Slouching Towards Savagery

Combining two earlier thoughts: The previous post "God, Husband and Father" opined that Patriarchy (and, with it, civilization)

...starts with the Woman, and it starts with raw biology. The beginning of the patriarchal order is when the woman binds herself to one man and one man only. She in effect decides to belong to that one man, most likely to the man to whom she gives her virginity.

Secondly, my early impression of Nicaragua (the "Repaso" post) contains this paragraph:

But if I expected to find the same innocent culture that I encountered in Guatemala in 1975, in that I have been disappointed. Along with money and technology, most Americans and Europeans have brought with them the corrupt morals and worldviews that threaten to completely undermine their own native cultures. And with few exceptions, Nicaraguans look up to their wealthier neighbors and want to be more like them. So the same kinds of trashy TV, political ideologies and immorality are flooding in, and folks here seem generally to be eager to emulate Americans and Europeans, even if in lemming fashion it ends with their own demise.

My sentiments have not changed much in the two years since I wrote the above. The culture of Central America (perhaps of the whole world) is slipping steadily into a dull savagery. And I think it has to do with the feminization of the culture and of women's independence.

The feminized culture isn't the Utopia promised by the feminists, especially for women. Since a 'liberated' society means sex without responsibility, its women are much more likely to attract womanizers and misogynistic woman abusers. Indeed, a feminist culture is a paradise for these irresponsible miscreants. Likewise ample accommodation is given for serial sex and the adulterous changing of partners, a sort of prostitution in slow motion. Likewise for sterile, childless or one-or-two-children households. What is increasingly not tolerated in the feminized world is the large and stable patriarchal family where an unattached man marries a virgin and where true motherhood is cherished.

Because of a lazy, feminist lack of strong fatherhood in the Church, and a resulting lack of strong fatherhood in society, any sanctions or taboos against unwed sexual activity are downplayed or completely ignored. (God forbid that we should marginalize or offend the whores or their bastards!) Socialist government programs insure that fatherless families are well tended to. As a result, young women have no fear or scruples about promiscuity, and tend to deliberately choose mates with no commitment. I guess liberated (savage) women find liberated (savage) men attractive.

When women choose savagery, there is little or nothing that men can do about it except play the same game. The typical gigolo / womanizer has several women, either in succession or at the same time, and perhaps dozens of biological offspring whom he need not support. The decent man who wants a stable relationship and who wants to be a real father is lucky to find one woman (usually one who was not his virgin) and will produce zero or one of his own offspring, while perhaps supporting one or more bastards from his wife's previous lover(s). So the gigolo's biological offspring, not the good man's, are well represented in each succeeding generation. In this game of demographic natural selection, women decide who will win, and right now the gigolo is winning big time. Civilization starts with the Woman; so does its demise.

As implied above, I have no idea whether this is a global phenomenon or an anomaly of Central American culture. I suspect the former. Nor do I have a solution to suggest. Perhaps the situation will be self-corrective. Since matriarchy / savagery is inherently unstable and backward, the whole damned house of cards may soon collapse. Globally, I suppose patriarchal Muslims will survive the collapse and effectively own the demographic future, with perhaps a few scattered pockets of traditional, large, patriarchal families keeping the Christian faith burning here and there.

God, Husband and Father

In the previous post, I offered my radical (root cause) analysis of the current moral crisis in the world. Now for an even more radical analysis, of a deeper root cause, a systemic ill at foundational levels...

Until recent times, the patriarchal structure of families and of society was not seriously questioned. And for good reason: from a Scriptural point of view, the most basic human authority is that established by God before the Fall of Man - the authority of Man over the rest of God's creation, and the real authority which God bestowed upon Adam over Eve, and, by extension, of all husbands over their wives. This domestic line of authority is, from a divine point of view, the source of all other human authority, the beginning of all human organization and governance.

