Lex Anteinternet: Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World

Lex Anteinternet: Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World: 

Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World

In the West, we just celebrated Easter.  In the East, where the Old Calendar is sometimes used, it's today.  This might mean, for the observant, that they were in Church the prior Sunday, in which case, for churches using the Catholic liturgical calendar, they heard this.

Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned,

deeply regretted what he had done.

He returned the thirty pieces of silver

to the chief priests and elders, saying,

"I have sinned in betraying innocent blood."

They said,

"What is that to us?

Look to it yourself."

Flinging the money into the temple,

he departed and went off and hanged himself.

We all know, of course, that Judas was Christ's betrayer.  Not too many stop to think that he was seized with remorse and hung himself.

Why was he so miserable?

Probably for the same reason that Western society, on the whole, is.

He thought of himself and chose his own inner wishes rather than being willing to sacrifice.

It's struck me recently that this is the defining quality of our age. We won't sacrifice and don't believe we should have to.  It explains a lot.

Interestingly, in a matter of synchronicity, after I started writing this I happened to listen to an episode of Catholic Stuff You Should Know on Augustine's City of God and Lewis' The Great Divorce that ties in perfectly.  It's here:

The one that explains exactly where we are.

CAN WE BUILD THE CITY OF GOD?

And I do mean exactly.

Also, a matter of synchronicity, we passed the 111th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic after I started this.  

The wealthy men on board the doomed ship, and a lot of the other men, stayed on the sinking ship so that women and children would be saved.  The men who went were largely the crew, needed to man the lifeboats as part of their tasks.  Otherwise, men didn't complain, they just stepped aside so that as few women and children as possible wouldn't die. A Catholic Priest stayed with them to prepare them for entry into the next life.  All of them were living up to a standard, but the interesting thing to note there is that it was a standard.  They were heroic, but not because they exceeded the standard, but rather because the occasion came to apply it, and they unflinchingly did.

Now we shove women into combat, something that in any prior age would be regarded as an outright societal act of cowardice and a complete failure of male virtue.

We've come a long ways, all right.  And not in a good way.

Sacrifice was almost the defining quality of any prior age, or at least those that preceded the late 1960s, and very much the defining quality of the 18th through mid 20th Centuries.  Men would die before they'd let women and children be injured, and if they didn't, they'd be branded as cowards for the rest of their lives.

Most people married, and marriage was understood to have a sacrificial element to it in numerous ways.  People didn't "write their own vows", the vows were part of the ceremony and they were, well, vows.  Promises you weren't getting out of, in other words.

Latin Rite English wedding vows still reflect this.  The entire series of events reads goes as follows.

First, the Priest asks a series of questions, to which the couple responds "I do", or words that effect:

(Name) and (name), have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?"                   

"Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?"                       

"Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?"

Only after ascent to that, the Priest reads:

Priest (or deacon): Since it is your intention to enter into the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.

Groom: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

Bride: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

The element of sacrifice is so strong in marriage, that in Croatia, a Catholic country, an added element is present, in which the Priest states:

You have found your cross. And it is a cross to be loved, to be carried, a cross not to be thrown away, but to be cherished.

That's really heavy.  That's not a fuzzy bunny, flowery rose, type of view of marriage at all.  You're signing up for a real burden.

But one to be cherished.

And that's the thing that the West has lost. 

We don't want to sacrifice at all.

If you look at life prior to the late 1960s, sacrifice was darned near universal.  Everyone, nearly, married and divorce was rare.  People sacrificed for their marriages.  Most married couples had children, and having children entailed sacrifice.  Reflecting the common values of the time well, the screenwriter of The Magnificent Seven summed it up in this fashion in a comparison of family men to hired gunfighters:

Village Boy 2 : We're ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.

Bernardo O'Reilly : Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That's why I never even started anything like that... that's why I never will.

The line, "And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground." was literally true for many.  Indeed, it's been noted that up until some point after World War Two Finland, which routinely comes in as the happiest country on Earth, had a very early male death rate, simply because the men there worked hard, and basically worked themselves into the grave for their families.

People were not, of course, perfect, and therefore children naturally arrived on the scene with an unmarried origin.  Depending upon the age of the couple, that often ended up in a marriage before the child was born, adding an added element of sacrifice in which the couple sacrificed, in essence, an element of freedom or even their future for what they'd brought about. When that didn't occur, the child was more often than not given up for adoption, which involves an element of sacrifice, but because it arises in a different context, we'll not get too deeply into that.

Things tended to be focused on that fashion. There were people who didn't follow this path, but they were a minority.

This has been portrayed, since the 1970s, as some sort of horrible oppression.  But the surprising secret of it is that people seem to be hardwired for it, and when it's absent, they descend into, well, a descent.

None of which is to say that sacrifices aren't present in the modern world. They are, although by and large society tries enormously to avoid them.

It's tried the hardest in regard to the natural instincts of all kinds.  People are able to avoid nature, and so they do, least they have to sacrifice. But that's a sacrifice in and of itself, but for what?

The self, is what we were told initially.  But the self in this context turns out to be for the economy.  In a fairly straight line, we're told that you should avoid commitments to anything requiring commitment, so that you can get a good career, make lots of money, and go to Ikea.

Very fulfilling?

Ummm. . . 

No, not at all.  

In The Great Divorce, which I haven't read but which Catholic Things summarized extensively, Lewis placed a self focused Anglican Bishop in the role of the self-centered intellect.  Self Centered is the epitome of the current age.  And that self-centered role placed the figure in Hell.

We're doing a good job of that figuratively for the same reason, and literally as well.

Prior Related Threads:

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 1. A thought on community

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 3. Our lost connection with animals.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...: 

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 3. Our lost connection with animals.

ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND

This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.  

(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy.  This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)

The other day, I posted this in a footnote on a completely different topic.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, par...:   

4.  One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.

Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones.  We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't.  Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species.  When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient.  Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.

Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.

Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.

We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat.  Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty.  Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants.  But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.

As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".

It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not.  Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors.  The ranch dogs do not. . . ever.  The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.

I started this thread back in February, when the entire news on "transgenderism" really hit the fan, so to speak.  Since that time there's been the filing of the sorority lawsuit in Laramie, a host of transgender mass shooting, and an absolutely freakish campaign by Budweiser in which a guy trying to channel a girl of the 1960s is sponsoring Bud Light.  Anyhow, this thread was to tie into it somehow, but now a lot of time has gone by, and working seven days out of seven, etc., I've really forgotten what my brilliant point here was to be, more or less.

But I'll go on anyhow.

This photograph shows a young woman at work, doing something that counted, and doing it in a way that was very close to nature.

So does this one:

Mid Week At Work: Mail Carrier, 1915, Los Angeles

And also this one:

Rural Nurse, Virginia. 1919.

And this one:

LOC Caption:   Sarah Crutcher, 12-year-old girl herding cattle. Route 4, c/o S.O. Crutcher. She was out of school (#49 Comanche County) only 2 weeks this year and that was to herd 100 head of cattle for her father, a prosperous farmer. She said: "I didn't like it either." She is doing well in school. Is in Grade 8.] Location: [Lawton, Oklahoma]

I think one of the interesting things about this photographs is, contrary to the modern image of what women wore when doing livestock work in the early 20th and late 19th Centuries, she's dressed in completely typical female attire for the time. She's riding wearing a fairly long skirt and a woman's hat that is typical for the period.

The point here?

Well this.  

We've gotten to the point where we don't deal with animals as they really are, daily.  We also are at the point where a large percentage of the original WASP demographic of the nation (more on this shortly) has lost most of the values it originally had, and replaced them with very weak tea instead.  And we've so removed ourselves from a state of nature, that most people don't have a grasp on what nature really is.

It's hard not to know the reality of the world if you live in it.

This past week, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in Casper in which the plaintiffs claim they suffered emotional distress as their two pet dogs were caught in snares which they claim were improperly placed on public lands by a trapper.  Apparently, in a companion criminal case, the trapper was exonerated.  The state land is very close to the city, which is a problem, but it's still state land, and still unincorporated.

