feminine-genius

That's entertainment, folks!

Amy Winehouse was not really on my radar, though I was familiar with her name and a couple songs. Obviously, with her premature death (age 27) all the gory details are now arrayed, like the scattered bits of a fatal accident. Melanie Phillips makes some excellent points here:

• Amy had tremendous talent;
• Amy had a tremendous following;
• Amy's decline fascinated her followers;
• Amy's death induces sadness, but for the wrong reasons.

Consider this chilling quote she found:

The soap opera of her deeply dysfunctional life boosted her appeal and commercial value. Indeed, this is openly acknowledged. At the weekend, commentator India Knight wrote (after telling us all how devastated she was by the singer's death): 'And I loved that she was a bad girl with bad appetites: a breed that, with her passing, heads further into extinction.'

Even given this particular consequence of a 'bad appetite' for drugs and alcohol -- a wholly avoidable and tragic death over which she says she weeps -- Ms Knight appears actually to regret that there is now one person fewer to behave in this way.

What is this utterly perverse yearning for yet more bad behaviour and self-destruction? And doesn't such a comment itself add to the climate of indifference or even approval which makes such tragedies even more likely?

How many people make their living chronicalling these sorts of death spirals, enabling the addicts for their own personal gain? This would be because they know there's a vast audience which enjoys the show, and mimics the destruction. This Daily Mail piece provides the visual props, and a bizarre reminder of the lasting harms:

A friend of Amy Winehouse conceded after she drank herself to death on Saturday that, yes she had her problems, but ‘she never did anyone any harm’.

If only that were true. The packets of cigarettes and bottles of vodka, beer and rum left outside her home in Camden, North London, by adoring fans bear testimony to how much she affected vulnerable young people.

Along with flowers and farewell notes, this was their way of saying goodbye to a woman they worshipped and emulated — not just because she was a musical genius, but also, I suspect, because of her car-crash lifestyle.

Take from it what you will. The next generation is in free-fall, with few moral boundaries and a candy store full of vices within arms' reach. At the heart of it, there are fewer stables families, which leaves them on a bed of quicksand and few defenses. God help them, and Jesus, mercy on these sunken souls!

A Palin post?

I couldn't imagine ever needing to post about Sarah Palin again (no matter what happens in the coming year) but I've done it. It relates to private family issues that [like usual with her loved ones] didn't stay on the QT for long. Bless her poor family for having to pull every last breath in a fishbowl!

Of course...

You knew this was coming. With the shredding of marriage, it was only a matter of time before private, consenting adults would push the flimsy barriers propped in meaningless places.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan already alluded to it here:

Recall how the Church resisted the “contraceptive mentality,” fearing it would rupture the sacred bond between love and the procreation of children.  Then, remember how the Church sounded the alarm over rising rates of promiscuity, adultery, pre-marital sex, and cohabitation prior to or instead of marriage.  And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity.

Think about it:

• marriage is no longer the fundamental unit of society but a path to self-expression;
• marriage is no longer ordered to stability or the raising of children;
• marriage has in many places been conflated to include any two people;
• the needs of children have been entirely marginalised or deliberately misrepresented;
• 40% of children are born to unmarried women in a variety of settings;
• cohabitating couples have been integrated into acceptable lifestyles;
• sexual intimacy is no longer ordered to either fidelity or procreation.

Thus, it only stands to reason (using this logic) that since marriage isn't about procreation or fidelity, that it can include any combination of consenting adults. Imagine, if you will, a man living with (or having conjugal visits with) multiple women and having children with each--without marrying any of them. Addresses aside, it's already ubiquitous--so wanting to make promises to these baby-mama's is touching by comparison.

Stand by for others whose creed endorses polygamy to pile on, and the slide down the slippery slope to inanity continues apace (not to mention ironies like this by those who recognise that there's not much meaning left in a deconstructed world).

