Lex Anteinternet: Can you say "slavery"?

Lex Anteinternet: Can you say "slavery"?: 

Can you say "slavery"?

Why does this absurd version of the Civil War still exist in the South? The war was about slavery. At the time, the Southern states fully admitted it.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with "economic freedom".

Blog Mirror: The Version of Catholicism in Your Brain

 

The Version of Catholicism in Your Brain

Lex Anteinternet: On being an only child.

Lex Anteinternet: On being an only child.: 

On being an only child.

My father (left as viewed) and his siblings.  I don't know the date, but given their apparent ages, this photograph would have been taken in Scotsbluff, Nebraska, in the late 1930s.  His borther is the only one left alive.  My father was the first to pass, at age 62.

My father was very close to his three siblings, one of whom is still living.  He was particularly close to that sibling, his brother.  They spoke by phone nearly every day when my uncle, who was a fireman, was not working.

My mother's parents and their children.  My mother is seated, fourth from the left as viewed, next to her mother.  Her youngest sister, seated far right, was the first to pass.

My mother was close to most of her siblings.  They were a feisty bunch in general, and they argued amongst themselves, but they were close. Like all such relationships, some were closer than others.  My mother was particularly close to her youngest sibling, one of her four brothers (she had three sisters as well), and he was very close to her.  A very long-lived family as a rule, her sisters have passed, but three of her brothers are living.

I'm an only child.

That was not my parent's desire.  They simply had a very hard time having children, and they were not young when they married, really.  Indeed, in the common understanding of the time, while they'd be regarded as "young" today, but only barely so, at the time of their marriage, at the time, they would have been regarded as middle-aged. Certainly my mother would have been, she being three years older than my father. They were married five years at the time of my birth, and she was 37 years old.  My birth was it, she'd never have another child.  Indeed, in retrospect, while was a remarkably fit person her entire life, my birth took a lot out of her in other ways and a significant psycho-medical decline would set in with in thirteen years of that event.

When you grow up as an only child, you constantly hear how "lucky" you are.  That's the point of the post.  You really aren't.

People like to imagine that only children are "spoiled", but at least in my case that wasn't true. The concept of being spoiled even has a name, Only Child Syndrome, but research has shown it's largely a myth.  My parents probably made a dedicated effort to keep that from happening to me.  What you are, however, is deprived in some very significant ways, all of which have to do with the close bonds that form between siblings being absent.

If you grow up an only child, you miss out on ever having that close relationship that can only come through a blood bond.  Siblings never escape their siblings, even under extreme stress. This is not true of any other relationship whatsoever, although a real, not an American Civil Religion, marriage does that in another fashion.  

And having siblings teaches you things that lacking them does not, and which can never be made up for.

Growing up as a child, my closest friends were my parents.  Having no siblings to distract me, if I wanted to interact with somebody close to me, my parents filled that role.  In most houses, you see children play various sorts of games with each other.  I'd certainly do that with friends, but there was no playing board games or card games with my siblings. I've never developed an affinity for card games, although both of my parents were good at them, and my father taught them to me.  For board games, however, my father was the go to.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I appreciated that most children, if they wanted to play a board game, would do it with a sibling.

Moreover, if adults are your playmates, you enter the adult world very quickly.  And not only that, you enter the adult world of your parents.  Either genetically or through environment, I obtained my parent's love of history very rapidly.  Not only that, however, but I entered it at an adult level quite quickly.  When I went from grade school to junior high at 7th Grade, at which time I was 12 years old, I remember being glad that the library had such adult books.  One of the first I checked out was Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far.  The sight of a short 12-year-old lugging up the massive tome to the library desk caused the librarian to nearly reject checking it out to me, and she warned me that it was a book for adults.  I was stunned.  I was reading adult books at home already, almost all the history tomes.  I loved A Bridge Too Far.

This made me, I suppose, "bookish" and it gave people the illusion that I'm "smart".  My father and mother were both extremely intelligent, likely both geniuses actually, but I'm not as smart as either one of them by a long measure.  I'm just well-read, really.  And being an only child makes you a loner in significant ways, as you do so much all by yourself that other people simply do not.

In my case, this was amplified at age 13 when my mother became profoundly ill.  Then it was me and my father, and from that point on, really, I was an adult.  And for a lot of things, I was an adult with nobody to turn to.  My father was my closest friend, although I certainly had other friends, but the problems you take to your siblings, I bore, like I am sure all only children do, by myself.

I still largely do.

This makes for a rough existence in a lot of ways.  As an adult, I really didn't have anyone to go to advice to.  I mostly made my own decisions, and started doing that at about age 13.  A lot of those decision, made only in the context of my own experience, were wrong.  Being insecure about the state of existence itself due to my mother's condition and due to a childhood asthma condition, I valued security way over that which other people do, which ironically ends up making you potentially insecure in certain fundamental ways.  My post high school academic career can probably be defined by that.  I studied geology first, and then law, not because of a deep love of the topic, but because they seemed to offer secure occupations.

My father died when I was in my 30s.  My mother when I was much older, I think in my early 50s.  With them both gone, there is no connection like that.  My wife was great during my mother's illness, particularly since they did not get along, but the strain of that did not help in our relationship and continues to have a lasting impact.  I can't go to siblings like she does with family problems, and her being the one I'm closest to on earth means that I'm uniquely vulnerable there in a way, frankly, that she is not.  My connection with things, basically, is razor-thin.

I note all of this for a simple reason.

Being a teenager without siblings proved to be difficult.  As a young adult, out in the world like young men are, I didn't notice it at all, but once my parents started their final descent, the lack of a sibling was agonizing.  As I've aged now into my 60s, I feel imperiled by it.  I wish I had a brother to talk to, like my father did, or like my mother did.

I don't understand why married couples forego children, and in a lot of ways I feel that people who don't have kids never really become adults.  Those having children, however, shouldn't have a single child.  It's not fair to the child.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed: 

Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Well worth reading:

Collapsed

You can see my reply there as well, which I've set out again here:

"Last year it would have not been a problem but this year I'm not in great shape due to family issues"

Me too, except it's my own health, starting with a surgery in October 2022, and another in August. Haven't really recovered, although I should have.

Maybe you never really do.

Anyhow, was walking out of the high country at a pretty good clip as a rainstorm came rolling in. Lost my footing on a rock, fell, rolled over, and cut myself pretty bad. Just me and the dog. No cell reception, and I've given up carrying my gmrs radio as there's nobody to call if I'm hunting alone.

Rolled over, wasn't damaged and hiked out bleeding. It hasn't been a great year.

Glad you were okay.

