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My dear brethren,

When God created the world, He did it with order. He established a hierarchy among the created things in order that the universe be one, while being made of different beings. Creation is an image of God, and so God wanted to show His unity in creatures that would be necessarily limited, and so different, from Him. The keystone of this creation was man - not because he is the greatest creature (angels are better), but because He assumes in him all creation. In the Middle Ages, the theologians called man a microcosm (a little universe), as he joins in one being the spiritual and material worlds.

When man sinned, he destroyed that order. First in himself, the microcosm was no longer ordered to serve God, as man himself wanted to be his own god. The passions - material powers made to help the soul achieve its goal - were in rebellion with the will, and tended toward other objects than the right ones presented by the intelligence. This rebellion against God however had another consequence. Beings submitted to man started to revolt against him and the society of men was to be plagued by wars and dissension.

Today, this revolt of man against God caused by original sin continues, but along the centuries, it changed its tactic and sometimes its name. In our modern world, a manifestation of it that is most prevalent is feminism. Feminism is a word that is used for many things, but very often, when we hear the word we are thinking of ladies making a manifestation in the streets for the right to vote, or salary equality, and all these social demands, but that's not exactly what feminism is. This is a manifestation of it, but it doesn't show exactly what it is, because some of these demands are just and should be able to be done without any feminist ideology behind them.

What exactly is feminism, and why is it such a danger to all of us? Why is it something that, I would say, even the best of women (and men) in the world of today are tainted with? In order to do so, I would first like to present some quotes from feminists (in fact these are sentences from feminist men, not women). This gives us a little bit of an idea of exactly what is behind all this, and after that we will explain exactly what feminism is. "Feminism is about breaking down arbitrary barriers. I think about all the limitations of opportunity that people experience because of arbitrary differences like race or gender. Just because there's an arbitrary rule, we're not going to let you do certain things or be certain things. We're going to limit your education and work, and commit violent attacks on you because of some arbitrary external characteristic."

You can see here that for feminists, the first task is to make the gender difference an arbitrary one. Nature has nothing to do with the difference of men and women, it is as arbitrary as race. What a stupid thing to think! Every child knows that a boy and a girl are different - and not only on the physical level - but in our modern world in which common sense is destroyed by a false philosophy, this goes very well, especially when they insist on confusing the word `different' with the word `unequal'.

Another quotation: "Feminism is at the cutting edge of nearly all major intellectual disciplines. Guys, if you don't understand feminism, it's not because it's not true. It's because you haven't allowed yourself to think about it yet."

This quote shows us that feminism is not firstly a political movement, but a way of thinking. The political aspect of feminism may be faltering, that doesn't matter to them as long as people adopt their way of thinking. It is the "new idea" that will save the world from barbarism.

In a more Catholic vocabulary, what exactly is feminism? Feminism really is the ultimate manifestation of pride in front of God. Feminism is not a way to make a better world where men and women are equal, it's in fact, having as a purpose, to make a world where both men and women are gods, that is the purpose of feminism. It is not a revolt of women against men because that really has no meaning. In the liberal society issued from the revolution, there were some injustices that had been created but they were the excuse for feminism, it was only to give the occasion to men and women to revolt another time against God. Feminism wants to make the order established by God in creation look arbitrary, in order to be able to replace it by its own "order."

My dear brethren, if we want to free ourselves of feminism, we need to understand what exactly is the order of God in creation, and especially the relationship between men and women. As we have just said, creation is an image of God, a symbol of God. Symbolism in the world is something that is very important. God made the world as a symbol, as a sign of Himself, because the intellectual creatures that He put in this world, ourselves, are made to know Him. However, our intelligence is not able to grasp Him directly. So in order to help us to understand Him, to get to Him, He will put symbols, analogies of Himself in the world.

When God created Adam, the book of Genesis tells us that He made man in His image and likeness. Man represents God in creation, he represents the authority of God in creation, as he has been put at the head of the material world; but man is not God, it's only a symbol, and in order to remind man that he is not a god, God created beside him, a companion, the woman. If you read Genesis carefully, God said, "Let's make someone similar to man." He doesn't say that the woman is similar to God. He says that she's similar to man. It's obvious that if we look at the physiological side, we both share the same nature and so by that women also are an image of God; but see the symbol that God wants to put in the difference of gender. Here the woman is the image of the image of God, and so if woman is to be a companion submitted to man, it is to remind man in all his actions that he is to be submitted to God. If his image is submitted to him, he must be submitted to Whom he is the image also. So this submission that exists between man and woman, is an image, is a reminder to all of us that we must obey God.