    As an important aside, it must be pointed out that patriarchal authority does not automatically infer actual superiority. Jehovah's Witnesses (not the brightest bulbs in the pack) make the intellectual blunder of deciding that, since Jesus obeys the Father he must be inferior to the Father and therefore not divine. Feminists make the identical error in proclaiming that Patriarchy degrades women by making wives obey their husbands.
    Notice that in all four biblical passages¹ where wives are enjoined to be subject to their husbands, they are told to obey their own husbands. Which is to say, they have no business obeying other men. This debunks the feminist myth, does it not? For the feminist complaint to be credible, Patriarchy would have to demand that all women obey all men because of their innate inferiority to them.
    As it is, true Patriarchy is about a divinely established order, and has nothing to do with an organic superiority. In this context, the word 'superior' may denote an order of authority, but it does not necessarily mean a higher level of worth or goodness. Consider: The Catholic Faith teaches that in the Holy Family there was one sinner, one sinless human, and one sinless divine-human. Yet the sinful Joseph had patriarchal authority over Mary and the child Jesus, both of whom were really superior to him.

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1.  Eph.5:22, Col.3:18, Tit.2:5, I Pet.3:1

Moreover, this patriarchal pattern is reflected in - nay, is the essence of - true monotheism, the relationship between Man and the Almighty. God as Father and God as divine Lover are two parts of one ancient theme. The pages of Scripture, both old and new testaments, are full of references to a nuptial relationship between God and his people. That most grevious sin of idolatry is always portrayed as the sin of adultery, analogous to the traitorous deceit of an espoused bride leaving her true husband and embracing false lovers.

As St. Augustine pointed out, the human soul is always feminine before God. But notice that for
Augustine's insight to make any sense, we must assume a patriarchal structure to our own human society. We must first understand that it is right and necessary for every young lady to save her virginity for one man, and then devote herself to that one man. And the man must then be willing to shoulder his responsibility as leader and provider and father. Only when we accept this as our norm can we see our proper posture before God our Father. There is a necessary link between the patriarchal roots of civilization and the patriarchal essence of true religion.

Interestingly, it starts with the Woman, and it starts with raw biology. The beginning of the patriarchal order is when the woman binds herself to one man and one man only. She in effect decides to belong to that one man, most likely to the man to whom she gives her virginity. If the man finds her devotion credible, he can for the first time know what the woman always knows via her biological role: he can know his own children. He can be a father in the true sense, and can shoulder the responsibility for both his devoted wife and for their children. From a biological point of view, the woman's devotion and submission is what enables the man to abandon the haphazard biological strategy of spreading his seed as widely and generously as possible, and to adopt instead the better approach, of caring for his own children and for their mother. It is the woman's feminine devotion that makes patriarchy - fatherhood - possible, and which is therefore the beginning and foundation of civilization as we know it.

Likewise, the soul that would be saved must abandon all false lovers and give herself wholly to her God. Like the devoted virgin giving herself to one man only, the Church and each of her members must be devoted wholly to God our Father and divine Lover. This means we must categorically reject the surrounding culture and its values. We can no longer pretend to be friends of this current culture nor of those holding worldly power (Jas.4:4). Having devoted ourselves to God alone, we must reject the adulterous advances of all others, especially the usurpations of feminists and egalitarians.

Consider how our present world scorns fatherhood. The feminist / egalitarian / homosexual campaign to redefine marriage and the family amounts to a rejection of the patriarchal institutions of marriage and family. Portraying abortion as solely a woman's 'right' deliberately ignores the rights of the baby and also denies the holistic patriarchal structure of the family and the responsibility of the father. The breadwinner status in the home is supplanted by government entitlements which foster dependency upon the bureaucracy and render genuine fatherhood practically superfluous. The net effect of the world's agenda is to foster a post-civilized savagery in which both men and women flit from mate to mate like bees flitting from flower to flower. Can someone tell me how a child of God can be on friendly terms with such? No, the Christian politician - or even the Christian who is a friend of politics - is a contradiction of terms, an oxymoronic impossibility. The Christian who cavorts with worldly powers is more prostitute than bride. Every soul that would be devoted to God must heed St. Peter's Pentecost call to "save yourselves from this wicked generation." (Acts 2:40)

Unless we reject the soft tyranny of feminism and return as a people to the disciplined virtues of patriarchy, we will lose all vestiges of fatherhood. Which is to say, we will be lost and uncivilized, no better than wild animals. And unless we return as a Church to a wholehearted devotion to God and a rejection of our surrounding culture, we will lose our connection to God our Father, and will be damned.

