feminine-genius

Interesting application

I have always been fascinated with the concept of Church as Sanctuary. This is a long-respected tradition, so that the church building is a haven during war, a mutually safe ground between opposing sides, and an oasis in times of crisis. Women, as icons of the Church, provide sanctuaries to new life and their presence in general should provide a calming influence on heated events. (That's the ideal, of course.)

This story out of Norway doesn't provide much detail, but the sanctuary premise is the heart of the story. (I googled this woman, but can't find other stories in English.) She is a Christian and seems to be at the heart of a deportation dispute that hints at persecution awaiting her in her homeland of Iran.

Shahla Valadi has been in church asylum in Mysen for seven years, and on Friday she will be wheeled to a demonstration in Oslo. A protest march on her behalf is organized for Friday, and in order for her to participate in Oslo her supporters will take her to the capital in a car that has been converted into a church on wheels, newspaper Vårt Land reports.

You see, as long as she stays in a Church, she is safe from deportation laws. The pastor who is caring for her wants the van in which he transports her to be considered a sanctuary as well, a "rolling church." He asked the Lutheran bishop to consecrate the vehicle, but she declined. The pastor was understanding of her position.

There is no condition of consecration for a church building to qualify as a sanctuary for church asylum. The Filadelfia in Mysen is not consecrated in the Lutheran or Catholic sense, but the authorities understand what makes a house of god, and we hope that they will continue to have that respect."

So much gets lost with the fragmenting of Holy Mother Church. We have a woman in role of bridegroom, the essence of Church as bride slipping away (you see, there's no coincidence that a communion that allows abortion wouldn't make the connexion that the bride provides sanctuary), a reticence to "consecrate," and finally a vulnerable woman caught in the tangle.

It's ironic that the minister caring for Shahla Valadi, who is described as a "TV-pastor," understands the urgency of consecration while a consecrated bishop declines to get involved. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of the case in question -- knowing so little, but the backdrop itself reveals much about a mystical body no longer consecrated in truth.

"Safe" motherhood = No motherhood

Pro-life groups have combined forces and responded to the recent "Women Deliver" conference sponsored by the United Nations:

(NEW YORK — C-FAM) A group of nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) from the United States, Europe and Latin America today delivered a letter to the UN and the organizers of the just concluded Women Deliver conference complaining that the conference was more about promoting abortion than caring for the real needs of women.

     The joint letter was issued by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), United Families International (US), Concerned Women for America (US), World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations, Institute for Family Policy (Spain), Instituto Mujer y Vida (Spain), Comite Nacional Provida de Mexico, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (UK), and many others. 

     The letter said, “We wish to express our profound disappointment and dismay that the Women Deliver conference has failed to meet its stated objective of addressing Millennium Development Goal 5, which is to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. Delegates were invited to attend a global conference on the causes, prevention and treatment of the complications of pregnancy and childbirth which lead to the deaths of so many mothers, particularly in developing countries, and to consider effective solutions. Regrettably, the conference agenda was so preoccupied with promoting the ideology and practice of abortion that the genuine healthcare needs of women and children were virtually ignored in the plenary sessions and overwhelmed in the panel discussions.”

     Roughly 1700 people attended the three day conference in London that was sponsored by a number of pro-abortion groups such as International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International, along with such UN agencies as UNICEF, the UN Population Fund, and the World Health Organization. According to C-FAM’s Friday Fax, the opening plenary set the tone as the confernce organizers and speakers announced that abortion rights were the number one solution to the global problem of maternal mortality -- even before skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetric care [my bold, gsk]. The Friday Fax also reported that a third of the panels focussed on abortion or abortion advocacy and among the rest, only a few addressed serious problems such as malaria and obstetric fistula. Moreover, only two panels dealt with newborn health and basic issues such as clean water, shelter and nutrition were virtually absent from the agenda.

     C-FAM Executive Vice President Susan Yoshihara said, “It was heart-breaking to see such in your face advocacy of abortion at a conference that cloaked itself in the language of maternal and newborn health.  Even though there were promising discussions on the agenda, abortion talk overwhelmed them due to the overarching pro-choice agenda of the event. Anyone who reads or hears about this conference must understand that this conference was primarily about legalizing and funding abortion. I urge all our friends from around the world to get our letter to as many people as possible.”

Emptying both barrels

Fr Jonathan Tobias has a small mountain of spent shells at his feet after this salvo. I've been bugged (like most) about the latest revelations from JKRowling, since it was an unnecessary and clumsy add-on. But it's done now. Second Terrace reveals the breadth of the damage. One snippet:

That was a neat trick, JK. You turned Dumbledore into a hero for zillions of kids. You waited until the book sales smashed one superlative after another, and the Brinks trucks lined the drive of your post-welfare mansion.

Then, after the kids (and priests like me) were lined up in your palm, eating out of your hand, you squeezed the bird, Slytherin-like. Dumbledore the hero, the wise man, the quasi-Christ-figure, you outed. Gay, despite no real narrative logic that demanded him to be so.

