Showing posts with label Obedience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obedience. Show all posts
Thursday, December 8, 2011
12:00 AM
A
Sororal Warning to Fellow Thomists: This rather anecdotal post delves
into matters almost entirely consisting of poetic knowledge, relying on
intuition and immediate appeals to common sense often bereft of
syllogisms. May produce eye-rolling and groans in many Aristotelians.
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:
Blessed are you among women
Blessed in turn all women too
'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.
Does this argument then justify idealizing the 'fair sex'? Either physically or spiritually? Alas, now one must delve into the mucky world of experience and instances.
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.
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Thursday, October 13, 2011
I am by your side; I am keeping watch.
At least I hope I speak that truthfully. When we were children studying the history of vile deeds, I know we all asked ourselves how common, ordinary people no different from us in essentials, did--without dissent--deeds that most individuals would never contemplate for a moment. Genocide, rape, enslavement, apostasy.
One of the most chilling moments in the film Beyond the Gates, a vivid recounting of the atrocity of Rwanda, is when the English teacher at a religious school sees one of his Hutu friends after the blood bath has begun. He has known this man for some time; this person even worked for the church to which the school is connected. When the Englishman sees him again after the ethnic cleansing has begun, the man is covered with blood and wielding a machete. Even with the grace of the sacraments, he turned to unspeakable evil.
Will most always be united with grace. While God must always reach out for us, while we can do nothing of ourselves, we must choose to wake when He calls. A sort of spiritual drowsiness, a deliberate blindness, a surrender of one's reason and volition to a stronger agent is the only thing that can account for the Satanic manipulation of whole peoples. It is strange how often we choke on the submission due to God, yet we render it unto Lucifer quite readily. And all because he presents the act in the form of a bargain, and man thinks he retains his dignity merely because he got something for his soul.
Degenerate evil is fast becoming the theme of our day, and the call for a rescue against our bellicose animosity towards one another has become the anthem even of those who do not believe:
We must be awake! It is hard, especially in this epoch of multitudinous distractions, and even the five wise virgins of the parable dozed while waiting for the Bridegroom. We have drifted off ourselves, but now we must right our course.
The first step of waking is to open our eyes. Every one has talked with that friend who said, 'Of course, I'm listening to you...I'm just resting my eyes.' Indeed. She was soon napping after saying that. When we wake in the morning we open our eyes and draw the curtains immediately, letting the sun's light dispel our bodily lethargy. Well, what is the light of the soul?
Wisdom is the universal answer, but who is she? And why has her patronage not protected many purportedly wise men from committing diabolical acts? A brilliant musical scholar, Molly Gustin (who strove to show how right reason was wed with good music), was once explaining why the worst music was always made by the educated man. Only scholars produced atonal abominations after all. She said that their education, willfully twisted, had snuffed out the light of truth that a folk musician or even a rocker still retains in his natural state: 'You have to go the university and became an intellectual in order to be perverted.' she gleefully teased her students.
So both the simple brute and the erudite ninny may be drowsing in moral torpitude. Then who is Wisdom, and where may we find her? How can we obtain her when she is found?
Well, the man who has truly awakened himself in mind, heart, and soul, will first say that wisdom cannot be obtained. Remember the ancient image of Wisdom as Athena. She is an armoured woman, and she would skewer any mortal that dared to make her his slave. You bear her yoke; she does not bear yours. The Renaissance made man 'the measure of all things', and until that error is unlearned, we cannot even hope to begin the journey to the light.
And in the multitude of the elect she shall have praise, and among the blessed she shall be blessed, saying: I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. (Ecclesiasticus XXIV:4-11)
Humility is the prequisite condition for receiving wisdom. Without it, we may gain knowledge, but will not otherwise profit from any study. For proud creatures, such as fallen human beings, humility has always been hard, but at least it was properly held as a virtue in many creeds and cultures of the past. The postmodern First World however has thoroughly rejected meekness in all its forms, particularly where it concerns feminine-like submission.
The idea of femininity in a position of governance is a concept not to be countenanced by the movers of our times, be they men or women. 'Feminists' did the world a great injustice in choosing to agree with the apostatized West that femininity was of no value and that it was only in imitating man, woman could achieve real worth.
