Dear Pro-Gun Activists: Nobody is Listening to You Anymore

An article published Wednesday in American Thinker, “Cries to ‘Ban the AR-15’ Based on Ignorance and Hysteria” by Michael Filozof, is representative of what is sadly the best of pro-gun activism in the wake of the Parkland, Florida massacre. Filozof may know quite a bit about hunting and semiautomatic rifles, but he doesn’t get the opposition. In fact, by the end of the third paragraph, you realize he’s not really talking about the opposition — he’s retailing long-standing right-wing stereotypes about gun-grabbing, Godless libruls. I say he represents the best because at least he had the good taste not to claim David Hogg is a “crisis actor” or to tweet that the deaths were the “worst news [for the survivors] since their parents told them to get summer jobs.”

Really? I remember a time, not so long ago, when conservative commentators were thoughtful, nuanced, and respectful of the opposition. Is this what American conservatism has been reduced to — conspiracy theories and social-media asshattery? At long last, has conservatism lost all sense of decency?

About Those Participation Trophies …

Dear Cody,

I’ve seen the message you left for “People Older Than Me” on behalf of “People Younger Than Me”, which has had over 331,000 views at this writing [11/19/16]. For the benefit of everyone else, let me repeat it:

Dear People Older Than Me:

Shut up about the f**king participation trophies. We didn’t ask for them. We didn’t want them. We didn’t cherish them and polish them while thinking about what special, gifted children we are. They were annoying clutter on our shelves that we had to throw out in secret so we wouldn’t hurt YOUR feelings. And if we knew back then that you were gonna bring it up every time you disagreed with someone under 40 for the rest of f**king time, we would have told you where to shove that cheap plastic statue.

Sincerely,
People Younger Than Me

Mass Immaturity

Cody, I’m sure you’re sick of the references to the participation trophies. As a friend of mine pointed out, only the really little kids just starting Little League got participation trophies. Eventually, they went out with the ball tee, and you had to learn to play to win just as you had to learn how to hit a pitch. Which is to say, you had to learn to risk losing just as you learned to risk getting hit by a pitch. Participating is a minimum requirement; getting a trophy for it is like receiving an award for putting on your pants.

Just to show I get the larger point, I’m sure you’re also tired of the sneering references to “safe spaces” and trigger warnings and being called “delicate snowflakes”. I suppose it’s also our fault that many people of your generation come to adulthood ill-equipped, lacking confidence, self-esteem, and the normal skills to cope with adversity, unprepared to accept the risks that are part of life in an unsafe world. And if your cohort has shown some rotten behavior as a result of the recent election, I must admit many adults haven’t shown mature behavior either before or after the election.

But in case you missed it, Cody, that was the real point of the “participation trophy” reference — not that your cohort thinks of themselves as special, gifted people, but rather that they throw temper tantrums or break out in noisy tears like spoiled, entitled brats at the least sign of opposition. You’re angry, sad, or afraid? So what; it’s still unacceptable. When you have these episodes of mass immaturity, that’s when we start talking about participation trophies. We don’t simply disagree with you; we find your manner of disagreement absurd and contemptible. No one has to take you seriously just because you do.

The Twin Towers of Siloam

The one memory that will stay with me, when all other memories of September 11, 2001 have faded, is how obscenely beautiful the weather was. There really should have been more portents. Fierce, fiery warriors battling in the clouds. Graves yawning and yielding up their dead. At least a two-headed cow, or the ghost of William McKinley.

But no, the New York sky was barely touched with clouds when the Twin Towers  crumbled to the ground. Just as clear was the Arlington, Virginia sky as American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the western side of the Pentagon, and over Stoney Creek Township, Pennsylvania, as the hijackers of United 93 plowed their Boeing 757 into the ground to prevent the passengers from taking over. And it was just as beautiful in Omaha, Nebraska, where I listened to my cab’s FM radio in horror, knowing exactly why Peter Jennings quietly said, “Oh, my God,” as soon as he said it. Satan had apparently decided not to overdo it.

