feminine-genius

Benedict hits the streets

Alicia Colon, columnist for the New York Sun, takes the new encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, and applies it to the inner city horrors with which we have become all too familiar:

The death earlier this month of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown has created a firestorm of protest against the Administration for Children's Services, which allegedly neglected the child's abuse by her stepfather. The response, of course, has been calls to flood the city agency with more money to hire more caseworkers to monitor at-risk children.

Most commentators on this tragic case can't relate to any of the participants. They tend to categorize the alleged perpetrators as "lowlifes" or just plain evil. This is much easier than delving too deeply into the factors that create dysfunctional and dangerous families for children to grow up in.

Having lived most of my life in or near neighborhoods like Nixzmary Brown's, I can trace the decline of morality in them to the day it became fashionable to claim God was dead. Oh, I can hear my critics moaning, "There she goes again, bringing up religion." But I know the people who live there, and though many of them are about as low as humans can sink, no one starts out that way in life. Alcohol and drugs may release the inner demons, but those demons thrive where there's a spiritual vacuum.

And that emptiness began when welfare began offering young women long-term support for their children - but only as long as there were no fathers around. What did we expect the results would be? Now we have generation after generation of children who were raised by single mothers dependent on government subsidies for their livelihood.

She's not writing from an ivory tower, or from a heart removed from human suffering. She has seen the wisdom of the new encyclical and has laid it down where the rubber hits the road.

How does society deal with the wreckage it has spawned through misguided social programs? We've witnessed the damage that a sexually liberated culture inflicts on children. When the Bush administration proposed advocating the benefits of marriage, liberals snorted at such a naive notion. But the nuclear family of husband, wife, and children is best for a stable society. In his encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI describes unconditional love between a man and a woman as "the epitome of love." Children born from such a union are unlikely ever to need the services of ACS.

Kudos, dear sister; excellent work. Remember that this is no religious journal but a major daily in one of our largest cities; neither is it a professional theologian pontificating, but a woman with a mother's heart using her common sense. Benedict would be thrilled.

The New Castrati

On Friday, Rush brought to our attention a fascinating piece found here on something dubbed "the new castrati."

If you focus on it, you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the "service" sector -- be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It's a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.

It is the voice of the neuter .

I mean that in the grammatical sense:
"a. Neither masculine nor feminine in gender.
"b. Neither active nor passive; intransitive,"

and in the biological sense:
"a. Biology Having undeveloped or imperfectly developed sexual organs: the neuter caste in social insects.
"b. Botany Having no pistils or stamens; asexual.
"c. Zoology Sexually undeveloped."

You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it.

The voice whisps across your ears as if the speaker is in a state of perpetual uncertainty with every utterance. It is as if, male or female, there is no foundation or soul within the speaker on which the voice can rest and rise. As a result, it has a misty quality to it that denies it any unique character at all. It is the Valley Girl variation of the voices that Prufrock hears:
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
It's parting wistful wish for you is that you "Have a good one."

Above all, it is a sexless voice. Not, I hasten to add, a "gay" voice. Not that at all. It is neither that gentle nor that musical. Nor is it that old shabby lisping stereotype best consigned to the dustbin of popular culture. No, this is a new old voice of a generation of ostensible men and women who have been educated and acculturated out of, or say rather, to the far side of any gender at all. It is, as I have indicated above, the voice of the neutered. And in this I mean that of the transitive verb: To castrate or spay. The voice and the kids that carry it is the triumphant achievement of our halls of secondary and higher education. These children did not speak this way naturally, they were taught. And like good children seeking only to please their teachers and then their employers, they learned.

Consider the wider cultural trough from which this generation imbibes: the movies, the tv series, the songs, and the celebrity icons. It's easy to see how a phenomenon of this magnitude can come about.

Androgyny is the enemy of masculinity and femininity, just as stereotypes are. Authenticity is our goal and what we have to work for everywhere.

