Let women in West speak - UN expert

                                                                               BBC NEWS

Allow women and girls to speak on sex, gender and gender identity without intimidation or fear: UN expert

A Press Release                                                                                                 

GENEVA (22 May 2023) – Threats and intimidation against women expressing their opinions on sex and sexual orientation is deeply concerning, said Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls in a statement today.

In the context of disagreements between some women’s rights activists and transgender activists in a number of countries in the Global North, Alsalem warned that [there are many cases of] violence against women and intimidation against people for expressing differing views.

“Discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation is prohibited in international and regional human rights law.

I am concerned by the shrinking space in several countries in the Global North for women and feminist organisations and their allies to gather and/or express themselves peacefully in demanding respect for their needs based on their sex and/or sexual orientation.

Law enforcement has a crucial role in protecting lawful gatherings of women and ensuring women’s safety and rights to freedom of assembly and speech without intimidation, coercion, or being effectively silenced. It is clear that where law enforcement has failed to provide the necessary safeguards, we have witnessed incidents of verbal and physical abuse, harassment, and intimidation, with the purpose of sabotaging and derailing such events as well as silencing the women who wish to speak at them.

I am disturbed by the frequent tactic of smear campaigns against women, girls and their allies on the basis of their beliefs on non-discrimination based on sex and same-sex relations. Branding them as “Nazis,” “genocidaires” or “extremists” is a means of attack and intimidation with the purpose of deterring women from speaking and expressing their views.

Such actions are deeply troubling, as they are intended to instill fear in them, shame them into silence, and incite violence and hatred against them. Such acts severely affect the dignified participation of women and girls in society. 

I am also concerned by the way in which provisions that criminalise hate speech based on a number of grounds, including gender expression or gender identity, have been interpreted in some countries. Women and girls have a right to discuss any subject free of intimidation and threats of violence.

This includes issues that are important to them, particularly if they relate to parts of their innate identity, and on which discrimination is prohibited. Holding and expressing views about the scope of rights in society based on sex and gender identity should not be delegitimised, trivialised, or dismissed.

According to international human rights law, any restriction on freedom of expression should be carried out strictly in accordance with the human rights standards of legality, necessity, proportionality and to serve a legitimate aim. Those disagreeing with the views of women and girls expressing concerns related to gender identity and sex also have a right to express their opinion.

However, in doing so they must not threaten the safety and integrity of those they are protesting against and disagreeing with. Sweeping restrictions on the ability of women and men to raise concerns regarding the scope of rights based on gender identity and sex are in violation of the fundamentals of freedom of thought and freedom of belief and expression and amounts to unjustified or blanket censorship.

Of particular concern are the various forms of reprisals against women, including censorship, legal harassment, employment loss, loss of income, removal from social media platforms, speaking engagements, and the refusal to publish research conclusions and articles. In some cases, women politicians are sanctioned by their political parties, including through the threat of dismissal or actual dismissal.”

ENDS

Reem Alsalem is the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences

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Culture and politics

 Isabel Díaz Ayuso's popularity and profile have given her a national presence Photo

Conservatives force Spanish PM into retreat - The Times

The woke Left can be defeated - Telegraph contributor Nile Gardiner 

Spanish PM Sánchez calls snap general election after disastrous results in local elections - Politico Europe:

Spain was due to hold general elections by the end of the year, but the Socialist leader announced his decision to move up the date following Sunday’s local elections, which saw his party suffer heavy losses across the country.

The gains for the conservative People's Party indicate they could unseat the current left-wing coalition led by the Socialists,  if they replicate the performance in national elections, Reuters reports. As a result of these results the government has called a shock snap election for July rather than wait till the due date of December. 

The numbers showed few clear majorities, except in the Madrid region where regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso of the PP looked set to win re-election with an absolute majority.

From an earlier Politico report highlighting the prominence of Diaz Ayuso:

At a campaign rally in a square in Madrid’s wealthy Goya neighborhood, the conservative mayor of Lisbon, former European Commissioner Carlos Moedas, praised her.

“You have got rid of something which is the worst thing about the left today: its moral superiority,” he said. “As if they’re better people just because they’re on the left, as if they’re more human. Isabel has looked them in the eyes and said: ‘No, it’s not like that.’”

Moments later, to rapturous applause, Díaz Ayuso took up the same theme. 

“What [the left] don’t understand is that when people are free and prosperous and united despite their differences, they are unbeatable,” she said. 

-----

“She has taken ownership of the word ‘freedom’ away from the left,” said one person close to her who wanted to remain anonymous because of their position on her staff.

“If you say ‘freedom’ in Madrid, people think of Ayuso … She has waged all the ideological battles possible over the last few years and that explains her success.”

Those battles have included attacking the feminist agenda of the government, as well as casting doubt on climate change.

As for that feminist agenda, a report from Le Monde describes the outcome of a national law on rules for transitioning from one sexual identity to another:

While this law is a "historic victory" for the trans community to become less "stigmatized," it has also provoked the indignation of a part of the feminist movement, grouped within the Alliance Against the Erasure of Women. For this alliance, the law leads to the "legal erasure of biological sex," "inoculates children with sexist stereotypes," "makes it impossible to take any action to rectify the discrimination suffered by women in the public space" and could jeopardize the reserved spaces where women feel safe (toilets, domestic abuse shelters and prisons). 

