The Wild Tears Fall

This essay was born in September, where so many times in that month, I saw Father Krzysztof mount the steps to the altar in his samite fiddleback, embroidered with a lush depiction of the Immaculate Conception in swirling robes of white and blue. The Scriptural verses which speak of her and the hymns dedicated to her had resounded throughout St. Clement Church, as the congregation admired the intercessor for both the weak and the strong. And even as she intercedes for us, does she not also soften many who claim to hate God? And can we of the West ever deny that devotion to her moulded the chivalry to which the best of its people yet cling? 

However, has that chivalry (whether cultivated in men or expected by women) occasionally gone too far in elevating women in general for the sake of the Virgin Mother? So far that even men of good will have given up the practice? In the rather insipid (but otherwise inoffensive) hymn, 'Gentle Woman,' there is a verse which is apt to make any member of the male 'species' roll his eyes:

'So estrogen can make you holy?' one priest wrote on his blog concerning that very line. While I agree with him concerning the puffed-up, anti-masculine sentiment the song implies, I winced at his language. Was he reducing womanhood to the hormones and chemicals that govern the characteristics of what it is physically to be female? Whether it is fitting for men to speak of their manhood in such a way is a matter that men must settle, but civilized instinct indicates that just as the reproductive organs of a woman are veiled within her flesh, so should her womanhood be veiled in discourse.


However, the flesh is fallen, and is it not wrong to put a sinful creature on a pedestal? For whether purer than man or not, she is fallen, and eaten up with her peculiar tendencies towards vice. Perhaps attendance at church is mostly made up of women, but when women take control of the liturgy, does it not often give way to hysteria, irreverence, or even spiritual prostitution? Priestesses have always been either possessed virgins or temple harlots, and they had one unifying principle: they were vessels for either gods or demons, not promoters of morality or ethics. More importantly, they were not 'givers of sacred things' as the sacerdotal title would imply. The postmodern, ahistorical attempt to revive paganism only confirms that notion.


All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore, it would seem that no human being in a yet unbeatified state is to be venerated.

Sed Contra, the Gospels do not encourage us to judge. Christian tradition is to esteem one's self as the lowest of the low, which is really the only logical thing to do, for true self-knowledge will always give us cause for improvement. A traditional Catholic justly possesses the lowest opinion of the practice of taking Holy Communion in the hand, but he may not regard the Catholic who even carelessly drops the Host as less virtuous than he. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta says that one learns humility through humiliation. Elevating others at one's own expense can be a very good practice for cultivating that virtue.

Even Aristotle, who could not have foreseen the paradoxical and supernatural demands of Christian ethics, observed that a man possessed of one vice, must sometimes adopt the practice of the opposite vice in order to rescue himself from his own disposition. Alcoholics must become teatotallers, and those who have too severly abused their sexuality may have to practice celibacy for the duration of their lives. Praxis often entails actions not directly following from our rational code in order to produce the proper balance in the soul. 



I was six years old when watching a film where the heroine was said to be able 'to tread on cobwebs without breaking them.' I was ten years old when I began reading books in which the fair maidens almost universally could laugh 'like a silvery peal of music.' 'Really?' I wondered in genuine puzzlement, 'and I thought one was doing well not to sound like a braying ass when laughing heartily.' At fourteen, I came across a novel where the lady had sweet breath even after eating fish. It was not difficult to find similar hyperbolæ regarding their lovely and irresistible characters. By the time one is a teenager though, such metaphors and descriptions are a bit ridiculuous.

One's feelings towards glorifying the feminine, as in the examples cited above, do serve to steer a girl down the path of either the lady or the feminist, and a boy, down that of the gentleman or just simply, the male. 

I turned abruptly about face from the path of feminism at age thirteen for two reasons: the horrific moral evils the movement promotes, (e.g. abortion) and the fact that the major tenet of feminism is that women ought not to be expected to behave better than men. Females would no longer be martyrs in the home, and they would certainly not provide men with the example of spiritual submission, as St. Paul instructed them to. A wife to act as her husband's gentle counsellor? His conscience? No, indeed! 

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there. _Maureen Reagan

Only the modern era could produce a movement that would proudly espouse practical and moral evils as the fruits of its labours. No, a woman often does better in the role of Pontius Pilate's wife than that of Pilate himself.

Not to throw an ad hominem spear in the direction of feminists, but it seems all too often that they never learned to gently laugh at some of those poetic exagerrations mentioned above or to appreciate their sisters to whom these sayings were applied. Bitterness that one has not been worshipped as those women were worshipped is not good ground for any kind of ideology. There is a much better route to take.

