Letter to Friends and Benefactors
The Heart of the Slack Problem
January 1993
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
A New Year brings us January once again, month of the Holy Family. The family is so important to human beings, and so threatened, that as I think I said last year, to write once a year in its defense is surely not too often. It has powerful forces for its enemy, and the Catholic Church for its best friend, because the God who instituted the family from the beginning of the human race, is the same God who instituted the Catholic Church to redeem that race, and so there is no way in which His true Church can be anti-family.
That is why Our Lord fortified the family by strengthening the bond which is at the root of the family, by raising natural marriage to the level of a supernatural sacrament, so that the practice of a lawful sacramental marriage is a source of sanctifying grace. Repeat: the practice of a lawful sacramental marriage is a source of sanctifying grace.
That is why in modern times the Popes have again and again defended the sacramentality of the marriage bond, as one sees in their Encyclicals of the last century. The sacramentality of marriage is like the top stitch in the seam of society, such that once it is undone, all society begins to unravel – from the secularizing of marriage, to its becoming a contract makable or unmakable at the will of the parties, to divorce, to contraception, to abortion, to homosexuality, to euthanasia, to the breakup of the home, to the irresponsibility of men and the de-naturing of women, to countless ills of which even 1992 has not yet seen the end – the chain of woes has an inexorable logic – "God is not mocked".
That is why on throw-away brown paper, recognizable in advance, is enclosed... is enclosed... ladies, I did not write these pages, you wrote them to me yourselves-they rhyme with "backs free"... I promise, word of honor, they have been enclosed with not a breath of malice towards the wonderful ladies that wear trousers, but in order to give encouragement to the even more wonderful ladies that do not wear them (because Heaven knows how little encouragement they may get from anywhere else!), but ladies, you are all wonderful, you are all wonderful, have mercy, have mercy – if you believe in genes, have that compassion which genetically belongs to your gender! I too have good intentions! I too mean well! – I only want to defend the family!
Interesting that such a slack subject can make people go so tight! In nearly ten years that I have now been writing this letter, no other subject has caused remotely such a reaction on the part of readers. The question has to be very important to people, especially of course to the tender sex whose wear is in question. The quotations selected for enclosure demonstrate that by no means all members of that sex go along with the wearing of what until recently was worn only by men, even if it is now worn almost universally also by women...
Maybe the ancient Aristotle was right after all to rank clothing alongside quality, quantity, time, place, etc., as a category of being, modifying the very substance of things. People are then different according to the clothing they wear, and a change of style in clothing both is caused by and causes, both represents and promotes, a change of style of life. In this respect women's fashion is particularly sensitive, because many a man's dreams and much of his love and attention centre around his woman, and so how she dresses to please him will correspond not only to her ideas on the shape and meaning of life, but also to his.
Common sense says that the main significance of women's wearing trousers lies in their resembling the men. Modern life may have increased the number of situations for women in which trousers are more – or much more – convenient than a skirt, but nevertheless if the men did not want their women in trousers, the women would not take long to find a way round those situations. As extract #29 says, it was Adam whom God held primarily responsible in the Garden of Eden, and it is the men who are primarily responsible for wanting the way of life represented and promoted by the ladies being in trousers: "I can't help thinking that if today's Adam became a prodigal son and returned to God, he would soon find Eve returning to her proper place too". Ladies, please, the writer of this letter is not getting at you. Men, the writer of this letter is getting at you!
Think! Was it God that designed the difference between the sexes? And if He designed it, do you think He meant for it to be blurred? And if the difference is being blurred, would it not follow that "an enemy hath done this"? Is it not an enemy of mankind that is for instance tearing babies out of their mothers' arms to send the mothers into military combat, in the brute force necessary for which they are necessarily and hopelessly inferior, thus betraying the babies abandoned, the mothers displaced and the soldiers weakened? Alas, any woman ashamed of being less brutish than her man is liable in brutishness to leave him well behind! When men totter, the roof shakes, but when women totter, the earth quakes. The sexes are different – Good Heavens! – that it needs to be said! In any sane society, the old men and schoolboys would rather take up arms than let any of their womenfolk anywhere near combat. Has anyone ever heard of the Nazis enlisting women in combat? To call the feminists "feminazis" is at least on this point an insult to the Nazis.
