Courtship

JULY 27, 2017

Crisis Magazine

Is Traditional Courtship Really “Unrealistic” Today?

ANTHONY ESOLEN

My imaginary sparring partner Mike has come back with some trepidation, because he never wanted to be maneuvered into saying that he wants to allow the killing of a weak and innocent human being. But now he speaks the language of “realism.”

I have learned, and sometimes to my chagrin, that the Church is almost too realistic for us ordinary sinners to bear. The Church notices that language is for sharing truth, and therefore she forbids not only lying, which most people can avoid, but also that indispensable pleasure of community life, detraction, whereby you tell the truth or a piece of the truth but not for the sake of truth; you tell it to hurt your neighbor. The Church notices that the love of parents for their children is natural and salutary, and therefore she abominates any attempt by a state to sever or to supplant that relationship, and has gone so far as to declare the obvious—for it takes courage in a mad time to declare the obvious. She says that parents are the first and supreme educators of their children. Then we hear from educational bureaucrats that that isn’t “realistic” either.

(How, if not in state institutions, will children learn to read Shakespeare, to understand the important movements and the crucial personages in the history of the world, to be familiar with the physical and human contours of the world’s nations, to grasp as a coherent and systematic whole the grammar of their mother tongue and that of at least one other, to be conversant with great men and women of letters, and to have a basic knowledge of flora and fauna, rock strata, planets and stars as they appear in the sky, and—never mind.)

But Mike has a different kind of realism in mind. It is not realism, but a worldly surrender to the common un-realism of man, who devises spider-web tangles of argument, special pleading, fantasy, and illogic to justify what he wants to do, or not to do.

“I think that it is unrealistic to teach abstinence before marriage,” he says. “So, when birth control fails, there should be a last resort available. I don’t like it, but I don’t see a way around it.”

“Mike, you are right not to like it. But I want to go back to that business about reality.”

“I wasn’t talking about reality, but about what human beings are going to do, even if they are being unreasonable.”

“I understand. May I ask you a blunt question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

“Go ahead.”

“When you first—I’m going to use the Church’s term, and I don’t want you to take it as criticism—when you first fornicated with a girl, what exactly were you thinking?”

He flushes a bit, smiles sadly, and looks at his hands.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

I let that stand for a moment or two. “That’s the easy answer, but I don’t believe it. I am guessing that you were thinking of a hundred things, and very fast, and that your feelings were a mad jumble of contradictions. Did you entirely want to do what you were about to do?”

“I have to be honest?”

“You have to be honest.”

“I was scared to death.”

“Because you were doing what married people do, what your own mother and father did.”

“That thought crossed my mind, but then other thoughts came in, too.”

“Thoughts about a child?”

“Not at first.” Mike starts to move uncomfortably in his chair. “At first I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to, you know.”

“You needn’t tell me the details. But what about that made you afraid? Were you afraid that she wouldn’t love you?”

“I wasn’t even sure she really liked me! But if I ducked out, who knows what she would think, or say about me. I was worried about my reputation.”

“Now that is strange,” I say. “It reminds me about how Augustine described his adolescence. He said that he boasted about shameful things that he had not done, because he was ashamed of not being as shameless as his fellows. Some reputation.”

“That’s the way things are, though.”

“Right. I’ll bet she was worried about that too. But if you were so unsure about whether she loved you, why did you begin to do the thing in the first place?”

“Who says that I was the one that started it?”

I raise my eyebrows involuntarily, but the moment of surprise passes. What he has said is entirely credible.

“Ah, and that explains why you were all the more hesitant to hesitate. You know what occurs to me? What we’re describing here is a perfect haze of uncertainty, untruth, evasion, suspicion, and longing. Would you say that you were happy?”

“I was excited.”

“Obviously. But that’s not what I asked.”

“No,” says Mike. “It was as I told you. I was scared to death. Afterward,” he continues, thinking about it, “after it all I guess I can say that I was happy. Then we just got used to it.”

“Used to it. Not an enthusiastic endorsement of a way of life.”

“No,” he says. “I think that I learned to love her because of the sex.”

“Are you two still together?”

“No, we broke up last year.” He says this with some resignation and sadness, and looks to the window. I wait a few moments.

“You do realize that what you’re describing is utterly backwards.”

“It does seem so. But what was I supposed to do?”

“Do you know anything about what meth addicts feel, once they’ve broken the addiction? They can no longer take pleasure in the ordinary things of life. You might say that their brains are exhausted, all used up when it comes to pleasure. Can you guess where I’m going now?”

“Yes, and it’s not a happy thing to think about.”

