Many people watching the post-election meltdown of the Left on social media view it with some measure of Schadenfreude and I suspect the average American dismisses it as silly. In some sense, it is silly. But, in a deeper sense, it’s serious, even deadly serious. It’s a death cult.
Almost 30 years ago, Pope St. John Paul II wrote about the fight between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.” Evangelium vitae talked about how these two “cultures” are contending for control in modern life. It was hardly a new insight for the Polish pope. As Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, he said basically the same thing to Pope St. Paul VI during the Lenten retreat he preached for him in 1976 (subsequently published as Sign of Contradiction).
Consider the fact that many of the reasons for the post-election hysteria are tied to the supposed suppression of “women’s rights” by the election of politicians who at least won’t codify abortion-on-demand-through-birth-for-any-reason-you-feel-like as national policy. Kamala Harris made abortion a centerpiece of her campaign, one of the few issues about which she managed to avoid a word salad and obfuscate. She “made history” by visiting an abortuary. She picked a running mate who did his best to weaken Minnesota’s pro-life protections, including legal presumptions about care requirements for newborns who survive the abortionist.
Many Harris voters put their eggs in the Democratic basket and are now emoting about their loss. In the post-election aftermath, let’s step back and look: we have a national party that believes, with radical fervor, that the extermination of prenatal life for any or no reason at any time prior to birth is a good thing. Not something to be regretted, but something to be affirmed, “shouted,” and campaigned on.
The Biden-Harris Administration harped for four years about the alleged torrent of “mis/disinformation” flooding America. But Harris trafficked in disinformation to capture the “abortion vote.” It is heartbreaking to watch otherwise normal women acting as if becoming a mother in 21st-century America is a life-threatening act for which, in the extremely rare situation something might become pathological, they will be met not with appropriate medical care but somebody dressed up in a Handmaiden’s costume.
As has always been the case, abortionists trade in extremely rare hard cases in order to hide and smuggle their real goal: unrestricted abortion without any justification at any time in pregnancy.
What is most interesting to me, however, is the “4B reaction” of this death cult. For those noninitiates who never heard of this movement (like me before this weekend), it is apparently a five-something-year-old South Korean “feminist” ideological import. The four “Bs” are words in Korean: no dating men, no marrying men, no having babies, no sex with men. Women are taking to TikTok and other social media outlets to announce they will boycott sex with men, especially men who voted for Trump. They are looking for ways to “identify” with other women: bracelet making, tattoos, masks, and shaving heads seem to be currently in vogue. How to identify “safe” men poses a bigger philosophical conundrum: one segment is working on that problem while other Amazons have simply concluded that any penis-bearing human being (except, maybe, those who have gone over to the “trans-woman” side) is irredeemably off limits.
Kneejerk reactions to the 4Bers have ranged from “it’ll reduce your voting pool” to “if you had that much control, abortion wouldn’t have been your #1 issue.” Rather than dismiss this, however, we should take this phenomenon seriously.
The 4B movement synergizes with several already established anti-life trends. Young people–especially young women–are either not getting married or getting married at historically advanced ages. Marriage itself is fast becoming not the ordinary state of being for most adults but a mere optional “alternative” among various other forms of concubinage of greater or lesser duration. Even when people finally tie the knot, childbearing becomes the next mountain to scale. Fertility rates in the Western world have dropped below replacement level, a phenomenon pronounced in 4B-origin South Korea and one lauded by its American proponents. Children as children (as opposed to children as desired product or as what former Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit called “parental projects”) are devalued, if not despised. Animating all of this is a profoundly anti-life culture.
For millennia–and not just in Christian circles–human beings understood sexual intercourse to have two meanings: procreation and mutual support (procreatio et mutuum adiutorium). The Church taught this clearly until the guerrilla warfare against Humanae vitae, and the rank cowardice of many Catholic clergy—especially bishops—in failing to talk about these things. Now is a “teaching moment” to be seized by “reading the signs of the times.”
The 4B movement is the cultural outcome of that dereliction, seeking to re-form American culture. It takes as a given that sex is primarily about pleasure, with contraception as an immediate backup and abortion as the ultimate backup form of post-conception contraception.
Just listen to the 4B argument: “because you voted for a political candidate, we will not have sex with you.” That statement is bereft of any concept of intercourse as an act of love, an act of giving to a beloved, of a permanent bond that may extend into eternity through the “two as one flesh” in a third person. That statement treats sex as a momentary “reward,” a compensation for doing something. Perhaps it’s right that the 4B argument eschews marriage because such behavior is not conjugal. Treating sex as a reward or compensation traditionally was associated with some other ancient profession.
Speaking of conjugality, Silvio Canto raises a question that needs a more thorough analysis from the marriage think tank world: the relationship of how people voted to their marital status. Canto quotes Conn Carroll that the real “gap” in the election was not gender but marriage: “Trump won a majority of not just married white women, but a majority of all married women” (emphasis added). Marital status, in short, is determined how most people voted.
That is why the 4B movement is fundamentally not a reaction to a political outcome but a rejection of marriage and childbearing as normal goods of human life and flourishing. It declares “blessed are the barren” cat ladies with “furry babies” (check out how many TikTokers self-identify by the latter). It essentially wants to say: getting outside of my “autonomous self” by sharing life with others (spouse, child) is inauthentic and evil.
It begrudges life. And, to extrapolate to a theological level, I add an observation once shared with me by the Rev. Paul Scalia. He pointed out that angels (including fallen angels) cannot procreate. There are no “baby angels.” The angelic choirs are what and as many as God created them. And it is perhaps not accidental that Satan’s first target for sin was the woman, not because she is supposedly weak or gullible, but because she could give more life, something the Evil One hates. Is it not telling that, when Christ defines him, he speaks of the devil as “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44)?