Cat's in the cradle -- the other half

As the years roll on, the carefully arranged children whose timing was planned according to all sorts of priorities of the mother have now had children who are audaciously expecting time with grandmother, who can't be bothered.

Having just quit after 12 years as a family court judge, my friend Susan Baker is now trying to set the limits for her own grandmothering. But the end of her legal career merely signals the beginning of another, as an author. She feels bad that, because of a long-planned book signing and a scheduled day on the bench, she couldn't drop everything for a week when her oldest daughter, Susan, had another baby last November. "I felt really guilty about that," Baker told me. But her new career is important to her. "I love those little kids and I do want to have a relationship with them," she said. "But I'm not willing to give up my writing or my traveling. I'll be the best grandmother I can from a distance."

As shocked as I was by the tone and tenor of this piece, after a little thought, it all fell into place as extremely logical. Why would these women drop everything for these children when they hadn't done so for their own children. Why would they suddenly have personality shifts that took them from "me first" to "others first"?

One recent Saturday morning my daughter, Morgan, and her husband, Trevor, were feverishly trying to pull their new apartment together with Ryan underfoot and the baby wailing. "Can you watch the babies while we work?" Morgan called to ask, as Trevor hammered in the background. She lives three blocks away from me in San Francisco.

Look, I'd love to nip over and whisper secrets into 1-month-old Maggie's ears, or to dress 2-year-old Ryan in the black leather jacket I bought her recently and take her to look for late blackberries in Golden Gate Park on my bike (with its deluxe new kid seat). But I have a job. I'm a reporter, I have two books to write, a husband who wants to go to France, and I just bought an investment property in Portland, Oregon. I love my grandchildren, but being a grandmother got added to my to-do list.

The truth is, I can't be the kind of grandmother my own grandmother was -- available and self-sacrificing, always arriving in her red VW with her overnight bag to help Mom. I wasn't a stay-at-home mom, and I can't be a stay-at-home-grandma either.

As I pondered this, Morgan was waiting for my answer. "I can't, sweetie. I'm working," I told her. "Okay, Mom, we'll manage," she said, with that briskness she uses to cover up disappointment. I put the phone down, realizing I'm going to have to live with that guilty feeling. You may think I'm being churlish, but at least I'm not alone. One friend, also a grandmother, was recently entertaining members of her board when the call came asking her to babysit at short notice. She couldn't do it. Inevitably, her daughter was angry and fed up, saying, "You make time for other people, but not for me."

"Available and self-sacrificing." At least she acknowledges that she was on the receiving end of a loving grandmother. Many take the security and self-assuredness that comes of the sacrifices of others (extended family, especially) and then walk. This woman is smart, successful, and well-rounded because someone gave of herself, but sadly enough the gift will not be passed on.

I am fully aware that there are children who take advantage of their parents and assume that they will step in generously as grandparents -- even burdening them while they deserve a little freedom. That is not the point of this article. This is the bra-burner who now is horrified by the mere term "grandma" and its associations.

I knew I had a problem with the granny thing when it took me two years to find a name I could stand. It had to allow my 2-year-old granddaughter, Ryan, and her baby sister, Maggie, to claim me as their grandmother, as the person ready to open her fridge, her wallet, her house, and her heart to them. But it had to do this without giving me -- or anybody else -- the idea that I was old enough to be anybody's grandmother.

Me, me, me. Does this car say "hip?" Do these jeans say "with it?" Does this name say "still youthful after all these years?" The grandchildren longing for love and attention now will soon enough find it elsewhere, "Bobbie," and I doubt they'll be beating down the door of your nursing home a few years from now for a visit.

UPDATE: [from a fine fellow] "Jessica Rachel McMaster (nee MacMenamin), the woman who coined the term 'ScrappleFace' as a nickname for a family dog, passed away early this morning. Mrs. McMaster is the grandmother of ScrappleFace.com editor Scott Ott, and served as a mother to him and three brothers since the late 1960s. Jessica McMaster gave up her career, surrendered much of her pension, and walked away from a comfortable lifestyle in a handsome apartment to move to an old house in the country and take care of four boys. Without her sacrifice, and that of her husband James McMaster, 84, these boys were candidates for foster care or an orphanage. Thanks to their love, these boys are now an airline pilot, a university professor, a construction worker, and a Christian children's camp director (who happens to write satire). James McMaster has devoted more than a decade to caring for his wife in their home as she moved through the stages of dementia. He kept his promise. Both of them serve as inspiring role models to their boys, and to many others."

