Holy Sonnet X

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ;  why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ;  Death, thou shalt die. 

--John Donne 

Chesterton On Slapstick Comedy

"All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of Man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy."

~G.K. Chesterton. "Cockneys and Their Jokes" 

What will Governor Moonbeam Do? (Part 2)

Governor Jerry Brown has a controversial  bill on his desk awaiting his response. SB48, according to Equality California (a group which favors this legislation) will:

... amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This bill would also prohibit discriminatory instruction and discriminatory materials from being adopted by the State Board of Education.

(The full text of the bill may be found here.)



In my previous post, I discussed the impracticality and even inhumanity of injecting identity politics into the classroom.  The California Catholic Conference voiced its opposition to the bill on those grounds last April.

But the debate over SB48, nicknamed "The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act" is not simply a debate about how to encourage politeness in schoolchildren.   It's not really even about bigotry.

When schools teach about the Women's Suffrage or Civil Rights movement, they usually do so in a manner that constitutes an endorsement. In the process, students rightly learn that institutionalized sexism and racism are dehumanizing and therefore socially unacceptable.  It is wrong to discriminate against human beings because of a state of being such as skin color or gender.  Skin color does not make a person good. It does not affect the state of his or her soul. Women may in general be physically weaker than men, but that does not make us morally inferior. While there may be evidence to suggest that men have more inclinations toward violence, that does not mean human males are born into a state of moral inferiority when compared to women.

A person's moral inferiority comes from choices, not from the way the way he or she was born. A man who, for example, cheats on his wife does so not simply because he has a male inclination for unfathfulness; he does so because he chose act upon it.  The action is where the moral problem lies, not the inclination.

So what will schools be endorsing when they teach about the LGBT movement if it is given the same treatment as the Civil Rights movement?   The LGBT movement's goal is the acceptance of certain behavior, not merely the acceptance of a state of being or an inclination. If the school treats that goal as laudable, it is essentially endorsing the homosexual lifestyle as something morally acceptable. This will most certainly come into conflict with the religious and cultural values of many students in California schools.

That is what makes this issue different. It is not simply about how one is born, or whether a person has certain desires, tendencies, drives, or inclinations.  It is about how one chooses to live and act, and whether a school, as an agent of the State, has the right to tell parents and students how to define sin.


In short, the debate over SB 48 is a debate about the role of the state in defining the sexual morality of private citizens and their children.

This becomes an especially sticky issue because teachings on sexual morality are often (though not always) faith based, which means this is also a question of free exercise of religion.

Though schools are often important for the social development of children, parents are the first and most important educators, especially in matters of faith and morals, and they are right to object when a particular school or and entire school system seeks to undermine what they teach their children in good conscience. 

It gets even stickier when students become old enough to choose whether or not to believe as they were raised.  It is not unheard of for a student to be raised in one faith, but convert to another in her teens. At the secondary level, a public school has to avoid infringing upon the constitutional rights of the student as well as the parents. The state has no business telling a student that she cannot believe what her faith teaches.


Schools and their employees cannot fulfill the requirements of this bill, and remain neutral with respect to the morality of homosexual behavior. This creates serious problems for parents, teachers, and students, whose reasoned moral objections to homosexuality and the LGBT movement come in conflict with this legislation.  Whether legislators in California like it or not, individual citizens do have a right to work in an environment that does not force them to choose between their consciences and their employment or education. It is not the place of the public schools to engage in social engineering or to judge the beliefs and opinions of students, though efforts to do so are nothing new, historically speaking. It is a practice that goes as far back as the 19th century.

As I pointed out in my last post, the state is much more likely to reach its stated goal of reducing bullying if it sticks to the more neutral path of instructing students in the very useful principle of respect for one's fellow human beings.  It is actually possible to teach kids to be polite to others, even in the face of serious disagreement or even fear, without injecting oneself into the religious instruction the student receives from his or her family.

Specific moral instruction is best left in the purview of parents, but there are many in education and in politics who believe they and the schools have a duty to subvert parental teachings with which they do not agree, especially if those parents embrace traditional Judeo-Christian morality.  In my own experiences at multiple public schools, I observed that this prejudice is so pervasive within the world of public education, that many of my colleagues were not even conscious of how it affected their attitudes toward parents and even toward their own students.

Contrary to what some among my former colleagues believe, it is possible to have strenuous moral objections to someone else's choices, actions, or lifestyle, without losing sight of that person's humanity.  With effort, one can even express such disagreements politely. It is even possible for young people to manage this with proper instruction.   But the purveyors of "tolerance" seem as unable to tolerate this concept as to tolerate the suggestion that there is even such a thing as objective morality.

