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President Obama fancies himself a man of superior intellect and profound introspection. In reality an opaque inability to clearly detail one’s thinking is a poor excuse for profundity.
The president struggles to explain things because his mind-set in stuck in a worldview that has been discredited by several generations of history.
This has been especially true of America’s failure to successfully address the terrorist threat that has penetrated our porous borders and catapulted over our feckless defenses.
Though it would have been more appropriate for him to have waited another day, the president explained his strategy…again… in a short speech that few people watched on December 6th,
In a post-speech essay for the WSJ, columnist Bret Stephen assumed the unenviable task of trying to fathom the inscrutable mind of Barack Obama.
Stephens christened his article: Fighting Terror by Self-Reproach
A few excerpts serve as a synopsis of his findings.
He does not make a case; he preaches a moral. He mistakes repetition for persuasion. He does not struggle with the direction, details or trade-offs of policy because he’s figured them all out.
His policies never fail; it is our patience that he finds wanting…It is for us to see what has long been obvious to him, like an exasperated teacher explaining simple concepts to a classroom full of morons.
Obama’s steadfast denial of any connection with anyone or thing related Islam is curious, if only for its close-minded ignorance of the facts, staring him right in the eye.
His concrete stance does not answer any questions but does raise a litany of such that beg for answers since our national survival might depend upon it.
The President’s struggles don’t resemble anything that would favor the country but revolve around his self-image and his twisted perception of a historical legacy.
Just what is Obama’s deep felt connection with Islam? Is it strictly political or do the waters of influence run much deeper?
He shows no such affiliation or interest in any other religious minority. In truth he has shown a deep-seated disdain for all religious, save Islam. I think he would even throw feminists, unions and homosexuals under the proverbial bus than he would any one Muslim.
Despite all of the above the American people, including millions of Republicans remain pathologically uncurious about this mysterious religion that has the heart of a faith and the soul of a politician.
Obama can share real blame.
George W, Bush’s ill-fated attempt to force democracy on Iraq is symptomatic of a blatant ignorance that undermines all our Middle Eastern policies. We should never have removed Saddam Hussein, nor any of the other buffer dictators that we once allowed to rule their people, albeit it with a bloody hand.
Look what their removal has wrought! Nothing less than international movement to accelerate a religious Apocalypse.
Obama finished the job by tearing after all the remaining dictators in North Africa so that the violent strain of Muslim Jihad is streaking through a good part of the world.
The front pages of our newspapers chronicle progress that may soon rival that of Islam in the 7th-8th centuries when its warriors were knocking on the gates of Paris.
Another important question no one asks is just what is radical Islam?
It prompts its own corollary as well. How can we win a war if we are not certain of who or what is our enemy?
A good place to start would be with the difference between Sunni and Shia.
Both Sunni and Shia Muslims share the most fundamental Islamic beliefs and articles of faith. The differences between these two main sub-groups within Islam initially stemmed not from spiritual differences, but political ones. Over the centuries, however, these political differences have spawned a number of varying practices and positions, which have come to carry a spiritual significance.
In the Middle East a potent mixture of religion and politics has sharpened the divide between Iran’s Shia government and the Gulf States, which have Sunni governments.
The Sunni-Shiite split is rooted in the question of who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad in leading Muslims after his death in 632.
Shiites say the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, was his rightful successor but he was cheated when authority went to those the Sunnis call the four “Rightfully Guided Caliphs” — Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and, finally, Ali.
Sunnis are the majority across the Islamic world. In the Middle East, Shiites have strong majorities in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain, with significant communities in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other parts of the Gulf.
More recently radical Islam has emanated from at least two identifiable sources— Wahhabism and the writings of Sayyid Qutb.
Wahhabism is a religious movement or branch of Sunni Islam. It has been variously described as “orthodox”, “ultraconservative”,” austere”, “fundamentalist”, “puritanical” and as an Islamic “reform movement” to restore “pure monotheistic worship” by scholars and advocates. It is named after an eighteenth-century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792).