Political action is certainly central to taking control of the direction of ideology and the shape of the culture, but this task must be coupled with reclaiming influence for the common good within institutions such as education, the media, and the corporate domain. 

American author and social analyst Rod Dreher, writing from the vantage point of his new home base in Europe, is worried by the aggressive US response wherever a nation's cultural heritage is deemed a persona non grata:

The United States is awash in its own many problems now. The ruling class, across institutions, has committed itself to the spread of an insane ideology that trains Americans to see each other in terms of racial identity, and acculturates them to grievances. It is also committed to the spread of a parallel ideology that is destroying biology, destroying science, destroying the mental health of young people, wrecking their bodies and their capacity to procreate, and so forth. The ruling class’s ideology is pulverizing the idea of truth-telling, and of merit and competence. I could go on. AND YET … the United States ruling class believes it has everything all figured out, and has the moral right to push countries like Hungary around, either directly or through its proxies in Brussels.

None of this makes Russia right, either in its invasion of Ukraine or about anything else! But folks, if you could only see how our country is seen by so many people outside of its borders. To be fair, America has a tremendous amount of goodwill built up in the hearts and minds of people all around the world. We are ruining it with our colonialist liberal messianism.   

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Cancel culture can never be regarded casually

There is an important debate about how to negotiate trans rights and women’s rights, but trying to shut down one side of the debate as unacceptable will make it more difficult to work out a fair solution, writes Kenan Malik, a British writer, lecturer and broadcaster.

In his latest Observer column he examines the rising tolerance of censorship whether by the social elites in universities or the government, or among the educated young. For example, the de-platforming of those opposing views caught up in the cult of the fashionable transgender ideology has generated dismay. Though not without blame of censorship themselves, "many of the issues they ["anti-woke free speech champions"] highlight are nevertheless important".

Of particular concern is that "there is growing support in sections of the left and on campuses for the suppression of unacceptable views".

The Higher Education Policy Institute found in a student survey last year that 79% thought “Students that feel threatened should always have their demands for safety respected” and more than a third believed academics should be sacked for teaching “material that heavily offends some students”. “Many people may be surprised, perhaps even unsettled”, the report observed, “by the greater keenness of students to limit what their peers and lecturers can say and do within the law”.

Last week, the Office for Students, as part of its regular reporting on the impact of Prevent guidance, ["the government anti-terror policy that has helped create a climate of self-censorship"], published data on cancellations of university talks. Out of 31,545 speakers in the academic year 2021-22, 260 had their events cancelled. The reasons for doing so are unclear; the OfS data unfortunately does not show how many speakers were banned because their views were deemed unacceptable. Whatever the figure, it is small – less than 1%. This shouldn’t lead us to conclude, though, that there is no issue. Controversial speakers will inevitably be small in number, but attempts to stop them speaking often highlight a deeper problem, particularly the tendency to portray political and social disagreements as “hatred” or “bigotry”.

The aggression of transgender activists disturbs Malik.

The most incendiary issue at the moment is that of trans rights. “Gender critical” feminists such as Kathleen Stock or Julie Bindel, who argue for the importance of sex-based rights and for the exclusion of transgender women from sex-based, women-only spaces, such as refuges or prisons, have faced calls for their meetings to be shut down.

Many of their critics argue that such individuals are not being censored because they have other platforms on which they are able to express their views, from newspaper columns to books. That is to miss the point.

On this Malik would clearly be a full supporter of the "right to hear", so that even the least degree of censorship is an offence against the personal rights of those who would otherwise have been able to hear, maybe for the first time, a speaker offering unfashionable ideas.  He continues, referring to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which became law this month:

At the same time, opponents of gender critical views should be equally free to express themselves. Last week, a tweet from Oxford University LGBTQ+ campaign calling for Stock’s invitation to speak at the Oxford Union to be rescinded was taken down by the student union on the grounds it might infringe the new law. The [anti-woke] Free Speech Union crowed about it as a victory. It was, in fact, a blatant denial of free speech. The episode revealed both how state-imposed free speech can itself be a form of censorship and how little the FSU understands about the meaning of free expression.

Malik offers these points by way of conclusion:

There is an important debate about how to negotiate trans rights and women’s rights, and how best to ensure that both are respected. Shutting down one side of the debate as unacceptable will not settle the issues but merely make it more difficult to work out a fair solution.

For too many people today, on both the left and the anti-woke right, what matters about free speech depends upon which side of the culture wars they stand. It is an issue too important to be treated with such casual disdain.

There is no easy answer to the ostracism a person may face in a work environment, especially if the corporate HR personnel are DEI activists, or even among friends and neighbours. But a guiding principle for us all is: Live Not By Lies.

Ω See also:

"A Generational Threat to Free Expression" ‒ Survey data show that Americans under 30 prize cancel culture over liberty. Eric Kaufmann ‒ City Journal

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The corrosion of social norms without religion

Most clearly in the United States, but significantly so, too, in most WEIRD nations, "shared ideas about norms, about decency, have been seriously corroded". In this there is a correlation with disengagement from participation in religion by the young, the university educated, and those captured by the self-invention promoted by the morality-denying ideology at the core of Critical Theory.   

