feminine-genius

The Cosby Fallout

All rape is reprehensible, and yet there's something about the element of hypocrisy in the Cosby story that adds to the indignity -- and the problem is two-fold. First. there is the toxicity of our depraved celebrity culture; and second, the unfortunate damage cast upon fatherhood, which cannot avoid taking the hit in this unfolding saga, because the story involves one of the few television shows that highlighted a strong, dedicated, and likeable dad.

First, we must remember that we're at the stage of allegations:

Comedian Bill Cosby spoke out against a wave of sexual assault allegations but told a Florida publication he does not have to "answer to innuendos." Cosby, 77, spoke to the newspaper Florida Today on Friday, before performing his comedy routine at a theater in Melbourne, Florida. The comedian has refused to address questions about allegations made by a number of women who said he forced himself on them sexually, with some accusing him of drugging them first.

Cosby received a standing ovation at the start of his 90-minute show in Melbourne.

True enough, his point is valid, but the fact that presently the number of women stands at sixteen gives one pause, and the consistency in their various accounts underscores the plausibility of the charges. That said, let's consider the setting in which such a thing was able to unfold:

Long before there was a Dr. Cliff Huxtable, before rumpled sweaters and a collective anointing as America’s dad, Bill Cosby was magnified a hundredfold in the eyes of the young models and actresses he pulled into his orbit. For them, he embodied the hippest of the 1960s and ’70s Hollywood scene, a mega-star with the power to make somebodies out of nobodies.

He partied with Hugh Hefner and was a regular at the magazine mogul’s Playboy Mansion bacchanals. He co-owned a restaurant and hit the hottest clubs. He sizzled.

Those wild, largely forgotten days clash with the avuncular image that has been Cosby’s most enduring impression on American culture. And they have been jarringly cast in a wholly different light as a torrent of women have told — and in some cases retold — graphic, highly detailed stories of alleged abuse by Cosby.

So there is a particular culture that surrounds a "mega-star," which has a way of short-circuiting prudence and common sense. People lose their heads in these situations because we make our entertainers larger than life. The last 30 years have also seen an unraveling of virtue and an increase in promiscuity -- so that not only do girls and women find it nearly impossible to draw a conventional line concerning chastity (that line all but disappeared decades ago) but they are loathe even to complain in these situations: "Sex with Bill Cosby -- what's the problem!?"

The confusion on the personal level is exacerbated by the popular culture, which bows to the ridiculous demands of such stars, undermines the dignity of the human person, dismisses chastity as a good, and loves a manufactured image (even knowing deep down that they are probably not accurate).

Ross Douthat hit the nail on the head this column:

Show me what a culture values, prizes, puts on a pedestal, and I’ll tell you who is likely to get away with rape. In Catholic Boston or Catholic Ireland, that meant men robed in the vestments of the church. In Hollywood and the wider culture industry, it has often meant the famous and talented, from Roman Polanski to the BBC’s Jimmy Savile, robed in the authority of their celebrity and art. And in Rotherham, it meant men whose ethnic and religious background made them seem politically untouchable, and whose victims belonged to a class that liberal and conservative elements in British society regard with condescension or contempt.

The point is that as a society changes, so do the paths through which evil enters in, the prejudices and blind spots it exploits.

In all of his examples (and we could add the sports culture with its own demons), we find abuse victims that couldn't get a hearing -- many times for years on end -- until the prevailing myth was either untenable or ready to be ditched. So here we are, and the alleged victims of Cosby are being heard, and yet that means that one of the entertainment industry's few voices for fatherhood is forever tarnished. Cliff Huxtable is already gone from the list of reruns on television. And those who do sit through the old shows wherever they are found will have a nagging voice in their heads: He's a fraud! He's a bully!

This is where the feminists and the deconstructionists will gain the most traction. Marriage and fatherhood, in their view, are constructs predicated on a foundational "lie" (that men and women were created to collaborate on a healthy, shared project called the Traditional Family). From Archie Bunker forward, they have tried to poison the well, showing that marriage is degrading to women and fatherhood a masque for sexism and misogyny. The Cosby Show was a breath fresh air, with the emotional health of all its characters, and particularly the virtues exhibited by Dr Cliff Huxtable -- as hardworking doctor, faithful husband (and son), and devoted dad.

As one of the founders of feminist theology notes, "Conversion from sexism means both freeing oneself from the ideologies and roles of patriarchy and also struggling to liberate social structures from these patterns" (p. 201). And one of her modern-day disciples reminds us:

I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it (Cornel West).

