See - this is exactly what I've been saying ...

Pope Francis in the Wilderness.

Today there is a New York Times article about the Pope's waning popularity and isolation.  It doesn't bother me at all, nor does it worry me.  The article quotes Fr. James Martin in an apparent reference to the 'Dubia Brothers' request for clarification ...

But he (Fr. Martin) said that the cardinals, not Pope Francis, were generating confusion in the church.

“The crashing irony is that some of the same people under John Paul II and Benedict XVI said that any disagreement with the pope is tantamount to dissent,” Father Martin said. - NYT

As I've said before - these people and their friends on social media and in Catholic media generate the confusion, not the Pope.

Catholic doctrine and the means of Eternal Salvation has not changed one iota for me or for anyone else.  The Pope has never taught that it has, nor will he ever do so. 

It is the enemies of the Church and the misled enemies of the Pope who are generating confusion in the Church.

Pope Francis is indeed a 'voice crying out in the wilderness'.  So what do we expect?  As Christ asked his followers, "What did you go out to the desert to see?  A reed swayed by the wind?  Someone dressed in fine clothing?  Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces.  Then what did you go out to see?  ... A prophet?"

I'm with the Pope.

Today is the feast of my Confirmation patron saint, St. Peter of Verona, who died writing the Creed in his own blood ... that is why I chose him.  I have great devotion to the Creed.  (It is one of three  essential prayers to gain a plenary indulgence BTW.)

S. Peter Martyr, Credo

Cicero uses the word “virility” to express character and vigor of soul... some thoughts about virility.

How can a man combat effeminacy in a genderless culture?  

"St Augustine, with extraordinary perceptiveness, described the nature of sin as follows: 'self-love to the point of contempt for God'. It was self love which drove our first parents toward the initial rebellion and then gave rise to the spread of sin throughout human history. The book of Genesis speaks of this: 'You will be like God, knowing good and evil', in other words, you yourselves will decide what is good and evil.

The only way to overcome this dimension of original sin is through a corresponding 'love for God to the point of contempt for self'. This brings us face to face with the mystery of man's redemption, and here the Holy Spirit is our guide. It is he who allows us to penetrate deeply into the 'mystery of the Cross' and at the same time to plumb the depths of evil perpetrated by man and suffered from the very beginning of history. That is what the expression 'convince the world about sin' means, and the purpose of this 'convincing' is not to condemn the world. 

If the Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can call evil by its name, it does so only in order to demonstrate that evil can be overcome if we open ourselves to 'love for God to the point of contempt for self. This is the fruit of Divine Mercy..." - John Paul II, Memory and Identity

And so this makes you sad, you say?

Sadness, or self-pity, is the twin sister of acedia. They are similar in some respects, but not identical. The sad person finds relief more easily, whereas the one besieged by acedia is trapped. Sadness is a temporary, part-time experience, but acedia is global and permanent. In this sense it is opposed to human nature. 

The chief symptoms of this devilish “scourge that lays waste at noon” are inner instability and the need for change (with wandering fantasies of a better place), excessive care of one’s own health (with special emphasis on one’s food), escape from manual work (with laziness and inactivity), uncontrolled activism (under the appearance of charity), neglect of the monastic practices (reducing observance to a minimum), indiscreet zeal in a few ascetic exercises (with extreme criticism of one’s neighbor), generalized discouragement (with the beginnings of a depression). - Dom Bernardo Olivera, OCSO

Effeminacy

St. Thomas includes effeminacy under the vices opposed to perseverance. It is from the Latin mollities*, which literally means “softness.” Mollities is the verb used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 which deals with the sexual sin of sodomy. It involves being inordinately passive or receptive. What St. Thomas means by persevering is when “a man does not forsake a good on account of long endurance or difficulties and toils.” An “effeminate man is one who withdraws from good on account of sorrows caused by lack of pleasures, yielding as it were to a weak motion.” Thomas states that this effeminacy is caused in two ways. First, by custom, where a man is accustomed to enjoy pleasures and it is, therefore, more difficult for him to endure the lack of them. Second, by natural disposition, less persevering through frailty of temperament, and this is where Thomas compares men with women, and also mentions the homosexual act of sodomy, and the receiver in this act as being effeminate or like a woman. 

