#st. agustine

"It is hard to follow you Lord, but it is impossible to leave you.” -Saint Augustine.

I’ve given up worrying about the existence of God.  Discussions about diety I leave to the young. After decades spent thinking about the inscrutable, all I gleaned from religious precept was that misogyny rises from it like a noxious odor.  I’m not alone in this opinion. Donna Nolan Fewell, a scholar of the Old Testament writes, The Bible, for the most part, is an alien text (to women), not written by women or with women in mind. Christopher Hutchins cast a withering eye on the Scriptures, as well, and arrived at an ancillary conclusion. The cure for poverty has a name; it’s called THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN.  Now, name me a religion that stands, or ever stood for that. Feminist writer Barbara G. Walker also added to my knowledge.  She pointed out that Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine held grudges against women and that holy father John Scotus Eriuge made men the following promise. ..when the heavens finally open in glory, women will be eliminated. (“Does Religion Make People Kind, Generous?” by Barbara G. Walker, FreeThought Today, March/April. pg. 14.) A prediction like that makes God irrelevant to the future of womankind and raises a question.  If the weaker sex is to be barred from heaven, why can’t men be more charitable to them on earth? So far, the patriarchal doctrine has done nothing except insist that women are inferior creatures unworthy of simple justice Honor killings are an example. That a woman who has been raped should pay with her life while her attacker goes free is perverse.  What’s more, the myth that sustains it is absurd.  Reason balks at the suggestion that all women should be punished because one plucked an apple from its branch. In Western societies, Honor killings aren’t prevalent, but other injustices prevail. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is a heinous example.  No longer allowed to control their bodies, women in the United States have been returned to the status of chattel. After 8,000 years of brainwashing, it’s not surprising that many women have accepted their inferiority, helped by Judas Goats who betray their sisters for a smattering of patriarchal privileges.  Phyllis Schlafly, an attorney in the 1960s, is an example.  She railed against the Women’s Movement and warned equality was the enemy of domesticity.       Amy Coney Barrett, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, appears to follow in Schlafly’s footsteps. Her religious conviction that a husband is his wife’s master made her vote to overturn Roe v. Wade inevitable. Katie Britt, U.S. Senator from Alabama, may be another of their ilk. That she chose to deliver the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address from her kitchen is noteworthy.  My comments about these women may seem unfair. Nonetheless, I’ll wager none of them found the time to make biscuits from scratch. If they are or were to be blind to their hypocritical positions, I must blame 8,000 years of patriarchy.     Masculine paranoia predates the Women’s Movement, so I’m inclined to question the conclusion of a 2024 study laying blame for misogyny at women’s feet. If true, the cause and effect is unclear to me. Why should a woman’s desire for equality disconnect men from society and send them into private lives of underachievement, underemployment, online addiction, and white supremacy?   I propose we search for masculine hostility within the male psyche. At the subliminal level, is it possible men doubt their superiority or harbor the fear that nature favors women? Consider this solitary fact as evidence. The male-defining Y chromosome is disappearing. The fault has nothing to do with women. It lies within the human genome.  The female X chromosome reproduces through genetic recombination, but the Y chromosome uses a cut-and-paste procedure. The latter is inferior to recombination because it produces errors that cannot be corrected.  Over time, these flaws accumulate so that, according to scientists, within another 4.6 billion years women will find themselves alone in the universe.  Let me hasten to assure my male friends that neither I nor a majority of women rejoice in that outcome. Nonetheless,  nature is experimenting with unisex reproduction. Enter the Japanese spiny rat, the first among mammals to shed its Y chromosome yet continue to procreate.       And so, my male cohorts, given your prospects for the future, it’s time to consider the olive branch.  Women are willing to forgive 8000 years of neglect if over the next 4.6 million years you join us in peace.  Together we can confront a deaf, dumb, and blind universe confident that we are unique because we know how to love. If any man doubts the generosity of this offer, let them remember this.  A woman’s voice is the first sound a child hears in the womb. At the closing, a woman’s tears may be the last sound a man hears.     

St. Agustine and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop Miniature on parchment of the 16th century

36:1-2: “[1] A psalm for David himself. Be not emulous of evildoers; nor envy them that work iniquity. [2] For they shall shortly wither away as grass, and as the green herbs shall quickly fall.”

-San Agustin de Hipona-

"Let us understand that God is a doctor, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for conviction." - St. Augustine-

Saint Augustine, Sermon to the village of Cesaréa, n° 6, in PL 43/695.

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