You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:33-34.
This comes out on a Sunday morning.
Faithful Catholics are going to Mass today, as required by the Church, or went last night. These are the readings for the day, which will also be read in some "main line" Protestant Churches that use the Catholic lectionary:
Reading 1
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10
Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which consisted of men, women, and those children old enough to understand.
Standing at one end of the open place that was before the Water Gate, he read out of the book from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand; and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.
Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the occasion.
He opened the scroll so that all the people might see it— for he was standing higher up than any of the people —; and, as he opened it, all the people rose.
Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people, their hands raised high, answered, "Amen, amen!" Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the LORD, their faces to the ground. Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read. Then Nehemiah, that is, His Excellency, and Ezra the priest-scribe and the Levites who were instructing the people said to all the people: "Today is holy to the LORD your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep"— for all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law. He said further: "Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our LORD. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!"
Reading 2
1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Brothers and sisters: As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
Now the body is not a single part, but many. If a foot should say, "Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body, "it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. Or if an ear should say, "Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body, " it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one part, where would the body be? But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I do not need you, " nor again the head to the feet, "I do not need you." Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary, and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety, whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.
Now you are Christ's body, and individually parts of it. Some people God has designated in the church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, mighty deeds; then gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?
Gospel
Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.
He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them, "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."
Faithful Orthodox using a different calendar will hear three readings as well, those being John 20:19-31, 1 Timothy 1:15-17 and Matthew 15:21-28.
Donald and Melania Trump, and their son Barron, aren't going to hear any readings today, as they're not going to Church. Melania is a non observant Catholic (her marriage to Donald Trump is invalid in the eyes of the Church) and Trump is from all observances non religious, in spite of Evangelicals having proclaimed him, with no evidence to support it, a man of God.
I find myself in a peculiar situation, in that as a Catholic who firmly believes that Episcopal holy orders are "completely null and utterly void", I'm rising to defend an Episcopal Bishop, and moreover one that I don't really know about in general.1
Moreover, as a Catholic who also believes that women may not be ordained to the priesthood, I'm rising to defend a female Episcopal cleric.
And in doing this, I'm recalling a homily delivered by a local young, highly orthodox, Catholic priest, that the being the "four things God hates homily".
Let's start off by recalling that, highlighting the part that applies here:
Because I've referenced it more than one time, but apparently never posted it (cowardice at work) I'm going to post here the topic of "the four sins God hates". I'm also doing this as I'm getting to a political thread about this years elections and the candidates, in the context of the argument of "Christians must. . . " or "Christians can. . . "
First I'll note using the word "hate", in the context of the Divine, is a truncation for a much larger concept. "Condemns" might have been a better choice of words, but then making an effective delivery in about ten minutes or less is tough, and truncations probably hit home more than other things.
Additionally, and very importantly, sins and sinners are different. In Christian theology, and certainly in Catholic theology, God loves everyone, including those who have committed any one of these sins, or all of them.
This topic references a remarkably short and effective sermon I heard some time ago. The way my 61 year old brain now works, that probably means it was a few years ago. At any rate, it was a homily based on all three of the day's readings, which is remarkable in and of itself, and probably left every member of the parish squirming a bit. It should have, as people entrenched in their views politically and/or economically would have had to found something to disagree with, or rather be hit by.
The first sin was an easy one that seemingly everyone agrees is horrific, but which in fact people excuse continually, murder.
Murder is of course the unjust taking of a life, and seemingly nobody could disagree with that being a horrific sin. But in fact, we hear people excuse the taking of innocent life all the time. Abortion is the taking of an innocent life. Even "conservatives", however, and liberals as a false flag, will being up "except in the case of rape and incest".
Rape and incest are horrific sins in and of itself, but compounding it with murder doesn't really make things go away, but rather makes one horror into two. Yes, bearing a child in these circumstances would be a horrific burden. Killing the child would be too.
The second sin the Priest noted was sodomy. He noted it in the readings and in spite of what people might like to say, neither the Old or New Testaments excuse unnatural sex. They just don't. St. Paul is particularly open about this, so much so that a local female lesbian minister stated that this was just "St. Paul's opinion", which pretty much undercuts the entire Canon of Scripture.
