GKC: The Prudery of the Feminists

The following article originally appeared in the New Witness, January 25th, 191. The American Chesterton Society put it in the most recent edition of their Gilbert Magazine. Did I mention you should get a subscription?  DO SO, THUS COMMANDETH ... well you should! HERE!!!


The Prudery of the Feminists

One assumes GK after dealing with the after effects of arguments with feminists

In the ultimate and universal sense I am astonished at the lack of astonishment. Starting from scratch, so to speak, we are all in the position of the first frog, whose pious and compact prayer was "Lord, how you made me jump!" Matthew Arnold told us to see life steadily and see it whole. But the flaw in his whole philosophy is that when we do see life whole we do not see it steadily, in Arnold's sense, but as a staggering prodigy of creation. There is a primeval light in which all stones are precious stones; a primeval darkness against which all flowers are as vivid as fireworks. Nevertheless, there is one kind of surprise that does surprise me, the more, perhaps, because it is not true surprise but a supercilious fuss. There is a kind of man who not only claims that his stone is the only pebble on the beach, but declares it must be the one and only philosopher's stone, because he is the one and only philosopher. He does not discover suddenly the sensational fact that grass is green. He discovers it very slowly, and proves it still more slowly, bringing us one blade of grass at a time. He is made haughty instead of humble by hitting on the obvious. The flowers do not make him open his eyes, but, rather, cover them with spectacles; and this is even more true of the weeds and thorns. Even his bad news is banal. A young man told me he had abandoned his Bible religion and vicarage environment at the withering touch of the one line of Fitzgerald: "The flower that once has blown, for ever dies." I vainly pointed out that the Bible or the English burial service could have told him that man cometh up as a flower and is cut down. If that were self-evidently final, there would never have been any Bibles or any vicarages. I do not see how the flower can be any more dead, when a mower can cut it down, merely because a botanist can cut it up. It should further be remembered that the belief in the soul, right or wrong, arose and flourished among men who knew all there is to know about cutting down, not unfrequently cutting each other down, with considerable vivacity. The physical fact of death, in a hundred horrid shapes, was more naked and less veiled in times of faith or superstition than in times of science or skepticism. Often it was not merely those who had seen a man die, but those who had seen him rot, who were most certain that he was everlastingly alive.

There is another case somewhat analogous to this discovery of the new disease of death. I am puzzled in somewhat the same way when I hear, as we often hear just now, somebody saying that he was formerly opposed to Female Suffrage but was converted to it by the courage and patriotism shown by women in nursing and similar war work. Really, I do not wish to be superior in my turn, when I can only express my wonder in a question. But from what benighted dens can these people have crawled, that they did not know that women are brave? What horrible sort of women have they known all their lives? Where do they come from? Or, what is a still more apposite question, where do they think they come from? Do they think they fell from the moon, or were really found under cabbage-leaves, or brought over the sea by storks? Do they (as seems more likely) believe they were produced chemically, by Mr. Schefer on principles of abiogenesis? Should we any of us be here at all if women were not brave? Are we not all trophies of that war and triumph? Does not every man stand on the earth like a graven statue as the monument of the valour of a woman?

As a matter of fact, it is men much more than women who needed a war to redeem their reputation, and who have redeemed it. There was much more plausibility in the suspicion that the old torture of blood and iron would prove too much for a somewhat drugged and materialistic male population long estranged from it. I have always suspected that this doubt about manhood was the real sting in the strange sex quarrel, and the meaning of the new and nervous tattoo about the unhappiness of women. Man, like the Master Builder, was suspected by the female intelligence of having lost his nerve for climbing that dizzy battle-tower he had built in times gone by. In this the war did certainly straighten out the sex tangle; but it did also make clear on how terrible a thread of tenure we hold our privileges--and even our pleasures. For even bridge parties and champagne suppers take place on the top of that toppling war-tower; an hour can come when even a man who cared for nothing but bridge would have to defend it like Horatius; or when the man who only lives for champagne would have to die for champagne, as certainly as thousands of French soldiers have died for that flat land of vines; when he would have to fight as hard for the wine as Jeanne D'Arc for the oil of Rheims.

