No, I have not been kidnapped by aliens.  I have been working on the paper I am supposed to deliver in Fatima next week.  I will post the introduction before I leave on Monday Morning.  Meanwhile, here is a tidbit from the King of the United States, regarding his meeting with Pope Benedict;

Denis McDonough, a deputy White House national security aide, said of the pope and Obama, “They discussed a range of those issues, and I think the president was eager to listen to the Holy Father.” He said Obama was “eager to find common ground on these issues and to work aggressively to do that.”

How does the culture of death “aggressively” find common ground the culture of life except by either getting us to use their talking points, or by talking us to death, or by shutting us up?

I here re-post my entry for July 2, 2008 on this the first anniversary of Thom Girard’s passing.  The accident occurred on June 30, but Marc survived into very early in the morning of July 1.  May our good knights rest in peace. I offered Mass for the repose of their souls this morning.

And when the last arrow
Was fitted and was flown,
When the broken shield hung on the breast,
And the hopeless lance was laid in rest,
And the hopeless horn blown,

The King looked up, and what he saw
Was a great light like death,
For Our Lady stood on the standards rent,
As lonely and as innocent
As when between white walls she went
And the lilies of Nazareth.

*******

Thom was one of our finest knights and a first rate example of all I wanted the knights to be: courageous, committed, kind, genuine and loyal.  Mark was his father’s son.

Thom has been the Grand Master of all our encampments, both last year and this year.  He had many years experience as a scout master, but more than that he had really imbibed the Spirit of Lepanto and understood how to communicate it to others.  He really was what I wanted all the knights to be.

Marc was inducted into the Knights at the spring encampment this year, after having been among the squires since we began the Knights several years ago.  When Thom became distressed as he was swimming with his daughter Hanna, Marc, who was swimming with his younger brother Lucas, told his brother to continue to the other side, went to the rescue and saved Hanna’s life and then attempted to save his father also.  Marc died a hero, a true knight.  He was his father’s son.

Please pray for the repose of their souls.  The one consolation I keep returning to is that now we have two knights who, in the words of St. Maximilian, have both hands free.

Thom and  Marc leave behind Carol, wife and mother, Jacqueline, daughter and sister, Adam, son and brother, Lucas, son and brother and little Hanna, daughter and sister.  Please pray for them also.  They are strong, full of faith and hope, but their suffering is hard to imagine.

Thom wrote an elaborate knight’s “ritual” by which we could induct the older boys into the Knights of Lepanto.  We have used it only once, for the induction of Marc back at the Spring Encampment.  I reproduce part of it here.  The words of the “Father” were pronounced by me, but the whole “ritual” was written by Thom.  This was a dialoque between father and son:

The Candidate then kneels before the priest.

Father:  In days gone by, there existed many orders of knighthood which recognized the skill and honor of their members.  In the service of their King, and in the defense of the noble ideals of chivalry, embodied in their Queen, did these orders achieve their exalted ranks. . .You have now been brought face to face with the Order of the Knights of Lepanto and have been adequately impressed with the seriousness of this obligation which you are about to take upon yourself.  As God is our King of Kings and Mary our Queen are you prepared to take the vow of the brotherhood?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I am.

Father:  Guards remove his penance . . .[after the penance is removed]  Will you be loyal to the Catholic Church, the Pope, to the Order of the Knights of Lepanto, and your brother Knights?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  Good Brother, in our company you must not seek lordship or riches, nor honor, nor bodily ease.  You must seek three things:  to renounce and reject the sins of this world; to do the service of Our Lord and Our Lady; and to be poor and penitent according to your means.  Will you promise to God and Our Lady that henceforth, all the days of your life that you will do these things?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will live in chastity according to your means in life?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will uphold the good customs of this house?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will never leave the Order, neither through strength or weakness, niether in worse time or better?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  In the name of God, of Our Lady, of St. Francis and St. Maximilian Kolbe and of our father Pope Benedict XVI, from its beginning and until its end, we accord you all the benefits of this house.  We promise you bread and water, hardship, work and the poor robe of this house.  Knight of the Patrocinium, bring forth the Great Sword of our order. . . .

Father: [holding the sword as the cross in front of the candidate] Acknowledge this sword, its brightness stands for faith, its point for hope, and its guard for charity.  Remember well that the sword of Chivalry should be drawn only in defense of God, or of those weaker than yourself. Do you acknowledge the values of this sword?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I do.

Father:  [returning the sword] Let the scroll be read.

Herald:  To all who can hear:  Whereas Marc has dedicated himself to high and noble service to God and the Kingdom of Heaven in war and in peace, we are minded to enroll him into the Knights of Lepanto.  We do hereby elevate and affirm Marc for his unique talents soon to be known throughout the world.  To which we set our hands this 24th day of May, as Christ is our King and Mary our Queen.

Thom gave all the speaking roles to the other knights and to myself during the ritual, but all the words were his, and it was all meant for Marc.

When we performed the induction of Mark, I had only had the time to glance at the ritual very quickly.  I had  complete trust that what Thom had come up with would be appropriate.

But when I read the words out loud to Marc:  “as God is our King of Kings and Mary our Queen are you prepared to take the vow of the brotherhood?” I thought to myself, “I hadn’t planned on anyone taking a vow right now.”  And then when I heard myself saying: “Will you promise to God and Our Lady that henceforth, all the days of your life that you will do these things?”  and Marc said yes both times, I thought, “I will have to revise this for next time.”  In any case, I figured that it was all intended in the right spirit, and expressed the Spirit of Lepanto so perfectly, so I said nothing.

Little did I know that Thom and Mark had providentially entered into the Knightly order together and were to seal their promise in this tragic and yet heroic event.  Thom and Marc used exactly the right words and they meant what they said.

Thom will be buried with the Great Sword of our order.  Similar arrangements are being made for Marc as well.  They promised to be true knights of Our Lady, and,

In the name of God, they were.