The Catholic neurologist and psychiatrist, Karl Stern, explained the problem thus:
The problem of activism--a lack of balance between action and contemplation--is said to be characteristic of our time...Now whenever we psychiatrists have an opportunity to observe this kind of person as a patient, we find at the bottom of it all a maternal conflict and a rejection of the feminine. (Stern, The Flight from Woman, Chapter I: Introduction)
A 'maternal' conflict. And what is the maternal conflict of our age? Whose motherly voice have we refused to hear? What enlightenment have we refused from fair Wisdom?
Either one believes in a thing, or one does not, so rather than attempting to set the supports for a bridge in the abyss, I shall try to leap it.
It has been ninety-four years now today that we, both the low and the high of humanity, have chosen to ignore the requests of the Lady of Fatima. That non-Catholics have done so is understandable (even with the well-documented miracle that occurred in Cova de Iria, Portugal on this day in 1917). But that Churchmen and the faithful have done so? Granted, one is not obliged to believe in private revelation. One is also not obliged to exercise his body, illumine his mind, or love from the heart in order to stay alive, but such lack of exertion is generally frowned upon by mankind in general.
So what is one to say of the actions of the Vicar of Christ in 1960 in refusing the request of Fatima? Well, nothing in fact. It is impossible to pronounce on the plans of the Lord's anointed, for there is no way of knowing what instruction he might have received from the Holy Spirit. We have never sat in the Chair of Peter. Yet, as we are meant to pray for the Pontiff, we must be alert in some way to what duties he may have to perform. It is necessary for us to know when to double our mortifications for his sake, to know when the lone, white-robbed figure most earnestly needs our prayers to strengthen his fortitude. In that sense, while we may draw no conclusions, we must to some extent ruminate about the duties of a pontificate.
Now in 1962, a certain spirit was about to be unleashed upon the world from the Roman Catholic Church, and we have come to call it the 'Spirit of Vatican II.' When someone finds the good fruits of that spirit, they must write of it. Until then, the faithful will suffer from its effects (whether consciously or no), and those outside the Faith will see it as a sign of the Church's eventual collapse.
Papa Roncalli of course did not envision such an effect from his Council. Father Malachi Martin, in spite of what that priest's detractors have said, believed completely in Pope John XXIII's good intentions and wrote this of the kindly pope:
...May...during the second session of the Council. By then, Pope John knew that the Council was out of his control; his agenda for a deep renewal of activist faith in the Church had been set on a course the Pontiff had not foreseen, and it would serve someone else's agenda instead. And he also knew that he would have no time to alter that fact. One June 3, Angelo Roncalli died in his faith and his regrets. (The Keys of This Blood, Book II: The Geopolitics of Faith, Chapter XXX: Papal Training Ground: Under the Sign of Solidarność)
One particular regret may have reached as far back as 1960, when the behest of Our Lady, penned by the hand of a nun who had been a simple shepherdess, was refused by His Holiness. Whether that is true, it must have struck the Pope as very strange with the Polish Primate, Stefan Wyszyński, later approached him with a request bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Madonna's in the very midst of the Second Vatican Council.
Mainly...Wyszyński wanted to urge upon Pope John that he dedicate the Council, the bishops of the Church, and the laity of the world, whose servants they were, to the same bond of servitude to Mary that the Cardinal was preparing in Poland...
...it was nonetheless widely known by now that Mary had called for dedication of more or less the same kind Wyszyński was urging on Papa Roncalli; and that she had apparently done so for more or less the same georeligious and geopolitical reasons that had motivated Wyszyński.
...Roncalli listened with indulgence and interest...and admitted that if he had heard Wyszyński out before he had made and implemented his decision, he might have acted differently. But his attitude to Wyszyński's urgings was the same as it had been when he had first read the secret instructions of Fatima in 1960...was that this time ''our time as Pope'' was not the time for such an act of dedication. Had the Cardinal been privy to the full contents of the ''three Fatima secrets," he might have wondered if there would be another time. (ibid.)
The heads of great men have of late not steered the barque of the world very well. Perhaps, it is time the Immaculate Heart of the Woman Clothed with the Sun took the helm, and we might begin to cede control to her in honouring this day and the bidding connected with it: pray the rosary.
Monday, April 11, 2011
No one who loves Paradise Lost has ever been able to show me any worth in that work. Was it beautifully written? Yes, and Nazis were well dressed. But poetry is meant to illumine as well as to delight, and the occasionally mad ramblings of Blake and the thoroughly bitter words of Pullman show clearly that the fruit of Milton's tree is indeed death.