Just as civilization is guarded by potential war, so it is guarded by potential revolution. We ought never to indulge in either without extreme provocation; but we ought to be cured for ever of the fancy that extreme provocation is impossible. Against the tyrant within, as against the barbarian without, every voter should be a potential volunteer. "Thou goest with women, forget not thy whip," said the Prussian philosopher; and some such echo probably infected those who wanted a war to make them respect their wives and mothers. But there would really be a symbolic sense in saying, "Thou goest with men, forget not thy sword." Men coming to the council of the tribe should sheathe their swords, but not surrender them. Now I am not going to talk about Female Suffrage at this time of day; but these were the elements upon which a fair and sane opposition to it were founded. These are the risks of real politics; and the woman was not called upon to run such a risk, for the very simple reason that she was already running another risk. It was not laws that fixed her in the family; it was the very nature of the family. If the family was a fact in any very full sense, and if popular rule was also a fact in any very full sense, it was simply physically impossible for the woman to play the same part in such politics as the man. The difficulty was only evaded because the democracy was not a free democracy or the family not a free family. But whether this view was right or wrong, it is at least clear that the only honourable basis for any limitations of womanhood is the same as the basis of the respect for womanhood. It consisted in certain realities, which it may be undesirable to discuss, but is certainly even more undesirable to ignore. And my complaint against the more fussy Feminists (so called from their detestation of everything feminine) is that they do ignore these realities. I do not even propose the alternative of discussing them; on that point I am myself content to be what some call conventional, and others, civilized. I do not in the least demand that anyone should accept my own deduction from them; and I do not care a brass farthing what deduction anybody accepts about such a rag as modern ballot paper. But I do suggest that the peril with which one half of humanity is perpetually at war should be at least present in the minds of those who are perpetually bragging about breaking conventions, rending veils, and violating antiquated taboos. And, in nine cases out of ten, it seems to be quite absent from their minds. The mere fact of using the argument before mentioned, of women's strength vindicated by war work, shows that it is absent from their minds.

If this oddity of the new obscurantism means, rather, that women have shown the moral courage and mental capacity needed for important concerns, I am equally unable to summon up any surprise at the revelation. Nothing can well be more important than our own souls and bodies; and they, at their most delicate and determining period, are almost always and almost entirely confided to women. Those who have been appointed as educational experts in every age are not surely a new order of priestesses? If it means that in a historic crisis all kinds of people must do all kinds of work, and that women are the more to be admired for doing work to which they are unaccustomed, or even unsuited, it is a point which I should quite as easily concede. But if it means that in planning the foundations of a future society we should ignore the one eternal and incurable contrast in humanity; if it means that we may now go ahead gaily as if there were really no difference at all; if it means, as I read in a magazine to-day, and as almost anyone may now read almost anywhere, that if such and such work is bad for women it must be bad for men; if it means that patriotic women in munition factories prove that any women can be happy in any factories; if, in short, it means that the huge and primeval facts of the family no longer block the way to a mere social assimilation and regimentation-- then I say that the prospect is not one of liberty but of perpetuation of the dreariest sort of humbug. It is not emancipation, it is not even anarchy; it is simply prudery in the thoughts. It means that we have Bowdlerized our brains as well as our books. It is every bit as senseless a surrender to a superstitious decorum as it would be to force every

An awesome article on GK Chesterton by Fr. Leonard. Feeney (yes that one, but it is great!)

GKC

In person Chesterton was a large man who was something of a strain on his clothes. Tidiness he persistently ignored in favor of comfort. Everyone who got near him was tempted to rearrange him, or at least to giving thought as to how it could be done. Eventually Chesterton gave up the idea of expecting to be held together in ordinary attire by ordinary threads and buttons, and went around wearing a cloak. The simplicity with which one could secure a sort of stylish seclusion by the tying of a single knot or the fastening of a single hook appealed to Chesterton. A cloak was a garment calculated to reveal not how he was fashioned, but where he was to be found.