In doing some research in order to answer a question of a commenter I found this article by Monsignor Cormac Burke, whose book on marriage I highly recommend.  It is an article on St. Augustine and his views concerning marriage and sexuality.  St. Augustine is identified by many–but not by Christopher West, to my knowledge–as the bogeyman of Catholic puritanism because of his negative views of sexuality based on his over-emphasis of original sin.  Monsignor Burke shows that this interpretation of great western doctor is not accurate.  This article is also helpful aid to the understanding of TOB in context.  The Church has always emphasized the inherent goodness of human sexuality.

Here is a quote from St. Augustine:

Let these nuptial blessings be the objects of our love: offspring, fidelity, the un­breakable bond. . . . Let these nuptial blessings be praised in marriage by him who wishes to extol the nuptial institution.

Here is part of Monsignor Burke’s conclusion:

It may well be that earlier in the twentieth century Christians needed to shake off a certain Puritanism in sexual matters, although it should be said that this was a particularly Protestant problem. In any case, it is scarcely the problem fac­ing us today.

In this context, it is interesting to recall how Augustine had first to defend marriage and sexuality against the Manichean tendency to treat them with contempt or ha­tred, and later had to continue to defend them against the Pelagian tendency to treat them as if there were nothing deli­cate or problematic about them.

Insofar as Puritanism or Jansenism contained some semi-Manichean elements, we have moved away from them. Augustine’s firmly held, middle-of-the-road position can warn us of the dangers coming from a neo-Pelagianism, with its false suggestion that nothing is wrong with sex, that there is nothing needing control in sex.

I am just following up on the latest developments of the West controversy in which I have been lately involved (pretty severe content warning).

Christopher West, in the last couple of days has been in the Catholic press–not responding to his critics, mind you.  All he says is public relations as far as I can tell.

In Our Sunday Visitor he is quoted as saying:

“Many good people seem unaware of what the great saints have taught about the mystical dimensions of our sexuality. This is where John Paul II’s theology of the body leads us — into the mystical depths of our creation as male and female, and the call of the two to become ‘one flesh.’

In my latest piece, linked to above, I show how West misconstrues St. Louis de Montfort as supporting some kind of holy fascination with the body of the Blessed Mother.  I do this not by quoting West out of context, but by actually showing from the text of the saint that he says nothing like what West suggests.

Then the National Catholic Register, reports the following:

West’s struggle to stem the confusion reflected a desire to both defend his reputation and to prevent a backlash against the late Pope’s teachings, which have begun to enter the mainstream of Catholic catechetics with the encouragement of Pope Benedict XVI.

It is not clear how accurately this statement reflects the actual views of Christopher West; however, there is no question that West and his supporters claim that he is the authority on TOB and that his assertions are compatible with the views of John Paul II.  The above statement goes so far as to suggest that disagreement with West is tantamount to disagreement with John Paul II.   But from the point of the critics the objections have nothing to do with the Holy Father’s teachings, but with the extrapolations of West.

And this is precisely the point of this post.  West and his supporter are avoiding to deal with the substantive issues raised in the critiques.  They say “The critics should have done it privately.”  “They should quote sources.”  When we quote sources they say  we  “are taking everything out of context.”   They tell us “West has good instincts; trust him.”

Unfortunately, they are making this worse for themselves.  I will do everything in my power to see to it that this remains a gentleman’s disagreement.  But I will not be told I am a prude for disagreeing with Christopher West or that I disagree with him because I have a personal animus.  I find this methodology and “strategic management” tiresome, to put it mildly.

Dawn Eden records some of the wearying methodology employed by West to deal with objections to his presentation in her latest post.  I refer to the incident transcribed by her in my latest contribution on her blog.

One commenter pointed out that in my exposition of the Blessed Mother’s courage (”Damsels in Distress“), that my distinction between the masculine courage of action and the feminine courage of suffering, according to St. Bonaventure, did not sufficiently take account of the many biblical images, nor of the great Chesterton’s “The Ballad of the White Horse.”  She is right, of course, that discussion about passive courage does not do enough to account for the Blessed Virgin’s active role in the redemption of mankind, or of women in general throughout history.  I have no disagreement with the commenter.

In fact, I have have written on the subject Our Lady’s presence in “The Ballad of the White Horse” in a paper I delivered at our international symposium on the Coredemption in England, 2001, entitled “Seven in the Heart, One in the Hand:  The Mediation of the Immaculate in the Poetry of Hopkins and Chesterton” (Mary at the Foot of the Cross II:  Acts of the International Symposium on Marian Coredemption, New Bedford:  Academy of the Immaculate.  395-439).  I am attaching here a pdf of the complete paper for those who are interested.  Also, FYI, there is an excellent reprint of the 1928 illustrated edition of “The Ballad of the White Horse,” published by Ignatius Press, that also includes a very helpful introduction and endnotes by Sister Bernadette Sheridan.

Since I have been studying the Theology of the Body lately, I would like to suggest that one of John Paul II’s insights–one that is thoroughly traditional–would be helpful here.  There is no question that man is characteristically the “giver” (”the one who loves”) and woman the “receiver” (”the one who is loved”; cf. TOB 92.6); however, the Holy Father also  says:

The two functions of the mutual exchange are deeply connected in the whold process of “gift of self”: giving and accepting the gift interpenetrate in such a way that the very act of giving becomes acceptance, and acceptance transforms itself into giving (TOB 17.4).

By way of analogy, I think we can say that the “giver” is also the “defender,” and the “receiver” is also the “defended,” but this does not preclude a mutuality, though the courage of action in a woman, such as in the case of Judith or St. Joan of Arc is particularly marked by empathy and uniquely maternal characteristics.

I think of St. Joan, in particular, who received the ability to ride a horse, to formulate military strategy, especially the placement of artillery, as an extraordinary grace.  She was not merely a figure head of the French army; nevertheless, she never raised her sword against a man.  It was merely enough for her to get to the enemy castle and touch it with her banner.  I also recall how she nursed the dying, including the English, and shed tears over them.

I include below an apropos excerpt from my paper.  Without burdening this post with too much back story, one should at least know that at the beginning of the ballad, King Alfred, who is leading the Saxons against the invasion of England by the Danes, receives a vision of Our Blessed Lady in an hour when he has all but lost hope.  In desperation he asks Her:

“When our last bow is broken, Queen,
And our last javelin cast,
Under some sad, green evening sky,
Holding a ruined cross on high,
Under warm westland grass to lie,
Shall we come home at last?”

