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“You can be happy with someone just like you, or with someone completely different from you. The one way you absolutely can’t be happy is with somebody you can’t respect…or admire…or trust.”
Excellent advice found in The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After by Elizabeth Kantor (Regnery). And that’s just the beginning. This most original new guide for women who yearn to find the right man and live happily ever after draws on Jane Austen’s books to lead today’s women through the pitfalls of dating and romance to a happy marriage.
The modern world is a hard place for Catholic women in the romance department. Mainstream magazines, movies, TV and books don’t reflect our attitudes toward men and marriage. Think Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. But Jane Austen. Ah, that’s another thing. Elegance and civility and virtue reign in her world. Regency England isn’t the 21st century, but human nature doesn’t change even if popular mores and morals do.
To quote Ms. Kantor: “[Jane Austen] was fascinated by many of the same issues that preoccupy us. She gave us at least eight case studies (that’s 1.3 per novel!) of men who are, as we say, ‘afraid of commitment.’ But she was more ambitious than we are. She didn’t just wonder how a commitment-shy man can be cajoled or pressured into accommodating a woman’s desire for commitment. Jane Austen identified circumstances in which a man can come to passionately desire the very kind of commitment that the woman is longing to be asked for. Wouldn’t it be lovely to live in her world?”
Well, with some help here, maybe we can. Beginning with Chapter One “In Love, Look for Happiness” and going on to cover themes like “Do You Take Love Seriously?”, “Friendship, School of Love”, and “Are We the Weaker Sex, after All?” Ms. Kantor examines how Jane Austen’s characters find love and happiness or, in some cases, don’t, and why they do or don’t. At the end of each chapter is a three-part synopses: Adopt an Austen Attitude…What Would Jane Do?…If We Really Want to Bring Back Jane Austen. Scattered throughout each chapter are pithy “Tips Just for Janeites”.
By the way, it’s not just for single women either. We old married women can enjoy and profit from it as well.
I found The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After hard to put down. It is both an immensely clever aid to assist women in male/female relationships as well as an erudite exploration of romance and human nature in Jane Austen’s novels.
Maureen Williamson
At Easter time, my wife and I had the chance to visit Poland. Part of our pilgrimage included a tour of Auschwitz.
As we were making our way through the complex, two thoughts kept running through my mind. The first, of course, is that while we relentlessly remind each other of Nazi inhumanity to man, we abort babies every day.
The second relates to selective outrage.
Before I get into selective outrage, though, let me point out that the “Auschwitz Experience” (for lack of a better term), goes beyond all bounds of restraint. In fact, if I had to choose one word to describe Auschwitz, it is “unrestrained” — unrestrained evil, and an unrestrained response to that evil. The packaged tour that all visitors take is over the top, to the point at which it becomes counterproductive.
The first graphic example of Nazi cold-blooded brutality was like a sledge hammer to the gut. By the third, I began to be annoyed. After the fourth, I wanted to scream, “I get the point.”
Let me get back to selected outrage. While we hear about the Nazi horror (and I don’t want to minimize that), we forget that our Soviet allies, whom we armed for years to come, had been operating their own unspeakable Gulag for many years. A Gulag, by the way, that in some respects was more horrible than the Nazi concentration camps, because the Soviets inflicted so much suffering on their own people.
One of the first facts we learned during our Auschwitz visits was that the first inmates at Auschwitz were 15,000 Soviet POWs. Of that original 15,000, 11,000 were dead within four months. Several hundred more became the first guinea pigs of the Nazi gas chambers. 96 of the poor souls actually survived the war, only to be branded “collaborators” by the Soviets and sent to the Soviet Gulag.
Furthermore, while we and our Soviet allies were sitting judgment on the Nazi butchers at Nuremberg, the Soviets had in fact begun to use Auschwitz for its own evil purposes.
Somehow we conveniently forget these facts.
In the month since our trip, two stories have hit the airwaves. One involves
charges by an international human rights organization that North Korea has a concentration camp of its own, with 100,000 or more prisoners. Torture, beatings, starvation, and abortion are reportedly the order of the day.
Escapees and defectors confirm the reports, and even identify the location of the camp on satellite maps.
Then yesterday the story broke that over the past 9 months the South Korean government has seized 35 shipments of capsules OF POWDERED HUMAN BABIES. The shipments originated in China.
Neither of these stories has received more than perfunctory coverage. In fact,
only Fox News reported on the North Koreans, and I have only seen the China story on Yahoo News. Selective outrage. Remember that the next time the Church is excoriated for not doing enough during World War II.
Neil McCaffrey III
Word comes that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be speaking at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Sebelius, as I’m sure my readers know, is pro-abortion. She is also one of the authors of the HHS mandate compelling Catholic and other religious institutions to provide sterilization and contraceptives including abortifacients in employee medical plans. Several years ago Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City told then-Governor Sebelius to refrain from receiving Holy Communion. The Bishops in Washington have upheld that ban.
In other words, Kathleen Sebelius should not be speaking at a Catholic university under any circumstances. Interestingly enough, the Pope just spoke about Catholic schools and colleges and their duty to train students in their faith.