There is no way of knowing if Milton would be pleased by his legacy or not. I usually respect the author's word by taking him to mean what he says; I also, as a rule, credit him with gaining the result from his readers that he intended. In Milton's case, those two things contradict one another.
Concerning what the author said, Milton hated the Roman Catholic Church. Like many Puritans, he despised her beauty, her learning, her history, and all her great works, as well as her popery and dogma. One way to discredit a thing one hates is to link it with that which everyone hates. If a roommate wishes me to stop playing Wagner in my room, then she is likely to say: 'You know he was Hitler's favourite composer, right?' And the mention of that murderer's name does make it difficult for me to roll my eyes at her lack of taste.
So if one loves heroic ideals, splendour in dress and architecture, admires personal ambition which leads to excellence, or any other thing produced from the womb of the Earth, then it isn't a horrible strategy to say such things have their roots in Hell itself.
There is one problem, Milton was so contra natura that what he called evil, any other man (without his religious bias) would call good. And these natural goods, for natural men, overpowered even the taint of diabolic association. The superbly opulent, glittering conclave of the demons in his Paradise Lost, garbed in crimson like cardinals and uttering heroic speeches, their will to strive for greatness even in the face of the impossible, even Satan's unrequited infatuation with Eve, all serve to seduce the souls reading Milton's work. I have never met a soul who did not sympathize with Prometheus against Zeus. Putting the devil in the former's place therefore does not seem like sound pedagogy for Puritan doctrine.
Perhaps this early confusion of sympathies was intended by Milton, who intended to dispel it by the coming of the angels and God, making the reader ashamed of his earlier, wordly attachment. But Milton's God is unlikable and even unimpressive. His angels are dull, promiscuous creatures (though they still manage to blush), and one finishes the book still considering Satan to be the tragic hero.
Dante showed in his immemorial poetry that the Non Serviam of Lucifer buried the rebel as a prisoner of ice in
his own Hell, drooling and munching the bodies of traitors. He is pathetic, isolated, and hateful for all eternity. The Non Serviam of Milton's Satan may have earned him banishment from Heaven, but it is the kind of noble banishment reflected in the lyrics of Bonnie Dundee:And awa tae the hills, tae the lee and the rocks
Ere I own a userper I'll couch with the fox
So tremble false whigs in the mid'st o' yer glee
For ye've no seen the last o' my bonnets and me
Like the noble Jacobites, the pious White Russians, or Joss Whedon's iron-willed Browncoats, the fallen angels of Milton may say the same of what they fought for as Malcolm Reynolds said of his cause:
'May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.'
Was Milton so obtuse concerning human nature as to believe his Satan would not be the victor in the hearts of his readers? Or was he truly, as Blake said, '...of the devil's party without knowing it'?
We have Milton then to thank for rendering that insane, baleful utterance, Non Serviam, a courageous thing to say in the eyes of those who do not adore God. Last Friday such a phrase emerged again (with cataclysmic import) in the media.
A powerful man was given the opportunity to repent for his former misdeeds, to take a stand for the weak and helpless, and to do so without losing any more face that he had already lost amongst his former admirers. He could easily have blamed a majority that forced his hand; he was not asked to perform an act of sacrificial heroism. No Calvary was waiting for him if he had done the right thing.
Instead, this vitaphobic shell of a statesman stood his ground for the most brutal evil of our 'civilized' age: the murder of a child to protect her parents' right to indulge their sexuality. While sewing his own nation's soil with salt, he simultaneously rubbed it into the wounds of those who care. The money for these murders would still come out of their hard-pressed pockets.
Of course, not being an eloquent or poetic man, the American President did not quote Lucifer at the endgame. He put it far more simply.
But when Boehner later asked for the elimination of funds for Title X -- spending for women's health and family planning organizations that also provide abortion services, the aide said the president flatly refused.http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/09/6439868-obama-to-boehner-on-title-x-cuts-nope-zero-
The president replied, "Nope. Zero."
Boehner continued to push to discuss the funds, the aide recalled.
The President repeated: "Nope. Zero."
"'John, this is it,'" the aide described the president as saying. "'This is it, John."
There was a long pause as no one spoke in the Oval Office spoke. [sic]
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- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.