However, we have to note that this submission is not a submission of all women to all men. Some women can have authority over men, that is not a problem. It is very important to see that the symbol must be common, but doesn't need to be without exception. That will explain why in a Catholic society, even if normally women didn't have a position of authority, it was not at all forbidden, and I would say it was not at all rare, to see women with authority. During the Middle Ages you find queens that had as much authority as kings, and very often when an artisan died, his widow took up the trade, and was doing exactly as he had been doing - that was not something rare at all. So you see that in these cases, Catholic society didn't see this submission as being necessary. Where the submission of the woman to a man is really symbolic of our submission to God, is in the relationship of husband and wife. In a normal society, men and women will have different tasks, in order to take advantage of the different qualities of both genders, but that will suffer exceptions, as individuals are widely different and can sometimes have the qualities or the vocation of the other gender. (See the example of St. Joan of Arc). In marriage a distinct society is formed - the family - and this society needs hierarchy, and so God put in it the symbol of our submission by making the man head of the family and the woman his companion.

Feminism is bent to destroy that order and hierarchy, and so will try to replace it in society in order to be able to change it in the marriage. So first it will ask for "equality" in the society, telling us that both men and women are fitted to do anything. In order to foster that, it will give the example of the exceptions, and generalize it to all men and women. That step is mostly completed today, and you see the mess in which it has put our society. Incapable people get positions only because we cannot discriminate. This last word has become a bad word, while in fact it means to choose the best and let go of what is useless for the task at hand. I discriminate when I choose a hammer instead of a screwdriver to drive nails in a board. This concept is at the bottom of any organized society, and even today, in spite of the words, discrimination is still used. If not, it would be chaos.

Feminism will also try to destroy the order in marriage, by putting both partners equal in everything. It is true that husband and wife are equal in regard to the contract of marriage and so in regard to the marriage act, but the husband is the head of the family created by the contract, and so there is inequality. Inequality doesn't mean oppression and slavery, it means a different place in the hierarchy of things. As St. Paul said, the sanctification of the wife is in motherhood, in having the stronger hand in the raising of children, while the man dedicates his life for his wife by working and providing for her and their children the means of life. It is sure that the wife can help in the income of the family and that the father will have to do something in the education of children, but they are not interchangeable. We would need another sermon to explain in detail the duties of both husband and wife.

After having destroyed the natural order, feminism will be able to implement a new order of things. It is here that the problem of feminism becomes visible, as it becomes quite divided. Some will be very radical, and will try to consider women the only good persons of society and promote the demotion of men; but all the flavours of feminine empowerment, and by a contrary reaction, all the flavours of male "liberation" will try to win the favour of the crowd. This is the chaos that we live in, and in fact, we can say that feminism is at the root of all the other "liberations" that are destroying society today, as the rights for homosexuality, pedophilea, etc.

My dear brethren, we have to fight to restore the natural order made by God, to fight to keep it in our own lives. This order is necessary for the symbolic reasons we have already seen. These symbols help us to know God better and so serve Him more lovingly. So man has to show not only the power of God by being in charge, but has also to show the virtues of God, to be really a new Christ, and especially in the relationship of marriage. Woman is to be the companion of man, to remind him that he is to be submitted to God, and that's why in the marriage the wife obeys her husband, to remind men that they must obey God. It is why St. Paul asks women to wear a veil in the Church, to remind both men and women they have to be submitted to God, because they share the same nature as men.

Also the natural order and hierarchy is better for us , and so we need to restore it. God wants us to be saved, to go to heaven. For that, He promised to give us the tools to do it, the graces that we need, and one of these tools is our vocation. God gave us the particular blend of virtues and qualities to help us to succeed in a particular way of life. If we try to do something else, we are not damned, necessarily, but our salvation will be more difficult, as we will not have the tools to do a good job. A married man will have more chances to be saved by being a good husband, a real leader of his family in all fields, even the one of sanctification, than by being a wimp only interested in cars and pleasures, leaving all decisions and good examples to his wife. A wife will be more certain of her sanctification by obeying her husband and raising her children than by having a successful career, except if God shows her that it is His will for Her.

Finally, my dear brethren, let's look at the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us in this restoration of true Catholic thinking. You see, the Blessed Virgin Mary is a woman and She was submitted to God. What was Her mission? To be the companion of Jesus in the work of redemption, and in that She is submitted to Jesus, She will follow Him in the way of the Cross, but She still is above all men. You see the submission of Mary to Jesus doesn't apply in Mary submitting to all men. Mary is not submitted to all men because She is Queen of all men. So by that we see that there are two different things here.

We have to remember that the real submission that exists between men and women is a symbol of a higher reality, as Mary is doing in Her mission but still is Queen of all men. So let's ask Her to understand this, to understand this importance of showing respect to God in the way that He wants it. Ask Her the grace to understand God in these images that He put in the world - what God wants us to do on the supernatural level, He put on the natural one - to show us a little bit how to do this.

So let's ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us, to give us the grace to react in this world, to react against this ideology that is destroying, in fact, the last order weakened by original sin: the order between men and women. Let's ask Her the grace to reestablish not only that order but also all the other ones, the order of our passions to our intelligence, the order of ourselves to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.