Tolerating the idea of objective morality means living with the possibility of falling from grace, and this is not terribly compatible with modern thinking.

In fact, our fallen nature is really our most ancient and universally recognized trait.  From Shakespeare's plays to Lord of the Rings, fall and redemption make up the thematic material of some of the greatest literature ever written.  Even the Ancient Greeks had their own story of  a "fall" in the form of Pandora and the infamous box of furies. As G.K. Chesterton noted, it wasn't until recently that people began to suggest that there is no such thing as sin:

Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. (Orthodoxy)

 

I suspect that this bill is less about bullying, and more a part of an effort to teach the next generations to deny both dirt and cat.

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Update: Read about what Archbishop Gomez has to say on this topic.

What Will Governor Moonbeam Do?

Identity politics took a central place in the political discourse of our nation during the last presidential election.  It seemed to me that this did more to reinforce racial division in the country than it did to heal it. I suspect it may have even served to undo some of the progress that has been made over the past couple of decades. One of my eleventh graders that year said to me one day that she never felt divided from anyone because of race, until she witnessed the national tension during that campaign season. She discovered unity is more difficult  when people are determined to carry out the dehumanizing practice of sorting themselves and others into competing victim groups.

This brings me to the issue of identity politics, and its influence on education as we know it.

As many of you are no doubt already aware, a piece of legislation is about to hit the governor's desk in California that, as the San Francisco Gate puts it, "would make the state the first requiring public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum".  It further explains that the bill "adds lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as well as people with disabilities to the list of groups that schools must include in the lessons. It also would prohibit material that reflects adversely on gays."


So, if Jerry Brown signs SB48, the good news is English teachers will have to stop ignoring Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

Wait a minute...  They are already in the curriculum!


And if since the bill also covers historical figures with disabilities, history teachers will have to stop leaving out FDR.


Wait...    Never mind. He's already there too.

We remember writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historical figures, not because they are token figures of a certain group, but because of their influence for good or ill.  We read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein because it is a great novel, not merely because a woman wrote it.  We study FDR's presidency because it was unique and historically important, not simply because he was in a wheelchair.  While someone's ethnicity, disability, or gender will contribute to who she is, it is not her only definitive characteristic. Even for historical figures whose identity is very important, such as Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King, great accomplishment and historical influence are still the primary reasons why we remember them.


Many suggest that the debate over homosexuality in America is no different from the questions of race that our nation faced over the past century. Even if, for the sake of argument, we concede this point, this legislation still remains impractical in light of certain realities in the classroom.

Nobody who has ever spent significant time in a school can deny that kids are pretty good at dividing themselves along arbitrary lines, whether it be race, class, fashion, glasses, or grades.  I have seen students treat one another better after meaningful personal interaction.  I have never seen a student decide that he is going to quit making fun of someone because a great author or historical figure had the same trait as the "other".  A student who bullies his classmate because said classmate is "a brain", for instance, isn't going to change his behavior because Einstein was "a brain" too. In fact, he is more likely to write off Einstein as well as his classmate, and go on his merry, anti-brain way.  I have never seen  a token minority author or historical figure serve to eliminate racism, nor a lesson on a token woman cure anyone of misogyny.

As someone whose curriculum consisted mostly of old books written by people who are now dead, I found the question of prejudice to be a very relevant one for my classroom.   If students cannot see the human dignity of those living human beings sitting next to them in class, they aren't going to be able to see it in fictional characters created by long-deceased authors. After all, can there be a greater divide between people than between the living and the dead?  Students must learn to see the inherent human dignity of those around them before they will be able to see it in people and characters from the past. Mark Twain showed us this more than a century ago: it is the lesson that we learn from reading Huckleberry Finn.  It is the time they spend on the river together that allows Huck to see Jim as a man and a friend, and not merely as a slave.

Tolerance is not a false pretense that people have no significantly different beliefs, backgrounds, and ideas.  It is not a hypocritical assertion that we are all the same.  It is a learned skill. It is, essentially, a form of patience that allows us to live and work with people whom we do not entirely understand, or with whom we fundamentally disagree, without losing our sanity or our awareness of each others humanity.

A curriculum that emphasizes differences and token representatives of politically fashionable classes of human beings does more to undermine a culture of acceptance in schools  than it does to create one. Students need no reminders that there are stark differences among them. Drawing attention to labels provides those unneeded reminders, and reinforces the false and dehumanizing notion that students cannot relate to anyone who does not have some arbitrary identifying characteristic in common.

