Rant Number 346 31 April 2009
On 5th July 1902 a twelve year old child near the Italian city of Ancona resisted rape. An innocent peasant girl, Maria Goretti had spurned a young man’s advances before. Until the day Alessandro, aged 20, caught her alone around the farm. Enraged by Maria’s persistent refusal, the brute first tried to strangle her and then stabbed her 12 times. Two weeks later, in great pain, she died in hospital. Before closing her eyes, she forgave her attacker.
‘No! E’ peccato! Dio non lo vuole!!’ Maria had repeatedly cried out when Alessandro had made his sexual bid. Along with the girl’s known piety and purity, her words fill in the picture. Maria’s resistance to rape wasn’t just an instinctive, natural woman’s reaction to the threat of physical violation. A devout Catholic, simple and unlettered as she was, she had perfectly grasped the ABC of faith. What Alessandro wanted from her was something sinful. Hated by God. Therefore, it was to be resisted. At the cost of her life. Full stop.
In prison, Maria’s murderer at first was arrogant and callous. Later he underwent conversion. After being freed he became a lay brother in a monastery, doing manual work. Maria, he said, had appeared to him in a dream, bearing flaming lilies. Alessandro lived on for many years, long enough to see Pope Piux XII in 1950 proclaim Maria Goretti a saint and martyr. And a patron of youth.
The priest admits that he had hardly before thought of St Maria Goretti. Only after a BBC Question Time episode last week she ‘spoke’ to him. Well, not quite in the way she did to Alessandro. Neither in a vision nor in a dream. I mean, it was like a flash of clarity. An epiphany. The penny dropped. Her name, her example, the meaning of her life all became wonderfully clear, cogent and topical to me. A patron of youth indeed. Girl power, that’s it!
To explain. The Question Time session was broadcast from Newcastle. Apparently the British city with the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. That was one of the issues debated, by panel pundits and public alike. Apart from a jolly, portly Tory MP, none of the panellists seemed to think there was anything all that bad in ‘a young person’ (i.e. an underage girl) having sex. It was all a matter of personal choice, freedom, enjoyment, safety, condoms and blah, blah, blah. Nor did the audience manifest great concern. A bespectacled Catholic schoolgirl hinted at her school providing ‘support’ but she did say what that was. And that was that. Value of virginity? Come off it! You off your rocker, mate? Had anyone been foolhardy enough to mention it, the carefully selected, servile BBC audience would have laughed her to scorn.
No parity, you might argue. Rape is rape whereas consensual sex…geddit? Fair enough. Still, not everybody regards even rape as an absolute evil. ‘I’d rather my daughter was raped than she’d lose her two front teeth’ I recall a middle-class mother averring. A statement of terrifying clarity. That mum had no doubt as to her hierarchy of values. Aesthetics before ethics. Though ‘aesthetics’ is probably too grand a word. Vanity, that’s better. Virginity? Wot! That mum would have found the very word funny, I suppose.
Guess it’s a bit unfair but I am reminded of comrade Joe Stalin, Britain’s wartime chum. When at the end of WWI the Red Army occupied part of Yugoslavia, the liberators proceeded to rape a number of Yugoslav women. Though fellow communists and brother Slavs, that was no deterrent to the victorious Russian soldiers. Milovan Jilas, a brave and upright Communist leader, complained to the Russian commander, who reacted with great show of offence. Later, in Moscow, Jilas found himself cold-shouldered by Stalin. ‘When our glorious soldiers after a great war have a bit of fun with women, what is that to you?’ Uncle Joe reprimanded Jilas. What must have most annoyed the tyrant was that Jilas had compared the beastly conduct of the Soviet soldiers to that of the British, who behaved correctly. Huh! ‘No sex, please, we are British!’ Do you remember the play? Alas, that was avant le deluge. We have moved on – or rather, backwards, since.
(Bizarre how a champion of chastity today is Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. For his body guards he chooses female virgins, the Daily Mail writes. Verily, a man who dresses in a toga can’t be wrong.)
The idea that rape is first and foremost a sin would have made no sense to Stalin, a renegade seminarian, anymore than virginity does to the great post-Christian British public today. Worse, virginity embarrasses Christians, too. Not many years ago the General Synod of the Anglican Church was debating sexuality. (Rather like a bunch of castrati discussing manhood, I feel.) Someone was naïve enough feebly to invoke the virtue of virginity. According to press reports, the Synod reacted with laughter. Indeed. What they did not realise was that Satan was laughing with them. Or, rather, at them.
Significantly, contemporary PC translations of the Bible garble Jesus’ parable of the Ten Virgins in St Matthew, chapter 25. They have now become mere ‘maidens’. Though the Greek clearly says parthenois, virgins. And so did King James Authorised Version translated. Quite right. The girls, wise and foolish alike, were waiting for the bridegroom to arrive. Virginity, the Gospel implies, was a prerequisite for lawful marriage.
St Maria Goretti. A gloriously counter-cultural saint. Some dumb viragos consider her an anti-feminist symbol but to me instead she is an authentic Christian feminist. A sacred, powerful affirmation of girl power. Because she fought to defend her virginity. Yes, that. Virginity, a unique human value. A genuine affirmation of female freedom, autonomy and independence. Against lustful men but above all against the ruling hedonistic ideology propagated by the BBC & Co. An ideology that seeks to commodify men and women’s sexuality. To reduce them to the bovine level of consumers, manipulated by commercials and subliminal media messages, in the name of a ‘progress’ which actually is a brutal regress.
The Church should declare jihad on a culture that has replaced Gospel values with inhuman models imposed by an anti-human, misogynistic system. St Maria Goretti is the ideal patron saint of this coming battle. An innocent, simple child. But one empowered by the Spirit of God to be a martyr for the Truth.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
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It is interesting to note that the Adana Massacres started in early April and bodies started to get washed up in Cyprus about a month later.