I don't mean to be hijacking somebody else's blog, but since October 2022 I haven't been myself.  I wrote previously on my surgery followed by a second surgery.  Since the first surgery, my digestive track hasn't recovered, and it's clear that it's not going to.  I'm sick every morning.  Not some mornings, every morning, save, oddly enough, for a few days I spent at trial where I couldn't afford to be.*  Most days I'm better off not eating any breakfast anymore, as it's just going to make me sick.  I was already developing an intolerance to milk, but now it's through the roof.  I can't even eat cereal with a little milk.  The stuff I'm used to eating in the morning, which was always a pretty light meal, is a no-go completely now.

And the second surgery resulted in a medication that I'm pretty sure isn't adjusted right, right now.  Everyone has told me how thyroid medication is supposed to make you feel great and give you energy. Well, that isn't working for me.  Researching it, there are a tiny minority of people who actually never feel good following a thyroid surgery and for whom the medications don't work to address that.  Given that almost no medication ever works well for me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was me.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I really wish I'd foregone that surgery now and have borne the risk of cancer instead.  At age 60, and from a short-lived group, the risk probably was worth it.**

Worst of all, frankly, being sick all the time impacts your attitude in ways you can't really appreciate until it's obvious.  I've been there recently. Short-tempered and not having a good long term outlook.  At work the other day I blew up on two colleagues who have been running a really irritating religious debate for years, in the hallway, for what they conceive to be the entertainment of the unwilling listeners.  Our poor Mexican runner has to listen to this constantly, and I finally had enough and just exploded on them.  The point isn't that their juvenile behavior was okay, but that my reaction was so stout.***I shouldn't have done that, and that's just a minor example.

I usually look longingly forward to hunting season, but this year I've just not been too motivated after a certain point. Being tired has a lot to do with that.   And when you are like that, you are a pain to those around you, at least to some extent.  Some can see and appreciate that, others not so much.  It's hard to appreciate it yourself until something forces you to.  I looked forward to all summer to the season, and enjoyed deer hunting, but usually by now I've done a pile of duck hunting.  I've gone this year. . .twice. Every Saturday, the dog looks at me with confusion.  The funny thing is that all week long I still look forward to getting out, but when the weekend comes, I go down to work like old lawyers do, and when Sunday comes, well I haven't gone to Mass the night prior, so I get a late start doing whatever I'm going to do.

As noted above, not only am I tired, but I'm not in shape the way I usually am.  I've fallen so rarely out in the sticks that as a short person, I'm one of those people who were sort of goat like, climbing in terrain where hunters and fishermen wouldn't normally go and not worrying about it even though it was patently dangerous.  As a National Guardsmen, I recall once somebody remarking how me and another NCO were mysteriously able to negotiate difficult terrain at night, silently.  We were both avid hunters.  To take a fall, and a pretty bad one, on terrain that I'd been over a million times was a shock.

I was actually quite lucky at the time.  I was all alone, taking a path that I normally would not have, although as noted I've been on it many times before. There was a thunderstorm coming in.  I was carrying a loaded shotgun.  I fell, and, recalling the plf ***I learned so many years ago, rolled out of it, but not before I'd scrapped myself up pretty badly.  I wasn't sure at first if I'd broken anything.  I had my cell phone, as noted, but no reception, so I couldn't have called for help if I wanted to.  I usually carry a handheld GMRS radio, but I've quit recently as if I'm alone, who am I going to radio to?

Hors de combat, after it started to heal.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I can recall my father getting like this when he was almost the exact same age I am now.  He died two years later.  He seemed pretty old at the time, so I wasn't hugely surprised.  I guess it's like the Hendrix song, "You may wake up in the morning, just to find that you are dead".

Of course, he was gravely ill for months prior to that.  In retrospect, however, it all started for him with a colonoscopy, the same way that this has started for me.  I recall him remarking as he was in the hospital on how all of his mother's ailments were now visiting him.  She died, if I recall correctly, at 65.

In my mind, I always imagined that at some point after I had reached retirement age, which I have not yet, I'd retire to a life of full time outdoorsman.  Not too many people do that.  There may be a reason for that. Some of us are luckier as we age than others.

Oh well, nature has a way of waking you up and reminding you that some things need to be done.  Getting sick? Quite doing what you are doing, refocus, and soldier on.  Get a grip, reform, reform, and keep on keeping on, but mindful of errors and omissions.

Footnotes

*I've long noticed for some reason a person's system will suppress symptoms of almost any illness when you absolutely have to keep on, keeping on. Usually things come back with a vengeance, or at least fatigue, when the crisis has passed.

**This is not intended to be advice for anyone else, I'd note.

***Re the argument, the entire facility had grown extremely tired of it and the shutting them up was welcomed, save by one of the arguers, who may be permanently mad at me.  Showing my presently poor mental outlook, I don't care.  I'm tired of hearing minority religions insulted when some of the employees belong to them, and I'm tired of having my own faith routinely insulted, which I've endured now for decades.  And while I'm a serious if imperfect orthodox Catholic, I'm also tired of one of these individuals, who isn't that good at arguing, turning to religious topics no matter what is being discussed, to include my assistant simply taking her shoes off in her office the other day, which would not normally lead to a Biblical discussion, but of course did.

I've also had it with somebody thinking that mocking the Spanish language is funny in front of somebody who's an immigrant.

***Parachute Landing Fall.  I learned this, oddly enough, while I was a CAP cadet.

Lex Anteinternet: Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Chage (COP28)

Lex Anteinternet: Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Confe...: 

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28)

Pope Francis released this statement yesterday:

Mr President,

Mr Secretary-General of the United Nations,

Distinguished Heads of State and Government,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Sadly, I am unable to be present with you, as I had greatly desired.  Even so, I am with you, because time is short.  I am with you because now more than ever, the future of us all depends on the present that we now choose.  I am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations.  I am with you because climate change is “a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life” (Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum, 3).  I am with you to raise the question which we must answer now: Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death?  To all of you I make this heartfelt appeal:  Let us choose life!  Let us choose the future!  May we be attentive to the cry of the earth, may we hear the plea of the poor, may we be sensitive to the hopes of the young and the dreams of children!  We have a grave responsibility: to ensure that they not be denied their future.

It has now become clear that the climate change presently taking place stems from the overheating of the planet, caused chiefly by the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity, which in recent decades has proved unsustainable for the ecosystem.  The drive to produce and possess has become an obsession, resulting in an inordinate greed that has made the environment the object of unbridled exploitation.  The climate, run amok, is crying out to us to halt this illusion of omnipotence.  Let us once more recognize our limits, with humility and courage, as the sole path to a life of authentic fulfilment.