Her answer is paradoxical:

“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”

Alfred then goes onto gather his chiefs and army in order to enter into a battle and quest in which he is offered no promise of victory.  Here is the excerpt from my paper:

King Alfred, after an initial victory in battle (Book V), and then the eventual slaying of all three of his chiefs (Book VI), was left in a predicament very much like the one he had been in when he had seen Our Lady, although his later doom and England’s was far more imminent.  The Battle of Ethandune was all but lost.  In a long speech Alfred convinced what was left of his army that “death is a better ale to drink” (bk. 7, 119) than to drain the cup of surrender to heathendom.  Convinced by their captain, the soldiers “stood firm” and “feeble” (153).  Alfred blew his horn calling his men to the hunt, and “The people of the peace of God/ Went roaring down to die” (184).  But in the desperation of the situation the Immaculate was present in Her causeless joy and hopeless faith:

And when the last arrow,
Was fitted and was flown,
When the broken shield hung on the breast,
And the hopeless lance was laid at rest,
And the hopeless horn was blown,

The King looked up, and what he saw
Was a great light like death,
For our Lady stood on the standards rent
As lonely and as innocent
As When between white walls she went
In the lilies of Nazareth.

One instant in a still light,
He saw Our Lady then,
Her dress was soft as western sky,
And she was queen most womanly–
But she was queen of men.

Over the iron forest
He saw Our Lady stand;
Her eyes were sad withouten art,
And seven swords were in her heart–
But one was in her hand. (185-205).

In the moment of supreme sacrifice, the Mother of God interceded on behalf of Her children.  The seven swords of Her own heartfelt sorrow, became one which She wielded in hand on behalf of those for whom She suffered:  In the first vision of King Alfred Mary had said to him:

“But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save” (bk. 1, 250-53).

Thus we are shown how this intercession of the Immaculate in temporal war is also connected to a greater war for the salvation of souls.  These wars hardly won and souls hardly saved are remarkably juxtaposed in another of Chesterton’s poems whose theme is along the same lines, viz., “The Queen of the Seven Swords.”  That poem is actually the introduction to seven monologues delivered by seven saints of Western Europe, who, as Chesterton notes, “have no connection with the historical saints” that “bore their names,” but rather are types of the different nations, viz., St. James of Spain, St. Denys of France, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. David of Wales and St. George of England.  There, in “The Queen of the Seven Swords,” Chesterton records a dream in which he saw Europe as a waste land, and after surveying the panorama of desolation said:  “There is none to save.” It is obvious from his descriptions that the wasteland is typical of moral desolation.  In the gloom, however, he saw a source of hope:

I saw on their breaking terraces, cracking and sinking for ever,
One shrine rise blackened and broken; like a last cry to God.

Old gold on the roof hung ragged as scales of a dragon dropping,
The gross green weeds of the desert had spawned on the painted wood:
But erect in the earth’s despair and arisen against heaven interceding,
Whose name is Cause of Our Joy, in the doorway of death she stood.

The Woman who had asked of Alfred “Do you have joy without a cause?” is in fact the Cause of His Joy, and this as She stands in the “doorway of death.”  Thus we begin to understand that the doom of Alfred is not a joy strictly without cause, but one without any natural explanation, for his joy has its source in the Heart of the Queen of the Seven Swords.  Chesterton goes on in “The Queen of the Seven Swords:

The Seven Swords of her Sorrow held out their hilts like a challenge,
The blast of that stunning silence as a sevenfold trumpet blew
Majestic in more than gold, girt round with a glory or iron,
The hub of her wheel of weapons; with a truth beyond torture true.

That truth which is beyond torture true is that faith which saves, not in spite of suffering, but because of suffering.  Hence we understand what the Lady meant when She asked Alfred “Do you have faith without a hope?”  Not a natural hope, or a conviction that things will get better, but a conviction that God is faithful to His promises.  In “The Towers of Time,” Chesterton says that “the heart of the swords, seven times wounded,/ Was never wearied as our hearts are.” And in the poem “In October,” honor is due to Mary, because Hers was “The broken Heart and the unbroken word.” Is this not why in his Encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, the Holy Father compares the Blessed Virgin to Abraham, saying with St. Paul that in hope believed against hope, She is blessed for Her unwavering faith?

Matt Pinto, founder and president of Ascension Press, the publisher of Christopher West, came to the defense of his star author the other day.  In the first sentence he resurrected Mark Shea’s “bayonet our own troops” line:

Over the past few weeks, I have watched a friend and fellow soldier in the Church get assaulted by his own troops . . .

There have been various ways in which the critique of West has been handled, but for the most part the thoughtful critiques were respectful and sedate.  In particular, I have made a point of trying to be constructive, as I said:

The problem is that sometimes the combox is too easy a place to lock and load, fire and reload. But the sword cuts both ways: I am not out to sentence and execute Chris West, so don’t suggest that a critique of his thought, even if you disagree with that critique, is an effort to, in Shea’s words, “bayonet our own troops.”

Matt Pinto, it seems, is counting on an easy dismissal of the critics based on the reputation of Christopher West.  He argues that the fruits are good, therefore, there is nothing meriting criticism.  One commenter (Which Fruits Shall We Pick?) notes the weakness of this argument:

For years, people defended the now disgraced pedophile and father of at least one illegitimate child Fr. Marcial Maciel by claiming that he couldn’t possibly have led an immoral life because “the fruits” of his work were so good. No less a Catholic intellect than the late Richard John Neuhaus made this explicit claim in an article still available at Catholic Exchange (a site Matt Pinto helped found). The article, available here http://catholicexchange.com/2002/05/14/93167/ bears a startling resemblance to Pinto’s current piece “By his fruits you shall know him.”

(I am not equating West to Maciel, but rather pointing out that an inadequate defense from 2002 makes a poor model for today).