The bill is also intended to add the history of the LGBT movement, but prohibits any material that could reflect poorly upon it.  This bears more resemblance to propaganda than it does to an honest approach to history. If similar legal injunctions existed with respect to study of the movement for racial equality, many activities of groups such as the Black Panthers and the more controversial comments of Louis Farrakhan would be forbidden material.  The fact that some people working for racial equality behaved badly has not undone the appreciation most people currently have for the progress our nation has made in race relations over the past five decades.  Human history, like the human beings in it, is full of behavior that "reflects badly" on someone. We can learn as much from those as we can from the moments when heroic people did something gloriously right.

In charity, I can only hope that those who are promoting this bill are unaware of the practical problems outlined above.

If they are aware of them, one needs to ask why they think a curricular emphasis on the LGBT movement will will change the value students place on their classmates or on Walt Whitman's literary achievements.  I shall deal with that question later.

Kids These Days...

...are more receptive to chant than many adults give them credit for. These are second-graders, folks.

St. Theresa Catholic School, Sugar Land, TX.

When I was six, I remember the children's choir at my parish mostly sang things like Carey Landry's "Bloom Where You're Planted", a song which I haven't heard in over 20 years, and probably for good reason, but which has annoyingly remained lodged in my brain since. Chant would have been much better, but wasn't really given much consideration. I have serious doubts that it would have even occurred to anyone to teach us Latin.

Learning chant and other forms of early music gives children an opportunity to learn about musical theory and history at a period in their development when their brains are particularly receptive.  Latin instruction not only allows them to understand the words that they are singing, it also gives them a linguistic foundation that will help them learn other romance languages and maybe even raise their reading comprehension skills and their SAT scores down the road.

Our Greek Orthodox brothers and sisters make a point of preserving their liturgical heritage, and teaching their children the language of their liturgy. There is no reason that we Roman Catholics cannot do the same for our kids.

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Update: Looks like this video has gained the notice of Fr. Z, The New Liturgical Movement, and the Curt Jester. Is it going viral? One can only hope so.

Corpus Christi

Remember how the Lord your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you and know your inmost heart - whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, he made you feel hunger, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

 (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)

Lauda Sion

(Sequence for Corpus Christi)

Laud, O Zion, your salvation, Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:
Bring him all the praise you know, He is more than you bestow,
Never can you reach his due.

Special theme for glad thanksgiving Is the quick'ning and the living
Bread today before you set:
From his hands of old partaken, As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.

Full and clear ring out your chanting, Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:
For today the feast is holden, When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.

Here the new law's new oblation, By the new king's revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:
Now the new the old effaces, Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.

What he did at supper seated, Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne'er to cease:
And his rule for guidance taking, Bread and wine we hallow,
making Thus our sacrifice of peace.

This the truth each Christian learns, Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:
Sight has fail'd, nor thought conceives, But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow'r divine.

Here beneath these signs are hidden Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Sign, not things are all we see:
Blood is poured and flesh is broken, Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.

(Source)

Whoso of this food partakes, Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:
Thousands are, as one, receivers, One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.

Bad and good the feast are sharing, Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death, or endless life.
Life to these, to those damnation, See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.

When the sacrament is broken, Doubt not, but believe 'tis spoken,
That each sever'd outward token doth the very whole contain.
Naught the precious gift divides, Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides, still unbroken does remain.
 

Lo! the angel's food is given To the pilgrim who has striven;
See the children's bread from heaven, which on dogs may not be spent.
Truth the ancient types fulfilling, Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling, manna to the fathers sent.

Very bread, good shepherd, tend us, Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us, Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.

You who all things can and know, Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav'nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be.

Amen. Alleluia. 

Related Reading:
The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Mystery of the Eucharist
Christ in the Eucharist 
The Real Presence
"The Institution of the Eucharist in Scripture" by Scott Hahn
Catholic Encyclopedia: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

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Update:
For a little humor related to today's feast, have a look at today's edition of "Not Said by Jesus Sunday" at Alive and Young.
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Wave of the Schoolmarm Ruler to Fr. Paul's Homily Blog

Fashion Trend Trivializes Rosary

One of my favorite gifts that I received for my confirmation was a beautiful rosary bracelet.  I felt that wearing it provided me with  a way to express my faith publicly but not ostentatiously, and on occasion it became a conversation piece that allowed me to share my faith with others who do not know what the rosary is.  It also came in very handy if I happened to forget to bring a full-sized rosary with me when I might have need of one.

(Photo Source)

Those who wear their beads with genuine devotion are in good company. After all, many religious wear their rosaries in their cinctures, keeping them available at all times.  In our human frailty, keeping our rosaries where we can see them is probably the best way many of us have to remind ourselves to actually use them.

But, we have to be careful about how we do so, lest they become Pharisaical display or mere superficial ornaments.

