THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The following are some writings from
Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand - one of the great minds of the modern Church. No blog composition on the Chapel Veil would be complete without giving proper attention to the Christian dignity of women...
(Priests4Life) - My dear young friend:
I know that young girls like secrets, and I am going to share one with you. God has chosen your sex for you; He made you to be a girl. You know that girls today are often told by feminists that the Church is "sexist" and has "discriminated" against them from the very beginning. She is accused of having treated them as "inferior", less talented, less gifted, made to be man’s servants. She has denied them power in the Church, and prohibited them from receiving the highest honor, to be ordained to the priesthood and so on.
No doubt, you have heard this siren song, because the media are good when it comes to spreading this negative message. And this is why, to rebut these false claims, I would like to make you realize that women – far from being discriminated against – have been granted a unique place by God in the work of redemption. The beauty of their mission is already hinted at in the Old Testament, but it finds its fulfillment only in the New, that is in the sweet Mother of our Savior; in Mary, the gentle Maid of Nazareth who was chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Redeemer.
Let us take off our "secular" eyeglasses, and then we shall be able to see that women, far from being "discriminated" against, are in many ways privileged. And this is the "secret" I wish to share with you. The body of every little girl born into this world is mysteriously sealed by what is properly called the "veil of virginity". That is to say, a "secret" is entrusted to her body, and a secret is always "veiled". According to Christian teaching, this veil closes the entrance to a mysterious garden which belongs to God in a special way, and for this reason cannot be entered into except with His express permission, the permission that God grants spouses in the Sacrament of Matrimony. Any little girl aware of this "mystery" will feel that her body is to be modestly clothed, so that its secret will be hidden from lewd looks.
Little girls, of course, grow up. How beautiful when a bride can say to her husband on their wedding night, "I have kept this garden virginal for you, and now, with God’s permission I am giving you its key, knowing that you will enter into it with reverence".
Moreover, when a wife conceives a few hours after her husband has embraced her, God creates the child’s soul in her body, (as you certainly know, neither husband nor wife can produce the human soul; God alone can create it.) In other words, there is a personal "contact" between God and the woman which, once again, gives to the female body a note of sacredness. Don’t forget that He whom the whole universe cannot contain, was "hidden" in the womb of the Holy Virgin for nine months. Once you realize this, you will be awe-filled for the double mystery that God has confided to you: to conceive a human being made to God’s image and likeness, and to give birth to it in pain and anguish. Do not forget that it was also in pain and anguish that Christ re-opened for us the gates of paradise – which had been shut by sin. To women has been granted the awesome privilege of nobly suffering so that a new human being, made to God’s image and likeness, might come into the world. Meditate upon this for a moment, and you will feel a deep reverence for your body. It belongs to God, and is not a "play thing" that you can dispose of as you please.
If you ever study pagan art, you will discover that it pays tribute to the male reproductive organ, representing it in various sculptures and paintings as a symbol of strength, virility, creativity, power. But from the very moment that the Catholic Church became a recognized religion, she fought relentlessly against this pagan cult. But the Church introduced a prayer uttered millions of times every single day in which the female organ par excellence, the "womb" is mentioned. "Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus". I am sure, my dear young friend, that if you meditate on this, you will understand that it is a privilege to be born a woman, and will respect the mystery that God has put in the female body.
Thank God that He has made you to be born a woman; I am sure now that you understand that it is a great privilege.
Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand
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(Casorosendi) - Woman’s religious mission
But let me turn to the question of feminism which has been one of my great concerns. Feminism started as a sort of revolt against sometimes very unfair and unjust treatment of women and one of my delights at City University, day after day, was how stupid my colleagues considered me. For a long time I was the only woman in the Department. And they used to say "A woman, how can you teach philosophy?" It’s very tragic, but what can you do? There is a history of male accomplishments.
If you read the Gospel, women play a very secondary role. Even the Holy Virgin is mentioned very rarely and speaks very little. The very moment that you put on supernatural lenses you are going to come to the strange conclusion that it is a privilege to be a woman. It is a privilege precisely because, to be in the background, from a secularistic point of view, to be humiliated, which often happens, is a tremendous supernatural advantage.
This is something St. Teresa understood so profoundly. It is not true that to be humiliated is to be inferior. It is not true that to be subject to one’s husband is to be inferior. If you read the Gospel of St. Luke when Christ was found in the Temple in Jerusalem and then went back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, it is said "He was subject to them".
Would you like to be in the situation of St. Joseph or in the situation of Mary? St. Joseph had original sin and was a creature. Mary had no original sin and was a creature. And the Child Jesus was God. And Who was subject to whom? God was subject to these creatures. It’s not a comfortable position to give orders to someone who is Divine. Therefore to be subject does not mean to be inferior, but it means simply the supernatural outlook that to accept humiliation is to come very close to God, because that is our way to Paradise. It’s a blessing. But I claim that women have a particularly religious mission.