The Loss of Faith

Inevitably, anniversaries such as this will produce analyses in gross lots, rewriting as growing out of the evil stem of the 9/11 attacks trends that were already in place the day before. We need no “truther” conspiracy theories to explain the nadir of our trust in our government; it had been declining for three decades and more. Anti-Moslem sentiment didn’t begin with the collapse of the World Trade Center; it was present during the OPEC oil crisis in the late 1970s, a natural outgrowth of American nativism. We don’t need al-Qaida to explain our interventionism; it was already implicit in complaints that Operation Desert Storm didn’t “finish the job” by going to Baghdad and ousting Saddam Hussein.

Of course we became more afraid. For the sake of security, we permitted the federal government unprecedented powers of investigation and almost casually dispensed with habeas corpus rights for suspected terrorists. In the meantime, we created a new Cabinet-level department whose name carries perhaps-unintended echoes of totalitarian police states. And we also built a cheap, absurd wall along our border with Mexico, as we flailed around to find solutions that would keep terrorists out without going so far as to completely imprison ourselves or stop tourists and imports from coming.

I can’t help but think, though, that in the last fifteen years we became more aware of the fact that America is rotting from within, that both the dream and the reality of America have been corrupted. That’s a broad and vague charge, one not easily specified or documented. However, as much as has been written about the loss of faith in God, I believe that we’ve lost faith in everything — faith in ourselves, in each other, in our social institutions, in our government, in our founding principles.

Justice for Harambe … or Revenge?

Photo source: Nature World News.

A recent petition on Change.org, titled “Justice for Harambe”, makes me wonder if anyone really knows what justice is anymore.

Harambe’s Death

On Saturday, May 28, a four-year-old boy managed to slip out of his mother’s sight at the Cincinnati Zoo. Nothing new or surprising in that. However, this four-year-old boy made short work of a series of barriers separating visitors from the gorillas at the zoo’s Gorilla World, and fell fifteen feet into the moat surrounding the habitat. Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla, found the boy and — well, the boy survived, and has all his limbs. Harambe, on the other hand, was shot to keep the boy from further harm.

Strange to say, very little public concern has been devoted to questioning the design of the barriers. No, most of what can with some stretch of the imagination be called concern has been devoted to punishing the boy’s mother for the death of the gorilla (and, incidentally, for letting the kid out of her sight).

The Change.org petition is demanding, based on eyewitness claims for which it offers no source, “an investigation of the child’s home environment in the interests of protecting the child and his siblings from further incidents of parental negligence that may result in serious bodily harm or even death.” Note the words “further incidents of parental negligence”; that the parents are already guilty of one count is a verdict immune to challenge or contradiction. The Court of Public Opinion has already spoken.

Choosing Classical Education Over Common Core

Students at St. John Bosco, Rochester, NY
(Photo source: stjohnbosco.org.)

On April 28, the National Catholic Register published an article by Peter Jesserer Smith on the growing number of Catholic schools and systems converting from conventional progressive education to classical — or perhaps we should say neo-classical — liberal arts education. While one hundred American sees, just over half, have elected to conform to Common Core, widespread rejection of the controversial curriculum is creating greater demand for an alternative to homeschooling, leading to more charter and non-profit startups.

The Problem of Education

Catholics aren’t the only ones returning to the trivium. Philip Kilgore, director of the nonsectarian Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter Schools Initiative, told Smith that “[parental] dissatisfaction with contemporary education has been driving the demand for a return to the classical tradition.” Says Kilgore, “I speak with so many people from every corner of this land who are eager to do something about the problem of education.”

Many people from various ideological backgrounds agree that American K-12 education is failing. Some, like Prof. Jack Schneider, would contest this, pointing to tests of limited scope, like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) test, that purport to show American schools as doing well. Others, like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, seem to recognize the problem only insofar as it affects the production of hire-ready future employees, as if the only worthwhile goal of education were to generate Homo oeconomicus.

The most commonly-perceived problem, however, is that the current systems produce moral and cultural illiterates, that the systems have abandoned teaching children how to think in favor of teaching them what to think. Writes Patrick J. Deneen:

We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. … Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).

“Safe Spaces” and the Fear of Growing Up

Protesters at Amherst College. (Twitter via Daily Beast)

On Thursday, November 12, Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts joined the list of institutions that have suffered student protests. According to MassLive, the protest “was sparked by the shared experiences of students who felt discriminated against on campus ..., as well as recent incidents on campus, like the papering-over of ‘Black Lives Matter’ posters with anti-abortion messaging that said ‘All Lives Matter.’”

