From the article:
"Anna Kolesárová was a Slovak girl who was shot to death in her own home, in front of her family, by a soldier from the occupying Red Army in 1944. Her courage and her suffering are undeniable. She is the first Slovak layperson to be beatified. Her death at the hands of a Russian soldier makes her a symbol of the struggle against totalitarianism, and her cult represents a renewal of religion after Communism, especially among the young. The trouble is not in her biography, but in the outdated and harmful ideas about sex and purity the church applies to her death. A recent account from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life says that Anna “repeatedly rejected the young man’s advances, preferring to die rather than give herself to him.” A church that continues to talk this way about rape, murder, and chastity is a church that cannot credibly face its own crisis of sexual abuse or repair its damaged moral authority"
"...It does not seem possible that now, today, we should need to ask this question: Was Anna murdered because she heroically resisted “temptation”? Or was she murdered by a man who tried to rape her at gunpoint? It can’t be both. Anna’s death is both tragic and galvanizing. But, as B. D. McClay wrote about Maria Goretti in a recent essay for this magazine, “The trouble is that she didn’t choose to die. Someone chose to kill her.”
A church that badly needs to offer healing to survivors of sexual assault must stop suggesting that those victims would be better examples of holiness if they’d fought harder.
"Maria and Anna are both classified as having died in defense of their “chastity,” “purity,” or “virginity”—translations vary. But those concepts are not interchangeable. For too long the church has been fixated on women’s virginity as an end in itself, as if chastity were a possession a girl can lose for good, rather than a virtue to be cultivated. This view reduces women to objects that men can possess or spoil, and makes men—all men—a threat to be deflected. It is warped, toxic, and totally at odds with everything else the church has taught me about love and relationships, and so, like many Catholic women, I’ve spent a lifetime shrugging it off. I’ve rolled my eyes at Augustine and Aquinas arguing about the Blessed Mother’s hymen, and I cringed and said nothing to the homilist who kept referring to Mary’s perpetual virginity at my sons’ elementary school Mass. Even so, I cannot fathom how the church, in 2018, can talk about a murdered girl as if she were holier, by virtue of her death, than one who was raped and survived."
The article is short, I would encourage you to read it. This passage is especially relevant to present discussions:
"...Young women know the difference between assault and seduction, even if their bishops do not. Anna was attacked by a violent stranger. It was not up to her, in that moment, to avoid the sin of sexual impurity. And if her story is told in a way that conflates the impulse to rape and murder with ordinary male desire, what meaning does it hold for young men?"
Slovak bishops: “Today, the temptations against purity are much greater than before—they weigh on the young soul from every direction, via the internet and media.”
ReplyDeleteIt almost sounds like the bishops thought Anna was tempted toward "impurity" by a rapist (?!) and decided she'd rather be dead. No. I don't get it.
Meantime, in other purity news, the Michigan Libertarians are setting up a deal to pay young women who refrain from having children until after age 23. With a lot of money on the line, might be an inducement for a lot of girls to abort (scroll to segment): http://www.michiganradio.org/post/stateside-kalamazoo-homeless-protests-100th-anniversary-spanish-flu-libertarian-medicaid-plan
Jean, yeah. "This guy is going to rape me, so I might as well kick back and enjoy it." Said no woman, ever.
DeleteAbout the Libertarian effort, the thought occurs to me that they're overlooking half of the equation. How about a program to encourage responsible behavior by young men? It would be better if both waited to have children until they were able to provide a stable home for them. But I can see a cash reward for not having children possibly encouraging abortion.
The problem is that abusive sex is regarded by the clergy as a moral issue when it is really a justice issue, i.e. it is an abuse of power. Francis in his Letter repeatedly uses the phrase “sexual abuse, abuse of power and abuse of conscience” to talk about clerical offenders and the clerical cover up. It is the rationalization (abuse of conscience) which justifies the use of power to justify sexual abuse by the perps as well as to cover it up by the bishops.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why the issue of sexual abuse by clergy has not gone away is because the legal system recognizes the injustice of the abuse of power by both the perps and the bishops . Injustices require some form of compensation if only that of hauling the bishops into our modern equivalent of the “stocks” by the news media.
Somehow the clerical establishment seems unwilling to see martyrdom as a witness against injustice. They had trouble with Archbishop Romero being considered a martyr, too.
