sacramentum.” Beyond that, which cultural/historical version are we supposed to restore? Arranged marriages between girls of 12 and men of 30 in which all domestic and legal power is concentrated in the husband? Or perhaps freely chosen unions between couples in their late 20s where the woman has saved her wages to bring a stake to the household? Do women have inheritance and property rights within the family? Is it extended or nuclear? I could go about varying structures, just within European Christianity, before ever raising questions about civil rights. Family history–the real kind–has been a curiously neglected subject among conservative Catholics.
And wouldn’t it be interesting to explore St. Edith Stein’s thinking on these matters?
In the column “the traditional approach to the family” includes acceptance that the sexes differ and need each other to maintain households suited to raising children and promoting the couple’s common good. That would require legitimate expectations as to their mutual obligations, which need to be at least somewhat concrete – otherwise everything becomes continual zero-based negotiation, which doesn’t seem workable. So it requires generally stable and reliable sex roles and thus rejection of what’s usually called feminism.
As for the kinds of specifics you mention, the column speaks of “social conventions that evolve in a decentralized way, so they reflect broad practical experience of life, and enforce standards that keep the pairings stable and functional.” So there’s no thought of determining in advance the details of a revived (not “restored”) tradition of family life that accepts sexual complementarity and takes seriously the goods of family life. That’s not the way tradition works, which relies on the human tendency to prefer what is found through experience to make life better on the whole. As your examples suggest, that varies somewhat by time and place.
I don’t know St. Edith Stein’s thinking on such topics. It may as you suggest be valuable.
St. Edith Stein, one of the first women allowed to study at a German university, wrote and campaigned for women’s education and career opportunities. Yes, it would be worth looking into her writings on the subject.
I should add: in the final paragraph I suggest trying to change how we live and understand our lives by taking these issues seriously and trying to live in ways that promote productive and satisfying family life and so benefit those around us. So it would be a ground-up movement concerned with what works in light of sexual differences, what’s needed for stable and functional relationships, and current circumstances.
Basically, we start where we are and see where we can go from there once ideological demands are dropped. No grand social engineering.
I consider myself to be a feminist. I am 72 and have been married 50 years. Women must insist that they have the right to live their lives the way they want to just as men do. If she wants to have a career she should do it and she should be paid the same as any man doing the same work. My father ruled our home thinking he was the HEAD of the family, which is why my elder brother couldn’t wait to leave and I remember my father saying “Why should he WASTE money educating a girl?” I got a degree anyway and worked until 3 months before my first son. My husband and I decided many things BEFORE we were married and divided our works by our skills. I warned him that if he ever laid an angry hand on me I would leave him NO SECOND CHANCES. He worked and kept the finances and made all those decisions and I owned and kept the house and I made EVERY DECISION with regard to the children. He could advise but NEVER decide. In this way we used our skills to raise our children to be successful and devout Catholics, who chose good, smart, talented wives, who they respect as equals. One is a lawyer and one is a teacher. Frankly, If we were just married today I have no doubt I would have to work and I would demand respect and equal pay and equal opportunities for advancement. Hamburger is no longer 59 cents a pound. Women in this nation HAVE to work to pay the mortgage or rent!
No, I do not approve of abortion. Catholics assume that all feminists do, BUT I do not agree with arresting women who have early miscarriages, which look just like abortions. I know, because I suffered two. Today in some states I would have bled to death or been arrested twice! And don’t say that doesn’t happen. It does! I know a great many doctors. Doctors in some states are saying that they are afraid to save a mother even though they KNOW the child is going to die or is dead already. Ectopic pregnancy is deadly to both and a dead child decaying inside can kill the mother. So, Catholics should research or better, take a female anatomy course at a nearby college instead of taking just anyone’s word from someone who has never studied in medical college. I have all sons, but if I had a daughter I would not accept the idea or belief that she is dispensable, because her husband can always get another wife.
I thought I was just agreeing that feminism doesn’t make sense?
🙂
Real family history is a hobby of mine & I do find that many people-conservative or otherwise-aren’t comfortable with the past, especially if it’s their own family’s past. I’m the descendant of an arranged marriage between a 12 year old girl & a young man in his 20’s, maybe 23. I actually think arranged marriages are a good thing but *arranged*, not forced. A dear Jewish friend of mine belongs to a community where parents arrange marriages through matchmakers. And of course, 12 year old brides wouldn’t fly these days but I knew a young mother who needed to get married at 13 so her child would “have a name.” That was considered the honorable thing to do back then, c. 1980 or so. Versus driving the mother of your child to Planned Parenthood.
