Religion

The submission of wives to their husbands has got to be one of the least popular teachings of the Catholic Church today — and the case can be made that the Catholic Church isn’t teaching this today at all. The folks at Heart, Mind, and Strength are busy finessing this doctrine into oblivion where it shall die the Death of a Thousand Nuances. For instance, Greg Popcak writes:

“BUT, when the man stops listening to the voice of God speaking through the needs of his wife and children, he becomes not a leader, but a despot. And obedience to such a husband would not be Christian obedience, but rather, idolatry … A husband can only claim authority to the degree that he is aware of the specific needs God has written on the heart of his wife and children and spends his days finding godly ways those needs can be fulfilled.”

How disappointing. To appease his anti-Catholic critics, it appears that Mel Gibson has decided to depart from the Gospels where the Jews are shown in a less than favorable light see. :

“Paul Lauer, marketing director for Gibson’s Icon Productions company, said Gibson has edited the film to show more ’sympathetic’ Jewish characters who were not calling for Jesus to be crucified. ‘We believe we have softened the story compared to the way the Gospel has told it,’ Lauer said in an interview. He pointed to Matthew 27:25, in which the Jewish mob calls for Jesus’ blood ‘to be on us and on our children.’ ‘That’s in the Gospel,’ he said. ‘It’s not in our film.’”

“Time to calibrate your gaydar, because Bravo’s ‘Boy Meets Boy’ (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.) is finally here. America’s first gay dating show isn’t just a dating show, you see. It’s a sexual shell game in which a mix of gay and straight suitors compete for ‘one exceptional gay man’ and, oh yeah, a secret cash prize. Of course James, The Exceptional Gay Man (TEGM), doesn’t know that half the men are straight — boy, won’t it be a hoot when he finds out? — which makes his earnest enthusiasm for his role as the gay bachelor all the more heartbreaking.”

At the bidding of a friend, I am reading Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. The night before last I came across this astonishing passage:

“Then he waited for communications, and they came, so soft and delicate, passing like shadows, that his will sweated blood and tears in the effort to catch and fix them and correspond. . . .

Here’s my take on The Passion of The Christ. There is no subject more worthy of meditation. There is no event more important in the history of the world. Mel Gibson’s movie, I predict, I pray, will convert thousands. It is not in the least anti-Semitic, except to those who believe the Gospels and the Christian Faith are inherently anti-Semitic.

With that said … I am very reluctant to give unqualified support to any theatrical depiction of Christ. Some of the Eastern Orthodox claim that a theatrical portrayal of Christ is against their canon law. I don’t know, but I would not be surprised. How could a movie, a play, not diminish the reality of Christ in the mind’s eye? He was — He is — the incarnate God. GOD! Can any film possibly do Him justice?

Dr. Peter Chojnowski’s blueprint for Distributism here highlights six elements of a Catholic economy: Guilds, Family-Owned Businesses, Homesteading, Apprenticeships, Barter and Credit Unions, and Neighborliness. The article is a good reminder of distributist ideals, even if they seem unattainable in our time. Perhaps the most salient characteristic of Distributism is the emphasis on Property:

“First, we must commit ourselves to the goal advanced by the economic teachings of Pope Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum), Pope Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), and the Distributist theorists, the attainment of real property for families. It is only with the attainment of real property (i.e., not mortgaged to the modern day usurer) that we shall establish fixed ‘realms’, footholds of Christendom capable of sustaining over a indefinite period of time families dedicated to the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

here’s one of Peggy Noonan’s finest articles from last November:

“A short word on smokers. They are people who’ve made a deal. They are old-fashioned, and it’s an old-fashioned deal. Their sense of life is essentially conservative: They know it is short, they know part of how you say thank you for it is to really feel it and enjoy it, and they know this life isn’t the most transcendent and important one you’ll be living. Smokers are disproportionately Catholic, did you know that? They know that eventually something will kill them. They accept death and illness as part of the equation. They love smoking so much, it so enhances their enjoyment of each day, that they’ll gamble. Some of them, they know, will die in a car accident next year, so it won’t matter if they smoked; some will die of old age at 97; some will get emphysema or lung cancer at 50 and pay the price. Fine. You buys your smokes and takes your chances.”

Kathy the Carmelite won our little “Name That Theologian” contest some weeks ago, and she would have been followed by Alicia and perhaps a few other well-read ladies. (Do we have educated women at St. Blogs or what?) This one should be a little harder. The excerpt is taken from a book that was moderately influential in shaping my own worldview — a book that, in my opinion, should be much better known. I’ll give you a couple of clues: the philosopher is a European, and the book was first published in 1926.

Permalinks aren’t working now, but Fr. Jim Tucker has some common-sense things to say about “centrism” as the strategy of those Catholics who want to oppose “extremism” (scroll down to “Centrism the Answer?”). Another problem with centrism is that it is entirely dependent upon where the shifting extremes of Left and Right happen to be. But Truth, and the prudential judgments that should flow from Truth, are completely independent of an ideological sliding scale. To be a Centrist, therefore, is to be a relativist.

I understand why mothers are constantly tuned into the needs of their babies, why they are born multi-taskers, why they have eyes in the backs of their heads, and why they can survive on very little sleep for extended periods of time. It is all built into women, with few exceptions.

But can anyone tell me what it is, exactly, that keeps a sleeping father from rolling over and smothering his 4-month old baby night after night? Can anyone tell me why the whole night long he seems not to move from the very edge of the bed?

Traditionalists are often accused of having a “hermeneutic of suspicion”, meaning that they don’t trust the hierarchy enough, that they are too critical of new ways of doing things, that they suspect whatever proceeds from the post-conciliar Church to be somehow an agent of Modernism. In fact, this criticism is fair, although there are as many degrees of suspicion as there are variants of traditional Catholics. This suspicion sometimes becomes irrational, uncharitable, and excessive, making a fine carciature for our enemies to toy with. But to some degree it is necessary. I myself automatically and reflexively distrust the USCCB, and find that most individual bishops are safely ignored (except when they must be opposed). I realize this attitude is totally backwards, and it goes completely against my establishmentarian instincts. I dread the day when my children, who piously pray for all bishops and priests, discover that most Catholic bishops and priests in this country are, shall we say, doctrinally challenged.

A reader writes:

“A few months ago in our local catholic church, I saw a holy card or [something] similar that depicted a contemporary ’saint’ or some other ‘venerable’ person. He was pictured standing on a rural hillside in perhaps Switzerland or Germany and was clearly ’smoking a pipe’ … Several weeks later when I thought to look again, the table had been rearranged and cleared and I could find no trace of him. I was wondering if you might know who this was?”