Some people can be “entertained” by these displays, and the political class will certainly not dig into deeper, theological currents animating the anti-values these displays entail. But we Catholics should, because they have much deeper implications for the possibilities of our culture as it contends with life and death.
The hysterical emoting we see on social media is, as I have elsewhere argued, not normal political discourse. Normal political wins or losses do not take this form. What we’re seeing–not J.D. Vance’s argument for childbearing–is truly “weird.”
What is happening, I maintain, comes from a deeper and darker place: a sacralization, an idolization of politics into a false religion, so that a political loss becomes an act of faith and the casus belli for a war of religion against one’s opponents. And that is dangerous, because the threat to America comes not from so-called “Christian nationalists” but a religion that wants to be a theocracy while hiding as a non-religion, just as the Evil One wants people to believe he doesn’t exist. And the intersection point of this religious struggle is life.
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I am sorry, I cannot see much point in this discourse.
Quote: “because you voted for a political candidate, we will not have sex with you.”
While that “4B”(about which I did not know until reading this article) sounds stupid, a choice of a political candidate to some extent reflects a person’s inner convictions and thus affect a choice of him as a sexual partner. For some Trump (and related convictions) is no-no, for some Putin (and related convictions) no-no, etc. I think it is a private matter and this is the biggest mistake of the “4B”, making private matters public. In truth, such an announcement is quite narcissistic: there are many other women in the world.
As for:
Quote: “That statement is bereft of any concept of intercourse as an act of love, an act of giving to a beloved, of a permanent bond that may extend into eternity through the “two as one flesh” in a third person”
I suspect “4B” are neither Catholics nor Orthodox or religious Jews i.e. they belong to the culture when to sleep with someone does not mean the above.
My challenge to you is whether you think these are all “private” issues of isolated, autonomous individuals who make up their own values and, at best, affect perhaps a “partner” (marital or otherwise) with them. The most cursory survey of our world suggests that is not the case and our culture is either coarsened or elevated. Vatican II said read the signs of the times. That includes anti-signs.
“My challenge to you is whether you think these are all “private” issues of isolated, autonomous individuals who make up their own values and, at best, affect perhaps a “partner” (marital or otherwise) with them.”
In your article you are talking about women who (quote):
“The four “Bs” are words in Korean: no dating men, no marrying men, no having babies, no sex with men.”
For a start, if they do not date men, do not marry them, do not have sex with men and do not have children it does not affect their partners because they do not have the partners :)) . The only way such women may affect men is wounding their ego via rejection. “How dare you, women, reject us, men?” – something like that. “Flocking together” perhaps makes it more impactful. My advice for those men who are (unreasonably) upset is to look elsewhere. If those women do not sleep with men then at least a real problem, of a potential murder of the unborn, is avoided.
Here is where you article inconsistent: you speak (quote):
“because you voted for a political candidate, we will not have sex with you.”
It is an entirely different story. Here we apparently have women who are prepared to date, to marry, to have sex, to conceive – but only if a man did not vote for Trump. They are notv “4B” then. As I wrote in my first comment, such a choice reflects personal conviction, conscience (which must be respected, according to Catholic teaching) thus is entirely normal. Personally, I would not have a relationship with someone who is neo-Nazy (this is an example, I am not saying that Trump is). I would talk to such a man out of curiosity but my desire to deal with him as a romantic partner would likely go to zero. So, what is the problem here with a woman who does not want to sleep/marry a man who voted for Trump? Is it about abortions? – No, because a woman can be pro-life and still not want to sleep with a man who voted for Trump. Furthermore, a woman can be pro-life and still not want to sleep with a man, with any man, to marry, and to have children, for a variety of reasons which are none of anyone’s business.
An entitlement to abortion is a phenomenon present in all groups of a society including those who voted for Trump. It is even present among Catholics, according to the shocking stats. And here of course Christians must fight for the lives of the unborn – unlike a fight against women who do not wish to sleep with men. At its core, an entailment to abortion more often than not has its roots in a person’s inability/lack of desire to see the other, including the fetus, as person. In my opinion, one of the major responsibilities of all Christians is to address that issue of a denial of personhood to the other.
Now regarding what you wrote in your next comment, “”Jesus said “let your light shine before men,” not “before other Catholics.”
He continued the sentence: “that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Hence, I believe that “let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven”, would mean here “love your fiancées and spouses so much that your relationships with them would show others that to date, to marry, to have sex, to have children can be good and personally enriching and thus highly desirable”.
Anna, you are obviously a thoughtful and articulate reflector. However, one comment caught my attention and indicates poor understanding of Catholicism–or better stated–Truth–and therefore slants all your arguments away from the Faith and authentic union with perfect love. To quote you:
“It is an entirely different story. Here we apparently have women who are prepared to date, to marry, to have sex, to conceive – but only if a man did not vote for Trump. They are notv “4B” then. As I wrote in my first comment, such a choice reflects personal conviction, conscience (which must be respected, according to Catholic teaching) thus is entirely normal.”
God, and so the Church, does not force itself on persons, thus the “respect” (for free will) to which you allude. However, “Personal conscience” frequently violates Truth and fails in love. Furthermore such poor reasoning may be typical in today’s twisted world, but it is abnormal in the life of a faithful Catholic.
I pray for your further exploration of the Faith, in Scripture but also sound catechesis, and there are numerous, reliable sources for you to access in that regard. With that salvation education you could be quite the apologist.