It should serve as a cautionary tale to Pinto and all those who make the “fruits” argument. To them, I would caution – pardon the obvious pun – that you cannot pick your “fruits.” Are the fruits of those scandalized by West any less valid than the fruits of those who have seen benefit? How shall we weigh these obviously contradictory consequences?

Pinto, a publisher of West’s books and a colleague from West’s Institute has written an interesting response to David Schindler, but at the end of the day, I have a fundamental problem with his premise.

From the long-running discussion, and many people who have commented that West makes them uneasy, or worse, it is clear that there’s an abundant harvest here, at least some serious portion of which is not nourishing. Not all fruits are good. Perhaps those who make the fruits argument should remember Maciel, and, of course, the Garden of Eden…

In any case, Pinto completely avoids addressing any of the substantive concerns raised by the critics, apparently, in the hope of not having to, ever.  For the most part, this tactic will probably  work.  He is shooting the messengers:  “Bad critics. Nasty West haters, all of you.”

Another commenter (Where’s Waldo) asks:

Now that we have heard from West’s publisher, who is next? His literary agent? His copyright attorney? Or his Public Relations firm? Where is HIS response.

Good questions.  How will he respond to Schindler’s offer to discuss this with him over time in the pages of Communio?  I don’t think Schindler will be easily pooh-poohed by West or one of his choir boys.

I started on this post more than a year ago and have come back to it from time to time.  While I am up at Mount St. Francis, hiding in my cave and working on my paper for our Coredemption conference in July, I thought I would finally knock it out.  I shot a video on the same topic  a while back.

****

As one interested in helping to bring about a revival of Christian Chivalry, I have thought fondly of the image of the “damsel in distress” as being both iconic and inspiring of the chivalric ideals. I was horrified, then, to see such an honorable term being disparaged by those otherwise promoting the ideals of chivalry. Call me naive or nostalgic (or worse), but I cannot for the life of me see anything wrong with it.

I will admit, if we understand “damsel in distress” as it is caricatured, for example, by the film image of the pretty woman being tied screaming to the train tracks by Dastardly Dan and then being rescued by Agent Jim West, then there is much to be disparaged. The poor helpless thing is abused by one womanizer only to be rescued by another, and all the while is oblivious to everything but the attention she is getting. The ideals of chivalry have always been partially obscured by the cult of “courtly love.” There is nothing new under the sun.

Television and film have that curious ability of turning unalloyed gold into lead, and contrariwise, of cultivating a fondness for the most obvious absurdities. We have learned to despise feminine vulnerability and celebrate the wonders of the Bionic Woman.

So what is the “damsel in distress,” and why should her place in the venerable history of womanhood be preserved and honored? To answer this question we must first examine the contemporary feminist trend to idolize the Amazon.

Ms. Rambo

TV and movies are rife with tough, violent women nowadays. And it’s a scary thing. The movie tough girl look likes a starlet but fights like Rambo.

I am reminded of the Greeks who invented the Amazon myth as a kind of horror story. No men resided in Amazon territory. Once a year the Amazons would travel to a neighboring tribe where they would allow themselves to be impregnated. All the male children were either put to death, sent back to their fathers or left in the wilderness. Nice.

The modern version is not just a horror story; it is feminist vicarious revenge, although, as usual, women are the losers in this gender horseplay. Misandry just ends in the frustration that women aren’t really men.

Not only are feminists in the mood to caricature men as jerks and buffoons, now they are literally kicking men’s rear ends–but only in Hollywood. No, in reality the Amazon myth is just a myth. The day all-women teams compete on a par with men in the NFL is the day I will believe otherwise. I am well aware that there are individual exceptions to this, but that just proves the rule, doesn’t it?

The Ms. Rambo fantasy is a sub-created world where women have their complete independence and men get payback from way back. I suppose it expresses the modern mood of male guilt over the past, when men and women believed that they were really different from each other. Women get their revenge all right, but at the expense of their femininity.

Women have, in fact, achieved a great deal of independence, some of it particularly critical in the light of divorce, abandonment and fatherlessness. Both single and married women have asserted their prowess in the public square and shown themselves formidable competition for men. In particular, many single moms have managed to create functioning families without a father.

But radical feminists have asserted women’s prowess most of all through divorce, abortion and birth control. After all, traditional childbearing has to go if women are to really be free of the dominance of men. Radical feminists have not yet figured out how to create a “woman only” utopia, so until they do, men are not quite as expendable as they would like to think.

In fact, in this charade men still win, don’t they? Now men have sex with women without consequences, and even when the woman keeps the baby, men feel more entitled than ever to opt out. It’s still a man’s world.

The Weaker Sex

Yes, women, like it are not, are the weaker sex, and while to say this is anathema in the public square, in my experience most women do not deny it, or are even inclined to deny it. Many will assume that by saying “weaker sex,” I mean “inferior sex,” which is not at all the case, nor does it even logically follow.

It is a women’s capacity to bear a child more than anything else that makes her the weaker sex. Physique and hormonal instability are secondary when compared to the immense vulnerability of female fertility. Men don’t get pregnant and have no fear of being abandoned by the mother of their child. The potential for motherhood is a woman’s greatest gift, but by its very nature it is something she is not capable of safeguarding by herself. She needs to be protected.

If anything, the ability to bear a child makes a woman superior to men, not inferior, but it certainly does not make her stronger. Alice Von Hildebrand, in her little book, The Privilege of Being a Woman, points out very clearly that the “weakness” of a woman does not mean that she is “less intelligent, less talented, less reliable, less moral, etc.” (35). She says that a woman’s weakness has both its cons and pros. (I paraphrase.) On the con side there is emotional vulnerability, greater sensitivity and openness to being wounded, emotional impressionability and sentimentality and emotional vulnerability to less than sincere men. On the pro side there is the fineness of womanhood in which her fragility and beauty are inherently connected; a woman’s weakness is one of the main motives for the promotion of chivalrous and courteous behavior; it is the fineness and beauty of vulnerability which tends to humanize men and promote the primacy of charity (cf. 36-47).