Yes, martyrdom can be a witness against injustice. Seems like their prejudice against considering Romero a martyr was political. They didn't have any problem with Thomas a Beckett. Of course that was a good long time ago. Maximilian Kolbe was considered a martyr to charity.
DeleteSome of the nit pickers are also having a problem considering Father Jacques Hamel a martyr, because he pushed back against his attackers.
I expected that was where Mollie was going when I saw the headline. As you note, B. D. Clay sort of set it up for her.
ReplyDeleteSo much could be said. I'll only start by saying "Quiet Mother, Gentle Dove" grinds my sensibilities. I picture Mary holding a laundry basket on her hip with one hand and a four-year-old's hand with the other, under a lowering sky with strands of damp hair out of place. That's how I remember my mother when I was 4, and how my wife looked when some of our kids were 4. Quiet woman? Trying to get the sheets in before the rain hits.
In my other picture of Mary, I see her kneading dough, sleeves rolled up and dust flying, with a hot oven (in a hot kitchen) behind her. Mary, Baker of Bread. Wonder why no artist ever did it. Probably did, and it was suppressed. Gentle doves don't bake bread.
So there is that. We have come quite a way from when Catholic girls were told not to wear patent leather shoes around boys (reflection!) and to take a phone book along on dates (in case they had to sit on a boy's lap in the car). When I say "we," I mean the laity. Our supposedly celibate betters sit around thinking about quiet women and gentle doves and instructing the faithful about how their lack of supposed celibacy opens the gates of Hell.
I'll stop for the moment.
Tom, did you ever hear the Kingston Trio sing Mary Mild? It's a bit of a heterodox take on the challenges of raising a divine Child. Said to be based on an oriental carol, "The Bitter Withy"
DeleteNow I have heard it. Thank you.
DeleteHere are a few more details of how she died, courtesy of Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"In 1944 - in the autumn - the final and bloodiest phase to World War II (the Eastern front) was passing through the eastern district of Michalovce which was then a part of the Hungarian nation. It was during this violent transition period that the people living in surrounding villages would hide in their cellars to wait for the shelling and fighting to end.[2][3]
"On 22 November 1944 the Red army soldiers entered the town. Her father Jan sheltered with his children and their neighbors in the cellar under the kitchen. During a tour of the house one drunken Soviet soldier discovered the hideout and peered inside.[6] Kolesárová's father bade her to "give him something to eat" and so she emerged from the hideout and walked up to the kitchen to serve the soldier food and water in the hopes of maintaining peace and to prove that she and the others posed no threat to the soldier.[4] The uncertain nature of the war prompted her and other women in the village to wear black dresses in order not to attract unwanted attention to themselves and to discourage improper behavior from the soldiers.[2] But this did not deter the soldier from making unwanted sexual advances towards her.[7][6] Kolesárová refused his advances and pulled herself out of his grip as he attempted to rape her.[8] The soldier pursued her to the basement.[9][2]
"There the soldier jumped her and ordered her to die in front of her father before he pointed his PPSh-41 automatic rifle at her and killed her on the spot for her refusal;[6] she was killed in front of her father and brother with two shots to the face and chest. Her final words were recorded as: "Goodbye father! Jesus, Mary, Joseph!"[3][1][10] The girl had made her confession and had received Communion not long before she was killed.[4] Her remains were buried the next evening despite the intense fighting occurring in the area but the funeral was conducted without a priest in secret so as to remain safe. The priest Anton Lukáč celebrated the solemn funeral rites one week later on 29 November 1944.[11]"
If Mollie's (and everyone else's) point is that Anna was a victim of sexual assault, and so was Maria Goretti - I agree completely. For that matter: maybe it's just a failure of my imagination, but I'm struggling to imagine any circumstances that result in a martyrdom in defense of chastity that don't involve sexual assault.
To say that she died in defense of purity ... I don't see that that's completely off the mark. In fact, it seems to fit the facts as presented here. She resisted a rape, and that got her murdered. She could have submitted, and might have lived. Why did she resist? I guess she's the only one who knows, but she might have harbored an exalted idea that her purity is worth preserving, even at great risk. I don't think that's an uncommon idea; it probably has more currency in societies that are more honor/shame-oriented than ours.