So well & compassionately discerned, dear Patricia Hershwitzky.
Jesus Christ is alive and with us still! Praise GOD!
We’ll keep this beloved & very talented Anna in our prayers.
Quote: “However, “Personal conscience” frequently violates Truth and fails in love.”
Without a doubt. This is why the full quote reads:
“It is an entirely different story. Here we apparently have women who are prepared to date, to marry, to have sex, to conceive – but only if a man did not vote for Trump. They are notv “4B” then. As I wrote in my first comment, such a choice reflects personal conviction, conscience (which must be respected, according to Catholic teaching) thus is entirely normal. Personally, I would not have a relationship with someone who is neo-Nazy (this is an example, I am not saying that Trump is). I would talk to such a man out of curiosity but my desire to deal with him as a romantic partner would likely go to zero. So, what is the problem here with a woman who does not want to sleep/marry a man who voted for Trump? Is it about abortions? – No, because a woman can be pro-life and still not want to sleep with a man who voted for Trump. Furthermore, a woman can be pro-life and still not want to sleep with a man, with any man, to marry, and to have children, for a variety of reasons which are none of anyone’s business.
An entitlement to abortion is a phenomenon present in all groups of a society including those who voted for Trump. It is even present among Catholics, according to the shocking stats. And here of course Christians must fight for the lives of the unborn – unlike a fight against women who do not wish to sleep with men. At its core, an entailment to abortion more often than not has its roots in a person’s inability/lack of desire to see the other, including the fetus, as person. In my opinion, one of the major responsibilities of all Christians is to address that issue of a denial of personhood to the other.”
That sex is an act of self-giving to another is not a peculiar Catholic idiosyncracy, even if the Church teaches it. It is intelligible on human (i.e., natural) grounds — and why are we not contesting anti-human views with human ones, which need not be doctrinal? Jesus said “let your light shine before men,” not “before other Catholics.”
Yeah, I have to largely agree. To put this on a more proper footing, it is generally a bad idea to marry someone with a different religion, even if we are talking about a Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox (both of which insist that the children be raised in the respective churches). Husband and wife can disagree about things that are fundamentally silly, such as favorite sports teams, but deep disagreements are a bad sign.
As you say, few of these women are likely to be Catholic, at least in a meaningful sense of the word, so they’re not marriage material for the Catholic men reading this article anyhow. Honestly, though, the kind of woman who is dedicated to making abortion available is probably not the kind of woman who could enter into a valid marriage anyhow.
Wow! Excellent article. This 4B is not all that new just seems ultra violent. My 1st wife,married 1971, was against having children. I agreed at start of marriage, young foolish wanted to see the world without children in tow. She was so against children she com0lained when I would play with relatives or friend’s children. She became pregnant while taking birth control. Against my desire to have this baby, she had our child aborted. It was not uncommon for young woman to not want children. I am 74 and have dated women same age range who are childless. The common emotion is sorrow for not having children & loneliness. We are meant to be a family from the beginning. Likewise, many of these same woman have always seen sexual intimacy as “just sex”! Multiple partners several short marriages and relationships, intimacy was not a bonding sharing between man & woman in love….just 2 lonely (my opinion) people seeking pleasure within the shadow world of a maybe relationship. In addition to your observation how marriage changes politica views. The lack of critical thought shows through these extreme social opinions. There is no discussion as seen in the unwillingness to even listen to others views. It is scary the failure to listen in a civil discourse, lack of critical thought on the view brings about this ultra emotional response that blossoms into isolation from others in this world & threats of violence. My apology if my thoughts are not clear, long day on the road. I had a wonderful career as a firefighter in large southwest city. Yet! I am still amazed & frightened by the lack of charity/love in this world. Please. I will enjoy more articles from your pen.
I’m so sorry to hear that Mr. O’Malley. God bless you & thank you for your service.
I seem to hear about more & more older people who are without children. Or those who may have no grandchildren. It’s something you didn’t used to encounter as often back in the day.
Fertility’s a sometimes thing. Women can take it for granted until it’s gone.
Insightful article (understatement).
6th last para., last sentence – “Marital status, in short, determined how most people voted.”
Whoa there, pardner! There is a lot to unpack here. Starting with the hysterical emoting over the fact that American women – many of whom aren’t Catholic, so why do you even care what they do? – are closing themselves off to relationships with men. One has to wonder why you are obsessing so vehemently over the lives of non-Catholic women or any woman at all when their lives and choices are of no real concern to you.
Let’s get one thing straight, there is no requirement in life to get married or have babies. Those are personal choices. If women are choosing to bow out of dating, marriage, sex, or having babies that is entirely their right to do so and there is not a thing you can do about it. Furthermore, why would you want to force those who do not wish to participate in what you personally want? When you force things on people and make them do things they do not want to do, that creates a climate of misery and society as a whole is worse off for it.
The author of this piece is presumably married and therefore already “got his.” Paired with the fact that he is also at an advanced age, all he has done is doubled down with on the hysteria his argument.
No matter how much people whines and emote all over the page, it doesn’t change the fact that women do not owe men dates, marriage, sex, or babies and you cannot force them to.
Why do I care what “they” do, if they’re not Catholic? Because the culture in which we ALL live is shaped by them, and what they’re shaping is a death cult. If we want to protect the unborn, if we want to staunch euthanasia, etc. we have got to stop thinking about a Catholic “ghetto” or that even politics can save us and get to the HARD work of re-forming a culture in our image and likeness. Might this be a Catholic moment? Perhaps (see here: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/11/09/a-second-catholic-moment/ ) but that means engaging the country we all live in.
