Continuing the discussion (February 2nd) of the destruction of the feminine principle of Being by the masculine principle of Doing, I should mention again the absolute necessity of balance and harmony of those two modes of all existence. Nature, indeed all of life, depends on it.  Ironically, the abstraction is easier to grasp for less intellectual, more agrarian cultures than for our modern more sophisticated times. Only when we recognize that this balance goes all the way back to pre-mythology of mother-earth and father-heaven can we understand the cataclysm of its destruction.

As the civilizer of the western world and most of the eastern as well, the Church introduced and then maintained the feminine principle among savage warrior-tribes, not only by means of the cult of the Blessed Virgin, but also in its own theology, spirituality, and moral code. Right conduct, both public and private, was established. “Gentlemen” (not meant to signify gentry, but behavior) defended and protected children and women, who personified—or tried to—the virtues of modesty, meekness, humility, virtues now lost as a consequence of the discarding of the feminine principle.

It is both useless and false to blame feminism (radical or otherwise) for this disaster. As already mentioned, feminism is a reaction to the destruction of the feminine principle, not its cause. The more immediate cause was identified by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968, but the remote cause dates from the sixteenth century, when civilization set out on a path toward its own inevitable end. Its progress has been steady.

Now we watch as the masculine principle, unfettered by any straggling remains of inhibition, demonstrates collective insanity in the Middle East. It is a reiteration of the hyper-masculine rebirth of the Germanic “warrior” seventy-plus years ago, and the raised fist of revolution in Russia, and in France, and other sites. Commentators on the news channels often seem to feel almost compelled to draw comparisons between the on-going brutal terrorism in the Middle East and the Nazism of almost recent memory. Not surprisingly, the former bears as much hatred for Jews as the latter, with Christianity as a close second, for the Judaeo-Christian God has ever borne a concern for the weak and helpless, for widows and orphans—in short, for the feminine principle. Atheistic secular devotion to human “progress” (a modern expression of pagan phallic self-worship) will always find that concern a stumbling block, unable to see that its antithesis saves it from its own self-destruction.

It is worth repeating too that the feminine principle cannot save itself because to act would be a contradiction of itself and thus its own self-destruction (e.g., feminism). As the passive element, it cannot save but must be saved by the active element. How? That can only be answered by the Gentlemen of the world, if any there are. Certainly, the first step would be to recognize that the Church must be allowed the salvific influence she alone possesses. By “Church,” I do mean the Holy Roman Catholic one. Protestantism is riddled with the anti-femininity that helped engender it. (Granting “rights” to women to fill male ecclesial roles is not a pro-femininity action. Quite the opposite, in fact.) That’s all I know. Except for faithful adherence to the Church and all her (ever notice that pronoun?) teachings, I have no idea how to save nature, the children, or civilization—all now steadily and surely dying from exploitation, from neglect, and from abandonment.

It is the business of the feminine principle to nurture, support, sustain. What prompted this meditation was the news today of the murder of the young humanitarian aid worker Kayla Mueller by her Islamic terrorist captors as she tried to nurture, support, and sustain Syrian refugees. CBS reports that she was given to an ISIS fighter as a “bride.” Then she was discarded.

We need heroes. And gentlemen. The feminine principle everywhere needs the masculine principle to be about its own business.