Masculine spirituality

[MarysLittleFlower]

I totally disagree with our society rejecting gender as something real because this simply expresses who we are and matches the differences in the sexes. For example .. Women can give life. They can be physical or spiritual mothers.

Some feminine traits I believe are receptivity, trust, and giving and nurturing life. This is linked to their sex, not made up culturally. So does that mean only women can have these traits? We do see them somehow prominent in women including those who stayed with Jesus the whole way. But as the souls relation before God has some feminine characteristics, men can have these traits too. Some they should have - gentleness for instance. But men do not become emasculated by them because they are balanced by appropriate masculine traits that are still there and still prominent.

Also all are called to trust God and believe Him, regardless of there being some femininity in the trait. (I say so because it is the receptive dependent person who needs to trust - a wife is this before her husband, so its feminine, but we are ALL this before God). This doesn't make us all androgynous in an internal way. Certain traits show prominence especially in family life.

If we get rid of this, as people tend to think today, its like - men and women should act the same, have the same roles, even look the same in ways. I see that as insulting to my femininity. By the way, I don't think these feminine  traits mean that women are unecessarily gullible, over emotional, or live in some fantasy world. This is not femininity. It is femininity unbalanced by virtue. Just as an aggressive man is masculinity unbalanced by virtue.

God made both masculinity and femininity and if we study St Paul's exportation to marriedcouples the roles he describes demonstrate women having a feminine role in marriage and men having a masculine one. 

[Era Might]

Mary's initial response to the angel was, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" I don't know how much more practical you can get. Ultimately she believed in the angel's message because she had perfect trust in God, not because she was predisposed to live in fantasy land by her XX chromosomes.

Joseph did not immediately know what was going on because unlike Mary he had had no angelic vision, only the news that Mary was pregnant. Once the angel appeared to him in a dream, he was no longer afraid and understood immediately what he had to do. He woke up and acted faithfully on a dream. That doesn't say much for this theory either.

Zechariah lost his speech because he was arrogant, not because he was practical. Sarah had a similar reaction to the angel's news of her pregnancy, so it's difficult to see this scepticism as a man's trait. Zechariah was a priest, occupying a very prestigious social position, and he was used to being the one who decided how everything should go. God silenced him so that he could finally learn to listen as well as to talk. Elizabeth carried the painful stigma of a barren woman (a 'real' experience devastating enough to shatter a thousand fantasies, especially in that culture) and consequently she did not have as much pride to get over. There was no pride compromising her ability to listen.

Contemplative nuns and monks do not live primarily by feelings. This is a myth that they work very hard to dispel.

Neither your theory nor your evidence for it has any logical basis. You seem to be trying to disguise the lack of substance by using sociological phrases that don't even make sense in this context. I don't think anyone is just an "abstract member of the economy", and whether or not someone is a mother or a wife is irrelevant to your ideas on gender - I'm not sure what a "truly gendered mother" is supposed to be, one that has a pram in the exact shade of pink as her uterus? You also have to ignore most men's experiences if you are going to paint heartbreak and loss of a dream as a female preserve. You could say that they are 'feminine' traits present in both sexes, but that's just an arbitrary classification, especially as ideas of what's feminine and what's masculine have changed over time and from place to place. I could say that such traits are the result of our previous incarnations as kangaroos with about as much chance of proving it.

When I referred to introverts and contemplatives I was referring to men, not monks and nuns. They have particular difficulties integrating their way of being into a practical masculinity. This is not sexist just reality and can be demonstrated in many literary figures...I happened to be reading through a bio of a Franz Kafka yesterday who struggled mightily with this.

Anyway, I have no "theory" and mainly was aaddressing myself to the OP who is also a man and I think gets what I'm saying based on his last post. You seem to take masculinity and femininity as theoretical models which have a theoretical "spirituality." I take them as real-world ways of being which practical spirituality not only strengthens but also tames. A feminine spirituality should tame the excesses, say, of womanly fantasy, and male spirituality should tame, say, male aggression.

Carl Jung's "Man and his Symbols" is interesting for the examples it provides of how myths and stories and dreams are ways of dealing with problems around feminity and masculinity. Fables like the king who chops off the head of multiple wives, or rite of passage fables about how men and women mature and break out of excessive traits of the opposite gender.