Now, I know I will get arguments from women, that point to certain facets of human life, where women generally manifest themselves as stronger than men, for example, in the ability to suffer and in the ability to persevere in the rigors of parenthood. However, full-fledged feminists would not count these examples as strength; quite the opposite.

All this being said, it is the vulnerability of feminine fertility, more than in any other way,  that leaves the feminists ambivalent over the woman’s capacity for motherhood. They know motherhood is a great good, but it is also one that puts them at a very real disadvantage.

Babies as Parasites

According to pro-life feminist Mary Krane Derr, feminists have alternately defended a woman’s distinctive capacity to bear children and then capitulated to the tendency to self-devaluation resulting from the changes that take place in a woman’s body during pregnancy. Most feminists, however, whether defending or attacking motherhood, have advocated for abortion. This ambivalence concerning motherhood, together with the gut reaction support of abortion, quite naturally has manifested itself in the regard of pregnancy as a disease and the fetus as an aggressor or parasite.

Derr quotes from a 1969 play by Myrna Lamb, “But What Have You Done for Me Lately?” It is another version of the Ms. Rambo myth in which the endgame always finds women still inferior and still the looser. The only consolation here is in sharing the misery:

. . . The drama depicts the reactions of a man in whom a pregnant uterus was forcibly implanted, clarifying for him the anger, desperation, and anguish of a woman when she faces the same dilemma:

“Why should I give this . . . this thing representation?” he cries. “It is nothing to me. I am not responsible for it or where it is nor do I wish to be. I have a life, an important life. I have work, important work . . . and this mushroom which you have visited upon me in your madness has no rights, no life, no importance to anyone, certainly not to the world. It has nothing. It has no existence . . . A tumor. A parasite. This has been foisted upon me? and then I am told that I owe it primary rights to life? My rights are subsidiary! This insanity! I do not want this thing in my body! It does not belong there. I want it removed. Immediately. Safely.”

The pregnant uterus he finds in him was implanted by a woman he once impregnated and abandoned. She remembers what it was like to have that unwanted disease and speaks for all women like her who are deprived of the surgery that would cure the unwanted pregnancy:

“Our work suffered. Our futures hung from a gallows. Guilt and humiliation and ridicule and shame assailed us. Our bodies. Our individual unique familiar bodies, suddenly invaded by strange unwelcome parasites, and we were denied the right to rid our own bodies of these invaders by a society dominated by righteous male chauvinists of both sexes who identified with the little clumps of cells and gave them precedence over the former owners of the host bodies.”

Wouldn’t that be the ultimate revenge, to force men, against their will to bear children? Do these women really hate themselves that much? It seems so.

Derr also points to the same self-devaluating root when considering the cause of anorexia. Studies have shown that the cult of thinness (which now seems even vogue in fashion and has resulted in the death of high profile models) is connected to many women’s discomfort with their own bodies, which they consider inferior, and that drives them to shed their feminine curves and appear more like a man.

No, women are not inferior and pregnancy is not a disease. Women need to rediscover their own dignity in that which is at the same time their vulnerability. Derr concludes her article:

Such a transformed understanding of gestation can give women the confidence to demand proper recognition of pregnancy as a truly indispensable contribution that they, and only they, can make to human life. Indeed, women must make this demand if they wish to achieve full liberation. If feminists are to heal women’s estrangement from their bodies, they must not think of pregnancy as disease, even when it occurs in tremendously unsupportive contexts. When they accept this construction of pregnancy, they only perpetuate the female tendency to lash out at the self rather than challenge societal conditions that deny the worthiness of the self.

The “societal conditions” to which Derr refers are many, but clearly one of those conditions is the devaluating of femininity by men, and the consequent acceptance and assimilation of that devaluation by women themselves. For some feminists, achieving “full liberation” means to reject all gender differences beyond biology as oppressive social constructs. It means gaining the strength not to be dependent on men at all. If this is what full liberation means, it is hard to imagine its achievement apart from birth control, abortion and divorce. The only other avenue, it seems would be lesbianism, a path, which logic based on false premises, has led some feminists to take. As Charlotte Bunch explains in Lesbians in Revolt:

Lesbianism is a threat to the ideological, political, personal, and economic basis of male supremacy. The Lesbian threatens the ideology of male supremacy by destroying the lie about female inferiority, weakness, passivity, and by denying women’s ‘innate’ need for men (even for pro-creation if the science of cloning is developed).

It’s a brave new world.

The Emancipation of Domesticity

It seems that modern feminists are more afraid and jealous of men than they care to admit. The feminist cry for emancipation from men is a misfiring femininity, a woman’s natural grace, an exhortation to men to be fair and humane, turned shrill and ugly. Emancipation has come to mean “free” to become like a man, which is to say, something not at all like a woman.

The absurdity of this strikes me in the gut (pun intended), as when popular culture play acts and allows Ms. Rambo to stand on the top of her heap of conquered and broken boys. As much as I pity the poor deluded girl, I pity the rest of us as well. The Amazon myth has trampled us all.

Feminists admonish men to give them quarter, but not to respect them. And men don’t. Abortion and birth control have not raised the status of women one iota. Abandonment and fatherlessness are a plague upon family and civil life. No one is better for it, certainly not women, but neither are men nor children. Feminists are manlier and less feminine, and for that reason they are less humane, and therefore, so is everyone else.

Just as men in film and television pretend to be beat up by women, so real-world men comply with the demands of the feminists and meanwhile snicker privately at the foolish girls who have guaranteed a man’s right to be a perpetually irresponsible, puerile, post-pubescent, and juvenile. Ladies, I hope you are happy.

Unfortunately, I think many women are quite happy. Gone are the days when they were regarded as the guardians of chastity and domestic life. One may no longer assume that the bimbo is dumb. The real feminine prowess has been cultivated and refined into a college educated, hyper-sexualized form of manipulation. The women’s clothing section of the local Walmart now looks like some out of the way, sleazy sex shop. It’s the new, smart, emancipated look. The war of the sexes goes on, and everyone is losing.

Women are, in fact, inherently the weaker sex; however, the whole world is at the mercy of this weakness. Unless women once again become the guardians of chastity and domestic life, we are all doomed. The dignity and power of a woman lies in her prerogative to say yes or no. She becomes a queen or a plaything with the well-placed whisper of one little word.

