feminine-genius

Obfuscation, pure and simple

No one doubts the confusion on sexual morality these days. What was clear in our vocabulary one hundred years ago has gradually been muddled by both words and actions. Thus, contrived words and phrases offer padding to once-hard realities, and the actions of the majority of people who reject virtue shift the paradigm into calling what was once dark now light.

Just as "anti-personnel devices" belies the fact that crude land mines rip the limbs off small children, "nuptial cohabitation" is a fancy way of saying that those who cannot commit to marriage still want to shack up and pretend. Giving them a new moniker does nothing to remove the fornication involved, nor does it make the couple any more inclined to seek the graces of the sacrament of matrimony -- since their decision has already given the bum's rush to God and His commandments.

Now, since most people do so (90 per cent of couples presenting for marriage are already sharing pots and pans) the definition of "nice people" and "thoughtful citizens" shifts to ignore the entire category of sexual activity, rather considering stewardship of the earth's resources, kindness towards animals, and how one behaves while standing in line at the coffee shop or interacts with his office mates. Both important in their way, but hardly the measure of integrity and virtue.

Now who is using new definitions and shifting the yardstick on morality? This clever couple at U.S. Catholic, who want to acknowlege all the good will and kind intentions of those who consolidate bedroom furniture and share closet space.

Couples who share this double commitment [to fidelity and exclusivity] manifest it in various ways, including a strong couple identity, a strong sense of “us” and “we,” the maintenance of their partner and their marriage as a high priority, a protection of their relationship against attraction to others, a readiness to sacrifice for one another without resentment, and an investment of themselves personally in building a future together. Such double commitment is the surest path to marital intimacy.

Well, sure, until they part. "Us" and "we" are useful terms until there are competing interests, which cannot even guarantee the fidelity and exclusivity of many married couples. We all mean well, but then things fall apart and we move on.

I cannot begin to fisk this as well as Carl Olson already has. He also points to the sharp rebuke by Archbishop Curtiss, who rejects the notion that this thesis can be in any way thought to be Catholic, and by Archbishop Chaput in his weekly column.

I believe in the intelligence and good will of the authors. I also believe that their argument is bafflingly naïve. If the Church, in her reflection on the Gospel, has always taught that sex outside marriage is morally wrong, then for the Church to now bless “nuptial cohabiters” amounts to colluding in sin. Ritualizing a sinful behavior, or calling it a nicer name, does not change its substance. The very last thing we need in a society already awash in confused sexuality is a strategy for accommodating it.

The greatest irony of the U.S. Catholic article comes in a comment by the authors that many young adults “cite confusion about Church teaching because Church leaders send mixed messages about sex, contraception, and divorce/annulment.” I very much agree. And one of the sources of that confusion might be Catholic publications, theologians and researchers who help feed it.

We need more support for marriage in society and the Church, not alternative arrangements. Cohabiting couples deserve the understanding and patience of the Catholic community, but above all they need to hear the Christian truth, persuasively offered, about the nature of marriage, the meaning of their sexuality and the importance of the family. We waste words and time when we focus on anything else.

Support for marriage, thankfully is being bolstered in many quarters, not the least of which is the Archdiocese of Boston. He includes a prayer we can all use in the coming years.

Vocation of Marriage Prayer

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of the Holy Family,

Help us treasure the gift of marriage that reflects the love of Christ for the Church,
where the self-giving love of husband and wife unites them more perfectly and
cooperates in your plan for new life created in your image.

Help us support men and women in their vocation of marriage, especially in difficult times when they join their sufferings to the Cross.

Help us uphold the institution of marriage in our society as the place where love is nurtured and family life begins.

Help us acknowledge that our future depends on this love and on your providential care for us. Amen.

Nihil Obstat: Reverend Mark O’Connell, J.C.D.
Imprimatur: Sean Cardinal O’Malley, OFM, Cap
Archbishop of Boston
May 15, 2007

No obfuscation there. Just timeless Church teaching, pure and simple.

"We are shocked, shocked ...!"

A little Egyptian girl has died from a botched circumcision and the nation feigns shock at the fact that such a barbaric practice still takes place in its midst.

On Thursday, the Egyptian Health Ministry issued a decree on female circumcision, stating that it is "prohibited for any doctors, nurses, or any other person to carry out any cut of, flattening or modification of any natural part of the female reproductive system, either in government hospitals, non government or any other places."