I have noticed over the past few years that many more people, especially teens and young adults, are wearing rosaries as fashion statements.  Even Justin Bieber has jumped on this bandwagon.

Unfortunately, the comportment and dress of some of some forces me to doubt that they are wearing rosaries as devotionals.  Many celebrities whose public behavior is, shall we say, less than in line with Catholic morality,  have popularized rosary beads as superficial fashion statements.   Britney Spears and Madonna are among the most prominent examples.

At the most extreme end of this problem is the inclusion of rosaries worn around the neck in the attire of gang members.  This has even caught the attention of schools, law enforcement, and news media. The San Antonio Police Department Youth Crime Service Unit "Gang Awareness" handbook and USA Today both report that rosary beads are now common components of gang-related attire.


More recently I have seen items labeled as "rosary necklaces" for sale in shops that cater to the more unsavory trends in youth fashion.  These usually have features that are rather different from the real thing.  Hot Topic, a mall chain that features some of the more edgy fashions popular among suburban teens, offers a so-called "rosary necklace" with a charm that looks like a pair of brass knuckles where the crucifix should be, and a gun-shaped center.   Such items are especially appealing to teens and young adults who buy into the glorified images of street culture so common in entertainment media. 

On the one hand, it could be argued that if  someone is going to wear a rosary as a mere fashion statement, it is less disrespectful to wear a bad knock-off than an actual sacred object. On the other hand, calling the bad knock-off a rosary, instead of something else, mocks the real thing and suggests that it is OK to pervert an item that is sacred into a profane fad.  Either way, this trend displays a great lack of respect for Catholic beliefs and practices, especially when worn by those who have no interest in even the appearance of using them for actual prayer or following Catholic teaching.  This public trivialization of one of our most distinctive spiritual tools should be of great concern to those who understand its true value.

Pope John Paul II called the rosary "an effective spiritual weapon against the evils afflicting society" (Rosarium Virginis Mariae).  No weapon, whether temporal or spiritual is of any use if we do not understand it or know how to use it.

It may seem like I am splitting hairs here. It may seem like I am nitpicking when I express concern about this. After all, we have much to be concerned about when it comes to our kids and what they do and what they see on television.  The fact that Lady Gaga wears something resembling a rosary around her neck (or eats one) may seem trivial compared to everything else she wears (or doesn't) and the things she says and does.

But I'm not alone here. Even the bishops find this trend to be disturbing, and have encouraged efforts to catechize people who walk into Catholic shops looking for rosaries, and thinking they are merely buying a necklace. Some business owners have begun giving out free leaflets on how to pray the rosary to the customers who purchase them, hoping that this will at least encourage respect for it, and maybe even teach people something.

If prayer, and the rosary in particular, is the most powerful tool we have to combat all of those evils that threaten our children (and he who is behind them), we must be concerned if people begin to forget what the rosary is for.

Imagine if every celebrity, twenty-something, and teen who wore something like the absurd piece of jewelry above actually learned to pray a real rosary. 

Catholic Feminism: Common Sense or Oxymoron?

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Eph. 5: 25-30)

During my engagement, I found myself explaining to a professional colleague (not a Catholic, nor, to my knowledge a practicing Christian of any kind at the time) that the passage above is, when taken in historical context, a feminist statement. In ancient times, men were expected to love their wives about as much as they were expected to love their cattle.   This message of Paul's was probably a bit of a surprise to them.

In the end, I told my colleague, if husbands do indeed follow the model above, women could safely "submit" to them without fear or loss of dignity, as the end result would be a mutual relationship in which each spouse places the other first.   If both strive for the ideal St. Paul lays out for us, neither spouse will be able to habitually treat the other as a mere object for exploitation.

This would also mean that both spouses should object to social and cultural trends that encourage violations of human dignity, and especially those trends which encourage gender-based exploitation and discrimination.

Simcha Fisher, a self-described Catholic feminist and blogger for the National Catholic Register, explains what Catholic feminist ideals look like in the present world in a recent post:

My husband says I’m a feminist. I know many liberal feminists would recoil in horror at that assessment: After all, I have all these kids, and I’m a member in good standing with that horrible old misogynistic Church, with its oppressive rules about reproduction and obedience. I’m pro-life and wholeheartedly follow the Magisterium’s teaching on the male priesthood and contraception, and try to make the Blessed Virgin my model.

So what makes me a feminist? Some would say that all faithful Catholics are feminists, because the Church is the most pro-woman organization around: The Church honors and values the particular gifts of women, and demands that men treat women with dignity and even a little bit of fear. John Paul II famously called himself a “feminist pope”; and in practical terms, the Church has probably done more for the physical well-being of women around the world than any other charitable organization.