A person can get into Natural Law from here, which used to be widely accepted, and which has been cited by a United States Supreme Court justice as recently as fifty or so years ago, and the Wyoming Supreme Court more recently than that, and both in this context, but we'll forgo that in depth here. Suffice it to say that people burdened with such desires carry a heavy burden to say the least, but that doesn't make it a natural inclination. In the modern Western World we've come to excuse most such burdens, however, so that where we now draw lines is pretty arbitrary.
Okay, those are two "conservative" items.
The next wasn't.
That was mistreating immigrants.
This sort of speaks for itself, but there it is. Scripture condemns mistreating immigrants. You can't go around, as a Christian, hating immigrants or abusing them because of their plight.
Abusing immigrants, right now, seems to be part of the Conservative "must do" list.
And the final one was failing to pay workmen a just wage. Not exactly taking the natural economy/free market approach in the homily.
Two conservatives, and two liberal.
That's because Christianity is neither liberal or conservative, but Christianity. People claiming it for their political battles this year might well think out their overall positions.
As I noted, two conservative items, and two liberal.
No murdering, no sodomy, no abusing immigrants, and no cheating people on their pay.
A homily nearly guaranteed to make everyone uncomfortable or angry.
Seems like everyone claiming to carry some sort of Christian banner in the deep Trump camp is only comfortable with one of those, now days.2
Bishop Budde directly addressed Donald Trump, and for that matter J. D. Vance. You may have read what she said, but invoking the Jimmy Akin Citation Rule, you'll let you hear it for yourself.
This is homily is profoundly Christian. There's nothing in it that any Christian can condemn. So why are people condemning it.
Well, because it is profoundly Christian. She asks for mercy for the different, downtrodden, and immigrants.
Gasp!
Donald Trump, who is trying to yank citizenship from the "natural born", is taking exception to a Christian cleric's plea for mercy for everyone his policies impact.3 4 Of course, he also ignored her comments about calling people names, accusing her of not being "smart", a frequent accusation by Trump (who might not be comfortable with his own smarts).
Well, this gets directly at the hypocrisy of some supporters of Trump who continually evoke religion, and particularly those who are in a certain evangelical camp.
For years now, we've been told by these people, including a fair number of clerics, that Trump, who has no discernable connection to any religion as an adult, doesn't seem to practice any religion, who is a serial polygamist with a horrific history towards women, and who is a member of the class that Christ warned less of a chance of getting to Heaven than a camel through an "eye of a needle", was a "Godly man".
This has been a complete fraud. There's no evidence that Trump is religious. He attended Church only fourteen times during his first term of office. He was confirmed a Presbyterian when he was young, a denomination he says he's no longer part of, but John Calvin would give him a dope slap for his personal conduct if he came back from the grave.5
What they really mean is they see him as somebody who going to restore and invoke a certain John Brown view of muscular evangelical Christianity. Their religion is heavily mixed with right wing politics, and they see themselves as leading a march out of a metaphorical immoral Kansas.6 Trump is just, in their view, a God sent vehicle to get this done.
Put another way, as I've mentioned before, they see Trump as a sort of Cyrus the Great.7 They don't care that he isn't a Christian, as he's going to back their "Christian values".
And their values, frankly, express a deficit of Christianity.
This is something we've seen before in the United States and it dates back, really, to the country being a protestant nation founded by migrating, and often dissenting, protestant sects. If you looked at the "Pilgrims", for example, they really weren't all that nice. Oliver Cromwell's Calvinism formed a background to a lot of the early religious history of the US, and Cromwell definitely wasn't nice. Indeed, he ended up being so hated in his own country that the location of his head remains a secret, something imposed to prevent people from digging it up in anger.
In the past, Southern "evangelicals" were often backers of segregation. Carrying forward to the current times, they see many of the descents from Christian moral standards, such as the intrusion of homosexuality into society in general and the pulpit in particular, as abominations. At the same time, however, they continue to see things that they've widely accommodated as not much of a problem, at least not openly. You aren't going to hear, for example, any evangelicals condemn divorce. Locally I know at least two people who "lived in sin" and were really active members of a major evangelical church. I've sort of known one person carrying the banner of Christian morality who is married to a divorced woman who is herself extremely right wing, which while common in the US, is something Christ specifically prohibited.
You really don't get the pick and choose option here.