What stands in the way of this?  The divisions that presently exist among us.  Yet a world completely connected, like ours today, should not be un-connected by those who govern it, with international negotiations that “cannot make significant progress due to positions taken by countries which place their national interests above the global common good” (Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, 169).  We find ourselves facing firm and even inflexible positions calculated to protect income and business interests, at times justifying this on the basis of what was done in the past, and periodically shifting the responsibility to others.  Yet the task to which we are called today is not about yesterday, but about tomorrow: a tomorrow that, whether we like it or not, will belong to everyone or else to no one.

Particularly striking in this regard are the attempts made to shift the blame onto the poor and high birth rates.  These are falsities that must be firmly dispelled.  It is not the fault of the poor, since the almost half of our world that is more needy is responsible for scarcely 10% of toxic emissions, while the gap between the opulent few and the masses of the poor has never been so abysmal.  The poor are the real victims of what is happening: we need think only of the plight of indigenous peoples, deforestation, the tragedies of hunger, water and food insecurity, and forced migration.  Births are not a problem, but a resource: they are not opposed to life, but for life, whereas certain ideological and utilitarian models now being imposed with a velvet glove on families and peoples constitute real forms of colonization.  The development of many countries, already burdened by grave economic debt, should not be penalized; instead, we should consider the footprint of a few nations responsible for a deeply troubling “ecological debt” towards many others (cf. ibid., 51-52).  It would only be fair to find suitable means of remitting the financial debts that burden different peoples, not least in light of the ecological debt that they are owed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to speak to you, as brothers and sisters, in the name of the common home in which we live, and to ask this question: What is the way out of this?  It is the one that you are pursuing in these days: the way of togetherness, multilateralism.  Indeed, “our world has become so multipolar and at the same time so complex that a different framework for effective cooperation is required.  It is not enough to think only of balances of power… It is a matter of establishing global and effective rules (Laudate Deum, 42).  In this regard, it is disturbing that global warming has been accompanied by a general cooling of multilateralism, a growing lack of trust within the international community, and a loss of the “shared awareness of being… a family of nations” (SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to the United Nations Organization for the Fiftieth Anniversary of its Establishment, New York, 5 October 1995, 14).  It is essential to rebuild trust, which is the foundation of multilateralism.

This is true in the case of care for creation, but also that of peace.  These are the most urgent issues and they are closely linked.  How much energy is humanity wasting on the numerous wars presently in course, such as those in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and in many parts of the world: conflicts that will not solve problems but only increase them!  How many resources are being squandered on weaponry that destroys lives and devastates our common home!  Once more I present this proposal: “With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger” (Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 262; cf. SAINT PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, 51) and carry out works for the sustainable development of the poorer countries and for combating climate change.

It is up to this generation to heed the cry of peoples, the young and children, and to lay the foundations of a new multilateralism.  Why not begin precisely from our common home?  Climate change signals the need for political change.  Let us emerge from the narrowness of self-interest and nationalism; these are approaches belonging to the past.  Let us join in embracing an alternative vision: this will help to bring about an ecological conversion, for “there are no lasting changes without cultural changes” (Laudate Deum, 70).  In this regard, I would assure you of the commitment and support of the Catholic Church, which is deeply engaged in the work of education and of encouraging participation by all, as well as in promoting sound lifestyles, since all are responsible and the contribution of each is fundamental.

Brothers and sisters, it is essential that there be a breakthrough that is not a partial change of course, but rather a new way of making progress together.  The fight against climate change began in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the 2015 Paris Agreement represented “a new beginning” (ibid., 47).  Now there is a need to set out anew.  May this COP prove to be a turning point, demonstrating a clear and tangible political will that can lead to a decisive acceleration of ecological transition through means that meet three requirements: they must be “efficient, obligatory and readily monitored” (ibid., 59).  And achieved in four sectors: energy efficiency; renewable sources; the elimination of fossil fuels; and education in lifestyles that are less dependent on the latter.

Please, let us move forward and not turn back.  It is well-known that various agreements and commitments “have been poorly implemented, due to the lack of suitable mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of non-compliance” (Laudato i’, 167).  Now is the time no longer to postpone, but to ensure, and not merely to talk about the welfare of your children, your citizens, your countries and our world.  You are responsible for crafting policies that can provide concrete and cohesive responses, and in this way demonstrate the nobility of your role and the dignity of the service that you carry out.  In the end, the purpose of power is to serve.  It is useless to cling to an authority that will one day be remembered for its inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so (cf. ibid., 57).  History will be grateful to you.  As will the societies in which you live, which are sadly divided into “fan bases”, between prophets of doom and indifferent bystanders, radical environmentalists and climate change deniers…  It is useless to join the fray; in this case, as in the case of peace, it does not help to remedy the situation.  The remedy is good politics: if an example of concreteness and cohesiveness comes from the top, this will benefit the base, where many people, especially the young, are already dedicated to caring for our common home.

May the year 2024 mark this breakthrough.  I like to think that a good omen can be found in an event that took place in 1224.  In that year, Francis of Assisi composed his “Canticle of the Creatures”.  By then Francis was completely blind, and after a night of physical suffering, his spirits were elevated by a mystical experience.  He then turned to praise the Most High for all those creatures that he could no longer see, but knew that they were his brothers and sisters, since they came forth from the same Father and were shared with other men and women.  An inspired sense of fraternity thus led him to turn his pain into praise and his weariness into renewed commitment.  Shortly thereafter, Francis added a stanza in which he praised God for those who forgive; he did this in order to settle – successfully – an unbecoming conflict between the civil authorities and the local bishop.  I too, who bear the name Francis, with the heartfelt urgency of a prayer, want to leave you with this message: Let us leave behind our divisions and unite our forces!  And with God’s help, let us emerge from the dark night of wars and environmental devastation in order to turn our common future into the dawn of a new and radiant day. 

 Thank you.

I'll be frank that I've gone from being cautious about Pope Francis to being in the "non fan" category.  I do not, however, by that mean that I'm in the flirting with sedevacantism category like Patrick Coffin and the like.  He's the Pope.   I tend to think, however, that as the Pope he represents his generation of Westerner to a very large degree, which has retained a view it formed in its youth that things need to change in a "progressive" direction and be more "inclusive".  The better evidence is that this is in error and we see a strong trend in the young Church in the other direction. The ultimate irony of that is that the mantilla wearing young women at Mass may be much more representative of the future than the young man this state sent to the Synod.

And it's been hard to ignore that while the Pope struggles with his racing into oblivion and potentially apostasy European contingent and some of their American allies, he hasn't suppressed them.  He's done just that with his critics on the right. The recent actions against Cardinal Dolan are shocking, particularly while the leadership of a German church with lots of Euros but emptying pews are given verbal warnings but are not otherwise checked.  

But he continues to surprise in ways. Contrary to what people assert, he's never endorsed things long regarded as sins, even though he seems increasingly willing to tolerate them.  And on greater issues, he certainly remains both catholic and Catholic.

This is one of them.

