Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Patriarchy, weediness, and neo-conservatism

Thinking about the ongoing debate on marriage, I thought I'd repost this, from Februrary 2016.
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Feed my sheep.

Something I have mentioned a few times I can now make more explicit: what neo-conservatives have done to marriage.

Patriarchy involves rights and duties for both parties. Over the millennia, Christian and non-Christian versions of Patriarchy have given men the incentive necessary to get them to commit to spouse and family, that is, to provide their families with support and protection. Christian Patriarchy, taking inspiration from the mystical relationship between Christ and the Church, raises Patriarchy to a higher level, as grace builds upon nature, but the point of it, the incentive to men and the support and protection to women, remains. Grace builds on nature, it does not abolish nature. By connecting the traditional prerogative of authority to the authority of Christ, Christian Patriarchy tells us more about what that authority is for (the benefit of the family as a community), but emphasises even more that this authority is to be taken seriously.

Feminists and radical liberals are hostile to the very concept of the family, because the family passes on values without reference to the state, and totalitarians cannot tolerate this. But the conservatives of today have done something very strange as well. In response to the claim that Patriarchy is oppressive, their response has been: well ok, let's stress the duties of the husband to the wife, and the prerogatives of the wife over the husband, and ignore or even deny the duties of the wife to the husband, and the prerogatives of the husband over the wife.



Explicit denial of the authority of the husband over the wife can be found in neo-conservative online Catholic sources such as this and this; it is given at length in books like this. Such views are often linked to Christopher West, though I couldn't find a helpful discussion by him online. More authoritative treatments do avoid denying the teaching of the Church, and content themselves with being silent about the authority of the husband. This is what we find in the Novus Ordo liturgy, Pope St John Paul II's Mulieris dignitatem and his later Letter to Women, and the Catechism, whose determination not to mention husbandly authority goes to particularly contorted extremes.

This silence on the part of Pope St John Paul II carries over into his defence of the all-male priesthood. Obviously, the reason why priests must be men is connected closely with the role of men as representing Christ, in the home and in the liturgy. Indeed, while the New Testament does not give us an explicit rationale for the all-male priesthood, the roles of the two sexes in the economy of salvation is made clear in the context of marriage (in 1 Cor 11). JPII seems remarkably reluctant to appeal to this directly, however; rather, the strategy was to stress the 'spousal character' of women, coupled with the bare fact of Christ's decision to ordain men and an assertion of the Church's inability to ordain women. In this Mulieris dignitatem (1988) laid the groundwork for Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994); the point was reiterated by the Letter to Women (1994).

Whether accomplished by explicit denial of the husband's prerogatives, or simply by silence about them, the picture conveyed to sincere Catholics seeking to discover the teaching of the Church on the matter is the same. They are offered half of the Patriarchal picture: the half that's of benefit to the woman, but without any of the quid pro quo for the man.

This extremely strange conception of marriage is then promoted to men in an equally strange way. To the complaint, explicit or implicit, that there is not much incentive to men to marry, and that the kind of man who accepts this settlement is a bit of a weed, they respond by pointing to all the Biblical passages and historical examples of Patriarchal men, such as those associated with Chivalry, and they say: look at these strong men. They are not weeds. What did they do? They served and protected women. You men who don't feel incentivised to marry: take inspiration from these men. Man up! And devote yourself to the service of women without thought of reward.

Again, the more authoritative (and theologically self-aware) the source, the more it is a matter of what they do not say, rather than of what they say. Their silence is filled in, however, by a small army of on-line neo-con apologists who neither know nor care that their weird way of reading St Paul is incompatible with the Fathers of the Church or a pile of Papal Encyclicals, and are themselves aided by non-Catholic social conservatives. Bishop Olmstead, therefore, can only be criticised for a lack of balance in his call for men to 'man up'. The distortion is more visible in this, and in a secular context in this.