K.A. Jones,
Certainly there’s no requirement for women in our modern Western Culture to do anything as far as marriage & childbearing. It’s completely their choice. But if you consider who will be making up the culture of the future it won’t be descendants of today’s women who declined to participate in marriage & family.
Mrs Cracker. Does that even matter? Far into the future we will all be dead. What happens after us should not be our concern as much as what is right here in front of us, right now. So why does it matter to you whether women opt out of marriage and having babies or not? You are already married and maybe even have some grandchildren. This absolutely does not concern you and as such you would be better served leaving women who are not you and of no relation to you to live their lives according to their values and principles. Nobody is stopping you from living your life the way you want. Stop poking your nose into the genitals of others.
Dear Jenna – does that not seem unecessarilly simplistically rude – at the expense of other beloved contributers . . ?
Of course we should care if others in our common polity are making irrational, anti-biological, life-negating, passionate propaganda that is well able to suck in innocents – including young Catholics – who may regret it for the rest of their lives.
Our world is in desperate need of fact-based LOGICAL & ETHICAL reasoning such as Professor John M. Grondelski has authored here. We need more LIGHT to illuminate the chaos that’s so drastically infecting human society.
“Far into the future we will all be damned, or not.”
There, fixed it for you – but I do feel a little guilty at my snark, since God’s mercy does abound.
“So why does it matter to you whether women opt out of marriage and having babies or not?”
It really doesn’t. The fact that women are called to the religious or consecrated life proves it.
“This absolutely does not concern you and as such you would be better served leaving women who are not you and of no relation to you…”
Ah, but there is one of the most important concerns: the women who ARE related to us. We have every right to preserve our values by passing them on to the next generations. You obviously would like to stop us.
“Stop poking your nose into the genitals of others.”
So tell your ilk to stop wearing those Pussy Hats, which do the same thing with less reason and class.
Several years ago I was having supper at a restaurant with one of my children & a family he knew through his work. The little girl in the family was wearing one of those pink, knitted hats. I just don’t know what the parents were thinking.
It might have been innocent enough had we not just come from a union rally where Bernie Sanders was speaking. So my guess was that the hat was worn to convey an off colour political message
Jenna,
When you ask about the merits of being concerned with the future over the now, it divorces the two as though they are two distinct categories with no overlap. If women are opting out of relationships with men over a political ideology that’s rooted in something we believe to be irredeemably evil, there will be more evil to come of that. That evil should be rightly exorcised.
Certainly a woman may choose to respond to her vocational calling as God calls her – and perhaps, very well, it may be to a life that is not marriage. BUT it would be to entertain an egregiously false notion of vocation to conflate a rejection of a legitimate vocational calling, like marriage (or something even more basic as an openness to discernment of a relationship with a man), on the grounds of promotion of a political movement that asserts it’s paramount “right” as to freely engage in abortion. As evangelists of the Gospel, it’s our moral responsibility to remind anyone who would take on the 4B yoke for those reasons of the real danger of such a project – for her own good, and, by extension, the good of us all.
Goodness Jenna, I think it’s harsh when childless people are accused of having less of an investment in the future but really, comments can be interpreted that way.
I’m very concerned about our future because I have 25 descendants & counting. They will inherit the future. It would be very unloving & selfish for me not to be concerned.
It’s actually way more selfish and unloving for you concern yourself with others. You made your choices in life. Nobody forced their views or values on you. But you want to force your views and values on others. That is what is known as having control issues. Your comment makes it abundantly clear that you do not view your “25 descendents and counting” as people to be cherished and loved. You see them as little more than employees. People who you think you deserve to boss around and force to do your bidding.
Really, really weird comment, contrary to everything mrscracker has ever posted here
Perhaps you misread my comments Jenna?
“…many of whom aren’t Catholic, so why do you even care what they do?”
The Great Commission in Mark 16:15 is why:
“He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.'”
American pluralism is not a cudgel to keep us from saying what out the be said.
Thank you for the article. Appreciate the information very much. A good read .
I wonder why no one ever asks rabid baby-killing-advocacy politicians like Kamala just how many times they’ve been pregnant and how each of those pregnancies ended. That would be: a born-live baby, an unplanned miscarriage, or an intentional abortion. When you hop around the country pushing the baby-killing agenda as if that’s all that matters, then it’s only fair game to ask a politician what their personal experience with it is. The same goes for male politicians. Obama was notorious for pushing late stage abortion legislation. He should be asked how many of babies he’d fathered had been aborted late-stage by the women he’d impregnated. This falls into the same category as the question Trump asked about war mongering as applied to Liz Cheney: How many occasions have you been behind the barrel of a rifle in a combat situation that you’re such a keen advocate of sending other people’s children to fight in the wars you and your father get us in?
Excellent questions. My husband said the same thing.
Making this comment after reading Dr. Grondelski’s article might be like stepping from the sublime to the ridiculous, but didn’t Aristophenes cover something like the 4B movement almost 2500 years ago in “Lysistrata”? Only then it was played for laughs! That’s one of the problems with liberals — they tend to be so far behind the times.
And it illustrates the other problem with many ‘liberals’: they are too too serious.
Thanks John. I too see a growing “sacralization, an idolization of politics into a false religion, so that a political loss becomes an act of faith and the casus belli for a war of religion against one’s opponents.” That is why I never voted for Trump (or Biden/Harris), tough I was tempted as an abortion abolitionist. True, the political murder cult of children obsessively promoted as a top issue by the Democrats proved less popular than they hoped. The alternative, however, is not a rank demagogue selling the old fashioned false worship of money, power and fame.