The New Apostolic Reformation has embraced Trump in spades. They feel that he'll, to put it in an old fashioned fashion, drive the Sodomites from the land and restore and impose a Evangelical Christian order. A lot of them seem perfectly comfortable with policies that will hurt, at a human level, a group of people who are largely darked skinned, even if they don't hold personally racist views.
To be perfectly fair, a lot of American Catholics, completely dim on the nature of the New Apostolic Reformation, are going right along with this and supporting it, so we are far, far from being free of accusation here ourselves.7b
That fact in and of itself will have some infesting implications. The Episcopal Church is a "main line" Protestant religion that was once a major force in the country, but which accommodated itself to an ever growing list of things Christians have always considered sinful. In the 1930s the Anglican Communion remained so close to Christian tradition, and close the Apostolic Christian tradition at that, that it caused a king to resign his thrown over divorce. Now it doesn't worry much about divorce and is okay, in many places with homosexual "marriage". Hence the accusation of "woke" aimed at the Bishop, even though she did not say a single thing that could be regarded as being woke in her homily.
I note this as Hispanics have come into the country they have been attracted to protestant and quasi Christian faiths in some numbers. This isn't hugely surprising, even though the majority of Hispanics are cultural, if not practicing, Catholics, as these faiths seem more "American". It's notable that in the novel, but not the movie adaptation of it, The Godfather Michael Corleone figure was disappointed when his protestant wife converted to Catholicism and started raising the children in that faith, as he hoped that they'd be members of the more "American", at that time, Episcopal Church. Indeed, Catholics aspiring to be in the upper middle class in fact often did that until the 1960s, when Kennedy made being American and Catholic seemingly okay.8
In reality, it never actually became okay, as the Church will not accommodate itself to the culture of anyone nation, something that became increasingly obvious after 1973's Roe v. Wade decision.
It's been noted that Hispanics voted for Trump in large numbers this last election, a shift in political alignments that we predicated here quite awhile back. That reflects their cultural conservatism, which is to say that it reflects their cultural Catholicism.9 What they probably were not ready for is the degree of outright hatred a significant number of the Maga crowed have to anyone who isn't a White nominal protestant. This started to become evident when Anne Coulter, a serious Presbyterian told Vivek Ramaswamy recently that she'd vote for him, but he isn't white. Indeed, he's an Indian American Hindu. Ramaswamy got the message and bailed out of the doggy agency, realizing that there was no future for him there. He's going to run for the Governorship of Rust Belt Ohio where voters will likely inform him that he's not white, as its okay apparently to say that once again.
Indeed, there are a lot of under the breath mutterings about Usha Vance who isn't white, and who is a Hindu. Oh my.
Chances are good that the Trump interregnum will have an impact on the Evangelicals in a major way, starting with this. There isn't really a home in a lot of those churches for Christians who hail from a culture that didn't arise in Great Britain during the English Civil War. When the disaster of Trump blows up, it's going to take the wind out of the sails of a lot of things associated with his movement, and most likely a lot of Hispanics out of the pews.
To be a real Christian, of course, has always meant that you didn't have a home in the world, and it still does. It has also always meant that you'd be hated. People want to hear that they can get rich on Earth and that its a sign of approval from Heaven. They want to hear that some people don't really count, up to the point of their deaths, whether that be through neglect or judicial execution. They want to be told that unnatural sexual unions are hated by God, but shacking up and affairs, as long as the plumbing is correct, aren't really a big deal. They want to be told they can pay as little to their employees as they can get away with, and that's just God's plan. And they want to be told they can hate the stranger, even the infant ones, if they weren't born in the right place.
They want "Christian values", as long a they weren't the ones Christians were martyerd for, and they're easy to do. They're okay with the Sermon on the Mount, as long as it doesn't mean they really have to go to Church to hear it, and can stay home and watch football.
Now, does this apply to all Evangelicals? Certainly not, and not by a long shot. About 80% of white Evangelicals voted for Trump, but not all of them hold such views by any means. 58% of Catholics voted for Trump, that being a majority. A lot of that may be explained in both instances by Democrats hugging the bloody body of abortion, which should be a lesson to them and one which we warned here was a mistake to do. And quite frankly much of what has come about was due to the developments brought about by Obergefell, which we warned would occur.10
So, horrified by a moral decay that became obvious with Obergefell, but having accommodated itself to a flood of moral decay that came before that, the American Civil Religion turned to an irreligious man who has no capacity for deep thought at all and who started whining, but only after some of his backers whined first, that a "woke" minister was interjecting religion into politics.
Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
Ronald Reagan.
Footnotes:
1. The phrase is from Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Apostolicae Curae holding Anglican ordinations to be invalid.
I'm not hostile to Episcopalians, I'd note, I just agree that Pope Leo XIII was correct. Apparently a lot of Episcopalians have over the years as there's been efforts to convey validity by cross ordinations from other churches that can demonstrate Apostolic succession, something the Methodist have done as well. Some Anglican male priests do have valid holy orders, however, particularly if they were formerly Catholics.
2. Trump reinstated the death penal for certain Federal offenses. The Catholic Church generally takes the view that its obsolete and while the state is allowed to impose it under certain conditions, those conditions no longer exist in the modern world.
3. This is clearly a legally deficient argument and has been stayed by a court.
4. Of interest, already there's been arguments that Trump's proclamation also deprives Native Americans of citizenship, a nasty shocking proposition. This because Trump's AG office holds the view that birthright means "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US.
Of interest, if that's correct, Ted Cruz is not a U.S. citizen. He was born in Canada.
5. Presbyterians do allow for divorce, as a last resort, in cases of adultery, which Trump has experience with, or abandonment.
6. Catholics that have been backing this best fear, as this camp is traditionally highly hostile to Catholicism, and many of its members wouldn't regard Catholics as Christians at all, even though Catholics are the original Christians.
7. This analogy really fails. Cyrus the Great wasn't a bad man, in the context of his times and station. He wasn't Jewish, and of course he lived well before the time of Christ, but he was charged with freeing the captive Jews under his dominion.
That's why some Evangelical Christians see Trump as a Cyrus. Cyrus enormously benefitted the Jew, but he wasn't Jewish. So, to those in the New Apostolic Reformation, Trump will be a Cyrus who lets them bring forth a new Evangelical Protestant nation.
Well, Cyrus would regard Trump as a pussy. Moreover, Trump is just making us look like clowns and stands a much better chance of tainting Evangelical Christianity irredeemably.
7b. Having said that,yanking the citizenship of the native born was the topic of an address by Catholic Cardinal Cupich.
He's not alone in this. Other US Catholic bishops have made statements on this issue, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned Trump's actions on immigration as well.
The Church does not maintain there should be "open borders", as some on the far left do. Rather, it holds that immigration should be governed by four principles:
First Principle: People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.
Second Principle: A country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration.
Third Principle: A country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
8. There was also a trend like this that followed World War Two with some returning US servicemen joining the (ironically) Lutheran Church as well as the Episcopal Church which seemed more American and local.
While widely missed, there's a counter trend today with young conservatives and traditionalist joining the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and some very devout Evangelicals joining the Orthodox Church after being exposed to the early history of the Church.
9. I've already seen one video clip by a Hispanic Trump voter horrified over the deportations, claiming he promised to do no such thing.
No he didn't. But this is an interesting example of how people convince themselves a politician holds their own views because he holds some views that they like.
10. We specifically stated:These justices have perhaps assumed too much if they've assumed that they can now act so far that Marshall would be horrified, and I'd be surprised if, long term, this decision doesn't either mark the beginning of a Cesarian court and a retreat of American democracy, or the point at which the roles of the Court began to massively erode in favor of a more Athenian democracy.
The top half of the March 1967 centerfold depicting the 19 year old "Fran Gerard". This photo was taken from Cynthia Blanton's webpage, where it appears in this fashion (i.e., you can't see her nude) and is put up here under the fair use exception. No doubt if the full centerfold was spread out, Camuglia's happy smile would not be what attention was drawn to.
Sort of going down the rabbit hole, I suppose, on this one, but the story is so illustrative of certain things, most of them pretty sad, so it's worth an additional, illustrative, look.
Cynthia Blanton replied to the post here, which was extremely nice of her to do, on her being a doppelganger for Francis Anna Camuglia, the March 1967 Playboy "Playmate", who appeared in that role as Fran Gerard. It turns out that my comment that they were close in age was not only correct, but there's an added freakish element of. The two young women were just eight months apart in age and, while Blanton had not met Camuglia, they had even been schoolmates in the same California high school, Granada Hills High School, prior to Blanton's family moving only shortly before March 1967.