Not only is there a degree of intellectual dishonesty here (and, theologically, an implicit denial of the teaching of the Church), but it is never going to work psychologically. Some generous souls may throw themselves into this idea, but for all their (perfectly genuine) service and suffering, they are never going to look like strong men, because they aren't behaving like strong men. They are simply allowing themselves to be exploited: they are doormats. It is impossible to establish a healthy relationship on that basis.

In the meantime, the attack on the family has turned the dating scene into a sort dystopian, Hobbesian State of Nature, where the incentives of Patriarchy on men and women alike do not exist. In this environment, prestige and sexual success belongs to men who have the aura of strength, without having any inclination to settle down and provide for a family: aloof alpha jerks. Men who want to do the right thing are guided by the neo-conservatives into behaviour which categorises them firmly as needy, wet, desperate beta men: weeds. The more these men try to aspire to the kind of 'strong male' proposed by the neo-cons, by stressing their willingness to suffer and serve, the more they are digging themselves into this hole.

The kind of advice generally given to young Catholic men is not just mistaken, it is grossly irresponsible. This is true whether it amounts to a fully-formed, weirdly distorted account of the marital relationship, or whether it is simply a matter of stressing one side of Patriarchy and pretending not to notice the other.

Liberals and neo-cons have created a social situation in which finding a good spouse is extraordinarily difficult. It will help, however, if we understand what is going on, and how our own behaviour and attitudes shape others' perceptions of us. We are also called on to accept and live by the teaching of the Church, even when this is not going to please everyone

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18 comments:

  1. Your second link after "Explicit denial of the authority of the husband over the wife can be found in neo-conservative online Catholic sources such as" seems to be broken.

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    1. Thank you, Dr. Shaw. That second linked article is a hard read, and more or less a point-by-point resummary of the nonsensical treatment of "submission" given in my own marriage prep program ("wives submit to their husbands by letting their husbands obey them!").

      The damage which Pope St. John Paul II did to the Catholic understanding patriarchy really cannot be underestimated: there is virtually no historical memory of pre-conciliar exercises of the Magisterium on this topic, and he was, after all, the closest thing to a bulwark of orthodoxy the Church had at a terrible time in its history, so his words are taken as Gospel truth here, especially by a certain strain of young female reform-Catholics common in the U.S.

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  2. 'They are offered half of the Patriarchal picture: the half that's of benefit to the woman'. The other half is of benefit to the woman of course but I do not suppose you deny thing.

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    1. Well yes you are right! Directly vs. Indirectly beneficial perhaps.

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  3. Do you think that this was done consciously or deliberately? If so why?

    I'd say it was an attempt to engage with and overcome the trope of the 'misogynist' church in the age of the sexual revolution.

    FWIW I have always enjoyed the work of St John Paul II but had not considered that half the equation was missing, but actually you're right. I think many women wouldn't see the duties of wife to husband because she'd implicitly assume or know what they were. Perhaps the Neo-cons thought this too and thus the omission was not deliberate? It demonstrates the folly of following the spirit of the age.

    But I'd also argue what young Catholic men and women need to see is this relationship modeled by their parents, though there is the elephant in the room of rights and responsibilities within the bedroom. But I daren't go there...

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    1. Yes, it would seem to be a ploy intended to "evangelize" (scare quotes because, after all, refusing to preach the Gospel is pretty much the opposite of evangelizing) people for whom patriarchy is a "hard teaching."

      As usual, the fact that that which has to be sacrificed to evangelize people who clearly do not want to hear the truth also has a negative effect on those trying to live in the truth of Christ is never taken into account. We're the elder brothers, after all, so who cares.

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  4. ^ and though the woman may implicitly know, it's helpful to all if this is spelled out somewhere.^

    Young women (and men)are being so indoctrinated into feminist thought these days I don't think anything can be safely assumed.

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    1. It is a response to the accusation of misogyny as you suggest. No doubt some neo-writers take the unspoken side of the equation for granted, others are a bit uncomfortable about it, and others still reject it.

