The Lost Bride: How the Modern World Forgot the Feminine

This is why it is important, as Pope Benedict XVI said, for woman to be at the centre of Christianity.

I recently wrote about how the sitcom Friends wreaked untold damage on a generation of impressionable young viewers. I know this, because I am that generation. Many of my Catholic peers (already left in the gutter by weak clergy who failed to preach the Gospel) fornicated, shacked up, watched porn and contracepted precisely because they had watched Friends and wanted to recreate, and participate in, the world presented to them. Before long they were smacked in the face by the consequences, and it wasn’t pretty.

We never saw the girls Joey discarded, the inner shame of Chandler, the tears of the trafficked teenagers used to titillate the boys through ‘free porn’, the struggle of a single mother raising a child alone in a hovel she can barely afford. We didn’t see how Phoebe battled depression after having her brothers babies, how Janice’s kids turned out, how the poor little girl talked into selling her babies to Chandler and Monica ended up; we don’t know whether she was ever able to have babies again, whether she took her own life. We didn’t see how the divorce affected Emily, what kind of adult Ben became, how many pregnancies were terminated after the many one-night stands. There is no acknowledgement of the damage caused by surrogacy, fornication, divorce, homosexuality, uniform gender roles, and a pornified culture.

Augustine’s Confessions this is not! There is nothing wrong with portraying sin if the reason for doing so is to show us the path to hell and highlight our need for grace. Done well, in the hands of writers who know and love Christ, it is a powerful evangelistic tool. But sin, in Friends, is not portrayed by way of pointing to it’s hollowness and sterility, it is portrayed by way of normalisation and acceptance, and it worked.

The 1996 episode of Friends entitled “The One with the Lesbian Wedding” was described as a groundbreaking moment for LGBTQ+ visibility on mainstream television which helped to ‘normalise same-sex relationships and challenge societal norms contributing to a gradual shift in public opinion which ultimately led to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.’ This is part of the Friends legacy. Challenging social norms is a revolutionary act, made all the more dangerous by it’s cuddly packaging.

Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20)

Good writing does not revolt against the good, but rather highlights our need for it. By way of example, at the end of The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantès’ final reflection is a turn away from personal vengeance and an acknowledgment that ultimate justice and judgment belong solely to God. Throughout his quest, Dantès believed he was an agent of divine Providence, acting with God’s sanction to punish the wicked. This belief is shattered when his actions cause the deaths of innocent people. We, the reader, are not shielded from a world of sin and death, we are brought down into it, but in doing so we learn that it is not the place we want to stay. The collateral damage caused by Dantès actions forces him to realise the limits of human justice and the arrogance of a man trying to play God.

The point is, Dantès ends a changed man.

I noted in my earlier commentary on Friends that one of the greatest harms caused by the sitcom was the subtle revolt against women and children.

• Women stripped of their inherent dignity are brought low; to become either a man (as husband, provider & protector) or a plaything for a man (as sexual object)

• and children who appear (if at all) as accessories, inconveniences or commodities.

Towards the end of the article I quoted Pope Benedict XVI who said:

“It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the centre of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

These words were met with a query from a reader who said ‘Surely Christ is at the heart of Christianity?’

It’s a fair question, but one which reveals the very problem that Benedict was responding to; a world who has forgotten the feminine element. The distortion of women that we see on our screens today, is ultimately the result of the distortion of Our Lady, Theotokos.

To answer the readers query more fully than an article can manage, I would recommend turning to Josef Ratzinger, (later Pope Benedict XVI) in his numerous works on the theme, a brief summation of which can be found here. He draws throughout his extensive works on the early Church fathers, including (but not limited to) St Ireneaus, St Ambrose, St Jerome and St Augustine, thus emphasising how important it is that Christians have a right understanding of femininity as exemplified by the Mother of God.

Notice what Pope Benedict says above ‘important for woman’ not women, but woman ‘to be at the centre of Christianity’ and ‘the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion’

Woman has meaning. Women (individually) embody that meaning. It is not easy for us to see through ancient eyes, especially when our new liturgy calls us to wear modern spectacles, but the ancient world-view is one in which everything means something. By contrast the reductionistic modern world-view is one in which nothing means anything. The sacramental worldview of nature and history is necessarily ancient (full of meaning) not modern (hollowed out).

Let’s assume that the apostles got it right, that they could see how every thing in nature means something, and how the big things in nature must mean something big. Well sex is a Big Thing!

What it means is so big that we will never exhaust it, only discover more facets of its diamond. But there it is, a massive fact of nature, not a clever human idea.

- Peter Kreeft

It is no coincidence that sexual imagery is used throughout scripture from beginning to end. The relationship between Bride and Bridegroom should always be understood as our relationship with God; ‘Betrothed in the Old, Married in the New and Consummated in Heaven’.

We…me, you, all the humans writing the words you read and speaking the things you hear have first received. God creates from without and we receive within. As woman and man this eternal principle of femininity (reception) and masculinity (provision) is instantiated in our divinely created biology.

The bride is feminine, and the bridegroom is masculine. Without this there is no fertility, there is no life. Likewise, the Church IS feminine, and must be feminine if she (we) is to receive all from God.

When we try to create our own reality, dictate the rules, monkey around with nature, and elevate ourselves above God we become masculine, we embody the principle of masculinity. To put it another way, when we try to endow the material (mater) with our own meaning (order the chaos) we play God. This is not about whether boys are better than girls, or whether women can drive cars and read maps, it is about whether or not we - as Christians - are humble enough to receive what God gives us. The mother of God is our perfect model. She receives The Word and in her ‘Yes’, her fiat, becomes the ‘holy soil’ of which the church fathers speak. Her YES models for each one of us (male and female alike) our bridal role as Christians, and shows us what awaits those who do likewise.

“The ground of Mary’s greatness is the thing so simple and innocent that it is too simple and innocent for the feminists to see. The reason she is crowned Queen of Heaven, the reason for her great glory and power is her total submission to God; her sacrifice, her suffering, her service.”

- Peter Kreeft

This is why it is important, as Pope Benedict XVI said, for woman to be at the centre of Christianity (not Christ, but Christianity) and why the feminine element stands at the heart of Christianity. It is to recognise the importance of our role as Bride and to warn us against the sterilising effects of playing the Bridegroom. Only Christ’s priests, in persona Christi through apostolic succession, have authority to be the visible Bridegroom, the visible masculine. This is why they must be male and why priestesses don’t make sense in Christianity.

God gives us life and we receive it. Those who refuse to receive what is given, may take it through suicide. Our earthly mother and father give us life through that act of giving and receiving the seed (a reflection of the Trinity). Those who refuse to receive what is given, may take it through abortion.

A refusal to recognise our place as feminine in the proper order, by rejecting or inverting it, is an act of pride. It is the Fall, it is Non serviam. It is against this modern tendency to revolt, to make up new rules, to decide on life and death, that Pope Benedict says ‘the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion’.

The disordered lifestyles presented as normal in the sitcom Friends were the result of a mind playing God, which rejects true femininity, refuses to serve and assumes the role of the masculine.

It is, as Peter Kreeft so astutely remarked, the modern feminists who are the real male chauvinists, lusting for reproductive freedom (sexual irresponsibility) like playboys and demanding empowerment, that is, envying and imitating not only males, but male fools, judging inner worth by outer performance, sacrificing being for doing, finding their identity in their worldly careers, not in their inner essence, in their physical and spiritual wombs and motherhoods.

It is against this Pride that the feminine element must be recovered, and for this, Mary is our model.