Losing dogs is a tragedy, but emotional distress?  This has never been allowed in the common law, as the law always held that the law is, basically, for people.  If you can claim emotional distress due to the loss of a pet, why not anything?

Now, that sounds cruel, and I understand grieving over the loss of an animal.  I've done it myself.  That is, in fact, one of the things about owning pets.  Normally, you outlive them, and if you are normal, you'll miss them when they die.

It's a part of life.

But emotional distress has been reserved, in the common law, for the loss of humans, based, in the end, for what we feel with the loss of a loved human being.  Not an animal, no matter how loved.

And of course, up until recently, there was no such concept as a legally recognized animal for "emotional support".  Support they did provide, but the bond was in a naturalistic way, not one for which the law afforded protection.

Have we lost something here?

I think we have, and it's connected with real work and real animals.

We'll explore What's Wrong With The World more in this series of threads, but here's one.  Being connected with animals in a real sense, and not in the sanitary removed from nature sense, helped keep us real.  

We've lost that.

It's hard to be obsessively focused on yourself, including your reproductive self, if you're around animals as animals, particularly great big ones that can hurt you.

And I'll bet the thought "I'm a girl, but I want to be a boy" didn't much cross the minds of Icelandic pony riding milkmaids, Oklahoman girl cowpunchers, or Los Angeles mounted mail carriers.

Related Threads:

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 1. A thought on community

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.

Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...

Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...: 

Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point, you are stuck in your career.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham.

Maybe I don't watch enough television to catch them, or maybe the recent financial crises and the pandemic put the brakes on them, but there used to be a lot of financial planner advertisements based on the theme that you could retire into a new exciting career of some sort.  You know, you worked hard but invested wisely, and now you were a rancher in Monument Valley (where the locals probably regard you as an interloping menace).

M'eh.

Probably, the story of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham is more realistic.

Anyone who has watched Field Of Dreams is familiar with it.  Graham, we learn, played but a single season in the major leagues and got up to bat just once.  After that season, he chose to leave baseball, knowing, the film tells us, that he'd be sent back to the minor leagues, and he just couldn't stand the thought, so he opted to move on, pursuing a career instead of being a physician, an occupation that he occupied for over fifty years in Chisholm, Minnesota.

Graham was a real character, and really did play one season in the major leagues and really did go on to a very lengthy career as a physician in Chisholm, Minnesota.   The film, however, is centered on regrets, and Graham plays into that.

In the film, and presumably the book, the main protagonist is an Iowa farmer who starts hearing voices in his corn field.  At first, the voices have him build a baseball field, promising "if you build it, he will come". The "he" turns out to be Shoeless Joe Jackson, famously banned from baseball due to the 1919 Black Sox scandal.  Jackson brings in the Black Sox, who in turn start holding games against another ghostly team, given as they're all years past their deaths.  The voice returns and tells Kinsella, the farmer, to "ease his pain", which ends up taking him on a cross-country journey in which he picks up a self urban exiled urban author, Terrance Mann, and a trip to a ballgame, at which they see the statistics for Graham.  They go on to Chisholm, Minnesota, to find that he had died years earlier, only to find Kinsella nocturnally transported back to the early 1970s in which he encounters the elderly Graham, who in reality died in 1965.  Graham declines to go with Kinsella and Mann, noting that it would have been a tragedy if he'd only gotten "to be a doctor for one day", his having become so central to the lives of the town's residents.

But then, traveling back to Iowa the next day, they encounter a youthful hitchhiking Graham, who goes back to the field with them and plays on the team of ghosts, apparently actually in reality regretting his having been deprived of a major league career.

The entire move Field Of Dreams is about broken dreams.  It's all about regret.  Every character in the film is full of regrets.  Kinsella regrets having departed company with his father, a former professional ball player, on harsh terms and not getting to apologized before he dies.  Mann, a disenchanted author, regrets not having meaningful writing to carry on with.  Jackson regrets having been banned from baseball.  All of them feature redemption in the form of a second chance at redressing their regrets.

I love the movie, and always have, but it's a dark film in some ways.  Almost every single character in it, no matter how cheerful they are, and they're all cheerful, is laboring under monumental internal regrets.  They're provided a chance to banish the regret, but only through Devine intervention, allowing a redress across time.

Field Of Dreams isn't the only movie that deals with regret, and even Divine intervention, but it's the only one that I'm aware of in which average characters are plagued with it and can only address it in such an intervention.  The closest portrayal of a similar topic of which I'm aware is It's A Wonderful Life, in which the protagonist is about to kill himself after years of hard work at a saving and loan business he was basically forced into due to the untimely death of his father.  In that film, however, a hapless angel takes him back through the lives of everyone he touched to show him how much worse the lives of those he impacted would be had he not been there.  Mr. Holland's Opus is another work that has a similar theme, but with no Divine intervention, in which the dream of the protagonist is shattered by a personal tragedy, but his work, opus, becomes a huge impact on everyone around him.  I like both of those films as well, but not as much, and frankly find them dispiriting for all of the wrong reasons.¹ I probably shouldn't, as the message of both is profoundly Christian and, well, perhaps this below best expresses it.

A film that takes a distinctly different approach from either is Will Penny, which is a great film.  In that film circumstances show an aging single cowboy, who has worked his entire life in that role, what life would have been like had he married and had a family that cared about him.  Right up until the end of the film it seems that, now that the opportunity seems to be unfolding, he'll take it, but as it turns out, knowing that it has in reality passed him by, he regrets his decision, but determines to ride off and live with it.  It's just too late.

Which brings me to this observation.

Recently, or so it seems to me, once you are over 50, and truth be known at some point earlier than that, unless your big planned career change is one involving only self-employment and doesn't depend much on your physical health, you're pretty much stuck with what you are doing.

The first time that really became evident to me in any fashion, oddly enough, was when I was in my 30s and practicing law.  My late mother had a friend who grew up on a ranch and had always wanted to return to his former life.  He'd had a long career as a banker, but now, in his 70s, he was trying to return with what was really a hobby farm.  He wasn't well enough to do it, and his wife was crippled, so their location out of town was imperiling her health.  My mother, who was extremely intelligent but often based her assumptions about somebody based on externals, kept referencing him as a "rancher", which he wasn't.  He was still employed at the bank, and it was a hobby farm that was failing.

He moved off of it soon after my mother first referenced him in conversation, and died soon thereafter.

Why, other than that it's always been obvious to anyone who knows me that my internal vocation is one that involves animals and wild country, she pointed that out, I don't know.  Probably as she conceived of him as somebody who had combined a city job, banking, with a rural vocation, "ranching" (actually farming), he was, to her, a model of what I could do.  My mother was always proud of the fact that I'd become a lawyer and quick to tell anyone that, even though its something I never bring up myself and tend to reveal, to strangers, only if asked.  That probably concerned her some as she wondered why somebody who had obtained such an admirable, in her view, professional degree would want to do something that in her personal experience was of a lower status.²  The point was made, as it seemed to make sense to her that a person could pursue agriculture as a hobby while admirably employed in a profession.

I viewed the banker as somebody who'd led an existentially failed vocation, banking, and was trying to make amends too late.

That's a pretty harsh judgement, but I've always been sort of "no quarters" in my view of some things, including myself.  Now, some 30 years later, I could easily say the same thing about me, and be quite correct.  I've had a long and respected career as a lawyer, which has not involved animals whatsoever, or wild country.  I've also been a stockman for most of that time, which does.  But my being a stockman is sort of a second activity, made possible as my in laws are the full time stockmen, and I'm part-time.  I don't regard that as a personal success, but a personal failure. There's no two ways about it.

For all of my time as a lawyer, I've dreamed of being a judge. That's the sort of dream that's puts you in Moonlight Graham territory as chances are, you aren't going to make it.  I first tried to make that switch when I'd only been practicing a few years, at which time, unbeknownst to me, experienced lawyers regarded that as impossible as you needed experience.