      It may be that JP2, or his advisors, thought that a 'Vires dignitatis' document would send the wrong signal, to say the least. Looking for references to Catholic fathers for the Position Paper on the EF and Men was difficult, and the results a bit meagre. (Interstingly it was some of the documents about Africa which referred to fathers most fully.)

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  5. All right and well said - but the attack on complementarity in relationships, in whatever form it takes, is still a biological response of a social animal which is programmed to stop reproducing under our exact conditions. This must be taken into account by anyone constructing a response to our predicament. By breeding in the Urban West - we are manually overriding something much more profound than whatever mad ideas third wave feminists or Liberals like to think motivates them.

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    1. I'm interested in hearing more about this, as the idea that (basically) the 1960s represents the execution of a program hard-written into human nature has occurred to me before. The collapse of things was so swift and sudden that it's hard to explain it without appeal to something fundamental to human nature.

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    2. I would tend to agree strongly with this comment.
      And I think it is not wealth alone. It is how we get it.

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  6. A worthwhile discussion has developed in the comments section of this article in The Homiletic and Pastoral Review: http://www.hprweb.com/2016/02/wives-be-subordinate-to-your-husbands/
    The article itself gives the rather one-sided treatment that you've criticised St John Paul II for but the comments include an incisive treatment from Fr Brian Harrison OS which is well worth reading.

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    1. Thanks for posting this. I think Fr. Brian has it spot on. I think the basis St. John Paul II and others use to interpret Ephesians in favor of their novel position is shaky. "Submit to one another" can be naturally be understood in that context to mean respect the hierarchies in life. So children to wives, wives to husbands, husbands to the kings etc.

      I also think that this reinterpretation of Scripture is absurd.

      I personally think that St. John Paul II by his statements, and even by his silence, lead the Church to a very bad place. With his canonization, you have good people going crazy trying to justify what he said and did. I think its time that people just pointed out that somethings he said (and did) were actually pretty bad.

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  7. I think it's increasingly hard for couples to take traditional cultural roles within the family, due to the economic climate. To be able to survive financially, it is often necessary for both parents to work, which reduces a woman's essential maternal period after birth, and often causes friction within the household about who does which chores.

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    1. Was the idea of male headship grounded only in the greater financial contribution of the man, and is it no longer relevant, since that greater contribution is no longer the norm?

      I think not. Prior to the industrial revolution, men were not wholly separated from the home during the work day, and though the man's physical work load may have exceeded the woman's, in fact both probably worked hard, all day long, though on different tasks.

      So, even apart from the mistake of believing that the prevailing economic situation is the basis for accepting or rejecting scripture and church teaching, it seems that the current norm of both spouses working was also the norm over most of the past two thousand years, with that period between the industrial revolution and the rise of feminism, in which only the man worked (outside the home), actually being the anomaly.

      The real issues are, first, what does scripture and church teaching say, and second, what are the social/marital consequences for a young man who accepts this older teaching, given the background of generalized feminist disgust over male leadership?

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  8. I agree Alexander. Fr Vincent McNabb, Chesterton and Belloc have agreed as well. Rural life is a foundational stone of the Catholic Land Movement. Contraception was an almost necessary byproduct of rural Catholics being corralled into urban ghettos. As McNabb said - Nazareth or Social Chaos. Urban living clearly violates nature. But the Jews became enamoured with it during their bondage in Egypt - thus Jerusalem. And since reading The Church and Land, I can't help but notice Jesus' best work happens outside the city. Including his redemptive work where he was outside the walls as well.
    If we want to seriously approach the topic of this article, we must approach the unnatural urban nightmare most Western men find themselves in. Patrimony is almost a natural byproduct of rural life. All the whimpy theology of the last century was all written by urban men. Go figure. Rural life has to be accepted as a part of the natural law at some point.

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  9. Yes, we rarely hear women being told to "woman down" as we hear men being told to "man up".

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