Catholics who are feminists recognize that, while so many true wrongs have been righted in the last 50 years, the poor treatment of women in America has just been displaced, not eradicated. So now, instead of corsets and disenfranchisement, we have widespread pornography, abortion, and abandonment of every kind. We have gained some necessary ground, but lost so much else that is valuable in the process. Most of my Catholic friends see the world this way.

...

What change would I like to see? From the secular world: Stop thinking of women as sex objects; but at the same time, stop thinking of women as identical to men. Stop treating fertility like a disease; but stop pretending that women can be full-time mothers and full-time careerists. Stop blaming men for everything that is wrong with the world. It’s tiresome and counterproductive.

From my fellow Catholics: Stop thinking of women as objects who are here to save you from personal sexual sin; and stop thinking of women as intellectually inferior to men. Stop assuming that all women are meant to bear child after child no matter what; and stop pretending that if women just tried a little harder, men would be happy all the time. Stop blaming women for everything that is wrong with the Church. It’s cowardly and childish.

That’s for starters.

But feminism is not all about complaining and protesting. What I would like most of all is for women to ask themselves honestly, without worrying about history or politics, “What is it that I, as a woman, can do especially well? How can I help other women do what they do well?”

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/what-is-a-catholic-feminist/#ixzz1Oe03Z7Ui

What Draws the Young to Old Things?

Vintage is in.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it never went out.

Many people under 35 are currently fascinated with everything from the vintage to the ancient. Why?  Aren't young people supposed to be wholly preoccupied with the latest and greatest?

This is not just true for thrift store shoppers and fashion bloggers. Within the Catholic Church there are many young people gravitating toward traditional liturgy and practices that, to some of our elders of the baby-boomer generation, seem a little antiquated and possibly somewhat baffling. Most of the women I see in veils at mass each week appear to be under 35.  The religious orders that are getting high numbers of vocations from the young are those with the most traditional attitudes. 

Oddly enough, we can turn to an antique book for an explanation of this youthful preference for tradition. As usual, G.K. Chesterton can shed some light on the matter in a single paragraph:

"To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little power--the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow up the stars. If age after age that power comes upon men, whatever gives it to them is great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean--an empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever makes men feel young is great--a great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of change who does not feel upon his neck the vast weight of the weariness of the universe. But we who do the old things are fed by nature with a perpetual infancy. No man who is in love thinks that any one has been in love before. No woman who has a child thinks that there have been such things as children. No people that fight for their own city are haunted with the burden of the broken empires. Yes, O dark voice, the world is always the same, for it is always unexpected." (The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904)

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome.

On Sin and the Opression of Women

John Paul II wrote the following in his encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity of Women):

Jesus enters into the concrete and historical situation of women, a situation which is weighed down by the inheritance of sin. One of the ways in which this inheritance is expressed is habitual discrimination against women in favour of men. This inheritance is rooted within women too. From this point of view the episode of the woman "caught in adultery" (cf. Jn 8:3-11) is particularly eloquent. In the end Jesus says to her: "Do not sin again", but first he evokes an awareness of sin in the men who accuse her in order to stone her, thereby revealing his profound capacity to see human consciences and actions in their true light. Jesus seems to say to the accusers: Is not this woman, for all her sin, above all a confirmation of your own transgressions, of your "male" injustice, your misdeeds?

This truth is valid for the whole human race. The episode recorded in the Gospel of John is repeated in countless similar situations in every period of history. A woman is left alone, exposed to public opinion with "her sin", while behind "her" sin there lurks a man - a sinner, guilty "of the other's sin", indeed equally responsible for it. And yet his sin escapes notice, it is passed over in silence: he does not appear to be responsible for "the others's sin"! Sometimes, forgetting his own sin, he even makes himself the accuser, as in the case described. How often, in a similar way, the woman pays for her own sin (maybe it is she, in some cases, who is guilty of the "others's sin" - the sin of the man), but she alone pays and she pays all alone! How often is she abandoned with her pregnancy, when the man, the child's father, is unwilling to accept responsibility for it? And besides the many "unwed mothers" in our society, we also must consider all those who, as a result of various pressures, even on the part of the guilty man, very often "get rid of" the child before it is born. "They get rid of it": but at what price? Public opinion today tries in various ways to "abolish" the evil of this sin. Normally a woman's conscience does not let her forget that she has taken the life of her own child, for she cannot destroy that readiness to accept life which marks her "ethos" from the "beginning".

Early feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft called for a higher moral standard for men, knowing that to do so would not only improve life for women, but also elevate the entire human race.  They too opposed the contraceptive mentality that made women the playthings of immoral men, and the pattern of exploitation and abandonment that left women bearing the weight not only of their own sins, but those of men who used them.  They believed rightly that this pattern must be broken.   Here, Bl. Pope John Paul II offers us the same challenge, this time woven into the great tapestry of Biblical theology.