“The turning point and why it got so large is that multiple students of all sorts of background recognized a feeling of feeling marginalized, or feeling invisible or  feeling isolated in some important way,” [organizer Mercedes] MacAlpine said. “It really took off just being to come together and talk about those experiences.”

What began as a sympathetic sit-in strike in support of the protests at Yale and the University of Missouri took an uglier turn when signs appeared claiming that freedom of speech was the “real victim” at Mizzou. In a response freighted with irony, the protesters demanded that Amherst president Biddy Martin issue a statement saying that Amherst would not tolerate the actions of the students behind the “All Lives Matter” stickers and the “Free Speech” posters, and that said students could be punished and re-educated in “racial and cultural competency”.

Devin Foley, in a post on Intellectual Takeout, asks what’s the matter with kids these days. “At the same time some students are flexing their political muscles (with the help of some professors) at the University of Missouri, Yale, and other schools demanding ‘safe space’, we’re treated to an increasing number of stories about the lack of resilience and overall fragility of many college students.”

This juxtaposition of intolerance and delicacy isn’t as oddly self-contradictory as it appears on the surface. The need for “safe spaces” is individual, while the strong-arm tactics belong to the group: “safety in numbers”, as the saying goes. However, it’s clear more is happening on our campuses than an increase in racial tensions and student political activism. The safety the protesters seek is far less from physical assault than it is from fear itself: more and more students are demanding that colleges rescue them from everything that causes them the least anxiety or unhappiness, from racism and sexism to bad break-ups and failing grades.

Leftist politics has found its home in the children of helicopter parents.

An Irish Catholic’s Look at White People—UPDATED

Jose Antonio Vargas with two unnamed men. (© 2015 MTV.)

At first, I was reluctant to watch the MTV documentary White People. I’d seen a trailer for it a couple of weeks before, which gave me the impression that a good portion of it was white college kids simply regurgitating the “privilege” narrative. Besides, it was an MTV project; whatever else you expect an MTV program to provoke, thought is not usually one of them.

It was better executed than I thought it would be. This was largely due to Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker who did the interviews and asked the questions. Throughout the film, Vargas is charming, receptive, and avoids all appearance of being accusatory or condemnatory. Although he takes one occasion to change minds, for the most part he simply looks on and asks questions as young people struggle to break through the barriers to openly talk about racial perceptions.

That’s not to say the documentary is, shall we say, without its moments. A young man in a “privilege workshop” talks about “never having to represent your race to other people.” My first reaction on hearing that was: “You’re a kid. You’ll get your chance soon enough.”

One of my sharpest memories is of a discussion I had twenty years ago with a coworker and her fiancé about mixed couples. My coworker noted that black parents seemed to welcome such couples, while white parents didn’t, then turned to me and said, “Why are they like that, Tony?” The only thing I could tell her is that my previous girlfriend had had an opportunity to meet my dad and his wife, and that she had ducked out. I’d been called upon to explain white people, as if we were all of a piece.

The Benedict Option: Building a Catholic counterculture—UPDATED

Rod Dreher. (Photo: John Zak.)

Saturday, on the suggestion of Brandon Vogt, I read fellow Metroplex resident Rod Dreher’s “Critics of the Benedict Option”, in which Dreher attempts to further articulate what he confesses is “an inchoate phenomenon”. It's inchoate because, while the name is taken from St. Benedict of Nursia, the idea is not a return to the great monastic period.

Indeed, Dreher doesn’t really have anything specific in mind, which is why it drives poor John Zmirak crazy. Zmirak is trying to treat as a defective syllogism what is patently a hazy vision (and therefore can’t be logically proven or disproven).

The springboard for Dreher’s idea is a passage at the end of After Virtue, written by the late Alasdair MacIntyre in 1981. MacIntyre, Dreher writes, “described the state of contemporary moral discourse as irresolvably chaotic — irresolvably, because we have no common source of moral behavior anymore, and have decided, as a culture, that moral truth is something one arrives at by feeling.” Here is the part of the passage from the end of After Virtue which to me is truly relevant in discussing the Benedict Option:

A crucial turning point in [the late Western Roman Empire] occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead — often not recognising fully what they were doing — was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. [Bold font mine.—ASL]

And thus the Benedict Option: Christian enclaves, like Front Royal, Va., or Ave Maria, Fla., existing to mutually reinforce the faith in the new Dark Age.