Hard-headed journalist Jesse Singal is the dismayed source of the quoted view of much of the social discourse on the likes of Twitter. In his latest Substack post he examines a particularly nasty episode of vicious responses from those who opposed the victim's views. His exposition of the implications for Americans of this widespread moral corrosion, evidenced by the abusive language used on social media, come as Australian broadcaster Stan Grant, of Aboriginal parentage, has responded to a deluge of gutter language and threats by stepping away from his roles, making the comment:

"To those who have abused me and my family, I would just say — if your aim was to hurt me, well, you've succeeded."  

One can also think of JK Rowling, so bravely enduring slanderous harassment.

For Singal, the corrosion of traditional social standards is to be observed particularly in those most strongly bound by what has been described as the cult of left-wing activism:

Progressive organizations all over the country are in the midst of wave after wave of embarrassing, time- and money-wasting meltdowns, largely because shared ideas about norms, about decency, have been seriously corroded. Antisocial behavior — both outright, obvious bullying and the more subtle, manipulative variants that tend to weaponize shared lefty contempt for oppression and various -isms and -phobias — is, if not endorsed, certainly endorsed tacitly by the silence of a lot of people who are otherwise super concerned about bullying and meanness and online harassment. At least theoretically.

The Pew Research Center reports:

Seven-in-ten adults who were raised Christian but are now unaffiliated [also termed "nones"] are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, compared with 43% of those who remained Christian and 51% of U.S. adults overall. Some scholars argue that disaffiliation from Christianity is driven by an association between Christianity and political conservatism that has intensified in recent decades.

Singal finds that the foul language, and the urge to inflict pain, are "unfortunately characteristic of a broad swath of the online lefty world, which is just a miserable, deranged, angry place". 

See this Twitter post here.

However, Stan Grant's experience of harassment, presumably from the Right after statements on colonial treatment of Aborigines and present-day racism, illustrates how a society can become desensitised and lose sight of the value of moral guardrails in trying to undertake a peaceful examination of controversial issues. See his article: For years I've been a media target for racism and paid a heavy price. For now, I want no part of it – I'm stepping away

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The Mass as eternal sacrifice that saves us

The Ascension of Christ 1958 Salvador Dali

Jesus' sacrifice of himself on Calvary to his father is able to continue for all eternity because of Jesus' ascension to heaven. In Revelation, Jesus is the Lamb, in glory but "as if slain". Jesus is both God and victim, saving us by the unceasing sacrifice he offers his father.

Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota made his latest Sunday TV sermon on how the ascension is central to this gift on our behalf:

Open up to the Letter to the Hebrews, this wonderful, mysterious text, written by someone who was deeply acquainted with the Jerusalem temple because it’s all about temple worship and sacrifice.

But here’s his basic insight:  For centuries earthly priests, on the Day of Atonement, would bring animals for sacrifice into the Holy of Holies.

Throughout the year, priests would facilitate the sacrifice of animals, the pouring out of blood and offering to the Lord.

These are commanded by God. But did they accomplish their purpose? No was the answer.

Why? Because the blood of cattle and goats and sheep is not sufficient for righting the wrongs of the world.

What alone satisfies the Father? Answer: The sacrifice of the Son. Jesus now on the cross, the lamb of sacrifice.

We say, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” So think of all the lambs and sheep and cattle and so on that were sacrificed. Did they take away the sin of the world? Well, not definitively. They were anticipations, they were the foreshadowing of this one great sacrifice of the cross.

The sacrifice with an eternal dimension

Now, because the one who performed that sacrifice is not just a human figure, not just a rabbi or a teacher or a social reformer, but is the very Son of God, that sacrifice has an eternal dimension.

Here’s the climax of the Letter of the Hebrews: That sacrifice on Calvary now takes place eternally in the heavenly temple.

So yes, on Mount Calvary in around the year 30 AD, but because it has an eternal dimension, it’s taking place forever in the heavenly temple.

It’s the resurrected and ascended Christ who is eternally presenting this sacrifice to the Father. In space and time, yes, in the year 30, but now eternally in the heavenly temple.

Every time we attend Mass, we are communing with this eternal sacrifice of the Son. What takes place on the altar — how important that is, by the way — not just the table. It is that, but also an altar; it’s a place of sacrifice because we represent the sacrifice of Jesus, uniting ourselves to the eternal sacrifice present in the heavenly temple.

It’s powerful, mystical stuff, I realize that, and if we think of the Mass as just a religiously themed jamboree or a chance for us to get together and hear stories about Jesus, I mean, that ain’t enough.

That’s not a sufficient understanding of the Mass.

The Mass is a link to heaven. It’s a link to the risen and ascended Jesus who is presenting his sacrifice eternally before the Father.

That wouldn’t be possible unless the Ascension were true.

Not of Jesus’ absence, no, on the contrary, of his more intense presence to us as the one directing our operations in the world, and as the one with whom we are united every time we celebrate the Mass.

Further insights

Christ IS “always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). What is the basis of this intercession? The sacrifice of the Cross (Heb. 7:27; 9:12; 10:14), which is forever present before God in the heavenly tabernacle because he who was both offered as victim and who offered the sacrifice as priest “appears before God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24).