The Abdication of Conscience

The political and cultural battle continues to rage over whether the government can rightfully usurp people's consciences by, for example, forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, or forcing adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples. The struggle is over whether the government can be allowed to trump faith and conscience.

I believe this battle is much older than most folks realize. The conscience clause ought to have been raised several decades ago when the government began to use public money to fund abortions, sterilizations, and the like. If it is wrong to commit an abortion, then it is also wrong to pay for one. If the government must not force a Christian physician to do abortions, it must likewise not force the taxpayer to fund them. It is this simple but radical conviction that led me to launch ProLifeStrike.org over 4 years ago.

But is this really the root (radicus) of the problem? Perhaps the issue goes back even further. Like maybe the 1940's, back to FDR and the New Deal. And then greatly intensified in the 70's and beyond with LBJ's Great Society and the War On Poverty.

Raised in a liberal Democrat home, it was difficult for me to make this radical (root cause) connection. For a long time I was strongly in favor of the various social programs of the liberal Democrats. It initially made no sense to me that the same politicians who wanted to 'help' the poor also wanted to abandon the poorest among us, those who cannot raise even a tiny voice in protest. Only gradually has it occurred to me that government entitlement programs and tax-funded abortions are woven of the same fabric. And only recently have I begun to understand the reason why. It has to do with the question above: Ought religious people surrender their faith and conscience to government authority?

The corporal and spiritual works of mercy - feed the hungry, clothe the naked, instruct the ignorant, give aid to the homeless, the sick, and the dying - have always been an integral part of an authentic life of faith. But nowhere in Scripture or in sound Catholic teaching are we commanded to turn these duties over to a secular government. In fact, the desire to do so could be seen as an abdication of one's personal responsibilities. The faithful Christian must feed the hungry and clothe the naked. To ask Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to do this for me is to surrender my moral conscience to them. If you want Barack Obama to be your conscience with regard to the hungry and poor, then he will also be your conscience with regard to the pre-born and sexual deviation. The problem with ObamaCare is not an inadequate conscience clause. The problem with ObamaCare is ObamaCare. The problem with ObamaCare is the New Deal and the Great Society. The problem began when the government usurped the Church's responsibility to the poor and needy, when the government began to commandeer people's consciences, and when Christians willingly abdicated.

Blogger's Block

Despite (or perhaps because of) my recent blog-fade, the last post attracted 3 quite different and interesting comments, albeit over the course of nearly 9 months of silence from me, which represents an exception to the general lack of interest shown most other posts.

While acknowledging that criticisms of my writings are usually well deserved, allow me to offer the following defense:

• Re-read the top line of the aforesaid post. I have never claimed any prophetic charism for myself, but was mostly just repeating a thought from a brother in Christ that struck me, as it still does, as being insightful and prophetic. And a bit scary.
• The immediate and precise details not being realized, it yet remains to be seen whether the main point will come to pass - namely, will Obama break diplomatic ties with Israel, and will this finally call down God's righteous judgment upon America?
• I can't explain why I felt compelled to attempt a 'prophetic' blog post. It was my first and, most likely, last such attempt. Neither can I explain my subsequent writer's block and inabilility to offer further thoughts. Perhaps the two inexplicable phenomena are related.

The final point is currently forefront in my mind. Not that I have been completely silent (see my Books page and my other blog.) I have not yet learned to just humbly shut up (Job 40:4,5). But perhaps my blogging days are coming to an end. "Dogpatch, Ergo sum" was always an Idea blog; perhaps I simply have no further ideas or new thoughts to offer.

No, that's not exactly true. I do have at least one additional thought rattling around inside my skull for some time now. Not sure if I will ever get around to articulating it here. But here's a hint: if I write an article about this thought, I would like it to happen sometime before Father's Day. That gives me - what? - 2 or 3 months to write the article. Or not.