The Pope here is indeed acting both very catholic and Catholic.  This is going to receive howls of protests in some quarters, including in those quarters of the West where populists assert they are acting on Christian principles.

Some of those howling will be Catholics, but as noted here earlier, in the United States, Catholics are often heavily Protestantized.  Not all Protestants will object to this statement, of course, and I'd be surprised if any serious "main line" Protestant body does.  But people like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will, and others will object to it along similar lines as he's likely to, assuming he says anything (which he's not likely to, as 1) taking on the Pope is a bad idea, and 2) it's definitely a bad idea if you are from a state with a lot of Catholics).  Other politicians will of course oppose this, and will do so openly if they're in a place that's safe to do it.

And as noted, some rank and file Catholics in the U.S., and I imagine in the increasingly MAGAized Canadian West, will as well.

Lex Anteinternet: How not to be helpful.

Lex Anteinternet: How not to be helpful.: 

How not to be helpful.

I hesitate to post this, and probably shouldn't.  I'm not a counselor of anything other than "the law" and I always think lawyers who use that term in their letterheads are being pretentious.  Having said that, the only thing lawyers really do is deal with people's problems, sometimes by creating problems for other people, so we do know something about it.

I've been in litigation for decades, and I think what that's taught me is that fighting sucks.  People who like to fight, including lawyers who like that, also suck.  Most people, including most lawyers, don't fit in that category, however.

Anyhow, with that caveat, I'm going to just put out some observational comments on how not to help people, and by that I mean people who are seeking our help as they have a close relationship.  Some people deserve help, some don't, and a lot deserve a lot better help than that they get.

Before I get into that, however, the first thing I'd note is that if you've sought help from a whole bunch of people, and they all give you the same advice, maybe you are the problem.  I've seen people who are flat out wrong with a legal problem ask a whole series of professionals, and then go down to their dog and cat, and get the same advance and be upset. They don't want real help, they want verification that their wacky view or bad plan is right.  Sometimes they want verification for going after somebody they shouldn't.

Don't be that person.

Well, in offering advice, here goes.

1.  Ridden like a rented mule.

Years ago, I had a friend who started off in the same line of work I did, but who temperamentally wasn't very suited for it.  He'd married right out of law school, and he and his wife had a couple of children pretty quickly.

At some point, he began to burn out pretty badly.  It was obvious.  But his wife had achieved a status that she'd always hoped for in the process.  Indeed, frankly, we'd been friend with both of them when they started out, but because he became quite financially successful, briefly, she reached the point of viewing us as being of inferior status and quit associating with us.  He didn't. 

Anyhow, you could see what was coming.  He was having trouble, then a close friend of his died and it was life altering.  He wanted out.  Financially, he started declining.

I don't know what the conversations between the two of them were, but I have a suspicion.  It was probably "you'll get over it" which amounted to "get back to work and stop complaining".

Well, ultimately he took up going to the gym a lot, she took up eating a lot, he met a woman at the gym. . . fill in blanks here.  The couple split.

Now, I’m a Catholic and I don't advocate for divorce, and I'm not justifying what happened here, but the "shut up and plow on" response is really common from spouse to spouse.  I've seen it from female to male and male to female.  Men work themselves to deaths as their wives can't conceive of them doing anything else or simply won't allow them to.

Death may be the mildest of results here, actually.  The failing party gets the blame, but often they were pushed into it.  If somebody is saying "I can't go on", they probably really can't go on, and they need the other person's help.

Indeed, to add to this, I've witnessed the odd phenomenon of a spouse who was there for all of her friends and her siblings, but nearly totally unsympathetic to her husband under the situation described above, and not even all that sympathetic to at least one of her children's problems.  There as well, the husband was sending out pretty clear signals that he was worn out beyond repair.  He started to get sick, and the wife didn't even really react much to that.  Eventually he had a bad fatigue related accident.  The "I told you I needed help" wasn't well received.

2. Looking for a solution.

Closely related to this is this one, and this is a male/female thing.

More particularly, this is a male/female couple thing.

Something about the psychological makeup of women causes them to present problems to their spouses, boyfriends, and close friends that they don't want solved.  This is so common that there are some well known jokes about it.  Men don't work this way, usually.  Actually women don't either, with men they know in a professional sense, even if they become friends with them, but then often coworker problem discussions are also of the "venting" nature.

If a man just wants to vent about a problem, but not have it solved, he'll just relate the problem to a stranger or somebody he barely knows, hence the classic stories about bartenders.  When he tells a friend, however, or a spouse, he's looking for a solution.

Probably due to simple familiarity, the longer a couple has been together, the more likely a real solution is just going to be brushed off.  

I've read lots of stories in legal journals about successful lawyers who entered some sort of deep crisis and then something horrible happened.  Often a spouse is interviewed and gives a "there were no signs" teary comment.

Maybe, but I'll bet more often than not there were.  Probably Joe Big Law had gone to his wife repeatedly with "look, honey, I need to do something here as I can't keep on like this", and the reply was "oh, you'll feel better. . . " at best.  He didn't.  Wife is distraught.

Well, she wasn't much help, quite often.

Offering no solution isn't being helpful. Flat out stating there's no solution definitely isn't helpful.

This also applies, however, to a lot of professional colleague advice.

A running story in the television series M*A*S*H was that, at the end of the day, the object of a field hospital was to get you patched up, and back into combat.  That's pretty much the way professional assistance programs work as well. They're going to address your problems and get you back into the game.

Maybe the game is the problem.

3.  It's all about me.

I've seen this repeatedly.

Somebody has a real problem, they go to their spouse or close friend, and that person quickly turns it into a discussion about their own, probably trivial problem.  It works like this.  "Honey, I've been shot, and I'm bleeding out", to which is replied, "Oh I know just what that's like, I stubbed my toe on a piece of furniture at work the other day, why I had told the janitor a thousand times that that needed to be moved, and I hate that furniture, it's Ikea and ".

No help at all.

I've actually had couples come with a legal problem where I have to shut one of them up as that person won't let the other talk about the problem.  "The semi tractor exploded and. . . . " followed by sudden interruption and; "Bob is always so dramatic, it wasn't a big explosion, why just the other day I was at Walmart looking at the low, low prices and Mrs. Sepansky cut in front of me at the notion's isle, well I said to her. . . "

4.  Lacking empathy

Most people are at least somewhat empathetic to others, but not all.  Some simply lack it entirely.

There's been some studies that suggest this is genetic, but I somewhat doubt that.  If it fully were, the genetic driver would be towards empathy.  Indeed, an opposite speculation on this is that the world became more empathetic with the spread of Christianity, as Christians survived crises because of their empathy towards others, and others empathy towards them.