What deep-laid insanity can have impelled and be continuing to impel the men of England for example and of the United States to so dishonor themselves as to be letting or pushing their womenfolk towards combat? In one word, godlessness, spelled out in the East as Communism (flagrant or disguised), spelled out in the West as Liberalism: Liberty, from any laws of God inscribed in male and female nature; equality to level down all the inequalities out of which God composed those natures; the rights of man, to do as he likes, regardless of the slaughter of the innocents, the babies abandoned while the woman gets in the way of the fighting man. Thank God for the grandmother, or the aunt, or even the day-care lady, or whatever woman stays at home to mother the children. She alone saves the situation, because no man can mother, and no child can do without a mother.
Motherhood is as sacred as life. All men know this by instinct. Nothing is more natural than the sublime honoring by Catholics of the Mother and Child. Listen to a priest's sermon reported in the Society's "Tradition Catholique" from Belgium: "It was holiday-time. The family had guests to dinner. The children had not yet gone to bed. As soon as the meal was over, mother got up from table, as it was late, she left the guests with her husband and went upstairs to put the children to bed. All together, kneeling around their mother, they began to recite their daily rosary. The littlest, a two year-old, was in bed. Propped up against the pillow, he had made the Sign of the Cross. But from then on he watched his mother. Kneeling upright, eyes closed, hands folded together, she was praying the "Hail-Marys", absorbed in the inner life of her soul. Quietly, the two-year old got out of bed. Going up to his mother, he drew her hands apart, pressed his back against her and slipped his little hands into hers, which gently closed together again, and the prayer went on".
Men, this is the family, this is the Catholic family, this is the life of the family in prayer which alone can save the world and create human as opposed to inhuman beings, this is the life of the family which it is your responsibility to let the Mother of God help you to re-create. It is not your business to be tender. It is absolutely your business to honour and to protect tenderness in women and children, instead of dishonoring and profaning it. Good women are willing to follow in this direction, but it no more behooves them to lead their menfolk than it behooves you to follow your womenfolk.
Take heart! The task is not impossible. Turn in manly fashion to the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and will all your mind, and the rest will be added unto you. It may be a journey of a thousand miles, but it still begins with the first step. It begins with nothing else. Across the United States and no doubt many other countries, there are numerous young families to be seen at the Society's Mass-centers for instance, attending the true Mass, practicing the true Faith, growing in happiness and holiness as the Lord God blesses them with one child after another. Have no fear. The family protected by the Mother of God is stronger than a hydrogen bomb.
As for this month's other enclosure, it has a handsome title, "Lefebvre was right", but not so inspiring contents. Friend of Pope Paul VI from before World War Two, Jean Guitton was like him inspired by hopes of a great renewal of the Catholic Church to come out of the Second Vatican Council but, like him again, he has found himself mysteriously disappointed by the results, a disappointment obviously not diminished in the 14 years by which he has outlived his friend.
Why the mystery? Because liberals cannot conceive of their basic principles such as dialogue and religious liberty being wrong. They are such loving and caring persons, they are so sincere, they so love and care for modern man, they are so full of luv, luv, luv, they mean so well, they have such good intentions, that they go out to embrace modern man, then they embrace his principles diametrically opposed to the Faith – and then they are astonished when the Church collapses around them!
How can intelligent men be so blind? Answer, by an operation of error that has built up over centuries for those that have not loved the truth (II Thess. II). Objection: but look at the third quotation of Guitton, he recognizes that truth cannot change! Reply: Yes, but look at the end of the same quotation: if he loved the truth he recognizes, he would never reproach Archbishop Lefebvre for his manner of having defended it, even had the Archbishop been ten times less diplomatic and more clumsy than he supposedly was. By the side of the Truth, the spokesman and his mode are insignificant. But Guitton loves the world, and that is his downfall – "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever" (I Jn II 15-17).
Truth to tell, "Lefebvre was right" is a misleading caption for the interview, because it is clear from the interview as a whole that Guitton does not really think that the Archbishop was right to round the circle, he is still convinced the Archbishop should have squared the circle. After all, a square is so nice, and a circle is so nice, it would be so nice to combine them!
My dear friends, can you think of any other time in the world when it was heroic merit for girls to wear a skirt or for boys to say that circles are round? Long live the 20th century! Long live 1993! Happy New Year!
