The Good Wife
A good wife, who can find? She is far more precious than jewels…
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (cf., Proverbs 31)
As I write, it is the evening of the memorial of Saint Margaret of Scotland (+1090), the English wife of the Scottish King, Malcolm the Third. Margaret was from noble lineage, daughter of Prince Edward the Exile and grand-daugther of King Edmund Ironside.
But more important than this dynastic union was the spiritual unity of this married couple, testifying in that rough and warlike age that holy and fruitful matrimony is not only possible, but necessary, even in the darkest of times.
Margaret’s virtue and piety, her dedication to her religious duties and the poor, were encouraged by her rough and illiterate husband. Malcolm perhaps did not see the full importance of his wife’s spirituality and charity, but he saw enough, and love did the rest. They had eight children together, including the future king and saint, David of Scotland.
We live in an age where marriage, sadly, is no longer valued, even amongst all-too-many Catholics. Women do not ‘need’ men, and men, in the main, feel bereft. The State, a coddling and soul-numbing bureaucracy and its technological tentacles have supplanted what men used to provide. In fact, in many households (it is difficult to get accurate numbers on these things, but many anecdotes and personal stories suffice for some evidence), it is the woman who supports the man and their children, often by some sort of government job, replete with benefits and generous maternal, sorry, parental, leave.
Rarely do I see, again even amongst Catholic families, that they have any issue with encouraging their daughters to join the military, police force, firefighters, nor with their daughters going forth into full-time careers, requiring years of training, with marriage and family on the back-burner; as a natural consequence, men hide out in basements and man-caves, doing what they do when entropy rules.
Prescinding from the other current moral problems in many professions (just this morning, our once-noble Canadian military is holding a ‘transgender job fair’, with some senior officer praising such ‘diversity’), I ask: What society ever had its women defending and rescuing its men? What man, holding his children, wants to bid his wife and their mother farewell, as she goes off on a tour of duty, while he remains at home?
Just because a woman might be able to fire a gun, or make the primary wage, does not mean that she should. That is, if there are still men around to take care of such things as defending one’s country or bringing home what is needed for the running of the house. But ‘husband as protector provider’ has such a quaint and far-off mediaeval, or perhaps western-frontier, ring to it now.
So witness the retreat of man, of masculinity, of the proper authority of fatherhood, something that can only be achieved if it is welcomed and encouraged by the proper receptive genius of woman, as wife, as mother, as the heart and centre of what used to be the ‘home’, but which is too often just a quasi-hotel, where people sleep, then go to work all day, maybe, often not, showing up for dinner, hastily prepared, or some sort of take-out. Even if it’s healthy kale-salad, with cranberries and spinach and feta cheese, is it really all that good for the family?
As the family goes, so goes society, warned John Paul II, and the family in any true Christian sense has by and large packed up and gone.
There are hold-outs, however, pockets of resistance against this age of androgyny, places where, to paraphrase the song, women are women and men are men…
We cannot of course return to the 11th century, with war-like kings wielding claymores and their wives back home at the castle weaving wool, although that does have a nostalgic ring to it. That said, there is still a respective role for men and women to play, as we resist the gravitational pull of the modern world’s sexless denial of this beautiful difference.
The philosopher Thomas Howard’s 1979 book ‘Chance or the Dance’ critiques modern secularism: The title asks the question: Are we living in a dog-eat-dog world of random disorder, with the devil take the hindmost, and marriage nothing more than a contractual ‘partnership’? Or is life an ordered and beautiful dance, where each of us has his role to play?
And just like a waltz, just because a woman can lead, does not mean that she should.
So man up, men: Esto vir. Like beautiful Margaret getting off that boat on the shores of the Firth at Queensferry in bonnie Scotland all those years ago, there are still a lot of good women out there still searching and waiting for a good man.
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk
(Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., a faithful, courageous and indefatigable Basilian priest, pro-life-and-family apostle, and the founder of Catholic Insight magazine. Here is what we wrote those on his entering into eternity five years ago, as we continue to remember him in our prayers and thoughts)[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Canonizing Sister Faustina and Divine Mercy
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER MASS IN ST PETER’S SQUARE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF SR MARY FAUSTINA KOWALSKA Sunday, 30 April 2000 1. “Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius”; “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever” (Ps 118: 1). So the Church sings on the Octave of[…]Continue reading→
Divine Mercy Sunday – An Echo of Every Mass
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’… ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn. 20:18)). Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and as we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave, we contemplate the wounded side of our Saviour, the Church’s source of life. On Good Friday in the[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→