Forget the brazen un-mateable mystics of evil. Beware the electable return of evil charm with 2028 Presidential candidates like Governor Beshear of Kentucky. Slick, young, smooth, Church of Christ well-spoken, established son of a Governor, Vandy & UVA grad who knows how to win in a Republican controlled State. Beshear is no DINO (Democrat in name only), any more than Bill Clinton or Carter. Beshear embraces every wicked part of the demonically approved Democratic platform (and the demonically amended Trump Republican platform). Note how Beshear went after Vance as “not one of us.” IMO, as an anti-silver spoon outlier, Vance is a rare hope of Republicans to keep the new blue collar voters to defeat a Bill Clinton type presidential candidate in 2028.
You have a point. KY Gov Beshear has a piece in today’s NY Times, “How Democrats Can Still Win.” It’s a fool’s errand to think having won a political contest, we will prevail without changing the culture behind it.
Well, not surprised that Beshear went to worship at the NYT. Why wait for the dust to settle. Power abhors a vacuum. 2028 starts today. And I’m sure Gov. Shapiro in Pennsylvania has already begun his run.
I find God’s Fool’s morning line on the 2028 presidential election race intriguing –touting: “Governor Beshear of Kentucky…who knows how to win in a Republican controlled State.”
Like GF, I see a definite Carter/(Bill)Clinton parallel — especially Beshear as a “centrist” “Southern boy” to follow an inept Leftist (Harris/Beshear, Dukakis/Clinton, McGovern/Carter).
What’s missing in GF’s analysis is HOW Beshear won in a Republican controlled state. In winning re-election in 2023, Beshear did little more than shore up his base in “blue” cities Louisville and Lexington by championing abortion, transgenderism, COVID quarantine extremism and “protecting” public school teachers unions from state support of parental educational free choice. Beshear’s Republican opponent (who was endorsed by Donald Trump, JD Vance, Glenn Youngkin and Mitch McConnell) was a stalwart champion of the pro-life, anti-child mutilation, COVID moderation and state support of educational free choice causes. He also was on President Trump’s published short list of potential US Supreme Court nominees.
On election night 2023, the Republican statewide ticket swept all of the statewide offices (which was no surprise, following statewide GOP sweeps in 2020 and 2022) — except the governorship. Outside Louisville and Lexington, which predictably were “true blue”, the only distinguishing (and ultimately determinative) factor was that “red” small town and rural Kentucky voters split their GOP tickets to elect Democrat Beshear.
Why did that happen, when “red” Kentucky has been so reliably Right on all of the cultural and class issues (dealing Harris a thumping 2-1 loss last Tuesday)?
Too bad. The GOP candidate, Daniel Cameron, was a young, bright, bold Attorney General, and he would have been Kentucky’s first Black governor.
Interesting that you did not write an equally scathing takedown of the MGTOW movement and how that breeds a culture of death. Or what about the manosphere, Male Rights Activists, and pick-up artists? A quick search of this site proves that when it’s men who drop out of dating, marriage, and starting families there is nary a peep from you. The manosphere is much more detrimental to society than feminism. Men seek to destroy women physically, mentally, and emotionally and that’s apparently ok according to the writers of this blog.
But when women say, “we have had enough and wish to be left alone ” you devolve into absolute hysterics about it. Proving that you believe women have no agency and men should have unlimited access to women’s bodies, minds, and lives.
Women are mostly free to be left alone Jenna, at least in our society. Truthfully more & more young people aren’t even having face to face relationships these days.
Hysterics is not a form of argument. Your post is simply ridiculous, aside from being patently false.
Nothing I wrote is “hysterics”, that you label it as such points to me having struck a nerve in you and now you’re shrieking like a banshee to try and negate my point. You must be one of the woman abusing MRAs who thinks it’s fun and funny to mentally abuse your girlfriend/wife/daughters into having eating disorders and other awful things. 😉
Not sure what you’re talking about but feel free to pitch an article. Do men sometimes act like pigs? Yep. And that’s in part because abortion — the female sacrament — has enabled them to do that and dodge responsibility, while freeing women also to be more promiscuous. That’s not opinion: just look at stats. Do I defend men doing these things? Absolutely not. But it’s no secret that, to no small measure, women are the keepers of culture … and anti-culture.
I remember hearing someone on Christian radio compare direct abortions to vacuuming out rental cars before they’re leased to the next person. It’s a disturbing analogy. Women are just turned into sexual vehicles that can be driven, vacuumed out & reused again. No long term commitment or purchase necessary.
Look up Men’s Right Activists. For an example of gross MRA behavior look for an article “5 benefits to dating a girl with an eating disorder” they boast about mentally abusing women into developing eating disorders because they think it’s funny and won’t have to pay a lot of money for dinner dates. Could you imagine completely destroying a person’s self image and self esteem just so they’ll be a cheaper date? I don’t think that is ok. Why would you? And there are other directions I can point you in, but you seem like a he-man woman hater type who let’s men get away with bad behavior because “boys will be boys” or whatever.
It is absolutely NOT women’s job to be the keepers of culture or anti-culture. That’s more “boys will be boys” nonsense that lets boys off the hook for bad behavior at the expense of women’s health and safety.
“abortion — the female sacrament”
Usually the diabolical words “abortion is a female sacrament” are used by those who defend abortions, typically by “the high priests of the abortion cult”. Such a definition reveals a deep pathology of course.
You chose to use those very words in the context of arguing with an unknown woman who challenged your article. Those words, being put between other accusations of women as such AND especially being directed towards your female opponent may indicate a (unconscious) fear or and animosity towards women who disagree with you.