With God's help, faithfully yours in Jesus and Mary,
January 1993
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
A New Year brings us January once again, month of the Holy Family. The family is so important to human beings, and so threatened, that as I think I said last year, to write once a year in its defense is surely not too often. It has powerful forces for its enemy, and the Catholic Church for its best friend, because the God who instituted the family from the beginning of the human race, is the same God who instituted the Catholic Church to redeem that race, and so there is no way in which His true Church can be anti-family.
That is why Our Lord fortified the family by strengthening the bond which is at the root of the family, by raising natural marriage to the level of a supernatural sacrament, so that the practice of a lawful sacramental marriage is a source of sanctifying grace. Repeat: the practice of a lawful sacramental marriage is a source of sanctifying grace.
That is why in modern times the Popes have again and again defended the sacramentality of the marriage bond, as one sees in their Encyclicals of the last century. The sacramentality of marriage is like the top stitch in the seam of society, such that once it is undone, all society begins to unravel – from the secularizing of marriage, to its becoming a contract makable or unmakable at the will of the parties, to divorce, to contraception, to abortion, to homosexuality, to euthanasia, to the breakup of the home, to the irresponsibility of men and the de-naturing of women, to countless ills of which even 1992 has not yet seen the end – the chain of woes has an inexorable logic – "God is not mocked".
That is why on throw-away brown paper, recognizable in advance, is enclosed... is enclosed... ladies, I did not write these pages, you wrote them to me yourselves-they rhyme with "backs free"... I promise, word of honor, they have been enclosed with not a breath of malice towards the wonderful ladies that wear trousers, but in order to give encouragement to the even more wonderful ladies that do not wear them (because Heaven knows how little encouragement they may get from anywhere else!), but ladies, you are all wonderful, you are all wonderful, have mercy, have mercy – if you believe in genes, have that compassion which genetically belongs to your gender! I too have good intentions! I too mean well! – I only want to defend the family!
Interesting that such a slack subject can make people go so tight! In nearly ten years that I have now been writing this letter, no other subject has caused remotely such a reaction on the part of readers. The question has to be very important to people, especially of course to the tender sex whose wear is in question. The quotations selected for enclosure demonstrate that by no means all members of that sex go along with the wearing of what until recently was worn only by men, even if it is now worn almost universally also by women...
Maybe the ancient Aristotle was right after all to rank clothing alongside quality, quantity, time, place, etc., as a category of being, modifying the very substance of things. People are then different according to the clothing they wear, and a change of style in clothing both is caused by and causes, both represents and promotes, a change of style of life. In this respect women's fashion is particularly sensitive, because many a man's dreams and much of his love and attention centre around his woman, and so how she dresses to please him will correspond not only to her ideas on the shape and meaning of life, but also to his.
Common sense says that the main significance of women's wearing trousers lies in their resembling the men. Modern life may have increased the number of situations for women in which trousers are more – or much more – convenient than a skirt, but nevertheless if the men did not want their women in trousers, the women would not take long to find a way round those situations. As extract #29 says, it was Adam whom God held primarily responsible in the Garden of Eden, and it is the men who are primarily responsible for wanting the way of life represented and promoted by the ladies being in trousers: "I can't help thinking that if today's Adam became a prodigal son and returned to God, he would soon find Eve returning to her proper place too". Ladies, please, the writer of this letter is not getting at you. Men, the writer of this letter is getting at you!
Think! Was it God that designed the difference between the sexes? And if He designed it, do you think He meant for it to be blurred? And if the difference is being blurred, would it not follow that "an enemy hath done this"? Is it not an enemy of mankind that is for instance tearing babies out of their mothers' arms to send the mothers into military combat, in the brute force necessary for which they are necessarily and hopelessly inferior, thus betraying the babies abandoned, the mothers displaced and the soldiers weakened? Alas, any woman ashamed of being less brutish than her man is liable in brutishness to leave him well behind! When men totter, the roof shakes, but when women totter, the earth quakes. The sexes are different – Good Heavens! – that it needs to be said! In any sane society, the old men and schoolboys would rather take up arms than let any of their womenfolk anywhere near combat. Has anyone ever heard of the Nazis enlisting women in combat? To call the feminists "feminazis" is at least on this point an insult to the Nazis.