Later on I had the experience and applied several times, and passed by some as well.  I passed by one as I knew that somebody putting in was so close to an influential figure that he'd get it, which he did.  I hope that figure realizes that, even now, he's indebted to an accident of employment for his current position.  

The time I first came pretty close, I nonetheless didn't make it to one of the three finalist.  A friend did.  It was surreal, however, as I received calls from those close to the process informing me I should expect to be one of the three finalists.  I received direct information that I'd interviewed very well.  When I didn't get it, and another position soon came up, I was called by a host of individuals who were within the system and urged to apply, which I had not intended to do.  I did, and didn't make the finals again.

Over time, I've watched the process and realized that politics, which weren't really evident to me early on, played very much a part.  One Governor in this time frame had an expressed preference for appointing women, as he thought the bench lacked them and needed them.  Over time, it became apparent that women stood a much better chance than men of getting appointed.  Well, he's the chooser, so I guess he gets to choose as he will.

The more recent Governor has favored very young appointees and ones who had criminal law experience.  I'm no longer young, I'll be 60 next month, and I don't have criminal law experience.  Nonetheless, I put in one last time when I was probably 58.  Totally pointless.

Since that time, I've awkwardly appeared in front of the very young judge.  That judge may turn out to be great, but the judge confessed that the hearing we were at was the first of the type the judge had ever experienced, and the judge wasn't quite sure what to do.  I'll give that judge credit for that.  Not everyone would admit that.

Well, at 60, I'm not putting in anymore.  I'd have to retire at 70, and I'd never get selected.  Oh, well.

I'm not the only one in that position.  At least one other friend of mine has the same experience.  Whenever we've talked about it, we always express it in an "oh well", we didn't expect to get it anyhow, and we still have our careers.  But frankly, in my case, it's another career failure.  I'll go to my grave as a lawyer knowing that whatever I achieved, I didn't achieve what I'd hoped to, long ago.

Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Being almost 60, I'm at the age where law journals have articles that claim people like me can have exciting second careers.  What they always entail, however, is some lawyer who moved from litigation combat to telling his younger lawyers how to engage in litigation combat, or some lawyer who moved from a big first into one that his son or daughter has, to mentor them.  I guess that's sort of a second career, but it really isn't.  It's more like going from being the team manager to the pitching coach.  You are still showing up wearing pinstripes and a ball cap for the team.  And frankly for the overwhelming majority of lawyers in the current legal environment, where it's hard to find a younger lawyer to even hire, it's not realistic.

What's notable about those articles is nobody ever suggests that any of the lawyers that they reference really were able to make a radical shift in the field.  None of the Old Hands, for instance, went from practice to teaching.  They keep practicing. At most, you see some who went from litigation to transactional within their firms.

And that's about as realistic as that gets.  Not that such a transition is meaningless, a lawyer I knew personally who practiced into his 90s had done a similar thing at age 60, and just all of a sudden.  The same lawyer, however, had wanted to be a doctor but found his dreams dashed by World War Two, during which he served in the Navy.  Coming back, the lost years didn't leave him time, he felt, to do what he wanted to do.  Indeed, everything about his educational path changed.

What this does do, however, is point out the reinforcing nature of occupations over time.  When the ABA, for instance, runs articles about second careers for lawyers, it's acknowledging that lawyers are looking for second careers, and telling them to stuff it, they're lawyers.  Not that this is a surprise as after a person has been practicing for a while, and I'm sure this is true of every other occupation, you're defined in that role.  I've ridden up to cow camps on trail after having been in the field for days, dressed as a cow hand, and covered with grime, only to be identified as "oh, you're the lawyer".  People who know me only casually from work, when they want to chat, open up topics on legal themes, assuming, logically enough, that what I'd really like to do in the evening while enjoying a cocktail (or more likely a Saturday afternoon at the hardware store) is chat about the law.

Societal expectations, therefore, become reinforcing.  You may have a diesel mechanics certificate, but if your prospective employer finds out you're a 50-year-old lawyer, or 40-year-old lawyer, forget it.  You're not getting hired as a diesel mechanic.

Radical changes, unless, again, they involve self-employment, age out.  I knew one lawyer who became a partner in a small drilling company, but that was a species of self-employment backed by the fact that a collection of business associated had the money, along with him, to invest to start up.  Another who had worked for years in a bank, then entered private practice, did it only briefly before returning to the bank. The brief taste of practice was enough.  One I personally knew dropped out of practice to become a teacher, and one I sort of knew did the same, but they were in their 40s at the time, with time still being available to them to do that.  Probably in their 50s, they wouldn't have been hired.

As I mentioned outdoor professions, one thing I'll note is that the Federal ones have age caps, in some areas, the Federal Government being an employer that can still officially do that.  State ones don't tend to have official ones, but they do have unofficial ones.  Federal ones tend to be based on retirement.  If you can't make 20 years by 60, you aren't getting in.  

One that surprised me recently, quite frankly, was the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.  Its age cap is 55, which is pretty old actually for entering military service, but it's only taking veterans (and only combat veterans, it claims).  Ukrainians men are liable for military service up to age 60s, but Ukraine isn't taking in any old soldiers from other lands.  That probably makes sense, really, as you don't know these guys and can't really vet them much before they show up.  Some vets of other armies, such as my self, are in pretty good physical health and probably could endure a combat environment just fine (maybe), others have grown sick, tired or fat, and couldn't.  There's no point in investing in somebody, whose going to die of a heart attack one week out.

Still, it's interesting as there are so many Western army veterans who trained to fight the very army the Ukrainians are fighting, more or less.  We didn't, thank goodness, fight them in the 80s, and we're not going to be fighting them, it appears, now.

Interestingly, the Canadian Army takes in older enlistees now.  I don't know how old, but the cutoff age is something like 57 or 58.  But those enlistees have to make it through basic training in the Canadian Forces.  Apparently Canadian soldiers are part of the general Canadian government old age pension system, and the Canadian government figures they can get a couple of years out of any who make it through basic, which is probably about what they get out of an average enlistee anyway.

As we live in the age of certification, many jobs that were open to people 30 years ago, when I first started practicing law, have had the doors slammed shut if you don't have perfect certification.  I know of one such field that loosely interpreted its certification requirements 30 years ago and now very strictly construes them. 

Added to that, of course, is the impact of income and influence of disbelief.  A professional changing jobs may be enamored with the idea of it, but it's pretty likely that his family, most particularly his spouse, isn't.  That's also why most of the real changes, such as for example the instance I know of in which a lawyer became a fireman, happen pretty early in careers.  Most professionals don't make the loot that people think they do, particularly when they start out, unless they're recruited into a really high test outfit.  Indeed, the one fellow I know who fits that description looks so stressed all the time, I wouldn't be too surprised if his heart just burst out of his chest in a deposition, and he died on the spot.  For most younger lawyers/doctors/accountants, etc., they're not pulling in the big bucks early on.  At that point, obligations aside, they can make a change as they aren't going to be hurt on a day-to-day basis much.

Obligations, however, change options enormously.  Student debt keeps a lot of people in jobs as they have to pay for their educations.  By the time they have the debt paid off, chances are they have a family and a mortgage, and that keeps them in place.  Most spouses have a low tolerance for dropping family income enormously and while early on couples may endure hardships bounded together by true love, later on the spouse who isn't proposing to drop household income will regard it as insane, bound down by practicalities and perhaps duty to the offspring of the marriage.  Shakespeare claimed that "conscience does make cowards of us all", but debt and expenditures have a big role in that.