We know that soldier rape is a continuing issue in war zones today. And even here in the relatively safe developed world, when I sent my daughters off to college, I worried more about their being drugged and assaulted by a predatory frat boy than about their being seduced by some 20 year old Lothario. So if the point being made is to urge the various dicasteries and episcopal conferences to try a little harder to find pertinent contemporary lessons to draw from this tragic death, I'm on board.
Jim, thanks for the added information. No question but that Anna was heroic in Christian virtue. But she would not have been less heroic if the soldier had completed the rape, whether or not he killed her. My feeling is that had already made up his mind to kill her.
DeleteYou resist a rape because you know it's going to hurt and because the rapist is going to mock and humiliate you. You resist in hopes to maintain control of your person. Many rape victims report that they try to leave their bodies mentally during a rape as a way to disassociate from what is happening to them. If you live in a culture in which a broken hymen makes you an unmarriageable outcast, that factors into your resistance. You may be more inclined to fight to the death than to detach mentally and wait for a chance to run away as "damaged goods."
DeleteIn seeking to reward Anna and girls like her by making them martyrs to purity, we implicitly condemn those who could not fight off their attackers.
I might prefer to be shot than to endure the humiliation of rape, but that does not make me purer or holier than a woman who is forced to submit and live with the trauma.
"You resist a rape because you know it's going to hurt and because the rapist is going to mock and humiliate you. You resist in hopes to maintain control of your person. Many rape victims report that they try to leave their bodies mentally during a rape as a way to disassociate from what is happening to them. If you live in a culture in which a broken hymen makes you an unmarriageable outcast, that factors into your resistance. You may be more inclined to fight to the death than to detach mentally and wait for a chance to run away as "damaged goods." "
DeleteI think that all of these factors fit under a capacious understanding of the idea of purity: preserving one's bodily and psychological, and spiritual, wholeness and integrity from assault. I'd like to think that the church (i.e. we) can think about purity without becoming obsessed with sexual details. This more capacious understanding strikes me as more in line with how, for example, purity was understood by our Jewish elder siblings in their biblical concern for legal and ritual cleanliness. Sexual purity was part of it but not the whole of it.
"In seeking to reward Anna and girls like her by making them martyrs to purity, we implicitly condemn those who could not fight off their attackers"
I am sorry if this comes across as argumentative, but I don't see the church's beatifying Anna as "rewarding" her. She's now beyond whatever punishments or rewards the church on earth can bestow. A beatification or canonization is more of a recognition that something has happened, or that something is true.
In point of fact, she failed to fight off her attacker - it's just that her attacker chose to murder her with a gun rather than force himself on her sexually.
So I don't see the church here as implicitly condemning women who fail to fight off their attackers. The church might even have an important consideration - the spiritual aspect - to bring to the work of helping victims of sexual assault to recover and heal.
It's an interesting point, Jim, but I think you're trying to expand on accepted understanding of the word "purity" to write a new story.
DeletePurity means that something is uncontaminated or free from immorality.
I don't know how you get around the idea that, in common parlance, rape/sex threatened to contaminate or make Anna immoral.
I agree that it is not a sin to get raped. And as I mentioned, I agree with Mollie's point that the church officials sort of missed the boat on the lessons they drew from her story.
DeleteI'm supposing that women's instinctive revulsion to being sexually violated (and men's revulsion to the women they love being sexually violated) isn't completely reducible to fear of violence, pain and humiliation, although I'm sure they're all very real and are part of it.
My angle to all this is that I think purity is closely tied to notions of holiness. I guess what I'm thinking is that I don't think it's beyond imagination that Anna resisted her assaulter because being violated would be unholy somehow, even if it doesn't make her morally culpable. It would be unholy insofar as it would make her a victim of evil - being in the presence of evil is unholy, even if it's not something that we choose or embrace. I don't know if that is logical, but I admit it makes a certain intuitive sense to me. She was confronted with evil and she pulled away and tried to get away. Evil tracked her down and killed her.
So the rape would have made her a victim of evil and less pure and holy in a way that being murdered would not? No, I don't get this at all.
DeleteIn Mollie's article, she mentions that the terms "purity", "chastity", and "virginity" are not interchangeable, even though people sometimes use them as though they are. I think that is a bit of what we are struggling with here. Sometime it would be useful to start another thread discussing chastity according to one's state in life, as a virtue that all the baptized are called to.
