Pope Francis on Complementary of Man & Woman

This is my favorite subject to think about, discuss, and develop, so it won't surprise you that I am super excited that our Pope spoke (albeit briefly) about it during his General Audience today. Since I am a TACer and, therefore, a firm believer in the utilization of primary texts, here are his words, without my opinions or interpretations thrown in. Take a look? 

Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!

Today’s catechesis is dedicated to a central aspect of the subject of the family: that of the great gift that God made to humanity with the creation of man and woman and with the Sacrament of Marriage. This catechesis and the next are concerned with the difference and complementarity between man and woman, who are at the summit of the divine creation; the two following ones will be on Marriage.

We begin with a brief comment on the first account of Creation in the Book of Genesis. Here we read that God, after having created the universe and all living beings, created his masterpiece, namely, the human being, which he made in his own image: “in the image of God He created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis1:27).

As we all know, sexual difference is present in so many forms of life, in the long scale of the living. However, only in man and in woman does it bear in itself the image and likeness of God: the biblical text repeats it a good three times in two verses (26-27): Man and woman are image and likeness of God! This tells us that not only man in himself is the image of God, not only woman in herself is the image of God, but also man and woman, as a couple, are the image of God. The difference between man and woman is not for opposition, or for subordination, but for communion and creation, always in the image and likeness of God.

Experience teaches it: to know himself well and to grow harmoniously, the human being is in need of reciprocity between man and woman. When this does not happen, the consequences are seen. We are made to listen to and to help one another. We can say that without the reciprocal enrichment in this relation – in thought and in action, in affections and in work, also in the faith – the two cannot understand in depth what it means to be a man and a woman.

Modern and contemporary culture has opened new areas, new freedoms and new depths for the enrichment of the understanding of this difference. However, it has also introduced many doubts and much skepticism. For instance, I wonder, for example, if the so-called gender theory is not also an expression of a frustration and of a resignation, which aims to cancel the sexual difference because it no longer knows how to address it. Yes, we risk taking a step backward. The removal of the difference, in fact, is the problem, not the solution. To resolve their problems of relation, man and woman must instead talk more to one another, listen more to one another, know one another more, love one another more. They must relate to one another with respect and cooperate with friendship. With these human bases, sustained by the grace of God, it is possible to plan the matrimonial and family union for the whole of life. The matrimonial and family bond is something serious, and it is for everyone, not only for believers. I would like to exhort the intellectuals not to abandon this topic, as if it had become secondary for the commitment in favor of a freer and more just society.

God has entrusted the earth to the alliance of man and of woman: its failure makes the world arid of affections and darkens the sky of hope. The signs are already worrying, and we see them. I would like to indicate, among many, two points that I believe must be attended with greater urgency.

The first. It is without doubt that we must do much more in favor of woman if we want to give back more strength to the reciprocity between men and women. In fact, it is necessary that women not only be more listened to, but that her voice has real weight, a recognized authoritativeness in the society and in the Church. The way itself with which Jesus considered women –we read it in the Gospel, it is so! -- in a context less favorable than ours, because in those times women were in fact in second place ... and Jesus considered her in a way which gives a powerful light, which enlightens a path that leads far, of which we have only followed a small piece. We have not yet understood in depth what things the feminine genius can give us, which woman can give to society and also to us. Perhaps to see things with other eyes that complements the thoughts of men. It is a path to follow with more creativity and more audacity.

A second reflection concerns the topic of man and woman created in the image of God. I wonder if the crisis of collective trust in God, which does us so much harm, and makes us become sick with resignation, incredulity and cynicism, is not also connected to the crisis of the alliance between man and woman. In fact the biblical account, with the great symbolic fresco on the earthly paradise and original sin, tells us in fact that the communion with God is reflected in the communion of the human couple and the loss of trust in the celestial Father generates division and conflict between man and woman.

From here comes the great responsibility of the Church, of all believers, and first of all of believing families, to rediscover the beauty of the creative design that inscribes the image of God also in the alliance between man and woman. The earth is filled with harmony and trust when the alliance between man and woman is lived well. And if man and woman seek it together between themselves and with God, without a doubt they will find it. Jesus encourages us explicitly to give witness to this beauty, which is the image of God. Thank you!

Just Keep Giving

Today started off covered in a deliciously thick layer of fog. After weeks and months of sun and hot and hotter weather, it is incredibly exciting to pull on leggings and boots with your Sunday dress and (indispensable to all Catholic girls) cardigan.

A couple of days ago, I started writing a blog post inspired by this beautiful gem of a quote from the only & only Ann Voskamp:

I stared at the blinking cursor for fifteen minutes without typing anything. I thought I could shake my writer's block by eating lunch, keeping the browser window up, but neither time nor food gave me the push to write.