And lest one give in to confusion, there is a difference between patriarchy (which is simply a culture founded on fatherhood) and misogyny (which is the abuse of male power). No matter, it is all the same in the post-modern world, and the demise of role model Cliff Huxtable only accelerates the moral chaos.

While I would like to think that justice is finally being served, there may be a darker element at work. Whether or not the suffering of these women really matters, it may be that Cosby is now considered dispensable because Dr Huxtable-as-role-model is seen as an abiding irritant* that must be purged from the popular culture. Bill Cosby's behaviour has provided the means, although he probably never imagined how his personal demons would smear the face of fatherhood itself.

* another similar irritant was eradicated with this unfortunate disclosure earlier this year.

Utterly inspiring!

If the world has you down, take a few minutes at least to watch the first of these Humanum videos:

 

There are six in all (found here) -- beautifully written, compellingly filmed, and grounded in eternal truths. If we simply live this reality, all will be well.

Where are the icons?

Jen Fulwiler and I are both converts, and for some reason this particular week, we both referenced our grandmothers as reminders of how the lives of women have changed -- and not for the better. In her reflection on Humanae Vitae, she notes:

I pulled up another stack of glossy rags and pushed them around my bed so that I could see all the covers at once. Something I had always wondered, but had never articulated, came to the forefront of my mind:

When, exactly, did the standard of beauty become a dictate that we must all look like Barbie dolls?

When I saw pictures of my ancestors, the women always looked beautiful, but in a way that didn’t overwhelm the senses with their physical beauty alone. The faded photographs of my grandmothers and their grandmothers showed clothing styles that left some attention for their faces, that didn’t detract from the subtleties of their expressions. The draping of the material smoothed over details, so that a few extra pounds could be smoothed into graceful curves.

Now, a century and a half later, society says a woman can hardly consider herself truly beautiful without a tight abdomen, slender physique, wrinkle-free face and, even, to quote one of the magazines in front of me, “ultra-sexy upper arms.” Upper arms? Did our ear canals now have to be sexy, too?

This was not a standard of beauty built on respect for women. In fact, it seemed like an outlook spawned by a society that demanded that women make themselves objects for men’s pleasure.

And when I considered when the standard of beauty began to change, I realized that it was right around the time that everyone started using contraception. Pope Paul VI wouldn’t have been surprised.

Paul VI was precisely right in saying that the acceptance of artificial birth control would negatively impact marriages and undermine respect for women. I note that in my latest column as well:

What are those doctrines that are so challenging? The Church teaches — and has always taught — that one reserves sexual intimacy for marriage, and that once married one stays married. Our grandmothers would have been distressed to know that these ideas were controversial, so the question must be: “What has changed in the fifty years since our grandmothers’ generation?”

In a nutshell, the sexual revolution wreaked its havoc on the world, making intimacy sterile and vows hollow. The ability to separate sex from babies shifted the fundamental meaning of the sexual embrace from a commitment with consequences to a frivolous pastime. Après ça, le deluge.

From that initial question, two follow. The first is, “Are these changes for the good?” Any mere glance at the sociological data in the last thirty years would indicate a firm No. Divorce rates have skyrocketed, sexually-transmitted diseases have multiplied, abortions have proliferated, fatherless children are ubiquitous and the promiscuity trends among children are shocking. While there is a single-mindedness among those who separate the actions of any individual from the wider drift of culture, prudent people cannot ignore the connections in these affairs. Those who care about children must acknowledge that their lives do not benefit from the disintegration of the family that has accrued in the last fifty years.

The second question is, “Should the Church follow the trajectory of the world?” This is where most of the confusion lies, because the population that has become accustomed to current trends has no collective memory of another way of life. In the 1992 court case, “Planned Parenthood vs. Casey,” the decision given noted that people “for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” Although Catholics have cause to deplore the decision, which rejected various proposed restrictions on abortion, the ruling indeed distilled the fundamental mindset of our age: sterile, uncommitted intimacy is sacrosanct.

Thankfully, most of us can remember our grandmothers' generation -- but that reality is morphing quickly, with the emerging generation detached from their traditional forebears at astounding rates. That means that WE must hold fast, keep the truth close to our hearts, and BE the icons that the world so desperately needs. Words on a page are one thing, homilies and exortations another, but the truth enfleshed in the lives of faithful people are most helpful.

And of course, enfolding all of us is God's grace -- pray for one another and trust that God will bring the truth to light!

