Contraception: the Logic of Ungenerosity

If liberals want to get contraceptives to all women, why don't they just start their own non-profit instead of forcing us Catholics to pay for and provide them? Because such would be a contradiction: the urge to contracept, especially other peoples' children, is intrisically an ungenerous one, and ultimately a eugenic one. The act of contraception is a "NO" to life, to children, to serendipity and surprize, to God's extravagance. Contraception is protection: it is a reaction of defensiveness, fear, and insecurity. Contraception is the reflex of one who feels poor, afraid, deprived, lacking in resources. It is the recourse of one bereft of the confidence of self-restrain. It flows, not from interior peace and integrity, but from tension, anxiety and restlessness.Contraception is rooted in a disconnect from God, the Generous One. It deconstructs the conjugal act, the sacrament of union and life, into a mutuality in use of the other. It is masculine instrumentalization of the woman's body. It empties the love act of faith and hope. It emasculates the male, depriving him of paternity. It attacks the body, heart and soul of the woman. It expands the masturbational urge of masculine insecurity into an ungrateful, violating intrusion into the body and soul of the woman. It is a deconstruction of sexuality as dignity in bi-polarity; it disparages femininity and virility in favor of an abstract, contrived, body-less androgyny. The liberal is liberated from communion with God; is freed from the patterns of God's plan as inscribed in Nature, Beauty and Being; is delivered into the isolation of personal autonomy. Unconnected and defensive, the liberal compulsively defends himself against chaos without and within. Unsheltered by family and Church, he uses the power of the expansive State to impose his paradign of control upon all, but especially upon the poor and the religious. He cannot help himself, the liberal: threatened and afraid, he is compulsed to impose his will through the coercive State. Lonely and orphaned, bereft of father (God) and mother (Church), he consoles himself with the illusion of technological control...over life, death, fertility and indeed Being. A Catholic, of course, is identical to the liberal in his fear, insecurity, and defensiveness. But recognizing, in the face of the Crucified, his poverty, sickness, confusion and sin...he brings them to the sacramental banquet, to confession and communion. He allows himself to be overcome by God's generosity: to be nourished, satiated, ravished, fascinated, intoxicated and infatuated at the altar. To the degree that this happens, he cannot help himself: his heart becomes pierced with joy and open to life, to newness and to God's liberality; he is poor himself and embraces the poor; he delights in gender, generativity and most especially generosity, not his own, but that from which he flows, that which flows into him and through him, that in which he lives, and moves and has his being.

Roots of War

"Wars are caused by hunger and poverty" said someone I immensely respect. But I could not agree. War is caused by the expansive and defensive masculine psyche...almost always. Hunger is the sometimes material cause of war; but it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary cause. We see poverty without war and war without poverty. Hunger is to war like wood is to fire: often enough wood is a material occasion for fire, but you can have immense areas of wood (forests) without fire and the worst fires can be chemical, nuclear, paper or just straw. Males intuitively understand war because already in the playground and locker room there are bullies: males who are impelled to domininate and demean others. Women often lack such understanding. The maternal instinct understands that little one need food and basic necessities. Unfamiliar with the dymanics of masculine aggression and competiton, they hear that the Sunnis and Shiites are fighting and instinctively think: the poor people must be hungry; let them work and eat and we will do away with war. The great warmongers of history were not hungry, except in the sense of "libido dominando"...the lust for power and domination. Think Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, Napoleon, the Japanese and Nazi empires of the 1940s, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. War is an explosion of the defensive or expansive masculine ego. A classic example: the Bush invasion of Iraq. Dick Cheny was not hungry. He was defensive. Apparently, he was terrified that we were vulnerable to another terrorist attack and he had explicitly vowed that such would not happen on his watch. Out of this paranoia, he construed questionable intelligence to ensure that he would not underestimate the threat of an attack. As Saddam Hussein resisted inspections so as to fake the Iranians into believing he had WMDs, the one who took the bait was Cheny. He fell into rash judgment, a very important sin against the seventh commandment. Contributing to this rush to error was a certain arrogance, a confidence in American might, and a Neo-conservative presumption of the ultimate superiority and appeal of capitalism and democracy. With the invasion, he imagined that we would rid the world of a threat and push forward the inexorable victory of "the American way" in the Mideast. At one and the same time, the Bush administration was flush with post-Cold-War American confidence and trembling with insecurity about our vulnerability to terrorist attack. This conbimation of cockiness and camouflaged insecurity is the makeup of every bully and every war. The only hunger involved in the Iraq invasion was that of the populace who were starving under the Clinton boycott: a hunger that was relieved by the invasion. This "humanitarian intervention" was probably the best reason for the invasion even as it was hardly a leading motivation. The worst war of my 65-year lifetime was certainly the Iran-Iraq war, waged by fabulously wealthy oil countries, which claimed a million Iranians and almost half as many Iraquis. Saddam Hussein invaded, not because he was hungry, but because he was threatened by the repurcussion of the Iran revolution among his own Shiites as he was ambitious to enstall himself as the strongman of the area. Again: the interplay of power, arrogance, and insecurity. To wage war requires power, especially in our world: it is not the recourse of the hungry and the powerless. Hitler waged war after he had revived Germany into a technological powerhouse. Hunger is the sometimes occasion of war, but more frequently war is the cause of hunger as it is an immense waste of resources. The Islamist war against women is a case in point: education of women can only improve the economy, yet the Taliban torture girls for going to schools. The roots of warfare go back to Lucifer's rebellion: it was a matter of pride, not hunger. The greatest act of war was the crucifixion: perpetuated by welll-nourished religious leaders and an imperial governor. Warfare is quintessentially a male sin. Women don't seem to get it.

