Provocative thought for the day...

"Well", said George to his beloved girlfriend, Gemma, after they had had a bit of tiff, "Girls do tend to take things more personally, you know, Gemma".

"I don't!" retorted Gemma, thereby instantly (and unwittingly) proving George's very point.

"Exactly my point, darling!" cried George. But Gemma couldn't see it, proving George's point even more thoroughly. George found it hard to suppress a chuckle which only made Gemma furious.

"Women", declared Gemma, "have many faults but men have only two. Everything they say and everything they do!" and flounced off in a huff.

"Oh right!" called George as Gemma's back receded into the distance, "what Feminist cookbook did that come out of?".

It was perhaps an unwise reply as Gemma carefully stored it up for a later occasion. Much later, after a very pleasant dinner á deux at her flat, when George was eloquently admiring her culinary skills, she slyly claimed to be surprised that he liked the recipe since it had come "out of a Feminist cookbook". Touché, thought Gemma gleefully to herself, that'll teach you!

George, thought Gemma, has not learnt the lesson of his own first discovery: we women do take things personally so be careful what you say to us! In so thinking, she was effectively tacitly admitting that George was quite right in the first place. But no way was she going to admit that to George. Not on your nelly!

And so it goes. The unfailingly fascinating, sometimes irritating, never-ending mystery of the relationship between the sexes (or "genders" as the Feminists inaccurately insist upon mis-calling them).

Today, however, there is a fly in the ointment. Indeed that is to put the problem rather mildly.

Feminism really has had a major impact upon society and upon the relationships between people. It really has changed the way we look at each other. But has it been for the best?

Our not so very fictional Gemma is not really a Feminist but she had, like so many others of her age and generation, picked up the jargon of that particular ideology since it had been thrust upon her from an early age at school, by her peers, by TV, film and the media, by government and the law and by so many key organs of society as a whole, even by the Church.

It would have been a miracle if she had not been affected by it. The fact that it seemed to lend respectability to every gripe that a girl might have against a boy naturally gave the ideology an additional attraction.

But what has been the real legacy of this ideology which we call Feminism?

Lara Croft, played by Feminist actress Angelina Jolie, is a kind of fantasy-model for many modern Feminists. Jolie adulterously stole another woman's husband and now lives with him, unmarried, with various children both adoptive and "biological".

Let's just sit back for a minute and look at it objectively - if we can, that is, now that it is virtually the official ideology of most Western countries in the formerly Christian Diaspora.

The most odious legacy of Feminism has undoubtedly been the gigantic change of law in relation to procured abortion. This was, from first to last, the one really big project of radical Feminism, aided and abetted by those unscrupulous men who saw in it an advantage for themselves.

Early Rad Fems like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and lapsed Catholic Germaine Greer endorsed this as the big aim and later Rad Fems have pushed for more and more liberal abortion and other so-called "reproductive rights".

There are now something like 42 million abortions per year according to various sources including the "pro-choice" Alan Guttmacher Institute and PP's Family Planning Perspectives. That's about 115,000 per day.

"Pro-choice" Speaker of the US House of Representatives, "Catholic" Feminist Nancy Pelosi, is another role model for many so-called "Christian" Feminists.

Since the 1970s there have probably been something approaching 1 billion babies aborted, in total, and possibly many more.

When you realise that the population of the entire world is only about 6.7 billion then that is a terrifying statistic.

We rightly agonize over the terrible fate of some 6 million Jews who died during what the Jews now call the Shoah or "disaster".

But what of the abortion Shoah?

According to "pro-choicers" this little cutie was "just a blob of cells" when in the womb and could be justly destroyed therein, her "silent scream" unheard by her heartless killers. And yet there are hundeds of millions like her...

Who will cry for these holy innocents, the children of wrath, done away with through the compliance of their own mothers and often fathers, too?

"Rachel weeps and will not be comforted, for her children are no more" [Jeremiah 31:15].

But what of the hard-hearted who do not weep for their children? What of those by whose own hand their very children were destroyed? Well, even many of them come to weep in later life. The enormity of their actions comes back to haunt them so strong in man is the call of the natural law. This terrible depression and sadness is called "post-abortion syndrome" and now afflicts many millions upon millions of women who are, too, the victims of radical Feminism.

"Rachel weeps and will not be comforted for her children are no more..."

This is the real legacy of radical Feminism.

But that is not all.

The divinely noble and completely unique vocation of motherhood, that mystical vocation by which the human race is continued and perpetuated, is degraded and even mocked by Feminists.

By such mocking the very Mother of God herself is mocked and the most sublime vocation is slighted and abused. And if she is mocked then so is God mocked for He prizes no creature more greatly than He does His own mother, the most Blessed Virgin Mary, our tainted nature's solitary boast.

She who should be the prime model for all women, the Immaculate Conception herself, is slighted and belittled. Modesty, a supreme courtesy, gentleness, humility, docility, long-suffering, patience, deep wisdom and above all charity - these virtues that were supremely those of the Blessed Virgin - are also mocked whenever our Holy Mother is mocked and never more so than by Feminism which might fairly be described as the principal anti-Marian heterodoxy.

I have heard some so-called Christian Feminists saying that women are the "gentler" sex, more "people-oriented" and more caring. Apart from the intrinsic self-contradiction in making such a discriminatory about the entire male sex whilst, simultaneously, complaining of discrimination by men, the statement is anyway dubious.

Some Feminists even go so far as to extol withcraft and devil-worship, pretending to distinguish between good and bad "magic" powers.

