Author: simchajfisher

A beautiful, courageous, somewhat nervous-making idea: naming your victims

Darren Cools (husband of Anna Cools, the proprietor of Roots Soap Co.) has foundedHer Name, a website built to honor women whose dignity was wounded through pornography.

It’s a simple, anonymous project:

If you want to add the name of a girl you have victimized by lust, please click the Add a Name button and enter her first name. If you remember her face but not her name, give her one. The form is completely anonymous and non-trackable. Use first names only.

Pornography is a grave affront against the personhood of the girl, woman, boy, or man on display — yes, even if he or she is willing and compliant.  I used to think this sounded like some kind of abstract sophistry — almost as if the Church wouldn’t admit that, deep down, it just has a big problem with sexy sexy sex, and is trying to come up with some kind of intellectual excuse for why porn is so bad.

I get it now, though. Porn is just one of the handier tools that the devil is using in this particular era to exterminate, to x out, to deny, to quash, to empty out souls. Even better: to get us to do that to each other. It is bar none the worst thing you can do to another person, to deny their humanity.

I am not sure if Her Name is the best possible way to remedy this. It won’t, of course, matter much to the actual girls and women who have been used; although I suppose they might see their names on the list and realize that at least one person out there recognizes what he has done. Anyway, it could be a great and powerful, genuinely humbling exercise for men (and others) to write down that name, to enter it in the rolls.

At the same time, it feels like there could be the tiniest grain of continued exploitation involved, even if the most benign and well-intentioned kind.  I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of assigning a name to an unknown girl, even if the intention is to honor her.  Naming is powerful, as this project clearly acknowledges — and implies control over the person named. Or am I thinking about it too hard?

Well, what do you think about Her Name?

At the Register: We All Need Re-Creation

With my bare hands, I tell you!

At least some of our leisure time should be spent in recreation — literally.

And I need to re-read Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef  Pieper. I remember it being great, but I didn’t remember enough to dare to make a reference to it in theRegister post!

The boy has an aha moment.

PIC Aha band “Not this kind, fortunately. Never this kind.”

Says the boy: My tooth is almost out. Can I just have my tooth fairy money now so I can buy this thing?
Me: Nope. Sorry.
Boy: Okay. I guess I better haul some more rocks so I can earn the money, because I really want it.
Me: Good idea.
[Me on the inside: HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Now to spread the word to everyone who owns a credit card . . .

 

Life is too short for bad sex with a good husband.

This is the greatest letter I’ve gotten in a million years. It’s from MightyMighty atLetters To Us. I’ve bolded the best lines. She mentions Greg Popcak’s excellent bookHoly Sex, which I’ve been meaning to review for a long time; and also references theReal Catholic Love and Sex blog, which is full of good and honest discussions. Here’s the letter:

I don’t want to be a freaky fan girl, but would like to take a sec to tell you how awesome your book is. I read it during a loooooong period of abstinence after our 3rd was born. It was sort of funny the way it worked out. I was reading a book about how sex is good and not a joke on women & reading similar things on realCatholicloveandsex.com [now apparently defunct – leads to porn site!]. All while waiting for some clear signs of fertility to start showing up so that we could chart. By the time it happened at 11 months postpartum, I was actually enthusiastic about sex for the first time since before our first was born.

Normally my interest is completely tied to what’s going on with me physically, but thanks to your book, I’ve realized how that’s not being very loving–it lowers sex into something that is just about scratching an itch. If it’s really about love, it is worth making the effort to be together throughout whatever parts of the month are open to the couple. My husband has now read your book (he wanted to understand the huge change in attitude) and he is working on making some similar changes himself. We’re both pretty guilty of first asking, “Am I in the mood?” instead of asking what our spouse/marriage needs in this moment. I pointed out, “We don’t do that about other things that are good for us, like exercising or paying the bills or eating. Maybe we ought to stop acting like being together is as optional as watching Netflix together.”

I feel like reading Popcak’s “Holy Sex” helped me start shedding some of the prudery I had about sex being a little bit frivolous/selfish and your book helped me shed the rest of it + the poisoning lies the culture teaches about sex. (Men are animals, women are the gatekeepers, sex is mostly about getting pleasure, God sorta hates women for setting them up for either 20 pregnancies or no sex when their hormones are cooperating, etc.) At some point I thought, “Life is too short for bad sex with a good husband. I am going to get to middle and old age and really regret spending the healthiest years of my life this way, just like I already regret spending my teens and twenties dressing like a frump.”

My dad died at 61 last year and my mom just said last week, “I really regret not lavishing more affection on your father. He shouldn’t have had to coax me. I should have been more….[hand gesture indicating va-va-voom]! He deserved that!” I was shocked, but glad to see that it’s really never too late to get a healthier view on sex.

