feminine-genius

Esther would be proud

When a religious feast conflicts with a sports schedule, atheletes have to make priorities, and these girls made an admirable decision:

On Thursday afternoon at the SunDome in Yakima, Wash., the Mercer Island (Wash.) Northwest Yeshiva girls basketball team walked onto the court for its consolation-bracket game in the Washington state tournament. The girls shook the hands of their St. John (Wash.) St. John-Endicott opponents. Then, they walked off the court.

Their actions weren't a protest or the result of any type of dispute. They were just the logical outcome of following their faith. The game was scheduled to be played during the Jewish "Fast of Esther," a time when those of the Jewish faith go without both food - and, more importantly, water - until sundown on Thursday. When their request to change the game time was denied, Northwest Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish high school of just 95 students located just outside Seattle, decided to forfeit.

"We didn't think it was safe for the team to play without water," the school's head, Rabbi Bernie Fox, said. Because of it, the first team from a Jewish school to qualify for the state tournament became the first team in state history to forfeit a postseason game - all in the same week. The team finished the season with a 10-14 record.

The story indicates that the officials made every effort to reschedule, but it was such a large undertaking that it simply wasn't possible. It recalls the same conflict in Chariots of Fire, when the Presbyterian Eric Liddell wouldn't run on the Sabbath. 

Well-done, girls!

Be not afraid

A little wisdom from the Olympics:

WHISTLER, British Columbia, February 25, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Russia's biathlon relay team revealed the secret to their success following their gold medal victory on Tuesday, reports AFP.

“Go ahead and have babies -- and get better in sports,” said Russian anchor Olga Zaitseva, 31, in a word of advice to the French and German teams, who won silver and bronze respectively.

Zaitseva told AFP that having her son, Alexander, who was born in 2007, helped her become a better athlete.  "My child is my greatest happiness and he is my best little gold medal," she said. "It has made me calmer.”

The four-member Russian team boasted three mothers, and Zaitseva's advice was echoed by the two other mothers.

"No medal compares to having a child," said Anna Boulygina, 30. "I think children are the main thing women are designed to do. Having a family is an enormous help to me and it is due to their support that I am able to achieve this result, so the answer is yes, it helps."

Olga Medvedtseva, 34, said that athletes hoping to win Olympic medals should not fear that children would hurt their chances.  "I would say it is a very stimulating experience and I would recommend having kids, don't be afraid of it, you will only get better as you are all so young," she said.

A Lenten intention

Father Mark reminds us of an excellent intention to keep before our eyes this Holy Season -- the holiness of men called to the priesthood:

In the First Lesson at Mass on Ash Wednesday (Joel 2:12-18), as well as in one of the magnificent Lenten responsories at Matins, the Prophet Joel emphasizes the role of the priests who serve in the temple, the ministers of the Lord. Taking their place as mediators between the porch and the altar, they represent sinful men before the Face of the All-Holy God, and the Mercy of God before sinful men. Theirs is, in effect, a mediatorship of intercession and reparation.

The word "altar" represents not only the place of sacrifice, but also the one offered upon it, and the fire from heaven that ratifies and consumes the oblation. Pope Pius XII writes, "The Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. She does this in the first place at the altar, where constantly the sacrifice of the cross is represented and with a single difference in the manner of its offering, renewed."

In this Year of the Priest, women -- as icons of Holy Mother Church -- can pray in a special way, a motherly way, for these men who are their spiritual sons, for example:

O Immaculate Queen of Heaven and Earth, refuge of sinners, and our most loving Mother, to whom God willed to entrust the entire order of mercy, grant to receive us as your property and possession, in body, mind, and soul, that we may become entirely yours, to do with as you please, wholly and completely yours, with our life, death, and eternity, so that we may become useful instruments in your Most Holy and Immaculate hands, in the work of giving birth to all those men, whom God has planned, from eternity, to be in service to Him at the Altar of God, in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, for the salvation of souls. Grant, O Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mary, that this work may be received by you, in total consecration, exempt from any influence and powers of evil. Protect us, O Most Loving Mother, and bring this work to the propagation of fruitfulness, so that God may be glorified, and Your Son Jesus adored. Amen

And remember Therese of Lisieux' great love for priests, as she prayed in her words:

O Jesus, Eternal Priest, keep your priests within the shelter of your Most Sacred Heart, where none can touch them. Keep unstained their anointed hands, which daily touch your Sacred Body. Keep unsullied their lips, daily tinged with your Precious Blood. Keep pure and unworldly their hearts, sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood. Let Your Holy Love surround and protect them from the world’s contagion. Bless their labors with abundant fruit, and may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and consolation here, and their everlasting crown in the hereafter. Amen.