Prophecy

The following is not my invention, but an observation made by a fellow believer three years ago, which struck me then as it still does, as prophetic.

Why hasn't God judged America?

If this seems a strange question to you; if you do not see how sorely America deserves God's judgment, then read no further; you are clueless. But if you have asked this question yourself, consider the following:

God has not yet judged America because of the promise made in Gen.12:3. When the Almighty called Abram to become the father of faith, he said, "I will bless those who bless thee, and I will curse those who curse thee." This promise was transmitted to Abraham and also to his offspring - but only to the offspring of the promise, to Isaac, Jacob, and to the chosen race, the Jewish people. As Jesus said in Jn.4:22, "...salvation is from the Jews", and as Pope Pius XI affirmed, "We are all spiritual semites."

It is a fact of history that those nations, kingdoms, and empires that have been a blessing to the Jewish people have prospered, while those that have persecuted God's chosen race have not done so well. America has generally been good to the Jews and has furthermore been a strong ally of the nation of Israel. So America has enjoyed God's blessing of prosperity, despite the great travesties and moral corruption of which she is guilty. The first clause of the promise applies to America: "I will bless those who bless thee." But should America turn her back on the chosen race, the second clause will take effect: "I will curse those who curse thee."

The prophecy is this: Barak Obama will lose the 2012 election. The Republicans will regain the White House, and quite possibly regain several seats in Congress as well. Conservatives in general and Pro-Lifers in particular will be dancing in the streets and will proclaim with characteristic optimism that the tide has turned, and that America is headed for true reform.

But there are 75 days between Election Day and Inauguration Day. With nothing to lose politically, Obama will use those 75 days to deliberately pick a fight with Israel over some pretended grievance. He will then break diplomatic ties with Israel, and in so doing will finally call down God's righteous curse.

Remember as well - - Inauguration Day 2013 falls within a couple days of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. 40 years is the Scriptural limit of God's patience (e.g. Ps.95:10).

Fortnight for Freedom Protest

I guess the good news is that 'Catholics' for Equality, which bills itself as "the country's largest national political organization of pro-LGBT equality Catholics", could only muster a handful of protesters. Click on the photo to see their site. Can you find more than a dozen or so individuals protesting?

It remains to be seen whether or not this event means that our bishops are finally getting a set. One can always hope.

Hickies, a novella

As long as I'm writing reviews on unrecommended reading here's a newly released title by a little-known author (but whose name you may recognize).

Hickies is a novella-length story set in the near future. It doesn't try to be futuristic in a sci-fi manner, but rather uses a futuristic theme - the dispersion of human clones within our society - as the context for grappling with some questions of a psychological, sociological, and moral nature. The questions themselves are not futuristic nor theoretical, but impinge strongly upon the human condition, and upon the current state of our world, and so are well worth the grappling. Whether Hickies does an adequate job of such grappling is yet another question worth asking. I personally think it does so in a clumsy and amateurish way, but in this case I may be incapable of honest and objective judgment.

In the same volume are four additional short stories. They are all works of fiction, and all by the same amateur author, but otherwise are not connected in ant logical or literary manner.

My best advice is to give the book a try. What the heck, it's only 13 bucks, and you might find it worth reading. Of course, all comments, both favorable and otherwise, are welcome through the comment link below.

If you are inclined to risk a little money on such an unknown work, may I suggest that you do so through its CreateSpace page. A royalty of $7.50 will be paid to a well-known (but anonymous, in this case) pro-life organization for each book ordered directly through this CreateSpace page. It is, or will soon be, also available through amazon.com and other venues, but with a much smaller royalty payment to the pro-life organization.

Note: As of Sept. 5, 2012, I now offer a price cut for direct CreateSpace purchases coming from this blog article. Go to the CreateSpace page, and enter discount code XD6K2ZBP for a $3.00 discount off each copy of Hickies that you order there. (This will result in a proportionately reduced royalty paid to the pro-life organization.)