MOMMENTARY

MOMMENTARY

( 4:04 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

I'm in a good mood today. We went to the 8:30 Mass, and even though it was the school Mass, we sang Immaculate Mary and Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above. The schoolchildren, mercifully, neither acted as lectors nor led the singing. I did have to administer salutary correction to an eighth-grader who was sitting behind me, and making fun of an old man at the end of the row who had a very odd speaking voice and was constantly a few seconds behind the rest of us. His antics were much amusing a very pretty girl whom he evidently wished to impress, so I trust I inflicted the most painful and persistent kind of embarrassment on the little creep. Memo to employed mothers: You can't civilize a child between 6:00 pickup at the daycare center and bedtime, and the underpaid wretches who work there won't do it for you. If you didn't want me to humiliate your young savage during Mass, perhaps you might have taken the trouble yourself in the past thirteen years to make him understand that decent people don't laugh at old men.

( 5:07 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

I keep meaning to blog about this but I keep forgetting. After much experimentation, I've discovered that one thing only reliably takes food grease stains - butter, oil, spatters from frying, and so on - out of clothing. You want to wet the area with warm water (hot if the fabric will stand it) and rub bar soap - that's right, plain old Ivory or what have you - into the grease stain. Rub it in well, until the material is thoroughly permeated with soap, and then wash as usual. This works much better than the liquid dish detergent my mother used to use for the same purpose. I rescued a light zip-up jacket of Cacciaguida's in this way, and there isn't much that will take grease out of a polyester-blend fabric, polyester being a petroleum derivative and having an affinity for other oleaginous molecules. (This is one of many reasons I far prefer cotton, linen, and wool to synthetics, but it's hard to find a light jacket of this sort - we used to call them windbreakers - in all-cotton, even at a natural-fiber mecca like L. L. Bean.) Anyway, I thought I'd pass along this helpful idea born of my long wrestle with domesticity. When I first got married and began having children, I was astounded at the number of really necessary things they don't teach you at Yale, and I've been finding out about them on my own ever since.

( 10:01 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

Among the Christmas music I've been listening to is the Irish Tenors' Home For Christmas. It was made before the laicized priest joined the party (I see the management are downplaying that phase of his career, and who shall blame them), and it recalls for me a time before Ronan Tynan, a great favorite of mine, had developed a lamentable habit of singing at Yankee Stadium. (I regret his taste, but he's from over the sea, and can't be expected to understand that in America the respectable do not hobnob with George Steinbrenner.) The selections really are outstanding, and include my favorite alternate setting of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, two Ave Marias, and What Child Is This? with all the proper second parts of the verses. They use the goofy English translation of O Holy Night, unfortunately: little as I wish to encourage the French, the original is really much more moving. I learned it off our Pavarotti Christmas album, which also contains another favorite, Gesu Bambino. Another selection on this album, Niedermayer's Pieta, Signore, goes on for about twenty minutes of "Giammai sia dannato nel fuoco eterno dal suo rigor," and is known to la famiglia Cacciaguida under the English title Lord, Please Don't Fry Me In a Wok.

I'm sort of an accidental Irish Tenors fan. When they first appeared on PBS I didn't want to watch, because Irish tenors of the John McCormack type had always given me a pain. Cacc, who has always thought it a pity that I'm not more self-consciously Irish (you don't need to be, when you're pure-blooded), put it on, at the unfortunate moment when Ronan Tynan was singing I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, which I don't much like. However, I liked most of the rest (only cringing when they sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling), and the story of Tynan's triumph over his disability quite won me over. It isn't the sweetest voice I've ever heard, but close, and I'm a fool for courage, especially in personal matters, where people so often indulge themselves in self-pity.

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( 8:41 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

I'm having one of those days that depressives get occasionally, even those, like me, whose depression is under good control. As a rule it doesn't bother me that I don't fit in anywhere, but every now and then it does. I'm way too argumentative to get along with women, which is rather a pity seeing as I am one. I wouldn't be anything but a Catholic, and I don't feel at home amongst most Catholics. I love Yale, but the majority of Yalies are a pain in the kiester. Oh, well, it will go away. I cleaned out from under the sofa today, and I'm making Cacciadelia and Son #4 some Christmas presents. It helps to be busy. Also warm. Also to have cheerful music. I can't agree with the people who disapprove of Christmas music during Advent. It takes me a while to work up to Christmas, which was usually the occasion of something extra-special in the way of family rows when I was a teenager, and the music helps considerably.

I've also been clearing up my side of the room, and I see that, in addition to the books already mentioned, I have on my bedside table (on the lower shelf, which accounts for my having missed them before)

Booth Tarkington, Penrod
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister
Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy

I'll turn on the electric blanket and take up one of the more amusing of these, and be better in the morning.