Camuglia's obituary simply notes that she "attended" the school, which causes me to suspect, with nothing to back it up, that she might not have graduated. Her life would likewise suggest she didn't graduate.
The high school still exists, but is a charter school now. It was nearly new then, having opened in 1960. It seems to have consistently been a well regarded high school.
Camuglia was just a teenager when she appeared in Playboy and only barely out of high school. And not only was she only 19 when the photos ran, give the nature of production, she was 18 when they were taken.
One year younger would have made this child pornography.
Not that this would prove to be a deterrent for Playboy. At least two of the Playboy "Playmates" were 17 years old when their photographs were taken, and the magazine knew that at least one of the girls had that young age. They waited to run that girls' 17 year old nude photographs until she turned 18, which would not have made it legal, but rather likely to be undiscovered. Another seems to have lied about her age, although seemingly this could have been checked up on. One girl was specifically run as a recent high school grad who was the "youngest" playmate and getting her high school wish to be a centerfold, when in fact she was 17.
Early on, Playboy was under a serious European threat for advancing pedophilia, although oddly enough from its cartoons. It turns out, however, that it did in fact go as low as it could go, age wise, for nudes, and even lower than legally allowed.
To add to the sadness of this, Camuglia's first husband had divorced her, or vice versa, just a month prior to these running. When he married her he was 37 years old. She was 18.
I don't know the reasons for the divorce, or the marriage. What did an 18 year old see in a 37 year old. I don't know what he saw in her, but her physical attributes were no doubt undeniable. The marriage lasted only seven months and he disappears from the record. A person has to wonder if the Playboy spread brought about the divorce, although that's pure speculation. The odds wouldn't have been good for its survival at any rate, given the odd age disparity.
Her next marriage was in 1970. She would have been 22 years old at that time. Her second husband doesn't seem to be mentioned on her headstone, however, which suggests that she was not married at the time of her death.
Her father died in 2010, and her mother in 2016. Their devotion to each other, and their children, is noted on their headstones.
Undoubtedly another Playboy photograph, but as she more likely actually appeared. Fran Camuglia didn't actually wear glasses. This was taken from an entry on Find A Grave and is likewise put up under the fair use exception.
I don't know where this all goes, but its a sort of morality play on bad decisions, combined with a lack of societal safe guards, and declining public morality. It's perfectly legal for a 37 year old to marry an 18 year old, but it's almost never a good idea. I'd guess her parents opposed it, and we don't know the story behind it. Really short marriages of much older men to teenagers have historically tended to be explained by pregnancy or mistaken belief in pregnancy, and the 18 year old Camuglia could fairly easily pass for an older young woman. Male interest in her can easily be explained by her obvious, apparently, physical assets, something which has apparently caused her to retain a fan base forty years after her tragic death.
It's hard to believe that this story wouldn't have worked out better if Playboy hadn't been around to exploit young women. I'll spare repeating all the details that were given in the documentary on the magazine, but they're horrific. Suicide wasn't limited to Camuglia. Murder was visited on at least one Playmate and visited upon a person by one. According to the documentary one young woman associated with the magazine died at a party and her body simply disappeared. One suicide scrawled her opinion on Hugh Hefner graphically on a wall in the apartment where she killed herself. A host of "bunnies" was used by men at an event physically in a way that traumatized them.
What, if anything, Camuglia endured we don't know. Maybe only having her 18 year old body be the object of, well, for forty decades, which would be odd enough, and which would also contribute to psychic loss.
In 1967 when Camuglia appeared in the magazine, in middle class society the magazine was both accepted and regarded as dirty. It claimed for itself that it managed to become the Stars and Stripes of the Vietnam War, and as grossly exaggerated in Apocalypse Now, it was so accepted by that time that Playmates appearing in the way that movie stars had in World War Two and Korea in the combat theater occurred. Pinup girls didn't appear overseas in the earlier wars, even though they existed.
At the same time, however, the magazine remained a "dirty" magazine and there were legal efforts as late as the 1970s to try to address its obscenity, although they failed. Being n the magazine branded those who did it in ways they could not escape. Whatever happened to Camuglia, she apparently couldn't escape it.
Well, may God rest her soul and may the perpetual light shine upon her, and all who endured such tragedy..
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:
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.
Marjory Taylor Greene, left, Howler Monkey's right (By Steve from washington, dc, usa - howler monkees doing their thing, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3963947). One of these examples is shameful, and it ain't the one on the right.
