L'Chaim -- not

Pansy (of Pansy and Peony) posted this disturbing account from her brother, who knew the American soldier:

Please pray for Cpl. Jennifer M. Parcell's family. Cpl. Parcell was a Marine on Okinawa that went to Iraq. She had to search a female victim in Iraq and when she was searching the victim, the victim detonated a bomb attached to her killing Cpl. Parcell and herself.

I did a little poking around and found this in the Baltimore Sun:

"She was a petite young lady, always smiling and gregarious, not the kind of girl you would envision as a Marine," he said. "But she took a military aptitude test in her junior year. To know what you wanted to do mid-high school shows she was focused."

When he learned Corporal Parcell was working toward a college degree and taking online courses while in Iraq, he said it made sense, given her determination.

Pay for your education by signing into the military. Harmless enough and yet I have great difficulty with women doing this. Petite, smiling, gregarious -- a woman called to give life, to foster love, to spread joy. This is the lie at the heart of the feminist movement, when women are called to suppress their natural characteristics like this and become soldiers.

I have no problem with the military, and was a Navy wife for years. I'm not even opposed to the mission in Iraq, leaving the controversy about it to those who know more facts about it than I do. But what I have always disliked about women in combat is reinforced by a book I'm reading at present (review to come) about Mao's plan for China, and one key part of communism was to undermine beauty, family, and motherhood as bourgeois, each to be rooted out. Thus women were to be drafted and treated with no distinction because in the proletariot dream, femininity was the enemy.

So here were are, face-to-face with two lies: the adoption of war and death as in keeping with the feminine vocation, and the adoption of death and martyrdom as a heroic endeavor for the Iraqi woman. Yes, immolation is not spurned for the cause of life and truth in our faith, but neither life nor truth was served by the death of these two women. Two beautiful souls manipulated by others -- so sad. Prayers.

Comments

[elena maria vidal]

Great post, as always.

[Donna Marie Lewis]

War and death is sad- whether the dying soldier is male or female is irrelevant.
BTW, being in the military was certainly a part of at least one woman's vocation- my Confirmation patroness, St. Jeanne D'arc.
If one is going by scriptural example, women should at least be in the espionage part of the services- there are several female 'double operatives' in Scripture- Rahab, Jael, Judith....

[First Communion Teacher]

I would think these are examples of women who did not seek to make a career of the military, but rather circumstances and personal danger or a calling from God dictated their temporary service.

My childhood dream was to be an astronaut (like Sally Ride) and thus, joining the military was a goal of mine. However, due to various life events, I never did it and I'm thankful for that today.

[gsk]

Death is sad, but context is important. Drinking yourself to death at a frat party is different than leaping in front of a train to move a baby stroller. That's why the Church has always put martyrs in a different category -- because their deaths provided a witness in how to live.

I do think it's different to have a young woman die a soldier's death -- it's quite different than Saint Gianna's death so that her baby could live. I don't put any blame on Jennifer, but I do indict the system, which cannot differentiate within the hierarchy of values who should bear what burdens and sacrifices.

That said, the death of Jennifer was contingent on the suicidal tendencies of an Iraqi woman -- who not only didn't choose life for herself, but took another woman with her as a trophy in her afterlife.

[gsk]

Another essential point: woman, as icon of the Church, must be the sanctuary -- and only participants on the battlefield as the very last resort. Jeanne d'Arc is tricky, but it was a very unique case in which a generation of Frenchmen seemed testosterone-deprived.

[elena maria vidal]

St Joan was indeed a unique case and, as she herself made clear at her trial, she did not do any actual fighting. She inspired and led the soldiers to victory as her voices directed her, but she would not of herself have chosen to be a soldier. "This is not my place," she said repeatedly. She loved embroidery and wanted to go home and spin with her beloved mother. She had a unique call from God as a consecrated virgin at a moment when all other hope had failed. She was a living symbol of God's unique and direct and miraculous intervention for the cause of royal France and the nation that is known as "The Eldest daughter of the Church." With Joan in charge, no one could doubt that it was really God and His angels in charge. The Little Flower took Joan as her model for heroic virtue and doing battle with vice.