“No, not happy at all. Have you ever known the pleasure of a chaste and innocent kiss?”

“Is there any pleasure in that?”

“Think. Let’s suppose that you are living in a time when people do not first take their clothes off and then ask one another their names.”

“That’s harsh!”

“Is it unheard of?”

“No, that happened to one of my roommates.”

“All right. Let’s suppose that everyone understands that sex is for marriage, period, but that boys and girls will naturally go through a period of many years, when they learn about one another, they flirt, they go to dances, they may go together to see a show, they talk, they meet the parents and the brothers and sisters—they may end up falling in love.”

“And they never touch each other?”

“How often do you see boys and girls these days holding hands, in public?”

“I never see it.”

“How often do you see them kissing each other, in public?”

“I never see it.”

“A strangely lonely thing, this life of hedonism. Why do you suppose they don’t hold hands, or kiss, in public?”

“I guess it’s because if they do that, then everyone will know that they are sleeping together.”

“Very strange. But there’s another reason, too. If you notice that people are not doing something rather simple and easy to do, you might well conclude that they simply don’t want to do that. They don’t enjoy it. Why would that be so?”

“Because it doesn’t give them much pleasure, I guess.”

“That could be it. But you see that the problem is not with the hands or the lips. The problem is with the experiences that have come before. The methamphetamine addict cannot really go outdoors and listen to the robins singing. It brings no pleasure anymore. Imagine instead a world that is clean, insofar as a world of fallen human beings is ever going to be so. Imagine then that a boy’s heart would beat a hundred times a minute just at the thought that he might hold the hand of the beautiful girl whom he admires so much—because she is kind and good and merry. Imagine that they have walked aside from a feast at their parish church, to watch the herons wading in the river to catch their fish, and the sun is deepening to orange in the west, and the sounds of children playing come to their ears from far away. Imagine that she too can hardly think of anything else but his presence, and that she is hoping that he will take her hand, though she is a little shy of it. Imagine that that they sit on a bench, and when they run out of things to say, he places his hand upon hers. And they sit like that for a long while.”

“That’s a different world.”

“Yes, it’s a different world. It is the way things used to be, in many places all over the world, and within living memory.”

“How do you know that for certain?”

“I talk to old people. I read things. I keep my eyes open. I knew some of that myself. But let me ask you a question. Wouldn’t that be a better world?”

“I don’t want to judge.”

“Judge the pleasure, then. That boy and girl I have described will remember that moment for the rest of their lives, whether or not they end up marrying one another. It will be a memory filled with the sweetness and the innocence and the promise of youth. It will be a moment without guilt, or shame, or, God forbid, the remembered fear that they might have made a child, one that they were not in the slightest bit ready to care for, and one whose life would be at grave danger as soon as he were conceived. They could stand before God and man without anything for which to apologize.”

“You are saying that they would have a life of greater joy, while we have a life of greater grief and confusion.”

“Did you expect anything different? Did you expect joy to come from hedonism? What hedonistic society in the history of the world was ever joyful?”

“I don’t know enough about history to answer that question.”

“Do you know enough about people at drinking parties to answer it?”

“Yes, I see.”

“There’s one thing sadder than people using alcohol—or drugs—to persuade themselves that they are happy and that they really care about the people they are with.”

“Go ahead, doc. Let me have it. Don’t spare me now.”

“People doing the child-making thing, pretending to love, but afraid to make a child. They are living in an unreal world.”

“They would say that they are living in the real world.”

“People will say anything, won’t they?”

Narcissism

The Weekend Australian 8thJuly2017

Blessed be the egoistic individuals

PAUL KELLY
EDITOR-AT-LARGE

The decline in Christian faith in Australia has direct consequences for public trust in the political system
In the litany of words about the census the core issue has been avoided — the almost certain link between the generational decline in the Christian faith as guide to the common good and the collapsing relationship between the people and the political system.

The reality is staring us in the face. Yet it cannot be spoken, cannot be entertained, cannot be discussed because there is no greater heresy and no more offensive notion than that the loss of Christian faith might have a downside.

Christianity has fallen from 88 per cent of the population in 1966 to 52 per cent today, and seems sure to slide soon below the 50 per cent threshold. It would be absurd to pretend this epic change does not have profound consequences for society since it constitutes the eclipse of a particular conception of human nature.

At the same time the past decade has witnessed a shattering of trust across the Western world including Australia between the people on one hand and politicians and elites on the other. This dysfunction in Australia has multiple causes within politics itself: the identity crisis of the major parties, the rise of negative politics, a selfinterested Senate, leadership failures and internal disunity.