DeleteI understand the difference between the terms, but I don't get Jim's distinctions in this case. I presume that, as a deacon and lifelong Catholic, he understands how they apply better than I do, and I should quit barging into conversations where I merely offend.
DeleteJean - a bit earlier, you offered a definition of purity: "Purity means that something is uncontaminated or free from immorality." Do you not agree that being raped might leave a person feeling contaminated? And that is evil?
DeleteThe victim of any crime will feel violated and besmirched because of an encounter with evil. I expect a rape victim feels that more intensely.
DeleteBut I don't think that anyone who is raped is rendered impure or is complicit with evil.
Perhaps I am too dense, but you seem to be saying that a woman is purer dead from resisting a rape than from being raped and somehow polluted with evil.
Jean - I think we're largely in agreement. FWIW, I'm not saying that a potential rape victim is better off dead. I do think that a woman (or a man) might resist a rapist - which can be a very risky strategy, as I understand it; resisting doesn't always mitigate the risk to the victim - in order to avoid being contaminated or besmirched. No doubt there are other motives, too, as you called out - and naturally, in the event, the victim doesn't have the luxury of analyzing all this. As I mentioned in one of my first comments: only Anna knows what led her to react as she did.
DeleteJim, re confrontation with evil: Perhaps many victims die thinking "there is no God who would let this happen!" Is that the corrupting effect of evil you refer to? Rejecting God is the "unforgivable sin," of course. But it is hard for me to imagine that God could not forgive someone for thinking it in a swift and violent encounter and to apply extra measures of mercy. (See Psalm 21, which Jesus hearkens to on the cross.)
DeleteAnna apparently died with the names of the Holy Family on her lips, perhaps a plea to the Holy Family to help her through her travail. If that was an expression of faith and trust, then I can see how it expresses purity of faith.
I can even say that a rape victim who resists may, perhaps unconsciously, be performing an act of faith and spiritual mercy by trying to put the rapist on the right road. Maria Goretti apparently tried to appeal to her rapist's better nature by reminding him that this was wrong and he could go to jail.
There's a weird scene in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor in which the awful grandma tells her murderer that he could be her own son. Is she just trying to save herself? Or is this a moment of grace that she offers her murderer that he refuses to take? I think it can be understood as both.
Anna's story be understood as a parallel to that of St. Dymphna, who was murdered while trying to evade her father's incestuous intentions. In that story, it is clear that St. Dymphna was canonized not because she died sexually pure, but because she tried, through words and actions, to persuade her father away from the path of sin. She, also, died asking God to help her.
https://natlshrinestdymphna.org/site/?page_id=11
Within the lives of the saints there is a pretty strong line of virgin martyrs whose sexual purity was a reflection of their purity of faith. Somewhere after the Reformation, sexual continence became conflated with purity of faith, especially for women.
I don't know. Virginity for its own sake, without reference to faith and goodness, strikes me as a kind of sterile. In fact, if we are to believe Linda Kay Klein, certain emphases on sexual purity for women can be corrosive: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/18/648737143/memoirist-evangelical-purity-movement-sees-womens-bodies-as-a-threat
Just rambling, I guess.
Does the Church implicitly condemn women who are not strong enough to prevent their rape? Nearly all the women in Berlin under 40 were raped or endured an attempted rape. "And companions" would be in the tens of thousands. Has anyone started a process for them? I haven't heard of it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Church condemns them, implicitly or otherwise.
DeleteIf she clobbered the Soldat with a lamp base and then filled him with alcohol and got him thrown in front of a convoy at night to escape blame, would she still be holy? I guess not. But I'd marry her.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day of Catholic Mothers of the Year, the winner usually had seven or eight children with another "in the oven" for the photograph. At the same time, Holy Mother had so tightly linked the words "virgin undefiled" that they could be separated only by a papal bull. None of those Catholic Mothers of the Year could have been virgins, on the evidence of the photographs. So were they defiled?
ReplyDeleteThat question bothered me for a long time until I realized the major two-word premise didn't make any sense.
I guess "virgin undefiled" means propagation without (ugh) sex. But now it is possible to propagate without (ugh) sex, and that is condemned as well. Very confusing.
ReplyDeleteAll this time, I thought that meant "undefiled by sex." There were implications for the continuance of the human race in the concept, but my little mind got hung up on the defilement of Catholic Mothers of the Year.
Delete