Interestingly, you seem to see women as intrinsically promiscuous (“abortion freeing women also to be more promiscuous”) while men, apparently, are released by abortion from their responsibility – but not aided by it in their promiscuity. I have to correct you, statistically females as a group are far less promiscuous than males as a group; this is determined by who they are, naturally, by the needs to reproduce and rear offspring and so on.
Hence, curiously, your discourse attributes to each sex the vice of the opposite one. In the reality, women as a whole do not feel less responsible for the offspring than men (think single mothers) and, I repeat, they are far less promiscuous than men (this is why male homosexuals are typically extremely promiscuous and female homosexuals tend to be faithful). Hence, it appears that you created a construct, of some “promiscuous woman” who kills her children to be able to sleep around. This construct contradicts even the fearsome “Medea archetype” who kills her children because her husband is unfaithful to her/left her. Medea is much closer to the modern reality because when a woman chooses to abort, she quite often does so as a consequence of a man abandoning her with pregnancy. Hence, your construct of some sexually obsessed woman aborting for the sake of sleeping around and enabling her man to drop his responsibility is absurd – so as your claim that it is a responsibility of women to keep culture “or anti-culture”. You really make out of a woman some kind of a fearsome deity or a priestess, very contrary to what apostle Paul said. Very astutely, he points at an intrinsic need of a woman to feel safe and be supported by her man. In passing, it is worthwhile to mention that objectively speaking, the culture as we have it now, was hugely created by men who have always been in a position of power – so your accusation of women re: degeneration of culture is unsustainable. Both Adam and Eve are guilty, each in accordance with their unique psyche.
To make a total, you seem to be fighting against a goddess who has no equal spouse but a lowly consort who, like her children, is threatened by her. Precisely here belong your words “abortion is a female sacrament” which you used as an argument with your female opponent.
It’s time for equal responsibilities for men and women in relationships and conception. Because I don’t care for who you are and refuse to have sex with or marry you, I am anti life? Don’t think so
The Catholic Church’s official doctrine is that women are in all and each respect inferior to men. Women are, in. Catholic doctrine, worthless. Thus, Grondelski is offended by women acting like we’re human instead of mindless 3D printers for making new males. In Catholic doctrine nothing a woman thinks has any merit; we are ONLY here to service every idiot whim of whatever male has the misfortune of being stuck with us.
This is SO patently false that it barely deserves an answer. Worthless? Inferior to men in all ways? Step away from the bong. Sure, one can dig up some weird statements made centuries ago but they do NOT constitute the position of the Catholic Church at all, a church that has as many female saints as male; a Church that has named females as “Doctors of the Church”; a church that gives the highest major international awards, like the Ratzinger Prize, to female theologians; who has women leading huge orders, universities, on all kinds of Dicasteries; a church in which St. John Paul II not only praised mothers but women who work (“Thank you, women who work! You are present and active in every area of life-social, economic, cultural, artistic and political. In this way you make an indispensable contribution to the growth of a culture which unites reason and feeling, to a model of life ever open to the sense of ‘mystery’, to the establishment of economic and political structures ever more worthy of humanity”) etc. ad infinitum, as anyone who actually studied theology would know.
What you said was absolutely ridiculous, a blatant lie. I suspect you are just angry about abortion.
Karen is a Texas lawyer who has been quite blatant about this on the UK site UnHerd. Pray for her, that she recovers her sanity. Also pray that the OTHER Texas Attorney Karen Cox isn’t confused with her!
Pls show me in the Catholic Catechism – which summarizes “official doctrine” — where the claim you make to be Catholic teaching actually is.
“…we are ONLY here to service every idiot whim of whatever male has the misfortune of being stuck with us.”
******
Do males have that misfortune or do we?
🙂
It’s largely a media creation. It’s best ignored.
Mention of the Korean 4B Movement also conjures a much broader perspective as the political paradigm-shift (!) in the United States goes into overdrive. Some musings, here, based on think-tank snippets and some reflection, as the turbulence has just begun…
The residue of history. Will the Ukraine War end with an armistice and new boundary of some sort, as in Korea nearly seventy years go? (Or, would the United States ever give back the Louisiana Purchase, or the Southwest, or would Turkey all of Anatolia to the Christians or even part to the Kurds?) Will nativist and bilateral negotiations cripple the NATO alliance?
How soon will all federal funding of abortion be terminated, so to speak, by the military and to Planned Parenthood? When will the Mexico City Policy be reinstated? When will the United State retroactively stop bullying needy countries with the blackmail that they must buy into the LGBTQ agenda as a condition of foreign aid? Will the ecocide deniers at least consider the science of spaceship earth, apart from Green politics—in the same way that the fetal infanticide culture-of-death must also consider the science of embryology and ultrasound, apart from the 4b Movement? How might the immigration reform agenda and deportations look better than arbitrary disaster triage and battlefield amputations?
Politics is downstream of culture–will the competing rainbow coalition politics and Stock Market politics concede some space to a natural-law culture of life? And, especially, will the perennial and apostolic Catholic Church, in America, do better than splitting down the middle like the disputed child, almost, in the hands of a wiser Solomon?
John Grondelski -grow-up. Sex is good.
Kevin Hurley, learn to read.
It was expected that rejection of Humane Vitae would lead to a bona fide culture of death centered on the conjugal act and the idolatry of pleasure. Pleasure demands death of life if it is to be adored.