The ban by the health ministry marks a return to a 1950s government order on Egypt's hospitals and doctors against FGM. Despite that order, the practice continued in Egypt, mostly carried out by barbers, midwives and amateurs. The order was reversed in 1995, shortly after [a 1995 CNN documentary], with female circumcision being permitted by medical staff only, in a move to stem amateur practicing. Although the documentary embarrassed Cairo internationally, it failed to propel the parliament to pass a new child bill penalizing circumcision.

A 2003 survey by the United Nation's children's agency, UNICEF, said that 97 percent of married women in Egypt have undergone genital mutilation. But the Egyptian government considers the 97 percent inaccurate. A recent study among schoolgirls by Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population found that 50.3 percent of girls between the age of 10-18 years have been circumcised.

Let's say that the practice is somewhere between 50 percent and 97 percent, and consider the fact that parliament refuses to criminalise the practice -- making the health ministry ban a blatantly empty gesture, leaving the practice of mutilating girls to "professionals." That would mean the "shock!" is adopted by poseurs in order to be taken seriously in the international community -- the same international community that values "diversity," the integrity of tribal custom, and frowns on close-minded western "imperialism" that would bully such a culture into conformity... You get the picture.

I'm shocked that only one girl has died. I'm shocked that people pretend to be shocked. I'm shocked that 51 percent of the population (meaning the women) accept this practice, conforming to stone-age cruelty in the name of honour and purity. Another man-made custom, with the Latin translation being vir, not homo.

"It's prohibited, prohibited, prohibited," Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said on the privately owned al-Mahwar network Saturday. While top clerics here insist that the practice has nothing to do with Islam, parents, especially in villages and Cairo slums, believe they are helping their daughters. They think circumcision is necessary for cleanliness and to protect a girl's virginity before marriage.

Opponents say that girls who undergo botched operations — along with doctors, amateurs without anesthesia often still perform the circumcision — can bleed to death, suffer from chronic urinary infections and have life-threatening complications in childbirth.

Egypt's renowned feminist activist, Nawal el-Saadawi, 76, who has published a biography on her own experience with circumcision, wrote of Shaker: "Badour, did you have to die for some light to shine in the dark minds? Did you have to pay with your dear life a price ... for doctors and clerics to learn that the right religion doesn't cut children's organs."

Bless this little girl, and all her sisters who suffer so. May change come swiftly!

Dumpster diving has its place

In checking the stats on this humble site, I came across an intriguing blog called The Philosopher Mom -- excellent. I scrolled down a bit to peruse the obvious gems and came across this:

I've been skimming over Augustine and Beckett on Augustine in search of material for the Pascal essay. Here's a paraphrased ponderance for you. The practice of apologetics (arguing in defense of the faith) must also involve an authentic witness of our lives.

This is because a conversion to Christianity is not simply an intellectual conclusion at the end of a series of irrefutable arguments. It is a new way of being which, "unless you believe you will not understand." (Augustine, City of God, Book IX)

That is, to make the leap from unbelief to belief is not to master Christianity with your mind (although our mind can bring us to the point of wanting to believe). The leap of faith is to enter a new way of existing in relation to God and the world. God becomes incarnate; the world becomes creation.

Er, this is tough to take, having just rolled off the sofa to take a break from The Diana Chronicles. This brilliant gal has the audacity to blog-roll me, which now lights the inevitable fire: how to concoct a philosophical/sociological and instructive essay on the post-Christian world of the insulated British monarchy as it relates to our hunger for role models, Freudian fantasies, and [um] self-destructive zeitgeist....  I've GOT to justify that link!

Seriously, though, this will be more than a review. I've gobbled up the work of Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Victorian age and this is the sad and necessary [near] last stop on the train of events set in motion by Henry VIII. I'm enjoying it a bit too much, but it's all part of the essential research on the decline of the West (really!)

In the end, Erika and I are both committed to an authentic witness of our lives and where the Incarnation transforms our way of being. It's just that her library is stuffed with Pieper, Pascal, von Balthasar and Augustine and mine has, well, some extra more frivolous volumes. But then if I blog-roll her, you'll have ready access to both!

A fatwa we'd like to see

There are many immigrants to Norway, and one group is from Somalia. Interestingly, although there's little pressure to acclimate to "Norwegian culture," whatever that may be, there is anger over one tradition that this group brings with it, female genital mutilation.