[I cannot think of a finer testimony from a grandchild. What a difference her generous attitude has made for so many. Our sincerest condolences. gsk]

Added UPDATE: Excellent story here; another fine witness for discussion.

Fait accompli?

We've been praying for the pro-life David's to pull down the UN Goliaths in the upcoming Hague Forum and it's looking dire. Remember the "Magnificat a Day"? The combination of International Criminal Court directives and the the attempted overthrow of Cairo objections is shaping up to:

• make abortion an international right;
• overthrow parents' rights to oversee their own children's influences;
• trump national sovereignty esp. in areas of religious objections.

According to Mary Jo Anderson,

The Hague Draft Report stifled the Cairo Chapeau, which was a last minute provision that broke the Cairo stalemate. Most Catholics recall the United Nations' Cairo Conference of 1994 (called ICPD).

The high intrigue which fascinated the media during Cairo was the intervention made by the Holy See to forestall a universal "right" to abortion as part of a women's health platform. The population management cadres promote such measures as a critical component of "sustainable development." Developed nations were assessed 0.7% of GDP to support the Cairo Programme of Action [POA]. The Wall Street Journal, remarking that this provision was a key demand again at the Hague Forum, noted that the assessment amounts to "A transfer of 0.7% of the industrialized world's GDP every year." (WSJ 2/10/99)

At Cairo, friction between pro-family nations (Catholic and Islamic) which balked at the repeated attempts by the population control factions to insert deceptive language into the documents sparked tempers and forged a coalition among widely divergent cultures. The new coalition of pro-family delegates sought to parry the UN tactics which jettison national sovereignty, parental rights and religious traditions in the implementation mandates of the Cairo POA.

Tension mounted. Pressure was applied to the soft spots of vulnerable nations: Those dependent upon World Bank loans for critical infrastructure — hospitals, schools, roads, and telecommunications — were thwacked with the stick of population control mandates.

The stalemate at Cairo was broken when a resolution was introduced: The "Cairo Chapeau" enabled the Cairo Conference to close with some measure of decorum. The "Chapeau" reads: The implementation of the recommendations contained in the Programme of Action is the sovereign right of each country, consistent with national laws and development priorities, with full respect for the various religious and ethical and cultural backgrounds of its people in conformity with universally recognized human rights.

These upcoming conferences have as their objective to throw out the Chapeau, giving no quarter for those who disagree with the UN. It sounds far away and inconsequential, but where it comes home to roost is with the content of your child's education.

When the Beijing Conference demanded parity for women (quotas) and the end-to all "stereotypical" references (such as motherhood for women), the school textbook companies responded immediately. Glance at the pages of a social studies book and you'll see photos of a woman construction worker and a man in a day-care facility -- or the equivalent.

The NEA is already anticipating the success of the Hague Forum, and it will affect your family from the youngest child up. Please continue to pray, because in worldly terms, it's over. All the hope we have now is God's finger in their eye -- please!

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be brainwashed

I find this story on liturgical music very, very frustrating:

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "On Eagle's Wings," the musical reworking of the 91st Psalm by Father Michael Joncas, topped all other songs in an online poll asking which liturgical song most fostered and nourished the respondent's life.

Two songs made popular by the St. Louis Jesuits -- "Here I Am, Lord" and "Be Not Afraid" -- came in second and third, followed by "You Are Mine," by David Haas.

The online poll was sponsored by the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. The poll was featured last year in an issue of its membership magazine, Pastoral Music, and announcements about the poll were distributed to diocesan newspapers in an effort to get the input of "rank-and-file Catholics," said J. Michael McMahon, the association's president.