4D discovered by Grondelski and via his essay news for presumably most of us is the birth of death within our culture of death. It was all forecast in the rejection of Humanae Vitae, a strident, manic, self righteous conviction of the supremacy of pleasure by priests, bishops, and the masses of our laity. Those who conscientiously held otherwise but remained silent, Grondelski chides for their cowardice to speak out. Life, at first newborn, finally life itself became secondary to comfort and pleasure now in the US codified in law, in Europe, constitutional.
Tied into this trend toward death, and its religiosity is the Synodal proposal to find a middle ground, a conscientious validation of behavior prohibited by Apostolic tradition based on what Rahner described as a fundamental option. A fundamental option in relation to worship of God is a fundamental error. As Moses said, God is an all consuming fire. With our relation to God there is no middle ground because evil cannot be reconciled under any form of rationalization, particularly if presumed a good as is now discussed by the Synod. God’s love, its purity and fire demands complete response in kind.
When I read this article, I, too, thought of Aristophanes. I’d have to reread it to see if there are any parallels.
I also understood the Babylon Bee item on Rosie O’Donnell’s alleged sex strike. No mention of 4B but now I get it.
I don’t think Grondelski’s article is one bit hysterical, but then again, I am a fairly serious follower of Catholic Unscripted.
I’m a fellow follower of Catholic Unscripted.
🙂
Those “hard, extremely rare cases” do happen, and it should be doctors and patients determining what course of treatment is appropriate, not grandstanding red states politicians trying to make an example of some poor,pregnant woman.
The patient should not have to be septic and at death’s door before proper treatment can be applied. We don’t need religious fanatics inserting themselves into people’s medical and OB-GYN problems. Nor do we need religious right busybodies trying to block contraception access.
Okay. Then how about secularists? Good enough?
William, there’s never a medical necessity to commit feticide. Early delivery in the case of preeclampsia & other conditions where both mother & child would die without intervention, sure. Texas law goes beyond that for critical situations.
What we’ve seen are examples of a failure to provide the proper standard of care & follow medical protocols. That’s something women can face in hospitals no matter what. Especially ethnic minority & poor women.
Better training of healthcare professionals is what’s needed.
If the 4B movement actually goes through with it and withdraws from marital relations outside of marriage, it will probably operate as a useful emotional reset for them. They’ve pretty well trashed their capacity for intimacy, through contraception, repeat fornication, and abortion. Since they’re giving up the second, they won’t need the first or the third, and possibly they can get themselves straightened out. Right behavior can often help us to see more clearly. If they actually go through with it.
If enough of them hold the course and practice traditional morality for unmarried women, then men might well be forced to make themselves worth marrying, rather than expecting a woman to settle for someone who lives with his parents, thinks leadership is synonymous with domineering or manipulating, or spends his time watching porn.
As one of my grad school professors used to say about the AIDs epidemic, the 4B movement is not a problem. It is a solution, a kind of natural selection. Some people should definitely not reproduce.
I hope your grad school professor later came to understand that AID’s in Africa & other parts of the world affects both men, women, & children.
That’s true to some extent here in the US. I knew someone who married a widower who had lost his wife to AID’s contracted during a surgery she performed. Her young child was infected by her AID’s at birth & later died.
Joined to political philosopher Ryszard Legutko’s views om the monopoly of democratic-liberalism as a “religion”, Dr. Grondelski’s final paragraph captures well what is occurring in the movement discussed.
Even in the single life, one does not lose the necessity of making oneself a gift to others if one is to humanly flourish, in anticipation of the heavenly participation in divine nature (2 Pt 1:4), where the Persons of the Trinity share a communion of love and life. This is brought out in John Paul II’s Wednesday audiences that comprised his “Theology of the Body” as one of his first concerns, as in his last paragraph here…
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19800116.html#:~:text=This%20nuptial%20meaning%20of%20the,possesses%20a%20full%20nuptial%20meaning.
The “self-autonomy” Grondelski describes, and defended here by some, is politically motivated and antithetical to objective, universal human fulfillment and the reason for our sharing in God’s existence.
How many guys do these abrasive and harsh women imagine want to sleep with them anyway? My guess would be not many. Its an irony that the level of hysteria from these 4B women serve to validate the opinion of some old time chauvinistic men that women are emotionally unfit for certain types of work. People in the US can LEGALLY have opposing opinions. What you cannot do is actively try to harm or suppress those who don’t agree with you. Speaking for myself I am not unhappy these women are choosing not to breed.
My husband and I adopted both of our children. I thank God for that and the women who were brave enough to give them life. . I am upset with women who feel their first option regarding pregnancy is abortion. The church should be pushing the concept of adoption much more than it is. But first they should stress chastity and personal responsibility. Cant recall EVER hearing anything on that topic from the pulpit. Note to women: you can’t get pregnant if you aren’t sleeping with someone. Maybe give that concept a hard look. And drop the hysteria.
The women drawn to the 4B movement seem to be dwelling in a fantasy world where they are powerfully attractive beings living their lives as an act of protest against men who will (they imagine) be injured by the very thought that these women don’t want to have sex with them. When the reality is that most men are unaware of the women and their protest, and probably wouldn’t care that much if they were aware. As far as making a dramatic declaration that they especially won’t have sex with men who voted for Trump, I have to wonder how many Trump supporters the liberal women drawn to 4B know well enough to get in a situation where a sexual relationship is a possibility. The declaration comes across like empty threat-making.
The 4B movement looks like a desperate grasping for a sense of power and control over one’s perceived enemies; the people who are likeliest to be hurt by 4B are the women who get caught up in it.
Dr. Grondelski’s article is very well written, but I struggle to take this 4B movement seriously, for the simple reason that I have seen it before, with a similar movement that arose just after the fateful Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade, which movement died off rather quickly with little to no fanfair, due to it’s proponents being fat, ugly, man hating feminists that no rational man would want to date, marry or have relations with to begin with.
