Male Power

Staying with the blog idea of yesterday, when men are in power, and women are not, women's bodies do not do so well.  In the male dominated Church that is mine, women who wanted to have an especially deep and intimate relationship with God, a male image, needed to be in a cloister.  Married women, having some sex, were too tainted.  It seemed weird to the Jewish male leadership that Jesus would have anything to do with hanging out with prostitutes or even talking to a married woman.  The first thing a woman had to do if she wanted to get close to God was shut down the body.  Cloister life, no men in sight, lots of strict rules, was a severe way to do this.  Monks did this too.  Eventually, the clergy were not to marry or mess around, though they did.  See the Renaissance.  The body, feelings, emotions, are always things that get in the way of intimacy, so goes the thinking.  But God made the body and in my faith, even took one on in Jesus of Nazareth.  He seemed to empower women.  Hollywood, Corporate hierarchs and anywhere that male power prevails, never seems to be good for women and their bodies.  Many a man leaves a marriage because he cannot take a woman's self-empowerment.  But some other reason is often given for the divorce.  But of course, I could be wrong.

Novitiate

In the recent movie, "Novitiate" which is in an art theatre of San Francisco and probably not in Boulder, Colorado, one of the norms is that punishing the body is a good thing, but giving comfort to the body is not so good.  Feelings, especially of a sexual nature, the wanting to connect to another in touch, for instance, is a bad thing, but whipping the body is a positive thing that helps to make us more perfect or less imperfect.  The movie takes place in the early 60s before my church went through a change toward openness to the modern world.  So, I remember the time.  I still here about this old attitude today.  The body is problematic because it has feelings.  If it is one of anger, especially in women, then it needs to be confessed as a sin.  If it is one of physical desire, well, you have really gone beyond the pail.  You won't get to perfection that way.  You love God, your spouse, by sacrifice.  Love and sacrifice can go together of course, but the sacrifice that is exhibited here is one of confusing what is normal.  It becomes normal to punish yourself by fasting (starving) or beating yourself.  Abnormal, in the path to perfection, is to accept feelings as indications of something that needs attention.  you must be rid of these feelings and or punish yourself for having them. We are not talking about sex addicts here.  Good Catholics cannot go see this movie because it has sex in it, but being a not so good Catholic, I saw the movie.  Melissa Leo is great as the Mother Superior.  Probably an Oscar nomination.

Helping God

I have heard and even said myself, “God has no hands.  God needs our hands to do the work.”  Oh?  What happened to the all powerful God we are supposed to believe in?  I think maybe God can do whatever God wants and does not need me as much as I think.  So what is my first chore each day as relates to God?  I think it is to allow God to love me and just to love God, first without doing anything.  I need to stop making love happen by my actions as it relates to this God who is supposed to be love.  Love God without doing anything, without pious thoughts or words is a good way to allow God to love us.  If I start out by first doing good works to help God out, that seems to me as something that is energized by a big ego trip.  “I “ am important to God’s work soon becomes doing things without first checking in with some intimate loving of God.  Do less and mediate more might be what many of us active people need to do.

Telemedicine

Soon, in Texas, you can call your doctor when you are sick and talk to the doctor on your computer.  You get face time but can stay at home.  Say you have the flu or feel fluish.  You want to talk to your doctor “now.”  You are sick and don’t really want to go out into the cold winter to drive to the doctor’s office.  Plus, you probably cannot see the doctor for several days.  By then you will be dreadfully feeling near-death experiences.  With this new method, you get on your computer and talk to your doctor who can look at you on the computer screen.  Assessment is made and medication proscribed.  No visit out into the cold weather is needed.  Now how about my church doing this with confession.  You would still be having a live encounter, face to face with the priest.  He does not have to have specific confession hours that are usually inconvenient for many people but not for the priest. Or there could be specific times for teleconfession.  With new technology, physical presence is not so important.  If you are elderly, in inclement weather, cannot drive, you still get the sacrament.  Media can be the Churches Friend.

The Trying

T. S. Eliot, the British poet, said that “for us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.”  I don’t think he ever met Bill W. They think alike in this regard.  We spend so much energy fretting about results and have too little energy to focus on our own efforts, “the trying.”  I can pray all I want for results, but at some point I have to act, do something.  This is what I can control, and my prayer is more that I do the action, rather than wallow in sloth or whining.  If I do act, but with a bad attitude, then I whine about the results not being what I want.  “God has abandoned me,” becomes my mantra.  So I focus on trying to do the best that I can now and let go of fretting about the results.

The Beatles

Why were the Beatles, from Liverpool, England, and other British rock groups so popular in the early  60s?  Because there were teenagers and  these teenagers had money to spend.  They were the new generation of consumers.  If you read yesterday’s blog, you learned that Europe lacked young people after WW II.  Then the babies came as the economies rose up from the rubble of war and bad pre-war economic decisions.   Eventually, money became less scarce.  No longer was all family income needed for necessities.  Now there was a bit “extra” and there were thing to buy.  Remember transistor radios?  No?  My friend Margo and I remember.  Anyhow, “teenager” became a category somewhere between child and adult.  In Europe, this was a late 50s development.  They were a consumer group with the desire for their own music.  Along came the Beatles.  They did have talent.  But now they had an audience who would pay to hear them or buy records and record albums.  This teen group would have its own hairstyles and fashion clothes.  Remember Neru suits?  No?  Well, welcome to a cultural history lesson.  Do teenagers read my blog?

Birth Control

Many people think that the reason the pope was against birth control in 1968 was because it was the traditional teaching of the church, and the church was against change in tradition not to say morality too.  But there is a reason that is rarely heard: Europe lacked children.  Birth rates had been down due to World Wars, Depression Era, infant death, lack of men all after the end of WW II.  If Europe was going to recover, it needed people, young people.  With the improvement of medical care, more prosperous economies, the chances of living past birth and into adulthood picked up.  Italy was one of the latter countries to get onto the economic bandwagon, though it did too.  Most of the lifetime of Italian Pope Paul VI in his early formative life was in this era of low birth rates.  One of the engines of morality is often economics.