Our Patroness

Detail from Maria Lactans (Mary Nursing) - Andrea Solari 1460-1524

Why choose, as our patroness, the Mother of Christ in her most intimate role? Because salvation and eternity are all about intimacy with God, and about the expression such intimacy finds in charity toward others. What better place than at the bosom of the Blessed Mother might we begin our quest to understand intimacy with God? Who else, or in what other role might one even vaguely approach the level of intimacy we have chosen to explore? No doubt, some unfortunate readers will find our image and the subject matter obscene and profane. That is to be expected given the sad confusion that pervades our era, an era wherein celebrities like Joan Rivers compare breastfeeding in public to douching in public. Get it?—A mother suckling an infant is not a breathtakingly beautiful sight; according to Ms Rivers, it is disgusting. And sadly, people laugh at her ranting.

The depiction of a nursing Madonna was common in the Middle Ages, so common that it's odd the Church didn't add the title 'Our Lady of Perpetual Lactation' to her litany: the litany of a mother who nurses her spiritual children into the life of her Son. John Paul II's detractors claimed that he wanted to "take the Church back to the Middle Ages." Indeed, in as much as he wanted to lead us back to the kind of Christo-centric, healthy humanism that pervaded the era, they were right. It is said by some that images of this type disappeared after the Council of Trent because the Council ordered a ban on nudity in sacred art. Not true. The Council did mandate that such "figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust." It is fairly obvious that the great master Andrea Solari did not have lust in mind when he painted the magnificent work above. An age that sees breast-feeding as obscene is an age that sees breasts as toys and children as baggage. Consider the following quote from Christopher West:

I remember attending the Second World Meeting of John Paul II with Families in Brazil in 1997. Nursing mothers were a common sight at this international gathering. What I found intriguing, however, was that women from "first-world" nations tended to drape themselves and sit off in a corner, while women from other nations seemed to have no qualms whatsoever about feeding their babies in full view of others. I remember one woman unabashedly roaming the crowd passing all manner of bishops and cardinals with her breast fully exposed while her child held on to it with both hands happily feeding. The only people flinching seemed to be those from the northern hemisphere.

Isn't it interesting that the part of the world producing the most pornography and exporting it to the rest of the globe has seemed to lose all sense of the true meaning of the human breast? What a commentary on the sad state of our sexually wounded culture! Breasts have been so pornified that we can fall into thinking that even their proper use is shameful. In other words, we have been so conditioned to see a woman's body through the prism of lust that we find it very difficult to recognize the purity and innocence of breast-feeding.

How did we get where we are? With a lot of help from the past. Why did intimate art like that above disappear after the Renaissance? For the same reason that fig leaves suddenly appeared over the genitals of every nude in Europe. The culture pendulum swings freely, and often too far. In our own times, it swings very rapidly. When I was growing up in the 1950's, the wonders of modern medicine (and the monopoly granted its practitioners by the FDA) were propelling medical doctors into the upper stratosphere of a new social order, one that haunts us still. They became the gods of the twentieth century, a position that is just now beginning to erode (remember, in America it is said that an abortion is a decision between a woman and her...husband? No way! Spiritual director? No. God? Nope. Doctor? BINGO!—one notch above God!).

I was just old enough to comprehend and remember the horror stories. Not to say that, as in every other age, there were not fine individuals who graced the ranks of the medical establishment, but as a general rule, the arrogance of the new aristocracy was palpable. Many of them had no problem informing their patients that breastfeeding was degrading. "Are you a cow?" some were known to ask when they learned of a patient's intent to breastfeed. Baby formula was their solution to what they perceived as a problem, and anything new and manufactured was obviously better than anything natural. Obviously. In a process that has now come to be cliche, medical science would make a huge contribution toward creating a health problem, and then offer a cure (a fix to fix the fix). Breastfeeding had for countless millennia supplied a Creator-ordained means of birth spacing. When medical science had callously cast that aside they had to fix it with the pill.

But...are we naive enough to lay all of the blame on the doorstep of modern medicine? Of course not, but secular culture, especially when it appears to embrace a certain level of scientific discipline—for good or for bad—is a powerful instrument of change. Every age has had to fight its own demons, and the demon of our age is secularism. Secularism's chameleon dogmas attack from all sides: from the mouths of talk show hosts, politicians, journalists, professors, preachers, and yes, unhappily, you and I on occassion. Iconized pop culture is, perhaps, the Achilles' heel of self-government; that is, our founding fathers warned that immorality is the enemy of liberty, and that morality could not be maintained without the kind of authentic religion that honors the Creator and promotes solidarity. Welcome to the vicious cycle: liberty allows secularism, and secularism destroys liberty. Godless religion always places self before others. Unborn children have already lost their liberty in the "free" nations of the West. Who's next? It doesn't take much imagination.

So...is Final Mission Publishing all about breastfeeding? No, but we are all about building a culture of life through the arts, and the bond between mother and child is very close to the heart of the matter. We will do what we can—one book, one painting, one artifact at a time—to build a culture of life, as outlined by John Paul the Great and the rich Catholic culture that is our heritage.