What deep-laid insanity can have impelled and be continuing to impel the men of England for example and of the United States to so dishonor themselves as to be letting or pushing their womenfolk towards combat? In one word, godlessness, spelled out in the East as Communism (flagrant or disguised), spelled out in the West as Liberalism: Liberty, from any laws of God inscribed in male and female nature; equality to level down all the inequalities out of which God composed those natures; the rights of man, to do as he likes, regardless of the slaughter of the innocents, the babies abandoned while the woman gets in the way of the fighting man. Thank God for the grandmother, or the aunt, or even the day-care lady, or whatever woman stays at home to mother the children. She alone saves the situation, because no man can mother, and no child can do without a mother.
Motherhood is as sacred as life. All men know this by instinct. Nothing is more natural than the sublime honoring by Catholics of the Mother and Child. Listen to a priest's sermon reported in the Society's "Tradition Catholique" from Belgium: "It was holiday-time. The family had guests to dinner. The children had not yet gone to bed. As soon as the meal was over, mother got up from table, as it was late, she left the guests with her husband and went upstairs to put the children to bed. All together, kneeling around their mother, they began to recite their daily rosary. The littlest, a two year-old, was in bed. Propped up against the pillow, he had made the Sign of the Cross. But from then on he watched his mother. Kneeling upright, eyes closed, hands folded together, she was praying the "Hail-Marys", absorbed in the inner life of her soul. Quietly, the two-year old got out of bed. Going up to his mother, he drew her hands apart, pressed his back against her and slipped his little hands into hers, which gently closed together again, and the prayer went on".
Men, this is the family, this is the Catholic family, this is the life of the family in prayer which alone can save the world and create human as opposed to inhuman beings, this is the life of the family which it is your responsibility to let the Mother of God help you to re-create. It is not your business to be tender. It is absolutely your business to honour and to protect tenderness in women and children, instead of dishonoring and profaning it. Good women are willing to follow in this direction, but it no more behooves them to lead their menfolk than it behooves you to follow your womenfolk.
Take heart! The task is not impossible. Turn in manly fashion to the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and will all your mind, and the rest will be added unto you. It may be a journey of a thousand miles, but it still begins with the first step. It begins with nothing else. Across the United States and no doubt many other countries, there are numerous young families to be seen at the Society's Mass-centers for instance, attending the true Mass, practicing the true Faith, growing in happiness and holiness as the Lord God blesses them with one child after another. Have no fear. The family protected by the Mother of God is stronger than a hydrogen bomb.
As for this month's other enclosure, it has a handsome title, "Lefebvre was right", but not so inspiring contents. Friend of Pope Paul VI from before World War Two, Jean Guitton was like him inspired by hopes of a great renewal of the Catholic Church to come out of the Second Vatican Council but, like him again, he has found himself mysteriously disappointed by the results, a disappointment obviously not diminished in the 14 years by which he has outlived his friend.
Why the mystery? Because liberals cannot conceive of their basic principles such as dialogue and religious liberty being wrong. They are such loving and caring persons, they are so sincere, they so love and care for modern man, they are so full of luv, luv, luv, they mean so well, they have such good intentions, that they go out to embrace modern man, then they embrace his principles diametrically opposed to the Faith – and then they are astonished when the Church collapses around them!
How can intelligent men be so blind? Answer, by an operation of error that has built up over centuries for those that have not loved the truth (II Thess. II). Objection: but look at the third quotation of Guitton, he recognizes that truth cannot change! Reply: Yes, but look at the end of the same quotation: if he loved the truth he recognizes, he would never reproach Archbishop Lefebvre for his manner of having defended it, even had the Archbishop been ten times less diplomatic and more clumsy than he supposedly was. By the side of the Truth, the spokesman and his mode are insignificant. But Guitton loves the world, and that is his downfall – "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever" (I Jn II 15-17).
Truth to tell, "Lefebvre was right" is a misleading caption for the interview, because it is clear from the interview as a whole that Guitton does not really think that the Archbishop was right to round the circle, he is still convinced the Archbishop should have squared the circle. After all, a square is so nice, and a circle is so nice, it would be so nice to combine them!
My dear friends, can you think of any other time in the world when it was heroic merit for girls to wear a skirt or for boys to say that circles are round? Long live the 20th century! Long live 1993! Happy New Year!
With God's help, faithfully yours in Jesus and Mary,