“The Christian commitment to learning, which gave birth to the medieval universities, was based upon this conviction that the one God, as the source of all truth and goodness, is likewise the source of the intellect’s passionate desire to know and the will’s yearning for fulfilment in love,” said the Pope, speaking to a group of American bishops.
“Only in this light,” he continued, “can we appreciate the distinctive contribution of Catholic education, which engages in a ‘diakonia of truth’ inspired by an intellectual charity which knows that leading others to the truth is ultimately an act of love. Faith’s recognition of the essential unity of all knowledge provides a bulwark against the alienation and fragmentation which occurs when the use of reason is detached from the pursuit of truth and virtue; in this sense, Catholic institutions have a specific role to play in helping to overcome the crisis of universities today.”
How does inviting as a speaker a Catholic who works against the teachings of the Church, whose insurance mandate denies religious freedom uphold the nature and duties of a Catholic university?
It doesn’t, of course
Maureen Williamson
The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to register objections to Kathleen Sebelius speaking at Georgetown. Go to http://www.georgetownscandal.com/ for more information.
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Posted 07 May 2012
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abortion § Catholic Colleges § Education § Pope Benedict XVI § Religious Liberty
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Tagged: abortion, Cardinal Newman Society, Catholic Colleges, Catholic education, Georgetown University, health care, HHS conscience clause, Kathleen Sebelius, Maureen McCaffrey Williamson, Maureen Williamson, Pope Benedict XVI
If the bishops of the United States spent more time fighting for things that are matters of faith and morals and less time interfering in political matters that are none of their business, we’d be a lot better off.
Abortion is a matter of faith and morals. So is the HHS mandate requiring Catholics to violate their consciences and pay for contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization as part of employee medical plans. So-called “gay marriage” is a matter of faith and morals.
The minimum wage is not. Nor is the budget of the United States government. Good Catholics can disagree on whether the minimum wage in any given state should be raised. They can disagree about what the government should and should not spend our money on. Catholic bishops have no right to speak as Catholics publicly on these and other political subjects. Yet that’s just what they do and have done for years.
No wonder we can’t win the real battles, the important battles. The bishops behave as if political opinion is the same as morals. It isn’t. By behaving this way, the bishops undermine the Church’s authority in matters of faith and morals in the public forum.
Maureen Williamson
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health quizzed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the HHS mandate requiring religious organizations to cover sterilization and contraceptives, including abortifacients, in their medical insurance plans.
As reported by the Christian Post, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina asked Mrs. Sebelius whether she knew of three tests that the Supreme Court has used in the past to determine the correct balance between constitutionally protected freedoms and a policy goal. Mrs. Sebelius replied that she did not. Rep. Gowdy pursued this line of questioning. After the Secretary proclaimed, “I defer to our lawyers to give me good advice on our Constitution. I do not pretend to be a constitutional lawyer,” the Congressman asked whether she had a legal memo from her lawyers on the issue. She replied that she had had “discussions.”
Now, HHS has, according to their own website, “over 400 attorneys and a comprehensive support staff.” One would think that if it was going to issue a mandate limiting the freedom of religious entities that the HHS Secretary would put these lawyers to work. Apparently not.
Maureen Williamson
“In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.” — Bishop Daniel Jenky, Peoria
This quote is from Bishop Jenky’s homily on April 14 for the Peoria diocese’s “Call to Catholic Men of Faith” Mass. The Bishop went on:
“Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.
“In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his ‘Kulturkampf,’ a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.
“Clemenceau, nicknamed ‘the priest eater,’ tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.
“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.
“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.”
The Bishop is, or course, correct. The current administration here – like many in the history of world – has no use for Catholicism. The Catholic Church interferes with its pagan plan for the world.
And, naturally, the Bishop’s comments brought criticism, most notably from the Anti-Defamation League whose Chicago director called the remarks, “outrageous, offensive and completely over the top.”
Why? Are Catholics not entitled to religious freedom? Where and how does persecution start? With infringements on religious liberty that grow greater and greater. In answering the criticism, Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Peoria diocese said:
“Based upon the current government’s threatened infringement upon the Church’s religious exercise of its ministry, Bishop Jenky offered historical context and comparisons as a means to prevent a repetition of historical attacks upon the Catholic church and other religions.
“Bishop Jenky gave several examples of times in history in which religious groups were persecuted because of what they believed. We certainly have not reached the same level of persecution. However, history teaches us to be cautious once we start down the path of limiting religious liberty.”
The Bishop is one hundred percent right. And I applaud him for not backing down, as so many do, when criticized.