To a friend who is leaving the Catholic Church

A Hard Saying

I so totally admire your love of the Catholic Church Tony. I am saddened that some of the rules I can not live with and will be joining a Lutheran one that will accept me.

What could I say? Facebook is where I keep in touch with my family and friends; I don’t go there to engage in verbal fisticuffs or stand on my soapbox. And yet, I can’t help feeling the answer I gave — “Forget it, lady. You gotta do a lot worse than that to lose my friendship” — was well-meaning but unsatisfactory.

I suppose I could have been a smartass and built some quibbles based on the precepts of the Church or on canon law. But either of those sallies would have ended in an exasperated “You know what I mean!”

In fact, I do know what you meant, my friend. It’s not really the rules you can’t live with, but rather some of the teachings. It isn’t a question of whether the Catholic Church accepts you: she does, and always has. Rather, it’s a question of what you accept — or, rather, what you reject.

You’re not the first person to abandon the Church over a teaching that sticks in the craw. Read the “Bread of Life” discourse (John 6:22-66): as Jesus insists that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (v. 53), his verbs in the Greek become more graphic, switching from phagō (to eat) to trōgō (to chew, or gnaw like an animal). At the end of it, many of his disciples leave him, telling themselves and each other, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (vv. 60, 66)

Two lists; or, “YOLO” vs. commitment

A few months ago, Katrina Fernandez posted a list written by one of HuffPo’s “limitless supply of young narcissists”, Vanessa Elizabeth, under the title “23 Things to Do Instead of Getting Married”. After skewering Ms. Elizabeth six ways from Sunday for her “verbose, self-appeasing litany of how ‘f**king awesome’ she is,” Kat posted her own list of things young women should accomplish by the time they’re twenty-three. Let’s compare:

VANESSA’S ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN:	KATRINA’S ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN:
1. Get a passport.	1. Join the military or a volunteer organization.
2. Find your “thing.”	2. Regularly donate to a charitable organization.
3. Make out with a stranger.	3. Graduate college with a useful degree, learn a trade, or acquire a marketable skill.
4. Adopt a pet.	4. Have a job and keep it for at least a year.
5. Start a band.	5. Get at least one raise, one promotion, or some workplace accolade.
6. Make a cake. Make a second cake. Have your cake and eat it too.	6. Own grown up clothes and dress like an adult, not a perpetual adolescent.
7. Get a tattoo. It’s more permanent than a marriage.	7. Become an active member of a church.
8. Explore a new religion.	8. Stop taking money from your parents. Don’t ask for loans or bail. You’re an adult now.
9. Start a small business.	9. Move out of your parent’s house.
10. Cut your hair.	10. Have a lease in your name and fulfill your contractual obligations.
11. Date two people at once and see how long it takes to blow up in your face.	11. Purchase and maintain your own vehicle and vehicle insurance without the aid of a co-signer.
12. Build something with your hands.	12. Balance your checkbook and create a budget.
13. Accomplish a Pinterest project.	13. Open a savings account.
14. Join the Peace Corps.	14. Put aside money from every paycheck, even if it’s just $10 to start.
15. Disappoint your parents.	15. Check out your credit score.
16. Watch Girls, over and over again.	16. Donate blood often.
17. Eat a jar of Nutella in one sitting.	17. Every day tell your friends and family you love them.
18. Make strangers feel uncomfortable in public places.	18. Babysit your friend’s children … for free.
19. Sign up for CrossFit.	19. Keep a private journal.
20. Hang out naked in front of a window.	20. Learn a hobby or try out new ones till you find your passion.
21. Write your feelings down in a blog.	21. Cancel a date to spend time with a grieving friend or family member.
22. Be selfish.	22. Seek and listen to advice from your elders.
23. Come with me to the Philippines for Chinese New Year.	23. Make a habit of thanking God daily.

GMOs and science for hire—UPDATED

I have this horrible suspicion that he's trying to be funny.

Comedian/activist Lee Camp asks, in the meme to your left, “Where is all the Christian outrage against GMO foods? The Lord’s creations weren’t good enough?” The most obvious answer is, “If Christians did get outraged about genetically-modified foods, we’d be written off as ‘anti-science’, so why bother?”