Romantic Love

The most pervasive, pernicious and unrecognized deception in our world is surely the myth of romantic love: the idea that there is a special person who can make me happy, can satisfy and fulfill my longings.The latest permutation of this illusion is the fantasy of gay "marriage." Romantic love is mostly, but not always completely, an infatuation, an illusion in which we project, out of our longing and need, a perfection upon the one who is beloved. Like the thirsty man in a desert, we create a mirage out of our thirst, in this case an emotional one. In the vast majority of cases, romantic loves ends sadly in disappointment, betrayal, loss and heartbreak...of one sort or another. Nevertheless, the myth retains a stronghold on our culture and people of every age: even aged, experienced and wise elders fall into the morass. But it is not completely a deception: for oftentimes, there is an actual, true perception of the beauty and value of the beloved. This perception is like a seed that must fall into the soil and die to bring forth life. If it does so, it can fructify into a genuine and lasting love...actually, into three distinct types of love. The best case scenario is growth into spousal or nuptial love, the love of marriage which forms a family and becomes a crucible of frustration and sacrifice that inexoribly burns away the delectible illusions of infatuation. In this best case scenario, the bliss of being "in love" disappears but the perception of the value of the beloved is purified and enhanced so that the love grows into a richer, deeper, and stronger form. The romance dies to be reborn in an enduring, truthful way. A second, less common itinerary is for the romance to transfigure into a genuine friendship, a chaste brother-sister (or brother-brother or sister-sister for homosexuals) relationship,infused with mutual reverence and respect, free of the cravings and fantasies of infatuation. This may be the case with any number of homosexual relations which endure and grow into genuine trust and fidelity. Father Groeschel was surprized himself to discover some Catholic gay relationships growing in this manner into chaste friendships: as they came to deeply love each other, they found abstinence from sexual acts to be the real way to love each other. This raises a fascinating question: could we imagine, within a Catholic context, a blessing upon a committed, even vowed love that is specifically celibate? I can imagine it, but as an exceptional and specially blessed friendship, not as a common ritual. Lastly, we see that romantic love is an expression of the Great Love in which we were created, by which we are redeemed, and for which we are destined. God and only God is the Great Lover, who alone can satisfy our longings. The aching, desperate, and often disappointing loves we suffer on this journey are all premonitions of the Great Love for which we were created.

Inebriated in the Holy Tavern

St. Catherine of Sienna, in her Dialogues, speaks of being "inebriated with the blood of Christ" and then speaks of the Church as a tavern, provided by God for us on our journey over the Bridge to heaven, in which we receive rest, nourishment, fellowship and good spirits. This image of the Church as a "tavern" is rich and suggestive and not exactly commonplace among ecclesiologists. Tonight being shrove Tuesday and tomorrow the beginning of Lent, it is espceially helpful. Clearly, Catherine's idea of a tavern was not one of drunken revelry, but something like what we experienced in the pubs of Ireland: refreshment, laughter, great conversation, women and children of all ages, music and singing, and good cheer all around. This is the Church as I know it!