The gayness of Dumbledore is only a useless appendix (though, doubtless, quite a profitable one: now that the family market has been exhausted, this latest revelation opens up the new über-rich childless childish gold-vein of the self-involved, who practice their simultaneous (not mutual) communion before the Mirror of Erised).

Ex post facto, and clearly tangential to the story line, you announced this hero as a homosexual. The syllogism is neat, I have to admit. To bring out of the closet what had been squirreled away inside, the argument goes something like this in the daylight:

• Major Premise: I admire Dumbledore the powerful and wise and mostly good …
• Minor Premise: Dumbledore is gay …
• Conclusion: therefore all gays are powerful and wise and mostly good and I must admire them.

If anyone doubts Father's syllogism, it's been verified already in the MSM:

"Jo Rowling calling any Harry Potter character gay would make wonderful strides in tolerance toward homosexuality," Melissa Anelli, webmaster of the fan site http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, told The Associated Press. "By dubbing someone so respected, so talented and so kind, as someone who just happens to be also homosexual, she's reinforcing the idea that a person's gayness is not something of which they should be ashamed."

Very young children are drawn to this revelation in wonder. What does it mean? What is "gay" anyway? I cannot think of any motive other than a very dark one that would lead to this. Millstones come to mind...  Oremus.

________________________________

UPDATE: One self-professed gay man is not pleased with the revelation.

But as far as we know, Dumbledore had not a single fully realized romance in 115 years of life. That's pathetic, and a little creepy. It's also a throwback to an era of pop culture when the only gay characters were those who committed suicide or were murdered (as Dumbledore was) ... Like a lisping weakling, Dumbledore is a painfully selfless, celibate, dead gay man, so forgive me if I don't see Rowling's revelation as great progress.

Chick flicks

While reading an excellent review of The Jane Austen Book Club, I came across a man's thoughts on "chick flicks." After taking his daughter to the movie (which he loved), he writes:

I secretly enjoy them so long as there are no green tomatoes or Debra Winger stricken with an incurable disease. Chick flicks are always more satisfying to me than car-over-cliff-exploding-on-impact films, or general mayhem revenge films. Chick flicks are about character, the labyrinth (and land mines) of family dynamics, nuanced dreams and doubts, and about soul-mating rather than sexual opportunism.

That's why we men don't like them. If nobody gets punched out in a fistfight, if nobody wakes up with a perfect stranger, we men regard chick flicks as an unfair test of devotion rather than entertainment.

And his thoughts on his mid-western town deserve notice as well.

[W]e drove for an hour all the way across town to one of those giant, flawlessly clean metroplexes set on the edge of a faux town square thrown up over night in the middle of nowhere, with a campanile clock tower in the middle of the "village green," ticking out the message, "shop, shop, shop, eat, drink and open a Macy's card, for tomorrow you shall die." At one end was a Red Robin and at the other a Macaroni Grill, and there were high-end scrapbooking and designer bread shops on every faux street.

Context, m'dears. We must give our lives context and the stamp of individual affections. I know these Plastic-villes, and they have the capacity to suck the life out of our souls. I'm all for efficiency and economy, but not at the price of authenticity, which we need for meaningful lives. Good work here, and yet there is much inherent in the feminine genius that can personalise even the "strip-mall" existence in which we may be trapped. Pray on it!

Evangelisation question

Abu Daoud has laid a gauntlet that I want to acknowledge, with the caveat that he may be wrong about his premise. He just returned from an intriguing ecumenical conference:

[The] meeting ... brought together dozens of ministries that have a desire to see Muslims come to faith in Jesus Christ as well as a good number of Muslim-background Believers (MBB's). Great work is being done in inner cities among Black Muslims, immigrants from places like Turkey, Yemen, Iran, and Bosnia. There are some vibrant student ministries that are thinking creatively about witnessing to students who come here to study from places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

He claims though, noting the absence of any Roman Catholic participants, that there are no apostolates specifically aimed at converting Muslims to the Church. Could this be true? Of course the White Fathers of old had that as their primary task. They were founded in 1868 by Cardinal Lavigerie.

Missionary posts were established in Kabylic and in the Sahara. In 1876 and in 1881 two caravans from South Algeria and R'dames, intending to open missions in Soudan, were massacred by their guides. In 1878 ten missionaries left Algiers to establish posts at Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika...  The society is composed of missionary priests and coadjutor brothers. The members are bound by an oath engaging them to labour for the conversion of Africa according to the constitutions of their society.

A news page shows that they are still quite active and on task, but perhaps Abu has something else in mind. Is there something else in the works? I'd love to collaborate with anyone who had ideas about how to reach out to Muslim women to consider questions of faith and dignity. If anyone knows of anything in process, please share.

Before the month is out...

... we need one good belly laugh. Yes, BC has touched my family. Yes, cancer is horrific. But please enjoy Simcha's dark humour in the right spirit.

