feminine-genius

Heart. Rending. Evil.

This account is necessary reading for pro-lifers who grow slack in the Cause:

A few minutes passed and I found myself no longer praying for Our Savior to be there with me. I prayed for Him to hold the 18 other hands. I needed Him to walk those 18 precious babies home. As the tears moistened the tape and matted my hair, I saw him... My stomach still turns when I think back to this image. The doctor ripped off his latex gloves, threw them into a waste bin in the hall and went into the next room. When the vacuum started up again, I resumed praying. The kind of prayer where no words form, no sounds slip from mouths, just an internal kind of silent wail that may not be noticed by someone sitting next to you, but undoubtedly shakes the far corners of Heaven. I was all too aware that this had become my mode of opening up my heart to God lately, and that day, my wails were louder than ever before.

Women are caught in the middle of this lie. Prayers for the medical staff in this industry, prayers for the women trapped and used, prayers for the babes cut down. Mary, Queen of Angels, pray for us!

UPDATE: Some excellent books are highlighted here about this topic and a particularly important prayer campaign is explained here. The evil grows when good men do nothing.

Giving life on God's terms

Jen at Et Tu has a fascinating juxtapostition of two women, each seeking to nurture children under difficult circumstances. One is Alexa Stewart, daughter of Martha, who is single, 41, and spending a fortune in regular IVF procedures.

I take two shots a day...Once a month, I inject myself with a drug that causes me to ovulate in 36 hours. Just before the 36 hours are up, I go to the doctor's office and they put me under anesthesia and use an 18-inch needle to remove about 10 eggs. Then, I go home to my apartment in Tribeca...The doctor, meanwhile, fertilizes the eggs right away, using a technique called ICSI [intra cytoplasmic sperm injection], which involves poking a hole in each egg and shoving a sperm in to create an embryo...After the doctor conducts an embryo biopsy for Down Syndrome and the myriad of other things you might find around the three-month pregnancy mark, he says, "Eight out of 10 are not healthy" or whatever. Then, he tries to [transfer] the healthy embryos. I've had two transfers; they haven't stuck.

Then she draws attention to anonymous woman who is married but infertile, who is drawn to adoption:

Lately my heart has been so heavy for orphaned children with disabilities. Perhaps they feel no one would ever provide a home for them because they are "less than perfect." The other day on the way out of mass, a boy about the age of 12, who had a disability of some kind...turned and looked me straight in the eye. He smiled the biggest smile I have ever seen and waved with excitement. It pierced my heart. My eyes filled with tears -- tears of joy -- that God made this precious child. Though he made not appear "perfect" by the world's standards, he is perfect to God. And he has dignity because of this.

Now Jen draws the appropriate distinctions between the morality of the two paths. The first woman regularly allows the doctor to whittle down the number of her fertilised eggs if they are defective and plods on, month after month, with this frightening regimen, while the second woman -- suffering just as intensely and searingly, prays, listens, grows and bends -- finding that her desire to mother is leading her to places she never imagined.

It reveals the light and the darkness about which Our Lord spoke. Sin darkens the intellect until one eventually crawls in a dim tunnel. Grace, on the other hand, fills the soul with light so that horizons become evident that were previously unseen. While the normal path is "man + woman = baby," often the equation is skewed. But responding without God diminishes ones options until it's "woman pursuing baby on her terms, whatever it takes," when God would rather the suffering soul to see that motherhood can be found in a variety of ways, and a fundamental respect for the marital embrace will bear fruit -- with patience. Mother Two is stretched and transformed, Mother One (sadly now, the mother of many dead children, to be sure) is not. Pity.

Tempest in a teapot?

I didn't realise that a small brawl had ensued after the publication of an article on Catholic Exchange. I had announced the Vatican initiative to celebrate Mulieris Dignitatem next year and had pulled some quotes from the document. My thesis for years has been that many women have been coopted by a variety of lies that undermine their dignity and that it is their responsibility to pray, study, and reject these lies.

Examples would be that contraception is liberating, abortion is necessary, adopting the male models of overwork and uncommitted sex makes life more interesting (and I mean the models that are not even authentically masculine, but are corruptions of masculinity), and that the Church is a patriarchy whose mission undermines the aspirations of women, etc. There are two options for women in the face of these lies:

1. the hierarchy of the Church, the men in their lives, or legal structures could combine to take these options away from women (abortion, contraception, and the choices they make possible with work and entertainment). Now it's a near metaphysical certainty that no laws will contrain these options, but husbands could join with the Church to come down hard on women to "make them see;"  -OR-

2. women could take each other by the hand, share stories, weep over injustices and bad experiences and commit themselves to pursuing lives that respect all life and enhance the dignity of authentic femininity.

Now the argument circles around the responsibility that men have to get us out of this morass. Of course men are called to chastity, to honour women, to safeguard life, to preserve marital bonds. OF COURSE! No one who promotes this message ever says that men are without responsibility in this. The essential difference is that women are packaged in many ways that degrade them, reduce them to playthings, and undermine their welfare. Thus it is women who have to stop this from happening.

Of course men should stop consuming porn, looking at women with lust in their hearts, and misunderstanding the sexual embrace. But women have to take the lead -- by refusing to participate in porn (on any level), by refusing to dress provocatively (which causes men to have lust on the brain), and by insisting that the sexual embrace be reserved for marriage. Women have this, er, power (I don't like that word) but they are capable of making the difference. And as the good men said at Vatican II:

But the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect, and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment, when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the gospel can do much to aid mankind in not falling.

