Reading Stephanie C. Gordon’s Ask Your Husband: A Catholic Guide to Femininity feels like a meandering stroll down a familiar lane. I was raised in conservative evangelicalism, and Gordon echoes many of the messages I heard about women in my youth: namely, that women shouldn’t work outside the home and that they owe unilateral obedience to their husbands. If this book were simply another spin on evangelical complementarianism, I wouldn’t have read it, and I wouldn’t be writing about it. But Gordon claims that her book presents the “timeless teaching” of the Catholic Church and attempts to bind the consciences of her female readers to a one-size-fits-all authoritarian model of marriage
Abigail Favale, Ask Your Husband is a superficial, ideological, and incoherent “guide” – Catholic World Report

The guidance given in Ask Your Husband primes women for both spiritual and domestic abuse. That this advice, which could prolong women’s and children’s suffering in abusive situations by enabling coercive control and blinding women to their reality, made it to publication in an ostensibly Catholic publishing house is deeply disturbing. It reveals either dangerously naïve ignorance about the reality of abuse against women or complicity in building and sustaining systems that will prolong it. –Rachel Amiri@godandchocolate: Ask Your Husband: A Dangerous Guide for Women (Part 2) – Where Peter Is

The Batman

Miley�Durbin@MileyDurbin: 
The Batman: *opens with Ave Maria playing*
My very Catholic fiancé: Perfect movie. Five stars.

Reeves’ The Batman subjects the mythos of the Dark Knight to its most searching big-screen cross-examination yet. Drawing on David Fincher’s serial-killer thrillers Seven and Zodiac as well as Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Reeves depicts Gotham as a noir nightmare landscape, dialing up the themes of violent streets and institutional crookedness from Burton’s films, but eschewing any element of whimsy or playfulness. After two years in the field, Batman is obsessed with his crusade to the point of monomania, but with violent crime and drug abuse at record highs he’s unsure whether he’s making a positive difference. “I’m vengeance” replaces “I’m Batman” as the Dark Knight’s calling-card line, and he believes that in some way he’s avenging his parents. What if the world is more complicated than that? Suppose what the world needs is not vengeance, but something else?
Steven D. Greydanus Caped crusaders and the common good – Decent Films

Daylight Savings Time

Grace Lapointe@glapointewriter: One time in my Catholic high school, I was in a boring class, & the clocks started going backwards. It was the Monday after Daylight Savings, & someone was manually resetting the clocks in the middle of the day. �

Now That Im Catholic@now_catholic:  In Arizona we revolted against the NWO scheme that is often called “daylight savings time” that in fact it saves no daylight or time. It has stench of Freemason plots too. The diocesan tribunal should open an investigation.

Goodbye William Hurt

GEEKchocolate@GeekChocolate: William Hurt, March 20th, 1950 – March 13th, 2022; best known for his award nominated and winning mainstream roles in Kiss of the Spider Woman, Broadcast News, The Accidental Tourist, he returned frequently to science fiction, Dark City, Lost in Space, Dune. #RIP

Irish Patrick and Italian Joseph

March is the cruelest month, at least for an Irish Catholic. Every March, the irresistible force of Lent meets the immovable object of March 17^th, St. Patrick’s Day. The traditions of fasting and feasting face off in mortal combat. Tortured souls appeal to bishops to avoid having to make a tragic choice; the deus ex machina invariably arrives in the form of a special dispensation. The Irish may argue that this could all be avoided if the Church simply proclaimed St. Patrick’s Day a solemnity, but the Italians beat them to the punch with the Feast of St. Joseph on the 19^th. Wounded pride notwithstanding, everybody wins and most American Catholics end with two party days in the middle of a season of penance.
Dr. Christopher Shannon An uneasy history: Irish Catholicism and the Irish wake – Catholic World Report

Jesuit Father James Martin

Anonymous Carmelite: Fr James Martin is a misunderstood soul. A lot of people judge him without knowing him, and are envious of his successful ministry. I never had a problem with him, even if I don’t agree with everything he might say. He seems very nice. Someone has to do what he does.

Fr. Martin felt called to advocate for LGBTQ Catholics after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. In today’s episode Jeannie and Mike talk to Father Jim about the marginalization of LGBTQ Catholics and how Pope Francis and scripture inspire a ministry of accompaniment and inclusion.

Listen on the Field Hospital Podcast with Where Peter is Founder Mike Lewis and Jeannie Gaffigan and find out more.

Just War

��Fr. Matthew Schneider��@FrMatthewLC: The general theory of just war & the idea that no war is just are not incompatible. Under just war theory, there is no war both sides could be objectively fighting a just war & just war is an extension of self-defense so te aggressor / invader is almost the unjust one. An ideal world would be fully at peace without war. But we have to admit we live in a fallen world: to declare all war unjust for both sides would leave license for the unjust but strong to overpower & exploit the just. Well, as an extension of self defense at least 1 side is always unjust. Also, subjectively different sides could both think they were fighting a just war or 1 part could be just for one side & another part for the other side.

Francis’ position, which itself seems like a development of St. John Paul’s own views, seems to be that with the advent of international institutions, nations can no longer lawfully declare war as a means of addressing their grievances since a component legal forum exists to settle them.

The pope seems to be saying that individual states who make war today are like individuals who launched military campaigns in the era of Augustine.

