The heart of femaleness is the ability to have children. If a young woman has no desire to have children those reproductive body parts and cycles are no longer a glorious potential but useless inconveniences, boobs and monthly aches and bleeding. And a guy sticking that thing into you, yuck! And being a guy or non-binary becomes a place of freedom, so cut off the breasts and banish periods with hormones. Why you even get some muscular strength and the macho feeling granted by testosterone. I have seen this repeatedly among young woman in my work in education.
Nice to see and here Dougie again. I agree with everything, but I think there are also material factors like houses pretty much being out of financial range for most young couples and other economic factor which impact family formation. I think also musically the contrast comes out strongly when you compare any old soul song in which love usually involves romance and most of what currently passes for r+b which is usually cynical and reduces love to the most base physicality.
I always appreciate these fiery posts! It’s strawberry picking time here on our farm and the superabundance is clear! Just taking a quick break from cleaning them which I started about four hours ago! And I still another four to go, as well as two more half rows to pick. Scarcity and safety are the mantras of our time, especially since the “pandemic”. These mantras make my skin crawl. Just the other day after finishing up a conversation with a Canada Post customer service representative who couldn’t help me in the least ( I’m discovering that no online services will ship to post office boxes anymore and this just in the last two months) ended his exchange with me with “Stay safe”. Why in God’s name would I want to stay safe!? What kind of a life is this?! I was reminded of the following….
“24Finally, the servant who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what belongs to you.’
26‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ replied his master. ‘You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. 27Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received it back with interest.
28Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30And throw that worthless servant!”
I don’t know. I think there is more to the puzzle than just the bare bones physical reality of baby making and poisons in the sky and whatever else. I think men are no longer men in our society. They no longer act as the leaders and heads of households that women need. That probably has to do with propaganda and media leading men to prioritize the wrong things. We need to respect, celebrate and submit to well-adjusted, capable, hardworking men in order to have a society made up of healthy marriages.
Yes - as I said in my initial comment, women need to respect, celebrate and submit to their husbands. Do you not agree? Your comment shows a degree of discomfort with my assertions regarding men's responsibilities and performance in today's society.
Like I said, I agree. I think the infantilization of men, whatever the cause or causes, is a real problem. But I also wonder what has happened to a certain segment of the female population that makes OnlyFans culture even possible.
It's remarkable when you consider all the anti-male propaganda over the past 50 years--"Smash the patriarchy," fathers on sitcoms always depicted as morons, cries against "toxic masculinity" 🙄, putting boys on Ritalin to suppress natural boyness, and much more...and it's a wonder any solid men exist at all
My dad barely graduated high school and raised 5 kids on one salary. He was exceptional at a job that now requires a BA for entry. He sold pot and was wild before he found Jesus. He's an excellent dad.
I can only imagine him growing up today - no ability to access a job that would get him anywhere worth going, a culture of hard drugs and despair, and a totally emasculated church...
I like 1 Corinthians 9:5, though, because it makes it clear that Peter was going around with his wife *while* he was an apostle, after the Ascension. He wasn't even a widower or anything.
Facts. Also, I believe there is no canon law against priests marrying. Eastern Rites allow marriage, I wouldn't be surprised if other Western priestly orders permitted married priests. I could imagine that those single young men who choose the priesthood would remain celibate and then those already married young men who feel the call to priesthood would be permitted to pursue the clergy life.
I also think that allowing married men to become priests would help to address the problem of creeps joining the clergy. I see an *economic* problem, where by forcing a decision between either getting married or becoming a priest, the Church is excluding many men from consideration who might've otherwise been fine priests. So then when recruiting priests, the Church has to select from an artificially limited pool of candidates who don't want to or even *can't* get married. And that results in diminished quality and an overall unhealthy institutional dynamic.
I would truly hate to go back to any era where women didn't have choices, and couldn't be scholars or go to school, and were shamed and destroyed for out of wedlock babies, but my feminist mom before she died would weep every time a baby was born on Call the Midwife (before it jumped the propaganda shark), and my niece just gave birth to baby Anenome Lilu, which seems like the hope of the world, if the pediatrician doesn't cripple her at the 6 month wellness visit. I have thought for a long time that it would be the masculine and the maternal that save us (in a Judeo-Christian context, that context being G.K. Chesterton's Christianity that has not yet been tried), so, anyway, a fine essay. I posted it to X. Made me think of this Ciardi poem 'Abundance"https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47014/abundance-56d2272d9d4f5
The greatest decision I ever made was to marry my husband. The best thing we ever did was have four beautiful children. Those who dismiss marriage as a piece of paper and children as a burden are the most unhappy, unfulfilled people you will ever meet. I see them all day, every day. It is a sad sight.