( 10:49 AM ) Elinor Dashwood

Terry over at Summa Mamas wants to know what books we have stacked up on our bedside tables. I've got

Georgette Heyer, Footsteps In the Dark
E. F. Benson, David Blaize
Booth Tarkington, Seventeen
Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne
Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle
Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome
G. K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown
Jane Austen, Emma

As a rule I don't read new books in bed, since the purpose is to set the mind comfortably at rest. Consequently these are all books I practically know by heart. New acquisitions, and such nonfiction as I ever do take in, I read during the daytime.

( 1:08 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

From the Summas, a link to an NRO story about Abercrombie and Fitch's decision, in the face of a threatened boycott, to cease selling its obnoxiously pornographic "Christmas Field Guide" in its stores. As I mentioned in TLS's comment box, that's the free market at work. I hope the Catholic Fascists I've too often encountered on the Internet, who dream of a Catholic dictatorship which would establish peace and sanctity forever, and eliminate wicked things like sin, representative democracy, refined sugar, and freedom of the press, will take note and consider the wisdom of working within the system instead of scrapping it. Somebody with whom I was arguing on Jeff Culbreath's blog made an alarming suggestion of exactly the sort of Catholic government that would become a tyranny in record time.

What is it about Catholics that makes them think they can start up a community of like-minded people who will live together in charity and harmony? These proposals give me the creeps. The supposition is always that Catholics will buy property, start businesses, live in close association, and adhere to the provisions of a covenant document. The reality is usually that neighbors are encouraged to spy on one another, independent thought and action are discouraged, and the leaders of the enterprise get rich. Whenever one of these communities starts up, I find myself wishing we could cut straight to the lawsuits and the expose in the newspaper, and save everyone a lot of heartbreak. There's no way around it: original sin is not alienable. Where you have power you'll have corruption, and I prefer not to live under the dominion of any authority which considers itself to have a divine mandate to violate my privacy, confiscate my goods, and trample on my freedoms. It isn't that we haven't yet found the right person to lead such a community, it's that there is, and can be no such person. People keep thinking that there is, and that they've found him or her, and the end of it will be that one day they'll seem to be right, and that will be the Antichrist. In the meantime, Catholics will do well to consider the benefits to the Faith of being protected from government involvement in religious affairs, rather than restricted by it.

( 11:09 AM ) Elinor Dashwood

By way of Mark Shea, a webite called CaNN, Classical Anglican Net News. A post on the site, collecting signatures on a petition of some sort, offers "your chance to make the Anglican Communion as God intends it to be."

Subsumed? Converted? The shop locked up and a sign saying "Gone Over"? I can't help thinking that they aren't seeing it in exactly those terms.

( 10:24 AM ) Elinor Dashwood

Last time. I promise, even if the Old Oligarch answers. O.O. in italics.

1) Theoretical discussion of headship (sources of doctrine, nature of authority, etc.).

Very interesting and helpful. I don't agree with your views in every particular, but that isn't to be expected.

2) Discussion of how headship should be practiced in the home in the abstract: i.e., generic practical advice that anyone can implement. Just making the theoretical more particular to commonly-encountered life situations.

Certainly practical advice for anyone who wants a 100% guaranteed way to antagonize his wife. Just by the way, I've been married quite a long time, and I still don't give people advice on hot-button topics like this, except at gunpoint.

3) Personal critique of how she practices headship in her own marriage with Cacciaguida.

I never suspected that you did. My point is that nobody's conscience, even your wife's, is any business of yours except your own. You aren't a priest, and you have no minor children. When you have them, their consciences will be to a certain extent your responsibility and Zorak's. Don't mistake me - you and I and all of us are entitled to speak and to write in a general way about the objective sinfulness of this or that sin: what we're not entitled to do is to root around in another adult's conscience - not even one's wife's - and point out areas of possible improvement.

In all previous posts, I was arguing against a position you presented as a categorical assertion: That no wife's conscience was the business of her husband. I disagreed with that assertion.

You're entitled. In my turn I also disagree with you. A husband is certainly allowed, by all means, to object to a wife's conduct, and to argue with her about her opinions if he thinks they're faulty, just as we're doing. But he mustn't try to act as her spiritual director, to examine her conscience, or to tell her she has to go to Confession. An adult's conscience is his own. It may be necessary, in order to prevent sacrilege and scandal, for a priest to take notice of a notorious public transgressor, if there is a question of a funeral Mass, or of receiving Communion. Short of that, no.

(Me:)I am not saying this is Elinor's reason for reluctance.
(Elinor:)Except by implication, of course.

I was being quite sincere there.

Very handsomely said, and I ought not to have taken it in that way.

I'm sorry you're so mad you no longer presume honesty on my part.

Well, I had been assuming it. I'm afraid my dependence on the purity of your means and purposes took a hit over this incident:

"in my forty-four years, I've seen a perfect correlation between an obsession with biblical teaching on obedience...and wifebeating.