Great! "Illumination and Support"

This is the most helpful address I've seen so far at the Synod:

Arturo and Hermelinda As Zamberline, married for 41 years with three children, addressed the Synod during the morning session Oct. 9. The designated subject for the session was the "pastoral challenges concerning an openness to life."

"We must admit without fear that many Catholic couples, even those who seek to live their marriage seriously, do not feel obligated to use only the natural methods" of birth control condoned by the Church, said the Zamberlines, leaders in their country of an international Catholic movement, Teams of Our Lady. "We must add that generally they are not questioned by their confessors" on the subject.

The Zamberlines, who are participating in the Synod as non-voting auditors, said the "rhythm of life" today makes it difficult to find time to learn natural methods of family planning, which they said have acquired an "unjust reputation of being unreliable," because they are badly explained and thus badly practised.

"The great majority of couples do not reject the use of contraceptive methods. In general, they do not consider them a moral problem," the Zamberlines said.

The Brazilian couple concluded with an appeal to the Pope and the Synod to help Catholics understand and obey Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI that affirmed Church teaching against contraception.

"If couples, as well as clergy, could at least find illumination and support, that would already be a great encouragement! Often, contradictory advice only aggravates their confusion. We ask, may the magisterium hasten to give priests and faithful the major lines of a pastoral teaching program to help people adopt and observe the principles laid out in Humanae Vitae," the Zamberlines said.

In remarks introducing the couple to the assembly, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris, one of three Synod presidents appointed by the Pope, said Catholic couples "often do not believe that the use of contraceptive methods is a sin and therefore they tend not to speak of them in confession and so they receive Communion untroubled."

"It is necessary to encourage a mentality of openness to life to thwart the contraceptive mentality and the spread of an individualist anthropological model that in certain countries has led to a strong demographic drop whose social and human consequences are not sufficiently considered today," the cardinal said.

This address outlines clear and concise challenges:

• natural methods of spacing children are not being taught;
• couples don't know that contracepting is a serious sin;
• a mentality has accrued that separates married love from its natural fruitfulness.

Fine -- that's one of the primary reasons for this Synod -- to see how mammon has confused the faithful, who are called to be lights amidst the darkness. Too  much of that confusion has seeped into the Church, and it must be resisted with the light of Christ. As I note in my latest column (not yet online):

Scripture makes clear that the Church cannot bow to secular conventions, as Saint Paul cautioned: “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2) or as Chesterton pithily remarked, “those who marry the spirit of this age will find themselves widows in the next.” So what do we do for a generation that insists that Church teaching is too demanding, uncharitable, and unlivable? We reject capitulation and insist on that transformation which makes all things possible.

Just as a parent doesn’t coddle a child who finds algebra “impossibly hard,” the Church should lovingly but firmly explain the foundational principles that make authentic chastity entirely possible. Just as reviewing the groundwork for equations—the nature of constants and variables—prepares a student for success in math, reminding the faithful about divinely revealed truth and God’s passionate love for humanity will allow them to “renew their minds” according to his purpose. And in that equation, while there is nothing so variable as the whims of man to live in a world of his own making, there is nothing so constant as divine grace which restores him to reality, drawing him back to the love that will set him free.

My prayer is that the Synod proposes concrete ways to "illuminate and support" married couples so that they can live the fullness of their vocation, and provide inspiration to those who want something more than what the world offers. Illuminate the darkness, support the good, and remind people of their inherent dignity!

UNICEF and child brides

A report from UNICEF was released today, entitled "Ending Child Marriage: Progress and Prospects," revealing that 700 million marriages worldwide involved girls under the age of 18, and of those, about 250 million of the girls were under 15. (Comparably, about 2% of boys were married under the age of 15, meaning that many these girls are married to considerably older men.)

One-third of the married girls are from India, roughly half are from South Asia, and the bulk of the rest are in Africa. In proportion to their own populations, the ten most culpable countries are:

• Niger (77%)
• Bengladesh (74%)
• Chad (69%)
• Mali (61%)
• CAR (60%)
• India (58%)
• Guinea (58%)
• Ethiopia (58%)
• Burkhina Faso (52%)
• Nepal (52%)

Contributing factors include culture, poverty, dowry laws, and lack of access to education or economic independence. The report studiously avoids explaining what the foundations of these "cultures" might be, since there's no reference to religious traditions, which are usually powerful indicators.

The report summarises:

Girls who marry are not only denied their childhood. They are often socially isolated -- cut off from family and friends and other sources of support -- with limited opportunities for education and employment. Households typically make decisions about girls' school and marriage jointly, not sequentially, and education tends to lose out. Accordingly, lower levels of education are found among women who married in childrhood. In Malawi, for instance, nearly two thirds of women with no formal education were child brides compared to 5 per cent of women who attended secondary school or higher levels of education.