Now I know why: today's psalm at Mass was waiting for me, ready to lend God's Word & inspiration to my little thoughts. I don't know that this will make them big thoughts, but it will make them better thoughts... that's what He does. He makes all things good.

~~~

Indulge me for a moment while I use a ridiculous example. 


Imagine buying your best friend tickets to Disneyland every weekend for the rest of his life. It would drain your pockets, quite probably put you in debt. But you do it anyway because you love him that enormously. Your gift is a sign and reciprocation of his gift of friendship.

But what does Jesus tell us about helping our friends, lending them money, possessions, or even our time? That it doesn't amount to generosity. That isn't a virtue. We are only generous when we give without thought of a return.

What would you do if this same Disneyland-going friend had betrayed you, insulted you, and left you without looking back?

In a virtuous love, a Christ-like love, we would continue gifting that friend with Disneyland tickets. Why? Because we bought those tickets as a gift of friendship, a free expression of our love for the other person. A sign of our unconditional love.

We have to invest ourselves without expecting a profit. He wants us to be a one-way street of giving.

Sound ridiculous? A bit.

Sound familiar? It should. All Christ is asking us to do is love others the same way He loves us.

And He gifted us with His love by giving His own self. We had given Him nothing. We had insulted Him, disobeyed Him, disappointed Him, abandoned Him. Without waiting for us to merit His favor, earn His trust, or even repent adequately, He gave us everything.

He didn't wait for us to promise, to guarantee that we would love Him back. He owed us nothing; we owed Him everything. But rather than demanding that we pay our debt, He gave us everything. He paid our debt to Him and then some. He merited Heaven for us.

He didn't buy us weekly trips to Disneyland... He bought our admission to eternal life.

Because He is grace, He is our Greatest Blessing.  

He. Gifts. Himself. To. Us.

Each Divine Person of our One God deserves more praise and thanksgiving than we can ever give Him... through Him we live, we move, we have our being.

... but how can we thank Him when we feel like He isn't there for us? When things go terribly wrong, when life isn't fair, it's tempting to feel abandoned by our Savior. He promised us joy... why, then, does it seem that the more we love Him, the more we trip and fall on our faces?

Because sometimes He wants us to be His gift. And that itself is the greatest gift: we are allowed to be Christ to others.

Think about that for a minute.

Wait. Keep thinking about it.

If your mind isn't blown yet by the humbling and enormously frightening reality of that gift, let me help.

Jesus is grace. He gifts us Himself so we carry that grace, His grace, His light in our own persons. That grace, that gift of Jesus Himself, is not something we should (or even really can) keep to ourselves. We can't contain Him.

So when nothing can go right for you - the car won't start, your clothes don't fit, your milk has soured, and your life just seems upside-down-and-inside-out - it can be hard to find God's blessings. It's hard to see His grace at work because everywhere you look just reminds you of what you don't have or what you need to get done or that you feel alone. Because how can the God of the universe let the universe of someone He loves fall to pieces? Shouldn't the life of a Christian be joyful and peaceful?

A word in today's psalm struck me. Let's pray Psalm Twenty-Three:

You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.

Sounds good, right? He spreads a table before me. Fantastic. My cup overflows. Awesome. But then... "only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life"... they follow me. The verb choice here is very telling. Goodness and kindness don't greet me, don't welcome me, don't throw a constant party for me. They follow me.

Our life will be established and rooted and transformed in & through joy and peace. But the world holds a lot of darkness. We can't expect to find light everywhere we go; we are expected to bring light - The Light - everywhere we go. We are called to light up the world. Christ calls us to bring goodness and kindness everywhere, all the days of our lives, because the world needs it, not because it already has it.

Life in Christ is joyful and peaceful, but not always in a way we can see clearly. 

He spoils us. He really does. He gives us so many things, both the enormous graces of the Sacraments and the tiny graces of beautiful flowers. His graces are our gifts and He showers them on us. I don't use showers flippantly here - He really, truly showers us with His gifts. 

But the greatest gift He can give us? It doesn't come with warm fuzzies or tied up with ribbons. The greatest gift He can give us is to allow us to be His Blessing. But being His blessing hurts. It hurts because we can only be Christ to others when we are giving ourselves to others. Being His blessing doesn't feel like handing down your leftovers to someone in need. Being His blessing feels like taking a part of yourself and giving it away. Christ gave Himself to us so that we might have life. To be Christ to others, we must also give ourselves, our lives, to others.

Where He needs us to bring His Blessing most are places that are darkest. Those dark corners and shadowy places are where His Light is needed most. Those are not places where you will find welcome and love and acceptance as a Christian, but those are the places that desperately need Christ. You won't find that goodies bags of extra graces are handed to you as you venture into those dark places. The gifts come from you - Christ gives you the gift of being His Gift to another person.