(me)How very convenient - not entirely honest, but certainly convenient - that you slide over, by means of an ellipsis, my description of the obsession - "by which I don't mean believing in it, but bringing it up constantly, lecturing everyone about it, cutting out articles by Fr. Wickens and telling his wife to read them, and warning her that she had to obey him absolutely or she'd be in mortal sin" - which makes it clear that I'm talking about men who abuse their position."

I was arguing against what I took to be your categorical assertion: that no man -- be it her priest or her husband -- could tell the wife what was her moral duty with regard to headship.

Got it in one, as far as the husband is concerned. As I said before, he is entirely in the right to argue with her about her actions, her manners, or her opinions if he thinks they're objectively wrong or injurious to domestic harmony. He's in the wrong if he lodges as a separate complaint that she isn't submissive enough to him.

Again, this statement only tells me one of two things:(A) You cannot distinguish between #2 and #3 above, and take all abstract discussions of pastoral application of theology to be intensely personal remarks.

Not at all. What I ought to have written in bold was, ". . . that another person's conscience, even your wife's, is no business of yours." If Cacciaguida, who has been studying my mind for twenty years, misunderstood the purport of that argument, it's not surprising that it wasn't clear to you.

(B) You're so mad, you're not listening to a word I've said.

Probably crying, too, poor thing. The ladies, bless 'em!

Whether you examine my conscience on a particular issue and are effective in that task entirely depends on the issue and the relationship between us.

Certainly. If ever you're ordained, and someone puts himself under your authority as a spiritual director, you'll be quite right to examine that person's conscience. Where we differ, I think, is over the question of whether this situation exists by virtue of matrimony and the teaching to the wife to obey the husband. I don't think it does. My impression of your view is that you do.

I wouldn't presume to counsel you on some matters, but if you had just killed a man, damn sure I would raise a personal criticism.

If you had a grain of sense you'd first want to know if I was still carrying the weapon, but I concede it would be quite proper on your part to object to homicide. It would not be your place to discover the gravity of the matter (I might have been defending someone from imminent attack, which would mitigate the sin considerably if not do it away altogether), or my capacity for efficient consent to the wrong, or the degree of reflection that took place, but even as a fellow citizen you would be entitled to expect me to submit the action to examination by the legal authority charged to inquire into such matters.

Or if I just confided that I stole the car I used to drive to your house over your dinner table, I darn well expect a full-dress examination of what I thought I was doing.

You wouldn't get it from me. I'd decline, if requested, to make myself an accessory to the theft; in that capacity I'd probably have to shop you to the police; I'd certainly see you in a whole new light, and not a good one. I wouldn't, however, question you as to the moral implications of the theft, or your spiritual situation since committing it, partly because you know this stuff already, but chiefly because it's not my business to probe your conscience.

You stated that no man had the right to question a wife's conduct in these matters.

I see where the misunderstanding comes in. I admit his right to object to her conduct. If she is selling drugs, or taking birth control pills, or mistreating the children, he is entirely right to confront her about it, and it's to be hoped he succeeds in stopping her. If she won't stop, he has a legitimate grievance against her, but I don't admit that he has another and a distinct grievance in her want of subjection. She is wrong to disobey St. Paul's teaching; he is not wronged by her doing so. I take it that you think he is, and that's the substance of our dispute.

Moreover, you mentioned that anyone who talked about his belief in male headship would be run out of the house if he tried to court your daughter.

This a point on which I have to expect you to take my word: in protecting one's children there is no presumption of innocence. In keeping potentially dangerous people away from one's child it's entirely defensible to rely on impressions, hunches, and one's previous experience of life and fallen humanity. My experience is that men who feel an inordinate need to pull the subject of submission into ordinary conversation are bad news. I don't mean men who, when the subject comes up, defend their belief in the teaching from Ephesians: I mean men - and I have met them - whose explanation of all the world's ills is that wives aren't submissive (like those persons who are ever ready to account for cultural decay by demonstrating that it's all the fault of the CIA, or the IMF, or the Jews); I also mean men for whom submission is King Charles' head, so to speak, a monomania which they can't get keep out of any discussion. I have no right to defame such a young man, but every right to consult my long observation of human nature in evaluating his character and personality for my daughter's guidance. This may very understandably stick in the craw of one who has so far only been the suitor; you'll see it from another point of view when you're the Daddy.

Your representation of such men struck me as an excessive and unjust characterization of those who believe strongly that it is their duty as Christian men to understand husbandry and fatherhood in terms of headship.

I only exhausted myself in explaining nine ways to Sunday that I considered it (and still do) a just characterization of men who understand their role to entitle them to control their wives' minds and consciences and to exact unquestioning compliance with every command. But never mind - let it pass.

I totally agreed with your insight that advice is often best given to women by other women.

Well, there's one point of dispute laid to rest.

Perhaps you are really enthusiastic about the doctrine, but just to other women in person-to-person conversation, and not on the blog.