Labour Party politician Anniken Huitfeldt wants girls from Somalia and other at-risk nations to undergo regular physical checks. Huitfeldt told newspaper VG that she proposes that every family that comes from Somalia and other at-risk countries must sign a document saying that the circumcision of family members must not happen. Huitfeldt wants the legal framework for such a contract, and penal reactions.

Bashe Musse of the Somalian Network also urged stricter regulations against the practice, and called for a fatwa against female genital mutilation (FGM).

That fatwa is not materialising, and to make matters worse, the medical oversight has no real authority or impetus to make a difference. Parliament is backing away from such a proposal, since it might "stigmatise" particular groups, and prefers a vanilla rule that "all Norwegian girls should have regular check-ups." At least the PM is angry enough to push for more vigilance:

Despite extra funding for efforts to hinder violence towards women and children, and laws against circumcision in place for 11 years, not one person has been charged with or convicted of genital mutilation.

[Prime Minister] Stoltenberg warned that the government would now step up its efforts. This week the Ministry of Justice and Police would hold an urgent meeting with the Attorney-General, Oslo police and the director of police. "Circumcising children is totally unacceptable. It is doubly criminal. It is a violation of Norwegian law and it is a violation of basic human rights," Stoltenberg told Dagsavisen.

From his lips to God's ear, as we say. I suppose this will target Jewish groups and Christians who circumsise their boys, but perhaps they can sort that out when they get a law with teeth.

Stepmothers are da bomb

I don't follow European politics very closely -- only grasping the broad brushstrokes, but I see that a recent bawdy cover pic of Angela Merkel (chancellor of Germany) is raising eyebrows. Europe is certainly used to its women leaders and they have provided some of its most conservative or hard-lined politicians. No matter -- what is fascinating is the difference in the way a woman is attacked.

The EU rotates its presidency, and Merkel currently holds the post. Evidently, the Poles feel that Germany is condescending towards them in the way Merkel has wielded that post, and yet if she were a man, she would be called a bully, a tyrant, or a fascist. Since she's female, the press has latched on (pun intended) to a feminine way of condescension -- which would be to be a peverse step-mother or an oppressive smothering mother.

"The cover's message," Stanislaw Janecki, editor-in-chief of Wprost, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "is that Germany, especially Ms. Merkel, was trying to treat Poles and the Polish leaders as small children completely unable to act on their own and somehow dependent on Germany.... There is the impression that Germany, being more powerful, wants to dominate Poland and that the Kaczynski brothers [whom she is tandem-nursing] want to stand up to this domination."

The editor also insists that it's not an attack on Merkel but the Polish leaders who acquiesce. He's insisting that the choice of a body attached to her head was a nod to how much she is liked.

"We imagined it to be a little funny," Janecki says. "The stepmother is often more sexy and more friendly that the real mother is. The body is of a young, 21-year-old model. I would say it is quite a nice body, and we didn't want to say anything bad about Ms. Merkel." He says they got the image from a model agency the magazine works with and they were looking for somebody "who was not so thin but someone who also has a good body."

Real mothers aren't friendly like step-mothers?! Ouch! (Maybe having something to do with the father abandoning them and the kids to find a newer [more fun] model, ya think?) This is so indicative of how very post-Christian and clueless the prevailing culture is there. Photo-shopped cleavage, kudo's to the sexiness of step-mothers, appreciation of good bodies as cover material, and a rip on motherhood as the best way to make a point -- all evidently touchstones of contemporary family values (and this would be from supposedly catholic Poland.)

Forget the Euro, put immigration on a back burner -- without the family, all else is heavy tile on a paper shack.

Storm clouds

Readers may lament the amount of posts dedicated to the way that women fare under Islam, but if we're concerned with their authentic dignity, their fundamental equality and the way that they are made in the image and likeness of God, then it matters. Many Muslim women write to me to say, "This is not how I live." "Your examples are exaggerations." "These fanatics don't represent the faith." How can one tell -- we read, we follow the news, we watch history unfold. One cannot trump another's experience with his/her own -- all experiences are valid, and a good sociological study would help to identify trends.

Thankfully, Tony Blankley points us to just such a study -- but it aint pretty.

I have just finished reading a deeply disheartening book by my friend Professor Akbar Ahmed. Dr. Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain and member of the faculties of Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, current chair of Islamic Studies at American University -- and is in the front ranks of what we Westerners call the moderate Muslims, who we are counting on to win the hearts and minds of the others.