Do I suspect the virtue signalers on TikTok will perdure? No. Do I think that the regard of children as a WOMAN’s product, to be created, modified, or destroyed at her unilateral will, will perdure: oh, yes. And THAT’s where the problem needs to be addressed because it is a cultural rot.
Spot on! It’s about the limits of a person’s legitimate area of responsibility.
That might not. In the Roman Empire (and many other cultures), children were the father’s product, to be modified or destroyed at his unilateral will.
Christianity holds children to be God’s product. Every other ideology denies that, but they do it in different ways.
LJ: Please write more…a book if you can. What you write is recognized as simple common sense – something seriously lacking in our culture and especially among these angry, lonely, narcissistic, self-indulged females.
What we need to hear more about is an adequate theological anthropology taught by St. John Paul II. Man (and that includes females) no longer knows who he is, why he was created, who created him and the very purpose of his existence. Man certainly was NOT created for the purpose of recreational, reckless and indiscriminate sexual activity as these women propose. But why should anyone know this? Our bishops are more concerned with illegal immigrants than with God’s design for man.
Why, Deacon! I thank you for the lovely compliment. I have never been known to be shy about expressing an opinion. Nor am I short on common sense.I find it distressing for the future of the country that it is in apparent short supply these days.Lets pray for better days to come.
Might I suggest to all these women that they consider dedicating themselves to a life as Consecrated Virgins?
It is ironic for a Catholic to label a movement focused on women’s autonomy a “death cult.” Catholicism teaches followers to worship a man who was tortured and crucified. It encourages people to live with an eye on the afterlife, often at the cost of their own well-being. Catholics are sometimes asked to sacrifice their bodies or even put them in harm’s way.
Meanwhile, a movement advocating for women to choose whether to have children is called a death cult. The movement simply rejects continuing a system that perpetuates patriarchy. It seems this calls for some serious introspection.
Autonomy can get pretty lonely.
“Catholicism teaches followers to worship a man who was tortured and crucified.”
And, resurrected from the dead as predicted; and ascended to have authority in heaven & earth; and pouring out God’s Holy Spirit on those who seek to sincerely love & obey His teachings, so they can experience forgiveness of their sins & a joyful faith in the resurrected, reigning Jesus Christ – the One Way of Truth & Life Eternal.
Available for every human. Not to be missed; try it some day soon, dear Sydney!
Syd: Women in our western culture can and do chose not to have children. But the vast majority manage to do so sans hysteria, and sans the hatred directed at men having a certain political opinion. Oh, and they also manage to do it without chopping off their hair. What these 4B women are “simply” doing is making themselves look like hateful fools.Patriarchy??? Really?? With women in college in greater numbers than men, using male names for their female babies,eschewing motherhood for a “career”, etc etc , the whine that women are suppressed seemed a tad far fetched. I dont think we REALLY have to worry about something so non-existent as Patriarchy. But you have made me quite nostalgic for an era when an awful lot of things in society seemed to work much better. Death cult, yes they are. A society which fails to reproduce ends up extinct. Most western nations today are failing to meet population replacement levels.
But the 4B movement is not merely “advocating for women to choose whether to have children” in a neutral way, as you make it sound. It specifically advocates that women choose not to have children as a form of protest and envisions that this protest will somehow punish men. As such, it is an expression of anger and frustration that encourages women to wallow around in those negative feelings in a way that could damage them.
By omitting a central motivation of the 4B movement, you are misrepresenting it. Why you are doing that, I cannot say, but the resulting argument is not very persuasive. You might try some of that “serious introspection” that you are recommending to others.
Sheesh. Lots of vitriol on display here.
Yes, the 4B movement is a cult of death,
It won’t last but the culture of death that we all swim in, whether we like it or not, doesn’t show any signs of disappearing any time soon.
Over on The Federalist, Mark Hemingway has an article, “We Need to Have a National Conversation About ‘Toxic Femininity'”, Nov. 14, 2024.
Dr John – Satan has been rattled by your article based on the ferocity of many of the comments for your article. You have told the truth and struck a nerve with the demonic.
Point of order to the comment “……such a choice reflects personal conviction, conscience (which must be respected, according to Catholic teaching) thus is entirely normal.”
– Actually, Catholic teaching is to respect personal conviction and conscience of a MORALLY FORMED personal conviction(s) and conscience. Not just personal belief or a conscience that could be formed by lies and deceit (not judging, just clarifying. The truth is the truth and the truth sometimes hurts).
– From the Catechism of the Catholic Church – Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator.
– If you’ll fight (and die(?) as the presumption goes) for your personal and collective #1 issue to wantonly dehumanize and murder your offspring (pre-born and newborn) and those of your neighbors (off spring that in many cases comes from the so called marginalized of society); what won’t you do? Who won’t you kill?
– History, recently with the barbarism demonstrated by radical factions across the world, and in the not so distant past by the actual Hitler (not the fabrication of the left), Stalin, Lenin, Mao, the Kims and others – once you dehumanize – you’ve cross the threshold of darkness and are capable of anything.
– God will win this fight like it or not; believe it or not. Satans cause will perish; if you go with him, that damnation to hell is for eternity. How sure are you of that bet??
– Like it or not, you are prayed for daily – those who seek with ferocity – a culture of death; and those fighting for the culture of life. That will happen for your / ours souls.
– “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen”
– May Gods Divine Mercy be on you; may you find peace, joy, through conversion and a MORALLY formed conscience and personal conviction.