A better answer is that Christianity is more properly focused on us in our relations with God and other people. Proper stewardship of the earth, though not an irrelevant topic, is quite a bit removed from the “ground zero” of divine revelation and apostolic tradition.

Some Christians are against genetic modification; for instance, a fellow Catholic who contributes frequently to The Distributist Review, John Médaille, opposes GMOs. But I think it’s safe to say that the bulk of Christians who oppose GMOs can and do so without dragging the Lord’s name into it. An argument against GM foods could probably be made from Leviticus 19:19 (“You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff”). However, as I’ve noted elsewhere, Christians aren’t bound to observe the Law of Moses; ritual purity is less important than compassion and avoidance of sin.

For my own part, I’ve not read enough of the relevant literature to take a stand either way. But to slam GMO’s opponents as “anti-science” is both wrong and misleading. Monsanto is the main target, but the agro-biotech giant is also the symbol of corporate regulatory capture of federal watchdog agencies. The fear isn’t of science or technology per se, but rather of “science for hire” — the insidious influence over scientific research wielded by the dreaded, dreadful “one-percenters”.

Making Harvard a propaganda factory—UPDATED

Sandra Y. L. Korn, '14, progressivist Borg.
(Image source WND)

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Sandra Y. L. Korn, a Harvard senior double-majoring in history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality (I heard you mutter, “Uh-oh”). In a Harvard Crimson post ironically titled “The Doctrine of Academic Freedom”, Korn has just advocated that Harvard remove itself from serious consideration as a center of academic research and become a generator of progressivist propaganda.

Not in so many words, of course. Her proposal, like Jonathan Swift’s, is modest:

… [The] liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.

In a way, Korn’s argument is refreshing in its near-honesty. We already bias our research output by our funding and publication decisions, is the essence of her reasoning. We already have student activism to make sure conflicting positions are unwelcome here. Why be subtle about suppressing political heresies? Why not make it overt by writing it officially into school policy? I’m only surprised she didn’t suggest “academic justice” be written into Harvard’s hiring, retention and tenure standards.

Which makes me wonder: what are her grades in her history of science courses?

The broken gate

There’s kind of a time warp in Facebook Land. On any given day, this strange phenomenon can cough up posts, videos and memes originally uploaded as long as seven or eight years ago. In Facebook Land, the Chuck-Norris-is-tough meme can never truly die.

Thus it was that I didn’t see the RantLifestyle article by Michael Peckerar, “The Girls You Marry vs. the Girls You Hook Up With”, until almost a month had passed since it was published. And not until I read Peckerar’s article did I know about the RantChic article by Regina Phalange, “Men You Marry vs. Men You Bang” to which Peckerar’s article is either a complement or a response. When a man uses an obscenity to describe sex, he’s crude and boorish; when a woman does so, she’s edgy and tough.

I played around with both articles on Monday, hoping to extend them into a commentary on role expectations and the standards of a good spouse. One thing I'd noticed was that, despite the provocative title of her piece, at only one point does Phalange suggest that a man from what we could call the “reject pile” might be good for a one-nighter or “friendship with benefits”; in the other seven categories, we’re almost forced to wonder why any woman would consider sleeping with such a loser, let alone marrying him. By contrast, on several points Peckerar leaves us no doubt that there are women a straight man should want to sleep with ... but not necessarily espouse.

What is the problem with income inequality?

Click to view larger graphic.

Since Pope Francis promulgated Evangelii Gaudium, with its infamous passage on “‘trickle-down’ theories”, conservatives — especially conservative Catholics — have been rather touchy.

Most of them aren’t driven by their own personal greed. Many if not most aren’t even wealthy, but rather solidly part of the middle class. For the most part, they’re good, well-intentioned people … even the disciples of Ayn Rand. And most are well aware that capitalism rewards some ugly human traits even given positive legislation and effective regulation. They don’t defend the ugliness or the weaknesses; they simply hold that capitalism works better than do communism or socialism.

But while the increase of the “wealth gap” has been a source of some concern for a while now, from recent conservative reactions, you would never have guessed that anyone spoke of income inequality before Francis. “But what IS it exactly?” asks my friend Elise Hilton. “Does it mean that a teacher, a brain surgeon and a garbage collector should all earn the same wage? Does it mean the wealthy entrepreneur should simply give away her money, rather than investing it or leaving it to her heirs?”