He started a revivalist movement in the remote, sparsely populated region of Najd, advocating a purging of practices such as the popular “cult of saints”, and shrine and tomb visitation, widespread among Muslims, but which he considered idolatry, impurities and innovations in Islam. Wahhabis, aspire to “assimilate with the beliefs of the early Sunni Muslims”, specifically the first three generations known as the Salaf.
Sayyid Qutb picked up their mantle in the 1950s. Born in 1906 he was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966 he was convicted of plotting the assassination of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and was hanged.
During most of his life, Qutb’s inner circle mainly consisted of influential politicians, intellectuals, poets and literary figures, both of his age and of the preceding generation. By the mid-1940s, many of his writings were officially among the curricula of schools, colleges and universities.
Even though most of his observations and criticism were leveled at the Muslim world, Qutb is also known for his intense disapproval of the society and culture of the United States.
During a sojourn to the United States, ostensibly to study Western culture, Qutb was scandalized by the low social mores of the American people, especially its women. Over two years, he worked and studied at Wilson Teachers’ College in Washington, D.C. (one of the precursors to today’s University of the District of Columbia), Colorado State College for Education in Greeley, and Stanford University. He visited the major cities of the United States and spent time in Europe on his journey home.
On his return to Egypt, Qutb published The America that I Have Seen. He was critical of American abject materialism, individual freedoms, economic system, racism, brutal boxing matches, “poor” haircuts, superficiality in conversations and friendships, restrictions on divorce, enthusiasm for sports, lack of artistic feeling, “animal-like” mixing of the sexes (which “went on even in churches”), and strong support for the new Israeli state.
During a sojourn to the United States, ostensibly to study Western culture, Qutb was scandalized by the low social mores of the American people, especially its women. Over two years, he worked and studied at Wilson Teachers’ College in Washington, D.C. (one of the precursors to today’s University of the District of Columbia), Colorado State College for Education in Greeley, and Stanford University. He visited the major cities of the United States and spent time in Europe on his journey home.
On his return to Egypt, Qutb published The America that I Have Seen. He was critical of American abject materialism, individual freedoms, economic system, racism, brutal boxing matches, “poor” haircuts, superficiality in conversations and friendships, restrictions on divorce, enthusiasm for sports, lack of artistic feeling, “animal-like” mixing of the sexes (which “went on even in churches”), and strong support for the new Israeli state.
This American experience was for him a fine-tuning of his Islamic identity. He himself tells us on his boat trip over.
Should I travel to America, and become flimsy, and ordinary, like those who are satisfied with idle talk and sleep. Or should I distinguish myself with values and spirit. Is there other than Islam that I should be steadfast to in its character and hold on to its instructions, in this life amidst deviant chaos, and the endless means of satisfying animalistic desires, pleasures, and awful sins? I wanted to be the latter man.
Qutb noted with disapproval the sexuality of American women:
The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs—and she shows all this and does not hide it.
His experience in the U.S. is believed to have formed in part the impetus for his rejection of Western values and his move towards Islamism upon returning to Egypt. Resigning from the civil service, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1950s and became editor,
It is Qutb’s puritanical thinking that is housed within Moslem law or the Sharia, which would see the world as a Muslim Theocracy.
As a legal system, the Sharia law covers a very wide range of topics. While other legal codes deal primarily with public behavior, Sharia law covers public behavior, private behavior and private beliefs. Of all legal systems in the world today, Islam’s Sharia law is the most intrusive and strict, especially against women.
Whether radical jihadists do this by the barrel of a cut, the blade of a knife or a baby’s cradle this is the threat that looms largely over the world horizon.
As a member of the Muslim faith in Indonesia during his adolescent, surely Obama knows all these facts. Is this what explains his struggle to communicate his thinking to us? Or is it something even deeper and perhaps more sinister?
In the November wake of 9/11, I bought a small lapel pin at the St. Patrick Cathedral gift shop in New York City. It depicted a small cross and an American flag, leaning on each other at a 45-degree angle. The pin beautifully linked these two revered symbols in a vital union that captured the country’s intense emotional feelings that had loudly resonated for those two past months.