Evidently, the WMD is a reality, complete with ironic acronym:

The International Menopause Society, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, has designated October 18 as World Menopause Day. In observation of the day, the IMS, through its organ the Council of Affiliated Menopause Societies, distributes sample press materials to inform women about menopause, its management and the impact of estrogen loss. World Menopause Day can also be a call to implement policies that support research and treatment in the area of menopausal health.

Don't miss the comments, for example the timely reminder:

If you're going to make jokes about breast cancer or menopause, prepare to meet lots of people with no sense of humor. Remember the joke: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: THAT'S NOT FUNNY.

Neither is this. Or this.

Where is the bride...? (II)

Another heap of suffering has been put into words eloquently here: 

What we see in the midst of great agony and strife is usually a glimpse into both Heaven and Hell - and in the glimpsing, there's a gift. In my broken, four-pound baby, who looked a little different, lived a great deal differently, and ultimately left me here to grieve her loss, I found a sort of joy that I'd never known, a real joy, and my time with her was not only laced but literally steeped in happiness and blessing. And yet, the hour of her departure and certainly the last moments I held her were wracked with a sorrow and heartache that I could not have imagined. There was a bit of Heaven, and a bit of Hell. How I long to fully know the one and fully spurn the other! Therein lies the real gift. Perhaps God's will is more wrapped up in removing the blinders from our eyes than in giving or taking anything away...

Before Copeland was born, I prayed that God would give me a "vision for eternity." I think I probably uttered those words more in a moment of personal satisfaction - "wow, that sounds good!" - than true desire, but nevertheless, they seemed to have been Spirit-filled. I want a clearer understanding of Heaven, to be sure. I want to know more fully where Copeland is. But my prayer at that point, while I thought it regarded her experiences, was really about my own. If the only vision I have is for right now - she's gone, i'm here, and the world's literally going to Hell in a handbasket - then I'm going to be one bitter girl. The vision I need is one that tells me that what makes sense to my senses isn't necessarily true. Broken bodies often equal whole spirits. Strength can sometimes house itself in weakness. A vision for eternity turns the truths of this world on end. It's the only way an unattractive, unpopular renegade hanging on a cross can possibly mean more than brutality and devastation.

Now obviously she has the ability to see Him, not as an unattractive renegade, but as the cherished Bridegroom of her soul. That comes with the gift of faith. I think in reading her entire post and the background of this child's short life, we must remember two things. There is a difference between God's perfect will and His permissive will. It is in the latter that we come to understand that "all things work together unto good for those who love Him" (it seems to be misunderstood in the comment section there); and secondly, we have to understand that, in a fallen world, to love is to suffer.

The two errors that tempt us are either to stop caring so much, and to withdraw into a world of sterile, distracting amusements, or to wallow in our suffering without hope, without faith, and without perspective. Our feminine genius is to bridge the personal suffering incumbent in our motherly love with the transcendent suffering of the One Who gives it meaning -- without losing eye-contact with either the souls in our care or the Beloved, Who loves them more than we do, Who suffers with them still.

As difficult as it can be at times, be the bridge -- like Mary. Make the eternal present in your maternal concern. Yours is the face of His bride.

Where is the bride...?

Like most, I've followed the story about Abp. Neiderauer giving Holy Communion to the men in drag, but I've seen no need to blog here, where we stick to the theme of femininity. Blasphemy is all-too-common, same-sex attraction disorder an intention that should ever be in our prayers, and the difficulties of exercising authority something that must be far harder than it looks. But Diogenes has commented in a way that deposits it in the lap of all women who struggle to be authentic icons of the bride:

One might think gay-friendly moderates would cringe at the flamboyance of the drag-queen activism and the belligerence of the Sister Edith sacrilege, but in fact the reproaches come exclusively from the conservative side of the aisle, while the progressivists seem unable to grasp what all the fuss is about. Some have hesitantly conceded that the Sister Act was "inappropriate" -- as if the dispute hinged on the etiquette of church-going -- but the general liberal consensus seems to be that anything that antagonizes the Catholic League must be on the right track and worthy of defense. [My bold]

Here we are, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Each of us, over coffee, would share her struggles -- physical, reproductive, parental, spousal, financial, theological. Like the Church, we suffer assaults from all angles, and yet, with Mary, it is left to us to remain faithfully at the foot of the Cross. En route to His final, consummate gift of Self, Jesus turned to a cluster of women -- women like us -- and noticed the tears. He notices still, and receives them as a collaboration with his heartfelt concern for all souls. He had received them before He set out on that path, from the contrite heart of the Magdalen, who showed us best what to do with those tears.

The bride is on Calvary next to the Bridegroom. We cannot parse the insults hurled at Him from every direction -- especially when one comment contradicts the next, and they tumble in disarray and confusion. Such is the heart of darkness. Just be faithful. Be the bride, faithful til death.