Today is the Feast of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr. Agnes was thirteen years old when she refused the wooing by a Roman Governor’s son, having promised herself to the Lord. Neither inducements, nor being clapped in irons, nor being brought to a whore house could change her mind. Agnes was finally beheaded, going joyfully to meet her Groom, while the pagan Romans wept at the sight of so beautiful child about to be beheaded for her faith.
Virgins, and the Church’s esteem for them have often been misportrayed. It isn’t that the Church celebrates virgins because it believes sex to be dirty. Quite the contrary. The Church teaches now, as it always has, that sex is one of the greatest goods of marriage.
Virgins teach us by their unblemished example that continence is possible. They teach us to love God and ourselves by reverence for His creation and its right use according to His divine will and plan. The continence of the virgin is an example of fidelity to the married. The purity of heart in the virgin finds its complement in the purity of fidelity between spouses, between Christ and his Bride the Church.
The beauty of the virgin begins in self-discipline and ends in self-sacrifice; again a model for married couples.
Agnes preferred death to infidelity to her Groom-the Lord of the Universe to whom she promised her beauty, her body, her heart and soul.
That sort of resolve is born in love and ends in the Arms of Love itself.
Coming Home 
As a modern, God-fearing, libertarian, my take on Agnes would be something more like, her parents and the state refused to allow her the liberty to make her own choice, including the choice to dedicate herself chaste and virgin to the church.
I don’t find the explanation here of the church’s attitude toward virginity entirely credible. Historically, there are many examples to the contrary, possibly even Paul’s rather nebulous advice to be celibate, as he said he was, but, if you can’t control yourself “it is better to marry than to burn.” There were also not a few church theologians who openly wrote that sexual attraction was the basis of the fall, it was all woman’s fault, all women are evil or temptations to evil, etc. etc. etc. I could look up a few names, but I’m sure you are familiar with them yourself.
What you have presented here is a respectable effort by a 21st century Christian and Roman Catholic to come to a better understanding of what God expects and respects than the church has managed in past centuries. I know you are not alone in that accomplishment. What is the point of our existence in a temporal universe, if we are not to improve, generation to generation, on our previous understanding of God, and of our purpose in living?
Siarlys Jenkins,
I’m just not following your point here….. maybe it’s me….
Question:
When you speak of “church” do you mean:
1. the “Church” as in the “Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church”
or
2. the “church” as in “self-proclaimed member(s)”.
I think Gerard’s explanation falls in line perfectly with Catholic Church teaching.
Can you give an example of a “church theologian” or two that you’re referring to?
Jenkins’ mistake is to superimpose our “age of enlightenment” upon historical witness. We moderns of course are the wiser because we see through the veil of pious tales and mistaken notions of religious practices of yesteryear. And yet the catacombs and brave witness of the martyrs giving of their lives in the coliseum cry out the reality of the early church and how they were on fire with holy love, even to the point of laying down their lives. Agnes is completely consistent with this.
Chrysostom, Tertullian, and Jerome would do for a start. Also Ambrosiaster. All taught that women were inherently evil, with the choice of penitence being childbearing or virginity. All considered contact with a woman to convey somewhat of this evil to a man, therefore intercourse, although necessary to keep her pregnant, was unclean. I’m summarizing of course, I’d need a whole page to be thorough, but these are well known and widely published sources.
Being on fire with holy love is worthy of admiration, as is laying down your life for your faith. However, it doesn’t mean that the Greek and Latin theologians who were, in part, successors to these martyrs, men whose blood had not the mischance to be shed, were perfect in their understanding. I might even suggest that the death of so many who were on fire with holy love deprived the church of those who best understood, leaving us misguided by the puzzled speculations of men who never experienced the same exaltation. It is no specific age of enlightenment that gives us a better understanding, but each generation struggling to understand what is by its transcendent nature beyond us, and if we are lucky, coming closer to the truth, building on all the history that came before us, errors as well as insights.
As for which church, the theologians I reference pre-date the assumed predominance of the bishops of Rome over whatever portion of Christianity they could secure control over. The ecclesia of the followers of Jesus had no curia, no Vatican, no diocesan administration. But it was accepted in the Roman bureaucracy for many centuries that the theologians I have mentioned wrote truthfully and with valid insight. I am more than pleased that the Roman canon today has superceded such twisted notions.
Siarlys Jenkins,
I don’t believe that our generation is necessarily any closer to to the Truth than generations before us, assuming you are referring to Moral Truth.
I am not a Catholic scholar but I doubt that Doctors of the Church – St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom – would deny the inherent dignity of women. I am not familiar with the others you mentioned but would be interested to see evidence that they taught that women were inherently evil.
Quite the opposite, in the opinion of Br. Ezra Sullivan, O.P.:
“In all, Jerome did more than any other single Church Father to promote the dignity of and reverence for women in his day. He wrote to them more than any other; he wrote about them more than any other; he taught them, defended their rights, and encouraged their abilities.” (Freerepulic.com)
gerard from illinois,
Thank you for your comment! A book I found interesting that you and others may enjoy – Four Witnesses, The Early Church in Her Own Words. (The “witnesses” being Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons.)