Later that week I accidentally happened on the tail end of a Requiem Mass for one of the 332 fallen firemen of that terrible day in September. With his rich baritone voice, Officer Daniel Rodriguez, the Singing Policeman, was ending the Mass with his powerful rendition of Julia Ward Howe’s The Battle Hymn of the Republic. His operatic marriage of cross and flag reinforced the underlying meaning of my pin.
Months later, I wore my pin to our parish’s men’s Bible study. One of our new members shook his head when he saw my pin. He said it made him feel uncomfortable to see a cross and a flag joined in such a public way. I was more stunned by his reaction. Had it been a crescent and a flag, I might have agreed with him. His objection did get me to question the moral relationship between faith and patriotism.
All Catholics should ask themselves whether they are American Catholics or Catholic Americans. The difference is much greater than mere semantics. The words are not hyphenated, like Irish-American or African-American where there is a pretense of equality not preference.
In American Catholic the primary word is the noun Catholic with its attendant modifier American. The noun designates one’s essence while the modifier merely describes accidentals, such as a smart or devout Catholic. Catholic American identifies American as the primary meaning, not Catholic. An American Catholic is one who generally will choose the cross of faith above his love of country while the Catholic American will usually hold the flag of man high over his Church when there is a deep moral conflict.
The real problem for Catholics revolves around many of the country’s democratic principles and institutions. Under the extra-constitutional rubric of separation of Church and state Catholics have been browbeaten into believing that they must stow their religion and more importantly, its moral teachings in their closets at home. For diehard secularists, religion is an article of clothing that should only be worn in the privacy of one’s home.
In the public square Catholics have also been conditioned to believe in free and absolute choice and equality for all without consequence. When applied to traditional morality, this absolute freedom to do whatever one wants, especially with regards to sexual morality, easily trumps Church teachings on chastity, modesty and the threat of moral confusion, or what the Church used to call scandal. I wonder just how many Catholic Americans parents think nothing of encouraging their daughters to use birth control, cohabit with their boyfriends and, if the situation dictates, abort their own grandchildren.
Another good example is the celebrated case of Terry Schiavo, the brain-damaged, though not terminally ill, woman in Florida many years ago. Catholics who sided with the civil rights of her husband in his insistence of her duty to die apparently left the Church’s teachings on suffering and the sanctity of life on the bathroom floor. The list is too long to address all the Catholic American politicians who consistently oppose Church teachings on a host of moral issues, especially abortion. The same may even be said of liberal priests, nuns and teachers whose public positions often create a feeling of moral confusion among their flocks.
Given the attitudes of so many Catholic Americans in the public eye, is it surprising that countless Catholics ignore and even actively oppose Church teachings on homosexual marriage, the ordination of women and embryonic stem-cell research? In a society that has lost touch with its religious underpinnings, is it surprising that American Catholics have been pushed to the sidelines for their social intolerance? Isn’t it high time American Catholics pushed packed back?
The constant turmoil on Wall Street is an apt subject for personal meditation. It should give most Americans pause to think seriously about their financial and material situations. This kind of meditation is sure to include a consideration of the many economic, political accusations and controversies that cloud our futures.
When investments go bad and the economy periodically falters, taking with millions of lucrative jobs, the automatic reaction is to lay blame on someone in power’s doorstep. Since the 1940’s the easy targets for the public’s venom have been the fat cats on Wall Street.
The 1987 movie, Wall Street, added a provocative phrase to the American lexicon that provided an extra layer of support for these accusations during persistent days of economic and financial uncertainty. One of the supporting characters, Gordon Gekko, played admirably by Michael Douglas, said in all positive sincerity that greed is good. On its surface it seems like a selfish thing to say. But like most things in the Bible, its truth resides in the interpretation.
As one financial observer asked rhetorically: Is not ‘greed ‘ just another word for self-interest? His comment was not far removed from Adam Smith’s classic The Wealth of Nations that taught about the importance of the Divine Hand, which he defined as people’s self-interests coalescing to support an economic structure. Those blessed with clarity of vision can easily recognize God’s Providence in this.