My sentiments exactly
Except, of course, to satan. To it, feminism makes perfect sense.
Graham I thought you were answering the question whether feminism made sense and I apologize to you if I misunderstood.
I apologize to the author of the article also if my comments appeared differently than I had intended. I’m not a feminist and feminism in most instances does not make sense to me.
Comment boxes are a tricky way to communicate with each other sometimes.
I thought your comment was clear!
Thank you for letting me know Mr. Kalb.
🙂
In order to get anywhere in this, men must bind the demon of effeminacy in their lives and families.
This is the only answer to the devil’s final attack. Unless husbands and fathers assume the authority, particularly spiritual, that God bestowed on them since the time of Adam, the wreckage will only get more horrendous.
How to assume this authority:
1) Pray alone, pray with your spouse and family, pray communally in just worship of God on His terms.
2) Bind all evil spirits that enter your domestic church
3) Practice detachment from the city of Man: sports, pop culture, technology etc..
4) Consecrate yourself and family to the blessed Virgin in the Montfortan formula.
If we try to fight the demon of feminism by ourselves, we have chance. Only with the help of the Trinity, the blessed Virgin, and authority given to us through the Sacraments can we outgun our ancient and more gifted adversary!
Ave Maria!
“He for God and she for God in him.” (Milton) If that what you have in mind?
As a woman, I support the laws that make it possible for a woman to become a doctor, soldier, lawyer, business owner, etc., or to be admitted into various institutes of learning if she is qualified. I also support the right of women to vote, hold political office, join and participate in certain clubs and organizations (e.g., the Rotary), etc. But I also believe that both men and women need to be honest with the various sciences and recognize that there are differences between men and women, and rather than pretending that we are exactly alike except for anatomy, we need to recognize and honor those differences. Some people want to explain these differences away and cite “cultural pressures.” Well, tell that to a man who is trying to nurse a baby. Or to a woman who is going through menopause. But again, a woman should have the same rights that men have enjoyed-jobs, education, military service, etc. (Note-my late husband and I raised two beautiful and successful daughters, one of whom is married with a toddler son.)
Really, “these laws” are the basis of a discrimination regime as we have it. The idea that women faced substantive moral disabilities is a canard. All the founders of the feminist impulse were radicals, and all the beneficiaries were interested in inexpensive female labor. There is no stage of feminism that has been anything other than damaging, largely because it took direct and unequivocal aim at the form of the Christian family. Current marriage and birth rates show that their revolution was, at least provisionally, very successful.
Agree. I was married at age of 19 and had five kids by the age of 30. In 1942, I started college. I never felt put down; thankfully my grandfather and father had great respect for woman. I read when my kids napped and at night when they were in bed; not a big TV watcher. I never felt disrespected. Seeing my kids grow into good, intelligent, curious people wad fascinating to watch. My oldest daughter got into the Feminist, as well as other movements. One day, when she was about 30, she said I (meaning me) was like a slave in the fifties. I asked her what she meant and she said I cooked, cleaned, did laundry and such for 5 kids, a husband and self. My response was something along the line of “Do you mean when your dad was at work?” Outside activities most likely were involvement with boy and girl scouts, watching kids play ball and occasionally get togethers with friends. I never felt at a disadvantage. Now at the age of 90, I get to have great conversations and family time (I love to cook) with kids, grandkids, great grandkids. Yes, women should have the same rights as men as to jobs, education, similar. Do balk as infantry type of military service. Nothing wrong with being a woman.
There is a Latin definition of knowing: Cognoscere est fieri aliud in quantum est aliud.”To know is to become the other in as much as it is other.” It is fairly easy to know something that is like oneself because the similitude that already exists gives the necessary knowledge; one has only to recognize it. To “become” what is different is very challenging, as anyone who has dealt with someone from another culture has experienced.
In the Bible, to “know” is the verb used for intercourse. This puts the question of knowing definitely in the discussion of relations between men and women. It also shows how challenging it is to know something that is different from oneself. This challenge is heightened when the “other” that one must “become” is another person. I think that the first step toward the rational discussion that Mr. Kalb seems to desire is to face the fact that men and women are different and that each sex needs to recognize that there is something intrinsically human that they can only discover from the other sex. Adam was not able to be fully human all by himself. He needed Eve who was “other”.