The whole world turns on this power, and it must be defended unto the death. It is both the stuff of adventure and a primordial, domestic thing. But isn’t domestic life the real adventure, the place where every day is perilous and uncertain, where the whole world hangs in the balance? Yes, the power of a woman’s consent is a domestic reality, one pertaining to marriage and procreation before anything else, but it extends to the whole of civilized life. G.K. Chesterton, perhaps the most chivalrous man of the twentieth century, had this to say about the “emancipation of domesticity”:

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene: I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness (What’s Wrong with the World).

I can hear the groans. No, I am not saying that a woman’s place is only in the home, but I am saying that it is primarily there. A woman is not accidentally maternal; she is essentially so. Edith Stein, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, put it succinctly: a woman’s vocation is “empathy.”

But empathy is a weakness. It is openness to experience and participate in what others experience, especially pain. It makes a woman vulnerable. But without it we all die.

Damsels in Distress

That brings me more directly to the question of the “damsel in distress.” It is a chivalric image of vulnerability and innocence. Of course, such an image is not complete without the “knight in shining armor,” who conveys the sense of courage and heroism. The image, completed with the damsel in distress being saved by the knight in shining armor, is the picture of courtesy and contains as happy an ending as anyone could hope for. Perhaps the word that best describes it is one coined by Tolkien: eucatastrophe, meaning the complete reversal of catastrophe, idealized as the triumph of the Cross made available to all of us in the Eucharist.

Historically one of the earliest and most important examples of the image as it entered the West is the legend of St. George and the Dragon. The story is by no means an exclusively Western treasure (I think of Russia and Lebanon, for example), but it is particularly important for an understanding of Western chivalry (especially in England).

As the legend goes, or at least one version of it, a dragon took up its abode at the spring from which the locals drew their water. The dragon thus took custody of the spring and demanded a price for its use. The only way the townsfolk could draw their water was by the offering of someone to the dragon as a human sacrifice. Each day a new victim was selected by common agreement through the drawing of lots. One fateful day, the lot fell to the princess of the kingdom, and even the intervention of her father, the king, was not enough to save her from the dragon; the people insisted that the arrangement be respected. At this point, St. George providentially ride up on his steed and volunteered his services to face the dragon, which he did to great effect, the dragon being slain and the damsel rescued. The awestruck townspeople as a result abandoned the ways of paganism and became Christians.

Crusaders, it is said, brought the story back from the East, and retold it as a courtly romance. In a way typical of the Middle Ages, Christian tradition and hagiography was transformed into quasi-secular romance. Certainly, for courtiers who heard this story the “art of courtly love,” could easily serve as the hermeneutic for the understanding of the story, in which case, it would not be any different from the story of the rescue of a damsel in the Arthurian cycle. However, the Christian symbolism, even in the most embellished version of the legend, is unmistakable: the Christ figure enters into combat with the Demon and rescues the Virgin Church from his clutches. This is paradise regained. In some versions of the legend, there is even a tree (Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) to which the maiden is tied and from which she is rescued.

The damsel in distress is the bride of Ephesians 5.  This passage of St. Paul on marriage is a holy incantation and exorcism that scatters the feminist demons to their dark and gloomy pits. St. Paul, the “misogynist,” is actually the guardian of feminine weakness and the promoter of chivalry. He admonishes the coward Adam and kneels at the feet of the hero Christ.  Both men and women are better for it, if by casting off the modern prejudice they can just for a moment wave away the wafting mist of the Ms. Rambo deception and see the Bridegroom and Bride for who they truly are.

Damsels Not So in Distress

We live in an unreal age, when we have “pregnant men,” surgically enhanced beauty queens and the Hollywood myth of the female soldier. I don’t say this lightly, or in any way to disparage the brave women who serve in our armed forces, but take the example of PFC Jessica Lynch, who was lionized by the Pentagon as the Rambo-like heroine of the Iraq war, but as it turns out, had never fired her weapon. This story is not only symptomatic of Pentagon propaganda, but of the general acceptance of the Ms. Rambo myth.  That myth is putting women in harms way in a manner that goes far beyond the ordinary dangers of military life.  Sexual abuse of military women by military men is of “jaw-dropping proportions.

But what about the valiant women of history and literature: Judith, Esther, Jael, St. Joan of Arc, Luthien, Eowyn, ect.? Examine each of their stories and you will find a woman driven by love and a prophetic spirit, not someone preoccupied with the worldly ways of domination and prowess. In each case, more importantly you will find a woman who picks up the sword that a man, derelict of his duty, has dropped and from which he has walked away. In each case you will find a victress who conquers not so much by force of arms, but by her beauty, virtue and charm.

Judith, that type of Our Lady, for example, is the ultimate femme fatale, beautiful and virtuous, who lulls her enemy by her charms and then decapitates him in his lustful sleep. Being the proper lady that she is, she is accompanied to and from her encounter by one of her maids who carries back to the city the head of the enemy in her purse. The men of Judith’s city who were too afraid and desperate to solve the problem themselves are left with no other resource than to sing her praises:

Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honor of our people: For thou hast done manfully, and thy heart has been strengthened, because thou hast loved chastity, and after thy husband hast not known any other: therefore also the hand of the Lord hath strengthened thee, and therefore thou shalt be blessed for ever (Judith 15:10, 11).

In regard to the dangerous character of virtuous femininity, which character is perfectly harmonious with a woman’s character as damsel in distress, Chesterton said it best:

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess (The Victorian Age in Literature).

The Valiant Woman

Who shall find a valiant woman? far, and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.

St. Bonaventure writes that this verse from the Book of Proverbs (31:10) is prophetic of the Blessed Virgin’s fortitude, especially at the foot of the Cross. The “price of her,” that is, her worth, is the fruit of Her womb, which fruit she bore, offered and possesses. Thus she bore the price in joy at Bethlehem; She paid the price in sorrow on Calvary; and now She possesses the price as Mediatrix in heaven.

