feminine-genius

Dale's latest

Dear Friends,

Blessing of the season to all of you.

I continue to work on my book on marriage and hope it will be published this year. In the meantime I developed a 4 hour seminar for Catholic Citizenship, a group which is working to amend the Massachusetts constitution and overturn the court ordered redefinition of marriage.

The seminar is called "Truth and Compassion." It is designed to help ordinary people explain the issue to friends and family. It has already been given twice and was well received. If you live in Massachusetts and are interested in scheduling a seminar in your area, you can email Catholic Citizenship at [email protected]. Those in other areas can email me and I will get back to you

The Dictatorship of Relativism

In 1995 I had the privilege to spend 30 minutes with Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It was clear then and has become even clearer as the years have passed that from his unique position he has been able view the entire battlefield on which we, as individual warriors, are struggling. Therefore, when he pointed out that our opposition is has been working for decades to establish a "Dictatorship of Relativism," I recognized that he was calling all of us to focus on this particular evil.

The promoters of the Dictatorship of Relativism insist that the highest virtue is tolerance – not because they themselves are tolerant -- but because they see it as a way to disarm their opponents. 

They have convinced a great many people that no one can know anything for certain except that no one can know anything for certain. Therefore all opinions are equal and anyone who doesn't accept Relativism as the only true faith is an intolerant bigot and a dangerous person – a fundamentalist. By this means they equate faithful Catholics and sincere Evangelicals with Islamic terrorists.

These Relativists do not offer any proof for their claim that no one can know anything for certain. In fact, they do not really believe it themselves. They are quite convinced that their views are correct and those who oppose them are wrong. They are Relativists only in that they believe that whatever opinion they have today can change tomorrow. In spite of this, they insist that whatever they are for today be enforced by law and everyone who refuses to conform submit to reeducation, be charged with a hate crime, or be marginalized as an intolerant bigot. They are ensconced in places of power and not afraid to use their power to further their agenda.

            

While they appeal to democratic principles and human rights, they respect neither. They are particularly hostile to freedom of religion. They claim they are for tolerance, but demand that we deny our faith in a living God, who has spoken, will judge, and can save.

We have our work cut out for us. I continue to write for www.thefactis.org.

May God bless our efforts in this coming year.

Dale O'Leary

Delivering children safely

Another prayer intention -- and political priority in India -- is for the women there to have better maternity care.

New Delhi (AsiaNews/CBCI) – Indian women ask as one voice that mothers’ health be included as a priority on the country’s political agenda. Yesterday, women from different parts of rural India met the Planning Commission, donors and the Union (Federal) Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to urge policy makers to prioritise the serious issue of maternal health.

The Constitution might guarantee the right to life, including the right to health, but India has the highest maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in South Asia. According to estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO), each year an estimated 136,000 women die needlessly due to causes related to pregnancy, childbirth and abortion.

This is simple. To avoid infections and hemmoraging, improve the clinics. The alternative is to have more contraceptives and abortifacients dumped by international agencies as a way to "minimise the risks." Wrong and bad. Antibiotics and healthy babies (and mums!) are far better than hormones and devices which undermine marriages and purity of the young. Prayers for their good intentions.

Another good movie

Considering the eugenics angle to the preceding post on Margaret Sanger, I must recommend another movie found through Netflix: The Keys to the House (La Chiavi de Casa) yes, with more subtitles. This concerns a boy with developmental problems (I think it was cerebral palsy, although it didn't say) who meets his father for the first time at age 15. Marvelous acting -- I don't know how they got his boy into the part, and deep questions pondered about family, responsibility, the value of human life, and love. Excellent from all angles, and never sugar coated.

Praying for chastity in 2006

Dawn Eden has put together an excellent piece revealing what we're up against with the taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood, which has access to millions of children in forming their views about sex. Knowing how they argue -- especially in the creation of a Moral Straw Man -- is key to knowing what is the best response.

In presenting the "two world views" of human sexuality, it will come as no surprise that PP's view is spiritual, freeing, and full of meaning, where the traditional (read: Catholic/moral) view is rigid, authoritarian, and based on senseless rules.

Dawn's links are thorough -- so educate yourself and pray hard over how to best apply your energy in the coming year to spread the truth. Lives depend on it!

Another talented Catholic woman

Speaking of tea parties, Jane Frances de Chantal was a mover and shaker who founded a marvelous and enduring religious institute after the death of her husband. Not totally absorbed in exchanging recipes, she also raised four children, kept up a deep correspondence with her spiritual director, Francis de Sales, and won the esteem of the faithful from her peers to the royals of her age.