What's at stake in Afghanistan

Among other things, the future for girls. The Taliban, which ruled from 1996-2001 places serious constraints on their lives:

Under the Taliban women were barred from access to healthcare and made to wear burqas covering them from head to toe, and only boys were allowed to attend school. Many of those customs are still widespread. Girls have had acid thrown in their faces by hardline Islamists while walking to school and schools have been set on fire. Last year there was a spate of mysterious gas poisonings at girls' schools, including some in Kabul, in which dozens of girls fell ill.

A report by aid groups in February said girls' education was at risk because of poor security, lack of funds and equipment and inadequate teacher training. It said 2.4 million girls were enrolled at school but about 20% of those did not attend classes regularly. Those who did often faced obstacles such as open-air classrooms and journeys of up to three hours. The report noted a shortage of female teachers – as few as one in every 100 educators in the most remote and conservative areas – which limited girls' hopes of receiving anything more than a primary education.

So the presence of the US-led NATO forces has changed the rules, but has a long way to go to changes "hearts and minds."

Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.

Khan Mohammad, the head of the Porak girls' school in Logar province, was shot dead near his home on Tuesday, said Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar governor.

"He was killed because he wanted to run the school," Darwish said.

Mateen Jafar, the education director in Logar, about an hour's drive from the capital, Kabul, said Mohammad had received several death threats from the Taliban warning him not to teach girls.

Jafar said Mohammad's son was wounded in the attack.

Practically speaking, the current military mission is focused on security and power -- which is to be expected -- rather than culture or human rights. Concerning the latter, one must recognise that cultures like these cannot be convinced, only converted. Only with an authentic Christian worldview will people come to see that everyone is in the image and likeness of God, worthy of respect and sacrifice. Until then, people will continued to be sacrificed for ideology -- and most of them women.

Some thoughts on DSK

I put down a few ideas about the DSK saga at Catholic Lane. One's blood boils at the response to this atrocious episode, especially the French insults concerning our justice and virtue.

In fact, many across the pond are tut-tutting American provincialism, in the manner of Socialist member of European Parliament, Gilles Savary, who noted, “Everyone knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine, and that he is distinguished from others by the fact that he doesn’t try and hide it.” The problem is “puritanical America, infiltrated by rigorous Protestantism,” which cannot deal with issues concerning “pleasures of the flesh.”

Alas, he is not alone in that way of thinking.

UPDATE: In response to one of the comments, let me clarify that abortion has always been essential to socialists, from their inception. They also denigrated marriage (a bourgeoise trap) and flaunted their libertinism through cohabitation and shared intimacy. That is why abortion always had to be available, for children weren't terribly welcome. When they did arrive, collectives were set-up for their care, because the mothers' priorities had to be the revolution, or their work.

Ultimately, "left" and "right" are inadequate terms, because those on the right often share the disdain for conventual morality. That is why I indicate that the Catholic ethic stands squarely in the center to counter excesses from all angles. We are the one who always serve the person first, without allowing him to be subsumed in ephemeral schemes.

UPDATE II: More details are emerging of escapades old and new, including other incidents with hotel staff on the trip that ended his career.Another fascinating article addresses the curious question, Why do French women put up with this sort of thing? The only woman, journalist Hélène Jouan sat on a panel that addressed this issue:

Every woman journalist, she said, knew the pervasive atmosphere fostered by powerful men in France, in which females were at the very least importuned with impunity, and disregarded – not even disbelieved – when worse happened. This had created, she said, the culture in which someone like Strauss-Kahn could, and did, think he could get away with anything.

She herself, Jouan said, hadn't been the victim of over-the-red-line harassment, but the very atmosphere in which salacious propositioning texts or late-night knocks on her hotel room door by politicians on the campaign trail were a common occurrence. She said it "was so heavy sometimes that at the beginning of my career, I almost gave up journalism."

The lack of response from the hitherto voluble other guests was spectacular...

The men around her couldn't grasp the problem, with one saying "Why all the fuss? It's merely a bit of hanky-panky with the help," and another insisting it was "overblown:"

Really, nobody died in that hotel room.