Charles Dickens noted that there is a moral beauty which 'only exists in woman': that she is capable of loving in another that which she herself has never possessed. Women who dote on their lovelier, more talented, or more virtuous friends and sisters are examples of this. That affectionate, selfless virtue contra the vice of misogynistic, female envy are the two forces that form the feminine dichotomy between those who love the old notions of exalted womanhood and those who hate it.


And what of men who refuse to put women on a pedestal? As with feminists, there is occasionally an element of anger, though it might just as often arise from indifference. 

Concerning anger, it is not seemly in a man to growl on hearing a woman being praised, and anyone bearing witness to this rancour would immediately assume one of two causes: disappointment in love or overbearing women in his family. Neither of these are worthy things on which to base one's conduct.

As to indifference in men? That is another thing, especially concerning Eros, when one accepts the tenet that only what is truly known is truly loved. Ergo, 'love is blind' is patently false. A lady professor of mine once made the case that Shakespeare's sonnet, 130, in which he rather degrades the form and demeanour of his mistress, was a beautiful expression of realistic love. 

Yet, there was not one female or male in the class bereft of an arched eyebrow. While indeed it would be folly for the Bard to have painted 'roses damask'd' in his lover's cheeks when there were none, the subjectivity of love should have moved him to like her face as it was. Have not men who had always loved sapphire eyes turned their preference to emerald orbs on falling in love with a green-eyed woman?


Leaving aside romance however, perhaps indifference is more justified on the rational scale? After all, one cannot and should not be as devoted to all people as one is to one's spouse. Why should a man rise from his chair, because a skirted creature entered the room or kiss a hand because the owner is female? Why should he curb his language or speak more delicately just because a woman is in earshot? Why is she due any of his particular homage simply because she is the daughter of that first one who was made from a rib?


The answer is that (as science has even proven and continues to prove) the differences between men and women are indeed as psychically entrenched as they are physically. Placing the two genders in the natural world, without the artificial constructions of the postmodern order, woman is still a remarkable thing. She may not be as strong as man, but she is built to endure more, both in stamina of labour and in pain. She is eminently practical and useful, and in beayty, she is the climax of the symphony of Creation. Woman is the last thing God made, and He made her from the best of matter--the flesh and bone of a rational creature. 

Moving the argument again into the civilized realm where her beauty initially inspires poetry of the giddiest (and perhaps silliest) order, woman must also take up the more mundane duties of the home: 

It takes a woman all powdered and pink 
To joyously clean out the drain in the sink 
And it takes an angel with long golden lashes 
And soft dresden fingers 
For dumping the ashes... (Hello Dolly)


There is another paradox in woman that while she may inspire abstract ideals, she is often more fond of what is concrete. At least until some modernist gets a hold of her, women are more realistic than men:

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. _G. K. Chesterton


To inspire idealism and to ground the world in realism. What better alloy could there be in the metal of any creature?


It is in such an attitude as Chesterton's, romantic rationality, that allows one to see things in truth. To see something 'in truth' is farther than the seeming 'reality' of how it is and nearer than the chimeric ideal of how it ought to be. Balancing on the slender thread of this paradox allows one to pass over the offenses of a coarse, shrewish woman and treat every female as if she were a lady--to see Dulcinea in even the coarsest concierge. 

When a man moulds his thoughts and acts in this way, he works for the defeat of extreme feminism. For he renders unto women the appreciation they are not allowed to seek. The trials and sufferings of womanhood can only find their glory in silence. Whereas men are allowed to exalt in their victories, and society pays public homage to their entrance into manhood, a girl who takes up the burdens of womanhood must discreetly pass over the details. The male sex must take the female rite of passage for granted. If it does not, the postmodern era has shown us that women who are indignant enough will degrade themselves and their sisters by dragging womanliness and all its secrets into the public eye.


Such is the necessity of chivalry in man. In woman, it cultivates the attitude that will not only lead her towards striving for sainthood, but to secure the same for the men about her. When she says, 'I must act in this way, because it is the proper sphere of my sex. I must do this humble thing, because it is not a man's province. I must bear this suffering quietly because of Eve's curse. I must bend, because I am woman, and the Lord has asked this of me,' she steps on the head of the serpent that lured our first mother from her throne.

Today is the feastday of Matka Boska Ostrobramska, which is translated as Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, but would be more literally rendered: the Mother of God of the Sharp Gate. English has a habit of diluting powerful titles with more sentimental or comfortable phrases, but this one especially perplexes me, both because of the decision to translate 'ostro' (aštra in Lithuanian, perhaps derived from the Latin 'asper') in this way, and why the Gate was called this to begin with. Having asked knowledgeable persons and having read the scant resources available, I am left to speculate; though undoubtedly a well-versed etymologist could provide me with a perfectly rational chronology of events that led to such a naming.