Christ’s perfect offering of himself present in heaven (Heb. 9:11-12) is brought to earth in an unbloody, sacramental manner in the Mass. As Frank Sheed puts it, “The Mass is the breaking through to earth of the offering of Himself that Christ makes continuously in heaven simply by His presence there.”

(Source)

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The Mass is the ‘once for all’”, perfect sacrifice of Calvary, which is presented on heaven’s altar for all eternity. It is not a “repeat performance”. There is only one sacrifice; it is perpetual and eternal, so it need never be repeated. Yet the Mass is our participation in that one sacrifice and in the eternal life of the Trinity in heaven, where the Lamb stands eternally “as if slain”.

The Lamb’s Supper, Scott Hahn (p150).

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Ω See also 

Dali and the beauty of science

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Ten-week twins certainly no 'tissue'

 

See on Twitter here. Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN and chair of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, described the Guardian article as misleading, saying, “The images in the Guardian article are clearly intentionally misleading. They state that they are pictures of gestational sacs, ignoring the inconvenient fact that in pregnancy, the gestational sac surrounds the embryonic or fetal human being — which have clearly been removed before these photos were taken.”

Complementarity and masculinity without fear

Through the whole of their life together as one. Photo: Truth Enoch

"It’s not cool now for men to be masculine and rough and rugged, and it’s like we actually need men like that," says sexologist Morgan Penn, who has spent the past few years learning and teaching the importance of love, sex and intimacy, and who was interviewed on a New Zealand radio station this month.

“This is kind of controversial, but I do feel like men are almost afraid to be in their power.

“You know, as women are kind of uprising and all this bad behaviour that’s been going on for so long has now been called out and it’s like it’s not cool now for men to be masculine and rough and rugged and it’s like we actually need men like that.

“In this generation, it’s lacking.”

The interviewer on the broadcast, Lillie Rohan, saw the value of what Penn had said, adding from her own experience:

"When I have someone to lean on I can let go and become less of a control freak. [My boyfriend] organised a holiday and it was so nice. Usually that would be me, like, 'I'll organise this'. But he's like, 'I've got this. I'll sort it.' and I was like 'Sweet!' It was nice feeling safe enough to let go of all that pressure."

Penn explained:

"I don't like talking about the feminine and masculine archetype but I think it's really important for the modern-day career woman to feel she can be in her 'feminine', not control
everything, let the masculine come in and take care of things. There's like a deep 'exhale' when that happens."

Rohan offered this:

"It's so nice and it's changed my perspective on relationships as well. I used to be, 'Ahh, don't let the man do that. You're a strong, powerful woman, you can do whatever you want.' And now it's so nice to be taken care of." 

Back to Penn: 

"Men love to provide... and it's nice for us [women] to enjoy it, to celebrate it, and then we get more of it."

Rohan then speaks of the vagaries of dating:

"It takes a man who is confident in his own masculinity to be able to do that... because today there are a lot of [promiscuous men], those who just don't want to step into that role."

Penn:

"Yeah ‒ into their manhood. We are living in this [time when] men are afraid to be in their power. We really need men like that in this generation , and it's lacking."

Rohan agreed: "Absolutely!" She went on to ask Penn whether she had male clients who were struggling with their masculinity.

Penn:

"I do actually. They struggle with how they fit in a world where a lot of their partners are independent women. Men feel a kind of emasculation ‒ 'She's bringing home the bacon, she's doing [everything]. Where do I fit in in this?'

"We have to think about the primal state of humans, and for men it's providing and caring and protection of the family unit."

Penn extends the state of mind to a couple's sex life:

"When it comes to sex we need polarity. We can't have two people in their 'feminine' ... fluid, floaty. We need one person who is going to take the lead, take charge and create the fire. So we need both parties to come and it doesn't have to be gendered... But it has to be a different kind of energy that comes in. Otherwise we lose attraction as well."

What Penn and Rohan have been discussing is recognising and expressing the characteristics that are distinctively of a feminine and a masculine nature. These are not a matter of functionality ‒ Who's better with a screwdriver? Who's good at teaching algebra? ‒ but are founded upon an innate difference that co-exists with equality. Difference and equality are not mutually exclusive.

How that mindset operates in the real world was touched upon in the interview quoted above with Penn and Rohan speaking about the woman creating an environment that does not entail putting herself to the forefront of every activity involving a couple or family. This is the current danger in society, as they said.

Stories of the dynamics of unity in diversity

A graphic illustration of how functionality is not the essence of what is termed "complementarity" comes from pastor John Piper who draws upon a heritage that dates back to the sexual revolution within Roman society brought about by the Christian teaching of the dignity of women, breaking from the culture and law where women, like children, were awarded the status only of chattels of husband or father. 

Piper's example is this:

Say there’s a couple at my church, say they just met each other in worship. He’s twenty-two and she’s twenty-one and say they like each other. You can tell. They watch each other from afar and they’re standing beside each other in worship this time and he’s thinking, I could ask her to lunch! And she might go! I don’t know if she’ll go! And he’s watching her worship, loving it, she’s so engaged. And she’s feeling the same way about him. So afterward he says, You got any lunch plans? No? Would you like to go down to Maria’s and we could walk from here? She says yes, so they’re walking. And a robber jumps out with a knife and threatens them and says, I want your wallet and I want her purse.