It is obvious, however, there is a deeper problem, that something more profound has gone wrong. The sense of a community of shared values is disintegrating. The most fundamental norms, accepted for centuries, are now falling apart as disputes erupt about family, education, gender, sexuality, marriage, tradition, patriotism, life and death.

The decline in our civic virtue is undisguised, respect for institutional authority has eroded, the idea of a common community purpose is undermined, trust is in retreat but the most important singular development is the transformed notion of the individual — the obsession about individual autonomy in every aspect of life: love, work, race, sex, culture and death. Put harshly but not inaccurately, it is narcissism presented as self-realisation and human rights.

The idea that our democracy is founded on core moral truths about human nature has collapsed

— or is collapsing. Donald Trump’s election as President was driven by fear the American dream had been cancelled and by alarm that elites led a separate life and used power for their selfinterest. But the deeper source was a feeling that the moral foundations of the country were eroding.

Confronting the US dilemma, American writer George Weigel said: “The first step is to recognise that American politics is in crisis because our public moral culture is in crisis. The second step is to recognise that American public moral culture is in crisis because of a false understanding of freedom. And the third step is to recognise that the false notion of freedom evident across the spectrum of American politics is based on a false anthropology: a distorted idea of the human person and human aspiration.”

If this sounds too lofty or too deep, let’s revert to the brilliant 2015 book by New York Times columnist David Brooks, The Road to Character, to offer downto-earth examples of what has happened.

Brooks says: “Psychologists have a thing called the narcissism test. They read people statements and ask if the statements apply to them. Statements such as ‘I show off if I get the chance because I am extraordinary’. The median narcissism score has risen 30 per cent in the last two decades. Ninetythree per cent of young people score higher than the middle score just 20 years ago.

“By 2007, 51 per cent of young people reported that being famous was one of their top personal goals. In one study middle-school girls were asked who they would most like to have dinner with. Jennifer Lopez came in first, Jesus Christ came in second and Paris Hilton third. The girls were then asked which of the following jobs they would like to have. Nearly twice as many said they’d rather be a celebrity’s personal assistant — for example, Justin Bieber’s — than president of Harvard.

“As I look around the popular culture I kept finding the same message everywhere: You are special. Trust yourself. Be true to yourself. Movies from Pixar and Disney are constantly telling children how wonderful they are. Commencement speeches are larded with the same cliches: Follow your passion. Don’t accept limits. Chart your own course. You have a responsibility to do great things because you are so great.”

Brooks argues there has been a “moral shift” in the way parents now raise children and this has permeated through institutions from Girl Scouts to the churches. He quotes a Texas preacher telling his flock: “You were made to excel. You were made to leave a mark on this generation.”

Australian writer Anne Manne, in her 2014 book The Life of I, says: “Changes in our culture have created an economic, social and relational world that not only supports but actually celebrates narcissism, cultivating and embedding it as a character trait.”

She says by the mid-2000s The New York Times declared that narcissism was not only an academic “growth industry” but also the explanation favoured “by columnists, bloggers and television psychologists”.

“Narcissism had become a central problem of our time,” Manne says. She quotes a prophetic passage from the path-breaking 1979 book by Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, where Lasch talks about the preoccupation with self: “People now responded to others as if their actions were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time.”

Manne references the work by academics Keith Campbell and Jean Twenge showing the rise in narcissism over generations. They called the problem an “epidemic”. According to Manne’s summary, Campbell and Twenge concluded that “what makes a child grow into a narcissist is spoiling, indulgence, an absence of moral discipline in building character and a culture of excessive praise, of telling children they are special”.

“The new terror is to be invisible,” Manne says. “As playwright Preston Sturges once quipped, ‘He was forgotten before he was remembered.’ Lena Dunham, the clever and creative writer behind the hit show Girls, put the new sensibility this way: ‘My dad finds Twitter just infinitely unrelatable. He’s like, Why would you want to tell anybody what I had for a snack, it’s private! And I’m like, Why would you even have a snack if you didn’t tell anybody? Why bother eating?’ ”

Now reflect again on Weigel’s bedrock argument: that we have a “distorted idea of the human person and human aspiration”. In a deft juxtaposition, Brooks exposes how far we have come and how far we have fallen.

His book begins with a reflection on the generation of the Depression and World War II — described by writers but not themselves as the “greatest generation”. You might remember them, perhaps they were your parents, the last generation of the universal Christian norm.

What did they achieve?