Im typing on my phone so can't say much more, but this discussion is not so serious as you seem to be taking it. Men have to live in the real world, not in historical theory about changing understandings of gender. Maybe it's sexist to point out and deal with masculinity and fen femininity in the real world, idk, but a good spiritual father will advise a young man to tame fantasies because it won't help him be what a woman needs in the real world.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Just to tie this in with masculine spirituality... Various men have commented that the Latin Mass is very well suited to masculinity. I think that is true. But I am a woman and I love the Latin Mass, and I realized that this liturgy balances the feminine and masculine traits and roles extremely well.

Men are drawn to the order, consistency of the Mass and they have an active role serving at the altar. Women can emulate Our Lady through praying and veiling. This is more feminine and many women get upset when this is said because they want to do active work, but - what is wrong with simply praying at Mass? I'd prefer that any day!

I know there are indults and things but indults dont mean its the norm. PJPII wrote he preferred there to be altar boys.

The Mass is also not about "rights" - even the priests duty is not a "right".

Also, the beauty of the Mass appeals to both men and women. As a woman, I am NOT drawn to banal lyrics of many modern hymns. I am also drawn to the beautiful polyphonies. Some have very 'tender' words but the men like them too cause theyre real and spiritual, not sentimental.

As a woman the horizontal community meal approach does not suit me either. So men who like the TLM for its masculinity: it is also well suited to women and masculinity and femininity are balanced very well there:)

BY THE WAY... I'm not saying all Novus Ordo has banal music and little reverence or the horizontal approach only. VII called for Latin, chant and more reverence. I'm speaking here of the really super modernised liturgies. Not the Mass they show on ewtn or what you'd find in a solid Carmelite convent. I prefer the TLM but this post only addresses it in comparison to the liberal liturgies we find. 

Era,  I can agree with your quote here... Living in a fantasy land is femuninity lacking virtue. However gender differences are real.

"I take them as real-world ways of being which practical spirituality not only strengthens but also tames. A feminine spirituality should tame the excesses, say, of womanly fantasy, and male spirituality should tame, say, male aggression."

 

Edited August 13, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower

[Era Might]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that because men and women have different tendencies therefore one is good or the other bad, or that these tendencies are absolute. But a man has to learn how to be a man, and that requires him to understand gender in the real world. Some men are aggressive brutes, others are passive introverts. The purpose of a masculine spirituality IMO is to help both these men better integrate themselves into a balanced gender role. The introvert has to learn how women expect social gestures...the brute has to learn how women are vulnerable and their emotions not to be played with because he can. To me, that's male spirituality, not abstract theories about the endless ways of being. Spirituality should be practical and accomodating.

[Era Might]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that because men and women have different tendencies therefore one is good or the other bad, or that these tendencies are absolute. But a man has to learn how to be a man, and that requires him to understand gender in the real world. Some men are aggressive brutes, others are passive introverts. The purpose of a masculine spirituality IMO is to help both these men better integrate themselves into a balanced gender role. The introvert has to learn how women expect social gestures...the brute has to learn how women are vulnerable and their emotions not to be played with because he can. To me, that's male spirituality, not abstract theories about the endless ways of being. Spirituality should be practical and accomodating.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that because men and women have different tendencies therefore one is good or the other bad, or that these tendencies are absolute. But a man has to learn how to be a man, and that requires him to understand gender in the real world. Some men are aggressive brutes, others are passive introverts. The purpose of a masculine spirituality IMO is to help both these men better integrate themselves into a balanced gender role. The introvert has to learn how women expect social gestures...the brute has to learn how women are vulnerable and their emotions not to be played with because he can. To me, that's male spirituality, not abstract theories about the endless ways of being. Spirituality should be practical and accomodating.

[KnightofChrist]

!!!!COMBO BREAKER!!!

[Credo in Deum]

[Lilllabettt]

Just to tie this in with masculine spirituality... Various men have commented that the Latin Mass is very well suited to masculinity. I think that is true. But I am a woman and I love the Latin Mass, and I realized that this liturgy balances the feminine and masculine traits and roles extremely well.

Men are drawn to the order, consistency of the Mass and they have an active role serving at the altar. Women can emulate Our Lady through praying and veiling. This is more feminine and many women get upset when this is said because they want to do active work, but - what is wrong with simply praying at Mass? I'd prefer that any day!

I know there are indults and things but indults dont mean its the norm. PJPII wrote he preferred there to be altar boys.