When she had assured the future security of her children, and when she had provided the education of Celse-Bénigne, her fourteen year old son, whom she left to her father and her brother, the Archbishop of Bourges, she started for Annecy, where God was calling her to found the Congregation of the Visitation. Celse-Bénigne, impetuous like those of her race, barred his mother's way by lying across the threshold. Mme de Chandal stopped, overcome: " Can the tears of a child shake her resolution? " said a holy and learned priest, the tutor of Celse-Benigne. "Oh! no", replied the saint, "but after all I am a mother!" And she stepped over child's body.

The Congregation of the Visitation was canonically established at Annecy on Trinity Sunday, 6 June, 1610. Its aim was to receive, with a view to their spiritual advancement, young girls and even widows who had not the desire or strength to subject themselves to the austere ascetical practices in force in all the religious orders at that time. By1622, the order already counted thirteen houses; there were eight-six when St. Jane Frances died; and 164 when she was canonized.

Her reputation for sanctity was widespread. Queens, princes, and princesses flocked to the reception-room of the Visitation. Wherever she went to establish foundations, the people gave her ovations. "These people", she
would say confused, "do not know me; they are mistaken". Her body is venerated with that of St. Francis de Sales in the church of the Visitation at Annecy. She was beatified in 1751, and canonized in 1767.

I ask: How does this square with the comments of our sister Rabeya? ("Until now, dialogue among women in the church was kept at the level of exchanging recipes or pouring each other tea.") Such nonsense. This is simply one of many wonderful (and non-repressed) women! [text above from Hilde]

Name that planet

A group of [sort of?] religious women are putting their heads together to reinvent God. What else could be the outcome of this?

BERLIN, Germany (UPI) -- A group of progressive female theologians of various faiths in Germany formed a religious group to reflect on their traditions from a feminist perspective.

The Inter-religious Conference of European Women Theologians is a conglomeration of Muslim, Christian and Jewish women who want to take religious interpretation into their own hands, Deutsche Welle reported Tuesday.

'Until now, dialogue among women in the church was kept at the level of exchanging recipes or pouring each other tea,' said Rabeya Muller, one of the group`s founders.

A German convert to Islam, she said we are 'rarely allowed to talk about the real fundamental theological topics, or there always had to be spiritual support from the men present.'

Um, Earth to Rabeya, what planet do you inhabit? What churches have you visited on that strange piece of rock? You couldn't have spent time in a Christian church in this world and come to that conclusion -- or maybe you weren't ever Catholic. I know in some of the non-ecclesial communions, perhaps Mary, all the women saints, daughter Jerusalem, and holy Zion don't stir up any feminine images the way they do in communions linked to Rome. Of course, other confessions don't have women Doctors of the Church (from varied times and places), abbesses (for over a millennium), and a wealth of feasts celebrating events in the life of a young Jewish maiden, who happened to be daughter, spouse, and mother to the Holy Trinity.

Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Elizabeth Ann Seton may have shared an occasional cup of tea with friends, but it certainly wasn't the pinnacle of their religious experience. Rather than waiting for male support, often the men around them had to hang on for dear life as they tried to grasp what the Holy Spirit was doing in them -- and so many other women saints, mystics, theologians, foundresses, and philosophers.

Whatever religion you make up to assuage your feelings, ladies, it couldn't compare with reality. Wake up and smell the coffee (from Catholic beans, of course!)

Seasonal thoughts

This meditation on the holy season we're enjoying is lovely. Very real, very incarnational.

Sometimes Christmas celebrations are sticky with treacly sentimentality -- perhaps it's because "awww" is more familiar than awe.  It's easy to sing piously "be born in us today" without remembering to be careful what you pray for because you might get it.  "Be born in me" -- let me work harder than I ever knew I could for you, stretch me beyond what I think I can bear for you, push me to my uttermost that I may gaze at you, afterward, with love and wonder.  The work of bearing my children is written on my bones; after I am dead a forensic anthropologist studying my skeleton will be able to say, "This woman was a mother."  Let my God write his Name into the core of me as well:  be born in me, Lord; be born in me.

So true, dear sister in Christ. For those of us who share in not mere mountains of laundry, but entire ranges. Kudos.

Not of this World

Just watched an excellent foreign film, Not of This World (Fuori dal Mondo) which is Italian (subtitled, for those who care).  Story is about a nun who finds an abandoned infant, whose presence tugs at her vocation just as she's about to take her final vows. She traces the sweater in which the child is wrapped, leading her to a lonely man who may or may not be connected to the child.

The subject of her call is treated very respectfully, and the drama of her selfish, mother explains some of her sorrow.

“Don't throw your life away like this,” says mother.

“It's the life I've chosen,” says Sister Caterina. “I've given my life to God.”

“There's always someone more important than your mother.”

Ouch! Suitable for those children who would understand paternity and who won't be scandalised by the assumption of a couple living together. No flesh; no rough language; only a stark look at love, family, and finding God's will.