Virile Chastity, as Reverence and Care, on the Offensive: Confident and Aggressive

"Avoidance of the near occasions of sin" is the traditional, defensive approach to chastity. I have known priests who would not allow a woman to ride in the front seat of their car. I recall a minister saying approvingly of his secretary that she would never have lunch alone with him. There is wisdom to this approach and it certainly made sense in a culture where men and women were largely segregated from each other. But things are different today: men and women work and live so closely that oftentimes it is not possible to retreat and distance oneslf from temptation. An example is our new military policy in which men and women, in combat areas, wll be placed together in circumstances that entail extreme physical intimacy. Our times require a fresh, new approach: not one of defense and retreat, but of offensive, confident, magnanimous agressiveness in regard to reverence and care. Since we cannot get away from women, we need to push more deeply, tenderly, passionately into a posture of reverent, protective, fraternal-paternal love for the women around us. Rather than pulling away, we need to push more deeply into respect and care. Rather than avoidance, we need to intensify our love as agapic and generous. This approach is more difficult and risky: women respond to tender, respectful love with trust and a tendency to really be themselves. This unveiling can arouse even more love, in its eros or desiring component, in the male. So, a dangerous cycle is initiated: the respect of the man elicits the trust of the woman which allows for personal disclosure which arouses deeper desire from the man. We are in VERY dangerous terrain here. It would take a miracle for this to work...and a miracle is exactly what we must pray for and expect. This can work only if the man, the woman and the relationship are all infused with grace; if it is situated in the context of accountability and transparency, prayer and liturgy, a rich network of support and encouragement, and a readiness to confess and enter into God's infinite mercy. We have no choice: we cannot return to the defensive, avoidance strategies that worked for our forefathers. We are involved in the fiercest spiritual combat in the arena of sexuality and our only hope for victory is in taking the offensive: aggressively, confidently, and magnanimously. Onward Christian soldiers! Viva Cristo Rey!

The Illiberality of Liberals

Articulate a reasonable doubt in liberal company about things like: the genetic basis for homosexuality, the non-genetic basis for gender difference, the certainty and imminence of catastrophic man-made global warming, evolution as a mega-theory explanatory of all life, female rights to combat and priestly roles, or the moral urgency of gun control! The response: incredulity, indignation, righteous anger, intolerance, disgust! Why are liberals so illiberal, dogmatic, close-minded and intolerant? There are several reasons. Firstly, the human intellect craves certitude. The liberal mind, allergic to religious revelation, authority, tradition and certainty, is addicted to agnosticism, relativism, and deliberate metaphysical vagueness and indecision. Lost in such uncertainty, the human mind diverts its longing for certainty into alternate dogmatic systems, in this case a "scientism" that grants absolute certainty to theories that are, scientifically or rationally, vulnerable to doubt. Ironically, then, those who, despising dogma, pay tribute to reason and science, themselves unconsciously baptize debatable values and theories into truths that cannot be questioned or scrutinized. By contrast, those of us who unabashedly accept the certain existence of purgatory, guardian angels and devils, can entertain a more light-hearted, open-minded and skeptical attitude towards currently fashionable scientific theories. Secondly, the liberal mind, uprooted from tradition, authority and revelation, is insecure,dependent upon the limitations of subjective experience and argumentation, and therefore extremely vulnerable to doubt. Lacking the shelter and security of religious authority, it unconsciously creates its own system of repression that is all the more pernicious in that it is unrecognized. Contrast the Catholic system: we clearly, unambiguously claim divine inspiration for the papal-episcopal teaching; but the liberal imposes its authority more covertly through intolerance and moralistic indignation. Thirdly, the liberal mind tends to be agnostic about the supernatural and the afterlife, therefore life on this earth takes on an absolute urgency, unqualified by a secure Hope in the eternal and transcendent. Therefore, anxiety about things like global warming, the population explosion, or the atom bomb reaches a state of ultimacy. By contrast, believers subordinate all these concerns to the fundamental drama of sin and salvation. We lose little sleep worrying about our carbon footprint. Fourthly, liberals, of the right and the left, tend to be uprooted from concrete, local ties to family, Church, ethnic tribe, and the range of subsidiary communities and therefore pledge their allegiance to the autonomous individual in relation to the mega-state or the global-free-market. If the right professes a naive trust in the workings of the impersonal "market," the left is desperate to ward off chaos and death through the agency of an expansive, messianic, mother-State. "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" we learned from the New Left in the 1960s. So, opposition to universal health care, gun control or mandatory provision of "reproductive services" is viewed as cooperation with evil. Fifthly, the liberal consensus is dominant, pervasive and unquestioned in academia, entertainment, the media and urban areas of both coasts. Liberals are unaccustomed to real debate and discussion on these issues. By contrast, conservatives in these environments are living in enemy territory and are used to dealing with the contrary positions. Lastly, the liberal mind is characterized by an emotionalism, a feminization (in a negative sense), a compulsion to personalize and a lack of virile objectivity, sobriety and abstraction. Theological and political issues are not argued in an objective, impersonal manner; rather, there is an immediate move to the ad hominem: concerns about the disvalues of sodomy are construed as homophobia and hatred; reservations about female priests can only spring from misogyny, ignorance, and chauvinistic arrogance; suggesting that entitlement programs will need to be cut back is seen as an intentional attack on the poor and helpless. Whether it is Chris Matthews pontificating on reporoductive rights, Senator Ted Kennedy lecturing nomine Alito on the activist role of the courts, or Father Roy Bourgeois condemning Vatican practice, we see emotionalism, refusal to acknowledge another viewpoint, and an incapacity for sober, detached analsis. Fortunate indeed, are we who have received the gift of faith, a shamelessly dogmatic faith, a gift we are especially celebrating in this Year declared by our Holy Father, in that our use of reason, science and wholesome doubt and questioning is purified and liberated from unrecognized dogmatism.