Dr. Ahmed travelled around the Islamic world in order to gauge how the faith was being interpreted and lived today, and he outlines three kinds of Muslims: the mystical Sufi's (Ajmers), the modernists like himself (Aligarhs) and the action-oriented orthodox (Deobands, who include the followers of Usama bin Laden). Normally an upbeat and positive man, he was very discouraged by what he found.

Even one or two years ago, I think Dr. Ahmed was reasonably hopeful that his views had a fighting chance around the Islamic world. So, my jaw dropped when I got to page 192 of his new book and he described his thoughts while in Pakistan last year on his investigative journey: "The progressive and active Aligarth model had become enfeebled and in danger of being overtaken by the Deoband model I felt like a warrior in the midst of the fray who knew the odds were against him but never quite realized that his side had already lost the war."

He likewise reported from Indonesia -- invariably characterized as practicing a more moderate form of Islam. There, too, his report was crushingly negative.

I report on this because of where it leaves women.

Meeting with people from presidents to cab drivers, from elite professors to students from modest schools (Dr. Ahmed holds a respected place in the Muslim firmament around the globe), reports that 50 percent want Shariah law, support the Bali terrorist bombing, oppose women in politics, support stoning adulterers to death. Indonesia's secular legal system and tolerant pluralist society is being "infiltrated by Deoband thinking Dwindling moderates and growing extremists are a dangerous challenging development."

Remember, wherever Shariah law is implemented, women lose their equality and many of their fundamental rights. An with the recent court case of Lena Joy -- which said Muslims may not convert -- she, and all women under that law, are no longer able to opt out of forced marriages or avoid many of the other outrages that are part of radical Islam.

If Dr. Ahmed is correct, not only will the current status of Muslim women continue to deteriorate, but there will be no exit, and as we have seen, diminished rights of Christians who live in increasingly radicalised nations. Women have to be aware of what is on the horizon and pray for their sisters around the world.

Words fail

If you're looking to expand your motherly heart, perhaps you could spiritually adopt some of these kids.

The next time someone praises "multiculturalism," ask if all cultures are equally praiseworthy. And if you find someone lathered up about bull fights, you could inquire about their opinion on this.

And for the record, Christianity was intensely involved in the struggle over labour laws and the protection of children. What do the prevailing religious authorities in these places say about this?

Whence comes equality?

Mustafa Akyol offers another fascinating discussion of feminism and its struggles in Turkey, which of course is at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. Thus its foundational debates about Christianity, Islam and secularism colour its perceptions of most topics, not the least of which concern women.

To understand the debate, one must consider the history of Turkey, which has been in turn the home to the Christian apostles, fervent Muslims, and subsequently radical secularists -- namely the "father of modern Turkey," Attaturk.

Those advocating the rights of women in this setting come from three camps -- those who see their rights granted by the state, those who see them as more fundamental and not able to be "granted" by a mere government, and those who find their equality as a gift of Islam to be distinguished from the man-made traditions that are unfortunately tied to that religion.

Our Catholic traditions offers concete observations on this very question, founded specifically in Mulieris Dignitatem:

1. THE DIGNITY AND THE VOCATION OF WOMEN - a subject of constant human and Christian reflection - have gained exceptional prominence in recent years. This can be seen, for example, in the statements of the Church's Magisterium present in various documents of the Second Vatican Council, which declares in its Closing Message: "The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at his moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling"...

2. This eternal truth about the human being, man and woman - a truth which is immutably fixed in human experience - at the same time constitutes the mystery which only in "the Incarnate Word takes on light... (since) Christ fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear", as the Council teaches.12 In this "revealing of man to himself", do we not need to find a special place for that "woman" who was the Mother of Christ? Cannot the "message" of Christ, contained in the Gospel, which has as its background the whole of Scripture, both the Old and the New Testament, say much to the Church and to humanity about the dignity of women and their vocation?

4. Thus the "fullness of time" [i.e. the Incarnation] manifests the extraordinary dignity of the "woman". On the one hand, this dignity consists in the supernatural elevation to union with God in Jesus Christ, which determines the ultimate finality of the existence of every person both on earth and in eternity. From this point of view, the "woman" is the representative and the archetype of the whole human race: she represents the humanity which belongs to all human beings, both men and women.

Perhaps this document should be on your summer reading list to remind you of where we get our dignity -- both as humans in the image and likeness of God, but specifically as women -- "the archetype of the whole human race (!)"

You won't find that reference in any constitution, any UN document, or in any party platform. That marvelous and sublime truth is fundamental to Catholicism alone, which bestows the greatest dignity on women to be found on the planet.