This is an interesting and in my view largely correct, insightful blog entry by Robert Reich:
It also comes, I'd note, on the same day that a Wyoming Republic commentator made what are somewhat similar comments, calling a member of the GOP Central Committee a hypocrite in no uncertain, and indeed highly crude, terms, although if true, they'd be deserving ones.
And hence, I guess, my comment.
While I think that what Reich is complaining about is in fact shameful, which starts with Marjorie Taylor Greene acting like a Howler Monkey during the State of the Union Address, how the crap can anyone on the hardcore political left sincerely make this claim? The hard left in the country has spent the last 50 years totally dismantling any concept of shame in absolutely everything whatsoever.
And that's a lot of the reason why we are exactly where we are.
Do we have no shame?
Of course not. We were told that nothing is shameful.
And indeed, this tracks well into the purpose of this blog, looking at then. . .and now. And, moreover, we often fail to note this trend, i.e., descent, in literature, as we assume that everyone in the past was living in the sewer or wanted to be like us, in the sewer.
That's truly not how it was.
I'll admit that I am torn in how to present this post. When I started drafting it, I found I went into detail on where shame has exited. I hadn't intended in the first place that the thread be a catalog of things formerly shameful, and now no longer shameful. And in looking at it, I don't think that's the correct approach. Maybe I'll expand on individual items later.
But what I will note, is there are a lot of things that were once regarded as highly shameful, in the arena of personal conduct, that no longer are, and in some instances, left-wing social engineers have gone so far as to impose shame on anyone commenting on them, or not engaging in them. Shame hasn't really left in that sense, it's been transferred.
Taking what is a short arch of history, but a long one in terms of individual lives, since World War Two, and really, since the late 1960s, a massive effort has been expended on this by the left. Even as late as the early 1980s, for instance, many things that are now not shameful, were.
Sex outside of marriage, particularly for women (or girls) was shameful.1 Having a baby out of wedlock was shameful.2 Homosexuality was shameful.3 Men dressing in women's clothes or affecting a female appearance was shameful. Prostitution was shameful4 . Avarice was shame, including avarice in these areas.5
Even into the 1970s, being divorced conveyed an element of shame.6 Living with the opposite gender and not being married was shameful.
Well beyond that, having a child and not supporting the child economically, even to the point of your own well-being being impaired, was shameful.
While it was definitely changing during the 60s, putting yourself on display, i.e., being an "exhibitionist" was shameful.
Pornography, even after Playboy, and its consumption, was shameful.
All this started getting ripped down in the late 1940s, it accelerated in the 60s and 70s, and it's gone on to really stretch the balloon in our present age. The results have quite frankly been a disastrous assault on nature.
Now, I don't wish to suggest that every conveyance of shame was warranted or a good thing. There were some really bad results. The high abortion rates of the 70s and 80s were partially due to it being simply too shameful in many people's minds to bear a child out of wedlock, with the shame being imposed both on the young woman, but also on her family. That this has ended is a good thing.
But the Me Generation's deep dive into themselves, and "if it feels good, do it", as the ethos, has been hugely destructive. The KIA, MIA, and WIA of the Sexual Revolution has caused a limping society. The focus on "me" lead to a focus on "mine", destroying community and boosting greed.
And in no small part, it's lead to where we are in things like Reich has complained about, and not just in this post. It's all sort of the same package. If the whole world is about me, me, me, and my needs, needs, needs, I really don't need to care what anyone else thinks or even reality. The difference, therefore, between Marjorie Taylor Greene howling for attention and a transgender advocates demanding that a man be viewed as a woman, as he wants to be, are really thin. Likewise, the difference between a AoC and Elon Mus isn't all that much.
Also, really thin is the difference between individualized self-expression, including pantless individualized self-expression, and Harvey Weinstein pulling the latter off of somebody else. It all just goes together. In a way that they likely couldn't recognize, Hugh Hefner, Harvey Weinstein, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert are all fellow travelers on the same destructive cultural bus.
Reich cites to shame being a necessary social engine, and it is. But you can't partially restore shame, really, as it has to be based on a larger something. You can't just say "bad", and it's bad, because it's bad. Bad things are bad, but due to something else making them bad.