These must be rhetorical questions. After all, with the exception of a handful of leftover Communists still dreaming in their academic refuges, liberals accept that different jobs will merit higher or lower wages. No one has a problem with entrepreneurs investing their income or leaving it to their kids; in fact, no one has a problem with people becoming or remaining rich.

It’s important to stress this because some writers, such as Pat Buchanan, dismiss the inequality issue as an attempt to ramp up class warfare based on envy of the wealthy. While this might be the case for some liberal politicians, the dismissal itself is an ad hominem; calling an opponent’s motives into question doesn’t disprove his argument or render it less credible.

Phil Robertson's other controversial statement

Amen, brother.

Are we done hyperventilating over Phil Robertson’s GQ interview?

Actually, it’s been kinda fun watching the MSM clutch their pearls over Robertson’s unapologetic assertion that gay sex is unnatural. After all, these are people who have spent no little amount of broadcast time painting Southern Evangelical Christians as inbred, backwoods-residing, mouth-breathing Luddites with a penchant for “flat earth” theories; they have no room in their collective subconscious for Bible-thumpers who are technologically up-to-date and show quite a bit of marketing savvy. Robertson’s forthright citation of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is precisely the kind of thing they should have expected. So we no more believe in their overdone displays of rage and condemnation than we believe that Louis was shocked, shocked to discover gambling at Rick’s gin joint.

Amazingly, there has been little public support for A&E’s decision to suspend further appearances by Robinson on his own show. The comfort-food restaurant chain Cracker Barrel tried removing Duck Commander products from their in-restaurant stores, only to bring them back out when their customers protested the decision.

Even more strikingly, various gay activists have gone so far as to publicly support Robertson and cry “shame, shame” on A&E. Said Brandon Ambrosino in TIME.com, “G.K. Chesterton said that bigotry is ‘an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.’ If he is right — and he usually is — then I wonder if the Duck Dynasty fiasco says more about our bigotry than Phil’s.” And former NOW leader Tammy Bruce tweeted her followers, “The gay civil rights movement was about making sure we weren’t punished for being who we are. Time the left applies that same value to others.”

What do we want from our schools?

Follow the link to The Anchoress’ page, and read as people bemoan the ignorance displayed by American College Students as Rhonda Fink-Whitman, author of the historical novel 94 Maidens, pounces on them with questions about World War II, the Holocaust, and genocide today. Not only do they moan, they also point fingers, search for causes, and wonder whether a legally mandated curriculum is an appropriate remedy.

One comment, from “Patrick”, didn’t attract attention from anyone but me:

Yeah, well; I aced the advanced placement European history test and was first place in the geography bee, and got the highest grade possible in Advanced American history ... And I can’t say that I’ve led a good life and certainly not a happy one ... So, you know — it doesn’t matter a tinker’s dam to me that I can tell you, in detail, about the Boer War or something.

I’m not surprised no one engaged this bit of educational heresy. Them What Has Bin Eddicated take it for granted that Knowledge is Power^®, that those who do well in school generally do better in other areas of life, that to have letters after your name like M.Sc. or Ph.D. will open more doors for you and make you a better person than will a mere G.E.D. If you can’t leverage your education into a good, happy life — oh, well; sucks to be you.

All of which is true in general terms; yet I can’t mock Patrick for expecting knowledge of the Boer War, the Treaty of Westphalia or the bimetallism question to lead him to Elysian fields. Why? Because then he would be well within his rights to ask me, “If it’s not guaranteed to make me a better, happier person, then what’s it good for? Why bother with it?”

How do we answer?

The passion of Dan Grieco

SK Daniel J. Grieco: Beloved husband, father,
friend and brother Knight.

Dan Grieco (1948 – 2013) was in many ways the man I want to be when I grow up.

Dan was one of the first people I met when my brother Bob and I joined our parish’s Knights of Columbus council in 2007. If you met him only once, you might just write him off as a “nice guy”. As you got to know him, however, you learned just how shallow such an assessment could be.

Dan was singularly passionate about everything, from the Church and the pro-life movement to hardwood floors. Whatever he was doing, he was excited about it, and he did his level best to get you excited about it too. Commitment was not a dirty word to Dan; it was almost his motto. If there was a project, he would be the first person to arrive — ready to work — and the last person to leave.