The vice of delicacy for Thomas considers those who cannot endure toils, or anything that diminishes pleasure, and thus delicacy is a kind of effeminacy. Thomas quotes from Deuteronomy 28:56, “The tender and delicate woman, that could not go upon the ground, nor set down her foot for softness.” It may be true that some cultural prejudices are being revealed here with this comparison because a vice is a vice, whether it is found in a man or a woman, but it is also true that some vices are more perverse or disordered when found specifically in men or women. Effeminacy is more pronounced in a man than a woman because women are more susceptible to this vice. Just as the vice of drunkenness is more pronounced or perverse when found in a woman than a man. - Homiletic and Pastoral Review 

*A bit of trivia on mollities ...

18th-19th century male brothels were known as 'Molly-houses' - molly derives from mollities. Curiously, Miss Molly referred to an effeminate or homosexual male.  Which begs the question, what did Little Richard know and when did he know it?  What?

Molly-houses were often considered 

as brothels in legal proceedings.

 A male brothel, illustration by Léon Choubrac,

 included in Léo Taxil's book 

La prostitution contemporaine, 

1884, pg. 384, Plate VII.

(Friends of St. Therese

will remember Leo Taxil 

as the fraud who deceived

the Carmel of Lisieux.)

Reassessing recent posts and thinking out loud ... 

So anyway.  Recently I received a link to an article on Camille Paglia's assertion that androgyny signals the demise, and/or collapse of Western civilization - or at least that was the impression I received from the Rod Dreher article.  Interestingly enough, I came across a comment on the post which reminded readers of a sort of history of effeminacy throughout European culture, citing tights and powdered wigs, and so on.  I'm making a gloss on the whole conversation to save time, but it certainly is not a new vice - the problem in our day is convincing the amoral that it is indeed a vice - even for the 'genderless' if you will.  

The game changer in our day is that gender theory-ideology has become pervasive and widespread, and the 'prophets of doom' are correct in recognizing the threat to culture.  As the Polish Bishop Pieronek noted a few years ago, “The ideology of gender presents a threat worse than Nazism and Communism combined.”  Even Camille Paglia is right when she asserts that "androgyny becomes prevalent 'as a civilization is starting to unravel. You find it again and again and again in history.'”  It's not the apocalypse however.  We do not need to panic or run for the hills, as it were.

It seems these reports, lectures, blog posts, and so on, excite fear and dread in many people, creating a sort of 'the sky is falling' mentality - leading to despair, or at least discouragement - and a whole lot of mistrust and confusion.  People freak out.

What is lacking is faith, conversion, repentance, prayer, and confidence.  The world revolves and the cross remains the same.  The Church stands and has lived through tremendous persecutions, cultural changes, era changes, societal revolutions and evolutions, and so on. God is in charge.  Today in the Gospel, after the Transfiguration, Jesus tell the disciples, "Rise and do not be afraid."  What lay before them after that miraculous event was the Passion of Christ.  His disciples will not be cheated out of their participation in it.  That must be our attitude I think.  We need to cultivate virility and virtue in ourselves.  We need to believe God, to trust Him, to listen to Him, to follow Him.

I came across something this morning from Jeremiah.  It seemed to me a warning against fear and cowardice in the face of change, in times of upheaval, and in that fear of alienation and annihilation:   "... but of you I will not make an end.  I will chastise you as you deserve, I will not let you go unpunished.  [...]  I will restore you to health; of your wounds I will heal you, says the Lord." - Jeremiah 30: 11-17  For me at least, that passage is helpful in these days of misunderstanding and discouragement, when so many clamor and protest the evils they perceive without recognizing that even in chastisement, the Lord is full of mercy and love.   

I may not have expressed that very well, so pay no attention to me and my personal meditations and thinking out loud.

I was right - I've seen all of this Pope-bashing before ...

And it was by the same players doing it now ...

