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.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Talk of human dignity as a foundation of understanding justice or morality -- is it really necessary? In so far as we need to understand that human beings are not the same as the other animals, having the same nature and end as we do. Beyond that? It seems to be a matter of prudence, whether to use such a term when it has been defined by moderns in conjunction with freedom, as a bare fact (or sovereignty).
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