Posted on 01/06/2015 1:56:22 PM PST by Enza Ferreri
An ancient law of the sea says that, when at risk of shipwreck, women and children must be helped into the lifeboats first. This is what was done on the Titanic, in the most notorious shipwreck in history. On that famous ship the orchestra continued to play to buoy the courage of those who were doomed to drown, including the musicians themselves. And a Catholic priest gave confession and absolution to all those who asked for them, himself going down with the ship. Old-fashioned gentlemen?
Nope, Christians. Because the unwritten rule of «women and children first» dates back to when Christianity empowered the weak and commanded the strong to take care of them. Before then, it used to be the law of the jungle that applied, because not even the super-civilized Romans gave any weight to women and children.
Please take note, as you rummage in your historical and anthropological reminiscences: only in Christian civilization has there ever been the habit of treating women and children with kid gloves, so much so that even today, when anyone holds the door open for a lady, he is termed “chivalrous” [deriving from the French “chevalier”, or “knight”]. This is a reference to the “macho” warrior whom the Church had taught to defend the widow and the orphan, the poor man and the oppressed.
For example, when the much-praised Native Americans (once known as redskins) travelled, the squaw went on foot, laden down with the luggage and with her papoose on her back; the husband was up front, riding a horse.
Assuredly, many of the gentlemen who went down with the Titanic were not religious at all, and many were Freemasons and anti-papists. But they were born and raised in a culture that was nineteen centuries old, a culture that could hardly avoid calling itself Christian, as even liberal Benedetto Croce had to admit.
Now let's listen to soprano Dimitra Theodossiou, one of the passengers on the Italo-Greek ferry that went up in flames a few days ago: «I was beaten and dragged down, as they tried to pull me off the ladder. But I reacted vigorously. I said: 'It's our turn!'».
Her words were confirmed by many other female passengers who underwent the same treatment. The men in the helicopters did indeed try to embark the women, children and the elderly first. But among them «there were at least some fifty men (…) who, in order to take their places, beat them, pulled their hair and threw them out».
In this reported sentence, the phrase omitted and replaced by dots included: «mainly Turks, Iraqis and Pakistanis». One of the rescue pilots said: «In order to try to save the children, the women, the elderly and the wounded first, as we always do, I had to yell and threaten to go away in my helicopter and leave them all there, over and over again.»
«As we always do». Quite. But not in the places of origin of those who (in the words of a Greek truck driver aptly named Christos) «had no consideration for the women and children at all».
However, why should the protagonists of this act, which to us is simply disgraceful and cowardly, be ashamed of themselves or feel like vile human beings? In their “culture” (I place the word decidedly in inverted commas) the women and children don't count at all.
These men have on their shoulders fifteen centuries which have accustomed them to thinking in this way. Back when I was studying Political Science, there was still a subject called Comparative Cultural Anthropology. That was before political correctness and relativism rendered it useless, as the 1968 protesters spread the idea that the Sioux were better than the cowboys and that the English first, and all the other Westerners after them, needed to be taught everything by Hindu gurus.
Today, whoever dares say that our civilization, moulded by Christianity, is superior to all the others risks a jail sentence or at the very least a lynching in the media. Yet the very ideology of relativism has been possible only in a Christian environment, and politically correct thinking itself believes it is superior to all the others.
What ludicrous imbecility this is, however, was summed up best by one of the men shoving the women aside in order to take their places in the rescue seat: «Why, aren't we all supposed to be equal?». What he implied was that, now that women have achieved equality, they can no longer expect preferential treatment. But it just so happens that he was universally deprecated (by the ex-Christians [or post-Christians]).
There's nothing to do: the latest ideology in vogue (again, among the Westerners) is no match for a culture that has become rooted in consciences precisely because it is the closest to the project that the Creator had in mind. And those who try to save their skins by climbing into lifeboats in place of women and children still remain cowards and vile human beings.
Translated by Alessandra Nucci from La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
Great article. Thanks for posting. I just sent it to my teen-aged daughter.
I’ve had this discussion with folks who get upset about the Bible verse saying the wife is to be “submissive” to the husband. At which point I say, have you read the rest of it? It says that the husband is to give himself up for his wife (i.e., be ready to die for her) the way Christ did for the church.
The umbrella of Christianity has allowed women to hold property, to vote, to hold office, to inherit land.
“Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.”
- R.A.Heinlein
Great article, thanks for posting it.
There’s no such law and the tradition isn’t ancient;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_%281845%29
Excellent!
I thought it was because of Van Halen.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Van_Halen_-_Women_and_Children_First.jpg
Most of the women and children in steerage drowned...
Nobody helped them into lifeboats with “women and children first”
Although the Birkenhead Drill is not ancient, I suspect the tradition pre-dated it (certainly in Western/Christian civilization). Otherwise the sailors/soldiers would not have accepted it as readily as they did.
I had a good friend who was a female Olympic swimmer. (She was a trainer for a football team I was on.)
She traveled the world, including (I think) Indonesia — some muslim country in Asia, anyway.
She was on a ferry that capsized rather far from shore.
The men all grabbed the life vest, pushing women and children out of the way. She did what she could, then dived into the ocean with her pants in her hands. She had tied the legs of the pants in knots and filled it with air to make an improvised float.
Men in the water tried to take it from her.
She swam away, eventually leaving the ferry when it was clear no help was coming and she was in danger from the other passengers.
Swam 5 or 6 miles in open water to shore.
Only female survivor.
The squaws DID drag the stuff but the men walked. When horses finally came, HE rode. She still walked but horses were occasionally used as pack animals.
That is historical.
Google: New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild herds as they spread throughout Europe and Asia.
That said, Christianity does make it clear that the woman is very important and special. heck, even the Old Testament makes the place of the wife important - God allowed everything but the wife to be taken away from Job...
BTW - I started life in the Catholic Church. Unless the nuns lied to us, doctrine said that if you came upon a choice where you could save either an adult or a child from a physical peril, you should save the adult and allow the child to perish. The reason - the child was ensured of going to heaven while you could not know the state of the adult's soul -- in order to allow the adult more time to become saved, the adult should be the one to rescue.
Would agree but women on ships was mostly considered bad luck until recent times with passenger ships. Most children on those ships were young boys who were part of the crew.
Nope, wrong. Jews got it right even earlier.
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