Yes, and feminism is only one flavor of a deeper cultural collapse…
And, ultimately of religious collapse. The culture denies that God is “the Other;” and therefore denies that personal (and sexual) complementarity is even about an “other;” and the homosexual notion forgets that there is an “other”–only an identical self-facsimile; and then the we have the gender theory spectrum of politicized non-otherness; and the accompanying (accompaniment!) identity theory; of which both chauvinism and feminism are simply an early and polarized phase.
But, then there’s the self-disclosed mystery (!) of the totally Other also becoming totally Immanent—in the Incarnation—precisely because of His absolute transcendence. And, of which marriage between binary persons is a faithful and concrete expression, and nothing less. Adam found “the woman” to be a communion of what is both different and similar, complementary rather than either alien or identical: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman” (Gen 2:23).
And yet, Fiducia Supplicans validates, in practice, the so-called third option. Thusly is even the perennial Catholic Church annexed (!) by Secularism’s homosexual lifestyle.
Feminism as an assault on reality no. As an appeal for sanity yes. We find both in institutionalized feminism, although reflective of the amorality inflicting us. Kalb asks the big question, But how should we handle situations in which intrinsic human tendencies cause problems?
A turn to a prominent now departed authority on the issue, Dr Karl Stern former chair of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Stern, born in Germany, atheistic Jew then orthodox Jew finally convert to Catholicism left then Nazi Germany circa 1933 settled in Canada. In his major work The Flight From Woman he divides the prominent apprehensive inclinations between male and female translated into modes of knowledge, scientific or rational, as contrasted with intuitive or poetic. The reader can guess male as predominantly scientific and rational. That’s how Kalb, sans masculine prejudice addresses the issue. Whereas Stern believed as I’m confidant Kalb does that feminine intuitive and poetic are essential to an ordered cultural fabric. Dr Stern analyzed the Nazi cultural philosophy as extremely male oriented to the virtual suppression of the feminine. As a generality, Women were required creatures for the production of future German warriors. German culture Stern noted became harsh, steely, cold. The epitome of what occurs from the flight from woman.
Today our dilemma differs substantially. Men seem to desire the role of the woman and the woman of the male. That makes redemption from our cultural self inflicted suicide impossible. Traditional family at the centre. It’s the key for certain intellectual progressives for the destruction of Western Christian culture and the advent of universal egalitarianism. Kalb as I do perceives mutual cohesion between the ‘legitimate’ sexes [LGBT a disastrous roadblock], and redemption, requires a “revolution”. That revolution can only occur through and in Christ.
I wish the author would be more specific rather than speaking in generalities. I think he is somewhat trying to be sympathetic to both men and women but doesn’t seem to address real life situations. For instance, should it be a matter of personal choice if either a husband or wife decide to work or stay at home? If one partner stays at home and the working partner is abusive, what mechanism would there be to ensure that the non-working spouse is not left with a choice of staying in an abusive relationship (often with children) or living in poverty? While generous divorce laws might allow upper middle and upper income non-working spouses to be able to live well post-marriage, that has more often not been the case with middle, lower middle and lower income couples who divorce. When family decisions are made, how are allegedly differing thought processes of men and women accounted for so that each approach is valued equally and decisions are mutual? Is it a failure upon the part of men who are unable to find a role or purpose within a relationship that does not involve being the primary or sole income generator or should that be men’s essential purpose? How would society be compensated for the potential loss of the skills and work productivity of intelligent and capable women? For the author’s vision to be realized, he has to come up with concrete ways to make his vague suggestions real and understood in a way that would entice at least a large number, if not a majority, of both men and women to buy into it. I seriously doubt a strict reversion to decades and centuries past is an easy sell – or even desirable. Something more creative, more appealing has to emerge. It’s an interesting conversation but riddled with issues requiring complex reasoning and rational thought.
Excellent practical questions!
Remote working has opened up all sorts of opportunities for families to earn income and be home to raise their children. It’s also helping to raise population and lower the median age in rural areas that were greying and experiencing depopulation.
You don’t have to embrace feminism to help support your family. Scripture gives plenty of examples of women in home industry. These days that might look a little different, but same principle.
Your standard seems to be a comprehensive scheme of social administration that e.g. keeps divorce from injuring anybody, supervises domestic decisionmaking to ensure procedural and substantive fairness, and treats women’s labor power as a social asset for which society must be compensated if a woman becomes a stay at home mother and homemaker. (Apparently, “society” gains nothing from that choice – when a woman does that the world becomes worse for other people.)
That’s a very common standard today. I think something like it dominates public discussion. It’s what people mean by “social justice.” That’s why I keep talking about a “technocratic society.”
