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Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear
friends
it is a pleasure and a honour to
address this audience of traditional family defenders. It seems that year by
year the importance of a principled defense of the family, marriage and
objective morality is greater and greater. We first have to acknowledge that
the principles of the modern life in the vast array of its expressions are in
their most deepest sense revolutionary, that is, they do not recognize God as
the Author of life and its direction. It is the man who is the center of
reality; using the terms of the ancient sophist Protagoras, the measure of all
things.
In this respect we are witnessing a
continuous undermining of the awareness of the natural differences between
women and men. This confusion is rooted in the negation of the unchanging human
nature. This is how the respected scholar Thomas Molnar defines the utopian:
„The utopian does not believe in a permanent human nature; if he did, he could not
hope to accomplish a complete break in the long time of generations...Yet,
unless human nature is permanent, we cannot speak of civilization in the
lessons of the past, or of minds communicating across the ages.“
Philosophically speaking, this is the natural outcome of the modern
philosophical approach, in noetics of Kant, in ontology Hegel and Heidegger.
Why is noetics so important? The confusion about human life, its ordering and
purpose, is related to the confusion or outright rejection of objective truth
as a value of cognition.
Noetic verification of truth
guarantees the possibility for a certainty regarding the metaphysical truths of
human life. The problems of life´s purpose receive their contents from the
premises particularly acquired by reflection of human nature.
In analyzing human nature
the first question to come is that of the first predicate of man in which human
being is imputed the value of substantiality. This means that man is neither
associated with another entity as its accident nor is derived from other
entities; he is essentially different from his own acts of living.
Substantiality endows a human individual with a high degree of autonomy of
being in which the personal character of human life is consequently
comprehensible, with its specific, internal finality as opposed to the monistic
dissolution in external circumstances. The nature of morality is also
comprehensible in connection with human nature. Without this connection,
though, the explanation of morality collapses, ending up in ruins of
reductionism and relativization. General validity and immutability of moral law
find grounds in relation to the necessary determinations of the permanent human
nature.
The anti-metaphysical drive
of the modern philosophy is one of the main causes of the current confusion
over the reality of WHO IS MAN. Naturally, this cannot leave untouched the
perception of the two sexes, the male and female modes of human existence.
Negation of the fixed, permanent, metaphysically grounded human nature leads to
the negation of permanent traits differentiating women from men. Besides other
side causes here we have the most fundamental ideological engine of the current
drive towards an „androgynous society“, in which the institutionalization, that
is its explication in educational, political and legal systems, of androgynism
or unisexism will become a matter of fact. How to define androgynism as a
social doctrine? It is an ideology that seeks to pervert the natural human
identity and behavior of the sexes into a condition of sameness and intolerance
against sex identities or behaviors.
The liberal media call those
who oppose the marriage between sodomites „homophobes“. But let us look from
the angle of fear at those who further the acceptation of the androgynous
society and we can fairly call them „heterophobes“. Why? Because they betray a
fear of complexity of life where there differences are NATURAL, that is not
devised by choice or mere human contract. We cannot imagine greater natural
differences within humankind then those that exist between men and women. Men
and women are different not only physically, but also psychologically. Men are
more abstract in their dealing with the world, women are more personal. Women
tend to relate with the outer world through the lens of their families, men
represent the family within the civil society, projecting their visions beyond
the family borders. There are, obviously, exceptions, but as life is complex,
but the exceptions do not nullify the norm. The problem today is that the
exceptions are becoming more and more the norm, because the society in large is
losing its awareness of natural law and God-given order. Another example of
natural differences between men and women can be registered from the earliest
stages of childhood. Just watch the children how that play, what thay use for
their games, what roles do they identify with when playing.
In this regard it might be
instructive to remind ourselves what was the mind of the Church under Pius XI.
when dealing with the growing phenomenon of co-education in the schools. I am
quoting from the encyclical „Divini illius magistri“, issued in 1929:
"False also and harmful to Christian education is the so-called method of
'coeducation'. This too, by many of its supporters, is founded upon naturalism and the denial of original sin; but by all, upon a deplorable confusion of ideas that mistakes a leveling promiscuity and equality, for
the legitimate association of the sexes. The Creator has ordained and
disposed perfect union of the sexes only in matrimony, and, with
varying degrees of contact, in the family and in society. Besides there
is not in nature itself, which fashions
the two quite different in organism, in temperament, in abilities, anything to
suggest that there can be or ought to
be promiscuity, and much less
equality, in the training of the two
sexes. These, in keeping with the
wonderful designs of the
Creator, are destined to complement each other in the family and
in society, precisely because of their differences, which therefore ought to be maintained and encouraged during
their years of formation, with the necessary distinction and corresponding
separation, according to age and circumstances. These principles, with due
regard to time and place, must, in accordance with Christian prudence, be applied to all schools, particularly in the most delicate and decisive period of formation, that, namely,
of adolescence; and in gymnastic exercises and deportment,
special care must be had of Christian
modesty in young women and girls, which is so gravely impaired by any kind of
exhibition in public“.
Regarding the relations
between the adults, we are witnessing a shift from marriage understood in terms
of complementarity and mutual peace of differences towards terms of conflict,
developing a trend towards conformity and sameness. We have to understand that
the root of androgyny is not in the affirmation of the differences, as it is
presented by the libertines and their press agents, but is in the denial of
them. This psychological and moral breakdown is demonstrated not merely by
those who call for legalization and legitimization of sexual cohabitation
between members of the same sex, but also by the tendency to divide between men
and women all the duties and rights on par, in
homesteading, childrearing etc. The same ideology is behind the
requirements to enforce quotas for women in public life and workplace.
The cult of androgyny has
also much to do with the divorce of sexual life from any concern for
reproduction. Contemporary Western elites, or at least their most powerful
segment, no longer values procreation, but actually discourages it.
I would like to make a
special note on one of the less reflected aspects of the unisex revolution -
the matter of clothing. To surprise of some, this has much to do with the
deconstruction of traditional society. There are a good number of books and a
growing awareness of the destructive consequences of nudism and lack of
modesty, especially among religiously motivated people. Much less focus is
taken for the type of clothing men and women wear, disregarding the amount of
body covered or revealed.
“A woman shall not be clothed with man's apparel, neither shall
a man use woman's apparel: for he that doeth these things is
abominable before God" (Deut. XXII,
5) do we read in the Old Testament. The OT rejects the cross dressing,
which is one of the contemporary manifestations of androgyny. The reason why it
was always considered inappropriate for women to wear men's apparel was not
because of the lack of modesty but because the unisex style clothing undermines
the awareness of the different psychological make-up and social roles given by
God to men and women.
For instance, the Brazilian Bishop de Castro Mayer
used to say that trousers on a woman are worse than a mini-skirt, because while the mini-skirt is sensual and attacks the senses, the trousers are ideological and attack the mind. The way we dress affects
our minds, our psychological make-up.
I am fully aware that this
particular aspect of the unisex revolution might be seen as of a lesser
importance, nevertheless its symbolic importance is much greater than we are
ready to accept. And also, we can never truly win the larger battle without at least
trying to be consistent and faithful in all the little things. So I want to
conclude my remarks with encouraging everyone to form in our families a solid
awareness of true manhood and femininity in all possible aspects and thus
reflect in a greater degree the mind of Our Lord, who had created us as a man
and a woman, not as some sexless and abstract humanity. |
