Matrimony Doesn’t Exist

“Dating discourse” periodically flares up on Catholic Twitter. Usually, when some brave soul ventures into the void with an explanation of why dating can be so awful and awkward. I am not a keen follower of this discourse, but it seems that it normally reaches the same conclusion every time: dating sucks because men are no longer good men and women are no longer good women. Both are in some way childish, inconstant, superficial, and probably addicted to base vices of some kind or other. “Gender” and “gender roles,” or whatever we want to call the moral and cultural qualities properly associated in society with men and women as such, are painfully absent, making everything more difficult to navigate. For whatever reason — the discourse continues — people no longer know how to acquire those qualities, and increasingly don’t even know what they are or why they are valuable. And this is what makes dating awful.

Whatever the (limited) merits of dating discourse, it seems obviously true to me that “gender” and “gender roles,” understood in this sense, have largely been lost. The question is why. I would argue that the answer, or part of it, is that matrimony itself, on which those roles are built, has been lost.

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Pope Francis’s Call to the Apostolate of Politics

In his general audience of September 9, 2020, Pope Francis catechized the faithful about the nature of the common good. There are three points to note.

First, the Pope used this opportunity to teach us that there is a deep, structural connection between the Church’s teaching about the nature of God, the calling to Christian charity, and the legal and political orders. Many Catholics today, infected by the errors of liberalism, pretend that the Church’s message of brotherly love, of living a life of holiness and sacrifice for others, has no connection with what She has perennially taught about law and political order. It is as if they fear an allergic reaction if the Church resorts to juridical and political language in teaching the faith, so they prefer the more dulcid-sounding tones of merely “pastoral” (i.e. allegedly a-political) rhetoric. Pope Francis shows that this is a false alternative. Everything the Church does and teaches, both about politics and about personal virtue, is ordered and connected to the same end.

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Liberalism and the Black Legend

«Liberalism», a wise pastor once admonished the world, «is a sin». It is both a sin against faith and against the moral order: «In the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against faith. In the practical order, it is a sin against the commandments of God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments». This was the language of the Church in the days when her bloody and heroic wars with the liberal order were still within living memory, with more still waiting to be fought after Don Félix wrote his polemic. Continue reading →

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The Apostolate of Politics

[Reblogged at The Josias.]

The excellent journal American Affairs, which from its very first issue has consistently delivered content of the highest quality to its readers, now publishes an essay on The Eclipse of Catholic Fusionism, by Kevin Gallagher. It is an account of the rise and fall of «fusionism», the alliance of convenience between the disciples of right-wing liberalism and those who sought to defend the moral law of the Church. This settlement, through which Catholics sought to make their mark on politics, reached its highest degree of influence in the Bush II era and into the early years of Obama’s first term. Needless to say, it was a complete political failure. Continue reading →

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