Not a fan

I'm an enormous fan of Benedict XVI, but not of this proposed move that may take place tomorrow:

The news has been widely reported in Lebanon, especially among Christians. Yet, one of its most vigorous promoters is a Muslim. Yesterday the Council of Ministers meeting chaired by Saad Hariri, has approved a decree that the feast of the Annunciation on March 25 is "a common Christian-Muslim national holiday," unprecedented in the annals of dialogue between the two religions .

The new festival, which will have a "national" rather than "religious" stamp, will be celebrated alongside that of the Annunciation, not replacing it. It should help to make the figure of the Virgin Mary, revered in Islam almost as much as in Christianity, a symbol of unity among the Lebanese, and further the image of Lebanon as a "Country symbol” of pluralism and tolerance, in agreement with the words Pope John Paul II.  

Obviously, political steps (concerning diplomacy and inter-religious relationships abroad) are not a question of "faith and morals" so different opinions are allowed and I may not have all the geo-strategic facts that the hierarchy does. But the Muslims view of Mary is so different than ours that I think it cheapens (even undermines) honest dialogue rather than helps it.

So be it -- we'll see what transpires. Our Lady of Lebanon, pray for us!

A compromised mission

While gays in the military currently have the spotlight, a more urgent issue is the problem with many women in the ranks who are either pregnant or single mothers, both of which deeply impact the ability of America’s military to achieve its mission. The case of Alexis Hutchinson, who refused deployment last year because she had no plan in place for her young son, was just settled:

A single-mom soldier who says she refused to deploy to Afghanistan because she had no family able to care for her young son will be discharged from the military instead of facing a court-martial, the Army said Thursday. Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, an Army cook stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, was arrested in November after skipping her unit's deployment flight. Hutchinson, 21, said she couldn't leave her son because her mother had backed out of plans to keep the child a few days before the soldier's scheduled departure.

So here we have a difficult situation—our tactical strength depends on a military force that consists of a large number of pregnant women and single mothers. It has hit the Navy particularly hard.

Navy Times recently reported that pregnancy rates in the Navy spiked by 50% in two years. Ship crews suffer when pregnant sailors are unavailable for deployment or require early evacuation. Instead of re-assessing misguided policies that worsen the problem, the Navy plans to extend them to the submarine service.  Never mind that short-handed crews and mid-ocean evacuations due to female medical emergencies would compromise undersea missions and put everyone at greater risk.

There is the logistical problem that they cannot meet their responsibilities, but an added morale problem when the pregnancy is the result of the wide-spread “fraternization” in the ranks. This widespread behavior both flouts regulations and weakens unit cohesion, and yet the feminist  response has been two-fold: to have ready-access to the controversial “morning after” pill and abortion (both on the tax-payers’ dime) and when necessary to place charges of sexual assault against the father of the child to protect the mother’s career. This plays havoc with troop cohesion and can easily spiral into emotional circuses.

We should all be concerned about how feminists are playing games with the armed forces -- especially since we all know families with loved ones already serving in dangerous settings. One must dig to know that many gender feminists have clearly tipped their hands and posited that war itself is a natural extension of patriarchy. These women (and men) believe that gender mainstreaming is a good way to “de-militarize” the military, and to that end, pregnant soldiers and disobedient young mothers are the poster children for a castrated force. The problem is that many fine young men and women will pay the ultimate price for a social experiment gone mad.  

Sunday snippets

A bevy of beautiful thoughts over here, always worth a read.

Oh Canada [sigh]

I was disappointed to read that Sister Joan Chittister will be given a nationwide podium in the Great White North, where she will pontificate on the subject of her most recent book, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.