In the poll, respondents could vote for only one song. No songs were listed on the Web site to give them suggestions. About 3,000 people took part in the poll.

Of the 25 liturgical music songs mentioned most, songs written after the Second Vatican Council took not only the top four positions, but six of the top nine, and 12 of the top 25. The fourth-ranked song, "You Are Mine," received 138 votes, 81 percent more votes than the fifth-ranked song, "How Great Thou Art," which got 76.

Beyond this, I think you'll recognise all the titles:

Other contemporary Catholic songs in the top 25 were "We Are Called," 11th place; "I Am the Bread of Life," 13th; "The Summons," 14th; "Shepherd Me, O God," 19th; "One Bread, One Body," 22nd, and "Hosea," which tied for 24th place with the traditional Catholic hymn "Pange Lingua."

Now, I am not making any value judgements on any of these songs. My point is that we seem to be gerbils running on a very small wheel in a very confining cage. As they said, there was no list to choose from, which is good, but what it means (in my humble estimation) is that after decades of hearing only a very few songs, not much else can come to mind, except in a few who remember Something Else.

Those folks are like C. S. Lewis' Puddleglum, trapped beneath the earth, trying desperately to remember life outside where there was a sun shining. And those folks are dismissed in a snarky comment:

Those who voted for "Ave Maria" and "Panis Angelicus," which finished 15th, probably meant the versions by Franz Schubert and Cesar Franck, respectively, "but we don't know for sure," McMahon said. "Since many of them (voters) were not professionals, they probably didn't realize there was more than one version."

No, they have only their hazy memories, sir, of a song that touched their hearts. Something they haven't had happen in a long time. Sorry if they cannot remember the Library of Congress ID code that goes with it, showing that they're qualified to name the song.

Why does this matter? What can we do about it? Mothers: sing to your children! You are not bound by the missalette. You are not bound by what's on the Top 40. You are free to fill your children's heads with glorious songs, religious and otherwise. Let them know what it was like at a sock hop singing "Splish Splash, I was Taking a Bath," how your big brother sang you "Eensy Weensy Spider" and tickled you tilled you nearly died, how you belted out "Barbara Anne" in your first car, and how grandmother loved "The Old Rugged Cross." Find folk tunes from around the world and sing them as lullabies or while folding laundry. Fill their heads with music so they don't think Baby Einsteins invented Mozart or that funerals must be limited to a select three songs.

I actually have my funeral music picked out and everytime we hear Holst, I remind them that this song made the list. There's more to life than Joncas and Haas, God love them, and your job is to introduce it to your kids and grandkids with love. If we're going into the catecombs any time soon, I want a far wider selection of tunes to bind us til the end.

"...and the blind shall see!"

Priceless, from the Times Online:

by Ruth Gledhill

I STARTED reading Deus Caritas Est expecting to be disappointed, chastised and generally laid low. An encyclical on love from a right-wing pope could only contain more damning condemnations of our materialistic, westernised society, more evocations of the “intrinsic evil” of contraception, married priests, homosexuality. It would surely continue the Church’s grand tradition of contempt for the erotic, a tradition that ensures a guilty hangover in any Roman Catholic who dares to indulge in lovemaking for any reason other than the primary one of reproduction. How wonderful it is to be proven wrong. The first half of the encyclical, the part on eros written by the new Pope himself, is a startling revelation, almost akin to reading one of George’s Herbert’s poems on love and God, or C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. The language itself verges at times on the erotic. The word “intrinsic” remains one of his favourites, but not as an appendage to evil. Instead, it becomes the “intrinsic link” between human and divine love, eros and agape. He acknowledges the power of the “apparently irresistible promise of happiness” between men and women when body and soul are “inseparably joined”. Recognising that the Greek word eros does not appear at all in the New Testament and just twice in what he refers to as the “Greek Old Testament”, he quotes Nietzsche, who said that Christianity had poisoned eros. Here he repeats the widely held perception voiced there by Nietzsche, a fellow German: “Doesn’t the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life?” Yes, he criticises the reduction of sex to a commodity and the consequent debasement of the human body. But then he indulges in some of the most beautiful and passionate writing I have ever seen in papal prose. He acknowledges his debt to Solomon’s Song of Songs, the book of the Bible with passages so explicit that few priests would have the courage to read them out in church without blushing. Legitimate criticism will come from some feminist circles. Although it is biblical, some women will not be happy at being referred to as rib-made helpmeets. His analysis of the role of the Church in bringing God’s love to fruition is also likely to be provoke accusations of implicit replacement theology. With its repeated reference to Greek myth and Latin learning, the encyclical is indicative of Benedict XVI’s formidable intelligence. But it also opens a new window into the soul of the Pope, showing a surprising depth of insight into what it means to love and be loved. Every sentence, stop and comma speaks of orthodoxy. It is steeped in the tradition of the ancient Church. The Pope was former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the body once known as the Inquisition. But this encyclical is not the work of an inquisitor. It is the work of a lover — a true lover of God. www.timesonline.co.uk/faith