So too has the return to long family ties of the pre World War Two era and the insurance system of the post World War Two era.  Couple of the 50s, 60s and 70s pretty much saw their children blast into independence as soon as they were 18, and more than a few families didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt about basically kicking children out into the cold world once they were that age.  It was quite normal.  Now it isn't, but then it really wasn't before 1940 either.  Be that as it may, that has brought about a return to the situation in which the family bread winner retains some financial responsibility all the way into his kid's late 20s, which not only means late career, but it can be career extending, as people can't quite what they are otherwise doing.  I know that I wanted my father to retire when he hit 60, and he wouldn't.  But I'd been paying my own freight by that time, at least partially, for quite a while and knew that I could pull it all.

Or so I thought.  He probably didn't think that, making him an example of somebody who probably was looking at things just the way I do know, right up until he died at age 62, having never retired.

Insurance is another matter.  In the American system you can go on Medicare at age 65, but prior to that, health care is your own problem, and it's expensive.  It interestingly gets expensive for most people right about the time that you really need it for the second time in your life, the first time being when women are of child bearing years.  Switching from one job to another, where health insurance is covered in one, and isn't in another, is pretty hard for most people. Quite a few people keep on keeping on for years until they qualify for Medicare.⁴

And self-determination, which a lot of us aren't that good at, plays a major role.  You are always faced with decisions when they come up, and you make them, usually, on what is important right then.  Personally, the door did open for me to an outdoor career with an agency right after I had become engaged.  It involved a massive income drop and a very uncertain future, as it started off with a temporary position. The responsible thing to do, it seemed to me (and it would seem to most) was to forego it, which I did.

Twice wars came up after I had left the National Guard, and in both instances I tried to get in them.  That has something to do with being trained to fight.  In the first Gulf War I made contact right away with my old Guard unit, but it wasn't called up as it had just switched from heavy artillery to rocketry and wasn't combat ready.  The second time I contacted them as well, and then a Colorado infantry unit being deployed, but the first one wasn't called up, and the second one didn't need any artillerymen.  As the wars dragged on, it just didn't seem like there was a real reason to join, and I didn't.  The door, however, was open in that second instance and I didn't walk through it. At some point it slammed shut due to age, just has it has now for the Ukrainian forces.  Немає (no) you are too old, age cap at 55.  Будь ласка? (Please?).  Nope, but here's some equipment we need you can buy.  (Seriously, they suggested some sort of optical equipment, or a drone.  I dread to think how much a drone might cost).

And so, the lesson's learned?

Édith Piaf famously sang Je Ne Regrette Rien, but if you look at her life, I'll be she did, and plenty of them.  Not that she's a model of an average or even somewhat typical life.  Moonlight Graham probably is in many ways, which is probably why the character appeals so much.  Maybe everyone watching Field Of Dreams feels that way a little.  Maybe not, but I'll bet plenty identify with that character more than any other in the film.

I don't know if most men really lead lives of quiet desperation, but I do suspect that a lot of people highly respected in their careers have unresolved paths they didn't take.  That doesn't mean that they didn't enjoy their careers.  It may mean they have large or small reservations about the paths they took.  I can't even begin to count how many times clients and litigants have told me "I wanted to become a lawyer" (or, pretty often, "I wanted my son to become a lawyer"), followed by a "but".  I've known professionals who didn't follow up on professional sports opportunities, who had been in military service and then gotten out, who had left farms and ranches, or who had thought about becoming a Priest or cleric, and didn't, all to some element of regret.  Indeed, with big callings, like the Priesthood, it probably downright haunts them.³

For those who recall it, people may imagine themselves singing Je Ne Regrette Rien, or maybe the defiant My Way, but Truckin is probably more like it.

The other lesson may be that the common American claim that you can start off doing one thing, and do anything else, is a lie.  

If it's not an outright lie, it comes with an expiration date.  Once you are 50 years of age, you are doing what you are doing, most likely, and you won't be getting out of it any time soon, if ever.

And this:

Well, you know I... I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn't. That's what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag. That's my wish, Ray Kinsella. That's my wish. And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?

Not without Divine intervention, there isn't.  And even as the movie portrays, decisions made in the past cannot be undone.  Graham reconciles it with 

Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.

My wife sometimes makes the same point about my career, with "all the people you've helped".  But then, this too:

 We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that that was the only day.

Footnotes

1.  I'm afraid that I'm an oddity with some films this way.  Shane, the classic Western in which the protagonist comes back out of retirement in order that besieged farmers aren't run off by cattlemen, is an example.  I know how the film ends, but I always hope that the cattlemen will win, and the wilderness they represent preserved.

2. My mother was not from here, and didn't hold farmers and ranchers in low esteem, but rather held professionals in very high esteem.  Her family had members who had been doctors, lawyers and engineers and she regarded this as having achieved a certain status.  A lot of people of her generation viewed the professions that way, and frankly, quite a few people still do.

She also tended to view being a lawyer as proof of high intelligence, which it really is not.  A Democrat, she'd frequently give a reason to support President Obama as "he's intelligent. . . he's a lawyer".  President Obama is intelligent, and he is a lawyer, but in reality, there are lots of fairly dim lawyers.

3.  Indeed, that's one of the ones that's most openly expressed.  I've known lawyers who, once they know you fairly well, will discuss having been in the seminary, or who wanted to be Priests, and it's a different conversation.  It's always pretty clear that they're downright haunted by their change into the law, no matter how much success they may have had in it. Conversely, I've known one Priest who had been a lawyer and at least one who had originally intended to be, who had no regrets whatsoever about their change in paths.

Of interest here, there's often an age limit to attempting to revive a vocational call.  Canon Law in the Catholic Church sets no age limit to becoming a Priest, but many dioceses do, and for good reason. Training a Priest takes nearly a decade.  While I can think of stories of some "older" men becoming Priests, in reality, they were middle-aged men when they started off.

Likewise, there's a limit on trying to become a Catholic Deacon, a vocation that's spread enormously in recent decades.  In our Diocese, the provision is:

The minimum age for a single man to be ordained to the permanent diaconate is twenty-five (25) years old, and thirty-five (35) years for married men. Maximum age to enter the Diaconal Formation Program is fifty-five (55) years (age 60 at ordination), unless the Bishop allows an exception. 

Sixty is surprisingly late, quite frankly, and I wonder if this has been recently moved as I thought the age limit lower, although not much.  Be that as it may, I know this only because at one time our African Parish Priest sent out letters to several men whom he thought would be good Deacons.  I was one.  I was flattered by the letter but knew I wasn't called, but I did pray on it.  I'm not called, working on my own defects is a full time enough job as it is.

4. The combined impact of insurance and family responsibilities in the current era is enough, in and of itself, to quash a lot of late career transition dreams.  Before Medicare, many people are hard locked into careers due to the need to keep their insurance.  Changes in the law, over time, have also meant that parents pay for their adult children's insurance well into their 20s.  Changing careers that involve insurance disruption is darned near impossible for many people.

And it likley would be for me, after my health issues of last year and their carryover inot this year.

Related Threads:

How the heck does a person figure out what to do?

Lex Anteinternet: Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in Germany. An die gläubigen Priester der Kirche in Deutschland.

Lex Anteinternet: Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in G...: 

Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in Germany. An die gläubigen Priester der Kirche in Deutschland.

Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in Germany

ON APR 02, 2023

Reverend and Dear brothers in Christ,

You have been very much in my prayers throughout the time since the beginning of the so-called Synodal Way. After the conclusion of the Fifth Synodal Assembly on March 11th last in Frankfurt/Main, I have been praying for you most especially, so that you remain faithful to the Apostolic Tradition, to the truths regarding faith and morals handed down to us by Christ in the Church, which we, as priests, are ordained to safeguard and promote. The faithful have never needed more than today priests who announce to them the truth, who bring them Christ, above all, in the Sacraments, and who guide and govern them in the way of Christ.

I can only imagine your profound sadness at the positions taken by the Assembly, including the great majority of the Bishops, which are directly opposed to what the Church has always and everywhere taught and practiced. I share your sadness and experience the temptation to discouragement, which you, no doubt, also experience. At times such as these, which priests have experienced at other times in the history of the Church, we must recall the promise which Our Lord, who never lies and is always faithful to His promises, has made to us, when, at His Ascension, He placed into our hands the Apostolic mission: “… and behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28, 20). Taking to heart, once again, the mission and Our Lord’s promise, we must soldier on, we must be His faithful “fellow workers in the truth” (3 Jn 8).

