Monthly Archives: June 2008

Chivalric Resource: Dr. John Rao

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In our franciscan communities it is our custom on most days to listen to a religious conference of some sort at breakfast. Lately we have been listening to downloads from Keep the Faith‘s website.

Of particular interest to those who read MaryVictrix are the some of the conferences by Dr. John Rao, associate professor of history at St. John’s University and director of the Roman Forum.

Of further interest are some of his series on Church history especially his ones on the Crusades.  Very Good.

I admire Keep the Faith and the Roman Forum very much.  The late Dr. William Mara was a giant among the great Catholic American thinkers of the last century.

Not being a Traditionalist myself, though celebrating the Traditional Rite, I can’t vouch for everything on the website.

God bless them for defending the crusading spirit.

Theology of the Head and Heart, Part II

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(Part I can be found here.)

Theology of the Heart

Rereading Genesis in light of the spousal symbol in the Letter to the Ephesians enables us to grasp a truth which seems to determine in an essential manner the question of women’s dignity, and, subsequently, also the question of their vocation: the dignity of women is measured by the order of love, which is essentially the order of justice and charity (Mulieris Dignitatem, 29).

Clearly, the Theology of the Head enjoys the same primacy that faith does in respect to the other virtues, insofar as reason enlightened by faith provides the mean for all the other virtues and since without faith it is impossible to please God. Hence, man is to the family what faith is to the other virtues. Yet the dignity of women “measured by the order of love” suggests not only the virtue of obedience but the vocation to be the heart of the family, its core and center.

One here could enter into the debate of which ultimately has primacy, intellect or will, or as scholastics posed the question: In what does the essence of beatitude consist: the Intellectual vision of Infinite Truth or rest of the will in the Infinite Good? That debate is not going to be settled here.

Even so, the will does enjoy primacy in its own right when considered under the aspect of the perfection of virtue which is found in Charity, or what John Paul II calls in the above quote, “the order of love.” Knowledge leads to love. Love cannot be real unless it is based on truth, but if the apprehension of the truth does not lead to love, then such an apprehension is vain and sterile.

This primacy of love points to the reason why woman is the heart of the home, and the mother, the heart of the family. Woman is the guardian of the heart and hearth. Continue reading →

Off with the Bubble Wrap

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Well here’s some news. Just wait for the feminists to come out of the woodwork and say there are no studies to verify what is perfectly obvious to those of us who have not yet drunk the coolaid.

Imagine, boys need fathers and men in their lives, and mothers and other women should let them be boys.  Revolutionary.

And would you believe that it is actually good for boys to take risks, that it actually helps them do better in school?

I’ll give the girl in the first link credit.  She sure as hell is going to catch hell:

Ms Lashlie, who describes herself as a feminist, said: “I’ve been in classes with young female teachers and by the end of the session my ears hurt.”

Woops!  I guess she already has:

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT union, told the paper the author was talking “a load of claptrap”.

“It is disappointing that a woman has felt the need to pander to the views of a tiny group of men who present themselves as the oppressed minority,” she said.

That’s right.  Men know nothing about boys, or how to get them to perform well.  Excuse our self-pity.

All Blogged Out Right Now

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I will get back to the grindstone momentarily.  If I must choose to live or to blog, I choose to live.  Anyway, I will be back.

Meanwhile there is this, because I live in America and  this is a cultural gem.

At some point I will have to talk more about culture and asctetics and their relationship to the restoration of chivalry and manhood.  Behold the disconnect.  Click on the link.

Encampment Interview (Udate: Interview with Thom Girard)

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Click on the image above to watch the AirMaria Roving Reporter interview with Thom Girard, Grand Master of our last encampment.  The next Encampment will be July 18-20.  I will have a new Encampment page up in the next couple of days.

Udate (7/8/08):

We had a technical problem with this video when we first uploaded it.  I have relinked to a new file.

This is the only video interview with the late Thom Girard, recorded at the end of the Spring Encampment, little more than a month before his death.

Iconoclasts

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Why is it that I can’t stand bureaucracies? Oh, that’s right, now I remember. Red tape destroys a World War II monument in Normandy because a farmer did not have the money to prune his trees. Government is so efficient.

I guess nothing really matters except the present generation: no past, no future. Now, us: that’ all that matters. Right?

Hats off also to the majority in the Supreme court who once again have decided to rewrite the Constitution by finding a new right somewhere in invisible ink. Boumediene v. Bush is precious. This sounds like a good plot for another National Treasure sequel.

I am sure the founding fathers hid every right imaginable on that parchment. We have until the end of the world to find them all.

Perhaps the purgatory of the said Supreme Court justices could be to write “I will not rewrite the Constitution” a thousand times in invisible ink without the fires of Purgatory heating up the ink to reveal the words (See National Treasure for details). St. Peter will only let them out when their work is cool enough to be invisible.

But if one is going to invent Constitutional rights out of thin air, it’s worth asking: What moral universe do Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Stephens, and Souter inhabit when they are willing to manufacture constitutional rights for unlawful enemy combatants who want to slit the throats and watch innocent Americans bleed and die while at the same time uphold manufactured constitutional rights that allow people to abort innocent unborn children?

Oh, the dishonor of it all. Where did all the heroes go?

More Pushing

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Yes, more pushing the envelope.

Obama is taking his general campaign to the “least likely’s,” Evangelicals and Catholics. Of course, the Messiah can do anything, no matter how preposterous, and get away with.

Doug Kmiec is not just an Obama supporter, he is now an adviser. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Kmiec disengenuously quoted Deacon Keith Fournier’s Catholics, Voting and the Common Good. While the deacon still wants to defend Kmiec as a good Catholic, he does strongly disagree with him:

While I agree that the civil discourse should be elevated, executing the canons on withholding communion is not vicious and uncharitable. Quiet the contrary. Kmiec is not a merely a defender of the right to vote one’s conscience. He is a flagrant campaigner for Mr. Planned Parenthood himself.