My guess is that this is a more developmental thing. Something's gone wrong.  And I suspect that lacking empathy is something stepped into.  Otherwise, quite frankly, the anti empathy genes would be weeded out, as people who lack empathy are hard to be around, while those who show it are sought out.

None of which takes away from the fact that some people just lack empathy.

In the excellent podcast Catholic Stuff You Should Know Fr. Michael O'Loughlin once observed that he'd remarked to a friend that he had his spouse to go to for sympathy. The friend laughed.  He couldn't go to his spouse for sympathy.  I suspect that's a lot more common than people suspect, and has a lot to do with the first item noted here.  It's not so much that familiarity breeds contempt as the people have assumed certain roles at some time, and there's a lack of sympathy for not fully measuring up to them.

An aspect of this, I'd note, is that some people are so lacking in empathy towards somebody seeking help from them that the asker just stops.  Indeed, the person lacking empathy not only lacks it, but is resentful about being asked for help. That actually punishes the person who needs the help.

That can really have a lasting negative impact.  At best, the asker just learns that asking is pointless.  But if the people are in a close relationship, that insertion of distance is corrosive.  A person asking somebody they love for help, and not receiving any, and even getting dissed for it, will struggle with disappointment at a bare minimum, and that disappointment can turn to hate.

You see that all the time with married couples who once obviously loved each other, but their love turned to hate. There's a lot of things that can cause that, but one is a person seeking help and receiving instead rejection.  The same comes up in parent child relationships.  Children seek out legitimate help, but don't get it, learning that they apparently really weren't that important in the first place.

5. The wrong help.

Some seeking help seem to get it, but the help they get isn't real.  Instead they receive validation, things akin to offering an alcoholic a drink.

This plays out widely in our modern society where some behaviors clearly recognized at one time as mental illnesses are now celebrated instead.  People are asking for help in their actions, but instead are simply being told they're okay.

It's easy to undestand this, as its easy.  Tough to give help is hard to receive help, and this tends to involve that.

6. The blender

Finally, I'd note, that a lot of these things get all blended together.

A person seeks help from the person who is supposed to be the closest person to them in the world, only to find that person has acclimated themselves to the role the help seeker occupies and doesn't want it changed.  At the same time, the person sought out is providing help to family and friends at an epic charitable level.  Back at home, however, it's "all about me".

Maybe that offers a clue to all of this.  

7.  The Wreck

8  Final thoughts.

I'll go back to what I noted at the start.  You read all the time, or hear it directly, that after something horrible happens "he showed no signs".  Often its from a close family member, probably a spouse.  A big law partner takes his own life, a busy business person drinks too much, too often, and dies young, a beloved mother falls apart, a desperate "transgendered" person ends their own life.

There were no signs.

Oh, sure there were.  People simply chose to ignore them.

Lex Anteinternet: A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.

Lex Anteinternet: A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it me...: 

A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.

Puritans on their way to church.

One of the blogs that's linked into the right on this site recently had this item:

The Declaration of Independence Founded a Theistic Republic

I should note, if you look at the items linked in on this site, over on the right, in the general interest category, there are things from the right and the left.  If you only looked at some of my posts,  you would assume that I'm a flaming liberal, maybe even a progressive.  If you look at others, you'd assume I'm a conservative (you wouldn't assume I'm a populist, and I'm not).  That probably means that I'm something else entirely, and indeed my views span right and left.  

A full reader of this blog would know that I'm a Catholic, however.

One thing that I think is obvious to serious observant Catholics, and likely observant Orthodox, is that this is a Protestant Country.  It really is. That's different from a "Christian Country".  It's Protestant. Even people who like to spout off that this country doesn't have a religious founding of some sort are, actually, some sort of cultural Protestant, by and large.  It's pretty obvious if you are a dedicated member of one of the minority religions, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, etc.  As Protestants live in a Protestant culture, they don't realize that the culture is Protestant.  Indeed, one of the charming things about Americans in general is the belief that everyone all over the globe thinks just like we do.

To take it a step further, quite a few sort of adherent members of other faiths, or maybe just not really well-informed members of other faiths, are heavily Protestantized.  So you'll find Catholics that have heavily Protestant views, for example.

The deeply Protestant culture of the country impacts almost everything about it, from our economics to our foreign policy.  It may not be at all evident to average people, but an example of that can be found in the country's overall reaction to the two major ongoing wars being fought right now.

I've supported, as people here would note, the Israeli war against Hamas, which Hamas started.  But to be brutally honest, a lot of American support for Israel comes from two sources.  One is the country's Jewish population, which is actually quite small, but which has been historically influential since some point in the mid 20th Century. The other is due to Evangelical Christians who see the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 as a fulfillment of a promise in the book of Revelation, although they aren't the only Christian's, or perhaps individual Christians, to see that, that way.  Evangelical Christians, however, tend to see Israel in absolutist terms and many see supporting Israel as a way to directly bring about the Second Coming.  For its part, the Israeli government, which actually tends to be highly secular, has worked that pretty heavily over the years.

Catholics and the Orthodox have a much more nuanced view of this topic, however, as their relationship with the region goes all the way back.  Apostolic Christians were present in the region since day one.  Early on, Apostolic Christianity won many converts of the Jews in the region, but also of Arabs and other regional populations.  Christianity, and by that we mean Apostolic Christianity, largely converted the entire region before the Arab conquests of the 5th and 6th Century brought in Islam, but even then huge populations of Christians, and again we mean Apostolic Christians, as that is all that there were, remained.  What Protestants, not Apostolic Christians, termed the Crusade when they began to falsify history came about originally to try to protect the pilgrimage routes to the very region that is now being fought over.  At least up until fairly recently, 10% of the Palestinian population remained Catholic, and to the north, Lebanon was, up until fairly recently, predominately so.  Large populations of Orthodox Christians were also to be found.  Israel, in its relationship with out of the region Christians, however, reaches out mostly to Evangelical Christians who are pretty much completely foreign to the region.

The English Colonies were of course colonized by residents of Great Britain, who were, at the time they began to do that, Protestants.  They were not all members of the Church of England or the Church of Scotland, however, and that very much has its ongoing impact today.  Dissenters from the Protestant state churches, such as the "Pilgrims", took refuge in North America from whichever Protestant church was in control at the time, which was usually the Anglican Church in England, and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Scotland.  Immigrants from minority Protestant faiths didn't tend to have a concept of extending religious liberty in the New World, but rather escaping oppression for their minority views in the Old.  Once in North America, they tended to be just as intolerant as the established churches they had escaped from.  The one thing they could all agree on, however, is that they hated Catholics.