Apart from suffering economic hardship, they won a war, beat the Germans, beat the Japanese, changed the world, backed their mates, returned home, raised families and contributed to their society. Guess what: they stayed humble. They didn’t beat their chests, didn’t say how great they were, didn’t seek media attention, ask what the country was doing for them, behave like narcissists or declare how extraordinary they were — when they had claims to being extraordinary.

Not only did they not boast about their achievements. Often they refused to even talk about them. How remarkable and humble was that? Brooks quotes Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent, saying: “We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other people.” Brooks says: “Their collective impulse was to warn themselves against pride and selfglorification.”

Many will recall the Australians of that era, a society of 88 per cent Christian nomination. People then had a different view of human nature. Yet their modesty, humility and Christian forbearance makes no sense in today’s world. The past is just a foreign country. Some of their generation went to church, others didn’t, some keenly avoided entering a church. But that was of no account. They were part of a Christian society in its outlook and virtues and view of human nature.

The progressives — and Brooks agrees to a certain extent

— say the world has improved since the 1950s and 60s, when sexism, racism and homophobia were rampant. The truth is that values have changed; some of the changes are good and some are bad. For Brooks, it is a question of character.

He says: “The more I looked into that period, the more I realised I was looking into a different moral country. I began to see a different view of human nature, a different attitude about what is important in life, a different formula for how to live a life of character and depth.”

Brooks does not make the link to Christianity — yet the link is unavoidable. Many of the virtues of the greatest generation are lost or fading. Some people fight to retain them and are traduced as a result. It is impossible, however, to separate those virtues from the Christian norms that were so pervasive at the time. Narcissism was in short supply and never rewarded. In those days Christian virtue was the norm and, critically, it was always the default position.

Christianity shaped not just the view of human nature, individual morality and how people were expected to behave. It also shaped the social norms. American sociologist Charles Murray says: “Religion’s role as a source of social capital is huge.”

Murray refers to Robert Putnam who, in his classic book Bowling Alone, says: “As a rough rule of thumb our evidence shows (that) nearly half of all associational memberships are church-related, half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context.”

As Murray points out, the postwar standards of American society were overwhelmingly shaped by religious norms. There was near universal marriage, divorce was rare, television shows mirrored “the American way of life”, in films there were no four-letter words, nudity or sex, crime was low, few people even in poor neighbourhoods had served prison time and there was virtually no problem with illegal drugs.

On the other hand, people drank like fish and smoked like chimneys. The south was racially segregated, racial disadvantage was huge, the civil rights movement was about to erupt, women were held back, pollution in some cities had become untenable, poverty was disguised but widespread. The cultural revolution seeded in the 60s was at hand. It was an irresistible tidal wave propelled by a changing world, technology and a baby-boom generation.

As Murray says, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had appeared in 1962 triggering the environmental movement, Ralph Nader had begun his critique of the auto industry on behalf of consumers, Bob Dylan’s theme songs were being released and the Beatles had captured the youth of the West. Each of these events would resonate in Australia.

The rise of progressive values in the name of freedom and justice would march in parallel with the decline of religious faith. Put another way, they were different sides of the same coin. Eventually, the revolution took judicial and legal form. The greatest institution that embodied the new social order was the US Supreme Court.

In a series of judgments, the court redefined the idea of freedom and human nature. Weigel captures this, quoting from the majority decision in the 1992 planned parenthood case. “At the heart of liberty,” the judges said, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.” Led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, this philosophy was repeated in the more recent decision to impose samesex marriage.

At this point individual autonomy and human rights (what some might call “the Big Me”) replaced the concept of an objective moral order founded in the Christian tradition. The notion of a Godordained morality was swept aside along with its view of mankind as more than a bundle of desires to be sanctified as human rights. Man, not God, was enshrined at the centre of the universe.

The judges reflected the spirit of the age and the cultural revolution that had transformed the West. The idea of freedom was separated from a higher order moral duty and tied to personal self-realisation and self-esteem. Narcissism was legitimised. Weigel says: “There is no claim here that the American democratic experiment rests on self-evident moral truths.” The upshot was a society of many truths; each person was granted autonomy to decide his or her own moral truth.

What does this mean for politics?

It requires little insight to conclude such a society and culture that prioritises a cult of “individualism” when translated into the political sphere is less cohesive and united, more divided over existing norms, less willing to accept the decisions and compromises of political leaders, far more difficult for politicians to manage and persuade and, above all, from which to extract a working majority position. In short, governing is harder, the gap between politicians and public more difficult to bridge and the society divided at its essence.

There is, however, an even deeper problem.

