There has been a rather elevated debate going on in the letters pages of this newspaper in recent weeks regarding the nature of women, the Catholic Church's attitudes to them, their relationship to men, their role in society and their place in the universe (no less).
It is a daunting subject of course, and ordinary people are wisely standing well back from the debate, which is naturally being conducted entirely by men. For the most part these are priests, professors and even a bishop, men whose ways of life give them more time to think deeply about women, without the crude involvement that lesser males foolishly imagine gives an insight into the nature of femininity.
The first thing to be noted about this debate is that it demands the construction of complex sentences such as the one above: there is little point to a serious intellectual discussion if the issues are to be made transparent to the man in the street.
Secondly, judging by the correspondence, it is clearly foolish to think of joining the debate, or indeed to think about women at all, without first being fluent in Latin.
Thirdly, anyone wishing to join in must first demonstrate a close familiarity with the works of the scholars of the Church, or failing that, the work of anyone who was once an important man and has been dead for a few hundred years.
The Latin thing is very big. It is a well-known fact that the Latin Mass was phased out because people who paid attention were beginning to catch on to the language, and hence learn more about women. This dangerous development was finally nipped in the bud, but not before the word was out on Aquinas.
In the war between men and women, and the great arguments of theology, people stand or fall by Thomas Aquinas. To some he is a towering intellectual and hero of the Church, to others he is a twisted woman-hater, and quite a few people find common ground.
There is also the translation angle. Aquinas of course wrote his great works in Latin. As it happens, Latin is a far less ambiguous language than English, but when a modern-day commentator alleges, for example, that Aquinas described woman as "the demon seed, the foul seducer, the Devil's harbinger and a downright inadequate housekeeper", you can safely bet your Bible that another respected scholar will instantly take the floor to correct the translation to "the sweet paragon, love's flower, source of all light and creator of scrambled eggs to the perfect consistency."
It is a relief then to turn to a youthful correspondent who shall be nameless, called Donal (16), who writes from his school in Galway to offer his thoughts on the opposite sex. Donal has already learnt so much of the truth about women that his Latin must of necessity be fluent. In physiological terms alone, he knows precisely what happens to a teenage boy when he meets a girl: "Blood is sent rushing to the face. Body temperature rises by 25s0]. Swelling of the hands takes place. Your feet have been amputated and replaced with elephant feet, in clown shoes. The part of your brain that deals with motor skills bunks off for the equivalent of a quick fag. . . "
As a field guide in the war between men and women, Donal is on a par with Montgomery, Lawrence of Arabia and Groucho Marx. His philosophy is also impeccable: to men who are slapped on the face by women (for whatever reason), he offers the consolation of "the thin line between love and hate". All this, after the pedantry of some letter-writers, is wonderfully refreshing. However, I am not in a position to accede to Donal's request that I grant him a "columnship", though he has good rhetorical reason for asking: "Have you ever been 16 and liked the prospect of going to work at nine, coming back at five, watching TV or going out etc. etc. and going to bed?"
I have been 16 a couple of times and more, but Donal is deluded in imagining a "columnship" is a passport to a greatly different or more exciting life. Nevertheless, "going out etc. etc." offers more possibilities for amusement than perhaps he yet realises, most of them residing in the etc. etc.
As Thomas Aquinas himself remarked one April evening, na- tura vero universalis est virtus activa in aliquo universali principio naturae, or "Virtue may be its own reward, but I go with the flow."