That was in large part because the English Protestant churches of all types had to rely on myths to justify their existence. The Church of England hadn't even really intended to separate long from the Catholic Church at first, but once things got rolling, it was hard to go back.  This was for a variety of reasons, and to at least some degree the Church of England remains uncomfortable with its separation.  It's made several attempts towards reversing it, and some significant sections of it basically pretend it didn't occur to a certain degree.  But an early feature of it was an attempt to justify what it had done, which it never really came up with a good thesis for.  Part of that simply devolved to creating a mythical history of Medieval Catholicism, a different approach than that taken by the norther European principalities that followed Luther, who also didn't mean to really separate at first.

Over time, the mythical history of the Medieval Church that the English created passed away in the UK itself.  Brave Catholic remnants hung on, and the fact that Ireland was part of the United Kingdom always meant that the fables had objections to them.  But in the English colonial experiments in North America, this was largely untrue.  Immigrants to the colonies were overwhelmingly Protestant, if in some areas not overwhelmingly Anglican.  Fables developed during the Reformation were carried over and instituted into the telling of American history and into American culture, which is why even now students at higher levels will hear stories of bloody Inquisitions and naked aggression in the Middle East that are simply untrue.

Part of the fable is that the country has always been supportive of "freedom of religion" and even that this is enshrined in the Constitution.  It isn't, and it hasn't been.  

At the time of the Revolution, almost all American colonist were Protestants.  Certainly exceptions existed, but Catholics were a distinct minority and members of other religions, such as Judaism, were nearly non-existent.  A significant exception had been Africans brought over as slaves prior to the 1700s, but during the 1700s they largely converted to Protestant faiths, reflecting the religion of where they were held, although often not the same varieties, exactly, of Protestantism of those who held them in bondage.  Certainly slaves when first brought over, which was still occurring at the time of the Revolution irrespective of its illegality, were members of African animist religions by and large. About 1/3d were Muslim, however, and a few were Catholic.  In terms of cultural myth, this is interesting in that it's commonly forgotten that most African slaves were animists at the time of their enslavement and also that the common excuse at the time that they would be introduced to Christianity actually wasn't true for all of them, some already being Christians.  Be all of that as it may, the legacy of pre enslavement religions dissipated relatively rapidly, although some remnant of it remains even today in terms of folk beliefs.¹ 

In 1776 when the nation rebelled against its Anglican monarch, King George III, most of the rebellious leaders in the Continental Congress were solidly Protestant.  Indeed, one of the Intolerable Acts they passed as causi belli was the Quebec Act, which allowed the Québécois to remain Catholic, which says volumes about just how anti-Catholic the country was.  A popular myth had developed that the founders of the republic and its constitution were largely non-Christian theists, but it's largely baloney.   The article linked in above sort of adopts that view, without really fully expressing it, in order to avoid, most likely, that the Founders founded a Christian nation, or a Protestant one.

That aside, they certainly did found a theistic republic, and their early thoughts and documents are shot through with it.  Nearly all of them, if not in fact all of them, believed in "natural law" which, as the article notes shows up in the Declaration of Independence, which states:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

And it goes on from there.

Okay, well so what?

Part of this is just historical.  It's important to be accurate about a nation's history, and frankly the country was founded as a Protestant republic in which everyone, almost, was a Protestant.  That was its culture, and to an enormous degree, it remains its culture today.  Countries always have a culture, and beyond that, they deserve one.

But (and there's always a but), this also raises some important cultural, let alone, religious topics.

As to Protestants, one thing to keep in mind that while various Protestant denominations made up the majority of practice for Americans, there was not one single Protestant church and as the nation grew, this very much became the case. At the time of the  Revolution, it would have been highly likely that almost everyone in a community in which any one person lived was the same type of Protestant.  In Appalachians regions, for example, most were some type of Protestant.  In New England, most were (although not all0 were likely Anglicans.  There were Quakers and other sects of course, but people largely lived in a community in which everyone was a member of that sect, unless you were of a distinct minority community like Catholics and Jews.

As the country expanded, however, this began to change, a fact aided by the separation from the United Kingdom which now meant that immigrants from Norther Europe in general, rather than Great Britain in particular, were widely accepted..  European Protestant faiths that had not been in the country in large numbers began to come in, with no real opposition to that.  Lutherans became very common in areas with large communities of Germans.  Various Anabaptist groups, always present, likewise expanded and became very influential in some regions of the country, particularly the American South.

And into this distinctly American brands of Protestantism developed, something that Americans seem particularly ignorant of today.  The "village preacher" or the church that was only loosely affiliated with a denomination became common.

Gather at the River in eight different John Ford films.  Ford was a devout Catholic, and obviously saw this song as emblematic of American, and Protestant, Christianity.  I've heard it in a Catholic Mass exactly once, in Pennsylvania.

This in fact became a feature of American life.  Well into the 1980s, of course, most American towns were heavily represented by a wide variety of American Protestant churches, but almost all of them had what is now called  "non-denominational" church headed up by a pastor who likely also worked five days out of seven in something else.  That figure became such an iconic American that such pastors are portrayed again and again in American films, such as those noted above, but even in much more recent ones.

The fact that American Christianity became sufficiently separate from European Christianity mean that a sort of do it yourself Christianity took particularly strong root in the US, and also in Canada, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.  Those who separated, for example, from the Russian Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia tended to become Old Believers, or even Catholics, although populations of refugee Anabaptists came into the country as well.  You don't find big populations of minority in Protestant religions anywhere else, however, in North America, save for areas that American Protestants have sought to proselytize in, some of which are areas that are already heavily Catholic or Orthodox.  Unique nearly wholly American strains of Protestantism, or religions that came out of Christianity, developed.

As this occured, it had an impact on the culture noted above, and still very much does.  Demographers have wondered about the rise of the "nones", but in fact they've always been there.  Rank and file Protestants have often not worried much about pew hopping.  People baptized in a Baptist Church will go to an Assemblies of God Church, and not think much about it.  Beyond that, a fairly large group of Americans feels that they are really God-fearing Christians, even though they very rarely go to Church.  I've heard people who never darken the door of a church save for a funeral or wedding discuss in earnest terms how the country needs to turn back to its Christian values, and in fairness, some do in fact practice Christian virtues fairly notably.

As the same time, however, people who claim this sort of loose ill-defined American Christianity often have completely jettisoned huge tenants of actual Christianity.  People will live together without being married or otherwise engage in conduct that any conventional strain of Christianity regards as gravely sinful.  Divorce, specifically prohibited by Christ, is widely practiced by American Protestants who don't give it a second thought.  In some ways, the easy practice of the very loose American Protestantism ranges from religion made very, very easy, to those denominations which have very strict rules that never actually appear in the New Testament, or Old, at all.