Here we touch on another view of mine, to wit, that one's feelings about a duty don't matter as long as it's recognized as a duty. As a matter of fact I'm quite repelled by all the swoony rhetoric on sites like Priceless Woman about joyful surrender and true womanhood, but that's because I'm not feminine at all and haven't a sentimental bone in my body. (If you think I'm harsh about most men, you won't want to hear what I think of most women. In fact I consider the vast majority of the human race to be very unsatisfactory.) But that's an entirely different subject.

I took difference with the way you suggested that men (in general) talk about it with women (in general)

Now, this is a matter of experience. It really is very common indeed for serious Catholic men to talk about submission exactly in terms of right and power. You'll run into this as you mix more with ordinary Catholic laymen (i.e., not academics, or people who made their way into the Church by a process of study and argument). In fact very, very few Catholic men of my acquaintance - virtuous, responsible fathers and faithful husbands, but not given to analysis - would grasp any of the distinctions that have come up in the course of this exchange. I found this out for myself when we moved away from New Haven - this is in many ways a great country, but there isn't an awful lot of subtlety out there.

A well-structured marriage isn't about achieving a power balance. It's about achieving an overflow of caritas. That's why unconditional love, selfless devotion, trust and submission are the primary categories; rather than self-will, equal representation and other "democratic" metaphors.

This is the sort of statement I particularly dislike, for several reasons. I find appeals to emotion quite sick-making; I'm inclined to view with profound suspicion any notion that a celestial ideal is achievable in this vale of tears (this is also my reason for avoiding these Catholic communities that crop up from time to time in the futile hope that fallen human nature can somehow move away to a new home and leave behind original sin like an abandoned wading pool); and I could never recommend anyone to resign her own and trust another's judgment except God's. A well-structured marriage - and the one I know best is holding up pretty well - is about cooperation and consultation, a formal habit of leaving the final decision to the husband when consultation reaches an impasse, and good manners under all conditions.

( 6:20 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

Obedience. Again. Old Oligarch in italics.

There are scads of issues where it is acceptable to call someone's conscience into question

So, been having trouble with pride lately? How about concupiscence? How about avarice? How about getting it into your head that my conscience is no business of yours. That wasn't hard, was it?

I am not saying this is Elinor's reason for reluctance.

Except by implication, of course.

in my forty-four years, I've seen a perfect correlation between an obsession with biblical teaching on obedience...and wifebeating.

How very convenient - not entirely honest, but certainly convenient - that you slide over, by means of an ellipsis, my description of the obsession - "by which I don't mean believing in it, but bringing it up constantly, lecturing everyone about it, cutting out articles by Fr. Wickens and telling his wife to read them, and warning her that she had to obey him absolutely or she'd be in mortal sin" - which makes it clear that I'm talking about men who abuse their position.

There is no reason why a priest shouldn't teach this to a woman, or one Christian to another, even if they happen to be of the opposite sex.

Next time we meet, I'll administer an examination of conscience to you. I'm sure you'll find that entirely proper. After all, I'm only counseling you as a fellow Christian.

The best counsel I've received both in the classroom and in the confessional pissed me off, because I am proud.

Interesting - it doesn't affect me in the same way - but hardly to the purpose. I'm really wondering when it's going to dawn on you that I'm not opposed to the theory or practice of obedience: I'm explaining why even a faithful Catholic woman is a) annoyed when a stranger pokes his nose uninvited into her conscience and her marriage and b) more comfortable and receptive to this teaching when it comes from another woman. Why some men extrapolate from this a rejection of the teaching on obedience is another question.

b) when ordinary married men do talk about it, it is too often entirely in terms of rights and power

I did not do that.

Did anyone say you did? I'm not talking about you at all. I'm saying that this is a frequent experience of Catholic women, and it is.

This is important to avoid, but it doesn't prevent men from talking about this with women.

Go ahead, if you like. What I've been telling you - rather often - is why this approach isn't likely to be persuasive with most women.

Taking the doctrine of headship seriously as a husband isn't easy either. It is easy to paint the male as being on easy street: heels up, chuckling, "It's good to be the king." But this is dishonest. No one who takes St. Paul's advice to the husband in Eph 5:25-26 seriously would behave like this.

Aha! We make progress. No doubt lots of husbands do take St. Paul's teaching seriously - mine does - but lots of them don't, and that's what worries many Catholic women. When you consider, for instance, how many men indulge themselves in a profession and a style of life which make it necessary for their wives to be employed full-time, it's not altogether an unreasonable concern.

I don't see why the lady feels it is impossible for both spouses to confront their responsibilities frankly in light of the Gospel

I don't think it in the least impossible; I know couples who do this to admiration. To be aware that some do not isn't at all the same thing as to believe that it's impossible. Really, you ought to know better.

or why it will always be the male who's the jerk and the slacker in trying to live according to the Gospel.