It is worthwhile to note his explicit linking of the fallenness of humanity with the phenomenon of gender-based oppression. This is a connection largely missed by the more recent incarnations of the feminist movement, which have instead suggested that women must be just like men (including adopting their supposedly congenital sexual depravity) in order to be "equal".  In short, they have themselves bought into a lie that has its roots in our very fallenness as human beings: a lie invented by men (or passed to them by the Father of Lies) in order to "keep women in their place".

What is this lie?  That anything uniquely female is also inherently inferior, and that only male behavior and male-defined success, and male power is real and legitimate.


G.K. Chesterton addressed that lie in What's Wrong with the World:

The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. ...

...


The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior. Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. 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.

Chesterton recognized the vast and profound importance of women, especially in their role as mothers.  He does not, as many people suppose Christian men do, view us as mere incubators, as playthings, or as servants.  We are the center of the most important place in the world: the home, the fundamental unit of society, and as such may be said to be, in a sense, the center of the human universe!  One may contribute to society in the workplace, but one creates society in the home.

Instead of using gender differences as a bludgeon to keep women down,  as an excuse to deprive one half of the population of education and social power, Catholic teaching and common sense challenge us to elevate women without diminishing our uniqueness, leaving us free to influence the world around us as God meant us to do.   As a culture we must "keep women in their place", not as slaves to men, but as partners.


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Related reading:
Psychology Today: Why Do So Many Women Experience The "Impostor Syndrome"?

Movie Recommendation: "Vision"

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of the truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

--Blessed Pope John Paul II

There are many who would be surprised to find faith and reason united in the life of an abbess living in the middle ages.  Such people cannot be familiar with the life of Hildegard of Bingen. She wrote books, music, and mystery plays, and also taught and practiced medicine. For an introduction to her, I highly recommend the recent film Vision.

After seeing a highly favorable review over at Tea at Trianon, I discovered that Vision was available for instant play on Netflix, so I naturally had to add it to my queue.

Elena Maria Vidal writes:

Resisting the temptation to make the film into a piece of feminist propaganda, Vision portrays Hildegard as an obedient daughter of the Church. Her obedience is by no means mere childish acquiescence, as the vow of obedience is too often misconstrued, but an expression of a vibrant faith. St. Hildegard is not afraid to take a firm but charitable stand against injustice. She will brook no infractions of the Rule which protects the serene and disciplined life of her nuns. She is a true mother ready to fight to the death for her spiritual children. (Read the rest.)

That sounded good to me!

I was never terribly familiar with her work before I saw this film, but I have to say that it has sparked my interest, particularly in her morality plays, one of which is shown in the film, and her hauntingly beautiful music, which is used extensively in the soundtrack. Here is an example of one of her compositions:








The film as a whole manages to show the beauty of monastic life alongside the inevitable human realities of internal politics.  It allows the story to tell itself, without excessive glorification of the heroine, or unnecessary demonization of the Church.  Barbara Sukowa's performance portrays a strong woman dedicated to the truth and beauty of her faith with a kind of radical orthodoxy that challenges those around her. She takes delight in the created world, and passes that on to the nuns in her care. At the same time, she is still a human being with human weakness who has to struggle to reach high ideals.  She is, like the rest of us, completely dependent on God for whatever abilities, strengths, or successes she has.

This film was, in short, a breath of fresh air.

Enjoy.

It's About Time

You may recall that the University of Notre Dame was the center of a much publicized scandal some time back.  Much to the chagrin of every serious Catholic associated with the institution and the outrage of many other serious Catholics who are not,  they invited President Obama to speak a their 2009 commencement, despite the fact that his positions on many fundamental social issues are directly contrary to Church teachings. (See the video below or read the Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics for more on which issues these are and why they are important.)





It could be argued that a Catholic university could legitimately invite a public figure who disagrees with church teaching to speak in a debate on issues of life and family. But, to invite President Obama to be a commencement speaker, and to award him an honorary degree while he was there, was a strange gesture for a Catholic university to make, to say the least. This is especially so when one considers the USCCB's 2004 statement on "Catholics in Political Life" which says:

"The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

Not surprisingly, Obama's remarks on the occasion, while full of words like "common ground", essentially asked Catholics and others with traditional Judeo-Christian values to set aside their consciences and follow his own moral views. (My response to his speech here.)  Genuinlely conciliatory? I think not.

(Source)

Protestors who came to speak out against this scandalous invitation were arrested for trespassing.