It seems to me though that people, families, and social groupings generally act in their own ways and can’t be controlled or reconstructed in the interests of abstract standards like equality. A serious effort in that direction goes against the grain and makes life worse for pretty much everybody, for example by disrupting non-bureaucratic and non-market connections. That’s what we see around us today. People aren’t forming families, and the families that do get formed are weak.
It seems to me instead that people make their lives by following natural inclination, personal habit, social habit (a.k.a. tradition), personal and social models and ideals, limitations and opportunities due to circumstance, etc. etc. etc. There’s also the force of the law, which is sometimes necessary but is a very blunt instrument for something as complex as family life.
With that in mind, when something isn’t working well we should ask how to make it work better in our own lives. We can also wonder about how social influences might point in a better direction. This column for example argues that current social ideals are making life worse and ought to change, and attempts to promote that goal through persuasion.
I agree it doesn’t specify much in particular instances. An argument in favor of local self-government doesn’t do that sort of thing. And 1500-word columns don’t resolve all issues.
Mr. Kalb, women are usually the ones who have to deal with the actual problematic situations that afflict families. For that reason, I for one would appreciate actual practical suggestions. I have read a number of excellent articles on various subjects that didn’t seem to have any effect on actual situations. I will pray that your article does not fall into that category.
But I still think John’s questions are good, practical ones.
P.S. As far as married women only working from home, that would limit nurses and doctors to unmarried women and married and unmarried men only. There is already a shortage of nurses. I just point out the fact.
I agree completely that practical advice on specific situations can be very useful. Or sometimes not. It all depends. Situations and people differ a great deal.
General principles can be useful, grand systems that promise solutions for all problems generally aren’t. And the specific problems of specific people (how much should I rely on family members? should I get a full time job outside the home?) usually call for a lot of detail, back and forth discussion, and personal experience.
Even then there’s lots of uncertainty. We should try to live in an orderly way but we can’t turn life into a system.
Mr. Kalb, I don’t understand. How does asking questions about specific problems constitute turning life into a system? I’m not asking you to provide the answers to the problems. That isn’t your job. But your insistence about not turning life into a system sounds like a reproof against making problems known at all.
Of course, you could just say that you don’t have the answers to the practical problems. As I said, providing the answers isn’t your job.
Anne Marie – specific practical issues should of course be raised and discussed. My thought was that general solutions usually aren’t possible so they need to be discussed in more particularized settings.
In an earlier comment (which may yet get posted), I mentioned Dominic Taigi, the husband of Bl. Anna Maria Taigi. Anna Maria was a mystic and much sought after by Catholic leaders of her day, including cardinals.
Another similar woman is Bl. Barbe Acarie, another mystic and a most influential leader in Paris at the turn of the 16th-17th century. She was the cousin of Pierre (later Cardinal) de Berulle and a friend of St. Francis de Sales. Francis once had to refuse her absolution because he told her that nothing she confessed was a sin!
Her husband, Pierre Acaris, was a passionate Catholic and deeply involved in the religious politics of the day. Unfortunately, his involvement was extremely imprudent and it brough near ruin on his family from which his wife had to extricate them.
At the end of his life, Pierre admitted, “My wife is a saint and I have made her one.”
I mention these two instances of a deeply holy wife married to a far less holy husband because it seems to me that the spiritual aspect of the relations between the sexes has not been touched upon in this discussion.
I wonder what Dominic and Pierre thought when they realized that their wives had a deep union with God in which they could not share. The husband may be the spiritual head of the household, but that does not make him the mediator between God and any of the members of his family.
This is something many priests also fail to realize, even if they can quote de internis necque ecclesia. There is only one mediator, and women can be united with Him directly. Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Scholastica, and St. Gregory the Great, in his biography of St. Benedict, gives a notable example of this fact.
Please continue to write! Your knowledge and perspective assist readers from a spiritual point of view. This is no less practical than the other valuable comments. God’s grace will be our guide if we will only ask. I am asking. This has made a difference.
Thank you, Linda! In case you want to read other things by me, I am a regular contributor to Where Peter Is. https://wherepeteris.com/author/sister-gabriela/
God bless you!
If I was getting married and my intended said she was a saint like Taigi or Acarie and I had to be like the husband of whichever, this would indicate to me, going forward, problems. Next thing is if she kept those ideas secret before the wedding and then after the wedding tried to nail me for not being like one of those men; or for that matter tried to nail me for being like one of them without distinction.
And if by now wedded, I loved this person but the lack of transparency and candour on her part was putting serious obstacles in the way, making discerning anything meaningful, impossible; then (as I’d imagine it) being “the head” in such a a situation wouldn’t just so provide any answers or resolutions. It’d be a mess unless we were in truth really married and grace was sustaining me.