At times such as these, when even those who are Bishops betray the Apostolic Tradition, faithful Bishops, priests, consecrated persons, and lay faithful will necessarily suffer greatly precisely because of their fidelity. As we begin Holy Week, the week of Our Lord’s Passion and Death, and anticipate the Easter Season, the time of His Resurrection and Ascension, let us take to heart His words to those who would be His disciples: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16, 24). During these holiest of days, Our Lord pours out from His glorious-pierced Heart the strong graces of His victory over sin and death to strengthen us to be good, faithful, and generous disciples. During Holy Week and the Easter Season, let us lift up to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the sufferings of His Mystical Body, the Church, which is passing through a time of pervasive confusion and error, with their fruits which are division, apostasy, and schism.

Let us always remember, especially when the suffering we endure seems too much to bear, that we are not alone, that Christ is alive in us, that divine grace – sanctifying and actual – is at work within us. Let us ever remember Our Lord’s words to His Virgin Mother and Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, with whom we stand mystically at the foot of the cross: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother” (Jn 19, 26-27). The Mother of God is the Mother of Divine Grace and is, in a special way, the Mother of Priests who, in her Divine Son, bring countless graces to many souls. Our Lord’s Virgin Mother is ever at our side, even as she lovingly instructs us: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2, 5).

One in heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we also ever enjoy the fellowship of all the saints who will never fail to assist us, if only we call upon their intercession. In dark moments, let us not forget the reality and exhortation divinely spoken to us in the Letter to the Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12, 1-2).

In closing, I assure of my union with you and of my daily prayers for you. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we have been discouraged for a time before the Mystery of Iniquity, but now, with our eyes fixed on Our Risen Lord and His unchanging teaching, may our hearts be renewed in ardor by His grace (Lk 24, 32). I urge you to be close to Our Lord Who has chosen us to be His brothers in the Holy Priesthood and to be close to one another in pure and selfless love of the Church, His Mystical Body, and in the suffering offered for the sake of love of Him and of our brothers and sisters for whom we have been ordained as true shepherds.

Please remember me in your prayers.

With deepest fatherly affection, I impart to you and to Our Lord’s flock in your priestly care my blessing.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Rome

Palm Sunday, 2 April 2023

An die gläubigen Priester der Kirche in Deutschland 

Hochwürdige und liebe Brüder in Christus, von Beginn des sogenannten Synodalen Weges an waren Sie besonders in meine Gebete eingeschlossen. Nach Abschluss der Fünften Synodalversammlung am 11. März in Frankfurt am Main habe ich ganz besonders für Sie gebetet, damit Sie der Apostolischen Tradition, den von Christus in der Kirche überlieferten Glaubens- und Sittenwahrheiten, treu bleiben. Wir als Priester sind geweiht, um diese zu bewahren und zu fördern. Mehr als jemals zuvor brauchen die Gläubigen heute Priester, die ihnen die Wahrheit verkünden, die ihnen Christus bringen, vor allem in den Sakramenten, und die sie auf dem Weg Christi führen und leiten. 

Ich kann Ihre tiefe Traurigkeit über die Stellungnahmen auf der Versammlung nur erahnen, auch die Traurigkeit über die große Mehrheit der Bischöfe, die sich in direktem Gegensatz zu dem positioniert haben, was die Kirche immer und überall gelehrt und praktiziert hat. Ich teile Ihre Traurigkeit und spüre die Versuchung der Entmutigung, die Sie zweifelsohne auch verspüren. In Zeiten wie diesen, die Priester auch zu anderen Zeiten in der Geschichte der Kirche erlebt haben, müssen wir uns an das Versprechen erinnern, das Unser Herr, der niemals lügt und der Seinen Verheißungen immer treu ist, uns bei Seiner Himmelfahrt gegeben hat, als Er die apostolische Sendung in unsere Hände legte: "... Seht, ich bin mit euch alle Tage bis zum Ende der Welt." (Mt. 28,20). Indem wir uns erneut den Auftrag und die Verheißung Unseres Herrn zu Herzen nehmen, müssen wir weiterkämpfen, müssen wir seine treuen "Mitarbeiter in der Wahrheit" sein (3. Joh,8) 

In Zeiten wie diesen, in denen selbst Bischöfe die Apostolische Tradition verraten, werden treue Bischöfe, Priester, geweihte Personen und gläubige Laien gerade wegen ihrer Treue notwendigerweise sehr leiden. Wenn wir nun die Karwoche, die Woche des Leidens und Sterbens Unseres Herrn, beginnen und die Osterzeit, die Zeit Seiner Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt, erwarten, nehmen wir uns Seine Worte zu Herzen, die Er an diejenigen richtet, die seine Jünger sein wollen: "Wenn jemand mir nachfolgen will, so verleugne er sich selbst, nehme sein Kreuz auf sich und folge mir nach." (Mt. 16,24) In diesen heiligsten aller Tage gießt Unser Herr aus Seinem glorreich durchbohrten Herzen die mächtigen Gnaden Seines Sieges über Sünde und Tod aus, um uns zu stärken, damit wir gute, treue und großzügige Jünger sein können. Die Leiden Seines mystischen Leibes, der Kirche, die durch eine Zeit um sich greifender Verwirrung und Irrtümer geht, deren Früchte Spaltung, Glaubensabfall und Schisma sind, wollen wir in der Karwoche und Osterzeit besonders durch das Eucharistische Opfer zum Herzen Jesu emporheben. 

Denken wir immer daran, besonders dann, wenn das Leid, das wir ertragen, unerträglich zu werden scheint, dass wir nicht allein sind, dass Christus in uns lebendig ist, dass die göttliche Gnade - heiligmachend und helfend - in uns wirkt. Erinnern wir uns immer an die Worte Unseres Herrn an Seine jungfräuliche Mutter und den heiligen Johannes, dem Apostel und Evangelisten, mit denen wir mystisch am Fuß des Kreuzes stehen: "Frau, siehe, dein Sohn ... Siehe, deine Mutter" (Joh. 19, 26-27). Die Muttergottes ist die Mutter der göttlichen Gnade und in besonderer Weise die Mutter der Priester, die durch ihren göttlichen Sohn vielen Seelen unzählige Gnaden bringt. Die jungfräuliche Mutter Unseres Herrn ist immer an unserer Seite, auch wenn sie uns liebevoll anweist: "Was er euch sagt, das tut!" (Joh. 2,5). 

Ist unser Herz, durch das Unbefleckte Herz Mariens, mit dem Heiligsten Herzen Jesu vereint, genießen wir auch immer die Gemeinschaft aller Heiligen, die es nie versäumen werden, uns zu helfen, wenn wir sie nur um ihre Fürsprache anrufen. Vergessen wir in diesen dunklen Augenblicken nicht die Wirklichkeit und die Ermahnung, die uns im Hebräerbrief auf göttliche Weise zugesprochen wird: "Da wir nun von einer so großen Wolke von Zeugen umgeben sind, lasst uns alle hemmende Last abwerfen und die Sünde, die so sehr an uns haftet, und lasst uns mit Ausdauer den Wettlauf laufen, der vor uns liegt, indem wir auf Jesus schauen, den Begründer und Vollender unseres Glaubens, der angesichts der vor ihm liegenden Freude das Kreuz erduldete, ohne der Schmach zu achten, und zur Rechten des Thrones Gottes sitzt" (Hebr. 12,1-2). 