The Pine Tree Flag, one of the flags used by American revolutionaries during the war for independence.  People can say what they like, but a rebel army flying a flag like this is not battling for a secular republic.  Currently, this flag is associated with a group of far right wing Evangelicals of the New Apostolic Reformation who are inaccurately defined as Christian Nationalist, but who do share significant amounts of their goals including the restoration or imposition of a Christian, by which they really mean Evangelical Protestant superstructure on the country. 

Into this mix, however, we now have the New Apostolic Reformation, a Protestant movement that is confused by commentators with Christian Nationalism and even sometimes confused at to its American Protestant status.

The New Apostolic Reformation comes out of that branch of American Protestantism that has the concept that the United States itself has a particular Devine mission.  This sort of thinking has roots in American Protestantism that go fairly far back in the 19th Century, and it still is particularly strong in some branches of non-mainline, if that is a word, Protestantism, and also in Great Awakening religions that came out of Protestantism.  The followers of such thoughts tend to believe, for example, that certain figures (often George Washington) were charged by a Devine mission at the time of the Revolution, and also tend to believe that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired.  You can find such thoughts today amongst various American Protestant religions outside of those which have retained strongly European roots, and also, as noted, as offshoots from Christianity.  For example, you will sometimes hear the words common to the belief quoted by some Mormons, although it is not a tenant of the Mormon faith itself.

It was partially this line of thought that gave rise to the Manifest Destiny belief that many Americans held in the 19th Century, but it carried on until the 20th Century. Consider, for example, this 1900 statement after the US had taken the Philippines during the Spanish American War:

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United States," as the Constitrltion calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens, but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength, and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.

* * *

Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question of party politics: deeper than any question of the isolated policy of our country even; deeper even than any question of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing hut vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given its the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world's progress, guardians of its righteous peace. The judgment of the Master is upon us: "Ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many thing."

From Congressional Record(56th Cong., 1st Session) Vol XXXIII, pp.705, 711.

The concept of the US as a New Testament "chosen people" remains surprisingly strong in some quarters of American Protestantism.

The New Apostolic Reformation, faced with a United States of the early 21st Century in which the openly strong Protestant connections are now highly muted in many places, have taken this one step further than most did in the past and openly seek to establish a new wing of Protestantism which advocates for the "restoration" of perceived "lost offices" of what they conceive to have been, inaccurately, in the early Church, such as prophet and apostle. There were indeed, of course, prophets in Judaism.  And there were apostles during the Apostolic Age.  Indeed, as a distinctly Protestant movement, it ironically fails to grasp that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are true Apostolic Churches, and they were founded by the apostles.  Restoring the "office" of apostle is not possible, as the Apostolic Age is over and Apostolic revelation fixed, something acknowledged not only by the Apostolic Churches, but also those churches of the Protestant Reformation which arose during the Reformation, the latter of which differ on that point from the Apostolic Churches only in regard to their relationship to the Apostles.

The NAR has been particularly associated with current strains of Trumpist populism, and in a vague sort of way helps to explain what is going on.  As American Protestantism outside the mainline Protestant churches has always had sort of a "do it yourself" aspect to it, it's free to conceive of a mission like the NAR's while also free to ignore vast tracks of actual Christian doctrine.  Looked at that way, the NAR doesn't, at least for the time being, need to worry itself about divorce and remarriage as antithetical to Christianity, or even the requirement that Christians be their brother's keeper.  Rather, the thought is, that is, by some, that political success can be achieved, after which a society modeled in their view of Christianity can be imposed from the top down.

In this fashion, the life of a figure like Donald Trump can be flat out ignored in pursuit of what is imagined to be a greater goal, which is distinctly different from the view of some other Christians that they must vote for Trump as they have no other moral choice.  Looked at this way, Trump becomes some sort of latter day Cyrus the Great, a non congregant being used by God to achieve a greater goal.  It's a radical belief, but it is out there.

Speaker of the House Johnson flies the Pine Tree flag outside of his Congressional office.

The flag of Vatican City.  This flag can occasionally be found in Catholic Churches.  I can recall at one time a point at which American flags, which also occasionally could be found in Catholic Churches in the US, were removed.

An oddity in the US is that the largest single religion in the United States is a minority religion, that being Catholicism.  Most Americans are Protestants, but the single biggest faith is the Catholic faith.  And contrary to what some like to suggest, not only are Catholic numbers holding their own, but they're growing.  At the same time this is occurring, moreover, the second "lung" of the Church, Orthodoxy, is expanding as well.  

Because this is such a Protestant country in culture and outlook, one of the things about at least a lot of Catholics in the US is that they were heavily Protestantized, something that really took off once JFK told the country he could be a Catholic on Sundays, but the country didn't really need to worry about that for the rest of the week. A disaster for Catholics, Catholics rushed to acclimate and went from being seen as vaguely strange and threatening to the rest of the country to being just one denomination. At the same time that this occured, actual reforms in the Church, combined with the "Spirit of Vatican Two" in fact made Catholics seem that way to many "main line" Protestants and also to many rank and file Catholics.  Many distinctly Catholic practices that had deeply inserted themselves into Catholic culture disappeared.  Catholics Masses were now in English (most places) or Spanish in some.  Catholics no longer were bound to eating fish as a penitential observance on Fridays outside of Lent.  Distinctive female head coverings started to disappear (prior to Vatican II, we'd note).  Unique accordance of respect in a formal way towards Priests ended.  A fairly uniform Catholic education ended (one that I hadn't participated in, nor had my father).  A weak 1970 Catechetical set of instruction came in, leading to an entire generation, of which I am part, hardly knowing the ins and outs of their Faith by the time they passed through it.

By the 80s and 90s, members of the Church who would never have thought of marrying in a Protestant Church or church shopping were doing so. Divorce and remarriage, something long common in the Protestant churches, also came in.

In some ways, it's now easy, retrospectively, to see how this came about.  A lot of this was due to what might be regarded as cultural shell shock, or as one sociologist put it in a different context, "future shock".  A generally disdained people for the most part, in much of the country Catholics kept to themselves and lived in "Catholic Ghettos" where their cultural uniqueness wasn't open to the rest of the world up through the middle of the 20th Century. This was never wholly the case, of course, and there were always notable converts to Catholics who were out in the world.  In the West, which always tended to break down distinctions, this was much less the case once people were outside of big cities, like Denver and Salt Lake.  

Still, in that time period, most Catholics were also blue collar workers and very few, save for some in certain professional occupations, had attended university.  Those that did often tried to attend a Catholic university, which in those days were really Catholic.  So, in much of the country they worked blue collar jobs, if they were professional their clientele was Catholic as a rule, and they tended to live in Catholic Communities. This was true for the Orthodox as well.  And it was also true for Jews.  Indeed, in some ways, the overall situation of these communities resembled that of African Americans, all of whom were disdained by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists. 

