man

Moral Framework

Moral Framework on April 24, 2010

By their comprehensive brevity and divine promulgation, God’s ten Commandments (Deut.V, 6–21) are the outstanding presentation of that natural law known to every man through his natural conscience, and which he denies or defies at his peril. Last week’s “Eleison Comments” claimed that this law makes easy a diagnosis of the ills of modern art. Actually it diagnoses a multitude of modern problems, but let us this week look at the structure of the ten Commandments, as analyzed by St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, 1a 2ae, 100, art.6 and 7.

Law is the ordering of a community by its leader. Natural law is God’s ordering of the community of men with himself, of himself with men. Of this community God himself is the centre and main purpose, so the first “table of the Law” lays out men’s duties to God (C.1, no idols, C.2 no blasphemy, C.3 keep the Sabbath), while the second table (C. 4–10) details men’s duties to their fellow-men.

The first three Commandments represent the duties of loyalty, respect and service in that order. For just as for a soldier in an army, says St.Thomas, disloyalty to his general, or treachery, is worse than disrespect, which is worse than a failure to serve him, so a man towards God must firstly have no other gods (C.1), secondly in no way insult him or his name (C.2), and thirdly render him the service he requests (C.3).

As for the duties of a man towards his fellow-men (C.4–10), of primary importance are his relations with the father and mother who gave him life. Therefore the second table of the Law is headed by the duty to honour one’s parents (C.4). So basic is this honour to all human society that without it society falls to pieces, as we see happening all around us today with “Western civilization” (which would better be termed “Western disintegration”).

The remaining six Commandments St.Thomas continues to analyze as being in descending order of importance. Harm to neighbour in action (C.5–7) is worse than merely in word (C.8) which is worse than only in thought (C.9–10). As for harm in action, harm to a neighbour’s person (C.5, no killing) is graver than to his family (C.6, no adultery), which in turn is graver than to his mere property (C.7, no stealing). Harmful actions in word (C.8, no lying) are worse than harm in mere thought, where again envy of his marriage or family (C.9, no concupiscence of the flesh) is graver than envy of his mere property (C.10, no concupiscence of the eyes).

However, the breaking of all ten Commandments involves pride – the ancient Greeks called it “hubris” – whereby I rise up against God’s order, against God. For the Greeks, hubris was the key to man’s downfall. For us today, a universal pride is the key to the modern world’s appalling problems, insoluble without God, which means, ever since the Incarnation, without Our Lord Jesus Christ. Sacred Heart of Jesus, save us!

Kyrie eleison.

Virile Distress

Virile Distress on March 20, 2010

Let me make no apology for coming back on a profound disorder of our wretched times: the dominance in public of women over men. That woman – the mother – should be queen in the home over things of the home – nothing more normal. But when she queens it in public, then there is something seriously wrong with the menfolk: they are giving to the women no lead or direction towards God, and the womenfolk are reacting, as is their nature, instinctively.

It is an intelligent young man from a distant land who reminds me of the problem. He observes around him that there are many more publications for women than for men; that in schools which are co-educational all the way to university, the girls, being more docile and diligent, regularly get better marks than the boys, who are in general disordered and do not apply themselves. My young friend asks, is co-education such a good idea?

He observes that it results in the girls succeeding better in school and coming out on top as the new “stronger sex,” manipulating the new “weaker sex” now at the mercy of their beauty. In all domains of the emerging “civilization of woman,” women are taking over the positions of leadership. Even to have children, a laboratory will now enable them to do without men, who no longer mean anything. Men are a failure. My young friend concludes with the agonizing questions: “What are the rules for being a true man? What is the meaning of virility? How should the strength of men differ from the strength of women? What is the truly “strong woman”? And the strong man?”

My dear young friend, you were born into a Revolutionary world which is defying God, and therefore seeking to overthrow the nature and natural order of things as God created them. God’s basic design is as follows: he created man and woman with profoundly complementary natures to marry and so populate the earth, in order to populate Heaven. To woman he gave superior feelings to be the heart of the home by having and looking after the children. To man he gave a superior reason to be the head of the home, and to lead all the family to Heaven. She is designed for domestic life, in the family. He is designed for public life, in society.

Therefore as much as the woman and mother should be listened to and heeded in affairs of the family for which she was gifted (see Proverbs XXXI for the Word of God’s own portrait of the truly “strong woman”), so little should she normally be seen or heard in public affairs, for which she was not made. The problem today is that godless and gutless men leave a leadership vacuum into which women almost have to flow, good women reluctantly. My dear young friend, pray 15 Mysteries a day of the Holy Rosary of the Mother of God, maker of true men. Fill yourself with God, with God, with God, and then you will be able to give to women the three l’s which they absolutely need: to be listened to, to be loved, to be led. Without God, you will have them walking all over you.

I am absolutely serious about 15 Mysteries a day. No less is needed.

Kyrie eleison.

Papal Error – I

Papal Error – I on January 30, 2010

Speaking two weeks ago on relations between the Rome of Vatican II and the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Pope Benedict XVI showed once more how subtle and powerful the Conciliar error is. He was addressing on Jan.15 a plenary session of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office). The three first paragraphs of his twelve-paragraph address need to be quoted in full, but a summary, as faithful as possible, will have to do.