Top

Publisher's Post

Welcome! In our creed, the word Catholic begins with a big C, for we have come to know that opinion must bow to universal truth, truth that transends time and culture. So...what are opinions like?

Opinions are like feet: everybody's got 'em; most of 'em stink.
Opinions are like dreams: most of them are meaningless; some are nightmares.
Opinions are like babies: whose could be more perfect than mine?
Opinions are like clothes: everybody loves yours when they're in style.
Opinions are like breath: if yours stinks, you'll be the last to know.
Opinions are like trophies: yours are bound to impress someone.
Opinions are like drinks: if you have too many of them you become obnoxious.

And now, for ours...

While surfing the web, I ran accross the folowing quote:

Such reactions are amplified by what might be termed chronocentricity — the egotism that one's own generation is poised on the very cusp of history.

From The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage

Chronocentricity?! Six syllables—Wow! Scary. Are you chronocentric? Is your generation the one for which the world has waited with baited breath, waited for you to come and enlighten the human race? I think that anyone who is honest with him or herself will concede that during some period, or at least, at some moment in their lives, they have felt superior by virtue of belonging to a generation that is in the know, a generation that will not get caught up in the sad errors of the past as they attempt to forge a new reality, a new beginning for humankind. It is often the only ground, the holy ground, on which liberals camp as they set about the business of freeing the world from the slavery of tradition.

Yet, chronocentricity is not the opposite of conservatism, at least, not conservatism in its extreme: reactionary-ism. Reactionaries are just retro-chronocentrists. They are a portion of the current generation that is poised to rescue us from the present by attaching themselves to an idealized point of time in the past. Some of them whined when the Holy Father added a new set of mysteries to the rosary (Who does he think he is? the Pope?). For them, the present is not part of the continuum we call tradition. In their minds, unless it is a clone of their nostalgiacised past, the present is always suspect; it is certainly not looked upon as tradition in the making. There is an old cliche: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Are extreme liberals and reactionaries diametrically opposed? I think not. They are just reactionaries of different breeds. Both have abandoned the mission. Both have relinquished the pilgrim status. Both are ego-centric.

So...why inaugurate a web log with a discussion of chronocentricity, a word that hasn't even gained entry into a dictionary? Because chronocentricity is such a fundamental element of secularism, and secularism is such a fundamental enemy of truth. Secularism is a great pretender, always containing just enough carefully mitigated truth to appear fresh and wise. The present is tradition in the making, and we have only two choices: to participate, or to opt out.

Final Mission Publishing is dedicated to a culture of life, and a true continuum of tradition is the only sound source for the wisdom required for such a mission. Disregard for this continuum puts everything out of focus. It allows people to peruse a great work like John Paul II's Theology of the Body, and declare that, as regards teachings on sexuality, the Church is finally getting it together; when in fact, all the Pope has done is to organize and synthesize that which was already extant. Others, who prefer to dip selectively into the tradition continuum, rendering it a non-continuum—and therefore, no tradition at all—will likely find John Paul's broad, systematic approach overwhelming, or worse, distasteful.

The Holy Father's genius lies in recognizing that we cannot expect to evangelize the world if we ignore the human experience, especially as elucidated by modern philosophers. It is in the nature of man to ask questions, and it is fundamental to true evangelism to implore the Spirit for answers to those questions, answers that meet us where we're at. This mission has been John Paul's passion, and we are the happy recipients of his monumental effort.

Secular culture beckons us to rebel against tradition, to be our own man, to not compromise (a mind set that serves the purposes of both liberals and reactionaries). Of course, if everyone rebels against tradition, running the other direction in a mindless stampede, who is it that's being his own man? (The more things change...). Contrary to pop wisdom, compromise does not herald the demise of integrity. Compromise can be good—even heroic, with integrity intact—if it's our pride that is compromised. Integrity—the healthy integration of mind, body, and spirit—is the modus of healthy individualism; its opposite is that unhealthy individualism known as egotism. If you want an example of that, just turn on a TV or radio (they might just be playing the ego anthem: "My Way"). Often branded "rugged individualism," this abandonment of communal pilgrimage is a myth, the perpetrators of which all end up the same—self-deluded.

...Regrets, I've had a few;
But then again, too few to mention...

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way...

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

"My Way" by Paul Anka

I, I, I, I, I! Ain't I great! If you don't believe it, just ask me, and I'll sing you this little do-it-yourself-pontiff manifesto. Actually, it's worse than that. Through modernism, the drama that began in Eden with the words "...you will be like God" now comes full circle as we become self-appointed gods, pretending to manipulate our own destinies. The egocentric little musical number above is a shining example of secular wisdom: definitely not the words of "one who kneels." Whatever the author's intentions, the song's failure to acknowledge a higher power, or recognize the power of solidarity, turns to shameless vanity that which could have been an exercise in real self-esteem and true integrity. There is no known substitute for humility. Jesus said it all: "...not my will, but Thy will be done."

"What is man, what has he got?" He has God, if he wants Him!

Live the Word!

F.M.P.

Top

Theology of the Body

Copyright © Final Mission Publishing, 2007. All rights reserved.

Cash Advance