In the series of which this is the third and last part, I have ... in fact ... been meditating upon the passages in S Ambrose's commentary upon S Luke; passages which the Church gives us clerics of the Latin Rite to read at Mattins on the Wednesday and Friday during this Ember Week of Advent.
So now I invite you to apply the cultural analyses I have been drawing from Homer, to S Ambrose's Book 2 in Lucam. Here are a few extracts.
"The Angel went in to [Mary]. Learn that she was a virgin by her way of life; learn it by her modesty; learn it by the Angel's word; learn it by the Mystery. It is the characteristic of virgins to tremble, and to be afraid whenever a man enters; to fear every utterance of a man. Women should learn to imitate the resolve of her chastity. Alone in the innermost parts of the house, so that no man might see her, that only the Angel should find her; alone, without comrade, without a witness, lest she be corrupted by any ignoble address, she receives the greeting of the Angel ...
"... When Mary heard this, not as if unbelieving concerning his words, nor uncertain about his news nor doubtful about his example, but joyful for prayer, religious for duty, hasty for joy, she went to the hill-country. For, indeed, being now full of God, where should she go with haste except to the higher places? ... Mary, who previously lived alone in the most private recesses, was not delayed by the modesty of virginity from going out into the public realm, nor did the harshness of the mountains keep her from keenness, nor the difficulty of the journey from her duty ... Virgins: learn not to run around (circumcursare) other peoples' houses, not to hang around in the streets, not to gossip together in public. Mary was late leaving her home, but speedy once she was in public, and stayed with her cousin for three months."
Presumably, the habits S Ambrose castigates did exist, or he would not have wasted his time criticising them. It is the assumptions he can share with his hearers about what constitutes modest and decent behaviour that I wish to highlight.
Our society has lost, it seems to me, the entire concept of female modesty. This has been replaced by the bizarre notion that women can dress themselves and conduct themselves as shamelessly as they please and as publicly as they desire, but that a man who is misled into drawing inept conclusions from this is self-condemned.
I do not think our Christian forebears or the Greeks for whom Homer wrote or the Italian congregations to whom S Ambrose preached would have had any doubt that our society has been driven completely and incomprehensibly insane ... barking mad. To our shame, our Islamic neighbours are more likely to understand Christian and pagan antiquity, Homer and S Ambrose, than we are.
We are the strangers, the crazy misfits, the arrogant out-of-place tourists who plant our inappropriate and unwelcome feet in every other country, in every other culture, on every other age of history.
And we are so pleased with ourselves.
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11 comments:
So true, alas!
"To our shame, our Islamic neighbours are more likely to understand Christian and pagan antiquity, Homer and S Ambrose, than we are."
Quite true. To this day, the Copts of Egypt sit on opposite sides of the church for their liturgies, even their youth liturgies for singles, and this practice antedates the time of the Islamic invasion.
And Orthodox Jews in every country have a separate "women's gallery" in their synagogues, and this is not understood as demeaning. In fact, the "rebbetzin" (wife of the Rabbi) has been known to give halachic rulings when the Rabbi is not at home!
Father you've tied this all together very well. In many ways, our Western Society is completely barking mad. Your final sentence is powerful. Thank you
Few things lovelier in this world than true femininity and its ancillary: feminine modesty in dress, speech, and behavior. But radical feminism has destroyed all that, while promoting the grotesqueries of drag queens indoctrinating young children and men pretending to be women. The consequent feminization of society and its attendant loss of male virtue and virility have produced the intended consequences, on full display for all to see. The Left has used (and abused) women very astutely for their agenda.
Fascinating! Quaeritur: When did transgression of the feminine space become commonplace, and is there a class aspect to that change? My education has been deficient (many lacunae!), so that, for instance, I have learned much by reading Patrick O'Brian's novels. I recall that Dr. Maturin was invited into a boudoir in Paris during the Corsican's Wars with no hint of subsequent amorous activities. Was that a specifically French situation, or "collateral damage" from the Revolution?
Presumably there was a time in Britain when men and women ceased to sit separately in church, and started to sit by families in family pews. I cannot think of any trace of this change that has been left in the historical record.
This has been an excellent series of posts!
I think women are the biggest victims of their own liberation, as clearly illustrated by the frustration of so many prominent feminists in the face of the trans madness. However, should it be so surprising that the aspiration of women to be men with vaginas should eventually lead to men wishing to be women with penises? The latter is rightly regarded as insane, but why wasn't the same judgement originally taken of the feminist aspiration?
Personally, I remember the men and boys on one side and the women and girls on the other of our parish church in early seventies rural Ireland.
You are right, as usual, Magister Johannes. But I can't help feeling this sneaking suspucion that St Ambrose may have been afflicted by a certain anti-marriage prejudice that his famous and even greater protege, St Augustine, seemed to suffer from. I hope I sm wrong - I feel like St Thomas Aquinas who said wrt St Augustine that when he criticised A, he felt like he was criticising his own father.
AvB.
On the subject of women's separation, in my experience in southern Germany (Bavaria, the Tyrol etc) the norm survives in many rural churches of separation with women on the left, despite the very liberal Church, and modern society. It remain a sort of folk-custom, and gives the boys the wonderful right of passage when they cross over in their early teens to sit with their fathers. For this reason becoming a man is something to aspire to, and as a result they also retain guilds of male altar servers, several generations together, notwithstanding the dire modern liturgy.
Whether this contributes to greater respect for women in wider society I do not know, but by the principle of cause and effect it seems probable.
The separate seating arrangements for men and women at Christ Church, Bromley, an Anglican church in the Evangelical tradition, so enraged the local archdeacon that he wanted to take legal action against their vicar under the Equalities Act. That was only 12 years ag0; I don't think they have changed their policy since.
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