Level Wise

Men — especially married men — should refrain from dreaming about a Perfect Wife. The wife God gave you is perfect for you: that should be enough. Nevertheless, if I had to describe the Perfect Wife, her characteristics would look like this …

First and foremost, the perfect wife will be a Catholic who is serious about pursuing holiness. She’ll make frequent use of the Sacrament of Penance and will get the children to a mid-week Mass whenever possible.

The perfect wife will also be feminine. In the immortal words of Rogers and Hammerstein, she’ll be a “girly, womanly, female, feminine dame”. She’ll be neither “frumpy” nor “flashy” in her dress and conduct, but simple and elegant. She’ll wear her hair and her skirts long enough to be pretty.

I was going to title this post “Schism and Mental Illness” because my latest encounters with schismatic trads have left me wondering if there isn’t some kind of intrinsic link. For instance, why is it that every schismatic I meet wants to be my spiritual director? I have a spiritual director, thank you. The last straw was when one such fellow, clearly no saint, finally got around to telling me that his own suffering (much of it self-inflicted) is really for the salvation of other sinners like me. He wanted me to thank him, I suppose.

But then, of course, it must be acknowledged that schism does not always lead to religious insanity (Bishop Bernard Fellay of the SSPX seems to be genuinely sane), and that the company of non-schismatics contains no shortage of lunatics either. So this post will have to take another direction.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Charles de Nunzio has entered the company of traditionalist bloggers with his provocative Annals of the 9th Crusade. He is a serious and careful writer to whom the frivolity of blogging must not come easy. Neverthless, you won’t want to miss his early entries. See especially his comments on the cultural import of The Passion of the Christ.

Michael Brendan Dougherty, another talented writer and friend, has launched a new online magazine called The New Fugitive (now defunct!). His essay “How I Became a Paleo-Conservative” should be required reading for every American male under thirty.

“I have always believed that there is a certain kind of Catholic (mostly male and mostly heterosexual), acutely aware of his own sinfulness, for whom AmChurch will just never get the job done. If there had been no old rite to come back to I think Gibson would have jumped out that window he talked about. There should be much to ponder in this phenomenon for the leaders of our Church. The kind of Catholicism that brought a Hollywood superstar to his knees does not include Fr. Bob and his Eucharistic harem.”

- David Kubiak, commenting at Open Book here.

ECR does not spend much time commenting on bishops. My general sense is that a few are zealous, but the general lot of them are (at best) lukewarm bureaucrats whom the faithful should charitably ignore most of the time. Nevertheless there are times when ignoring bad bishops does more harm than good, as in the case of Bishop Lynch of St. Petersburg. CWN’s Off The Record, quoting Mary Ann Kreitzer of the Catholic Media Coalition, informs us of the Bishop’s continuing reprehensible conduct here:

Don’t miss this marvelous rant here:

“My personal perspective as a woman, a reader, a mother, and a Christian, is that I hate inclusive language. I hate it because I feel patronized when it’s in use. I hate it because I feel like its promoters, well-intentioned though they may be, are saying to me, ‘O woman, you are not smart enough to know when the words “men” and “man” refer to the whole human race and when they refer to males … I hate inclusive language because it insists that all the places I thought included me were actually excluding me. It seeks to drive a wedge between me and pretty much everything written before 1970. Inclusive language has robbed our language of the little honors paid to the feminine in the tradition of using the feminine pronoun for ships, countries, and abstractions. Inclusive language is the Mrs. Elton in the garden of literature, the tacky boor who wrenches every spotlight towards herself …”

Here’s a little something to brighten your pro-life evening. Remember that building contractor who organized a boycott of Planned Parenthood’s proposed slaughterhouse in Austin, Texas? Well, on the heels of President Bush signing the partial-birth abortion ban, a commenter has more good news for us:

“An update is that the general contractor dropped the job today. The story has already made CNN and Austin media is in an uproar. Planned Parenthood is vowing to finish and local government is freaking out….but this thing is going to be very difficult to complete without a GC and with few subs willing to do the work. In the past 2 weeks alone, the AC guy dropped out, the foundation contractor dropped out, the lumber supplier cut off lumber and the most likely roofing materials provider also dropped out. This led to the GC giving up on the project and announcing his termination today! We are ecstatic….. Mark Proeger”

I’ve been reading the articulate and punchy Elinor Dashwood lately. Naturally, I’ve never said anything to her about enjoying her blog, but have waited until I have something to complain about. (So much for that chivalrous and gentlemanly image I’ve been cultivating …)

Actually I don’t really have a complaint, just an observation and some questions. She’s been arguing with another blogger about male headship, and she seems to imply that male headship isn’t defined doctrine. Mrs Dashwood writes:

“The point is that this Aranda person continues to write as if what he vaguely describes as a ‘traditional teaching’ is the same thing as a defined doctrine. What can I say? It isn’t. Don’t take my word for it, bubbeleh, read the Catechism.”

A reply to Shawn McElhinney:

“Authentic Traditionalism is not found in externals Jeff. It is akin to an authentic observation of the Law which Our Lord commanded and which those who were obsessed with external rituals (i.e. Pharisees) did not react to well.”

Catholicism requires externals, Shawn. Lex orandi, lex credendi. But I don’t recall anyone here advocating a restoration in externals alone. Indeed, the compromised externals we are living with today signify a catastrophic decline of belief.

“This is not to say that those attending the Latin mass are Pharisees of course; however, the attachment to externals to the extent many of them have is not spiritually healthy.”

Or, at least they get close. After days of reading ignorant headlines about a “comatose woman”, CNN has upgraded Terri Schiavo’s condition to “disabled”. I say they get close. The article still describes her as being in a “coma-like” state and does not make it clear that Terri is verifiably conscious.

Meanwhile, Greg Krehbiel reminds us that the executive branch is not helpless in the face of bad court decisions:

“Gov. Bush has swallowed the lie of the imperial court. Who, after all, controls the police in the state of Florida? Isn’t it the governor? By the wise design of our founders, judges have no power at all to enforce their decisions. They rely entirely on the executive branch. It’s one of those checks that was supposed to keep us from tyranny, but the check has bounced. Executives act as if they’re captive to courts.

It just gets better and better. Bryan Baldwin of Catholic Light has the following report:

“This afternoon at the Hospice Center Terri Schiavo, whose feeding tube was removed on Wednesday, was denied Viaticum. Monsignor Malanowski was told by police and the attorney for her husband that she could not receive the 1/4 Host he had brought her. (Mrs. Schiavo is fully capable of swallowing.) She has been visited by Msgr. Malanowski for over three years and today, as always, she reacted with joy at his presence as she sat in her chair and turned to greet him.

Here’s an inspiring story of small private businesses making a big difference:

“In a boycott that may be the first of its kind, a group of builders and contractors in Austin, Texas have banded together to stop construction on a new abortion business. Workers were slated to begin construction on Tuesday of a new $6.2 million Planned Parenthood abortion facility.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to stop it, slow it down and make it more expensive,’ said Chris Danze, owner of Maldonado and Danze, Inc. an Austin concrete contractor. Danze is chairman of the Austin Area Pro-Life Concrete Contractors and Suppliers Association. He said every concrete supplier within 60 miles of Austin has indicated it will not supply materials or labor to the project …”