Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: Thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up. Thou hast understood my thoughts afar off: my path and my line thou hast searched out. And thou hast foreseen all my ways: for there is no speech in my tongue.  Behold, O Lord, thou hast known all things, the last and those of old: thou hast formed me, and hast laid thy hand upon me. Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and I cannot reach to it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face?  If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea:  Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me.                           (Psalm 138, 1-10, Douay-Rheims Bible)

DURING HIS VISIT TO Great Britain this week, Pope Benedict issued statements on the clerical sex abuse scandal, including comments to reporters during his plane trip, and met with victims. This meeting and his statements, while filled with compassion and understanding, were deeply troubling. The Pope’s emphasis was on healing for victims. There was no forceful statement by the pontiff on disciplining bishops and Church officials who overlooked or covered up sex crimes. Until those who aided and abetted offenders are removed from positions of power, the Church’s efforts at repentence are inadequate. The reckoning is stalled. It is not enough to express sorrow. (more…)

  IN THIS ENTRY on home economics, I wrote: The ideal domestic worker is an artist and her creation is her home. The artist takes what materials he has and manipulates them, but the goal is not just to create something interesting, but to express a vision of love and beauty. Even Michaelangelo worked with the most banal of materials and ordinary techniques. All was imbued with imagination and vision. It may seem ridiculous to compare a humble home filled with love and simple beauty to the Sistine Chapel. But, they are the same in that they are both works of artistry and express first and foremost the human soul.  

IF  THIS WOMAN had been wearing pants, would she be the same? (more…)

DAVID writes:

This past week, quite a controversy erupted when an anonymous author at Catholicity.com posted this article suggesting that women refrain from wearing pants because they are, according to him, intrinsically immodest and therefore evil. His tone was quite condescending to women. In particular, you will note the paragraph suggesting that men accompany their wives to clothings stores in order to guarantee their wives will not pick something immodest. Well, as you might expect, the article infuriated many women, and as the old saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Simcha Fisher, author of the Catholic blog I Have to Sit Down, launched the first attack against the article here. Promptly following her lead was And Sometimes Tea author Erin Manning, and finally, Mark Shea joined the fight as well at Catholic and Loving It. You would think this is a small matter, this question of whether to wear pants or skirts, but the arguments lasted for days – and in many cases became quite nasty. In my view, the root of the tumult is the wounded relationship between Man and Woman. So in addition to pants, skirts, modesty and lust, there was talk of male domination and sexual dysfunction, feminism, the proper interpretation of Ephesians 5 and other scriptural passages, the depravity of our culture, and neutered masculinity. (more…)

THE U.S. COMMISSION on Civil Rights Conference took place at the National Press Club in Washington this week. Policy analysts discussed the state of the black family, apparently without mentioning a word that was so crucial and yet largely ignored in the Moynihan Report of 50 years ago. That word is matriarchy.  Black society in America is matriarchal. Welfare helped push the black family in this direction, but an end to welfare, which has not yet been achieved, will not restore it as long as black women are sexually free and economically independent. 

The blogger Natassia, who is a commenter here, has put together a good summary of the conference proceedings. There are glimmers of sense in the remarks by conference participants, especially from Heather MacDonald and Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute. MacDonald said: (more…)

AN EXCHANGE of e-mails about The Thinking Housewife was sent to me and I promised to respond to it. The exchange between two men is posted below, with some minor editing changes. My response follows.

Fred writes:

Lots of interesting ideas from this right-wing website. It reminds me of how things used to be — some of what used to be was good, some was bad  — a lot of the good got thrown out with the bad.

A huge loss was the idea of a one living wage job per household  — this was the good reason to discriminate against women joining the workforce. We should have kept that rule, but with modifications. (more…)

 WILLIAM STEWART writes:

I’m not sure the scene depicted in your picture and caption is as innocent as it seems on the surface; in fact, I’m inclined to think otherwise. I don’t think the teaching in the public school system, of skills previously taught at home, was a good thing, because the teachers of “domestic science,” “household science,” or “home economics,” etc., tended towards an elitist view, that only experts knew how to properly cook according to the new “scientific” understandings of “hygiene,” and that what a girl might learn from her mother at home was no good, as that lady didn’t have the benefit of “scientific knowledge” that such self-appointed “experts” did. (more…)

MEAT EATERS are imperialists. Their refusal to trade the fatted calf for edamame or chickpeas is proof of aggressive instincts and fundamentalism, both political and dietary. The meat eater is a colonialist at heart, a supremacist of one kind or another. The vegetarian stands for world peace and tolerance, the carnivore for hatred.

The burger, in particular, is a symbol of all that is wrong with Western civilization. Most everyone likes it anyway.

Julia Child was inspirational in the field of burger cookery, even though she specialized in French cuisine. In general, Mrs. Child reveled in meat and was unapologetically Western compared to today’s fusion cooks. Mrs. Child’s burger recipes are excellent and simple. They are also somewhat counter-intuitive. Adding heavy cream to hamburger is not something that naturally occurs to us, but it works. (more…)

A READER writes:

IN THIS previous discussion, a reader asks:

How is [the pervasive sublimity of Muslim architecture – or, for that matter, poetry or spirituality] possible for a civilization that is “inherently false and evil”? 

This is an important question (although, for clarification, it is important to note that I never asserted that Islamic civilization was false or evil, but Islam itself.) This question is important not just in regard to Islam but to all false doctrines that flourish, produce admirable works and create some civilized order. Please see Kristor’s outstanding and succinct response. In a few paragraphs, he explains why evil must and always will coincide with the Good. He writes:

If Islam is false, then Muslim saints, poets and architects who approach sublimity are all the more remarkable, for they have won through to the Good at the heart of all things despite their false religion. It should hardly surprise us that there are Muslims who have scaled such heights. The falsity of their religion does not annihilate their appreciation or capacity for beauty or goodness. Nothing can persist unless it has some good and truth in it. So even Islam expresses some truths. And everyone, no matter how many false beliefs he may hold, must if he is to live perforce confront and deal with the world as it really is: so that the truth of things must press upon him, and shape him. Anything that is, then, may by being the handiwork of God be also for some creature the occasion of a theophany.

(more…)

FEISAL ABDUL RAUF, the imam promoting the Ground Zero mosque, is a man for his time, the perfect lubricant for an ecumenism that acknowledges faith and at the same time renders it meaningless. See this excerpt from his book What’s Right with Islam in which he argues:

The language of good versus evil is precisely the language of the fundamentalists whose worldview we oppose. Once we define as evil those who counter us, we lose the moral high ground and begin to descend an exceedingly slippery ethical slope.

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.

I recommend the reader Brendan’s excellent commentary in this post. He writes: (more…)

CHRISTOPHER BURCHFIELD writes:

In 1981, the U.S. Forest Service entered into the Bernardi Consent Decree against the advise of its own attorneys within the Department of Justice. In essence, the Washington Office determined that 43% of its employees, within each of its some sixty professions and trades, should be women. Beginning, ironically enough in 1984, through the year 2000, a mass exodus of men with “on the ground knowledge and skills” took place in a purge so extensive that today no institutional knowledge of the 174 individual forests remains.   (more…)

LADY GAGA is an “overconceptualized and claustrophobic” performer whose image as “the voice of all the freaks and misfits of life” is slick marketing. So writes Camille Paglia in a long profile of Gaga in today’s Sunday Times. Paglia writes:

There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere. (more…)