Church and World
Dhimmitude on the March: The Prefect Carenco Forbids “The March of the Pigs” But Permits an Islamic Congress
Like the Prefect Poubelle,1 but for other reasons, the Prefect of the Rhone-Alpes region, Jean-François Carenco, may also leave his name to history, but in a different category: “Dhimmitude.”2
Last May 4, he made an administrative decision to prohibit the organization of a demonstration, “The March of the Pigs,” the purpose of which was to denounce compliance with halal [the Islamic equivalent of kosher regulations–Tr.] in public establishments...and State enterprises.
Prefect Carenco explained: “This Islamophobic and provocative demonstration is an attack on the consensus of our Republic.” If we understand correctly, yielding to anti-republican demands of some Mohammedans constitutes sharing the consensus of our Republic, but decrying them would constitute an attack upon the aforesaid consensus. Perhaps they ought to stop taking the French for idiots.
When one brings up the issue of “freedom of expression” to Commissar...of the Republic Carenco, he retorts: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle, but this is provocation.” Indeed? More than the burqa, the niqab, halal, prayers in the street, demands for accommodating Islamic prayer times in the work day, and more and more aggressive communal conflicts? What does the name Carenco stand for? One begins to wonder…
The decision forbidding “The March of the Pigs” is all the more provocative as the same Carenco has concurrently authorized a seminar for May 28 at the Grand Mosque of Lyons, featuring Saïd Ramadan Al-Bouti, theoretician of jihad, and Muhammed Al-Hawari and Tahir Mahdi, both members of the European Council for Fatwa and Research...
A keen observer of the Islamic thing, Joachim Veliocas stated concerning Saïd Ramadan Al-Bouti:
We had already analyzed his works and position papers…with passages of his works where he preaches secret, subversive action to overthrow the miscreant governments when outright jihad does not turn to the advantage of Islam. In short, the Syrian professor of Arab Thought at the University of Bordeaux, Ghassan Finianos, stated in his book Islamistes, Apologistes et Libres Penseurs (Bordeaux: PUF, 2006) that the charismatic leader of the Lyons mosque “justifies using violence in the pursuit of power and, consequently, the propagation of Islamic values.”
Such, in point of fact, are the people who, according to the criteria of the dhimmitesque Carenco, share our republican consensus.
And so, in 2011, at Lyons, capital of the ancient Gauls and of ...stuffed saveloy, chitterlings, pork scratchings, and the like, the pig has become an accursed halouf. That’s what happens when the Islamists come marching in.
1 Eugene Poubelle (1831-1907), a French administrator whose name became the household word for dustbin in France, a result of his beneficial work in behalf of public sanitation.
2 Dhimmitude is a neologism first found in French denoting an attitude of concession, surrender, and appeasement towards Islamic demands. It is derived by adding the productive suffix -tude to the Arabic language adjective dhimmi, which literally means protected and refers to a non-Muslim subject of a sharia law State. (Wikipedia)
When Professor Vincent Becomes Miss Martine
When in June 2010, the physics and chemistry teacher at St. Dominic’s High School in Saint-Herblain, France (near Nantes), said goodbye to his pupils at the end of the school year, his name was Vincent. When school resumed in September, it was Martine. During the summer holidays, he had a sex change, he explained.
Faced with the students’ surprise and the dissatisfaction of some parents, the headmaster stated: “This identity change is obviously a personal development, and we do not have to take a position on the matter. What counts is the teacher’s professionalism.” The diocesan director of Catholic education simply dispatched a psychologist to the school to help the students with any ensuing turmoil.
This story is the practical application of a theory called “gender,” according to which human beings may choose whether to be a man or a woman. The theory rests on the distinction between a person’s sex, which is a biological reality, and his or her gender, which is a psychological reality. A human being of the feminine sex would not thereby be a woman.
This theory is based on an erroneous philosophy called existentialism. Its leading representative, Jean-Paul Sartre, said: “Man is freedom….Man exists first and defines himself later. There is no human nature....Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” In the same vein, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre’s companion in sin as well as in intellectual absurdity, wrote: “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” She even dared to add: “Motherhood is incompatible with women’s liberation.”
How should we react to such aberrations? By opening our eyes, keeping our feet on the ground, and thinking straight. That there is a human nature is self-evident. Otherwise, how would we distinguish human beings from animals or plants? Dogs do not have kittens. Camels do not beget apple trees. Never will a crayfish be mother to a water-lily. And if we use the terms human being or man, is this not proof that these words denote a reality? Or else language means nothing. There would be nothing to do but keep quiet! Let’s go further. A human nature exists, but in this human nature there exists a distinction between two categories of persons: men and women. Some would like to be able to choose. Being unable to do so would hamper their freedom!
Alas, just as we do not choose our nature, and the man who would be a bird will stay a man, neither do we choose our sex. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that soul and body form a whole, and not two independent parts. Thus, when the body is male, the soul is too. A woman is thus a woman in all of her soul and her psychology. One cannot therefore make a distinction between sex and gender.
Behind this debate, which would be laughable did it not reflect a sorry reality, lies a pernicious doctrine infecting people’s minds. The modern world would have us believe that there is no difference between men and women; perhaps a few physical differences, but nothing more. Consequently, women would have exactly the same rights and duties as men. They would have the same role to fill in the family and in society.
To convince ourselves that these assertions are false, let us remember creation: God created Adam first, then observed that he suffered from loneliness, and so created Eve, “a helper like himself.” God then commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.