1. Your Congregation shares in the special ministry of the Pope to ensure Church unity by safeguarding Catholic doctrine. That unity depends on unity in the Faith of which the Pope is the foremost defender. To confirm the brethren in the Faith and keep them united is his prime task. 2 Your teaching authority, like the Pope’s, involves obedience to the Faith, so that there may be one flock under the one Shepherd. 3. At all times the Church must get all Christians to witness together to the Faith, “In this spirit I place a particular trust in your commitment to overcoming any remaining doctrinal problems in the way of the SSPX achieving full communion with the Church.”

The problem here is much more than just whether or not the SSPX is in “full communion with the Church.” The problem is the whole relationship between unity and the Faith. In reality, Catholic unity is essentially dependent on the Catholic Faith. A Catholic being defined firstly by what he believes, then wherever there is no Catholic Faith there can be no Catholics to unite, and wherever there is that Faith there is the essential basis of Catholic unity. Now the Pope does say (1) that “Unity is in fact primarily unity in the Faith,” but generally (1,2,3) he connects unity and Faith as though they are on an equal footing, almost as though they are interdependent, whereas true unity is entirely dependent on the true Faith. How else could he arrive at his conclusion of (3), quoted above in full, where he gives the impression of instructing his Congregation to overcome doctrinal problems for the sake of Rome-SSPX unity?

Yet the duty of Christ’s Vicar is not to unite Rome and the SSPX at any cost, so to speak, but to unite them in the Catholic Faith as given us by Christ. So if there is a doctrinal difference between Rome and the SSPX (and there is, and it is huge!), then his prime problem is which of the two has the Catholic Faith, and which has not. And then he must unite the whole Church around whichever of them has that Faith, even if that happens to be the poor li’l SSPX! “Li’l,” or little, because it is insignificant except by its Faith!

Alas, Benedict XVI is more Conciliar than he is Catholic. But the Council, putting man before God, constantly undermined the Revealed doctrine of God, or the Faith, in the name of the ecumenical unity of men. That is why Benedict XVI is incapable of grasping, short of a miracle, the significance of the SSPX’s doctrinal stand. Yet how many Catholics are not liable to be deceived by the smoothness of his transition from much Truth (in 1,2) to its undoing (in 3)? Few! The error is as powerful as it is subtly conceived and expressed! We must pray for the miracle.

Kyrie eleison.

Undesired Celibacy

Undesired Celibacy on January 16, 2010

Last Sunday’s Feast of the Holy Family may be a suitable moment to quote a reader’s question arising from the pronouncement of “Eleison Comments” three weeks ago that, normally speaking, an unmarried man is a “zero” while an unmarried woman is “less than a zero”: what about a man or woman who might have liked to get married, but for whatever reason either could not or did not do so? Not everybody that does not marry has a religious vocation, the reader added.

I began by replying that unnatural loneliness is all too normal today. Modern life, especially big city life, causes not only marriages not to happen which should happen, but also many marriages which have happened to come apart. That is one punishment amongst many others of liberalism, which by glorifying individualism engenders an inaptitude to live in the married state. Liberalism also glorifies freedom from all ties, and the marriage bond is nothing if not a tie. “Hence the collapsing birth-rates of the Western nations and the suicide of once Catholic Europe. It is all immensely sad and immensely serious.”

I continued: “Obviously to call all men “zeros” is a colorful way of saying that, firstly, we are all before God minute creatures, and secondly, men are not nearly as great as they think they are. (Two Russian proverbs say that a man without a woman is like a garden without a hedge (to surround it), or like a man out in January (in Russia) without a fur cap!) To go on to call women “less than zeros” is a likewise provocative way of saying that firstly, contrary to the dreadful disparaging of their complementarity by the enemies of God everywhere today, women are not the same as men, and secondly, they are more profoundly dependent on men than men are on women – see Eve’s punishment in Genesis III, 16: “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.” But the “zero” and “less than zero” are not primarily to provoke but to be put together in an eight, to demonstrate graphically the natural power of the union of marriage.”

Alas, today many a priest comes across young women who would love to marry but can hardly find a young man that strikes them as fit to be a husband. The young men seem all too often virtual dishrags, washed out by a liberalism which dissolves their minds by which God meant them to lead. Liberalism does not so easily undo the instincts and emotions which God makes natural to woman, although when it does, the results can be even more terrible.

In conclusion, I referred to the Eighth Station of the Way of the Cross, where Our Lord consoled the weeping women of Jerusalem (Lk. XXIII, 27–31): such a punishment, he warned, would soon come down on deicide Jerusalem as would make them envy the women who had never had husband or family. In our own day that is not a reason not to marry, but it may be a consolation for anyone to whom Providence has not given to marry but who might have liked to do so, because coming down upon us in what cannot be the too far distant future is . . . tremendous reason to start putting now more trust than ever in God’s unfailing Providence . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Christmas Cheer

Christmas Cheer on December 19, 2009

Here is some good news for Christmas, drawn from England’s “Catholic Herald” of Dec. 11: a report from the United States tells that the present economic recession is helping marriages. The recession began towards the end of 2007. In that year the divorce rate in the USA was 17.5 for every thousand married women. In the following year it was 16.9. Lessons at what Americans call “The School of Hard Knocks” are costly, but they sure teach!

