SEE the ongoing discussion about Twilight. Readers disagree with Fitzgerald’s claim that the book feeds unwholesome desires in women. Vanessa writes, “Feminists actually really hate those books. It’s such effective emotional porn because it speaks to women’s innate wish to be desired, protected, and dominated by a strong and morally-upright man.” She adds: [...]

  HOW IS IT that a confirmation hearing for a female Supreme Court justice becomes an occasion for lamenting how much women are held back? The goofy senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, and Elena Kagan agree that women still have a long way to go. And, so we have the strange spectacle of powerful women telling the nation that women are not [...]

  “THE OBJECT of education is to teach us to love Beauty,” said Plato. Aristotle claimed it was to make us “feel joy and grief at the right things.” John Henry Newman said liberal arts education is the process by which the intellect “is disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its own [...]

  CATHOLIC FEMINISTS may look to the writings of Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI to support their view that careerism and feminist interpretations of history are compatible with their faith. But how do they reconcile this stance with unambiguous statements to the contrary by previous popes? As noted by Allan Carlson, and discussed today at Throne and Altar:

    FITZGERALD writes: The Twilight series is nothing more than female emotional pornography. It’s an intoxicating formula for today’s girls from 10-40 and yet it has none of the social stigma attached to traditional pornography. Here’s a particularly interesting article at Whiskey’s Place. The author understands that men retreat from fields that women enter. Women have now entered the [...]

  MARTIANUS CAPELLA writes: And eternal be their memory–the liberal arts colleges died long ago. Within most of those colleges which dub themselves “liberal arts colleges,” not a single administrator or professor knows what the liberal arts are nor why they ever were. The liberal arts curriculum was designed by theologians of the Middle Ages [...]

  THE AUTHOR of Throne and Altar writes in response to recent posts here about Catholicism and feminism: [T]he true Catholic social doctrine, as expressed clearly from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Piux XII, has exactly one principle, and it is simple and clear. That principle is patriarchy. More precisely, the guiding principle of Catholic social thought [...]

  CAMILLE PAGLIA writes that middle class values are killing eroticism and romance. Writing in The New York Times, Paglia says middle class propriety is behind the stifling regime of postmodern androgyny. Although she makes some excellent points, I don’t agree with her thesis. It’s true that androgyny is a natural sex suppressant, in the same [...]