We've been seeing a lot of this recently, interestingly, and some of that's a good sign. The Me Too movement is an effort to restore shame where it had once been. At least up into the 50s, if not beyond, men who expected women to put out were called "wolves", and to be tagged that was shameful. While the name was no longer around by the late 70s, early 80s, the same conduct was still not admired at that time, but Hefner and company were ripping it down, and in deed, raping it down, basically. Hollywood, where actress self prostitution was pretty common all along, was interestingly the first to really say "enough", on an individual level, and try to reverse it.
But you really have to restore the metaphysical basis for why that's wrong, to really get anywhere.
Young people, left without the guide rails of the culture that was torn down, have partially restored it as well, although groping for a basis for it remains. And in some odd ways, as we recently addressed, even the transgender movement, deep down, is an effort to reach out to get back to a less material, less perverted, time.
So here we now are. Having become comfortable with a Quasi Judaical Dictatorship that's suddenly betrayed autocracy and restored democracy, the left finds itself now championing what it had become comfortable omitting, and here at last, its rediscovered, shame.
So is this a "everything was better in the past" post? No it isn't.
But shame exist for a reason, and excising it wholly was a mistake.
Footnotes.
1. People will instantly claim that there was a double standard, and to some degree that was true, but not to the degree that people commonly imagine. It is true that it's becoming public knowledge that a girl had sex outside of marriage would tarnish, and often severely, her reputation, and if it was a case of multiple men, it would put her in a category that would be difficult to ever get out of, but men who were multiple standard violators likewise got tagged with a permanent, indeed lifelong, reputation they couldn't get out of either. They had greater leeway than women, but not absolute leeway.
2. As noted in later in the thread, this probably partially lead to the high abortion rates of the 70s and 80s. It also, however, lead to a lot of children being given up for adoption in a process in which the pregnant girl often absented herself, or her family absented her, for a period of time so that the pregnancy would not be discovered. I know at least one person who experienced, this, later going on to a very respected adult life and the pregnancy not being discovered until after she had died. As there was a high demand for healthy infants to adopt, and frankly white healthy infants (and there still is), this often worked out well for the adopted as well. Again, I personally know one such person whose mother was a college student when she became pregnant and the father never knew.
Indeed, that latter item is surprisingly common. You'd think the distressed young woman would have always told the father, but often, they didn't. This is because they didn't want, quite often, to be faced with the choice of marrying the individual, which also often occurred. Such marriages usually happened quickly before the woman "showed". In cases in which the women were in their 20s, they often just didn't want to be married to the man in the end, and for teens, their families didn't want to put them in that spot, quite often. And of course, date rape wasn't really a concept at the time, and therefore in cases in which that resulted in pregnancy, not wanting to marry the man made sense.
3. This tended to have an arresting influence on open displays of homosexuality, and it also led to quite a few homosexuals simply suppressing it individually, or even refusing to acknowledge it in any sense.
4. It still mostly is, of course, but there are ongoing efforts to break this down.
The degree to which prostitution is shameful, although not really being a prostitute, tends to change by era. In rough and ready frontier areas, the institution tends to exist pretty openly, and it also tended to very much be associated with certain armies, sometimes by compulsion. That doesn't necessarily mean that the individual shame associated with it evaporates, but rather the tolerance of it is pretty open. In other eras, there's very low tolerance for it.
There tends to be a myth that prostitutes were the founding women in a lot of regions of the frontier, which is just flatly false. I've heard this myth associated with one local, now long deceased, historian, but as I've never read his work, and for acquired bias reasons I'm unlikely to, I don't know if that's really true. Be that as it may, the most typical fate for prostitutes was early death, due to the lack of protection from disease.
5. But not just in these areas. Being "greedy" has been something that's always been around, but which wasn't tolerated in the way it now is until after the Reagan Administration came in.
Americans have always had a very high tolerance for the accumulation of wealth, but not to the present level. Simply being wealthy is not a sign of avarice, but having wealth was at one time very much associated with a social expectation of charity. Quite a few wealthy people still exhibit that trait today.
"I pay my taxes", while something nobody likes doing, was actually something the very wealthy used in their self-defense at one time, as the upper tax rate was extremely high.
6. Fault, of course, had to be demonstrated for divorce up until nearly everyplace, or maybe everyplace, adopted "no-fault divorce".
Divorce is really regarded as being routine today, but even into the 1970s it was a mark against a person.
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