“All taught that women were inherently evil, ”
So Agnes was evil according to the early theologians?
Amazing.
Kinda like Reverand Wright theology, except directed at one half of the population of the world.
Your born evil, you’ll live evil, and you’ll die evil.
I don’t know that our generation is any closer to moral truth, but I don’t know that earlier generations were any closer either. They made their own errors, their own compromises with the world of their time. In fact, if you look at the posted Roman church canons on torture posted at Erin Manning’s site, RedCardigan, there is a very faint acknowledgement that in the past, governments considered torture a legitimate instrument of state, and that the church even partook of the exercise of torture. This is all wrapped in protestations that torture was always against the teachings of the church, but there is an ever so faint admission that the church did systematically practice torture.
I admire even a limited ability to recognize past error, rather than insisting that because the church used torture in the past, therefore the church may not abjure it now. I recall that a Roman bishop in Texas started a campaign against production of nuclear weapons at a plant in his diocese some years ago, and an evangelical Protestant mega church pastor tried to show his patriotism by organizing “Pantax Appreciation Day” for the company contracted to make the bombs. The mega-church leader rhetorically asked how a church that launched the Inquisition could have the nerve to complain about a nuclear weapons facility.
The truth is, every person, and every institution, can learn from experience and improve on their own history. The church doesn’t sponsor torture any more, and is free to call for an even higher moral standard, such as taking weapons of mass destruction out of use entirely. So it is with church teachings on women. I suspect early theologians admired Agnes precisely because she put away all that they considered evil, but this doesn’t speak to the beauties of married intercourse as part of family life
Here is a good sampling of Jerome:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/jerome-marriage.html
We could argue all day about exactly what he meant, but he would not endorse all that Gerard has said here about marriage. Or, perhaps after living in the 21st century, he would sincerely modify his earlier views. He might retract statements like:
“I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins.”
“The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, and whose crops are choked with briars.”
Jerome’s writing, taken as a whole, is more complex than anyone could reduce to a single sentence. There is room for Ezra Sullivan to tweak something acceptable out of his writing toward women. But a woman who was a contemporary of Jerome would, I suspect, have responded either with fear and a good deal of self-loathing tempered by a sense of life as penitence, or have rejected his teachings with contempt.
A reminder here that one will not find a single Church teaching that claims women are intrinsically evil or that they are somehow less in the eyes of God than men.
The Roman Canon, the very center of the Mass in the Roman Catholic tradition, has not changed since the year 600 and has roots going to the very earliest apostolic times. In this, the most sacred of the Church’s prayers, every priest and bishop in the world (Pope included)recognizes the special place certain martyrs and saints hold in our faith tradition. Here, in addition to Agnes are numbered other women: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecily, and Anastasia.
Why would a Church that has anything less than the deepest respect for women hold them in such high regard? And we haven’t even mentioned Mary, whom we esteem with the highest of accolades accorded to anyone in the Church, second only to our Savior.
Of all the major religions in the world, name another that esteems women as highly as the Christian religion.
Gerard, if asitis had so blatantly disregarded specific citations previously posted, as you have done here, making bland statements about “not a single church teaching” when many church teachings have been presented which point the opposite way, you would have listed that as one more reason to ban her from the site.
It is your site, you are free to do as you please, but the statement doesn’t have much inherent credibility. Someday, Christians of all stripes will have to acknowledge that we are all heirs to centuries of error, well intentioned error, but there is no consistent line of perfect adherence to much of anything, most particularly the perfect will of God.
As Thomas Merton wrote, being uncertain whether his life actually did please God, “I think that the desire to please you does please you.” We cannot, with any honesty, count on much more.
Siarlys,
that’s gerard from illinois, not Dr. G.
Oh, I thought Dr. G. was giving a lecture in Illinois. Thanks for clarifying.
S. Jenkins:
I would simply post as Gerard but for the fact that Dr. Nadal beat me to it. Also, I do not pretend to possess his intellect.
As a scholar you certainly recognize that there are varying historical accounts and opinions on all of these matters. I might add that even though someone is declared a doctor of the Church (Chrysostom) that is not a guarantee that all of his teachings are de fide.
As with most people time is a major limiting factor so I will simply cut to the chase. The Church has never taught in any age that women are “inherently evil.” And speaking of doctors of the Church, three are women. How could that be if women are “inherently evil”?
Yes, as you point out no one age is perfect. Even now we have priests and bishops who are wrong on birth control and abortion. In the future when others look back at these days and try to grasp the “centuries of error, well intentioned error” wherein many were unconcerned with the heinous crime of abortion they will see that even though the Church taught correctly, many did not follow.
I think we’re at a good stopping point. Future centuries will make their own judgement as to error and correctness. I suspect they will surprise us all.