Veneration of Women

At contention between God and Satan is the status of femininity. Two millenia ago, in the Assumption and Coronation, God exalted a poor, humble, fleshly, mortal woman, mother of a tortured and executed mendicant preacher, to be Queen of heaven and earth, of all the angels and saints. From eternity He intended this. In doing so, he exalted all women, precisely in their fleshly femininity, not in spite of it or in disregard of it. In a Saturday mass communion antiphon we pray: "Blessed be the womb of the Virgin Mary, that bore the son of the Eternal Father." Attend: it is the feminine body, precisely in its sexuality, that is the carnal temple of God's holy presence! Tradition has it that the brightest and greatest of angels, Lucifer, father of lies, his pride fully inflamed, flew into a rage on hearing that he would defer to a weak, fleshly woman and proclaimed his everlasting "Non Serviam." Since then, his obsession is to degrade women, as women, especially in their flesh. Our Scripture starts with the assault upon Eve and God's promise (the "proto-evangelium" or "first gospel") that a woman would crush the head of the serpent; it ends in Revelation with assault of the Beast upon woman and child and the final nuptial triumph of the Bride and her Bridegroom-Lamb. It is crystal clear: veneration of women comes from heaven ("Blessed are you among women"). The meaning, mission and identity of masculinity is precisely to emulate God in honoring, cherishing, protecting and delighting in the woman and her child. Degradation of femininity comes straight from the pits of hell: rape, pornography, honor-killings, abuse and gender-or-sex-based profanity as well as misogyny in its more subtle forms. Words which express contempt for women, particularly in their body, clearly carry a demonic origin and intent. The exalted, glorified feminine body of Mary in heaven unveils, unequivocally, the eminently sacred nature of the specifically feminine body, especially in those sacred areas associated with the conception and nurture of children and the marital love act. Such exaltation of woman has characterized Catholicism from its inception ("Son, behold your Mother"): consider the iconic, artistic representations of our Lady including the Madonna and Child and the Pieta. Unfortunately, this veneration has been too frequently obscured by clericalism, chauvinism, unrecognized masculine insecurity and the consequential fear, dread and incomprehension of femininity. Femininity is experienced by the male with fear and trembling: fascination, obsessive attraction, incomprehension, annoyance, adulation, and most importantly, as a reminder of his own mortality, finitude, and vulnerability. Woman reminds the male that he came from flesh, that he is and was dependent upon a mother, that he is deeply incomplete and desperately desirous of "another," and that as flesh he is marked already for death. Unconnected with God our Father, the source of all life, temporal and eternal, the feminine becomes for the man an affliction, a scandal, a curse, an object of fear, dread, rage and contempt. In other words, unconnected with the Father, the male inexorably conspires with Satan in his contempt for women. The feminism that gripped our culture in the 1970s was misguided in its reaction against male misogyny in that it failed to deeply recognize and honor femininity, but attempted to deconstruct gender difference in favor of a neutralized, homogeneous androgyny. Feminism as we know it is largely a contempt for femininity in that it denies that there is anything special and sacred about women: we have sports journalists in men's locker rooms and women in combat and we construe that as "equal rights." Unconsciously, it has mimicked the perverse male disregard for femininity by leveling the two sexes into a uniform, sterile, neutral and abstract "personhood" that is actually a version of selfish, non-paternal masculinity at its worst: abortion, sterile intercourse, autonomy, careerism, envious clericalism ("we want the power of the priesthood too"), and incomprehension, if not disparagement, of the real meaning of gender as filial, fraternal, sororial, spousal, maternal and paternal. We Catholic men, on the other hand, have the unbounded Joy and Honor of emulating St. Joseph as he cherished his Woman and her child, in humility, reverence, chastity, obedience, quiet and courage. St. Joseph, Pray for Us!