By Alcuin
While not every men’s rights activist (MRA) need be a Christian, every MRA needs to know how Christianity has been gutted of its masculine core, and how this feminization of the central religion of Western countries has played a key role in the feminization of Western society.
Dominican priest Aidan Nichols argues in an important chapter countering feminists that Christianity’s lack of the Father, which has led to the lack of fatherhood within Western culture, has hurt society and individuals deeply. Writing about Nietzsche and Freud, and their rejection of fatherhood and rejoicing in nihilistic (that is, fatherless) freedom, Nichols observes:
“the reaction against the Father, … which they pioneered, has produced a society and culture where fathers are instinctively distrusted, where a spirit of unreflective patricide is abroad, where to exercise paternity, by nurture of one’s biological children or by formation of one’s spiritual children, has become especially difficult.”
He offers the concrete example of the anger than many liberal Catholics hold against the fatherly popes of recent times, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
The false rape claims and pedophilia craze of mainstream society come out of this deep suspicion of men and masculinity. Many men are forced to survive by becoming manginas. Thus they too reject the father, and add to the matriarchal nihilism and general misandric hysteria. Nichols has no ties to the men’s movement, so these thoughts are my own, not a part of the book. But this chapter on the rejection of the fatherhood of God shows the roots to much of today’s problems.
Nichols notes that this theological concern (the theological study of the Father is called paterology) seems at first glance to affect only the Church, but as the above quote from the book reveals, this great change in theological perspective, basically the rejection of the first Person of the Trinity, has led to a sweeping change in Western society and in the world.
Nichols warns, “the concealing of the true face of the Father can be said to have had ill consequences of a wide-ranging sort in Western culture and society. The death of the divine Father in whom authority and goodness are inseparably united, the font at once of power and value,” was celebrated by Freud and Nietzsche. Freud blamed much neurosis on the guilt supposedly engendered by God the Father.
Notice that fatherhood united authority and goodness. Under feminists we have authority, but authority that is tied to only hate and manipulation, not goodness. Feminism idealizes nothing other than power, whereas worship of God the Father created more transcendent ideals. The only thing that feminists have made transcendent is themselves. They wish to worship themselves.
Nichols shows how in a Fatherly conception of God, we worship God rather than a projection of ourselves. This is because God as Father is wholly other, whereas the goddess is part of the world. In goddess worship a fair amount of enmeshment occurs (no surprise there), where, for instance, the world is actually the womb of the great mother goddess. It thereby becomes very easy for women to begin to worship themselves mistakenly (and, of course, to expect men to do likewise).
This terrible sort of narcissism is something that patriarchy, at least Judeo-Christian patriarchy, has strongly opposed as blasphemy. While Eastern Orthodox theology talks of the divinization of the Christian, this divinization is always a gift of God, not something achievable by myself. Feminists, conversely, assume that women, by virtue of being women, are already transcendent. Hence, they claim that a woman never lies about rape. Again, here we see how theology affects wider society. Theological issues are not mere church issues.
Nichols claims that only a proper practice of traditional, patriarchal Christianity can return us in the West to balance: “The collective trauma created in the Western soul by distortion of the image of the divine Father, followed by murderous revolt against him, can only be healed and pacified by return to its source.” This source is God the Father.
Two aspects of fatherhood to which Nichols refers are the sacrificial and the generative. God the Father creates because He is a Father. He is not the Creator, Nichols warns, but the Father. “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” are proper names of the persons of the Trinity. Christians fail to fully understand the nature of God the Father when they refer to Him as Creator. This is a limited view. He is creator because He is Father. His patriarchal nature makes him creator. The feminist trinity, creator, redeemer, sustainer, is not the same as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because it rejects the masculine nature of God in its attempt to reject the patriarchal nature of Western society.
Thankfully, Nichols does offer some unpleasant truth about feminism, and its attack on Christianity, though more force would have been more appreciated. It is, he notes, the sacrificial Father who “subverts a heterodox feminism.” In other words, God the Father is at the present doing battle against the Baals and Ashuras of feminism.
One supposes that Nichols has no room to discuss more freely how destructive matriarchy and feminism have been to civilization, society, the family, and individuals. Readers must read a bit between the lines to see the extent to which feminism is nihilistic. Even so, many more such books are necessary for us to better understand the nature of feminism.