Far off and from the last ends is her price; and who is she? This woman, the Blessed Virgin, is the price, through which we prevail to obtain the Kingdom of Heaven; or it is Hers, that is, taken from Her, paid by Her and possessed by Her: taken from Her in the Incarnation of the Word; paid by Her in the redemption of the human race; and possessed by Her in the gaining of the glory of paradise. She brought forth, paid and possessed that price; therefore it is Hers as the one originating, as the one paying and as the one possessing. That woman brought forth that price as one strong and holy; paid it as one strong and pious; possessed it as one strong and vigorous (Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Conference 6).

Mary is the ideal woman and the iconic Damsel in Distress. St. Bonventure chooses to speak in reference to Her when discussing thd Gift of Fortitude.  He makes a distinction between the courage of action, which he attributes properly to man, and that of suffering, which he attributes to the woman: “Men are they that do; women are they that suffer” (pati). The root here of the word suffer is passio (literally, “that which is undergone”), so in the first place it indicates receptivity, an openness to what it is real; secondarily, but most importantly, it is openness to suffering willed out of love. Mary is the Queen of Martyrs and the Sorrowful Mother. She is the Queen of the Seven Swords.

In the friars chapel in Griswold, Connecticut, the rood beam spans the width of the Church and  separates the sanctuary from the nave.  On it a summary of St. Bonaventure’s doctrine are carved and gilded:

Pretium Redemptionis Nostrae Maria Protulit, Persolvit Possidet,

that is, “Mary bore, offered (paid) and possesses the price of our redemption.”

Taken out of the context of Christian revelation the idea of men acting and women suffering could and has been interpreted to mean: “Men are those who do unto; women are those who are done unto.” But one must recognize that the context for this relationship in the mind of saints like Bonaventure is John 19 and Ephesians 5. The Ms. Rambo myth and the accoutrements that go along with it, like contraception and abortion, are the paraphernalia of a world that has rejected the cross, where mutual manipulation is the rule, where persons are used, not loved.

Historical chivalry from the point of view of Christian ethics was about channeling the courage of action in such a way that it respected the high dignity of the courage of suffering. Women were venerated precisely for the fine delicacy of their beauty, which is exemplary of everything that is worth dying for, namely, the true, good and beautiful.

Unfortunately, the ethical ideal in historical chivalry was all too often just that, an ideal. The courtiers and troubadours too often idealized woman in a pagan sense, that is, they made her a goddess, who was to be served and flattered in the hope that she might shed the dew of her grace upon the poor suitor. So reads one of the rules of courtly love: “Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.”

I can never take this kind of thing seriously. Dan Brown tried to resurrect this nonsense in his unbearable Da Vinci Code. Poor little Sophie, so the backstory goes, misinterpreted the sex-rite in which she had discovered her grandfather engaged and refused to speak to him for the rest of his life. Only after his death, when she is fully enlightened by the much smarter men around her, is she able to realize that what had horrified her in reality it is the most respectable form of goddess worship. And guess what?  Sophie also eventually learns that, descending as she does from the bloodline of Christ, she has a special title to the cult of the goddess. The culminating passage where this tripe is fully revealed to Sophie reads like a pious exposition of the most holy mysteries, when in fact it is the diabolic mutterings of the demon of lust. And of course, Sophie takes it all in as the enlightened little sex object she was meant to be.

This is also a reason why I fear what I think has rightly been termed the pansexualism of Christopher West. I do not wish to connect him with the paganism of Dan Brown, but I am always suspicious of pious male veneration of the female body. I am not talking about an ordinary red-blooded attraction. I am talking about the refined, studied and sophisticated trappings of sexual obsession cloaked in euphemisms.  Do I think this is what West is engaged in?  No, but the penchant for unveiling the mystery in explicit language is dangerous.

Chesterton points to the contrast of worldly and other-worldly regard for femininity in his poem “The Ballad of King Arthur.” The historical information we have regarding Arthur is very slim. All we know are the bits and pieces salvaged by monks from the Dark Ages, mostly about what battles he fought in, especially, the Battle of Mount Badon and concerning the fact that he “carried the image of Mary, Ever-virgin, on his shoulder, through whose virtue and that of Jesus Christ,” he was victorious.  Chesterton writes:

King Arthur on Mount Badon
Bore Our Lady on his shield
High on that human altar held
Above the howling field,
High on that living altar heaved
As a giant heaves a tower
She saw all heathenry appalled
And the turning of the hour.

But the woman that the world remembers, when the story of Arthur is retold and embellished, is not the Queen of Virgin’s but the queen that betrayed the king:

The Queen that wronged King Arthur’s house
Had lovers in all lands
And many a poet praised her pride
At many a queen’s commands:
And the King shrank to a shadow
Watching behind a screen
And the Queen walked with Lancelot
And the world walked with the Queen.

But, as we might expect, Chesterton does not walk with the world or with the Queen “that wronged King Arthur’s house, but with the Queen of the Seven Swords:

Stillness like lightning strike the street
And doubt and deep amaze
And many a courtly bard be dumb
Beside his butt and bays
And many a patron prince turned pale—
If one such flash made plain
The Queen that stands at his right hand
If Arthur comes again.

Guinevere was not so much a damsel in distress, even as she was rescued from the flames by Lancelot, because she was a manipulator just like Lancelot. On the other hand, Our Lady is the true Damsel in Distress and Christ, the true Knight in Shining Armor, because they are one in the mutual freedom of self-giving.  Arthur, the “once and future king” will find the honor of his kingdom regained, when the lesson of the Quest of the Holy Grail is learned by the mass of men.  Chivalry cannot be a sham and we cannot live without the real thing.

Yes, women need to be protected. They are damsels in distress. The man should stand guard in front of the veil. The courage of action should be put into the service of the courage of suffering. Christ on the Cross did what the first Adam was afraid to do: He protected his Bride. He entered into battle with the dragon and freed the Virgin tied to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He was slain in the process, but in the power of His paschal mystery has presented her to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5: 27).

Hail Victress, standing fast,
The banner is lifted.
Unfurl the sign of salvation,
And storm with Thy Lord
the lair of the Dragon.