And as the man, you would say, Well, I guess that would be the wise thing to do, hand over the wallet and the purse. And then the robber says, And I want her. Now, little does [the robber] know that she’s got a black belt in karate. And this woman can take him down quick. [But her partner] is not a fighter. And here’s my argument: everything that God has built into him as a man says, You can use your karate if you want to, but I’m stepping in between. That’s what I do. That’s what men do.

And if people listen to this podcast and say, That’s purely cultural. That’s just Piper. That’s American macho. Blah. Blah. Blah. I think they’re out of touch with reality. I think written on the heart of every man is my manhood, my God-given manhood and not my macho, sinful manhood, but my God-given manhood, is compromised if I don’t seek to take this robber out for the sake of this woman’s life. So, what happens is he steps in, the robber cuts him, and knocks him down. She takes [the robber] out. [...] 

I’m making every bit of this up to make it work because it’s just so real. And so she gets in the ambulance with [her partner] riding down to Hennepin County and he’s conscious, and everything in her says, This is the kind of man I want to marry. He’s useless when it comes to taking out robbers with knives, but that’s the man. That’s the kind of man I want to marry.

Another account of the dynamics involved, this time true. Piper relates:

This a real story, okay?  I was doing marital counseling for this couple. He had an eighth-grade education, she had part of college education, she’s quite articulate, he is just an average guy, a painter. They were both Christian, and their marriage was on the rocks again and again. I was rescuing them. And I asked them one time if they are having family devotions. No. And I turned to Jim—let’s call him Jim—and I said, Jim, that’s your responsibility.  You should be taking the initiative to make that happen. She shouldn’t have to make it happen. You should make it happen. And he said, I can’t read very well. And she reads really well and it’s just embarrassing. I said, Okay, Jim. This is not something based on the ability to read. This is not what we’re talking about here, Jim. You’ve got three kids, right? Okay, let me ask this: can you say after supper tonight, “Hey kids, come into the living room.” Can you say that?

Yeah.

Okay, can you say, “Jane,”—let’s call her Jane—“Let’s meet with the kids in the living room and have some devotions tonight.” Can you say that?

Yes.

Okay, when they’re all gathered together and sitting there stunned, can you say, “We’re going to have devotions and since mom is a good reader, mom’s going to read a chapter for us. And maybe we should read from the Gospel of John together. And then I’ll pray for us as a family. Jane, would you read from John?” Can you do that?

Yeah.

Okay, that’s leadership. Do it. Do it. It’s making sure her gifts—which are better than yours on almost every score—are used with your initiative. She wants it."

I mean, I’m not making this up. She had come to me and said, We don’t ever read the Bible together!

After the fruit-eating incident, God came to the Garden of Eden and questioned the man about what had happened. Piper, in another place, gives an explanation:

Now, why didn’t God seek out the woman first since she ate the forbidden fruit first? Because God made man first and built into him a God-given sense of sacrificial responsibility for leadership and protection and provision. He is responsible for what just happened. That’s the price of leadership. (Source)

For the sake of family and marriage

Here's another fictional example of how complementarity works:

A husband and father wants to start his own business. His wife knows that he has had that dream a long time but she knows too he is a poor administrator, given his lack of organisational skills around the home. She knows she could make a fuss such that he would not proceed, but she thinks that for family peace she should cooperate with him in his effort to make his dream a reality. As she expected, the business goes bust, with a lot of mental and financial suffering in the process. However, strengthened by grace, she maintains a calm family life, exercising virtues that make for nobility of character and spiritual power, and her husband learns where his weaknesses lie.

Conversely, the film Juno portrays a husband who abandons his wife when she follows her dream of being a mother by adopting a baby. He puts ahead of his wife's wish his own desire to advance his music career. On his part, there was no sacrificial offering of support of his wife and his marriage.  

If we see God at the heart of everything that happens in our life, that there is a personal completeness that God is drawing each individual toward, then the responsibility that men are designed to bear is part and parcel of a beautiful pattern of life, where women and men are empowered to live life to the full, with their diversity governed by a communion of being. That is, the two persons sacrificially submit their wills to achieve a unity of life that fulfils each of them by different means.

Ω See also:

Rejecting femininity is not celebrating women 

Women in the early Church - a radical equality 

Egali-complementarians

Meet me halfway - On Catholic marriage

Manhood and Womanhood

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Our spiritual dimension evoked in music

Music by Maria Popova. (Available from her as a print and as stationery cards.)

Music, like life, is no more than itself. There is no implicit reason to it except that it is. And that is its magic. 

Those words are from Tina Davidson, an accomplished pianist and leading composer,  "the eldest of five children living in an itinerant family across Turkey, Germany, and Israel". Cultural commentator Maria Popova distils Davidson's autobiography titled, Let Your Heart Be Broken: Life and Music from a Classical Composer, in these words:

Eventually, that dark inner child found light in music as she became an accomplished classical composer, creating with “that wonderful absorbing feeling of being,” with “a sigh of homecoming.”

Speaking more generally, Popova affirms... 

