Panegyric: A hymn of praise

Katie has (rightfully) scolded me for posting several negative blog entries in a row (excepting the brief Egg Report, which was mostly positive), but I have to get one more negative one in there before promising to post a positive one.

It’s about Jimmy Carter and a recent panegyric written about him, courtesy of the latest edition of Notre Dame magazine, the alumni publication for my beloved wife’s alma mater.

To qualify this post, please read about our continued support of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, a fine organization at Notre Dame working for true cultural renewal and a truly human culture. Katie and I both have great hope for Notre Dame as the groundswell of faithful students and faculty turn the tide for Christ at this great institution.

A Notre Dame alum wrote an article about Jimmy Carter, who, like Al Gore of recent news, also won the Nobel Peace Prize (in 2002).

The article has nothing but the highest praise for Mr. Carter, and I do not doubt that there is much that he has done that is praiseworthy. However, of the several points that Mr. Carter makes in this piece, I had to take exception to one in particular, and I hope that he might read this post or have it brought to his attention, that he might reconsider his position on the matter.

The matter in question is Fundamentalism. From the article:

In 2000, Carter publicly cut his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention over its prohibition of female pastors and belief that wives should be submissive to their husbands….

“I pointed out that any group can become extreme, fundamentalist in philosophy,” he says. “I described on one page, I remember the characteristics of a fundamentalist. In religious circles, it always begins with male domination. This has been down through the centuries and still exists in the Roman Catholic faith and the Southern Baptist Convention.”

His position and statement are grossly false and indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of the Sacred Scriptures as well as of Catholic teaching and tradition, not to mention of the faithful Christians and communities who are members of the Southern Baptist Convention (to which I myself belonged and was baptized when I first became a Christian).

Hasn’t he read Ephesians 5? Could God (through St. Paul) have made it any more clear?

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord….Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

The Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention believe what St. Paul says here: It is anything but an invitation for husbands to dominate their wives, which violates their dignity as persons, and is instead the clear call for men to love their wives as Christ loves His Church: heroically, sacrificially, defending her to the death.

This article is happy to show a picture from 1979 of Pope John Paul II with Mr. Carter and his wife, an implicit endorsement by the Pope of Mr. Carter’s views on the Church? Negative.

How confusing that Mr. Carter, in his above statements, seems completely ignorant of the Pope’s landmark work, Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women). It was written and given to the world almost 20 years ago, so there has been ample opportunity for Mr. Carter’s to have read it, especially since he is so concerned with the plight of women in our society. Now is not too late, Mr. Carter.

Thus the “fullness of time” manifests the extraordinary dignity of the “woman”. On the one hand, this dignity consists in the supernatural elevation to union with God in Jesus Christ, which determines the ultimate finality of the existence of every person both on earth and in eternity. From this point of view, the “woman” is the representative and the archetype of the whole human race: she represents the humanity which belongs to all human beings, both men and women. On the other hand, however, the event at Nazareth highlights a form of union with the living God which can only belong to the “woman”, Mary: the union between mother and son. The Virgin of Nazareth truly becomes the Mother of God.

John Paul II continues: “both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God’s image.”

Every passage could be quoted, but I will leave the rest of this awesome Apostolic Letter to Mr. Carter to read. Women have tremendous beauty and dignity and nowhere is this more eloquently written of than here in this letter. It should be required reading for everyone, like Mr. Carter, who makes such slanders against the Catholic Church.

Alright: Two posts in one week challenging recent Nobel Peace Prize winners to learn their faith better is enough for me.