Once again, I didn't suggest anything of the sort. Either you're exaggerating, or you're projecting.

Can we put the wife-beating thing away now?

No, we can't. I've been repeatedly making the point that several factors, including this one, contribute to the uneasiness many serious Catholic women feel about the subject, and make it more effective for the teaching to come from women. To judge by the way you keep turning the question to the substance of the teaching on obedience rather than to the manner of it (which is what I've been talking about), I gather that you aren't really arguing with me at all. Can't you find a woman to argue with who doesn't accept this doctrine? It would, certainly, be more difficult than pretending that I disagree with it, but don't let that worry you.

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( 4:58 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

Have you seen TSO's rate-your-library quiz? It reads like my parents' (single, three-shelf) bookcase, except that the Catechism wasn't out yet. Here's my reply, since I've never succeeded in leaving an actual comment on Tom's blog:

This is a very Reader's Digest-y selection. I'm surprised you didn't include a complete set of Dickens.

1. Proust is mediocre, and shouldn't be on the list at all. And where is the greatest English novelist? I don't see her name anywhere.

2. Shakespeare - geez, what edition? The Riverside is good, but overrated; the Rockwell Kent stinks (full of typos); the Yale is very good; the individual Folgers are the best of all. Be specific!

3. Boswell's Johnson is so-so; anyway most of it's in Bartlett's.

4. A set of encyclopedias should mark you DOWN two points - it reeks of insecurity, it's invariably out of date and in any case there isn't one in print that isn't marred by ax-grinding editors. Crikey - while you're at it why not list the Harvard Classics and the Will and Ariel Durant series as well?

( 3:41 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

A mystery. I'm a diabetic. When I saw that a Krispy Kreme franchise was to open inside the Walmart where I shop twice a week, I was concerned that I'd find the sugar fumes very disagreeable. There's a freestanding KK on the Boulevard near the library, and I often feel queasy from the airborne sugar while driving past it at forty miles an hour with the windows up - imagine what it would be like confined within a building! I thought. As a matter of fact, there is no smell at all. Why? I wonder if the regular Krispy Kreme uses a hypothetical device that Cacciaguida and I thought up years ago and called a "puffer". Our route home from church took us past a Denny's which served breakfast, and the tantalizing smells of bacon, pancakes, and syrup would waft out and make us crazy. We posited that Denny's had installed a huge fan to puff out savory aromas over the street and draw patrons into the parking lot and the restaurant. I wonder - does Krispy Kreme on the Boulevard have a puffer, to draw in passing traffic? There would be no reason to install one in the Walmart location, because the potential customers are already on foot and able to stroll right over and make a purchase. Is there really such a thing as a puffer? I wonder.

( 9:27 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

From time to time during this blogging adventure, I've run across M'Lynn's name, as a commenter or by allusion. I'm going to be reading a lot more of her work, I assure you. I jumped to her blog from Alicia's to read M'Lynn's post on race troubles, and I was really impressed. M'Lynn makes the point that politics can't solve a problem that has to be approached with charity, that is, caritas, loving one another in God. I can't help but think that one way to achieve this is not so much by conferences and committees, and certainly not by litigation, but by making opportunities in everyday life to find common ground in a personal and quiet way. I'm thinking of a couple of anecdotes that illustrate what I mean.

On an email list to which I belong, a member recounted his day at an automobile show in New York. The crowd was almost entirely male but utterly diverse in other respects, and their passion for the subject threw down for a time all barriers. Side-curled Hasidim were entering into animated conversation with young black men in shades on the merits of this or that type of engine, and suburban dads and old guys in cardigans rubbed shoulders with bus drivers, grease monkeys, and Wall Street types in ogling the new-model cars. I had a similar experience at a flower show, a gloriously surreal exchange with a spike-haired, much-pierced Cockney punk rocker who was addressed by his companion as "Nige". Nige and I, a dowdy middle-aged mom who drove a minivan, fell into conversation on the subject of the perversity of gardeners, who always seem to hanker after any climate but their own, Englishmen longing to grow the gardenias and magnolias of the hot American summer, and Americans wishing they could have the bluebells and primroses which come to such perfection in England's cool, moist spring.

The point about these stories is that the people involved were thinking about something outside themselves, and so they were, in the exact sense, un-self-conscious, and awkwardness was overcome in the pleasure of talking to another enthusiast. This is a kind of open-hearted goodwill that can be practiced anywhere and at almost any time, because every person in the world has something he wants to talk about. Everyone has a first baby, or is proud of his Mustang or his rosebushes, or has a child in the class play, or is also weary of waiting for a late bus in the rain. The opportunities are there, if we can only recognize them and act on them.