As the moral status of the church declines, the moral status of progressive ideology grows. Vacuums will be filled. Because the Christian ethos was tied to the past and tradition, it became a target for the new ideology of personal freedom. This is founded in the view that settler societies such as America and Australia have failed to come to terms with the racism, indigenous exploitation, sexism, patriarchy and monoculturalism at their heart. The task of community leaders was once to uphold the values of the civilisation; now, more often than not, it is to dismantle them.

Pivotal to this transition is the progressive attack on the Aristotelian framework that made the West a success. This concept was articulated at various stages by the popes, notably Leo XIII and Pius XI. As outlined by Tulsa University professor Russell Hittinger, this envisages three “necessary” elements for human happiness: domestic society (marriage and family), faith and church and, finally, political society. A brief reflection might confirm the wisdom of this framework.

It is, however, now being dismantled in the new and manic crusade of human freedom. Progressive doctrine denies any preferred model for family structure since that would be prejudicial and discriminatory; it now approaches its ultimate objective in the realm of faith — to drive religion from the public square and reject the role of religion and church as a mobiliser of social capital in a secular society.

The final logic is that everything depends upon politics. As the society of family and marriage becomes mired in confusion, as the society of church and religion is the target of assault, so the society of politics is being asked to assume a role and burden utterly beyond its capacity and guaranteed to leave community-wide unhappiness.

The tripartite design that made the West such a workable and successful proposition is being torn part. Once dismantled, it cannot be put back together. This is being done in the name of justice, rights and progress. There was an inevitability about the decline of Christian faith, but there was nothing inevitable about the dismal pretender that presents as its replacement.

The rise of progressive values in the name of freedom and justice would march in parallel with the decline of religious faith. Put another way, they were different sides of the same coin

LGBTIQ???

Article from Into The Deep July 2017

LGBTIQ

There is a joke about a patient in a psychiatrist’s waiting room who introduces himself to another patient as Napoleon. The other bloke asks him how he came to realise he was Napoleon. Napoleon answers confidently, “Jesus told me!” Another patient pipes up indignantly from the other side of the waiting room, “No, I didn’t!” If this joke was about gender confusion, we wouldn’t be able to laugh. If it was about a man who thought he was a woman, we’d be expected to suspend all reality and accept what he believed himself to be, what he “identified as”. This is what the LGBTI brigade demands of us. LGBTI stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex; sometimes a Q is added for queer. And there are plenty more. Most of these “identities” relate simply to who they want to have sex with, or how. Some of these individuals are quietly misled or misguided, and some are battling privately with their own demons. These people deserve our sympathy and patience. But the activists, the lobbyists, the vicious, vocal, anti-religious, anti-freedom-of-speech, intolerant LGBTIQ brigade, I have had more than enough of. I’m sick of them thrusting their “sexual preferences” into the spotlight and trying to force us to consider these normal. I’m sick of seeing the acronym LGBTIQ plastered everywhere, and I’m sick of the “gay pride” events that make everyone celebrate the deviant sexual activities of some. I propose another meaning for LGBTIQ: Logic – Get Back To It (Quickly!). We all know that human beings are either male or female. We know that men and women are different. And we know we are complementary. Male and female together “work” – we are designed that way, two halves, made to be a whole. A man and a woman join in marriage and their sexual differences join perfectly to create new life, children that can grow and mature in the shelter of their parents’ love. We all know what is normal and natural and (bio)logical. Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied into submission by those who try to convince the world that men can be women, girls can be boys, a man can have a husband or a woman can have a wife (or any combination thereof), or children can be born to parents of the same sex. The vast majority of us has been silenced, afraid to speak of logic. We know that if we say a man in a dress is still a man, we’ll be accused of being bigots; or if we claim that marriage is between a man and a woman, we’re haters; or if we think children need a mother and father, we’re judgemental. It made me look up the old story of the Emperor’s new clothes. Hans Christian Andersen wrote a profound little tale (published in 1837) about a couple of swindlers who came into town and claimed to be brilliant weavers of the finest cloth. The cloth was invisible to all who were unfit for their office or who were “unusually stupid”. The Emperor paid the thieves a fortune for his fine new clothes, and no one was game to admit that they couldn’t see a thing. He undressed and put on his new clothes and paraded through town. Everyone in the streets exclaimed how fine the Emperor’s new clothes looked because no one wanted to be seen as being unusually stupid. It took an innocent child to say, “But he hasn’t got anything on!” This little child gave the adults courage to state the obvious and the whole town in the end “cried out at last” that the Emperor had nothing on. Where is our innocent child to speak the obvious truth? Where is our courage? Or do we just go along with the pretence of the swindlers? Surely the majority of us still believe in logic. Let’s Get Back To It. Quickly.
Ed.