Although man and woman were created in the image of God, the creation story shows that a woman is not a man. It is mainly through procreation that their differences appear. While the father gives life as source, the mother welcomes and nurtures it. The father gives life. The mother transmits it. The mother’s body is like a nest where life will develop; where the child will be protected and loved, nourished and warmed; where it will be safely sheltered beneath her heart. The woman’s mission, then, consists mainly in motherhood: childbearing and childrearing. “She shall be saved by childbearing,” says St. Paul (I Tim. 2:13). As for girls called to consecrate their virginity to God, they become mothers too, but spiritually, by an invisible but very real generation. The union of Christ’s love with the consecrated virgin’s love gives birth to the supernatural life in souls.
The first consequence concerns the place they will occupy in society. The mother’s presence near her children is more indispensable than the father’s. Women have an essential place in the family circle, a place that men have neither the vocation nor the capacity to hold. A teacher of disadvantaged children remarked: “The woman is the heart of the family. If today we have serious problems to solve, it is because the woman is no longer the heart of the family; and when the child comes home, he no longer finds his mother there to welcome him.”
Pope Pius XII made the same observation: “It is the woman who makes the home and is responsible for it, and the man can never replace her at this task. It is the mission imposed on her by nature and by her union with man, for the good even of society. Draw her outside her family, and you will see the woman neglect her home; and what will become of it without her flame? The atmosphere of the house will become chilly; the home will practically cease to exist, and will turn into the precarious refuge of a few hours.”
Some feminists feel that the work of the housewife is humiliating. But what did the Blessed Virgin Mary do every day? But was she not the mother of God? Did not her divine Son reserve for her the activities most beautiful and most suited to her nature? Moreover, to make a good housewife, the requisite skills are elevated and numerous: the woman must be at the same time cook, seamstress, nurse, laundress, landscaper, teacher, gardener, taxi driver, hostess, secretary, and bookkeeper! Who would dare maintain that the harmonious conjunction of these manifold crafts is degrading? We see instead that the mother at home must be very competent, hence the need to prepare her for this noble task from an early age at home, at school, and in her other activities.
If the mission of women is in motherhood, that of man is summed up in authority, as Pius XII explained:
Husbands, you have been invested with authority. In your home, each of you is the leader, with all the duties and responsibilities that title entails. Do not hesitate, then, to exercise that authority; do not abdicate these duties; do not flee from these responsibilities. Do not let laziness, carelessness, selfishness, and pastimes make you let go of the rudder of the ship of family entrusted to your care.
It is a lofty mission that supposes many qualities, including strength of character, self-control, prudence, kindness, decisiveness, and a sense of duty. By analogy with the human body, if the mother is the heart of the family, the father is the head. Similarly, it is up to men rather than to women to exercise the important responsibilities outside the home in politics or in the business world.
The second consequence of the divine plan concerns specific qualities. As the man has a different role from that of the woman, God has given him different qualities. Ordinarily, we find that men are endowed with a certain height of view, thoughtful and logical judgment, a sense of the abstract and universal. As nature does nothing by chance, these qualities allow them to exercise their leadership role well. As for women, God gave them complementary qualities: more than men, they are endowed with a keen sensibility, tenderness, intuition, tact, and a flair for detail. These qualities allow the woman to fulfill her maternal mission.
Feminism, seeking equality at all costs, wants to erase all differences between men and women, not only in terms of dress, by imposing pants for women, but also socially and professionally. It is unthinkable, say the feminists, that some professions should be reserved for men, and others for women. Yet our Lord chose only men to be priests. This is explained by the fact that the priesthood is a function of authority in the Church. It will be easily recognized that some physically demanding jobs such as movers, legionaries, or firefighter are specifically masculine because men are stronger than women physically. In contrast, motherhood is reserved for women, and all related crafts are better performed by women, because the care of young children requires love, insight, and sensitivity, areas where women are superior to men. Think, for example, of midwives and kindergarten teachers. Note also that there are more women teachers than men teachers, especially of kindergarten and elementary school.
So let us admire the harmony of God’s work. But who says harmony says order, and therefore hierarchy and inequality. In the family, the man is the head, and his wife is his companion, not his servant. By her specific qualities, she brings her husband a precious enrichment that complements his masculine qualities. It is therefore essential that men should be manly and that women develop their feminine qualities. Only on these conditions will the natural and divine order be preserved, and thus the family and society will survive.
We must emphasize the differences because one of the vices of our time is to seek simplification in uniformity.
The disorder of our time consists in the tendency towards a society without classes, beings without a specific nature, life without rules, and humanity without distinctions. In contrast, the society we desire to build is richly differentiated and distinctly hierarchical. It would be impossible to paint a pretty picture were the red not different from the blue. It would be equally impossible to play beautiful music were all notes of the same pitch. Imagine what would happen to us if all the veterinarians decided to be as much as possible like plumbers, and vice versa. Veterinarians would seek to heal animals with the techniques of welding and drainage! Such egalitarianism would not benefit either animals or plumbing. No society can afford to tolerate the idea that animals and plumbing are substantially the same. No society can afford to tolerate the idea that men and women are substantially the same. The more feminine women are and the manlier men are, the better we shall get the genuine, vital order that is the foundation of human happiness.
Many Bishops Resist Latin Mass
With this headline Reuters news agency comments on the Roman Instruction of May 13, 2011 (Feast of Our Lady of Fatima). According to commentaries, many bishops said “they had more pressing issues to deal with or put it on the back burner” (Reuters). The interpretation is therefore, that the new instruction tries to enforce the Motu Proprio of July 7, 2007, which allowed all priests worldwide to celebrate the traditional rite of the Mass.
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