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( 1:44 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

In the comments box over at Summa Mamas, Terry mentions that she rocked her baby to sleep with "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God". I don't know that one, but it is reassuring that I'm not the only one who used hymns as lullabies. "Come, Thou Almighty King" was never a big favorite of mine as a general matter, but it has a nice rocking meter and a melody suitable to sleepers and the cradle (as opposed to trumpets and the walls of Jericho, which is what my favorite hymns tend to be reminiscent of). Other songs I adopted as lullabies were the Irish love song "Eileen Aroon", the Burns lyric "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose", and, at Christmas time, all sorts of carols, especially "What Child Is This" with all the proper second parts of the verses. Cacciaguida used to carry a crying boy on his shoulder and sing Old Germont's aria "Di Provenza" from Act II of Traviata, a very suitable choice for soothing overwrought sons.

So - what are the lullabies at your house?

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( 12:09 AM ) Elinor Dashwood

It's not my fault. I didn't bring the subject up, but I'll be dashed if I'll let somebody have the last word just because that somebody has free time.

The Old Oligarch complains that he's a theologian, and thus entitled to discuss theological subjects. Fine - go for it. You look after the theological discussion; meanwhile the pastoral aspect of the case may safely be left in the hands of the ordinary laity, including the laity who have been married five times as long as theologians. Be my guest and call it "headship" if you like; you'll be widely and invidiously misinterpreted, because that word already has a heavy load of contextual baggage, but that's your call. But I stick to my guns on this: submission is a matter of conscience between a married woman and God. The instruction is given to wives with reference to their own conduct; no mandate is given to men to enforce or even to demand submission. No one, not man or woman, not even her husband, has the slightest right to question a wife on this subject, any more than he or she has the right to pry into any other aspect of another adult's conscience.

Furthermore, this discussion - which wasn't my idea, I repeat - would get on better if the O.O. did not so constantly argue on the implicit assumption that the only reason why any woman could resent discussion of this matter is because she has a sensitive conscience about it. Not that it's anyone's business, but I at least have not. I'll try to state this plainly, since the message does not so far seem to have gone home: the reason I am rendered uncomfortable by male input about this is because every man whom I know beat up his wife had also a pronounced tendency to harp on the subject of submission. Maybe all the men I know who don't smack their wives around live and die by the teaching from Ephesians, too, only they don't talk about in front of me; that's entirely possible. But so far in my forty-four years, I've seen a perfect correlation between an obsession with biblical teaching on obedience - by which I don't mean believing in it, but bringing it up constantly, lecturing everyone about it, cutting out articles by Fr. Wickens and telling his wife to read them, and warning her that she had to obey him absolutely or she'd be in mortal sin - and wifebeating. I have no objection to its being considered as a theological question - I have no turn for theology myself, but it's a very necessary study - but the real-world application of the teaching requires some personal experience.

So here's where I stand.

1. Submission is an important teaching which women need to think about.

2. Women are irritated by men's talking about it because a) it's a matter of private conscience, b) when ordinary married men do talk about it, it is too often entirely in terms of rights and power, and c) in the general way, it is feminine human nature (not mine, D.g., but generally) to take all questions personally rather than objectively. You and I had the advantage of coming of age in a setting in which dialectic was the norm; in the outside world it isn't the norm even among men, and among women it's practically unheard-of. For all these reasons, general lay consideration and exhortation on the subject are much better left to women.

3. Submission has never been easy. Now, with no-fault divorce, women feel very unprotected, and disinclined to make themselves vulnerable to husbands who could drop them without warning and leave them and their children in poverty. A woman will be less uneasy about adopting submission if her husband emphasizes by word and action his wholehearted commitment to permanent marriage - including a disgust at other men who ditch their wives for younger women, or who keep girlfriends on the side - his Christ-like sacrifice for her sake, and his gratitude for her fidelity and care and the inestimable gift of his children. No woman is going to feel safe in being submissive to a man who watches racy reality shows on UPN, drops a few thousand dollars on new golf clubs or a plasma TV without discovering first what she may need, and spends his free time hanging around with the guys instead of taking part in family life.

4. Every man's hand has to be against wife-beaters. Too often men, understandably reluctant to interfere in another man's household, deliberately ignore the evidence of abuse, and pretend it isn't happening. A woman would also feel safer if she knew that a violent husband could not depend on this silent acquiescence to let him get away with beating her. I know a priest - you know him, too - who stopped a domestic bully cold in his tracks by telling him that he knew what was going on, and it had better stop. Men can do a lot to help.

5. Finally, the most necessary ingredient in this effort is neither exegesis nor persuasion but prayer. The commonest element in the stories of women who turned around on this issue is the power of prayer, first in changing their own hearts, and then in guiding their husbands away from claiming a right (which Scripture doesn't in fact give them) to taking up their own responsibility to love their wives sacrificially, as Christ loved the Church.

( 1:01 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

Thanks to Zorak for the link to an article about building supply and construction tradesmen in Austin, Texas boycotting the construction of a Planned Parenthood clinic that is intended to offer abortions. God bless every man who made his conscience the line dividing the work he'll take and the work he won't touch with a barge pole.