Those charges have now, two years later, been dropped, thanks to the efforts of the Thomas More Society, the president of which happens to be a Notre Dame graduate.

Links:

Thomas More Society’s Relentless Legal Pursuit Wins Justice for Pro-Life Activists at Notre Dame
WDNU News: Charges Dropped in Notre Dame Protest
LifeNews.com: Charges Dropped Against Notre Dame-Obama Speech Protestors


Tip of the Schoolmarm Ruler to: Joseph Bottum at CatholicVote.org.

Common Sense Thought for the Day

“As an apologist I am the reverse of apologetic. So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds. (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much tenacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.”

-G.K. Chesterton

Video: Remains of John Paul II removed from the Grottoes

RomeReports has posted the video below:



My husband and I were there only last November on our first ever pilgrimage to Europe (or to anyplace, really). It still seems strange to think we actually walked through those passages through which John Paul II's remains are being moved in the video. The experience will remain with us for the rest of our lives.


John Paul II, pray for us.

Catholic Education in Transition

(Source)

Darwin Catholic offers an insightful post on the cultural forces both within the Church and without that have changed the way Catholic schools relate to the communities they serve. He cites changing demographics within cities, the disappearance of explicitly Protestant culture from public schools, and the shrinking numbers of vocations in teaching orders as highly significant factors.

Having  experienced secondary-level Catholic education from both sides of the teacher's desk, I think he is correct in identifying these as reasons why schools struggle to compete with public schools for students and why they find it increasingly difficult to keep their budgets in the black. Costs go up as fewer religious are available to teach, and more electronic "bells and whistles" are perceived as necessities for education both public and private.

In addition to facing difficulties with enrollment and budgets, the cultural crises within the church can alter the culture of schools as well.  Catholic education was originally meant to serve Catholics for a reason:  parents wanted their children to be instructed in the faith as well as in the core subjects.  Catholic schools provided a place for this. It was especially necessary because public schools were once more influenced by anti-catholic segments of Protestant Christianity.

In communities where there are high numbers of serious Catholic parents, catholic schools have little difficulty maintaining their identity.  It has been my observation that in local communities where there are few serious Catholics, it is much easier for schools to shed their Catholic identity and emphasize their academics instead, as a way to attract enrollment. Parents who are not dedicated to living out the faith in their everyday lives do not usually catechize at home, and often react badly if schools expect students to take the Faith seriously, even to the point of expecting the school to let it slide when students openly violate the school rules and the moral teachings of the church by, say, repeatedly turning in plagiarized work or even showing up drunk at prom, or worse.

As with many questions the Church faces at present, the question of the direction of Catholic education is largely going to be answered by families. Strong Catholic families produce vocations to the religious life, making more priests and religious available to serve in schools.  They influence schools to provide clear catechesis and a strong community of faith for their students. They reinforce this catechesis at home by living out the faith in the daily life of their little "domestic church".

Unfortunately, the Church has not been immune from the general decline of the family in our culture, and many Catholic educators and the institutions that employ them find themselves fighting harder and harder in an uphill battle to maintain themselves, as do the families they serve.  There are no easy answers here, and even the hard answers remain incomplete or elusive.

Resurrexit Sicut Dixit, alleluia!

A little Mozart for Easter. Christ is risen!

I

Regina coeli laetare, Alleluia,
Quia quem meruisti portare. Alleluia,
Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum. Alleluia.

Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia:

For He whom you merited to bear, alleluia,

Has risen, as He said, alleluia.

Pray for us to God, alleluia.

Say Cheesy!

There are many little things that serve to make life more pleasant, and they are often the patient work of skilled hands. Good meals made from scratch, beautiful music, and richly worded poetry are among them.  The mass-produced, the inane, the vulgar, and the bland become much less appealing when held alongside these things.

Tonight my husband drew my attention to this post over at Fr. Z's blog which links to a recently composed sample of bland lounge music a setting for the new translation of the Gloria in the forthcoming new (and, dare I say, improved) missal.

If you are interested in assailing your ears for a moment, click here.

Here I must paraphrase the fictionalized version of Mozart in the film Amadeus. "One hears such sounds and what can one say but... turn of the century liturgical music!"
 
I once saw a T.V. documentary explaining the process by which perfectly good cheese is adulterated with procesed fats and artificial colorings in order to produce the ubiquitous single slice of American cheese.  Oddly enough, this composition put me in mind of that.