World War Two started to massively erode this.  For the first time large numbers of Catholics attended university and after the war, for the same reason, this continued on due to the GI Bill.  The walls of the Catholic (and Orthodox) Ghettos began to come down.  Vatican II came along and made institutional changes in the church. Separately, the Vatican change the liturgy to its current form, a definite improvement, and provided that it could be said in the vernacular.  Bishops and Priests who assumed a certain directly from this began to expand on it, and a Catholic President came in and told Americans that Catholics were just like everyone else, something a lot of Americans rapidly embraced. Similar developments happened north of the border where the Church itself started the process of dismantling institutional control of large areas of Quebec society, which in turn developed into the Quiet Revolution.

Looking back now, lots of younger Catholics wonder why their grandparents allowed so much to erode.  Why did they allow the incidents of Catholic culture to fade? Why did they put up with taking out the altar rails?  Why wasn't some Latin retained?  Why did the parishioners not balk when the Bishops lift year around penitential meatless Fridays?  The shock of it all seems like a likely answer.  Having gone from heavily Irish, or German, or Italian communities and practicing a religion that practically had its own language, and that meaning that your future in the larger, Protestant, American society was at least partially laid out for you, and limited, to one in which they were told that they were fully part of the larger consumerist limitless American society where the rules only loosely applied, and then having part of the old culture simply destroyed, they were shell shocked.

But, in application of Yeoman's First Law of Behavior and Third Law of History, they've gotten over it now.

We've discussed this a lot recently, but at this point, it seems pretty clear that something is going on, and maybe even clear what it is.  One big thing is that we Catholics are different after all.

Try as the American Church of hte 70s might, the fact of the matter is that CAtholic's remain stubbornly subject to the letter to Diogentus:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.  

In other words, Catholics that came up after the 80s looked at what the World had given to accommodating Catholics of the late 60s, 70s, and 80s, and found it wholly wanting.  Like topics, we're otherwise writing on in slow motion, tradition, which turns out to be grounded in something real, and there's an effort to take it back. As that's being done, it's the case that the reforms that came in are being rejected, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Trad girls in conservative skirts and wearing chapel veils, young men fairly conservatively dressed, parishioners attempting to secure Latin Masses, or going to Easter Rite Devine Liturgy, aren't seeking to reform the reform, which up until recently was the vanguard of a return to tradition. They're seeking to wholesale bring the incidents of Catholicism back in.  In doing that, they're making it plain that they're not just another denomination, and they don't want to really be part of the American religious scene.  Whether they're applying the Benedict Option or the Constantine one, they're not only not melting in, they're returning to wholesale different.  And that different doesn't look back to 1776, it looks all the way back.

So why does any of this matter?

Cyrus the Great.  Some far right Evangelicals tend to see Trump as a sort of Cyrus figure.  Cyrus was not Jewish, but his proclimations favored the Jewish faith in an existential sense.

Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying: 'Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD, the God of heaven, given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is among you of all His people—his God be with him—let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel, He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And whosoever is left, in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill-offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.'

 Ezra 1:1–4

Well, it does, for a variety of reasons, some mild, and some a bit scary.

One thing is this.  It used to be particularly noted by some that the English-speaking world was particularly given to democracy, which it was.  Those with a limited horizon tended to associate this solely with the United States, but that was in fact extremely inaccurate.  The United Kingdom had a functioning parliament in 1776 when we abandoned the UK's overlordship, and in fact that is part of the reason that we did that. They had a Parliament, and they weren't letting us in.

A person can say what they want about that and try to disassociate it somehow from something particularly English, but it is there.  France, in 1776, wasn't democratic. Spain wasn't either.  You can't really find another major power that was.  And all of England's progeny took this path for a long time.  Canada never had a non-democratic moment.  Nor did New Zealand, or Australia.

Now, English democracy was not perfect, and the franchise was not even particularly large.  Major classes were completely excluded based on economic, and also in the case of Catholics, religion.  But it was there and that heritage was conveyed.  Moreover, when it took root in North America, it expanded beyond what it had been in the UK pretty rapidly.

Which leads us to a more radical proposition.

What was also conveyed early on was a certain culture, and part of that was a political culture. The overall culture, however, was Protestant.  And it remains so.  It's so Protestant that even the atheists are culturally Protestant.

An essential element of that American Protestantism is the concept of "I can make up my mind for myself and nobody can tell me what to do".  Lots of religious "reformers" in the US have done that, but that's a Protestant thing.  To Protestants, it's not strange to hop from one Protestant denomination to another, and to even include denominations that claim to have no denomination, even though the they do.  Catholics and Jews, on the other hand, are part of one, big, global, faith.  Moving from parish to parish, for Catholics, is no big deal, as Catholicism is the Church.  But going to another denomination is an extraordinarily radical move and an act of rebellion.

Democracy, of course, as a movement has spread well beyond the English-speaking world and indeed, there were democracies that spring up in various places in the non Protestant world, as for in example Italian city states.  Antiquarians will point out the example of ancient Athens, or even Germanic and Nordic raiding bands.  On the last item, all people are democratic at the tribal level, pretty much.  None of this really counters the point, however.

This brings us to the next reason this is important.  The most recent movement, which is threading through American Evangelicalism, is radically exclusionary in a way, and this too is part of the North American religious heritage.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that American society really started to view Catholics as suitable citizens,a and then only reluctantly. The huge Irish and German immigrant populations that fought in the war made Catholics impossible to really ignore.  Jewish Americans were really small in number, but they started to be accepted, very reluctantly, about the same time.  As this occured the word "Judeo-Christian" was invented to include everyone then in the country in a singular larger American Christian sort of world.  But the fact remains that hostility towards both religions, and more recently Islam, has been an ongoing feature of American life.

Catholics, and if there are any, Jews and Muslims (the latter two unlikely in any numbers) flirting with the new concepts of Christian Nationalism and National Conservatism really need to do so at their caution.  The New Apostolic Reformation forces may have a similar view on moral matters as mainstream and conservative Catholics do, but the NAR is definitely not Catholic.  And the history for Americans of general of politics and religion being welded together, and indeed coopting each other, is not a comfortable one at all.  Put another way, Donald Trump is not a deeply religious, or even moral, man, and there's no real reason to believe that he's some sort of Cyrus the Great.

But some clearly see him that way, explaining their actions, and even some of the odd propoganda in the Trumpist camp.

None of this is to say that faith shouldn't inform a person's politics.  It should.  But they are not the same thing.

Footnotes:

1. Native Americans of course had their own religions, but what was different about their history, up until the early 20th Century, is that unless highly assimilated, they weren't "Americans" at all.  It wasn't until 1924, a date which our 100 year retrospective posts haven't even yet reached, that all Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship.

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Christian Nationalism, National Conservatism and Southern Populism. Eh?