The Mass is also not about "rights" - even the priests duty is not a "right".

Also, the beauty of the Mass appeals to both men and women. As a woman, I am NOT drawn to banal lyrics of many modern hymns. I am also drawn to the beautiful polyphonies. Some have very 'tender' words but the men like them too cause theyre real and spiritual, not sentimental.

As a woman the horizontal community meal approach does not suit me either. So men who like the TLM for its masculinity: it is also well suited to women and masculinity and femininity are balanced very well there:)

BY THE WAY... I'm not saying all Novus Ordo has banal music and little reverence or the horizontal approach only. VII called for Latin, chant and more reverence. I'm speaking here of the really super modernised liturgies. Not the Mass they show on ewtn or what you'd find in a solid Carmelite convent. I prefer the TLM but this post only addresses it in comparison to the liberal liturgies we find. 

Era,  I can agree with your quote here... Living in a fantasy land is femuninity lacking virtue. However gender differences are real.

"I take them as real-world ways of being which practical spirituality not only strengthens but also tames. A feminine spirituality should tame the excesses, say, of womanly fantasy, and male spirituality should tame, say, male aggression."

 

this is kind of all over the place

[PhuturePriest]

Mary is a good example, she believed the angel whereas Joseph, initially, was practical: he wanted to put her away quietly. Same with Elizabeth and Zachariah, he lost his speech because he didn't believe the angel. Fantasy is not all there is to femininity, but women generally are believing romantics, they want to be swept off their feet...and often end up heartbroken when they believe in the wrong person.

So? Men often have romantic ideas of being the knight in shining armor sweeping fair lady off her feet. 

The involvement of swords doesn't make something non-romantic. 

[Era Might]

So? Men often have romantic ideas of being the knight in shining armor sweeping fair lady off her feet. 

The involvement of swords doesn't make something non-romantic. 

Yes, men have fantasies too, and then have to live with the consequences. That was my point about the missionary priest...he is not fantasizing about missionizing, he is living his life in a mission...that's a big difference I happened to be thumbing through a book by Rod Dreher the other day called "How Dante Can Save Your Life" and he has a quote from JRR Tolkien in a letter to his son:

The older Tolkien warned his son to be wary of courtly love, which exalts "imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. The woman is another fallen human being with a soul in peril," Tolkien wrote, adding that the courtly ideal "inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love,' as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose."

Old Mexican rancheros are full of tales of love and loss...Latin culture is romantic in a way ours isn't, and brutal in a way ours isn't, as fantasy and reality are very hard to distinguish.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Era Might

[Ash Wednesday]

I find Saint Therese's spirituality is very beautiful. It's not a matter of historical context, but a matter of personality. Some people are more attracted to Saint Nicholas punching Arius in the face, and others are more attracted to Saint Therese and Saint John of the Cross with all their sap and romance. There's nothing inherently wrong in either one.

St. Therese has been very dear to my heart lately, so.... Agent Cooper Thumb Up for you. Her prose is an acquired taste, but over time, I've discovered there's a great deal of honesty, wisdom and humanity in her that often gets overlooked. At the moment, I struggle with the style of St. Louis de Montfort. That said, I'll give it some time.

Spirituality is as diverse as there are saints and people, to the point where I struggle to even attach labels like "masculine" or "feminine" to it, myself. And fortunately, everyone has a lot to choose from.

Does Thomas Merton count as "masculine"? He's very direct, and has written some on the Desert Fathers, who really weren't "feminine" in any sense.

His earlier writings were excellent. That said, were his latter works not pretty questionable and heavily influenced by Buddhism? 

[beatitude]

 

Mary's response is more properly  translated "How shall this come to pass?" i.e.,  "What magic will be used to make this happen?"  The question is not sarcastic, it is in earnest. It has the quality of openness, not doubt. Mary believes God can and will make her a mother, even though she is a consecrated virgin. She is ready to believe.

...

Capitalism, naturally, has no use for gender. It would prefer the efficiency of uniformly androgynous "human" resources. In practice this has meant a campaign to strip women of gender identity and encourage them to pattern themselves after the male model - wonderfully free from any messy, overhead-sapping activities: Pregnancy, childbirth, nurturing of children; Reasoning through dilemmas by factoring in relationships rather than exclusive reliance on abstract logic, etc.  It is not an accident that the rise of industrial production has coincided with human rejection of belief in religion, magic, etc. and the proclamation that gender is dead. After all these things are not "productive."