Explorers need a map

Rich Lowry tells us all we need to know about Newsweek's bombshell: the discovery that boys and girls are different. After all the gender mainstreaming and feminisation of the classroom, [gasp] boys are falling behind and disliking school in record numbers.

If school overemphasizes sitting quietly and language skills; if recess is eliminated; if discipline is eroded; if the books feature consciousness-raising instead of action-packed narrative — then boys will be bored, disaffected and disruptive. Classrooms have to be made more boy-friendly — with more discipline, more competition and more activity — so that boys are no longer treated, as one expert put it to Newsweek, "like defective girls."

But beyond the school challenge, statistics are showing that fatherless boys are the fundamental problem.

"One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school," Newsweek reports, "rests on a single question: Does he have a man in his life to look up to?" It continues: "An increasing number of boys — now a startling 40 percent — are being raised without biological dads. Psychologists say that grandfathers and uncles can help, but emphasize that an adolescent boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map."

It is possible, with prayer, that the pendulum can gently swing back to a healthier place for our culture. Otherwise, these discouraged and aimless boys will become angry men -- in greater and greater numbers, pawing at the promiscuous [fatherless] girls who perpetually tease them, creating in turn more dysfunctional children. Such is the death spiral we're in.

"I will make all things new," said Our Lord. We need to beg Him to start with the family and to guide us in our doing part. Oremus!

Providence College outranks Notre Dame

... in authentic manliness, at least! Whereas the president of PC put the kabosh on the V Monologues, the president of Notre Dame considered followinging suit but was overcome by the dithers.

The Rev. John I. Jenkins, who took over as president of the Roman Catholic school on July 1, did not say he would cancel the events, but is scaling back both events. He discussed the matter on Monday during a speech to faculty members and plans to address students on Tuesday. He said also wants to hear from alumni.

He told the faculty he worried that sponsorship by university departments indicated a certain level of acceptance. As an example, he said the school would face questions if it were to sponsor a play that was anti-Semitic.

"A reasonable observer would assume that the university is sponsoring an event that, in fact, is clearly and egregiously at odds with its values as a Catholic university," he said.

He said events that are inconsistent with Catholic values should not be allowed at Notre Dame.

After his 50-minute speech, though, some of the faculty questioned him, saying that a university is the place where thoughts and ideas should be challenged.

Margaret Doody, an English professor, said the university should be a place for freedom and that higher education had already been through a period where research and thinking were restrained. "It was known as McCarthyism," she said.

When I hear that men are "worried," I imagine the hand-wringing. To be pushed about by Ms Doody -- who equates academic inquiry with the investigation of her pubic region on stage with a magnifying glass and a microphone -- shows that he lacks the cahunas to think clearly himself. He didn't even tell her that she couldn't do it, only that ND might not pay for the magnifying glass.

Kindly refer to the clarity offered by Father Shanley in relating academic freedom and such depravity.