It also occurs to me that any readers in the area who have projects looming - garages or extensions to be built on their houses, or commercial premises to be built or remodeled - will want to give the job to one of these men who turned down blood money for the sake of unborn children.

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( 10:48 AM ) Elinor Dashwood

Catching sight of a copy of The Return of the King this morning makes me wonder even more what Peter Jackson has to fill out the movie to three and a half hours. Shelob's tunnel; Frodo's capture and rescue and the struggle through Mordor; Field of Cormallen; crowning of Aragorn; and, I suppose, homecoming. Without the chapters "The Voice of Saruman" and "The Scouring of the Shire", it seems to me that Peter Jackson might as well call it Fling the Ring and get it done in about ninety minutes. This annoys me, and I can only conjecture how much worse it must be for real Tolkien scholars and enthusiasts. However, I've long suspected that one of the means by which the Lord chastises whom He loves is by permitting movies to be made of their favorite books.

( 10:57 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

According to Number Four Son, Saruman has been cut out entirely from the theatrical release of The Return of the King. Peter Jackson said he also left out "The Scouring of the Shire" chapter (in which the returning hobbits set the Shire to rights after the ring is destroyed, and Tolkien speaks his mind about the pernicious and fascistic "Defense of the Realm Act" which made England a bureaucrats' picnic of regulations and rationing for several years after the war), which makes me wonder what he's found to string the movie out to three and a half hours. Other reports assert that nine different versions of Saruman's death were filmed, and that the Saruman scenes will be included in the special six-disk Director's Cut. (Only joking - they'll probably be able to get it all on five.) I wish they'd included "The Scouring of the Shire"; a lot is lost by this incessant cutting to the chase.

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( 9:25 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

More literary crushes have come in from blogdom. Henry Dieterich of Plumbline admires Dorothy Sayers' Harriet Vane, and also the well-known and popular Elizabeth Bennet.

Eve comments interestingly on characters one loves, and characters one identifies with. Unfortunately, I've never heard of any of them, and so the full effect is lost on me. See what you make of it, here.

Jeanetta of De Fidei Oboedientia has excellent taste: her choice is Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice.

Dawn Munson writes in "The saintly Gerasim from Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych. He embodies the concept of 'more matter -- less art.' "

OrbFab inclines to the classics: in girlhood she loved Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, for rescuing his Marguerite from Madame la Guillotine.

Peony has decided, with her usual good judgment, that Mr. Knightley is her admiration.

Bobbi of Revolution of Love (why does that make me think of the Beatles?) is another who appreciates Mr. Knightley's sterling qualities. I agree with her that the actor who played him in the A&E movie - Mark Strong - is more appealing in the role than the indisputably good-looking and talented Jeremy Northam. Mr. Knightley needs to be played as Honest Manliness rather than Matinee Idol. (But catch Jeremy in Happy, Texas, an extremely funny caper flick.)

Micki, the SmockMomma of the superlative Summa Mamas, contributes a most interesting and unusual name - Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Little Prince. I've never read The Little Prince, but Micki's description inclines me to repair that omission.

Good discussion - thanks to all who took part.

( 4:32 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

Oh, brother. Not again. The Old Oligarch has joined the ranks of men determined to stir up hornets' nests. I'll state up front my view of this whole exceedingly wearisome topic of spousal obedience: submission is a matter of conscience between a married woman and God. The instruction is given to wives with reference to their own conduct; no mandate is given to men to enforce or even to demand submission. No one, not man or woman, not even her husband, has the slightest right to question a wife on this subject, any more than he or she has the right to pry into any other aspect of another adult's conscience.

That said, I'll repeat my first allusion to the subject, which the O.O. found objectionable (emphasis mine):

I make absolutely no generalization from the few cases that have come under my notice - there may be husbands by the thousands insisting on wifely obedience, and yet doing so with perfect charity, discretion, and maturity. But the only three men I've ever met who talked a big line on wifely submission ended up beating their wives. I don't say, or even surmise, that you, Mr. Brown, or you, Mr. Smith, knock the little woman about when she doesn't come up to standard. I do say, however, that in the only three cases that have passed within my personal observation, husbands who had an immature and hostile desire for mastery found in the dictum from Ephesians a perfect excuse for exacting slavish service and silent obedience to their every behest, and enforcing their demands with beatings.

I'll add to that only that it was perfectly clear in the context that this was an explanation of the reason why any young man who came visiting my daughter and talking about obedience would exit the house at a high rate of speed and with a boot print in his backside.