Holy Lily of our knighthood,
Draw us to Thy side
To die with Thee,
con-crucified in Him.

The Chivalrous Woman

The idea of damsels in distress implies that women need men. But men also need women. And this is not only a matter of marriage and family, or of matrimonial complementarity. It is also a matter of chivalry. Men need women to be chivalrous.

There is a grain of truth in the chivalrous ideal of the service of women. But it has nothing to do with the mutual manipulation that has continued through the ages, even after the presumed death of chivalry. Even among those who hate chivalry, the mutual manipulation of the sexes is a sacred doctrine. Ms. Rambo is tolerated by her brothers in arms because now she is one of the boys. She can use her sexuality on her own terms, but the game is on. Let us see whether she succeeds. She no longer has any claim to protection.

Mutual manipulation can never end unless men are protective and women want to be protected. Motherhood is worthy of the highest veneration. Vulnerability is the delicacy of a flower. If men do not love this, they are not worthy to be loved.

Women need to hold men to the highest standards. They need to be choosy in regard to the men to whom they say yes. This is the real power of a woman: her fiat. On it the whole of history depends. What John Paul II reminds us, and Christopher West stresses, is that the “freedom of the gift” with respect to man and woman in the mystery of marriage is absolutely inviolable, and that the preservation of that gift belongs to the man (the male) in a special way (TOB 15; 33.1-2). A woman’s yes is sacred and it needs to be protected. But if woman does not value her fiat properly, if she sells it off cheaply, she has no real escape. It is either subjugation in the classical sense or the Ms. Rambo myth.

Geoffroi de Charny was a fourteenth century French knight and bearer of the Oriflamme, who wrote a well known manual for knights called The Book of Chivalry. In that work he writes of the duty of courtly women to hold their men to the highest standards.  For the most part that meant that they were only to give their love to knights who had won worldly honor, and who could safely be named a lover of some man without their own loss of worldly honor:

And if one of the other ladies loves the miserable wretch who, for no good reason, is unwilling to bear arms, she will see him come into that very hall and perceive and understand that no one pays him any attention or shows him honor or notices him, and few know who he is, and those who do think nothing of him, and he remains hidden behind everyone else, for no one brings him forward. Indeed, if there is such a lady, she must feel very uneasy and disconsolate when she sees that she has devoted time and thought to loving and admiring a man who no one admires or honors, and that they never hear a word said of any great deed that he ever achieved. Ah, God! What small comfort and solace is there for those ladies who see their lovers held in such little honor, with no excuse except lack of will! (20.14-25).

The worldly standard of pride was somewhat necessary in the training of men of arms, and still is. The warrior must be ferocious, in some measure, and so the warrior culture encourages bold, decisive behavior that is bent upon domination and victory.  That women would hold out for the bravest and most honored men was understandable and promoted the warrior culture, even so, while this may have also promoted the ideals courtly love, it did not necessarily safeguard the true dignity of women or the good of marriage and family life.

Too many women sell their fiat too cheaply to knaves who are not worthy of them, and sometimes those knaves are knights in the making, whose honor, a woman’s cheap yes does not serve.  Men need to be both warriors and true gentlemen and only women can help them find that balance.  Women need to humanize men, without stifling their urge to take risks and to fight.  Men need to protect and defend the honor of women.

I pointed out in some comments on a blog that was discussing Theology of the Body—to which I will not link because of some of the filthy comments found there—that the Playboy philosophy of Hugh Hefner is not only puerile, but effeminate. The playboy is a prurient Peter Pan, who has never learned how to be a man, perhaps because he has never sufficiently identified with a father figure. His preference is to play indoors where he can’t get hurt and where he will never by deprived of the soft touch of a woman.

There are also the men who are just plainly brutal, how have natural bravado, aggression and a libido to match. A woman’s cheap yes, in this regard, and other men’s silence in the face of it, are the stuff out of which tragedies are made. The damsel in distress has one weapon only: her judicious consent over which she is the sole mistress.

Chesterton was inspired by the nursery rhyme “Pears or Pairs” to write a poem on the subject of true courtly love, which he entitled “An Old Riddle.” I will conclude with it, since it so aptly summarizes the battle of the sexes and the formula for mutual victory.  That formula does not provide for the possibility of the damsel in distress being rescued from Dastardly Dan only to be wooed by a more suave womanizer, nor does it provide for the baptism of the Ms. Rambo myth.  The real solution is more difficult and more complex, but as with everything else that is worth living for, it is worth dying for:

Seven Knights of the Court of Love
Each has her for a star above
Seven smite in a single name
Seven hearts are hearts of flame
Round where she doth sit
But a maid’s choice is as God’s choice
And who shall challenge it. . .

Seven titans, huge and starred
Seven giants of God’s own guard
These may merit all years’ renown,
Fit for these be the robe and crown,
Heaven’s fields befit
But a maid’s grace is as God’s grace
And who shall merit it.

Finally, a sane Cat article from the left wing media.

Photo credit: StuffOnMyCat.com.

My latest contribution to the peace process.

In the context of the Holy Father’s remarks it appears to me that this “real and deep victory” concerns the refusal to consent to lust of thought, recognizing its intrinsic evil, but without the transference of the evil of that act onto its object, namely the body of a woman. And the danger of not winning that victory, in Manichaean terms, would be to excuse the sin of lust on the basis that one is overcome by the evil of a woman’s body. At least in this context, there does not seem to me to be a mandate to have a “fascination at the human sexual-body,” just an urging not to allow our rejection of lust to become a rejection of the goodness of the human body.

Thanks Dawn.

During the encampment last month, one of the activities for the boys was called “Living off the Land,” in which they were taught what plants on the property were edible and which were not. It was no surprise, then, that at the First Friday activities this month, certain little boys, at least one of which had not been on the encampment, were raiding all the presumably edible purple flowers.

I had not actually attended the class and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between dandelion leaves and deadly nightshade, so I did not really know what to tell the panicked mothers. The next day the friars found half-eaten purple flowers all over the parking lot.

Turns out they are clover flowers. Not a problem. Watch.