In point of kindliness, Chesterton had one of the biggest hearts that has ever lived. And yet I am told the doctors found it undersized physically when they examined him in one of his illnesses. Nothing daunted, he went right on using what share of heart he had to love the world largely and lavishly until the hour of his death. This is what is known as a paradox. 

When Chesterton stood up he was impressive. But it was even more marvelous to watch him sit down. He sat down with an air of supreme humility, as if totally collapsing in the arms of God. In the difficult assignment of being both huge and human he needed lots of support. Once seated, he would doze and dream a great deal, and seemed constantly distracted by the incessant rush of his own thoughts.

As humility was Chesterton’s outstanding moral virtue, so what he chose to call “sanity” was what he wanted most for the mind. He was far too humble to suppose that one could appropriate sanity as an assured possession without offering plenty of credentials. And so he undertook to outline what he meant by sanity perhaps more carefully than any man of his generation. One of his contemporaries, George Bernard Shaw, said sanity was the specialty of the superman. This pseudo-preternaturalism annoyed Chesterton, and his reply was devastating. “Shaw criticizes human nature,” he said, “as though he himself did not possess it.” Another contemporary, H. G. Wells, offered hope that sanity might blossom in some brain of the future. Chesterton was quick to analyze this mixture of biology and guesswork masquerading as prophecy, and he exposed it to relentless ridicule. In the end he made more of a monkey out of Wells than Evolution ever had.

The rest of the chapter is fantastic!  I know many people will scouff because its by Father Feeney, but Father was a great literary man in his day.  The comparison is often made to that of the Belloc of America.  

Read the rest HERE

Giving Scandal & Learning Humility

I have been troubled lately, and have been trying to learn humility in recognizing my wrongs.

I want to thank Terry for his recent thoughts on pride and on learning ones place through humility.

Today's Gospel in the ancient right was the parable where the King invites people to his sons wedding, but is shunned and his servants that are sent to bring the message are killed.  He later calls for people good and bad to be informed of his feast and to be invited.  At the feast the King then comes across someone not dressed properly for the wedding and casts him out of the feast to the darkness where there is wailing and mashing of teeth.

The more that I ask myself how I can change, the more I feel myself trying to remain complacent in my own pride.  I too often see my thinking as the most important thing.  I'm always quick to correct others, but that log is in my eye.  Looking at it just after Mass today I can again see myself as the man who is invited to the wedding feast but is dressed improperly, in other words my agenda is more important than the feast.

Im trying to find a way to be humble in my thoughts and deeds, while not going soft on truth.  And quite frankly it seems like an endless battle where I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

If I were asked after my conversion where I would be three years later I would have never thought I would be siding with the traditionalists.  I would much rather let things go on without injecting myself into it.  Im no scholor or theologian.  Im arrogant and self righteous...and I hate being called on the carpet for it.

I am the one wearing the clothing inappropriate for the wedding feast.  I cause scandal and drive others away.

I am taking a break not from writing or learning but from placing myself in any place of authority because my pride is far too troubling.

Please pray for me that I learn humility and do His will (which is love and mercy itself) and not my own (narcissism).

Having got that out of my system, I want to make you aware of some fantastic sermons I came across today.  I think you will find these to be fantastic and the way I'm pushing myself to be a better Catholic.

Have a Fantastic day!

And please say a prayer for this Priest

+JMJ+

Trying to Figure Out Francis

Perhaps its just me but ever since the election of Francis to the Papacy it seems like everyone, even faithful Catholics are complicit in creating an aura of rupture over the new papacy.  Perhaps it should be expected that people are so fascinated with every little aspect of Francis’ ways that they forget that its really not about the person but the office.  It was the same thing with JPII (and no I don’t say the great, let history decide that), people treated the papacy as a celebrity office, picking and choosing what they like to hear from him and propping up an image that is friendly to them, like that hes ecumenical because of the Assisi issue.  Benedict was a known commodity unlike these two, so no honey moon existed.  With Francis it is said that people are walking on egg shells around him (I would presume with what he says its probably like walking on egg shells when hes around traditionalists). 

