Quote of the Week: Pope Leo XIII
We behold the condition of Europe. For many years past peace has been rather an appearance than a realty. Possessed with mutual suspicions, almost all the nations are vying with one another in equipping themselves with military armaments. Inexperienced youths are removed from paternal direction and control, to be thrown amid the dangers of the soldier’s life; robust young men are taken from agriculture or ennobling studies or trade of the arts to be put under arms. Hence the treasures of States are exhausted by the enormous expenditure, the national resources are frittered away, and private fortunes impaired; and this, as it were, armed peace, which now prevails, cannot last much longer. Can this be the normal condition of human society? Yet we cannot escape from this situation, and obtain True Peace, except by the aid of Jesus Christ. For to repress ambition and covetousness and envy–the chief instigators of war–nothing is more fitted than the Christian Virtues and, in particular, the Virtue of Justice; for, by its exercise, both the law of nations and the faith of treaties may be maintained inviolate, and the bonds of brotherhood continue unbroken, if men are but convinced that Justice exalteth a nation.
–Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae.
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An excellent reminder of all the human costs in ‘keeping the peace’ in such a misguided, crazy and convuluted manner…
Sounds like the modern United States…
Not only is the quote itself a good reminder, but what happened to prove the futility of the “armed-peace” soon afterward only served to confirm the Pope’s words. Seeing this, people should also understand that Vatican II’s concerns about the arms race was not new, but only became more serious as the kinds of arms under discussion became that much more deadly.
The culture of death is perfectly described by the Pope. Henry, in my work and my reentry into the Catholic faith after 40 years away Easter of ’05 I have been shown that women are God’s gift of love to this world of violence, suffering and death that we men have created. They have been forced through a primitive fear to seek out safety with the very source of their fear, men. They tend to respond or gravitate to what may give them safety, meaning and power without ever truly realizing their magnificence. I realize this is a general statement and there are exceptions. The purpose of this statement is a starting point to understand with compassion the crisis of women when they must choose life or death for their unborn children.
If we can understand that women are raised in a world that is in direct opposition to the innate creation of being a woman then we can begin to heal the identity crisis that most women endure throughout their lives within the faith and outside of it.
A true peace is one in which Jesus works through us to create a world that first honors women on a human level by creating a just society that makes it safe for women to freely examine and explore their true identity without feeling the pressure of trying to fit into a male dominated faith or society that has no idea that women are the first gift of love that God has given us.
I rambled but I hope I made some sense.
Ronald,
While I think you are right in pointing out the cycle of violence within the issue of our culture of death, I would not be so quick to assume the “nature” of women as such. It’s better to just look at the fact we embrace the problems addressed here not only on the level of nation-states, but also on the level of our own personal behavior and action as well. That is a valid point, and one which needs to be stated often!
Henry, Thanks for responding. When I talk about the “nature” of women I am taking into consideration studies that show the effect that violence has on gene expression and how this effect can then be carried over to the next four generations after the threat has been removed from the environment.
Women have a larger amygdala than males and the role of this structure is to evaluate danger and mediate the fight or flight response and emotional memory. This is all instinctive and extremely complex because it receives direct input from all the senses and is extremely important in social bonding and the development of patterns of emotions and belief based on very primitive emotional responses to environmental influences. Along with other structures in the brain an unconscious world view is created by the time we are 3 and we then gravitate to a social system that resonates with that emotional learning.
Women also have a larger corpus callosum than men. This structure is responsible for creating communication between the right and left brain hemispheres. The male corpus callosum stops growing at the time of puberty when testosterone is flooding the body and brain.
Both of these structures are critical for survival. The question is why the differences?
The second question might ask how these differences affect behavior for both male and female.
The brain is the flesh that Paul talks about and if we do not understand how this structure creates the reality we live internally and externally then we will have no idea how to resolve human conflict.
Thanks for your consideration.