So far as Dan was “nice”, it wasn’t just a general air of bonhomie: he took avid interest in other people’s lives, was warm, engaging and funny, and had no hesitation about telling other people — even other men — “I love you”. If you were in the hospital, you could pretty much count on a visit from Dan. His love for his wife and children was boundless, a shining constant in his life.

But the reason I write of Dan here is because that same vital combination of passion and commitment showed through in his religiosity. Dan’s love of God and the Church was just as fierce, devoted and fully committed as his love for his family and friends. You could almost use the word zealous, except that the idea of zealotry has been spoiled by violent nutjobs; Dan was disgustingly sane. Of all the people I’ve known, he was the best at “walking the talk”.

An angel in Missouri — UPDATED

Until you watch the news footage on the “mystery priest” incident, you don’t really realize how improbable the story is.

Rural Catholicism means driving long distances for Mass and religious instruction. In some parts of Texas, one priest will have charge of three or four parishes, and will spend more time in his car than any place else except — maybe — his bed.

The only Catholic church in Center, Missouri is on the National Register of Historic Places but not on the Diocese of Jefferson City’s list of active parishes; it’s an eight-mile drive to St. Stephen in Indian Creek near Monroe City. There’s no active parish in New London, just up State Highway 19 from Center; the closest parish, Holy Family in Hannibal, is almost ten miles in the opposite direction from Center. Sacred Heart in Vandalia is over twenty miles south of Highway 19.

That stretch of Highway 19, where all you can see from horizon to horizon are farmsteads and long rows of corn, is where an (allegedly) drunk driver plowed into 19-year-old Katie Lentz’s older-model Mercedes convertible. To intensify the improbability, first responders had blocked off access by road to the scene. So it’s not as though some Blackie Ryan-like character innocuously emerged from, and melted back into, a crowd of urban gawkers who had all inconveniently misplaced their iPhones or had them focused elsewhere; it was just Katie and the New London Fire Department — and lots and lots of cornfields.

And yet, there he was.

The war to end all wars

Western front, 1915-1916. (Source: U.S. Military Academy.)

Over on The American Catholic, DarwinCatholic has posted an interesting article on an ongoing reassessment of World War I. The American Catholic has a lot of posts on American history that don’t even begin to reference Christ, the Church or anything specifically Catholic, so I don’t feel so bad about calling this blog a Catholic blog.

The main thrust of Darwin’s post is that post-war revisionism struck early and hard. Most of us who learned anything about the war in school learned that it was a horrendous waste of life, as idiot generals and field marshals hurled frontal attack after useless frontal attack in an obscene homage to Napoleon’s tactics; why, such attacks had become outdated by the end of the American Civil War!

Of course, now that I read this, I realize that the Civil War never dealt with front lines that extend hundreds of miles; with one end fused to the English Channel and the other to the Swiss Alps, the Western front didn’t permit flanking attacks. Just the sheer number of soldiers by itself changed the way the war had to be fought.

The generals of the war, Darwin points out, knew very well Napoleonic tactics wouldn’t work. The problem was finding something that would work. Both sides were fairly evenly matched for inventiveness; as soon as one side found a possible solution, the other side would develop a counter. For instance, gas worked for the Germans only until the French and English started producing their own gas masks. The art of war had to be not just changed but reinvented altogether.

But did the war have to be fought at all?

Mary, Martha and earning readers

Now as they went on their way, [Jesus] entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Jacopo Comin (Tintoretto) (1518-1594)
Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

I’ve referred to Luke 10:38-42 before, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as Jesus’ big convention-crossing moment, when he allows Mary the sister of Lazarus to sit at his feet as a disciple, a place only men could take. Here, if one wishes, one finds Jesus unequivocally treating a woman as an equal to the men around her, refusing to relegate her to the role of servant to men against her will.

That’s if one wishes to do so. G. K. Chesterton noted, in The Everlasting Man, that Christ “did not particularly denounce slavery … [but] he started a movement that could exist in a world without slavery. He never used a phrase that made his philosophy depend even upon the very existence of the social order in which he lived. He spoke as one conscious that everything was ephemeral, including the things that Aristotle thought eternal.”[1]

In the same way, the passage in Luke’s Gospel is not about sexual politics or women’s equality. Rather, it’s about how we let the thousand details of quotidian life distract us from discipleship.

By “we”, of course, I mean “I”.