The understanding is, she notes, that French women will not take any of this seriously or fight back (there will be repercussions), and she points out that First Ladies have always studiously ignored their husband's transgressions. Furthermore, France's leading feminist, Elisabeth Badinter, is married to a Socialist leader, and thus we come full circle: socialism is anti-virtue and anti-family, and pure feminists see their struggle as the next stage in the dialectic. There is no other path to "progress." 

Keep that in mind when considering the merits of the left. Women must pay a very high price for their utopia.

 

Interesting backdrop to wedding

Parents in Britain are in a bit of a "sticky wicket," according to the Telegraph:

[M]illions of parents are facing an unprecedented childcare headache in the coming weeks, as a "perfect storm" of the Royal Wedding, Easter holidays and AV referendum see schools shut their doors for longer than ever at this time of year. Children whose schools are used as polling stations in the May 5 referendum and council elections will be at home for a total of 14 weekdays over the next month.

Parenting groups warned that the extra days off will put families under strain, as working parents struggle to make childcare arrangements for the unusually long break. Economists have warned that the extra bank holiday on April 29 will knock a quarter of a percentage point of growth off the economy. Business groups expect productivity to suffer to the tune of £6bn.

The one-off bank holiday falls at the end of Easter week and is the day running into the May Day bank holiday weekend. As a result, it will create two consecutive four-day weekends.

Part of the challenge of modern family life in the developed world is that there are few extended families around, single parents have little back-up, and fewer children in each family means that older kids are not available as they once were. Moreover, the job market forces every capable person into the workforce leaving them unable to help in this situation. Even the elderly aunties and grannies are corralled into nursing homes or other senior living facilities.

None of this is necessarily morally bad, it's simply part of the  dreary landscape we've created for ourselves, so that the Royal Wedding becomes a Royal Nightmare for those who are alone and struggling. Neither does it serve as inspiration for the upcoming generation who have yet to embark on parenthood -- they may see babies as more trouble than they're worth.

The TOB discussion (updated)

As editor at the women's section of Catholic Exchange, I've begun a series of articles that respond to Dr Alice vonHildebrand's critique of Christopher West's work on the theology of the body (yes, I know -- that's a twisty turny path). I think she wrote as lovingly as possible, offering an important fraternal correction that may serve to deepen our understanding of this rich subject.

The founder and director of the Theology of the Body Institute, Mr West has virtually made his name synonymous with the fascinating topic, which–in this sex-saturated culture–is at the forefront of the effort to evangelize teenagers and young adults. There are some who take issue with his approach, which can be roughly grouped in two categories: those who are troubled by his language–which is couched in today’s syntax and embellished by examples from the popular, secular media; and those who are troubled by his theological approach–which lays more emphasis on the revolutionary elements of the “theology of the body” than on the “hermeneutic of continuity.”

Part One: What Purity Isn't

Part Two: Necessary Fraternal Correction

Part Three: Reaching the "Objectively Disordered"

Part Four: Custody of the Eyes

Part Five: Three Views on Theology of the Body

(Stay tuned; more to follow)

ADDENDUM: for information on how to obtain Dawn Eden's excellent thesis on this topic, go here. For Barb Nicolosi's view, go here. More concerns raised here. We will run a few more pieces on Catholic Exchange next week.

NOTA BENE: I should mention that Christopher West generously wrote the forward to my book, The Authentic Catholic Woman, for which I am deeply grateful. His words there were quite unexpected, expressing his great desire for women to heal from the wounds caused by the lies fed to them in the sexual revolution (and his sincere contrition for any part in that deception). I found his contribution touching and appropriate, given the breadth of the book. For those who wish to read it in the coming year with a book club, I am happy to send a copy of a free study guide.

Bottle vs. breast debate 2.0

A shocking commentary by the editor of a parenting magazine has proven deeply upsetting to some readers -- and highly instructive to the wider world.