“But King Solomon loved many strange women …”
Once again, the Rover has been the accidental recipient of a message intended for Notre Dame’s administration. The editors of the Rover insisted that it belonged in the Humor section, despite the conviction with which its author seems to have written.
To whom it may concern,
Little over five years ago, a concerned Catholic mother voiced the widely unpopular opinion that women ought not to wear yoga pants in Mass. Her argument was that “such an unforgiving garment” makes it harder for young Catholic men to see these women as “someone’s daughters and sisters” rather than simply “babes.”
Now why a woman would want to be a daughter or sister (a role of obligation that arose in a traditional, and therefore patriarchal, social construct) instead of a babe (a fully autonomous and worshiped goddess), I’ll never know. But I do know that a new crisis has arisen.
On your campus, there is a new problem even more distracting to men and demeaning to women. Gone are the days of leggings and short skirts distracting the men of ND. Now, when the men’s eyes are drifting from the altar, their new target is the woman two rows up with the chapel veil and long skirt. No longer are the women deifying themselves by their clothing, but hiding themselves; no longer are men objectifying women, but subjectifying them! (I mean viewing them as a subject who worships as themselves, instead of an object of worship).
Yoga pants were the call of the babe, and now the scapular is the token of the “bride of Christ.” The men of ND stood a chance at resisting the call of the former. They have not a prayer of ignoring the latter.
The Catholic revival among today’s young people has had several mantras, sometimes “trad and glad,” now “based and chaste.” This radical and unforeseen predicament is a blow to fourth-wave feminism—and what a shame, when the folks at UCLA have been cooking up the fifth wave! (You’ll love it, they’re going to insist that drag queens are more “woman” and “feminine” than ordinary women!)
The initial movement of feminism was far too modest and strove only to ensure protection of women’s dignity and civil rights. But with the later waves, oh man, we really started cooking! We saw that we could strive to make women into something more than men. And it didn’t take long before we started to make her even more than man: a goddess, the object of worship.
We had made so much progress for feminism when we did away with standards of dress. Women were finally liberated to be the center of attention. But now these so-called “chaste chads” on your campus couldn’t be bothered! They would keep praying no matter what bacchanalia is around them. And for who knows why, they’re at their most distractible when the women are the least distracting!
I don’t need to tell you that sex sells—I’m sure your economics faculty can calculate how catastrophic it would be for the American economy if chastity and modesty were the law of the land. That is exactly why I need to draw your attention to the horrifying trends among your young traditional Catholic students—if we can’t depend on the irrepressible promiscuity of nineteen year-olds, then the very fabric of modern American society is in question. And don’t get me started on parietals.
Your young women are wearing veils in Mass—isn’t it bad enough that they wear veils at their weddings? They’re treating Jesus (an ordinary 1st century Jew, mind you) with more respect than they will give their husbands! They’re wearing long skirts with reckless disregard for the environment (fabric costs time and resources, you know!). If this culture grows anymore, the divorce rates are going to plummet, and then what are we going to do with all of our unemployed divorce attorneys? God forbid!
… God forbid? God be forbidden! But there’s plenty of time for that. Good work with McGrath, by the way. And let me know how the new Ethics center goes—that other one was a thorn in my side.
Signed,
- N. Wormwood
James Whitaker is a graduate student in the Theology department. Because of the difficulty of finding a good place to host a tailgate on game days, he wants to gauge interest in having a tailgate at 7 a.m. the Wednesday before each game. To RSVP, you can reach him at jwhitak5@nd.edu.
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