Some women are gentler and more caring but some aren't. The Feminists are a prime example of those who so often aren't. Where is the gentility and care in defending the abortion of a defenceless, innocent babe in the womb? And on such a vast and terrifying scale?

The divorce courts are clogged with applications by women seeking to divorce their husbands on the advice and encouragement of a great array of Feminist friends, advisers, counsellors and lawyers.

Fully 75% of divorce petitions in the UK are brought by women - the same in the USA.

The result is yet another disaster for the children born of such broken marriages who then become a tool in the divorce battle.

Few people realise the extent to which the divorce courts, so thoroughly and institutionally "sexist" (to use the favourite Feminist buzz word) but in the wife's favour, frequently strip the husband bare and degrade him before his children to the supposed advantage of the wife. He is ousted from his home (which he may have paid for 100%), is often prevented from seeing his children and is humiliated time and again by the courts. This directly leads to the sad statistical fact that 55% of fathers, within 5 years of the divorce, never see their children again until they have grown up.

Heather Mills explaining why she should have got even more millions in her divorce from Paul McCartney.

The Feminists seek to blame this upon men, of course, but the blame more often lies with the Feminists themselves who persuade the wife that divorce is her moral right and in her best interests. In fact, many wives who were persuaded by Feminists that divorce would be to their advantage, later deeply regret their decision.

Feminists would have men re-created in a Feminist-preferred image (a bit like Lenin's "new Soviet man") but they can never decide what that image is. They are only agreed that it is not like the image which God has given us in the Holy Family.

How many girls remember with the deepest love and affection their own fathers in whom they see God the Father and St Joseph? Yet out of the mouths of some of these very same girls will come the odious words of Feminism castigating all men for "oppressing" women over the centuries. Does God the Father oppress women? Did St Joseph "oppress" women?

How many girls remember with deepest love and affection their own fathers? But when they mouth offensive Feminist slogans against men they should remember that they are abusing other girls' equally beloved fathers, not to mention all those men saints, not least St Joseph himself.

Radical Feminists, and even some supposedly "Christian" Feminists, pretend that God is not a Father at all but really some kind of immanentist "Goddess", an idea with which the most savage and primitive of heathens and pagans would have been at home.

I once heard, from the mouth of a well-known Feminist nun, the arrogant words "What's so great about humble?!". She is now an ex-nun and, indeed, now openly admits what has for a long time been true, that she is also an ex-Catholic. Here, indeed, is a modern version of the "foolish virgin" of Scripture.

Among those who suffer the most deeply from radical Feminism are the children who are often emotionally traumatised for the rest of their lives. The government complains that fathers are absent from the lives of children so that the children suffer but whose fault is that? The very same hypocritical government which allows the divorce courts and the Feminists to bring about this situation in the first place!

Feminism also encourages women to "have it all" - job, career, glitzy lifestyle, "arm candy" or "trophy" husband (get a new one if the old one doesn't match up!), "trophy" children (but not too many, now!) and the whole "me first" and "I love me best" culture of rotten selfishness and self-obsession.

It is this very self-obsession that causes people most harm - psychological, emotional, spiritual and even, ultimately, material.

Few people are as unhappy as the self-obsessed and that includes all too many Feminists.

Many young girls are positively badgered into careers they don't want, to avoid the marriage and family they want (often until it is too late) and to expect to get only the richest, most beautiful, most famous and most intelligent of husbands and to reject all the rest.

This absurdly self-obsessive view often prevents many a young girl from finding a perfectly good and loving husband in foolish anticipation of finding a man with the brain of Einstein, the looks of Robert Redford, the money of Bill Gates and the charm and spirituality of Pope Benedict.

Needless to say such a man simply does not exist.

What a blight upon the life of an innocent young girl with so much to look forward to in life if she is cheated out of marriage by such absurdly excessive expectations.

This is the terrible legacy of Feminism. What error, ironically, could be more harmful to women? Or more afflicting to the already much-afflicted heart of our Lady?

It is truly one of the prime heresies of our age and has re-crucified the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart, and the Just Heart of our good father and lord, St Joseph, more savagely, remorselessly and cruelly than many another heresy.

When "Christian" Feminists abuse men do they mean to include the saints like St Joseph? It's funny how they never bother to make an exception for them...

It strikes right at the heart of the Holy Family by attacking the very foundations of the idea of the family, of motherhood and fatherhood, and of the Divine fatherhood of God, the motherhood of our Lady and the humble justice and charity of the fatherhood of St Joseph.

From such evil, good Lord deliver us all!

Ab omnia mala, libera nos Domine!

Have mercy upon us for so far forgetting the perfect model of our Blessed Lady, the Queen of Heaven, who is the model for all women and, indeed, for everyone, man or woman.

Let us take a leaf out of the book of the blessed St Mary Magdalene who had once been a woman of ill repute and evil life but turned to God and became a true lover of God and men and one of the greatest of Christian mystics.

So greatly did God reciprocate the sorrow for sin of this once fallen woman, and esteem her humility, that He did not hesitate to give her the great grace of seeing Him first after His Resurrection. God resists the proud but he lifts up the humble and contrite to the greatest heights.

That, after all, is the meaning of Christianity and Redemption. Man sinned but God raised him (and her), after redemption, to even higher still heights. So great is the love of God. In the words of the Magnificat:

"He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble."

Let us then pray to our Lady and to the Magdalene, the great saint and mystic, that they will teach us to re-learn again to be humble and contrite for our sins.

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam...






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