This past Saturday, I had opened Tolkien's The Hobbit, and the work cast its ever potent spell on me as the world of the grand, epic, and sublime clashed with that of the humble, comfortable, and simple. Poor Bilbo had not known, just as Tolkien had not yet discovered, that the universe of The Silmarillon had at last converged on that of Farmer Giles of Ham.

It was the same I believe for the then yet sleeping giant, G. K. Chesterton, on his visit to the Vilnius in Lithuania via Poland. The journalist from the land where the battles of ideas had already been fought and quite definitely concluded (as he himself discovered later) had wandered into a realm where the Faith was still a contender amongst the forces of modernism. Cultural tradition was still too vital a character to be patronized, and Bolshevism was not the agnostic, neutered pet of the drawing room, nodding by the fire, but a godless wolf panting and circling outside the gate. There was Polska, the bulwark between the new barbarity and the decadent remains of Christendom.

The still unCatholic Chesterton was driving about in Wilno with an engaging Polish lady, when he was suddenly told to stop the car on a wide open street. This woman with whom he shared a common tongue, who was well conversant in his British culture, suddenly was the emissary of a very different world, a stranger:

As we walked under the arch she said in the same colourless tone; "You take off your hat here." And then I saw the open street. It was filled with a vast crowd, all facing me; and all on their knees on the ground. It was as if someone were walking behind me; or some strange bird were hovering over my head. I faced around, and saw in the centre of the arch great windows standing open, unsealing a chamber full of gold and colours; there was a picture behind; but parts of the whole picture were moving like a puppet-show, stirring strange double memories like a dream of the bridge in the puppet-show of my childhood; and then I realised that from those shifting groups there shone and sounded the ancient magnificence of the Mass.

This was the picture he saw, though plated over with the golden robes that typically adorn beloved icons.

She is the Lady of the Sharp Gate simply because that was the name of the gate in which her protective image had been placed. But that which has a commonplace explanation may also have a deeper, and truer, extraordinary one. My name means 'lamb' in Hebrew and my surname means 'blood' in Gaelic. It was not my parent's intention to link my name with the Blood of the Lamb, but I have always had a special ardour for that devotion. Hence, the meaning of my name is a very special gratification to me.

On his visit to Vilnius, Chesterton keenly felt a cleavage between this reality and the Great Reality. The distinction between dawn and darkness is often quite sharp. It begins with that band of colour, ruddy and lemon toned, against indigo darkness and only later melts into a pleasing softness of iridescent hues.

I glance now at my own image of the icon so kindly brought me from Wilno itself. Dazzlingly resplendent in her plated gown, she leans dolefully over the upturned crescent of a silver moon, before which stands a crucifix. Her hands, crossed over her breast, cannot embrace him, as she merely looks on.

By far, it is the mose engimatic representation of Our Lady I have ever seen. Sweet, maternal, and beautiful as ever, but so distant and melancholy. Neither her hands nor eyes are turned towards her erring children, but lost in contemplation. As I probe this mysterious image with my carnal eyes, I cannot but sigh and wonder how many sharp awakenings I must endure before the Dawn finally illumines my soul.

It should be observed that true men have never feared greatness in women, even in the ones whom they have loved. While many devotees of theatre love the song, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, a delightful tune whose charm springs from the spunky clash of the sexes, it does not in anyway capture the historical relationship between Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. On the contrary, Frank understood perfectly well that Annie was a prodigy and promoted her advancement in showmanship. He was hardly a ‘swollen-headed stiff.’

G. K. Chesterton drew this distinction between the woman glorified as a demi-goddess for her greatness and the grasping woman so often put down to being a shrew by ‘old fogeys’:

No honest man dislikes the public woman. He can only dislike the political woman; an entirely different thing…. A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified--well, I only write here of the facts of natural history; and the fact is that it is this, and not publicity or importance, that hurts. (G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men: The Suffragette)

In the above excerpt one has an illustration of woman not competing with men, but being placed in a position of power and yielding to exercise it for the greater good. This is her duty and her glory, yet it is passive. What is the influence that woman may seek actively? The great religious educator, Mother Janet Erskine Stuart wrote of it thus:

The only way to govern is to love…this is a woman’s order and must be governed in a woman’s way—by the heart not by logic. The heart is the mainspring of a woman’s government. Therefore, anything that takes nearer to the heart of people is our great power. Unselfishness and love are our levers.

There are petty-minded, small men in this world that do feel threatened by women. These would be flawed men, but what member of humanity is not flawed? And are women without spiritual blemish? Hardly. This fact has shown itself in the way ‘Women’s Liberation’ has campaigned for its goals.