Some people in seminaries and chanceries referred to them as "Wanderer-types", CUF-ers, Fatimists, Baysiders, and so on.  When I first returned to the Church/sacraments, I was told to stay away from them, as well as St. Agnes parish in St. Paul.  The thing is, my attraction to the Church had been the Eucharist - Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament - and my first communion upon my return took place at St. Agnes - where the Ordinary Form of Mass was celebrated as it was intended to be.  I prayed the rosary, sought out places for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, all things considered traditional.  So I wasn't sure why I should stay away from these 'types' since I felt I was Catholic, just like them.

I never fit in however.  I never fit in with so called progressives either.  I never tried to fit in either - why should I when Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament had already taken me in?  I had great devotion for the papacy - I was grateful for the papacy.  I admired from my youth those saints martyred during the Protestant upheaval who were martyred for their faith in the Real Presence and their fidelity to the Pope.  Why was I Catholic?  The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist of course - God with us, Our Lady, Mother of God, and Habemus papam - we have a Pope.  I loved every pope - and I was grateful for each new pope after his predecessor died.  I have said I have favorites among the popes - but it is only about personality.

Perhaps the sweetest pope ever was Pope John Paul I.  I watched bits and pieces of a film on the pontiff last night.  It was very well acted and presented - a fact creators of American Catholic film and television drama ought to aspire to and emulate.  But I digress.

The point is, Holy Father John Paul I seemed very much like Pope Francis and I suspect, if he had lived longer, he would have had the same enemies Francis does today.

That said, I came across an excellent reminder from John Allen at Crux magazine that the anti-papist sentiment and attacks we are witnessing in the Franciscan papacy is nothing new - as I've noted in former posts.  Have a look:

Anti-Francis backlash in contextThe Burke saga has left some observers wondering if the internal opposition Francis faces is unprecedented, especially at senior levels of the Church.
To begin, let’s be crystal clear: According to tradition, Francis is the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, and he’s also the 266th pope to have problems with some of his bishops. The story goes all the way back to the Acts of the Apostles, and a celebrated clash between Peter and Paul.
More recently, both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI faced enormous internal opposition, both from the grassroots and from sectors of the hierarchy. There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world and more than 5,000 bishops, and to think that at any given time some share of both aren’t going to be unhappy with their leader is a delusion.
In sum, the notion that there’s anything terribly new about what we’re seeing today is, for all intents and purposes, hogwash. - Finish reading here.

 What seems more remarkable to me however, is the viciousness of the attacks against the Pope - and this by the 'faithful remnant'.

A comment on Mark Shea's blog regarding such harsh criticism against Francis by the uber-faithful Catholics online, offered another take on the phenomenon here:

I would say there are a few causes of this. One, many of them were/are converts, which is itself a good thing, but they brought with them their non-Catholic issues and way of thinking: they are Protestants who happen to believe, for now, the Catholic Church is right, but they give a Protestant conditional obedience to the Church. I know many of these who then go from church to church: I know many right now thinking of going Orthodox because of it (which is a danger to the East).
Another group has been raised Catholic, but are very much American first. They often accused the left of this, which is often true in the US, but they are it just as much. They look at everything in the lens of American politics, forgetting that the foundation of American politics (right and left) stemmed from a reaction against Catholicism. This, I think, is why many of the same memes are used between classical anti-Catholicism and their current ideology. It is because they took on too much of the foundations of American thought which devolves into this.
Another group has been led astray by the first two, and though they want to be Catholic, and agree that the Pope should be heeded, they are confused because they believed the Pope has been saying the exact same thing as the American right for some time. As a result, in their writings, you can see their confusion; they still hold on to what they "learned" and reason from it, though they are willing to slowly learn and see beyond it. Yet because they have yet to "get there" yes, their words are then re-used by others to reinforce the divide.
Certainly, there are also the sophists, who just parade what they think can be said for the sake of money. - Horn of Silk  (The follow up comments are equally as interesting.)

The Martyrs of Gorcum. 

They all chose death rather than renounce 

their faith in the Blessed Sacrament and Papal supremacy. 

Imagine that.