On the evening of February 2, 2014, a group of topless feminists attacked Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela as he alighted from his car and tried to enter a Madrid church to celebrate Mass. Casting all dignities aside, the women threw bloodstained underwear at him while cuffing him with their bare breasts. They shouted, “Abortion is sacred”. The feminist activists (called “Femen”) blamed the cardinal for the Spanish government’s bill which is aimed at restricting abortion.
The scenario epitomizes the absolute disparity between the Church and the protestors. The cardinal is attempting to enter a sacred place to pray; the protestors chant that abortion is sacred and express their displeasure with a torrent of vulgarities. It also illustrates the disparity between law and disorder, civility and savagery, the Culture of Life vs. the Culture of Death.
It is an understatement to suggest that the Femen women behaved immodestly. With regard to this contention there may be broad agreement. There may be less agreement, however, on drawing a connection between immodesty and the Culture of Death. Nonetheless, I will argue that there is one.
Wendy Shalit makes an important point in her excellent book, A Return to Modesty: Rediscovering the Lost Virtue, namely that the virtue of modesty has been, if not completely, then virtually, lost. How this came about is an interesting question, but one factor that has played an important role is secular feminism that has sought to free women from stereotypes and prove they can compete with men on almost every level. This ideology, which is not to be confused with a realistic philosophy grounded in nature, has placed an exaggerated importance of freedom and has accorded very little significance to intelligence.
Columnist Dennis Prager makes the following observation: “A generation ago, men refrained from using curse words in front of women. Today many young women curse as readily as men (I have probably seen more women than men drivers make an obscene gesture at other drivers). Such behaviors were inconceivable when women were expected to act feminine. And, of course, the “liberated” female’s celebration of casual sex, throughout history associated with male nature, is the antithesis of femininity.”
Modesty is the moral virtue which allows women and men to present themselves not as sex objects, or asexual beings, or errant individuals, but as persons. Blessed John Paul’s entire philosophy of personalism revolves around this notion that the person is simultaneously a unique individual and a responsible member of the community. Thus, a person is modest in dress, behavior, and language, in order to facilitate genuine person-to-person relationships. The principle barrier to modesty is pride which, in this instance, is typified by the retort, “You can’t tell me how to dress, how to behave, and how to talk”.
In my encounters with feminists in the classroom, I found myself at pains trying to convince them that freedom must be combined with intelligence in order for it to be profitable. One surely has the freedom to walk across a busy intersection blindfolded, but that is not very intelligent. In fact, it is courting self-destruction. A woman can choose to dress provocatively, but she may pay dearly for it. A woman has the freedom to try being a man, but, like the horse that tried to sing like a nightingale, risks losing sight of her own femininity. The freedom to indulge in reckless sexual activities, to clamor for abortion, and to assault those with whom you disagree is not consistent with developing one’s self as a person. The Deadly Sin of pride ascribes too much importance to the isolated self and accords too little importance to intelligence.
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Although certain feminists want to be more like men (they have now invaded the world of sumo wrestling), in so doing, they have created an unbridgeable gap between themselves and the sex they seek to emulate. On the one hand, they reserve for themselves the right to be as immodest as they please, while at the same time they demand that men adopt the virtue of heroic sexual restraint. The pride that forbids modesty ultimately wages war on its opponents. According to the Femen website, “our naked war will continue against anyone who threaten {sic} our right to abort”. The convergence of immodesty with war is not to be taken lightly.
Pride says, “I am going to do what I jolly well please, and no one is going to stop me”. Without the protective barrier of personal modesty, pride goes to war. The true person makes room in his life for the “other” and is willing to converse rather than coerce. Alberto Ruíz-Gallardón, Spain’s Justice Minister and main promoter of the abortion reform, has declared that “No insult, yelling or scorning can make this minister abdicate in fulfilling the commitment of… regulating women’s rights but also the rights of the conceived and the unborn.”
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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