... that creative work gives something which cannot be quantified or commodified. 

Margaret Atwood speaks strongly as to the importance of the creative sphere and the gift that is its product: "... its nature has spiritual worth but no monetary value, being priceless". 

Popova, too, excels with poetic insight as to the role of music in our life:

It is the sacrament we reach for when we want to feel what we feel more deeply, the daily pulsebeat that helps us move through even our most challenging days with more composure and resilience. It is the sunshine of the spirit. 

“This indeed is music,” Whitman exulted. “[It] whirls me wider than Uranus flies, it wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them.”

Music, the most abstract of the arts, is the most concrete in how it unlocks us to ourselves, how it “opens a path into the realm of silence.”  

Following this train of thought Popova takes us to Josef Pieper, who said, first, that music "... is by its nature so close to the fundamentals of human existence", and second, in Popova's words, that "when we listen to music [...] we perceive something greater and beyond the sum total of the specific sounds and words, something of additional intimacy and meaning, just as in poetry we 'perceive more and something other than the factual, literal meaning of its words'.”

And there is another element of our spiritual dimension — Popova is able to declare that Davidson has succeeded in offering readers...

... a lyrical reckoning with what it takes to compose a life of cohesion and beauty out of shattered bits and broken stories.

On that point, Davidson herself states:

The miracle is the persistence of the soul to find itself, to look hard into the darkness, reach back, and grasp remnants of ourselves. The miracle is that we create ourselves anew.

That persistent "I" is what makes each person's life such a miracle! 

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A persecution that hammers all of us

Photo: PxHere

Persecution is a term used mostly to refer to people of religion, but the impact of the cultural norms that have a tight grip on our lives today means  that, in a true sense, all of us are being treated unkindly, not superficially, but in a way that goes to the core of our being.

The nature of this ill-treatment was noted by Pope Francis last week, reflecting on his three-day visit to Hungary at the end of April. He spoke of how Hungarians take pride in how they stood firm as a people  during a turbulent history but more especially in modern times against the oppression, first of the Nazi regime, and in quick succession, against that of a Communist elite imposed by Soviet overlords. 

However, Francis explains that he found evidence "as emerged in meetings with young people and the world of culture" of another kind of oppression at hand in society. Francis says:

But even today, as emerged in meetings with young people and the world of culture, freedom is under threat. How? Above all with kid gloves, by a consumerism that anaesthetises, where one is content with a little material well-being and, forgetting the past, one “floats” in a present made to the measure of the individual. 

This is the dangerous persecution of worldliness, brought about by consumerism. But when the only thing that counts is thinking about oneself and doing what one likes, the roots suffocate. This is a problem throughout Europe, where dedicating oneself to others, feeling a sense of community, feeling the beauty of dreaming together and creating large families are in crisis. 

The whole of Europe is in crisis. So let us reflect on the importance of preserving the roots, because only by going deep will the branches grow upwards and bear fruit. Each of us can ask ourselves, even as a people, each of us: what are the most important roots in my life? Where am I rooted? Do I remember them, do I care for them?

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Forces and events vastly larger than us

...the key to the enigma of the universe and to all history

Maria Popova enjoys the richness of the autobiography Let Your Heart Be Broken by classical composer Tina Davidson. Entering into the spirit of Davidson's story of her life, Popova writes:

We spend our lives trying to anchor our transience in some illusion of permanence and stability. We lay plans, we make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us with the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in a pool of the unknown, the heart breaks open and allows life — life itself, not the simulacrum of life that comes from control — to rush in.

Those words, that in life we often "find ourselves [...]bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us" took me just the few weeks back to the Easter night celebration of the rising from the dead of Jesus, who is God who took flesh to come among us. I want to complement Popova's sentiments of wonder with a perceptive reflection on the understanding of life that Christians express at Easter:

The  Easter Vigil begins with a wonderful ritual. In the darkness of the night, out under an open sky, before a fire, a candle, the work of the Mother Bee, is blessed as the priest prays: ‘Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to him and all the ages, to him be glory and power, through every age for ever.’ Christian hope is rooted in more than the story of an individual who once vanquished death, whose victory can still affect the life of other individuals. Christian hope is rooted in the certainty that Jesus Christ is the key to the enigma of the universe and to all history.

Easter is more than a firework of revelation preceded and succeeded by dark silence. God’s incarnate Word is the same Word that was from the beginning, that speaks in Scripture and still operates in the Church, Christ’s Body. That is why it is essential for us Christians to be deeply rooted in the past. It is essential that we know Scripture well, that we know the history of the Church and of the saints.

Avoid, then, a disproportionately contemporary and self-centred vision of things which may make the faith more graspable, perhaps, but also reduces it to something banal. No political or sentimental aim will rejuvenate our soul and inflame our heart, but only the unchangeable promise of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the same today, yesterday, and forever.

— Erik Varden, a Trappist monk and bishop of Trondheim, Norway

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Recovering our humanity — an urgent task

Dr Iain McGilchrist, an English researcher of the thinking processes that make humans human, has spent 25 years analysing the respective tasks of the two halves of the brain. Commenting on McGilchrist's books reporting his findings, Hugh Dickinson offers a useful summary of what makes his work so important:

In summary, [the science is that] the right hemisphere (RH) is wide-ranging, imaginative, creative, poetic, fascinated by the arts; it is prepared to take risks and to go with the flow. The left hemisphere (LH) is meticulous about detail, grammar, spelling, and conventional rules; it loves tools, machines, spreadsheets, and orthodoxy. To summarise: LH loves maps; RH loves exploring the world. 