Abschließend versichere ich Ihnen meine Verbundenheit mit Ihnen und meine täglichen Gebete für Sie. Wie die Jünger auf dem Weg nach Emmaus haben wir uns eine Zeit lang vom dem Geheimnis des Bösen entmutigen lassen; doch nun, mit unseren Augen fest auf Unseren auferstandenen Herrn und Seine unveränderliche Lehre gerichtet, mögen unsere Herzen durch Seine Gnade mit neuem Eifer erfüllt und erneuert werden (Vgl. Lk. 24,32). Ich bitte Sie eindringlich, Unserem Herrn nahe zu sein, der uns zu Seinen Brüdern im Heiligen Priestertum erwählt hat, und einander nahe zu sein in reiner und selbstloser Liebe zur Kirche, seinem mystischen Leib, und im Leiden, das wir aus Liebe zu Ihm und zu unseren Brüdern und Schwestern, für die wir als treue Hirten geweiht wurden, aufopfern. 

Bitte denken Sie an mich in Ihren Gebeten. 

Mit tiefster väterlicher Zuneigung erteile ich Ihnen und der Herde Unseres Herrn, die Ihrer priesterlichen Obhut anempfohlen ist, meinen Segen. 

Raymond Leo Kardinal BURKE, 

Rom Palmsonntag, den 2. April 2023

Related Threads:

Compromise and Compromised

Lex Anteinternet: Compromise and Compromised

Lex Anteinternet: Compromise and Compromised:

Compromise and Compromised

Joan d'Arc.

Eddie Mannix:  Father?

FC:  Yes, my son?

Mannix:  May I ask you something, Father?

FC:  Of course, my son.

Mannix:  If there's something that's easy, is that wrong?

FC:  Easy?

Mannix:  Yeah, yeah. . . easy to do.  An easy job.  It's not a bad job, it's not bad. But there's this other job.  It's not so easy.  In fact, it's hard.  So hard Father that sometimes I don't know if I can keep doing it.  But it seems right.  I don't know how to explain.

FC:  God wants us to do what's right.

Mannix:  Yeah. . . yeah, of course he does.

FC:  The innervoice that tells you that, it comes from God.

Mannix:  Yeah.  I got it.

FC:  That's his way of saying

Eddie Mannix: Yeah. Right, I get it.

Dialogue from Hail Caesar.¹ 

Years ago, I knew a woman who was at that time recently out of the Marine Corps.  She was a fallen away Catholic.  Interestingly, unlike so many who fall away from a faith, she made no excuses for it.  Indeed, in discussing the topic with her once, she stated that she'd become a Catholic in the first instance because, like the Marines, it didn't make compromises.

She was a very troubled soul, and plagued with problems. Her marriage was her second, and that may well have been the origin of her falling away.  All in all, however, looking back, a lot of her problems were likely organic in nature, for which she'd bear no fault at all.  Her cross was a heavy one, and she was definitely dragging it and dropping it, but she didn't make very many excuses for it, which is a rarity.

Her observation was a keen one.

She'd been a Marine, as they were a military service that didn't compromise.  And when she'd become a Christian, she'd become a Catholic, as it was a faith that didn't compromise with the Gospel.   They didn't compromise, and they were not, by extension, compromised.

That's a lesson that human beings seemingly have a really hard time learning.  We live in the era of compromise, with some institutions, and people, being so compromised, they have little value.  Some are so compromised that they've gone from having value, to little value, to negative value.

Compromise sneaks in by means of subtle ways at first, when it does.  Something seems hard, can't we make it just a little bit easier? Something seems unfair, can't we make it just a little more fair? And the truth is, we often can.  But doing it for its own sake often has very real dangers.

The small compromise works, quite often, towards a little larger one, that works towards an even grater one.  Value erodes, and the then the attempt to address the erosion, by that point, usually turns towards even greater compromise.  To reduce it to a bad analogy, we go from allowing a desert without finishing dinner, to asking if a difficult one would simply like to have dinner and skip all other meals in an effort to get them to eat.  

We live in the age of compromise, and now many things are compromised.

The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

G.K. Chesterton.

From the very onset of Christianity, there has been a struggle between those who would add to the Faith that the Lord entrusted to the Apostles and make it more difficult, and those who would subtract from it to make the narrow path urged by the Lord into a superhighway, if they could get their way.  This has always been the case, and while distressing and bewildering to those who must live through any one era in which it occurs, it will always be the case.

Indeed, even during the lives of the Apostles themselves, this occurred.  Fights broke out as to whether Gentile Christians, who at the very first were a minority with Jewish Christians the majority, were subject to Jewish dietary laws or, perhaps more daunting, laws requiring circumcision.  It was rapidly determined that they were not and indeed right from the onset dietary laws were completely suspended, none of which has kept various Christian groups from adding new ones in, often with no particular basis, from time to time.  Even as those things were going on, however, other Christians basically felt that if they showed up for the Sacrifice of the Mass, they were doing about everything required of them, causing St. Paul to list out a list of mortal sins that barred entry into Heaven, including grave sins against chastity such as fornication, male prostitution, and homosexual behavior as well as such sins as drunkenness.  St. Paul pulled now punches whatsoever on this, condemning, in the full texts, men who affected a female appearance.  So blunt is Paul in his letters that in our modern era people have taken to either ignoring, excusing or psychoanalyzing St. Paul in a fairly desperate effort to avoid his teachings.

Indeed, the easy out that people attempt to give themselves in this area is to try to limit and then minimize St. Paul, but pretty soon you have to do the same to Christ as well.  Jesus notably criticized the Pharisees for making things difficult needlessly, but it was also Jesus who just flat out stated that getting divorced remarried was adultery.  No exceptions.  And while people like to claim that "well Christ didn't say. . ." this or that, it's pretty clear that 1) he might have, or 2) in areas of well accepted moral conduct there would have been no need to go back over some things, and 3) he actually did condemn certain immoral act either directly or indirectly with statements that are recorded. The Samaritan woman at the well, for example, was directly criticized for serial marriages and living with a man she was not married to, which again indicates that divorce was barred and sex outside of marriage was as well, none of which has kept, for some time, Protestant Christians from going to Church feeling they are perfectly okay if they're divorced and remarried, shacked up with someone, or living the hook-up culture.

It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man's faith is put to the test on the day God's will is not his.

Sigrid Undset, The Axe.

Truer words were never spoken.

Certain German Catholic Bishops, now edging on open rebellion against the Church, assuming that they haven't raced into schism, should take a break, study some actually history and then reconvene.  Indeed, their betrayal of the faith is so great, they ought to resign.

And while I'm straining not to join those Catholics who now recoil every time they hear of Pope Francis, it is becoming a struggle.

And a lot of this is that, should St. Paul appear in Frankfurt today, he'd be none too happy with the German bishops who are really busy saying that sexual sins aren't that, and are going to take the well trod Protestant path of excusing and then blessing sin, something that took Protestant's decades to do but which the Catholic Church in Germany, seemingly ignorant of history, is doing at rocket speed.  Indeed, if Christ appeared on the streets of Frankfurt today and counselled against divorce, based on the ongoing conduct of the same Bishops, they'd seemingly inform him that while he may be the Son of God they've taken a vote and that's just too tough, so God must abrogate the rule.  Likewise, if St. Paul were to walk into the Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus in Frankfurt and step up to the ambo to warn the congregants of their conduct, he might be interrupted by a Bishop to be informed that while St. Paul feels that homosexual sex is wrong, in Frankfurt they want to bless it.

No matter how a person attempted to address this, it's an example of secular compromise leading to irrelevance.  It's goes down a well-worn Protestant path that has pretty much lead the congregants out the door.

This history is well established, and not just in Christianity. Starting with the Christian example first, however, the pathway is pretty beaten down.

Most of the Protestant religions, indeed maybe all of them, were originally extremely stringent in their doctrine.  Indeed, it's an irony of this history that their original rebellion against the Church was fueled, in part, by the late Medieval Catholic Church having become slack in behavior.  Clerics ignored their oaths of chastity and married or took paramours, Bishops often occupied their positions for political reasons, Priests had become uneducated.  In short, the monumental effort of a fighting faith seemed to have been accomplished and a retreat into "well. . . ." had occurred.  Protestant reformers, often with a poor understanding of the Faith themselves, sought to burn down the edifice of the Church which didn't seem to match the message of the foundation of the Gospel.