I have been a liturgical singer since I was in my teens. Up to and during that period of my life, the works of Haugen and Haas, as well as much protestant worship music, made up the bulk of the music I heard and sang at mass. It was not until my college years (at a secular university) that I was exposed to truly traditional and well-performed Catholic music, and knew it for what it was.  I had to take courses from the Music department at my university and join one of the performance choirs in order to learn about and sing what had previously been hidden from me.  It had been hidden, in part, because many in the generation before mine had ignored it, laboring under the misconception that the young have no capacity to appreciate that which is old.

Hearing traditional music after a lifetime of hearing the new stuff is much like trying gourmet cheese after a lifetime of eating Velveeta.
 

What I have seen of the new English translation is more poetic, more faithful to the Latin, and more theologically "meaty" than that which we currently use.   It is the hope of many that this will lead to a more beautiful liturgy and better catechesis for the Faithful.  In particular, I would like to see the Latin Rite liturgy in America better retain its Catholic identity. (We can take a lesson from Eastern Catholics as well as our Orthodox brothers and sisters here, whose worship suggests a preoccupation with tradition over superficial modernization.) Maybe the new translation will even encourage a higher level of composition for liturgial music?   Maybe?

I am not insisting that we all have to install massive pipe organs in our churches and start singing nothing but Faurė, Mozart, Byrd and Palestrina.  Not all choirs have the skill for that.  Simple, traditional hymns have enough of the poetic and the reverent in their lyrics and their composition to sound lovely with less traditional guitar or piano accompaniment.  For new mass settings, it might be worthwhile to take some of our cues from these.

Or, if I may continue my cheese analogy, if you can't have brie, try a good, everyday cheddar!

Alas, listening to the sample above is like watching someone pour Cheez Whiz all over a delicately prepared filet mignon.

Affairs of Church and State.

I'll let this clip speak for itself.

"Not that I loved Caesar less"...

My kids just finished reading "Julius Caesar".

I was particularly fascinated by Brutus and his conscience this year, perhaps because he seems so relevant to our present political discussions. Though he tries to be noble, Brutus's conscience and his sense of logic both fail him when he chooses to commit objective evil in order to promote what he believes to be the "greater good".

It was "not that I loved Caesar less," he claims. "But that I loved Rome more."

Loved Rome. Patriotism so great that it overcame his basic sense of right and wrong. And the wages of his sin, as one might expect in a Shakespearean tragedy, is death. Lots of it.

At Notre Dame, President Obama presented us with a great deal of talk about unity and common ground. Overcoming differences. Appealing to our ideals as Catholics, he tried to convince us that he is willing to work together to reduce abortion, AIDS, poverty. "Why can't we all just get along?" he seemed to ask plaintively.

I will tell you why, Mr. President. When Brutus betrayed his friend by murdering him in the name of patriotism, he unleashed chaos. "Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement" do not come when we shuffle off moral authority. The death of Caesar did not mean the beginning of a new republic. Instead, it brought civil war and the tyranny of the mob.

We are happy to work with you, Mr. President, to change our country for the better. If you want to fund adult stem cell research, adoption programs, homes for unwed mothers, and pre-natal care for pregnant women in crisis we are with you. If you want to make it easeir for citizens to take care of each other through local (even faith-based) organizations, you have our full support.

But as long as the FDA thwarts ethical adult stem cell research on your watch, your words are empty. While you support the abortion industry without holding it accountable for its bad behavior, your logic holds no water. As long as you continue to ignore the sanctity of marriage, the value of abstinence, and the consciences of health care workers, we cannot trust your policies. When you send our money overseas to fund abortions over our objections, and your Homeland Security officcials brand us as extremists and terrorists, we cannot take your words seriously, however "fair minded" they may be.

Your diplomatic rhetoric does not match your actions, sir, though surely you are an honorable man.

The other conspirators asked Brutus to set aside his qualms and murder Caesar with them.

You, Mr. President, are asking us to do worse. You are asking us to set aside our qualms, not to eliminate a potential tyrant (though some of your friends might think a child in the womb is such.) You are asking us to set aside our moral convictions and allow the murder of children in the womb and spiritual harm to those outside of it.

You are presenting us with a false choice between our consciences and the "greater good". You may not literally be placing the dagger in our hands, but you are asking us to become accessories to the actions of those who have it.

When it comes to the sanctity of human life, and the true dignity of marriage and women, our answer to you and any other president is the same: Consequentialism is not compatible with Christianity.

We love our country too much to destroy its soul.

We will not be made conspirators, Mr. President.


Tips of the Schoolmarm Ruler to: Real Choice, Ad Altare Dei, The American Catholic, William Shakespeare

Civil marriage and Separation of Church and State.

Prompted by the California Proposition 8 controversy, Darwin Catholic has posted a thoughtful reflection on the question of whether the State should simply get out of the marriage business altogether, leaving marriage in the hands of religious faiths.

Check it out.