I say a human being stripped of its gender is no longer fully human. It is a cog - albeit a productive cog - in an economic machine.

I don't think Our Lady was being sarcastic, I think she was expressing a genuine curiosity. It's also a very practical curiosity. There is another instance in the Gospels where she demonstrates that pragmatic quality: she notices that the bride and bridegroom at Cana are in danger of running out of wine, she anticipates their worry over it, and she quietly decides to mention it to Jesus. She is not a good example for this idea that women are all for romance and daydreams while men are practical.

I disagree with part of what you write about capitalism and gender. It's true that pregnancy and menstruation are treated as defects that get in the way of productivity (there are still plenty of people who think it's reasonable not to employ women who are likely to take a career break for children), but on the whole gender is very profitable. Makeup manufacturers, fashion designers, even sanitaryware companies - they'd all be making a lot less money if women didn't buy into the gendered expectation that they should have this nail polish, that handbag, this hair removal product, those specially perfumed pads.

Anyway, I have no "theory" and mainly was aaddressing myself to the OP who is also a man and I think gets what I'm saying based on his last post. You seem to take masculinity and femininity as theoretical models which have a theoretical "spirituality." I take them as real-world ways of being which practical spirituality not only strengthens but also tames.

I take them to be socially constructed boxes that men and women are crammed into and that make very uncomfortable living spaces. I don't think there is any such thing as 'masculine spirituality' or 'feminine spirituality' - there is the soul and God. Neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all one in Christ Jesus. I'm not saying that men and women don't have different experiences (having the capacity to carry and nurture life within you does affect who you are, even if you never give birth), just that it is facile and harmful to treat these basic differences as evidence that one sex is innately more romantic than the other, or that the other has a hardwired preference for CocoPops over Rice Krispies. It requires a huge suspension of logic.

[veritasluxmea]

His earlier writings were excellent. That said, were his latter works not pretty questionable and heavily influenced by Buddhism? 

That's what I heard too. He had some struggles with his vocation later in life and it appears he started looking to Buddhism for answers to his conflicts. 

This article from Catholic Answers covers it well. 

I’m going to be a bit critical of Merton’s interest in and writings on Asian philosophy and religion, not because I don’t admire his brilliance, but because his commitment to orthodox Catholicism appears suspiciously attenuated by the end of his life. In the 1969 book Recollections of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West, Benedictine monk Br. David Steindl-Rast wrote that Thomas said that he wanted "to become as good a Buddhist as I can." When he flew out of San Francisco for Asia on October 15, 1968, he left with the expectation of religious discovery, as if his monastic life at the Abbey of Gethsemani was a spiritual precursor to the insights he would gain in the East. He wrote in his journal:

He writes as if his Christianity and his Buddhism had already become enmeshed into a new hybrid religion, with "Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny," and he expresses his desire never to return until he has found mahakaruna, the Buddhist notion of "great compassion." As a Christian, I admire Buddhist mahakaruna, but as a Christian I also know that one need not look beyond Christianity to find it. I wonder—and we shall never know in this life the answer—what "home" Merton was headed for that day in October. (via catholic answers)

[Gabriela]

This is a common perception of Merton, but to my knowledge, he never said anything that contradicts Catholicism. We are not forbidden as Catholics to learn about other religions, to admire the truths that we find in them, or to use their vocabulary/concepts if they help us to become better Christians. Of course, on that latter one, one ought to be very careful. But Merton was a very learned man, so I trust he was capable of that.

[veritasluxmea]

I think a lot of it depends on how you interpret his personality/writing style too. Unlike St Thomas of Aquinas, who literally never refers to himself except to say I object that... Thomas Merton is very personal, relational, "spiritual but not technical" in a sense. (I'd say he's a more feminine writer that way!) So a lot of it is about interpretation of his person, what influences his inner world, what his inner state is. He's constantly spiritually seeking and changing, not settling or growing deeper in one obvious direction. Like Gabriela said he doesn't outright contradict the Church... but I read some of his later ideas as being dangerous. He found Christ and pretty much seems to have stuck with Him, but it's not really how traditional/usual Catholicism rolls. So if you're mature I'd say Thomas Merton is fine. 

Just my two cents though. He's certainly a complex man so no summary of him will ever really be complete. 

Edited August 13, 2015 by veritasluxmea