 

PIC dancing peasant couple

In another letter, she says:

 

It was very helpful to read your (semi-sarcastic) comments about developing some skill in bed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has put minimal effort into any session that I was participating in out of duty/charity. I find that putting in the same effort as I do when I’m all gung-ho (when I’d honestly rather just read in bed) takes the session (is there a better word??) from kind-of-degrading-to-both-of-us-because-I-feel-used-and-he-feels-judged to just as good as when I was up for it. For whatever reason, I needed permission to stop acting like a prude and start trusting that my husband wouldn’t be scandalized by me being enthusiastic.

I now realize that acting like sex is dirty if it’s too enthusiastic gives power to the smutty culture that reduces sex to “consensual pleasure.” God made sex awesome and me participating in it fully is good, not dirty. What’s dirty is when two married people feel smug for having sex without having given each other their all, including the trust needed to let go, unconditional acceptance for each other’s everything, and the effort to really be generous with one another, not just their fertility. Good job! You ate a protein bar at a 5 star restaurant! You went to Italy and never left the hotel! Good job, you’re Catholic and you still managed to separate love from sex!

 

 So smart. Thanks, MightyMighty!

I don’t always do obnoxious fist pumps

. . . but when I do, it’s because I got a good book review from a priest. Madonna House‘s Fr. Denis Lemieux, whose blog, Ten Thousand Places, you should be reading, had this to say about The Sinner’s Guide to  Natural Family Planning:

The meaning of chastity in marriage and the painful journey towards it is well treated, as is the delicate subject of discernment around the choice to have another child. The judmentalism that can sometimes pervade NFP circles is squarely and forthrightly condemned, and the overall theme of the book is the need for mercy, humility, gentleness, sympathy, and kindness to surround everything to do with sex, babies, marriage, and fertility in our hurting world. All written with much humor and poignancy.

I recommend this book highly, especially for younger married couples themselves in the trenches, but really for anyone who wishes to deepen their understanding of the vocation of marriage, its dignity and sublime meaning lived out in the nitty gritty of daily life and toil.

Thanks, Fr. Lemieux! Read the rest of his review here.

One slice of Christian theology without so much puppydog in it, please.

Here’s a  rightfully exasperated post on why we shouldn’t teach kids that Jesus is just playing teddybear switcheroo with us, like so:

PIC Jesus with even bigger teddybear

Urgh. She spells out what the problems are with this image (including that alarming blue necrotic tissue. Seriously, did The Big One fall, or what?), and what would have fixed them. She opens with something that rang oh-so-true:

when I first saw the pic, I actually thought someone was just making fun of us crazy Christians again. But then, I realized it was–likely–well-intended and promoted by a Christian.

It got 47 “likes.” I giggled painfully here, because the other day, I posted a graphic of a quote from my book:

(you can find it and other share-able graphics on my Tumblr page).  The inimitable Deirdre Mundy reminded me that, if I wanted the big-time social media shares, there really needs to be an adorably pathetic puppy involved. So I whipped out my Comic Sans and my blatant disregard for copyright laws, and posted this:

And damn your eyes, it got shared all over the place.

Christians. We are responsible for 90% of the western hemisphere’s greatest art and highest thought. We produced Aquinas and Michelangelo. GET IT TOGETHER.

 

At the Register: A Few Tips for Making Hard Choices

BECAUSE I LOVE TO GIVE ADVICE! And my life is not a complete and utter catastrophe, so I must know something, right?

Ad Orientem and Versus Populum both make sense

Here we see a cartoon meant to illustrate why it “makes more sense” for the priest to be facing the altar and the crucifix, as he does when celebrating the Traditional  Latin Mass:

PIC ad orientam versus populum cartoon

 

I’ve seen this cartoon in various places, most recently here. It’s cute, but misleading. Recall what the catechism says:

1368The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of the Church. The Church which is the Body of Christ participates in the offering of her Head. With him, she herself is offered whole and entire. She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all men. In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value. Christ’s sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering.

When the priest and Christ crucified are both facing the same way, it brings out the idea that Christ allows us, with the priest as a mediator between heaven and earth, to share in the sacrifice that He re-presents to the Father.  This is particularly obvious during the Elevation, when the priest raises the consecrated Host above his head, and the congregation makes a profound bow.

It’s an error to refer to Ad Orientem as “the priest with his back to the people”; but it’s also an error to refer to Versus Populum as “the priest with his back to God.” Each orientation is a valid way to celebrate Mass, and both expresses something true, mystical, and profound about what is happening.

At the Register: Tug of War at Harvard Is a Sign of Good Civic Health

Freedom vs. freedom is always a little messy, but this one worked out just like it’s supposed to. (If the link doesn’t work, please cut and paste: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/tug-of-war-at-harvard-is-a-sign-of-good-civic-health)

 

Caption contest!

For more *ahem* brilliance, see “Michelle Obama trusted the internet with a picture of herself holding a sign.”