Men Not Appreciating Femininity

The immature male psyche is incapable of appreciating femininity. With the onset of puberty, the male is overwhelmed with an urgent physical urge for the feminine, but the exigencies of his developing body and psyche, cultural forces, and the itinerary leading to his final paternal mission, all together blind him to the mysterious, inner intelligibility and splendor of femininity. Femininity, like its complement virility, is an interior form, an essence, a gestalt, a spiritual intelligibility, a profound integrity and harmony, a radiance that reveals a hidden mystery. Like any form of Truth, Beauty or Goodness, it reveals itself, gently and trustingly, only to one who is wise, reverent, and loving. The main reason immature men are blind to the exquisite inner worth of women is that their developmental task emphasizes qualities that contrast sharply with femininity: he is working towards independence, she embodies interdependence; he is developing toughness, she is tender and sensitive; he is prizing autonomy and initiative, she epitomizes relationship and receptivity; he is impelled to objectify, distinguish, separate and analyze, she intuitively synthesizes, harmonizes and personalizes. These are not stereotypes; they are profound spiritual realities. Example: at a social event, two young women are likely to excuse themselves and go to the rest room together. This is indicative of a personal bond or communion between them. The capacity for relationship is a constitutive moral-emotional-spiritual strength of femininity. If he thinks about it, the adolescent male would consider it a sign of weakness and dependency, a lack of integrity and confidence. He projects upon the girls the values of his own stage of development. The male and female are moving in contrasting psychic directions: towards maternity and paternity. Material causes include the hormonal, organic and morphological endowments of the bi-polar genders; efficient causes include cultural expectations; formal causality is the underlying femininity or masculinity of the specific soul; and final causality is the contrasting goals of maternity and paternity. The woman is destined to be profoundly in union with her children, other women, husband and everyone surrounding her,especially the sick and needy. The man is preparing himself to be the head and founder of a family, a provider and protector of his wife, children and especially the weak and needy. Further in the journey, the two are destined to fall deeper and deeper in love with each other, a love that is mutually and increasingly respectful, appreciative, humble and generous. As the male takes into himself the female, in so many acts of knowledge and love, his masculinity becomes whole, meaningful, fertile and noble. Likewise for the female. Mature masculinity may be defined as the capacity to receive femininity: in knowledge, reverence, and an affection that is at once gentle and strong, generous and tender. This truth is, of course, offensive to cultural correctness and fashion. Feminism, in its harsher forms, can be understood as a feminine internalization of male devaluation of the feminine and a consequent mimicking of male immaturity at its worst: profanity, promiscuity, careerism, and abortion. The indignant demand for women priests, for example, springs from a failure to appreciate femininity in its own right and a pathetic imitation of insecure male power envy. In our culture and time, the "normal" and transitional undervaluation of the female by the developing male has been vastly expanded and now infects all of society. Technology and science, as control, in contrast to knowledge as (feminine) contemplation and reception, have become the dominant modes of knowledge. This mode of operating can be understood as the masculine, cut off from the feminine: manipulative, exploitative, violent, and irreverent. The culture cannot even comprehend the form or essence of femininity because it recognizes no forms in that it reduces reality and truth to the measurable as it marginalizes deeper forms of knowing (art, religion, morality) as subjective, emotional and feminine (in a derogatory sense.) Within our Church, our celibate clergy have, unhappily, not been immune to this sin of misogyny. Nevertheless, the Church remains the last and invincible preserve of radiant femininity: She is infallible and efficacious in her preservation and cherishing of her own identity as Bride of Christ, as Mother of all her children, in union with the saints especially consecrated virgins, and ever receptive of the nuptial (sacramental) acts of love from her infinitely appreciative Spouse.