A further distinction that needs to be made is between obedience and "headship". I'll admit that - although the O.O. doesn't seem to take much account of my disclaimers when they don't suit him - I don't know what he means by headship. I've been reading the material available about the question on Evangelical sites, where it appears to be a very hot topic indeed, and what I detect is a subtle but very important difference: obedience, or submission, means the wife's choosing to let the husband be the final authority and make the final decisions; "headship" is widely used to mean allowing the husband to act as the wife's spiritual director, and also to demand constant sexual availability, to forbid questions about his decisions, and to direct what she wears, eats, and reads, how she does her hair, what friends she makes, and how she occupies her spare time. I trust that isn't what he means, and I suggest that "headship" is not a useful term when the matter under discussion is the Ephesians teaching of submission. I'll also repeat what I wrote about submission, which should make it clear that I'm not in the business of encouraging marital discord:

I'll say what I understand by the Ephesians verse which is such a favorite with those men of my acquaintance who slug their wives. A wife's responsibility is to follow her husband's decisions in the major matters which affect the family as a whole, such as where they're to live, what books and movies the children may be exposed to, and other such grave questions. Her mind and conscience, and the duties toward which they direct her, remain her own affair; a husband need not be obeyed if he orders his wife to commit a sin, or to neglect a duty (such as honoring her parents), or if he insists on his conjugal rights when his wife is ill, or at a point in the cycle when a pregnancy would likely result that would put her in danger. (To be clear on this last point, I myself have five children, all born by C-section after risky gestations, and the danger I speak of is a genuine threat to life. I'm not talking about not wanting to be pregnant because it would ruin one's figure - I haven't one, anyway - or because morning sickness makes one feel icky.) Both spouses, as a mere matter of good manners and a sensible desire to make family life calm and happy instead of bitter and turbulent, should refrain from appalling behavior like bickering, nagging, personal disrespect, criticizing one another in front of others, and emotional manipulation. A husband and wife who adhere to these precepts will live in a harmony nearly unknown in this fallen world, and must, I think, find favor with God.

I really advise against any man's mixing himself up in this matter. It's apparent to anyone who types "wifely submission" into Google that there are any number of sites, by women and for women, which discuss the theory and practice of submission, and I incline to the view that this is a subject which is best talked over among women. Men will do better to stick to exhorting one another about the next verse, which sets out a husband's responsibilities, in which effort I sincerely wish them joy and success.

( 5:20 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

I've been fighting off a cold with rest and fluids and Cold-Eeze. Wonderful stuff - you take it at the first sign of symptoms, and it practically cancels your cold. This should teach me to traipse off away from home during virus season; I might have expected to get sick, exposing myself to Heaven knows what weird foreign rhinovirus strains from who knows where.

Anyway, some results from the Literary Loves question:

Terry of Summa Mamas likes Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, and also admires the unnamed priest in The Power and the Glory. One of the things I liked about Cacciaguida was that he reminded me of the too-dreamy Atticus.

TS O'Rama has a soft spot for Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch.

Kenny, who hangs out at The Edge, is keen on Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings. (Good choice, Kenny!)

Julie from AR writes in with a very original selection, Prof. Snape from the Harry Potter books. She also likes Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre), Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights), and the thoroughly estimable Col. Brandon from Sense and Sensibility.

John calls in from The Inn at the End of the World to say that he'd rather not participate, since his "hyper-masculine piper guy" image would take a hit if he revealed that he was gone on Jane Eyre. Your secret is safe with us, Piper Guy.

And we can't do without the tender-hearted and romantic Cacciaguida. His literary squeezes include Shakespeare's Juliet, and Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice. He also admires Beatrice Portinari, who must fall into a sub-classification of Real, But Written About. My big heartthrob in that category is Henry V. Cacc says he wasn't much like Shakespeare's "star of England" in real life, which is very likely, but I think Cacc is just browned-off because ever since I read The Daughter of Time I can't bear to watch Richard III.

Who else stirs this cranky old heart of mine? The delightfully irascible Benedick, from Much Ado About Nothing (is there a Kenneth Branagh theme developing here?). Faramir, as depicted in the book, just and noble and patient even under his father's bitter injustice. And, of course, Dr. Thorne from Trollope's eponymous novel.

I'll list more names as they come along - join in!

( 4:34 PM ) Elinor Dashwood

I had an idea for a blogtopic in the course of corresponding with Peony. What fictional character or characters have you ever fallen in love with? I haven't comment boxes, so email me or reply on your own blogs. I'll go first: Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey.

Catholicism, family life, conservatism, Jane Austen, needlework, tropical plants, and general observations by Elinor Dashwood, aka Mrs. Cacciaguida.
Email me at EDashwood@hotmail.com

If you're reading this, you're probably already reading:
Cacciaguida
E-Pression
Old Oligarch
Donna Marie
Summa Mamas
Jonathan Lee Morris
The Discernment Dilemma
Fr. Zuhlsdorf
The Inn at the End of the World
A Plumbline in the Wind
Blurry Flurry
The Curt Jester
The Cafeteria Is Closed
DaveTown
The Paladin
Secret Agent Man
Vast. Right. Winged.

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