There have been many gestures and things that have been said in this short 3 months by the Holy Father that have often left us scratching our heads as to what he means by such.  I think I am at the point that I want to compile some things I have noticed and give a quick take on them.

1.       Forgoing of wearing the Mozetta and the red shoes.  Just after he appeared as the new pope most people recognized that he was not wearing the traditional Mozetta and later on that he was not wearing the red shoes.  Many in the media pointed to this immediately saying that surely this was a guarantee of ruptures to come, that finally the carnival was over as rumors put it, which were later refuted.  Such clothing is often viewed as luxurious wear, trampling on the poor and their misery.  Anyone can learn that the red is symbolic thing representing the blood of the martyrs which the Pope is to always prepare to also undergo.  Many said that the shoes were from a prestigious maker that the rich and famous use, but the shoes were actually made by a local cobbler, so strike 2.  Protestants came out saying that this was a good sign that he would forgoe such things, but as with everything else protestants have a hard time understanding the importance of symbols in the Christian life.  Francis later said that he was keeping his black shoes because they were fairly

2.       Just after the Pope was elected he made a couple statements that he hoped for a poor church and a church of the poor.  Many people immediately jumped on the words and said finally a Pope focused on the poor and not just the Vatican’s wealth.  I think its fair to say that the Pope is a Jesuit and very detached from worldly things including money and power.  I remember hearing a story from Badger Catholic about Father John Hardon and his profound simplicity where he is said to only have had 2 pieces of clothing, 2 cassocks.  Now I will note here that he did from time to time were pants, but still it was a detachment from the world and the concerns of the world that defined the late Fr. Hardon.  So too Francis is not attached to the things of the world and people cannot put him in a box that that confuses a culture built on division.  My initial thought on his statement of a poor church was a church detached from the things of the world that often keep us from being the evangels we are called to be.  He later confirmed this thinking in one of his addresses in the Paul VI hall during a general audience.  If we think for just a second it was the poor Catholic immigrants that came to this country that built the cathedrals by taking out 2^nd mortgages, who had children, who were persecuted for the faith and yet persevered.  They were detached from how the world saw them.  Its not that they would not want to be American but they knew that they were to be in the world but not of it.  Having a love for creation doesn’t mean you place it above the final goal of being with the creator of the creation.  We are called to go against the grain, to be the light of the world.  The poor who have made up the majority of Holy Mother Church were dependent on God and trusted him just as he told them to.  The concerns of the world for riches and control distort the simple joy of trusting in him.  I know not where I will get my food, my clothing or the respect I seek, I place that in his hands and I pray his will be done and he never disappoints.  Even when things take a turn for the worse I remember Colossians 1:24 when Paul says Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

3.       When Francis decided to not move into the Papal apartments it was generally hailed as another fantastic break from the church’s so called Traditions and represented the humble aspect of the new pontiff, a paradigm shift from the past.  Supposedly it was said that he thought the apartment was too huge so he shunned to life.  I want to point out a couple things.  First no Pope since Leo XIII has occupied more than one level of the apartments.  About a year or two ago the History Channel got permission to make a documentary about the Vatican including the Papal apartments.  From what I remember the apartment that Benedict XVI occupied was not glittering, but very modest with a small TV and old furniture.  After the announcement was made the Eponymous Flower posted an article really looking at the supposedly shunned apartments, which the Pontiff still uses for meetings by the way.  You can find that great article here.  Perhaps one of the things that need to be cleared up is the reason why he choose not to be in the Papal apartments, namely he doesn’t like being entangled in bureaucracy and he loves being around people.  Benedict was a shy man and familiar with the way the Vatican Bureaucracy worked.  The bureaucracy does act as a buffer, but it also prevents the pontiff from getting helpful information.  For instance during the reign of Benedict XVI there were some in the Vatican who wished to see the Neocatecatical ways liturgy approved, and it was nearly approved until Raymond Cardinal Burke received a private audience with the Pope where he revealed the plot greatly saddening the Holy Father and eventually stopping the plan.  Francis in staying at the guest house is able to step out of the bureaucracy and get to business on his terms without a million road blocks that hindered the previous pontificates. 