Motherhood is the essence of being a human female. Remove that, and you remove part of your humanity. My heart hurts for these people. They are empty vessels.
Thank you Michael for this vital piece. xx someone from the younger generation yearning to learn the old ways and sow a future of abundance for our children
It will be disastrously rude (and Protestant) of me to say this, but...
"The holiest two people of all time never had sex, and both were conceived without their parents having sex, and one of them phased from the womb of the other without passing through her birth canal" is not an idea that has no consequences
And no, the "dispassionate conception" is not really a functional improvement over the immaculate one
As far as I know, no one of note has ever argued that Mary wasn't physically conceived in the usual way. (That's not the meaning of the Immaculate Conception.)
Frankly, that the "perpetual virginity" and "immaculate conception" of the Virgin are bunk, invented wholecloth by the sort of "Sophia who?" church fathers who castrated themselves and told everybody else to stop having sex too. And that that bunk leads inexorably to the problems Christianity faces in its understanding of sex.
In our religion, God has a human mother. That this somehow leads to a celebration of celibacy and sterility rather than chastity and fertility says something about sticks and asses. It's been 2,000 years. Can we let poor Mary make love to Joseph and birth James etc. yet?
The heart of femaleness is the ability to have children. If a young woman has no desire to have children those reproductive body parts and cycles are no longer a glorious potential but useless inconveniences, boobs and monthly aches and bleeding. And a guy sticking that thing into you, yuck! And being a guy or non-binary becomes a place of freedom, so cut off the breasts and banish periods with hormones. Why you even get some muscular strength and the macho feeling granted by testosterone. I have seen this repeatedly among young woman in my work in education.
young men want children even less than young women
So true.
Nice to see and here Dougie again. I agree with everything, but I think there are also material factors like houses pretty much being out of financial range for most young couples and other economic factor which impact family formation. I think also musically the contrast comes out strongly when you compare any old soul song in which love usually involves romance and most of what currently passes for r+b which is usually cynical and reduces love to the most base physicality.
I think the cost of houses is also an intentional tool for curtailing flourishing—and procreation
I always appreciate these fiery posts! It’s strawberry picking time here on our farm and the superabundance is clear! Just taking a quick break from cleaning them which I started about four hours ago! And I still another four to go, as well as two more half rows to pick. Scarcity and safety are the mantras of our time, especially since the “pandemic”. These mantras make my skin crawl. Just the other day after finishing up a conversation with a Canada Post customer service representative who couldn’t help me in the least ( I’m discovering that no online services will ship to post office boxes anymore and this just in the last two months) ended his exchange with me with “Stay safe”. Why in God’s name would I want to stay safe!? What kind of a life is this?! I was reminded of the following….
“24Finally, the servant who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what belongs to you.’
26‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ replied his master. ‘You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. 27Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received it back with interest.
28Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30And throw that worthless servant!”
* “So I was afraid and hid…….”
I don’t know. I think there is more to the puzzle than just the bare bones physical reality of baby making and poisons in the sky and whatever else. I think men are no longer men in our society. They no longer act as the leaders and heads of households that women need. That probably has to do with propaganda and media leading men to prioritize the wrong things. We need to respect, celebrate and submit to well-adjusted, capable, hardworking men in order to have a society made up of healthy marriages.
I agree—but don’t women bear some of the responsibility?
Yes - as I said in my initial comment, women need to respect, celebrate and submit to their husbands. Do you not agree? Your comment shows a degree of discomfort with my assertions regarding men's responsibilities and performance in today's society.
Like I said, I agree. I think the infantilization of men, whatever the cause or causes, is a real problem. But I also wonder what has happened to a certain segment of the female population that makes OnlyFans culture even possible.
There's a huge market for OnlyFans. Why? What's wrong with a certain segment of men that they're making OnlyFans culture possible?
For women it's easy to explain what happened. Fatherless girls want love and attention. They'll take it where they can get it. "Daddy issues."
Where did their fathers go? What happened to male leadership? Why have men just given up?