First, what have they demanded? Rights. Do they speak of duties? No. Yet, rights do not exist where there are no duties. A woman’s right to be respected necessitates a man’s duty to respect. However, feminists insisted on only half of this reality. Yes, they demanded rights and esteem with a hazy sort of logic, wishing to be put on what they saw as equal terms with men, arguing from commonality of species and brushing aside differences in gender. It never occurred to them to consider the reasons certain fences had been erected before tearing them down, or if differences in gender did sometimes entail differences in duties, and consequentially, in rights.

When suffragettes indecorously chained themselves to fence posts (not that being indecorous is always wrong), they did not stop to think what a vote even was or whether perhaps a married woman should be contented with her husband having one vote for the entire family.

‘But a woman is not a mute appendage of her husband!’ Rightfully so! However, is the vote merely an expression of one’s personal opinion? Is it really as trivial as preferring blue stripes to green, apples to oranges, or hiking to horseback-riding? Or is it as personal as religious affiliation, philosophical disposition, or artistic taste? By all means then, if a political vote is just an expression of one’s identity, then women ought to have it, and so should her children, too by the way. One cannot argue against completely universal suffrage, if the ability to take part in a ballot represents one’s dignity as a human being. The ill-informed, the criminal, and the extremely young ought to have a vote, as well, if the quality of humanity is the basis for this entitlement.

I am not a democrat by any means, but I at least concede that if a democracy is to work, then the ballot ought to be taken seriously. A nation’s people ought to have some say in the determination of their country, and this ought not to be a matter of personal prejudice but of a soul’s conviction of what is right.

A husband and wife may beg to differ on the superiority of Italian or Russian opera, but they should be united on the future they wish for their children. The more serious the issue, the more it determines the fate of their country, the more a man and his wife must be united if their household is to have any sort of unity and happiness. In such a case, having two votes is indeed superfluous. As to common, single women? Well, frankly, I’m not so sure that common, single men should even be able to vote. He that has no stake in a nation’s future is not likely to make sagacious choices.

Thus, a matter feminists confused for discrimination on the basis of gender, was actually the question of a form of government (true democracy) and its failure to succeed against the onslaught of another (mercantile aristocracy). Other issues for which women campaigned fail to bear the scrutiny of logic as well.

Second, just as Women’s Liberation proponents have not considered the full extent of what they demand, they have not thought of the rippling effects of getting what they want. E.g., they see that the other gender is able to copulate as it pleases without worrying about the burden of a child, and that it may often receive the approbation of other male peers after sexual exploits (never mind how the old societies looked down on such seducers). Infidelity on a man’s part seems easier as well, and civilization has often been more inclined to overlook it, or in the cases of polygamous societies, indulge it.

Without even considering the fact that women are more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases or that a woman’s heart is not easily polyandrous (as science can virtually demonstrate with its developing research on oxytocin), feminists declared that they wanted the same liberties as rakes and wanted them immediately. They only saw one stumbling block—the inconvenience of the miracle of life. Abortion and contraceptives then had to be requirements in their campaign, and the life of another human being was laid on the altar to female appetite.
Ironically, the sort of abusive males that created the ‘need’ for this sort of escape could not have been more pleased with this development. Males are frequently the ones dropping the mothers of their children off at abortion mills to ‘have it taken care of.’ Males also engineered the pill, and sacrificed women’s lives via experimentation to do so. An equivalent of the birth control pill for men was tested, with the effect of shrinking the subject’s maleness; experiments here ceased immediately. Did such doctors evince any concern for women’s welfare here?

In a patriarchal system, a father is at least held to accountability, yet instead of declaring war on the behaviour that demeaned women and striving to revive chivalry and paternity, feminists actually chose to imitate the men that had abused them. Instead of insisting on premarital abstinence and that husbands strive for fidelity, they lobbied for the means to behave in the same way. It didn’t matter how many lives got in the way, or even whether those lives were female. The death toll is still mounting by the tens of millions, and due to the widespread .practice of gender selective abortion, most of those victims are female.

Summarising the problems of the Women’s Liberation movement thus far: first, women did not even understand the things they were demanding. Second, they evinced extreme selfishness in not giving a mongrel’s bark for the consequences of the revolution they were bringing on. Now for the third, 'Woman’s Liberation' was in effect an act of treachery against mankind—mankind in the very literal sense that she declared war on men and women.

Note, I do not say war on males, but war on men. It was not that these women wished vile seducers and oppressors to be punished, but that they yearned for the ability to play the same games.

‘I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.’ _Maureen Reagan.

Well, Ms. Reagan, be glad and rejoice, for there isn’t much competence or compassion in the foremost women holding office at all. Instead of seeking to bring that which lacked in the masculine gender up to the standards of the feminine, feminists have laid us all low.