Faced with that, the Church cleaned up its act and by Trent was heading back into correction, but that was too late to address the creation of numerous dissenting Christian bodies that had gone from schism, in some cases, to outright separation.  As noted, lots of those bodies were extremely rigorous at first, although this wasn't really the case for the followers of dissenter Martin Luther, who really showed what the future was going to be like.  Luther was an ordained Priest who rebelled against what he felt to be abuse and then caused his followers, mostly due to German princes wanting to separate themselves from Rome for their own greedy reasons, to completely separate.  Over time, Luther, found, as is so often the case, that Christianity was inconvenient to his sex drive, and found an excuse to violate his vow of chastity, taking a wife who had been a nun and who likewise violated hers.  Nobody can know the state of their minds or souls at that time or that of their death, but from the outside, it looks a lot like Luther found a way to rationalize his bedroom desires at the expense of his Faith at that point.

In so doing, he blazed a particularly noteworthy path. The entire Church of England came about due to King Henry VIII wanting an entire series of women who were willing to compromise their morals for a chance at queenly status.  Eventually the Church of England came to the conclusion that it was an Apostolic Church in the Catholic mold with all the same holdings, for the most part, but for being under the Bishop of Rome, including barring divorce.  Theoretically it still bars divorce, but in reality, mid 20th Century, it turned a blind eye to it, and then determined that St. Paul didn't mean what he said about homosexual sex.  In doing that, it reflects the path that, to varying degrees, almost every Protestant denomination has.  Finding a Protestant denomination that takes seriously Christ's prohibition on divorce is pretty much impossible, and even the Orthodox have strayed in this area, in spite of their insistant claims to have not interjected "innovation".  Not all Protestant faiths have cut St. Paul's letters out of the New Testament, but a lot of them have.  Some have pretty much reduced their theology to "its nice to be nice to the nice", which challenges nobody.

The Church of England started to die off as early as the 18th Century.  Increasingly weak tea in its theology, the English, a devoutly Catholic people before Henry VIII, came to more or less ignore it.  Now they're pretty much fully ignoring it. Culturally Christian, the Church of England survives because of the state in the United Kingdom.  In the US and Canada, it survives as it was once the church of wealth, and it retains it.  All over, Protestant faiths are simply dying, save for example of those which buck the trend and strongly retain fairly strict interpretations of the New Testament in various areas, which itself has caused silent schisms within them. There are, now, two Lutheran churches everywhere.  There are, now, two Anglican Communion churches everywhere.  

The German Bishops have determined to get on the wrecked train of the Church of England. It's just so hard, basically, that well, we'll ignore things, even if they don't put it that way.

What it boils down to, in the end, is that carrying your cross, particularly if you have money in your pocket, is hard, as we're really lazy and spoiled. So maybe, the logic goes, the Church ought to just say it's okay.

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?"

He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.* If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect,go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Mathew, Chapter 19.

We, in the West, and I mean 100% all of us in European nations, are the rich man.  We've collectively gone to God, asked what we need to do, and found it, well, if not hard, but seriously inconvenient.

We want to have sex with whomever, and at this point whatever, without consequence, and we want, in this modern era, God and Man's approval of it.  In other words, St. Paul may have warned his flock that men shacking up with men locked the gate to Heaven, but right now the German Bishops want to basically say, "hey, that's okay", I'll open them back up for you and bless it, it'll all be okay.

It won't be.

Indeed, we darned near want to be gods ourselves, recreating ourselves in our own imaginary image, rather than what we actually are.

Why had church attendance dropped off in Europe, and elsewhere, following the mid 20th Century?  It's hard to say, but money is a lot of it, even if we don't recognize it.  When the wolves were closer to the door, we were closer to the wolves as well, and less inclined to think that we can make ourselves into something we aren't.  Now, however, pretty much ever culture in the Western World is at the point where people are told making money is the point of their existence and that they should entertain themselves with sex and games. The Catholic Church has been the only thing, really, saying no, in the West.

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." 

Luke, Chapter 9.

Christ's quote, as recorded by Luke, is the antithesis of what the German Bishops propose.  No Cross, no Crown, maybe the old quote, but they'll not have it.  They'll convey the crown cheaply, they imply.  But it'll have no value in this world, and the opposite value in the next.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

William Penn

Ironically, but seemingly unnoticed, the Catholic Church as weathered the storm of sexualized consumerism a lot better than other Christian faiths.  It's suffered no doubt everywhere, as people decided that it was more fun to play with themselves without consequence than worry about the natural result of everything, as long as drugs could sterilize the results.  Free of the worry of war, and free of the responsibility of their own actions, and free of poverty, it was pretty much life in the Playboy Club all the time, save for the guilt of it.  The guilt is still there, but the German Church, worried about empty pews, seeks to do away with that.  In doing that, its missing that there's a fairly large core of Faithful who never left. They may be weakened, but they haven't gone. And beyond that there's a large crowd of Catholics near the door who want in, but who can't quite break way, yet, from the circus.  They've also missed the point that wherever parishes, sometimes by diocesan design, and sometimes by parish action, raised, rather than lowered, the bar, people came back in, in numbers.  Indeed, an entire young Church, with clerics who aren't party of an effeminate subset tolerated in the 70s, and who are orthodox , is doing well.

What will ultimately happen here, we don't know.  We can hope that Pope Francis will act, although in much of the Orthodox centers in the Western World, there's not much hope pinned on Pope Francis at this point.  And we might hop;e that the large, poorly funded, massively growing Catholic Church in Africa says enough.  The German Church is rich, due to the Church tax, but it isn't vibrant. The African one is poor, and vibrant.  History may oddly repeat itself in some ways, as Catholicism came originally out of Africa and wasn't very shy when it did.

Or the German Church may go into schism in some fashion, openly or without acknowledgement, and evaporate, leaving those who want real standards, which in the end turns out to be everyone, wanting.

And it might leave quite a few souls imperiled, including those who are gathered in Frankfurt.

Not everyone was cut out to be a soldier.  If you aren't, it doesn't mean you are a bad person.

SSgt. Ronald E. Adams, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, May 1982.*

I have, and have not yet published, a long item on women in combat roles in the military.  I also have a shorter one I forgot about, inspired by what one of my friends (okay, relatives) thought was a charming photograph put up in Stars and Stripes, if I recall correctly, of a bunch of female troops breastfeeding their children.

The United States has been phenomenally lucky, maybe, to avoid any major wars since the Vietnam War.  I know right away somebody's going to state, "Since the Vietnam War? What about . . . "

I stand by my comment.  The US hasn't fought a major war since the Vietnam War.

The long war in Indochina required the United States to deploy 549,500 service members at its peak in 1968 in what is actually a very small country. After Tet, Westmoreland asked for the number to be increased to 750,000, and to be allowed to invade North Vietnam.  The maximum US deployment in Afghanistan was 110,000 in 2011. 157,800 was the maximum for Iraq during the second Gulf War.

In contrast to all of these, the U.S. Army, just the Army, reached the number of 8,200,000 troops during World War Two.  About half that number were inducted into the service in World War One.

Okay, so what?

Well, this, 

War is a male deal by its very nature, and I mean nature.  Warfare is one of the handful of roles written into a Homo sapiens's nature when they have an X and Y chromosome.  If they have two X chromosomes, it is not. This is true for all members of the genus homo across time, distance and culture.  

The male role as soldiers also, at one time, tended to propel them to leadership in society.  Tribal leaders who proved adept at war often had an influential role in society.  Geronimo didn't become a leader of his society, for example, by hosting tea parties or screaming in Congress like a howler monkey.