It's remarkable when you consider all the anti-male propaganda over the past 50 years--"Smash the patriarchy," fathers on sitcoms always depicted as morons, cries against "toxic masculinity" 🙄, putting boys on Ritalin to suppress natural boyness, and much more...and it's a wonder any solid men exist at all
I think it's economic too.
My dad barely graduated high school and raised 5 kids on one salary. He was exceptional at a job that now requires a BA for entry. He sold pot and was wild before he found Jesus. He's an excellent dad.
I can only imagine him growing up today - no ability to access a job that would get him anywhere worth going, a culture of hard drugs and despair, and a totally emasculated church...
A surprising number of Catholics aren't aware that St. Peter was married (1 Corinthians 9:5).
Matthew 8:14–15, Mark 1:29–31, Luke 4:38–39
I like 1 Corinthians 9:5, though, because it makes it clear that Peter was going around with his wife *while* he was an apostle, after the Ascension. He wasn't even a widower or anything.
Facts. Also, I believe there is no canon law against priests marrying. Eastern Rites allow marriage, I wouldn't be surprised if other Western priestly orders permitted married priests. I could imagine that those single young men who choose the priesthood would remain celibate and then those already married young men who feel the call to priesthood would be permitted to pursue the clergy life.
I also think that allowing married men to become priests would help to address the problem of creeps joining the clergy. I see an *economic* problem, where by forcing a decision between either getting married or becoming a priest, the Church is excluding many men from consideration who might've otherwise been fine priests. So then when recruiting priests, the Church has to select from an artificially limited pool of candidates who don't want to or even *can't* get married. And that results in diminished quality and an overall unhealthy institutional dynamic.
I was listening this morning to Peter Panagore talk on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. He had two near death experiences, became a Christian minister, and quit, and now has a sort of youtube pulpit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlFn4cq9kBw&list=LL&index=1&ab_channel=PeterPanagore
I would truly hate to go back to any era where women didn't have choices, and couldn't be scholars or go to school, and were shamed and destroyed for out of wedlock babies, but my feminist mom before she died would weep every time a baby was born on Call the Midwife (before it jumped the propaganda shark), and my niece just gave birth to baby Anenome Lilu, which seems like the hope of the world, if the pediatrician doesn't cripple her at the 6 month wellness visit. I have thought for a long time that it would be the masculine and the maternal that save us (in a Judeo-Christian context, that context being G.K. Chesterton's Christianity that has not yet been tried), so, anyway, a fine essay. I posted it to X. Made me think of this Ciardi poem 'Abundance"https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47014/abundance-56d2272d9d4f5
What a beautiful poem! Never bumped into that one. And always lovely to hear your thoughts.
Your words are like a cool, clear wind at the end of a hot day: very welcome.
I love green Grow the Rashes, O. Do you know Michael Marra’s version? - it would bring a tear to a glass eye.
I don’t know it—but I’ll look for it!
The greatest decision I ever made was to marry my husband. The best thing we ever did was have four beautiful children. Those who dismiss marriage as a piece of paper and children as a burden are the most unhappy, unfulfilled people you will ever meet. I see them all day, every day. It is a sad sight.
Motherhood is the essence of being a human female. Remove that, and you remove part of your humanity. My heart hurts for these people. They are empty vessels.
Give this a listen: https://youtu.be/LPbzvkQS0Us?si=_hNJChFYgTcio-7i
Thank you Michael for this vital piece. xx someone from the younger generation yearning to learn the old ways and sow a future of abundance for our children
It will be disastrously rude (and Protestant) of me to say this, but...
"The holiest two people of all time never had sex, and both were conceived without their parents having sex, and one of them phased from the womb of the other without passing through her birth canal" is not an idea that has no consequences
And no, the "dispassionate conception" is not really a functional improvement over the immaculate one
As far as I know, no one of note has ever argued that Mary wasn't physically conceived in the usual way. (That's not the meaning of the Immaculate Conception.)
Frankly, that the "perpetual virginity" and "immaculate conception" of the Virgin are bunk, invented wholecloth by the sort of "Sophia who?" church fathers who castrated themselves and told everybody else to stop having sex too. And that that bunk leads inexorably to the problems Christianity faces in its understanding of sex.
In our religion, God has a human mother. That this somehow leads to a celebration of celibacy and sterility rather than chastity and fertility says something about sticks and asses. It's been 2,000 years. Can we let poor Mary make love to Joseph and birth James etc. yet?