The National Catholic Broadcasting Council (NCBC), which airs the daily Mass on Vision TV, has announced that they will be hosting a religious sister on their annual televised Lenten mission. Sr. Joan Chittister will address this year's mission, which is set for March 29-30 on Vision TV with the theme “A God for All Seasons.” Sr. Chittister told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that her talk focuses on the “spirituality of aging,” but, she said, she is “more inclined to call it a lifestyle for the 21st century.”

I reviewed that book here, which was unusual for me. I try to avoid negative reviews, saving my ink for recommendations, but its arrival in my stack of material was too tempting to ignore. I found her book more inane than anything else, which is sad, but it makes sense given that Sister Joan parts company with the Church on most life issues and is an ardent supporter of womenpriests. I think the good news is that her collaborators on this last issue are diminishing in number and decibel levels, which makes this new Canadian "endorsement" unnecessary and irksome.

Combatting cluelessness

Evidently, some still think that girls are still conflicted about whether they have the strength and courage to think beyond some 1950 stereotype (the one that said they were meant to be silly, stupid or sexy). Seriously.

This morning Mattel unveiled Barbie’s 125th and 126th career which was decided based on votes that poured in from her fans all over the world. News Anchor Barbie won the Girls’ vote and became Barbie’s 125th career in Barbie’s I Can Be doll series, but Barbie also unleashed a surprise on us – Barbie’s 126th career. According to Lauren Dougherty, director of Barbie marketing for Mattel, voting for the Computer Engineer Barbie became viral amongst female engineers and other women in the tech industry, so much so, that many, many votes also poured in for a Computer Engineer career for Barbie. Because this popular vote went to Computer Engineer Barbie, Mattel couldn’t resist but to reward Barbie with a 126th career choice as well.

She was minutely researched with women in that field (hey! Where did they come from?) and joins a plethora of other busty career-track babes, with evening wear that proves they can slither and slide without rules.

What is missing from the equation is a dose of reality:

“Girls outperform boys in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, and graduate school,” says Dr. Michael Thompson, a school psychologist who writes about the academic problems of boys in his book, "Raising Cain." He says that after decades of special attention, girls are soaring, while boys are stagnating.

“Girls are being told, 'Go for it, you can do it. Go for it, you can do it.' They are getting an immense amount of support,” he says. “Boys hear that the way to shine is athletically. And boys get a lot of mixed messages about what it means to be masculine and what it means to be a student. Does being a good student make you a real man? I don't think so… It is not cool.”

The picture doesn't get much brighter for young men when they get to college. Campuses are now nearly 60 percent female, with women earning 170,000 more bachelor degrees each year than men. Women are streaming into business schools and medical schools, and will be the majority at the nation's law schools. At some colleges, they're getting so many more qualified women applicants than men applicants that the schools are doing something that might shock you.

You'd never know this from all the ink and sweat spent on encouraging girls, but perhaps we should give it a rest. Boys are becoming the endangered species in many places that really matter, and they'd be hard pressed to find encouragement from nice a girl who would simply say, "You're awesome."(She's been primed since pre-school to take on the world as a zero-sum game.)

Two new pieces

Catholic Exchange article here.

NewsReal article here (somewhere--look for an elephant, really!)

Running up to Cape Cod to give a talk.

In response to the French bishops (updated)

I was, frankly, appalled that the French bishops came down so strongly on the side of burqas, and I've tried to state their justification and my response here. Regardless, I feel as though they've sold out women, marriage, complementarity and common sense (is that too harsh?)

 

UPDATE: The picture above is a better illustration of what the French are dealing with (not to mention the irony of that set-up). And I really like this comment offered at the site:

There are reasons we desire “face to face” interactions with others and want to see God’s face.

We are hard-wired for communion.

UPDATE II: And the French government is taking this approach. How interesting.

UPDATE III: More research shows that what was presented as a statment by the French bishops was actually only a statement by one bishop who is in charge of inter-religious dialogue. A little more palatable (since there's far less "authority" behind it, but still not an opinion I can agree with.)