Maureen Williamson
Husband and wife counseling team Art and Laraine Bennett’s new book is The Temperament God Gave Your Kids (Our Sunday Visitor). The book illustrates the differences in four God-given temperaments and provides tools for parents in dealing with each of the four in their children…Why are some people granted the gift of faith and others not? And, what is the difference once a Christian has that gift? From David Mills in First Things via the Ronald Knox Society: “As the Catholic priest Ronald Knox once admitted, he didn’t know why he saw the truth of Christianity and many perfectly nice people he knew didn’t see it at all. He certainly wasn’t better than they were. He could only thank God that he saw it, as unworthy as he was, and pray for those who didn’t. The atheist has no such restraints.”…The top ten prayers every Catholic child should know? Go to http://catholicism.about.com/od/prayers/tp/children_prayer.htm. …Roman Catholic Books has reprinted The Childhood of Jesus by Magdalen Eldon and Frances Phipps, a charming children’s picture book about Our Lord’s formative years.
Maureen Williamson
“The Church Militant” is not a phrase one hears often these days. No doubt this is to do with the fact that She has not, in fact, been militant for some time. Rather, She is the Church Acquiescent. Acquiescent, that is, in the face of modern secular society, which has no use for her and would like better than anything to have Her go away—as well as, therefore, in respect of Her members, the laity, who are no longer taught that they are soldiers of the Church but something more like social workers sent forth by Her to “give back’ to the community, whatever that witless phrase is supposed to mean.
It is difficult, of course, and even unchristian as well, for the Roman Church to be at war, so to speak, with any society. The difficulty was made clear in the 1930s and 40s, when, despite Her uncompromising opposition to Germany under National Socialism and Stalin’s Soviet Union, She exercised prudence in her relationship with the governments of both countries, in order not to bring retribution upon the very people She sought to help. Today, however, modern governments, especially those of the Western “democracies” (as will continue to think of them), have entered upon a kind of Cold War with Rome: a situation that the Church must not try to ignore, much less deny. A French writer, Emile Perreau-Saussine, argues in a recent book (Catholicism and Democracy) that, following World War II, the Catholic Church made Her peace with democracy after nearly two centuries of opposition to it, having concluded that the modern world offers a choice between two forms of government only—democracy and totalitarianism—and that the Church, as well as humanity in general, was compelled to align Herself with the former. Well and good. But democracy, as the French scholar Claude Polin has shown, is based on an assumption of the divinity of man, whose will is sovereign and must not be abridged by supernatural suppositions. It is time that the Church freed Herself of Her obsession with the liberal notion of “human rights,” by which She has (more or less unsuccessfully) sought to ingratiate Herself with secular society, and emphasized the profoundly anti-religious tendencies of modernity. In doing so, of course, She will make only trouble for Herself and for Her members–to the point, perhaps, of having to put them into uniform again. But Christ Himself was Trouble: the greatest Trouble, indeed, the world has ever known. It is time that Catholics recalled that truth and began making some Trouble of their own doing in the world, at the metaphorical ends of the swords they are not only entitled, but actually compelled by their Faith, to carry at their sides.
Chilton Williamson, Jr.
My husband and I like to relax watching DVDs. We’re not fond of most modern movies; but we do find old and a few new television series, mostly British, that we enjoy. Of course, we’re hooked on Downton Abbey.
We have recently been watching an Italian mystery-adventure series called Don Matteo. Sold by Ignatius Press, it is in Italian with subtitles. Chilton loves watching it and practicing his Italian. We both love it for its charm. The characters are appealing and truly nice people. Something rarely seen today. And, the main character, Don Matteo, is a Catholic priest of the old-fashioned variety.
I highly recommend it.
Maureen Williamson
“Guess what,” political strategist Hilary Rosen told Anderson Cooper, “[Ann Romney] has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economics issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.”
Ms. Rosen’s comments unleashed a firestorm of protests as they rightly should have. A stay-at-home mom with five sons, Mrs. Romney responded on twitter by saying: “I made a choice to stay at home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”
Ms. Rosen has since blogged on the Huffington Post:
“In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles. . Here is my more fulsome view of the issues: ‘As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay at home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day. I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.’”
Like most liberal women Hilary Rosen thinks she has the right to define “women’s issues” and “women’s financial struggles.
She criticizes Mitt Romney for listening to his wife’s views on issues. As a woman, I think that’s a good thing. She criticizes him because he has pledged to defund Planned Parenthood. I think defunding them is a good thing as well. Planned Parenthood does evil things. Ms. Rosen doesn’t like it that Mr. Romney, according to her: “went to a congregant’s hospital room and told a young single mother who had just given birth that she was shaming the church and should give her baby away.” But if women who had illegitimate children were shamed, maybe we wouldn’t have so many illegitimate children in the world.
And with reference to the economy, what makes a working woman any more savvy about the economy than a stay-at-home mom? Do stay-at-home moms not know about everyday financial issues? I would suggest that many of them know more than working women about financial struggles. They usually have lower household
incomes. In fact, why does a community organizer know more about the economy or financial struggles than a stay-at-home mom?
In a further blog on Huffington Post, Hilary Rosen’s partner, Elizabeth Birch, says:
“Let’s take off the gloves, women of America — because this is a manufactured battle over things on which we mostly agree. And, frankly, I don’t want our kids to e the subject of any battle.”
It isn’t a “manufactured battle.” The disagreements between conservative and
liberal women are at the core of our future – disagreements over social issues,
moral issues and the economy. And both sides know it.
Maureen Williamson
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