Indeed, early on most societal leaders in budding nation states had this origin.  Kings were originally simply leaders of their kin, in war and peace, but by the time they ruled over any appreciable amount of territory it was because they could command men in battle.  Put another way, it wasn't their respective views on Brexit that decided the contest between King Harold Godwinson and Duke William of Normandy.

In more modern times, it was still the case that having been a notable military leader, or even just having served notably, could result in later success in politics or business.  We seem to have passed that era by, however, and probably for the better.  Our last President who was a really well known military figure was Dwight Eisenhower and we've not had a President who served in the military since George Bush II.  As the modern world is less and less violent, having leaders who are good at something else makes sense.

Which is probably the underlying, quite reason, that Western societies became concerned about women not being allowed to fulfill combat roles in their militaries.  We don't really expect them to actually have to fight. The militaries, that is.  And we've grown use to the idea that the fighting will be done by commandos where women are unlikely to end up, or by drones, which can be flown and commanded by anyone.

The war in Ukraine, however, is proving a real throw back.

Which proves that large-scale, peer to peer, war is still possible.  Indeed, we're edging up on one with China right now, by which time China will have the largest, if not the most capable, Navy in the world and an outsized army and air force.

All of which is why opening up combat roles to women in the military has been a mistake, and may well prove to be a really fatal, and worse, mistake for women and men both.  Oddly enough, I saw two women debating this recently on Twitter, in which one of them definitely noted an aspect of this:

HrafnJá 🇮🇸 @RedStarSysop 19h Replying to @daily_cowboy

I remember similar arguments as to why I couldn’t serve in a combat unit but living in the field was fine. “Well, you’re built different. Well, hygiene issues. Well, if you get hurt we’ll look bad.” I joined to do the work. The brass’s squeamishness was their flaw, not mine.

Lady Hecate @hecate40 18hReplying to 

@RedStarSysop

 and 

@daily_cowboy

Women don't belong in combat.  They are not physically able to do the job.

Eric Quallen (he/him)@QuallenEric10h Replying to 

@hecate40

@RedStarSysop

 and 

@daily_cowboy

Have you been in combat?

Lady Hecate @hecate409h Replying to @QuallenEric

@RedStarSysop

 and 

@daily_cowboy

No.  I have been in fights with men.  I got my ass kicked.

Well. . . yeah. 

Psychologically, combat is a male role.  Physically, it is as well.  And not to go into too fine of detail on it, morphologically, men are suited to it in ways women are not.  Men are generally stronger, more aggressive, do not have bodily cycles that prove to be a frequent periodic health and sanitation problem, and don't get pregnant.  And frankly men are generally replaceable in their other roles fairly readily, whereas women are not.

On some of these, it might be noted, there's a reason that women have not supplanted men in sports, which is not a substitute for combat in my view, but which has certain analogous features.  Indeed, the small invasion of female sports by men masquerading as women through "transgenderism" is an acknowledged threat to first rank female athletes in their own sports, and one which, frankly, sees the best of the best in female athletics being displaced by males who are nothing more than also-rans when they compete against men.

The latter is illustrative as the insertion of women into this male role has led to the decrease in standards across the board in militaries.  In order to make military service suitable for women, standards of all types have to be significantly depressed. This is widely known, even if the information is routinely suppressed.

And young men, who no compunctions about being attracted to women, also tend to avoid wanting to serve in combat roles with them.  This is likely due to a deep instinct in them that's twofold.  They know that serving with women will depress the martial nature of their units, but they also know that, if htey're decent men, that they'll protect women first.  No combat unit with any sufficient number of women in it is going ot have combat cohesion for long, as some man is going to act to save women in the unit, before his mission.  It's just a fact.

Goyaałé (Geronimo) legedary Apache leader.

University of Wyoming Engineering Building, 1950s.

We've had some comments, we might note, on Academia recently.

One thing that had never occurred to me, but which I find really interesting, is the modern expansion of the university is coincident with the rise of new academic disciplines.  That would never have occurred to me but for listening to a Catholic Things you Should Know podcast.  But once considered, it's quite clear.  Education prior to the expansion of scientific disciplines in the university was concentrated on a very limited number of fields. This probably provides the reason for why the service academies came into existence in the U.S.  They were engineering schools.  I know that, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly why there would have been a deficit of engineering schools. The reason is pretty simple, the pre scientific revolution university didn't really dwell on such topics.  A person would come out of them with a good education in history, literature, and language, and depending upon where they went, quite often religion, but engineering, biology, etc. . . well, not so much.

In the mid 19th Century, that all changed.  But one thing about change is that it tends to be self-driving.  Legitimate fields like sociology covered an awful lot, and then the academy in those areas kept on keeping on.  For that reason, we currently have things such as studies on sexual diversity that take themselves really seriously.  We've addressed this a couple of times as well.

The overall problem is that at some point you cross over certain bars.  Graduating from high school was actually subject to a fairly high bar at one time.  Starting in the 1970s it was lowered, and was low in the 80s, but efforts following that started to set it high once again and much of htat has recovered.  Be that as it may, university, which was never intended to be universal, lowered its bar starting in the 80s and it's stayed low in some areas.  

Part of that is because academic positions are professor's rice bowls.  The College of Law at the University of Wyoming, for example, openly wrings its hands in angst about whether low bar passage rates will mean the end of the school.  It probably won't, but the spiraling "let's make passing the bar" easier reaction is the wrong one.  Rather, the school probably ought to make itself tougher.  

Some fields, we'd note, mostly scientific and engineering ones, can't lower the bar no matter what.  They are what they are, and for that reason they keep on keeping on, unimpeded.  They ought to be the model.

This would mean, society wide, that there would be fewer college graduates.  So be it.  Dropping the bar as low as it's gone means that lots of degrees have no value, and some degrees only have value within academia itself.  As pointed out in our Oikophobia post the other day, if a degree only has value within academia, it probably really has very low value, and there may be a wholesale falseness associated with it.

University of Wyoming, Geology Building, 1986.

Oklahoma County Courthouse.

Your value as a person is not determined by your performance on this exam or any other exam, your performance in law school nor the bar exam. Your value is inherent and inviolate and nothing can take it away from you.

Professor Shelley Cavalieri.

The law is a bitch.

Common, but unattributed.

We just touched on this topic.

When I took the bar exam, we used a state and national test. The state test was all essay, and only on the state's law.  The exam took a couple of days, and was followed by an oral interview.

Prior to my taking the bar exam, the examiners, in the oral interview, could and did ask oral questions. That had been dropped by the time I took it.

Much more recently, the state went to the Universal Bar Exam, which is a joke. The state test was dropped.  The interviews were dropped.

The quality of lawyers. . . dropped.

Interestingly, law grads locally are now having a hard time passing the UBE.  It hasn't gotten tougher, everything has just declined.

Law schools, as noted, and state bars, spend a lot of time worrying about this, they shouldn't.  Rather, they should take the counsel of Sgt. Ronald E. Adams.  Maybe, if you can't cut the mustard, like Professor Cavalieri notes, you aren't a bad person, but just weren't meant to practice law.

I'll never get a gold medal in the Olympics.  I won't win the Medal of Honor.  I'm not going to be President.

But like most people, there are challenges that I have faced and will face.  Demanding that the standards be lowered so I don't have to face them is a personal defeat, and a defeat for everyone else as well.

Footnotes

1.  It may seem odd to start with a quote from the Coen Brother's comedy, Hail Caesar! here, but in fact, the movie is taken fairly seriously by philosophic and religious commentators.  The Coen brothers themselves made comments at the time that it was released that it was actually a serious religious picture presenting "big questions".  This has lead to discussion of whether the film, which is by two Jewish filmmakers, has a Christ figure in it.

Christianity Today, at the time of its release, stated.

This is a passion play, one with Eddie Mannix at its center, our Man of Sorrows, the savior of the (movie) world.... But he has reached a crossroads—a point of temptation, if you will. The tempter is a friendly Lockheed Martin executive, who wants him to abandon his true work in the world and come live the easy path.