I have not yet started The Church Impotent by Leon Podles, but in reading the description of the book I question the support for his thesis. Is he overreaching in his genealogy?
"In an original and challenging account, he traces this feminization to three contemporaneous medieval sources: the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rise of scholasticism, and the expansion of female monasticism."
After all, St. Bernard was instrumental in the creation the Christian knight and the military orders. Thus, I am a bit baffled. There will be an element of the "feminine" in Christian spirituality, for both males and females, in so far as we are the recipients of God's grace. (The Song of Songs) But what men should o when enlivened by charity and grace will be different from what women do, as grace builds upon nature.
As for the criticism of the scholastics... I will have to see what he says. Could his criticisms not also be applied to the monastic theologians?
I think it would suffice to locate the breakdown of Christian spirituality with the destruction of Christendom and the rise of the modern-state, and to look at Church-state relations and how the Church has fared.
2 comments:
I thoroughly liked the book.
In modern bibles, the Greek word "malakos" is not translated at all, or is mistranslated in I Cor. The word is "effeminate". It has NO sexual connotations whatsoever in Classical Greek!
For me, in my opinion, the overpreaching of "love" by everybody in the Catholic Church has brought on effeminacy on a grand scale to all male Christians. I see the Church as a mass of effeminates.
And as St. Paul says, "Effeminates shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven".
In the 1960's, seminaries on a grand scale accepted men escaping from the draft! Or seminaries accept men who refuse/hate military service. The bible says, "Cowardice possesses the effeminate man". All these effeminates received Holy Orders.
I look at the god, Apollo, and the societies that were under him, i.e. the Spartans, produced real men. I look at my God Jesus Christ, and all I see is effeminate pussies. Sometimes I wonder if I am following the wrong God.
The problem isn't with the centrality of charity in Catholic spirituality and moral theology, but the transformation of charity into mere sentimentalism, so that we have Christian "nice guys" instead of Christian gentlemen. As for the historic causes of this transformation here and in Europe... I don't know if this can be laid at the feet of the 60s or not.
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