Dr McGilchrist’s diagnosis of the malaise of the modern world is that LH has taken over and tried to eviscerate all RH activity. LH knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

LH thinks that the purpose of education is to train people to be useful workers and, through vigorous competition, to obtain well-paid jobs. RH thinks that education’s purpose is to make fine, happy, creative, mature, morally courageous, emotionally intelligent, co-operative human beings. Margaret Thatcher’s announcement that “There is no such thing as society” is an LH broadside to sink the RH ship called social conscience.

"Ideas have consequences", a statement that has become somewhat of a cliché these days as it posits that how we form the ideas that carry weight in our thinking is a matter of significance to our personal lives and to the functioning of society.

McGilchrist's findings bear close attention, as he and his work are increasingly seen to be insightful given that the manner of reasoning and institutional decision-making in many domains are being found to be unbalanced. 

Dr Iain McGilchrist ... "our reason is not reasonable enough, it’s too dogmatic"

Therefore, we do well to tap into an interview transcript just published in which McGilchrist explains his findings in light of the present malaise in society:

What I think happened during the Renaissance was this sudden flowering in which there were great steps forward in so many aspects of life — a great richness. (This is not about the humanities versus the sciences by the way, nor is it true that the humanities are somehow right hemisphere and sciences somehow left hemisphere; good science and good reasoning involve the right hemisphere as much as the left.) Then towards the end of the 17th century came a sense that science had solved all our problems and we were beginning to understand how to control everything ourselves.

Unfortunately, we now believe that if we just had a little bit more power (which is the raison d’etre of the left hemisphere: to grasp, to get) — if only we could do a bit more manipulation — we would solve everything. But at the same time, we’re making an unholy mess of the world in so many respects. We’re destroying nature, we’re destroying humanity. We’re certainly destroying this civilisation. I’d say we’re taking a sledgehammer to it. And so, this is a very sad outcome for this know-it-all left hemisphere.

There are several reasons why I think the left hemisphere has become more potent. One is that it’s the one that makes you rich. It’s the one with which you do the grabbing and getting. Another is that it’s much easier to explain the left hemisphere’s point of view: “If we do this, it leads to that.” When you start to openly analyse what your civilisation is about, rather than getting on with it, then you lean more and more into this left hemisphere point of view. A.N. Whitehead, who I consider one of the all-time greatest philosophers, said: “A civilisation flourishes until it starts to analyse itself.” And that’s remarkable because Whitehead was a mathematician and a physicist, but he was able to see the limitations of science and reason.

I happen to believe our science is not scientific enough. It’s too dogmatic. I happen to believe our reason is not reasonable enough, it’s too dogmatic — and it’s dogma that’s always the problem. We need science, we need reason, but we also need to see that they can’t answer all our questions. Love is very real. Anyone who’s experienced it knows that it’s one of the realest things that can happen to you — but according to science, for it to be real, you’ve got to be able to see it in the lab, measure it, manipulate it. 

'The Machine' becomes dogmatic

McGilchrist has observed that in history there has been corrections one way or the other but the Industrial Revolution has been a key influence on the world we live in today:

[..]the power of the Industrial Revolution led to this machine-like way of thinking about living things, and we’ve never really lost that.

There are great artists in Modernism and Postmodernism. But it’s interesting: the ways of seeing the world that normally would only happen to somebody who had an injury in the right hemisphere began to be represented in the visual arts in the 20th century. There’s a wonderful book called Madness and Modernism about this topic, showing how things you find in schizophrenia are now happening, and are being portrayed in our culture.

It’s not that we’ve all got schizophrenia — of course we haven’t — but what I think is that we’re all neglecting the right hemisphere. Schizophrenia is a case in which the left hemisphere has gone into overdrive, and the right hemisphere has been wound down or is not really being listened to, and this leads to delusions and hallucinations. I think we are now in a world which is fully deluded. We’re all fairly reasonable people, but now it’s quite common to hear people say — and for them to go completely unchallenged — things that everybody knows are completely impossible. They don’t have any science behind them. [My emphasis - BS]

There are aspects of our culture that have become very vociferous and very irrational, and very dogmatic and very hubristic. “This is right, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.” That’s the way the left hemisphere likes to be. Cut and dried, black and white. But the right hemisphere sees nuances, gradation: there’s good and bad in almost everything. 

The dogmatic nature of society's thought processes are unprecedented, McGilchrist notes, and he goes on to identify why this is:

I’d like to make a distinction, by the way, between what I would call a rationalistic approach and being reasonable. Being reasonable was something I remember from when I was growing up. There were reasonable people and they were admired. The idea of education was to make you reasonable. But now, that has been supplanted by something quite different: a rationalising framework such as a computer could follow. So we’ve been pushed by the increasing sophistication of machines — the intoxicating feeling that we have power over the world —  into viewing the world in this reductionist, materialist way. And the trouble with power is that it’s only as good as the wisdom of the person who wields it. And I don’t notice that we’re getting wiser. In fact, I think that would be an understatement. So it’s rather like putting machine guns in the hands of toddlers and then hoping there’s going to be a happy outcome.