Anyone who says they are saint most certainly isn’t! The saints are the last people to proclaim their sanctity!
Elias, curiously enough, both Anna Maria Taigi and Barbe Acarie experienced a conversion to a deeper spiritual life AFTER they were married. In fact, with Barbe, it was her husband who brought it about. He was concerned that his wife was getting too worldly so he had some religious books bound in elegant bindings and left them around the house. His wife read them and she obviously took them to heart. So it wasn’t a matter of “marrying a saint” but of having your wife outstrip you in holiness.
Yes Sr. that’s their life with God.
I wouldn’t say curious as to the conversions. I would remark how the conversion sustained the bond.
I’m sure the conversion did more than just sustain the bond. But it’s a pity that the growth in holiness of one spouse was not matched by the growth in holiness of the other, unlike Louis and Zelie Martin, who grew together as they grew more united to God. We need canonized couples to show the joy of matrimony!
And then there’s the case of Elizabeth LESEUR (1866-1914), saintly wife whose husband (Felix) worked to destroy her faith—until after her death and he was converted. The book cover reads:
“Felix’s eyes were opened by Elizabeth’s diary […]. He became a Christian and soon entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest. At the urging of friends, he published this diary, along with the introduction that tells of their life together and shows how Elizabeth’s virtues won him back to the Faith” (Elisabeth Leseur, “My Spirit Rejoices: The Diary of a Christian soul in an age of Unbelief,” Sophia Institute Press, 1996).
Might it be that ST. PAUL is sometimes misread when he says that in heaven (yes, we do not marry), we are anonymously “neither male nor female”? What, then, does St. John Paul II mean when, on the analogical/anagogical(?) Song of Songs, he refers to “duets”—possibly even in heaven (“The Theology of the Body,” 1997, p. 369)?
Especially when combined with this from the very long-term preacher of the papal household:
RANIERO CANTALAMESSA: “Precisely because eternity and a heavenly Jerusalem exist, a married couple who love each other know that their communion is not destined to end with this passing world and dissolve into nothing, but that transfigured and spiritualized, it will last for eternity” (“Virginity: A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,” 1995, p. 9).
ST. JOHN PAUL II, again: “In the risen man, male and female [!], will be revealed, I would say, the absolute and eternal nuptial meaning of the glorified body in union with God himself through the ‘face to face’ vision of him, and glorified also through the union of perfect inter-subjectivity [?!]. This will unite all who participate in the other world, men and women [!], in the mystery of the communion of saints (“Theology of the Body,” 1997, p. 267).
It seems that the unmarried ST. CYPRIAN (and others) might miss a beat by conspicuously leaving married and transfigured spouses out of this litany of saints who await us: “A great crowd of our loved ones awaits us there, a countless throng of parents, brothers and children longs for us to join them [….]” (Liturgy of the Hours, Friday, 34th Week of Ordinary Time).
Two QUESTIONS: in the “Theology of the Body,” is St. John Paul II noticing that monastic mysticism of ultimately being “alone with the Alone,” does not exclude the more Trinitarian-like (?) possibility of the alternative, married and sacramental vocation of being nuptially “together with the Together”? Yes? NOT that the Trinity is like human marriage, but that human marriage is at least remotely like the transcendent Trinity.
If so, then is the novelty-blessing for “irregular” “couples” as such (!), under Fiducia Supplicans, less of an unconvincing theological nuance than it is a possibly self-evident monstrosity? Just askin’…who am I to judge?
Powerful Beaulieu. Evidently conversion can be the test of the bond and equally the bond can be the test of the conversion. Serendipity!
In the words of Tolstoy, “Where love is there God is”!
Francis T, no reply button above:
Congratulations on managing to build your belief system on a mountain of cliched assumptions, false assumptions and caricatures, while managing to convince yourself that they were arrived at independently and honestly. Disillusioning you of beliefs from an ideology, where every single premise is either inherently and necessarily false or a misconstruing or incomplete rendering of social realities, as is the case in all human ideologies, (ists and isms always denote ideologies) would take more space than allotted here, but it is grotesquely malicious to advance the preposterous bald-faced falsehood that miscarriages are or ever have been treated as criminal abortions anywhere in America, except, of course, when illegal abortions were provided cover by lying abortionists.
What about feminism that simply holds that women, like men, are created in the Image and Likeness of God, and that therefore they should not be treated in a way that contradicts their human dignity, which is the same as that of men? (See Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 369)