The days of Wormwood

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

Ever since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society I wondered what would have happened should LBJ had declared war on prosperity. He declared war on poverty and poverty won, others declared war on drugs and the results are plain for all to see… It seems to poor simple me that the remedies of our age are designed to backfire badly. Follow me to the Museum of Good Intentions to examine the carcass of the war on mistreatment of “the weaker sex, the speaker sex we mortal males behold” to borrow the words of one of my favorite jazz standards: Girl Talk. The song composed by Neal Hefti,  lyrics by Bobby Troup was, according to pianist and singer Michael Jay Feinstein, the “last great male chauvinistic song written in the 60’s.”

Criminal mistreatment of women is a great calamity of our age only surpassed by the even more calamitous remedies that modern society has tried to implement against it. My opinions on this matter have resulted in people calling me an obsolete simpleton, archaic, medieval, knuckle-dragging neanderthal, and other things that I cannot repeat in this family venue. Nevertheless I have to “express myself” because that is one of the many inalienable rights that modern society has conquered for me — and I don’t want to waste such a treasure — so here I go with my helmet on, just in case.

Remedies against the great ills of society do not amount to much if they are not designed to address the root causes. In the case of criminal mistreatment of women there are some sinister forces, none of them a mystery, none of them hidden: anxiety, egotism, avarice, out of control sensuality, the need for instant gratification of lust, and above all the “pursuit of happiness” devoid of the tempering virtues of self control and moral duty.

That collection of vices and negative emotions are parts essential of the behavior of modern post-Christian man but those seeking to protect women do not try to reign the monster they have created. Quite contrarily, they expect women to assert themselves by imitating the behavior of their male counterparts. It seems to me that once Tarzan and Jane are emptied of all moral barriers and told to “assert themselves” the struggle will eventually be won by the one who better knows how to use brute force. It is quite logical for a materialistic society to resolve problems by sheer firepower on the streets, and by pure muscle power in the boudoir.

What is not logical is to allow ourselves to be immersed in the kind of pornography where anyone has sex with anyone, or anything, in any manner, while at the same time we scorn the simple virtues of traditional family life and still pretend that women — who are normally weaker physically — are treated with respect. It is quite schizophrenic to glorify lewd animal behavior on one hand, and expect King Kong to be a nice romantic guy with the woman who was the object of his basest desires only a minute earlier.

The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Revelation 8:8-9.

I don’t know what that mountain is and I do not dare to interpret St John’s Apocalypse but I always thought that verse was a good analogy for the contraceptive pill. In prophetic language the sea often represents humanity. The contraceptive pill hit the West like a great stone hurled into the sea. Ever since the early days of the pill, families in developed countries keep getting smaller and smaller. Now it is common to see couples who prefer to travel the world, enjoy life, and have no children. DINKs, double-income-no-kids living affluent lives devoid of the sacrifices and duties normal to family life. Once they have lived their lives they dive into the waters of time leaving no trace behind them like stones that sink into the deep. Through a variety of new sterile “lifestyles” the economies and social structures of the world are being slowly destroyed. I guess that even the women of pagan Rome who took time to worship the Bona Dea would find this new paganism objectionable, for the old paganism was a well acquainted friend of the mysteries of life but this new paganism is the enemy of life. And what is femininity but the garden of life herself?

The pill is one of the seven circles of death that conform this garden of atrocities where everyone has a sort of unholy communion with everyone. It’s like a demonic copy of the Communion of the Saints, this last one was a gift from God that began to enter history with the Immaculate Conception. Opposite to that, the pill descends almost to the moment of conception to snuff life. The next circle is abortion, then infanticide, followed by the sexual use of children, then followed by the sexual perversion of youth, and then the sixth circle is the perversion of those in religious life: seminarians, priests and other vocations, completed with the final circle which is the depravity of all mankind. The brutal mistreatment of women is only one consequence in that intentional degenerative process.

I have been told that the artificial estrogen that is the essential component of the contraceptive pill is eliminated in the urine and cannot be naturally degraded. It simply stays there contaminating the water everywhere. Human bodies are sixty percent water and we all must drink water to survive. Since the pill arrived we humans and every animal alive are drinking from the cup of death. We are being poisoned by impurity.

When I was in my early teens I memorized the lyrics of  this song by Sergio Endrigo:

Un toro è disteso sulla sabbia
E il suo cuore perde kerosene
A ogni curva un cavallo di latta
Distrugge il cavaliere
Terra e mare polvere bianca
Una città si è perduta nel deserto
La casa è vuota non aspetta più nessuno
Che fatica essere uomini

A bull is laying on the sand
Its heart is leaking kerosene
In every bend of the road a tin horse
Destroys a knight
Earth and sea are but white dust
A city is lost in the desert
Empty houses are waiting for no one
Mankind is so tired

Where there is no giving of one self, one can only love the physical attributes of the other. Poets and philosophers have filled many volumes musing about the fleeting beauty of youth. Those who can only love that surface shine will soon grow bored. That boredom will be followed by some sort of hate or indifference. Those who love the soul are different because for them, their youth is a sacrificial present, an oblation offered in the altar of love. The men and women of God conquer each other not by possession  but by surrendering and becoming part of the beloved.

Once I heard Italian singer-composer Luigi Tenco say these glorious words on television:

“Sono contro il divorzio. Lo considero una faccenda ipocrita da parte di un uomo che non ha la spina dorsale per amare una donna per sempre.”

“I am against divorce, I regard it as a hypocritical stunt by a man who does not have the backbone to love a woman forever.”

Ah, the good old times!

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Don’t miss this article in The Catholic Thing.