So we’re not living in an age of reason, after all?

We’re living in an age of rationalising and reductionism in which everything can be taken apart. I suppose there was an almost equivalent period — it was very short lived — of Puritanism, when it was absolutely not tolerated for you to disagree with a certain way of thinking — which was, in fact, a very dogmatic, reduced, abstracted way of thinking. But I think at that point, we hadn’t reached the stage that we’re at now. Because at that time in history, people lived close to nature. Most people belonged to an inherited culture, a coherent culture. Art had not been turned into something conceptual, but was visceral and moving. Religion had not been presented as something that only a fool or an infant would believe. These are all very arrogant positions that we now hold.

We know that some things are key to human flourishing: proximity to nature; a culture; some sense of something beyond this realm. They make people healthier, both physically and mentally. We’ve done away with that and now all we’re left with is public debate.

How to escape our self-made prison 

To trust one another in working together, especially to safeguard nature, heads an agenda in learning afresh how to flourish. Secondly, we need to recognise the difference between mere processing information and the form of reasoning that focuses on the common good. McGilchrist puts it this way:

We can begin the work of limiting the damage we do to nature. I think we also need to reestablish some sense of who we are and what we’re doing here. Although we’ve got all this power, and machines that can “think”, they can’t think at all, they can only process information extremely rapidly. We’re not really wise.

One of my answers, when people say, “What should we do?”, is pray. And by that, I don’t mean, as Heidegger said, “Only God can save us now.” I don’t mean that God will suddenly come down with his divine hand, sort everything out, and it’ll all be okay. That’s not going to happen. What I mean is that we adopt a different, less arrogant, less hubristic attitude to the world; that we have some humility; that we re-kindle in ourselves a sense of awe and wonder, in this beautiful world, and with it bring some compassion to our relations with other people. Not shouting them down, vilifying them, telling them they’re frightful, but reasonably talking and saying, “Okay, you disagree with me. I’m interested, explain your point of view.” What we mustn’t do is follow the strident shrieking voices, whatever they may be saying.

That there is a prison ready to hold us captive, one of our own making, is demonstrated by a global survey that has just published findings. The survey asked more than 42,000 respondents in 26 countries across continents questions based on the four dimensions of health: mental, physical, social, and spiritual. Note that the focus is on the so-called Gen Z age group, that is, those between the ages of 18 and 24. The survey report states:

According to the McKinsey Health Institute 2022 Global Gen Z survey, those between the ages of 18 and 24 report poorer spiritual health than older generations, with Gen Z respondents almost three times more likely than baby boomers to report poor or very poor spiritual health.

Spiritual health enables people to integrate meaning in their lives. Spiritually healthy people have a strong sense of purpose. While people who are experiencing poor mental health could have good spiritual health, or vice versa, Gen Z individuals who experienced poor mental health were five times more likely to report poor spiritual health than those with neutral or good mental health. 

A crucial finding: "In most surveyed countries, a higher share of Gen Z survey respondents report poor mental, social, and spiritual health compared with other generations."  The survey finds that:

Although many individuals around the world are struggling with their health, there are meaningful differences within groups.

Globally, one in seven baby boomers say their mental health has declined over the past three years, compared with one in four Gen Z respondents. Female Gen Zers were almost twice as likely to report poor mental health when compared with their male counterparts (21 percent versus 13 percent, respectively).

In most surveyed countries, a higher proportion of Gen Z respondents said their mental health was poor or very poor when compared with other dimensions of health (16 percent in Gen Z and 7 percent for baby boomers). However, in China, Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, Gen Z respondents reported that they struggled most with their social health. Overall, mental health experiences varied by region, with Gen Z participants in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Nigeria rating their mental health as “very good” with the highest frequencies.

While Gen Z tends to report worse mental health, the underlying cause is not clear. There are several age-specific factors that may impact Gen Z’s mental health independent of their generational cohort, including developmental stage, level of engagement with healthcare, and familial or societal attitudes. 

This report did, however, investigate the role of social media:

Gen Zers, on average, are more likely than other generations to cite negative feelings about social media. They are also more likely to report having poor mental health. But correlation is not causation, and our data indicates that the relationship between social media use and mental health is complex. 

We need to go to the likes of Jonathan Haidt's research to get a firmer grasp of how social media are such an important cause of distress among young people:

A big story last week was the partial release of the CDC’s bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed that most teen girls (57%) now say that they experience persistent sadness or hopelessness (up from 36% in 2011), and 30% of teen girls now say that they have seriously considered suicide (up from 19% in 2011). Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller.

From that horrendous set of statistics Haidt is confident enough to declare:

There is now a great deal of evidence that social media is a substantial cause, not just a tiny correlate, of depression and anxiety, and therefore of behaviors related to depression and anxiety, including self-harm and suicide.

A final word as to the arrogance that governs much of the thinking within technology and science, and the dangers that that governing ideology creates, we take note of the alarm sounded today about a world where AI is pushed into territory without boundaries set with humanity's common good in mind.

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