Robert Greer Cohn

    The main characteristic of Nazism was dynamism, according to Herman Rauschning in The Revolution of Nihilism (cited by Camus).
    This is extreme but offers a useful clue to late-civilization male psychology, which is chiefly determined by what they are not. They are not mothers; nor are they usually the male spiritual leaders who replace holistic female sacred/natural—natural spirituality—with a less natural equivalent, typically in the celibate Catholic clergy teaching a doctrine which bars women from the Trinity, the centerpiece of their belief. This anti-naturalism characterizes also other Christian sects and Orthodox Judaism. All are marked by a truncated but impressive verticalism and quietism.
    But most other men are fairly dynamic, active in this wise; along the Adamic way—using a deviation and evasion—pursuing professional goals, calculating, manipulative, digitizing, striving, constructing, and so on, as opposed to the Edenic of child-bearing  and -raising, high artistic creativity, spiritual vocation.
    Now that the birth rate has fallen dangerously low in Europe, as Pope Benedict XVI proclaims with alarm (First Things, Jan. 2006), the importance and the special faith and risks of motherhood become more clear to the sensitive. Even the economy is chastened by the decline along with the increasing possibility of being replaced by more-fertile types, especially Muslims. It is high time we made motherhood and birth a sacrament, and honor the Virgin Mary afresh, revising the Trinity as she always tended surely to do in Catholic belief.
    This means a significant shift in values, and the spirituality of motherhood must rise as we see male domination of the spiritual yield somewhat; restless materialism, in globalizing industry and professions likewise need some relative devaluing in men and male-imitating feminists.
    Somehow, the desperate, whole-fleeing dynamism of most men must be partly checked, as Nazism was, out of dire need and a more southern regard for mama takes over, as in Italy—not Nordic Germany. Uniformly celibate clergy must give way to the marriage-option in Catholic clergy, thus promoting women and birth and our survival. They would be better balanced between transcendence and immanence, less inclined to perverse sexuality. The male and general idea that women—mothers—are less serious than leading men has to go–if we want to live on. Toqueville admired American women above all, courageous women like Lincoln's, Eisenhower's, Regan's, mothers, women who are really tougher than men in the clutch in my experience. Nor should we ignore the elderly honorable ladies of the sort I saw, unforgettable, on a recent trip to Paris, carrying the spiritual strength of flagging France's past. I spoke to them; they are worried. When men, who are meant to protect them, flinch, they voice deep concern, like the purple-fingered grannies in Iraq, standing up valiantly in line for decency and survival.