From this perspective, countries like Ukraine aren’t a nation “going to war” but the victims of a violent crime — a crime they have every right to resist, and the international community has every right to police.
‘Just war’ no more? What did Pope Francis say, and what does it mean? (pillarcatholic.com)

The point is simply this: War is not, in the Tradition, a prize you win and something you get to do if you can jimmy the criteria, tilt your head just so and squint so as to “fulfil just war criteria”. It is something you tragically, horribly, have to do sometimes in a fallen world full of Hitlers and Putins and Napoleons and Attilas and Caesars.
Mark Shea, A Bit on Just War and Pope Francis – Stumbling Toward Heaven (markpshea.com)

Monks and Superheroes

Fr. Casey, OFM@caseyofm Replying to @drew_deacon: I think my favorite criticism is when someone says that monks shouldn’t be spending time on the internet making videos which means I’m a bad monk.

Me: You’re right. I am a bad monk. Some might even say that I’m not a monk at all

I’m literally not a monk. I’m a friar, a member of a mendicant order not monastic one. Thomas Merton was a monk, St. Anthony of Padua was a friar.

I got to thinking about Plastic Man while reading The Ascent to Truth, Thomas Merton’s exploration of the spiritual teachings of John of the Cross. Plastic Man is the alter ego of Patrick “Eel” O’Brian, a small-stakes criminal whose bodily structures became fluid and pliable following a chemical exposure during a heist. After O’Brian had been left for dead by his gang following his freak accident, a kindly group of monks took him in, healed his wounds, and, in so doing, inspired him to choose a new life trajectory — one oriented to selfless service.
Rick Becker  Plastic Man Piety: Of Monks, Malleability and Supple Sanctity| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com)

Pandemic Solution

Chumly Pieplate@Chumly_Pieplate: 

Okay. Three quicks things, then I gotta go.

1. Bills conducted a clinical ass-kicking on the Pats… Good.

2. Follow the science people! Stop seeing Spiderman.

3. For those of you in snow country, enjoy the fluff, or the slush. You know who you are. �

Putin

When Christ is alive in us, we love as He loves. And, hard as it is to believe, Jesus loves Putin. He died for Putin, just as surely as He died for you and me. He wants nothing more than for Putin to repent, confess his sins, and end this war. That’s what we should want, too.

Of course, if we ask God to strike him down, He doesn’t have to do it. There’s no risk of that. The point is to put on the mind of God. The point is for us sinners to desire the good of our fellow sinners—just like God does.

St. Augustine, expanding on Jesus’ teaching, declared that a Christian “loves his very enemies, and so loves them that he desires that his haters and detractors may be turned to righteousness, and become his associates, not in an earthly country, but in a heavenly country.”

That’s what we should want for Putin. If we can’t muster that kind of charity, that’s okay. We’re none of us perfect. But it’s something to which we might aspire.

MICHAEL WARREN DAVIS Can We Pray for Putin’s Death? (crisismagazine.com)

Russian Consecration

Bishop Robert Reed@BpRobertReed: On March 25th at 5pm (Rome), Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Cardinal Konrad Krajewski will offer the Consecration in Fatima and the same will happen in dioceses across the globe.

Here’s a daily prayer of preparation:

Bishop J. Strickland@Bishopoftyler:  I join Bishop Schneider in this call to prayer. Let us unite with Pope Francis in praying the Consecration of Ukraine & Russia to the Immaculate Virgin Mary. I also urge us all to join in the Novena prayer Bishop Schneider offers at the end of the attached article.

It is great that Pope Francis will be consecrating Russia again on the 38th anniversary of John Paul II’s consecration. This news brought out several claiming that Russia had not been consecrated to fulfill the request at Fatima. The logic grounds for such claims are extremely flimsy and of necessity need to involve one of several colossally unlikely conspiracies. I will cover Francis’s re-consecration, the basic argument it was done in 1984, & alternatives that don’t make sense.

[Additions after talking with Jimmy Akin at the end.] Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC,  Russia Was Consecrated in 1984 to the Immaculate Heart – (frmatthewlc.com)

The best way to understand the Fatima-obsessed conspiracy theorists is to remember they are basically toddlers who will only drink out of the red sippy cup. No, not that red sippy cup. The RED sippy cup. No, not that red one either, the RED one. No, the RED cup. No, no, don’t put my juice in THAT RED CUP when I asked for the RED CUP. NO NO NO now you put the lid on WRONG and now the juice is RUINED.
Mary Pezzulo, Yet More on the Consecration of Russia |  (patheos.com)

The Transfiguration

James Martin, SJ@JamesMartinSJ: Gospel: At the #Transfiguration three disciples are given a glimpse of Jesus’s identity–and his divinity (Lk 9). But the vision on Mt. Tabor also points Jesus’s “exodus” and his time in Jerusalem. In other words, Jesus’s willingness to suffer for humanity is part of his identity

The location of the Transfiguration was probably Mount Hermon in northern Galilee very near to Caesarea Philippi, where the Lord had camped for a week before, where Peter had made his profession and Christ had changed his name and promised him the “keys.” Important things take place on mountains through salvation history, such as the implementation by God of covenants. The Garden of Genesis, Eden, was a mountain. Noah’s Ark rested on a mountain. Abraham took sacrificial Isaac up a mountain. Moses took the seventy elders up the mountain for their banquet of bread and wine at the feet, so to speak, of the Father at the threshold of Heaven (Ex 24:1-8). At 7336 feet Mount Hermon is quite an arduous climb, but it is right there. Caesarea Philippi is on its southwestern base. Some situate the Transfiguration at Mount Tabor in lower Galilee, only 575 feet, a strange-looking isolated bubble of a hill on the plain some 90 km from Caesarea Philippi. Also, Mount Tabor, in those days, had a fortress on top of it.  Fr. John Zuhlsdorf The Mystery of the Transfiguration – OnePeterFive