The charity of beauty

Mr Carrier, who is a loyal Catholic employed somewhere in the vast beauty industry, took on a Church Lady who thought the dimensions of faith and work incompatible. While no doubt a chivalrous fellow, he came out swinging -- perhaps since she was a crank, and hit first?

I said beauty comes from God and women are supposed to look good. Thus, to seek or give aid in it is no sin, even though some find ways to abuse it.

Anyway I got to thinking and if I had to choose, I would rather argue that a married woman has a positive duty to wear make-up, rather than the opposite view. Of course, neither is exactly right, but I just don't understand the frumpiness that seems to grip so many of the young orthodox Catholic women of today.

I only thank heaven I found a cute protestant girl before I became an Evil Traditionalist. And traditionalists are the worst of the lot; this circa 1982 drab turtle-necked nun-chic with a single dab of ill-chosen colour in the middle of her squinty, tight-lipped pucker.

This cannot help the birthrate.

The next thing you know, there will be calls for teetotalism. It is a kind of puritanical Calvinist insanity to reject physical beauty. I don't see why it has caught on among Catholics while even the weird sober evangelicals are still teasing their hair and painting themselves up like Miss Texas.

Being a convert, I've fought that Calvinist streak in myself for many a year. I think it's at the heart of what's so maddening about the United States in general, founded by our laced-up Pilgrim brothers and sisters so many centuries back. Catholicism has ever fought to balance such things, and the dour Calvinists have wrassled with the libertines throughout American history, with Brahmins rising above the fray in an effort to mislead people from the fundamental questions. Better to slug it out and keep "sin" and "virtue" in the vocabulary than to take the secular path, but it's a rough road. I can't help but think that Saint Teresa of Avila would firmly be on the side of the lipstick peddler.

A "sand monkey's" grief

As a mother, I'm naturally very interested in how children process their world, especially the chaos of dysfunction. How do they find solace amidst the shards of family that are broken and dangerous, rather than solid and edifying. This is an account of a young Egyptian man who lost his grandmother, who in her very thoughtful way, made a sanctuary for a child whose parents neglected their duties.

If there was one constant truth, one real thing I could always depend on throughout my life, it is the love that me and my grandmother had for each other. When you are the product of a divorce between madly career-driven woman and a womanizing man-child, you end up having 2 empty houses, but no actual home. The one home I had, was her home. The person who truly raised me between my mother's social climbing efforts and my dad's 6th divorce was her. Every bad thing in me comes from them. Every good thing in me comes from her. I wanted her to be my mother so bad, that I hated my father for never appreciating what he had. For not devoting every fiber of his being in appreciation of that woman.

I don't have many happy childhood memories, but there is one thing that always made me smile. Walking into her room, as she lay on the bed, and bending over and kissing her hand, while with the other one she stroked my hair. That was always enough to make me happy. That was my happy Place.

I enter the room, and I see her, one her bed. The same way I've seen her a thousand times before. Only this time it was different. She didn't look up.  No signs of breathing in her chest. Just a peaceful look on a face that clearly has no life. I walk close to her, I kiss her hand like I always did, and it's cold.

It finally registers.

The next thing I know, I am slumped on the floor next to her bed, holding her hand and crying.

A very interesting read, for the fascinating glimpse into his world, for details on Islamic rituals, for confirmation of the fact that families live and learn and love and suffer in similar ways all around the world. And that the feminine genius can be lived anywhere -- and can transform lives. But you knew that.

Radio clip

Donna-Marie has graciously provided a link to the radio segment from Ave Maria Radio, which explains the initiative surrounding Mulieris Dignitatem. Start putting your plans together to study this document and spread its wisdom!

Our little sisters in East Timor

Prayers for these young girls who have suffered terribly because of a political rift.

The Baucau diocese has expressed dismay over the rape of convent girls there and the burning of Church property following the announcement of the appointment of the country's new prime minister.

Father Francisco Pinheiro da Silva, vicar general of Baucau diocese, says that around 2 a.m. on Aug. 10, unidentified men raped about nine girls, one of them only 8 years old and the others 15-17, at the Salesian-run convent school in Baguia subdistrict, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) south of Baucau.

"Indications show that the brutality and immoral actions were done by Fretilin supporters," said Father da Silva, referring to supporters of the former ruling party.

Despicable that the disputes of ruling elites lead to such depravity against those who are clearly innocent and outside the debate. It is one incident in a wave of violence following the last election.

According to Father da Silva, second-in-charge of the diocese after the bishop, more than 600 houses were burned down and more than 6,000 people have fled into the jungle. It is reported that three villages in Viqueque district, 185 kilometers (about 115 miles) east of Dili, were burned to the ground, he said. Baucau district is calm now, he said, but many still live in fear and are traumatized because thousands of people have lost their homes and property.

One can eventually rebuild a home, but the despoiling of these "temples" will take time and grace to mend. Poor dears.

Jerusalem, mother of all nations

Its foundations are set on the sacred mountains – the Lord loves the gates of Sion more than all the tents of Jacob. Glorious things are said of you, city of God! I shall count Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me. The Philistines, Tyrians, Ethiopians – all have their birthplace here. Of Sion it will be said “Here is the birthplace of all people: the Most High himself has set it firm”. The Lord shall write in the book of the nations: “Here is their birthplace”. They will sing as in joyful processions: “All my being springs from you”.