“Marriage in America: The State of Our Unions 2009” is the title of the Report published jointly at the Institute for American Values, University of Virginia, by the Center for Marriage and Families and the National Marriage Project, whose director, Brian Wilcox, wrote the Report. He says that millions of Americans have adopted a “homegrown bailout strategy,” and “are relying on their own marriages and families to weather this storm.” As our new-fangled world collapses, so the old proverbs come back into their own: “Every cloud has a silver lining”; “Blood is thick and water is thin”; “There’s no place like home.”

Another piece of evidence quoted by Wilcox to prove that the economic crisis is helping marriages is the decision of many married couples to get rid of credit card debt. As reported by the Federal Reserve Board, Americans have reduced their collective revolving debt by 90 billion over the past year. Wilcox says the recession has revived the “home economy” as more and more Americans are growing their own food, making and mending their own clothes, and dining out less often: “Many couples appear to be developing a new appreciation for the economic and social support that marriage can provide in tough times.”

Husbands, behave like men, and turn to your wives for support. Wives, glory in your womanly gifts which men do not have in anything like the same measure, and lean on your husbands for strength. A man without a woman is normally a zero (yes, zero!). A woman without a man is normally even less, an incomplete zero, or an open U. But put the U as support beneath the zero, and you suddenly have 8! On the Miraculous Medal, is not the Cross of Our Lord shown resting on the M of Mary? To go through with his Passion Our Lord chose to renounce all his divine Strength. But could his humanity alone have performed our Redemption without the human support of his Mother? Never!

Not many economists have any common sense, but the few that are not living in la-la-land all see this recession getting much worse yet. Mothers, re-learn domestic skills. Fathers, re-learn vegetable gardening. All lovers of truth and reality, strengthen not only family ties, but also neighbourhood ties. It is going to be a question of survival, and our governments and media are not going to help, on the contrary, unless they seriously change direction. “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” figuring at this time of year as a powerless human baby. Yet this baby is the Almighty!

Kyrie eleison.

Femininity Rediscovered

Femininity Rediscovered on November 14, 2009

When a walled town is being besieged, and the enemy are continually attacking one part of the walls, the townspeople must continue to defend that part of the walls. Today the Enemy of mankind, Satan, is continually attacking true womanhood, because without true women there can be no true mothers, no true family life, no truly happy children and finally no truly human beings. I wish I could quote the complete testimony of another ex-feminist who wrote to me several months ago to thank me for, as she now sees it, “affirming and supporting our true nature as women.” The following is a cruelly brief summary of her classic letter:—

“Born in the mid-1960’s, I had a violent and abusive father, and I have lacked a father figure ever since. After he died when I was 14, I rejected my Catholic faith and left the Church – it is difficult to believe in a loving God when you are not loved by your own parents. Away from the Church I embraced radical feminism and paganism, and I came to hate dresses because they were portrayed as an inferior form of clothing to what boys wore. I wonder where I got the idea that women are weak? I now understand that women aren’t weak at all, but we are strong in different ways from men.

“I went to college determined to prove that I could do anything a man could do, but in my next seven years as a police officer I realized that the aggressiveness and dominance needed by the job just did not come naturally to me, and that I could never be as physically strong as the men. So I equated any sign of femininity in me with weakness. At the same time, as a radical feminist, I hated men, and wanted not to need one, and because of all that feminist garbage, I almost never married. But in my mid-thirties I realized I ran the risk of being alone for the rest of my life, so I decided to date. Soon afterwards I met my future husband.

“When he asked me to wear a dress because it was more attractive, I exploded! However, I did try it just to please him. Then my behaviour slowly changed, and as I began to act and to feel more feminine, I discovered that I liked feeling feminine because it felt natural to me. When after some time we married, my priorities changed and I wanted so much to stay at home. At work I can be assertive, but I don’t enjoy it. I now understand that it is normal for me as a woman to prefer not to lead, because that is the way God designed me. I have spent my entire working life trying to compete with men and to be like men, and it has made me unhappy and feel like a failure because try as I might, I am not like men and never will be, because I am not a man.

“It was my husband’s love that enabled me after 26 years to return to the Church, kicking and screaming, but God was calling! There I found everything somewhat different from what I remembered, and to begin with I disagreed with the Church’s position on all questions involving women. But as I read more, my eyes were opened, and I realized amongst other things how the way I dress shapes my feelings and even my personality. When I wear dresses or skirts I feel gentle and feminine, more natural. My on-going education on the Church’s teachings on the role of women, which includes “Letters from the Rector,” has helped me to gain respect for myself as a woman and not as a pseudo-man. It is to the detriment of everyone that feminism has become ingrained in our culture.” (End of the testimony.)

Blessed Mother of God, please obtain for us manly men, without whom we will hardly have womanly women.

Kyrie eleison.