Why a religious mission?
Because women, by their very nature are more receptive than men. You see this in the mystery of the sexual sphere. The woman is receptive, which doesn’t mean passive. That was one of the dreadful confusions made by Aristotle, that he identified passivity and receptivity and then declared the male superior to the female, which is a pagan nonsense.
The woman has a great advantage over the human male, she is receptive and religiously speaking, receptivity is a crucial virtue. The Holy Virgin taught us that when she said at the Annunciation "Be it done to me according to Thy Word". She wasn’t doing, she said "be it done". In other words she was receptive and her receptivity enabled the Holy Spirit to fecundate her and at that very moment the Son of God was made incarnate in her womb.
St. Teresa of Avila and St. Peter Alcantara say that many more women than men receive extraordinary mystical graces, and if you study the history of mysticism you will be amazed how many more women than men were mystics. Why? They are more receptive and you see, towards God we are all females. A saint becomes a male saint because he learned to be receptive to God’s grace. "Give it to me, O Lord, I cannot do it by myself".
The mystery of femininity
The woman is in a very particular way the guardian of purity and in the world in which we live, the world of sexual perversions and disaster, maybe it can be said this is because women have failed in their mission to stand for purity.
And why do I say she stands for purity and for virginity?
There’s something very interesting. If you look at the liturgy there are special Masses for popes, for apostles, martyrs, non-martyrs, confessors, non-confessors and when you turn to women, you have only two categories, virgin/non-virgin, martyr/non-martyr. This is something extremely interesting. There is no Mass for celibates, none, but there is a Mass for virgins.
This indicates very plainly that there is something extraordinarily great and mysterious about femininity. And why do I say it is so great and so mysterious? Because you all know that every little girl that is born, is born with a seal, so to speak, protecting the mystery of her femininity, which is the womb. There is a seal and if you understand, a seal always indicates something which is sacred. The seal, which doesn’t exist in the male body, is profoundly symbolic and says this belongs to God in a special way. This is a sphere which is so beautiful and so profound that it cannot be touched upon, except with God’s permission, in a Catholic marriage.
When a girl or young woman is permitted to give the keys of this mysterious domain, this closed garden, to her husband-to-be, she says: "Up until now I have kept this garden virginal, now God has given me the keys and is allowing me to give them to you and I know that you will penetrate into it, with trembling reverence and gratitude". The moment that a woman is embraced by her husband and a few hours afterwards she conceives, in this very moment, something absolutely amazing happens which once again illuminates the greatness of femininity. Neither husband nor wife can create a human soul. God alone can.
Of course there is the male seed and there is the female egg. These are material realities that God has put into the bodies and when they are united, an amazing thing happens. God creates a new human soul, totally new, which never existed before. Where? In the mystery of the female body. This is where the soul is conceived. It has nothing to do with the husband. The husband is out of the game at this point and the very moment that God creates a soul he implies that there is a special contact between God and the female body, so to speak, touching it in creating it. Once again, what an extraordinary privilege.
Sacred veiling
And this is why the female body should be veiled because everything which is sacred calls for veiling. When Moses came down form Mount Sinai, he veiled his face. Why did he veil his face? Because he had spoken to God and at that very moment there was a sacredness that called for veiling.
Now the stupid feminists after Vatican II suddenly "discovered" that when women go to Church veiled, it is a sign of their inferiority. The man takes off his hat and the woman puts on a veil. My goodness, how they have lost the sense of the supernatural. Veiling indicates sacredness and it is a special privilege of the woman that she enters church veiled.
You see the Church recognises things so profoundly that in some way you can say she has always recognised the special dignity granted to women. You cannot be a Christian and not recognise the privilege that it is to be a woman, because the most perfect of all creatures, the only creature born without original sin, is a woman and therefore once again you understand the extraordinary privilege of being one and having this image of the Holy Virgin, who was both Virgin and Mother and the two go beautifully together.
Virginity and maternity
It’s not so that if you remain a virgin you are going to have no children. The women who have most children are virgins. Mother Teresa of Calcutta had millions of children. You know in the best of cases women can have 18 or 20. Today they no longer do that, but it used to be the case. But if you are a virgin and you give yourself completely and totally, you become a mother to millions of people, begging for your help and begging for love because basically, what is maternity? Maternity is so holy, because it is to accept to suffer that someone may be born and therefore there is a beautiful parallel between maternity and the sacrifice of the Cross.