The greatest gift He can give us is to be the Blessing. 

It's incredibly humbling to realize that's what He wants us to do. He asks that we strive to bring & leave goodness and kindness here on our earthly journey, especially to the places that don't have it in the abundance He desires. 

So when the world is dark and scary and sad, when it seems like all you do is give, give, give... remember that is your greatest gift from God. And just keep giving. He won't ever run out of gifts for you. 

A Sad Day, A Hopeful Day

What a sorrowful Friday.

I woke this morning to news of the Aurora, CO shooting. So many lives lost or injured. I can't even imagine the horror of being in that situation.

Later in the morning, I sat on the floor, playing with two small children. I was enjoying sharing in their joy and simple happiness. As I sat there, I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate. I pulled it out and stared at the screen for a second. It was from someone I wasn't expecting to hear from for a while. It was with some trepidation that I opened it, but nothing could have prepared me for what I read.

I don't remember the exact wording, but the message was this: a student from my alma mater was struck and killed by a car early this morning. (story here)

Cue stomach drop. I stared blankly at my sister, who was across the room. She asked what was wrong and I told her the news.

It still hasn't sunk in. I can't believe it. They say little kids don't find death tragic because they don't understand what it means for someone to be gone forever. I find death tragic... but I can't claim to grasp what that really means either. Somehow you always expect they'll come back.

That's a great thing about being Catholic: we believe that, by the grace of God, we'll see those people again.

There's something to hope for.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may the perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Gone Girl: A Review of the Disappointment

I was recently inspired to read a novel. It was praised as "one of the best books I've read in a LONG time." Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn. I can agree to a point: Stephanie's choice of the verb "devoured" is absolutely fitting to the way in which I read that book. It's a page turner (or, since I got it on kindle, a button pusher). I read it in about three days, which is pretty typical for me. The last day I read over half of it. I could not put it down. So yes, I agree on that. It's a book to be devoured.

My opinion diverges after that. Yes, it was well written. It was gripping. It kept you guessing. It was a bona fide "thriller." But no, it was not one of the best books I've read in a LONG time. Not even without the capital letters. Here's why.

First (and this is arguably a non-point), there are about ten f-words per page. Seriously. Used literally and as a cuss word. The other oft-appearing word rhymes with "witch." I'm worried I'm going to randomly say something really naughty. How embarrassing.

Second, the ending is disappointing. (spoilers here) The bad guy wins. In order to not give away everything, I have to not give away anything more than that. (yes, the plot is that complex). But that just about sums it up. The bad guy wins.

Ugh.

Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.

...

Ok, I'm back. This bothers me. It does. Really. The bad guy ought not to win. (weird sentence there...) This raises another question: does the end ruin the whole thing? No. The book is riveting throughout. All the way to the last sentence of the last page. You wait and wait and wait and then... there's no happy ending. There's a kind of heroic sacrifice involved... I think. These characters are so complex.

It's a book that leaves you wishing things were different. Wishing for a different ending. Wanting the sociopath, psychotic, messed up people to go away. To be punished. And it doesn't happen, darn it. Instead of being led to things true, good, and beautiful, you are left running from things false, bad, and ugly. Which, I suppose, could be argued to have a value. You end up in the same place... maybe. You run, not because you love the beautiful, but because you're so freaking scared of the ugly. Sketchy, at best.

My solution? I picked up Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery this morning. A happy book. Happy endings. Good people. Not crazy loonies getting twisted "happy endings" that make you want to puke.

Warning! Semi-Political Statements to Follow!

The political realm is something that I generally try to stay out of, but not because I don't have opinions. Any TAC educated, Italian, and female human being has opinions... and stubbornly holds on to some of them. 

Recently, my entire Facebook newsfeed was filled to the gills with political memes, statuses, and articles coming from both sides (I have a great deal of diversity in my Facebook friend pool). I agreed with some of them. Ones like this

  

even made me giggle a little evil giggle. I'm a big enough person to admit that. I was in for a shock though, when something like this popped up.

 

(To be fair, it wasn't exactly this one. I looked for it for the purposes of this post and could not find it... and who knows what sort of targeted ads will start popping up after some of the google searches I did) 

The point is, I've found that I have a double standard. While I found the first one funny, I found the second one immature, sophistical, and downright... mean. Honestly examining the dichotomy of my feelings, I realized that from "the other side", the first one is equally distasteful to others as the second is to me. 