Child brides are often unable to effectively negotiate safer sex, leaving themselves vulnerable to sexually transimitted infections , including HIV, along with early pregnancy. The pressure to become pregnant once married can be intense, and child brides typically end up having many children to care for while still young. In Nepal, for example, over one third of women aged 20 to 24 who married before their 15th birthday had three or more children compared to 1 per cent of women who married as adults. Child brides are also less likely to receive proper medical care while pregnant, In countries including Bengladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Niger, women who married as adults were at least twice as likely to have delivered their most recent paby in a health facility compared to women who married before age 15. This, along with the fact that girls are not physically mature enough to give birth, places both mothers and their babies at risk.

Since the child brides who survive pregnancy have abundant children, and their daughters themselves are married young, the number of overall child brides is increasing rapidly (even when small inroads are made to discourage the parents).  The Catholic response is not to discourage marriage or the child-bearing inherent to that vocation, but to expand edcuational opportunities for girls, delay marriage until it is safer, and to introduce and support the idea that marriage is a partnership that flourishes when mutual respect is possible.

Mixed bag of ideas

This article makes some excellent points, and ignores some key factors in the question about why baby boomers have the highest divorce rates -- higher even than the generation that followed them:

Boomers' unique social history may make them more divorce-prone than other groups. Why? Baby boomers, those 79 million born roughly between 1945 and 1964, are a specific cohort because of the conditions and events that they both experienced and, sometimes, created. Boomers came of age as relatively pampered children of a great postwar economy. With their adolescent disrespect for the past and their theme of "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," they pushed against the restrictive conventions of social life their parents more or less had accepted...

As young adults, large numbers of them were part of the civil rights, anti-war, gay rights and women's movements. Books and magazine articles in their time attacked (and counterattacked) traditional gender roles -- and the institution of marriage and its traditions.

Boomer women experienced more recreational sex and more sex partners than women in previous generations. New job opportunities and careers helped create the changes in household formation (such as who was or wasn't home during the day, who did less or more housework, and who wanted more or less sex) that disrupted traditional marriage.

As a result, the boomers experienced decades of relationship innovation, creating cultural confusion about whether marriage was necessary, and what made an excellent -- or even adequate -- marriage. As boomer men and women wavered between choosing self-fulfillment over older traditions of duty, loyalty and lifetime marriage at any cost, the institution of marriage became, over time, more of a voluntary association than a predictably permanent one.

All very true. They rejected the traditions that they inherited (and which created the comfortable world in which they lived) and preferred innovation. 

Then there is this observation, which explains SO much:

They are fighting fiercely to remain youthful, to stay employed and/or passionately engaged with life, sexually vibrant (particularly with the help of new medical interventions) and regard their 50s and 60s as every bit the opportunity for love and sexual attraction that their 20s and 30s were.

Yes, all those awkward ads are targeting baby boomers for these very reasons. They rejected the normal boundaries all those years, and even now refuse to accept that nature says slow down.

Ah well, now we come to what's missing. It's obvious that the parents of the baby boomers gave them so much: stable homes, a good education, material comfort, opportunities, etc. But what they didn't give them was faith. The very faith that sustained their parents and grand-parents through two horrid world wars, a depression, and sometimes very trying family dynamics was evidently not worth passing along, rather they thought that mammon alone could give them what they needed. 

Most likely, a large number did try to explain virtue, but that message was lost in the cacophany of materialism and innovation. And that leads to the next missing piece: contraception. Without a firm grounding in religious doctrine (why chastity is essential) there were fewer and fewer visible contraindications to promiscuity. They engaged in promiscuity because they could -- the chance of pregnancy was significantly diminished -- and naturally the decisions that flowed from such imprudence were highly self-destructive.

So with no allusion to faith or virtue, what is the author's conclusion? She believes that the younger generation will do much better because they know how much suffering broken families cause, they marry later, they are more economically sophisticated, and they live together at far higher rates -- which is supposed to be some sort of silver bullet to the divorce monster. Tragically. Misguided.

The next generation is far less capable of life-long commitment, they are less family-oriented, they don't see marriage as integrally related to children, they have fewer children overall, cohabitation actually contributes to a far higher divorce rate should the couple move to the altar, and there are fewer role models and sources of reliable advice should they marry and encounter difficulties. And most importantly, without sacramental unions, the graces necessary to carry a couple through the challenges of a life-long union simply aren't available. In short, many of them are simply walking wounded -- the casualties of their parents' cherished "innovations." 