Christ accepted to die that we may be re-born to Eternal Life. In some way you can see this charism of women. Either virginity which can be combined with maternity or maternity without virginity are so sublime and are so beautiful that these two charisms are incompatible with the priesthood. They just don’t go together. The moment that you realise you have a maternal vocation, the moment that you realise you are called to virginity, it excludes the priesthood. They don’t go together. You cannot have all the charisms and what a blessing that men have the priesthood, because otherwise they could develop complexes of inferiority which would be a catastrophe because they don’t like it. As a matter of fact I think they would be very disturbed suddenly to realise the greatness of femininity.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta said "A woman cannot become a priest. There was only one creature on earth who could say with truth ‘This is My Body, This is My Blood’, the Holy Virgin and she was not chosen to be a priest." Therefore let us accept and realise to be a priest as St. Paul says quite explicitly, God chooses who is going to be a priest and he happens to have chosen the male sex. However, some stupid women would like to sell the privilege of their femininity, the mystery of their femininity, the sacredness of their femininity, their maternal vocation, to become priests and to steal it from men who have received it from God Himself. The Church has always honoured women in an extraordinary way.
Overcoming the evil of feminism
If you study pagan art, you will see that the pagans glorified the male genitals. The male organ was considered to be the symbol of strength and power. If you go to Pompeii or to Athens, to pagan countries, the male organ was always the one that was honored.
When the Church took over, she waged war on this pagan cult. She eliminated it, she fought against it. Sometimes you find remnants in pagan cultures, but the very moment the Church came it was officially eliminated and what did she do? She replaced it by a prayer, prayed by millions of people, day after day, century after century, which makes an explicit reference to the female organ par excellence, the womb: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus". That is the place that the Church gives to women in the Church.
Therefore let us realize the tremendous greatness of the mission women have received and make them realize that they have to wake up to the greatness of this mission, to fight for it and to overcome the catastrophe and evil of feminism.
I have not chosen to be a woman, but the more I meditate on the Christian message, I am grateful I am one.
Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand
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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The following are some writings from Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand - one of the great minds of the modern Church. No blog composition on the Chapel Veil would be complete without giving proper attention to the Christian dignity of women...
9 comments:
You know, your poll on veiling needs another option. I would love to veil - the more I read about it the more I want to - but it would cause too many problems at this time in my parish. I already stand out because I receive on the tongue, and the few of us who do so have been rebuked publicly for doing so, and harassed for genuflecting in line. Wearing a view would just be like a red rag at this point.
Lucyna Maria, I've never been able to construct a perfect poll. Every one I've done has always had something wrong with it. The truth is, I think if I tried to cover every possible option the poll would be 40 or 50 questions long, and that just doesn't seem real practical to me.
So I use the poll as a teaching method as well as an outlet for people to voice their opinions. The poll is also designed to make a point. The veil is a Biblical custom which was universal among all Christian women for centuries, but then it fell out of use (very recently), and only in certain places of the world. Why? The answer is feminism - militant feminism that is.
People sometimes try to point out to me that the veil is no longer a part of western culture. I won't believe that until men start leaving their ball caps on during the prayer at baseball games. Still, the point is made - frequently. To which I have only one response. I ask them "So what are you going to do when Western culture falls?" It is going to fall you know. The cyclic nature of history dictates that it must happen - sooner or later - eventually. You didn't really think Western culture would last for ever (in its current form) did you? Some day our culture will be gone. Some day it will be replaced by another culture. Hopefully that culture will be based in Christianity at least, and ideally Catholicism. But until then we wait for the inevitable.
So when our current western culture falls, and if you happen to still be alive when it does, will you veil then? If then, why not now? The veil has been around so much longer than western culture. It's a custom that is more stable than our entire western world. Nations have risen and fallen. Empires have come and gone. Cultures have appeared, changed and then disappeared. Yet through it all, the chapel veil remains.
Peer pressure can be a tough thing. I know it's hard. But the fact is, women in your parish, and most parishes, will never return to the veil if all of them are afraid to thanks to peer pressure. Peer pressure is one of Satan's greatest weapons, and he uses it in our own churches. The only thing that can overcome it is courage, and courage comes from God.
I know it's hard. I know it's easier to blend in, and nobody wants to rock the boat. However, when it comes to a woman wearing the veil, if people are giving her a hard time about it, it is they who are rocking the boat and not her.
The best advice I can give you is to pray about it, and ask God for the courage to do the right thing whatever that may be. You should remember this. A second woman will never veil herself at mass, until the first woman takes the initiative. A third woman will never do it either, until the first and second have led the way. It's hard to be a trend setter. It means having to endure people's attention, and sometimes their disapproval.
Of course there is a way to slowly ease into the practice that doesn't attract attention. Just don't use a veil. Start off with a hat. Then once you've gotten used to that, graduate to a scarf of some kind, then eventually move into a veil if you so chose. Remember, St. Paul never said "how" a woman was to veil her head. He just said she should veil it. What you use is your business.
Fair enough about the poll questions. :)
When I say rebuked and harassed, I missed out that it was by our parish Priest, not our peers.
Thanks for your suggestions, I will have to pray about this. I think, though, that now is not the time, but definitely in the the future.