4.       A couple weeks ago the Holy Father made a statement about Atheist’s that was all of the sudden blown up by the media who claimed it meant Atheist’s were assured of Heaven.  In fact the Pope made no such comment, he merely said that we can meet each other in doing good.  Now before we delve into the issue that only Good can be done by those in Christ understand I agree, but we are talking about actual grace which is given to all and we can use this grace that God gives to the heathens to bring them closer to God.  This whole thing reminds me of the former Pontiffs interview with Peter Seewald where he was asked whether it was a good thing that Male prostitutes use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.  The Holy Father said that it was a move in a moral way that the person thinks of the others good when asking the question.  However he didn’t say that it would be ok, just that it is a move in the right direction, not a saving one and still sinful.  The moral of both stories is that the media is incompetent, and some are even downright evil in their distortion. 

5.       Another complaint is that the Holy Father only rarely refers to himself as the Pope.  Many see this as a shift of emphasis that he rejects the office.  This, however, is a mistake.  It is true that he much prefers at least publicly to be refereed to as the Bishop of Rome, but in doing so he doesn’t reject any other title afforded to the Supreme Pontiff.  For instance I can think of a number of times he references himself as the Pope so its not like it escapes him.  Rather in continuity with Benedict I think he is really trying hard to bring the Orthodox back in Communion with the Holy See and one of the ways to create the trust is to use familiar terms that both “lungs” share.  Specifically speaking Ignatius of Antioch refers to the Bishop of Rome who over sees the church in charity, so it’s a common link.  So too before he was elected as a pope he was asked his opinion on titles.  He did not reject that titles should be used but he did say that when one has to use titles over and over again to demand they recognize his authority he has already lost that authority.  So when people say that he is breaking the Tradition’s you can recognize that they are removing themselves from reality.  The Pope does not wish to hold himself up as a man against all others, but as the Servant of Servants correcting those dissenting from the faith in all charity.  Therefore don’t make a big deal of which title he prefers all of the titles are valid and it is up to the Pope how he wishes to wield his authority in the church. 

6.       This love of the poor is often referenced by those in the church (or out of it for that matter) who seek to set up Francis against the previous pontificates.  This is yet another media blitz to control the conversation and create false distinctions that only serve to confuse and divide the faithful.  All Pontiffs even the bad ones loved the poor to some degree or another.  Benedict didn't see his being a Pope in every sense as being opposed to loving the poor.  For instance in 2010 he was given a gift of a $2500 truffle, he immediately had it delivered to a soup kitchen for their use.  Living in the Vatican or living in the streets makes no difference in the end, and it shouldn't be used to condemn either.  St. Louie IX was a King, living with all the indulgences due his honor, yet his Love for the Lord humbled him to be a Christian King taking care of the poor and the widows while defending the country he was entrusted to. 

7.       A confusion of humility with simplicity, is perhaps the greatest confusion that is permitted by quite a few out there.  Even Catholic media sources allow this to propagate.  When people see that he doesn't wear the red items, or that he doesn't use a golden pectoral cross or lives in the guest house and not the papal apartments they say isn't that humble?  Hes rejecting material goods, he’s so humble.  Such thinking is Jansinist.  Its not humble to reject the traditions that are developments of the office.  It might indeed be simplistic, but its not humble.  Imagine if a King existed that when asked to give its people hope in leading his people into battle instead appoints another to take his place so that he may maintain his comfortable existence.  It is the same with Francis he might well feel uncomfortable with the so called “trappings” and tempted if he were to adhere to the Traditions that are part of the development of the office.  This is not an exclusive feeling toward the papacy.  Fulton Sheen and even Pius X were uncomfortable in the office with all of its traditions, yet they submitted themselves humbly accepting the office and all that came with it.  Perhaps when Francis is convinced that he will not be tempted by such aspects he will be more open to giving himself over to the office completely.

Let Us always pray for the Holy Father in his most difficult work in the Vineyard.  So too continue in praying for all the clergy and religious, for their battle with the diabolical is unceasing!  Oh and by the way I dont think Francis really cares about the issues most Traditionalists do, thats going to have to be a grass roots effort