Since the source for the article is CNN, one wasn't expecting to find the wisdom of Solomon, but the inability to read even the most basic tea leaves is discouraging. A reliable diagnosis of such cultural crises is essential, but despite the interesting start, this case the author comes up woefully short. 

Do we want our mothers' lives? Heck no!

So say the Generation Y ladies polled by this [award winning!] writer: 

Essentially, my life is very different from my mother’s, and I do feel like a bit of a child in comparison ... But am I unhappy as a result? Not at all – I have a lot of time and freedom too, and I love that. I also feel like I’m in control of my life ... I’ve travelled more than my mum had at my age, I’ve been able to take my career in any impractical direction I’ve wanted to because I’ve never had to support anyone else. Every decision I make about my life is mine to make alone.

Does this make me a selfish woman child with a Peter Pan complex? Absolutely, but it’s ever so much fun.

She outlines in broad detail all the milestones that her mother had accomplished at her age, explaining how none of those are manageable today. She begins:

I’m writing this in bed, in the flat I share with my friend, even though it’s 1pm on a weekday. I’ve got no man, no babies and a freelance career that allows me to live like a student, should I choose to. Invariably, I do.

I’m 30 and by the time my mother was my age, she was married with two children and a mortgage, and was working a 60-hour week in a highly driven, corporate environment. In short, by 30 she was a fully-fledged grown up – a woman.

Meanwhile, I’m still floundering somewhere between a girl and womanhood - staying up too late, sleeping in too late, powering through my increasingly brutal weekday hangovers with berroccas and bacon sandwiches.

She is a good writer, expressing her situation honestly, and explaining to us that the culture that she's inherited has changed the social landscape forever. It's definitely worth the time it takes to read it.

Believe me, I have been imagining that it was the men who didn't want to get married. Reading this (an eye-opener!) I see that young men and women are sharing the "ambivalence" tango, if you know what I mean.

"A disgrace for the whole of Egypt"

Another horrific story emblematic of a widespread problem in Egypt. Mary Abdelmassih writes:

(AINA) -- Hundreds of Christian Egyptian girls having been abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. But the case of 14 year old Sarah has become symbolic, bringing to confrontation Muslims groups, whose members are implicated in the kidnappings, and the Coptic Church and human rights organizations.

On Sunday, September 30 Sarah Ishaq Abdelmalek, born on August 1, 1998 in the town of el-Dabaa, 130 kilometers from Mersa Matrouh, was on her way to school with her cousin Miriam, when they stopped at a bookshop. Miriam went ahead of Sarah to school, leaving Sarah behind. Sarah never made it to school and no one has seen her since then. Her father was hesitant at first to contact the authorities for fear of harm to his family and his other children by the Salafi Muslims, who have a large presence and influence in Mersa Matrouh and Alexandria. He finally filed a report with the police on October 20, accusing 27 year old bookshop keeper and Salafist Mahmoud Abu Zied Abdel Gawwad, a married man and father of children, of abducting Sarah and marrying her against her will (AINA 11-2-2012).

"Sarah was smuggled across the borders to Libya with the help of the Interior Ministry," said Ebram Louis, founder of the Coptic non-governmental organization Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance (AVAED), which handles cases of abducted Coptic minors. Louis blamed the interior ministry for all the disappearances of Coptic minors, saying the ministry colludes with the Muslims.

The recently elected Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II said the kidnapping and forced conversion of Sarah is a "disgrace for the whole of Egypt." During a meeting with a delegation of the Journalists Syndicate Council at Anba Bishoy Monastery in Wadi Natrunon on November 12, he said "Can any family accept the kidnapping of their daughter and her forced conversion?"

The growing fears over kidnapping are leading many Christian families to pull their girls from school, which is a wider unfortunate effect of the policy. The fact that the authorities turn a blind eye to this means that Christians can never expect justice, girls can never feel safe, and that Islam allows a bizarre underpinning to marriage: namely that unions can be based on coercion and duplicity. 

In a statement, Salafist Front made clear that they will not hand over Sarah under any circumstances. They claim that "When we take up the issue of the girl Sarah, our response is purely in terms of her human rights." Their spokesman, Khaled el Masry, said that once a girl has embraced Islam she has no Christian guardian and can therefore get married without consent.

Age is also a factor, since she is 14, but that's been discussed here and here. Please pray for Sarah, her family, and all those in captivity -- and spread the word.