I am so in love with Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand's writings. Thank you for celebrating the New Feminism and the true beauty of being a woman. Your blog is awesome.
This doesn't at all make me feel better about being a woman. I've done everything right as far as the Catholic church is concerned regarding sex, but this emphasis on virginity and motherhood does not free my soul, it constrains it. I am more than my genitals and my reproductive capacity!
Any PERSON who has not had sex is a virgin...what is the deal with the emphasis on WOMEN virgins?!
Stop telling me I have some special and beautiful gift because as a woman I'm capable of childbirth. Every man I have asked, "so would you want to be pregnant and bear children?" each has thanked God they don't have to go through it. To men it a gift because it is a "gift" that thankfully passed them by.
Very interesting words from Dr. Von Hildebrand. I'd never heard of her before but now I'll have to check it out. I think its time for us women to want to BE WOMEN and not constantly compete with men all the time. I can remember when I was little and wore a chapel cap and couldn't wait to get old enough to wear the full on veil/mantilla, then the Vatican II got rid of that and I was so mad! yeah, there are some gals who wear 'em but I'd feel really pretentious if I went to Mass with one. Yet, I go to the Orthodox church, put on veil and feel right at home. Weird, huh?
Anon, if wearing the veil/mantilla is a genuine expression of your faith there need be no concern about being pretentious. Wear it as you please and those who stare be will eventually get used to the idea and will leave you alone. If wearing the mantilla to mass brings you closer to God, it would be a shame that you don't wear it.
Pretention comes when wearing the veil is about some sort of rite of passage or looking beautiful or wearing it because one is told to do so by society/church/family/whomever. Wearing a veil for these less-than-pure reasons means that the action is just for show and thus the action has no meaning. The person shouldn't bother wearing the veil and seek to come closer to God in another way. Or perhaps, through prayer and meditation, work to overcome the vanity of such reasons...now that is a spiritual journey worth taking!
Women can become women by listening to their deep heart where God speaks and follow the instructions they hear. God wants each person, each woman, to be able to be who she is inside. I do not believe that God instructs all women to be the same and act the same. Some women, when being genuinely themselves, are most comfortable being "one of the boys" and act "masculine" and other women, when most true to themselves, embody all the traits associated with "feminity". Most women are somewhere between the two extremes.
Women, I challenge you to find out what it means to be a woman by silent prayer and constant attention to your heart. When you do something in your daily life and you feel peace and freedom in your heart, pause for a moment and consider whether the Spirit is showing you your true self and how you can express your true self, the self that God loves unconditionally.
Reading this article made me think of many things, but Ms/Mrs. Black has compelled me to speak, though I'm a bit nervous to for a number of reasons. I'm sorry, Sir Knight, if this is the wrong place to speak.
We women are 'more than genitals and reproductive capacity', true, but that doesn't mean its something that should be overlooked. Reading Dr. Hildebrand's article made me feel some hope in my heart.
It pains me to say this, but I know very well how great an honor that 'veiled gift' we're born with is, because I'm in mourning over its loss. It was first stolen from me when I was small, then further lost by my own misguided mistakes when alone. When I finally realized just what I'd lost, what I'd done, I almost constantly had this wish of just closing my eyes and not waking the next day.
Since then, I'd tried to guard what I had left, being more prayerful, dressing more modestly, and eventually veiling. I still stumble in my struggle, and I always feel so broken up body and soul when I do, but then, as I read down where it talks about the bond of a husband and wife, it reminds me that I'm still have that to share with my future husband. Like I was told somewhere else in this blog, I was given hope that bond would help heal the deep hurt I have.
So, thank you, Sir Knight, for sharing this. It also reminds me to redouble my efforts I give when trying to guide girls from making similar or worse mistakes than I did.
Please pray for me,
-'Wings, a college girl
WhiteWings, may God help heal your deep wounds and help you find peace and comfort.
I wish for all girls and women to be able to hold their heads high and feel confidence in themselves and their bodies at all times. It is a terrible thing to feel shame, fear and guilt relating to one's body, because it is an enduring, soul-wearying and dark existence. When women choose to share their most intimate parts of themselves, whether physical or spiritual, may they do so in a context of love and bonding.
May women and girls who are survivors of harm by another person know that you are sacred and nothing anyone else can do to you can tarnish your value or your holiness. You are not to blame when another person sins against you. May God help you to find strength and peace in heart and mind.
May women who have acted in ways they now regret also know that they are part of the Body of Christ. There is no stain that God cannot wash clean and no break that God cannot make whole. You too are no less worthy of God's love than you were before your error. May God ease your suffering.
May God help you to feel your great worth and see yourself as the amazing person you are.
Women, God loves you and wants you to live a joyful life. Pains and mistakes in the past make you no less worthy and lovely in God's eyes.
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