To be clear (and to stay out of trouble), this isn't a real political statement. I'm NOT saying that truth is relative. I'm NOT saying that both sides are right (because something cannot be true and false at the same time in the same respect. First axiom of all philosophy and human thought). 

I AM saying that some of us have missed the boat. Y'know, the one with "Charity" emblazoned on the side. 

Distasteful or offensive humor is nothing new. We all experienced it to some extent in school or in other social settings. One clique of people band together against some other group of people and they all peck at each other in a mean spirited manner. They obviously don't understand where the others are coming from and, what is more hurtful, they obviously haven't tried to understand, or care to understand. Instead, they resort to saying "funny" things to each other about the others... and what is funny to them is a jab in the eye to the others.

This is not how to win the world for Christ. How can it be? Imagine a person of a more liberal political bent, scrolling through his newsfeed. When he sees that first image, what will his reaction be? In all likelihood, one of two things: he will dismiss it as "those crazy conservatives" mouthing off again or take offense and be angry. In any case, I can guarantee that the message will not cause him to change his mind. He will not change his political views, but he will think less of those who think differently than him. It reinforces the wall between us. Positive influence? I think not.

So, in conclusion to this long and unusually serious post, I'd like to ask you all to think twice before you post those funny pictures. Think about who will see them. Think about what it will do. It will not bring anyone closer to truth and it may just make them hold it off at arm's length or kick it over the fence completely.

Reading Between the Lines

Mum asked me awhile ago to write a "philosophical" post about the television show "Southland" on TNT. She watched the entirety of it while I was at school, but was so enthralled by it that she asked me to watch all of the episodes again with her. She was right: it is enthralling. It's about LAPD officers, working some of the toughest cases in the worst parts of that city. But it certainly isn't the gritty violence that brings me back to watch yet another episode. It's the morality written in to almost every character's story arc.

As with most cop shows, there are about fifty main characters. Fine, I exaggerate, but not by much. Each person has his or her own personal story arc. The most notable and interesting to me are Sammy, who has a boat load of personal life problems, struggling to cope with the death of his previous partner on the job, trying desperately to save his new partner Ben from doing stupid things, and Ben, who seems to be desperately and actively trying to ruin his own life by ignoring Sammy and doing those stupid things.

Now, I'm hesitant to make assertions here, in part because I'm sure there are many diverse opinions on what screenwriters in Hollywood are really doing with their stories. Some believe that they are actively promoting sex, alcohol, and drugs to corrupt the world's youth into a relativistic, loose, indulgent society. Watching Southland, though, that doesn't seem to ring true.

Take Ben. We first see him at the beginning of Season One, fresh out of the academy, first day in the patrol car. He's young, he's eager, and he seems pretty... nice. His story arc promises to be the typical "growth" story arc. Y'know, young guy, grows up under the watchful care of his senior partner, does good for the city of Los Angeles. Maybe has some hard knocks, loses a few battles, makes mistakes, but overall, he succeeds in becoming a stellar police officer.

Not so much.

His story arc doesn't really do the growth thing. It does the growth, but in a kinda lopsided way. He gets more confident, he wants to do good... but things get dark. Ben gets angry. There's an interesting parallel developed in the seasons, though, and this is where I'm reading between the lines (whether accurately or not is for you to decide). The more angry Ben gets, the more of a "skirt chaser" he becomes. At the beginning of Season Four, you see Ben in bed with not one, but two women. Wooooaaaah there, fella'. Ben McKenzie, the actor who plays Ben Sherman, said of his character in an interview, "He turns into a bit of a slut."

No kidding.

Now, if Officer Ben Sherman seemed happier the more "conquests" he racked up, I'd be more willing to hop on the wagon of people saying that the writers are promoting this lifestyle. But that isn't what happens. He gets angry. He gets stubborn. He almost gets his partner (Sammy) killed. Sammy sees Ben's increasing anger and tries to calm him down. Tries to get him back on the... less angry side of life.

Why is Ben angry, you ask? In Ben is the struggle of compassion and nobility vs. anger at the injustice he sees. He became a cop to right wrongs and bring the bad guys to justice. What he sees is a situation that he can only hope to contain, but never eradicate. He sees people in pain who don't want to help themselves. His compassion leads him to try and try and try to help people on a personal level. To do this, he has to get personally involved. When he gets personally involved, he cannot help but feel angry at the situation.

What can a man do with all of these emotions? Ben's solution is to party hard and sleep around on his days off. But it's obviously not a real solution. Sammy knows this. Ben probably does too. Sammy tries to reach out and help. Ben ignores him and shuts the (figurative) door in his partner's face.

Who knows what Season Five will do to Officer Ben Sherman. Will he continue on his downward bend of his growth arc, or will he finally start climbing up? To be oh-so-geeky and cliche, will he conquer the forces of evil or succumb to the dark side?

Too bad we won't find out until February...