When thinking about wealth from a Catholic perspective, the first thing that comes to mind is the biblical allusion to the Eye of the Needle. This story was treated in all the Synoptic Gospels, especially Matthew 19 23:24, where Jesus said it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
There are a myriad of interpretations for this citation but I think they all share a common thread in that wealth brings with it a proportionate number of responsibilities that require greater attention and concern for our fellow man than we might expect to find from people who live in closely guarded gated communities.
For Catholics wealth is always a mixed blessing. By its nature wealth is purely neutral. It can be used for good or evil. The dangers of wealth revolve around its corresponding power. It can be used to build a hospital or an abortion clinic. It can be used to clothe the naked and feed the hungry or it can be used to buy a closet full of shoes or furs or stuff oneself with caviar and champagne. That’s what free will is all about.
The 2nd century teacher, Clement of Alexandria wrote a treatise called Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved in order to explain that neither poverty nor wealth are sinful nor righteous of themselves. What matters is how people respond to their relative riches or penury. Rich Christians should know the companion verse in Luke 12:48 and unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.
According to authors Mike Aquilina and James L. Papandrea book’s Seven Revolutions, Clement’s treatise as well as other Church documents, favored a symbiotic relationship between wealth and penury. God gave riches to some with the hope that they would give to those in need.
The poor have a corresponding responsibility to pray for the souls of the wealthy. Jesus discouraged his disciples in thinking that wealth was earth bound. Instead he wanted them to understand that true spiritual wealth transcends riches and treasures. And it can easily be shared with others on earth.
The fact that Gordon Gekko has become a stock character in the debate on economic inequality and equality points to the underlying prejudice against wealth that has been with us for several generations. I sometimes wonder where the Catholic Church would be without the generosity of its wealthier members. I think all Catholics should examine their consciences and their attitude toward those who have much more than they do.
Catholics should also remember that while excessive greed can be harmful to one’s soul, it is a two-way street that can easily lead even poor people into sin. Those who covet the material possessions of others, even to the extent of stealing them, are also guilty of greed.
A more complicated sister version of greed is what psychologists call Schadenfreude. It means literally taking pleasure from the misfortunes of others, especially the wealthy. The 2009 crash and its historically long recovery with its attendant bankruptcies, social and economic displacements have provided more than enough temptation for this sin.
The Christian response to the vexing problems of wealth is that we all should pray for the scions of wealth that they use their financial blessings to foster the kingdom of God, help the poor and advance the teachings of Christ. To do anything else, especially to play the blame game is to engage in a practice that is nearly as culpable as those of the greediest billionaire.
I love watches. I must have over 30 watches. Ever since my grandfather taught me to tell time when I was seven years old I have loved keeping time. My mother taught me to be punctual for appointments and dates. I was always early and spent a good deal of wasted time, waiting on street corners for my habitually late friends. It is a characteristic that still shapes my life.
I think time awareness dominates American life. Everything is measured in hours, minutes and maybe even seconds. Lawyers keep precise track of their billable hours because time really is money to them. Plumbers and electricians all charge by the hour. In sports, we keep records of who had the fastest time. Most professional sports, except baseball, tennis, and golf, revolve around a clock and its timekeepers. I think that’s why baseball is no longer the true national pastime because it doesn’t move fact enough.
We all love fast foods, instant breakfasts and glance at papers, which measure world events in terms of sentences, paragraphs and not columns. Working mothers talk of spending quality time, with their children. Marriages have broken down because the couple never had enough time for each other. Some other commitment or interest had a greater hold on them than their marriage vows.
We have I-pods, Blackberries and all time saving devices that paradoxically take too much time to learn to operate. We have become virtual prisoners of our own devices. As I get older I find that I do not like to wait for anything, whether in a movie line, traffic or the grocery store. Instant gratification is not quick enough for me. I wont even buy green bananas. Part of this arises from the fact that I am not getting any younger. I am in the inevitable stage of what the late sports announcer Jack Buck used to call playing the back nine.
Time has become a subject for my personal meditation. I think of all the time I wasted as a child. When the poet John Milton lost his sight, he wrote a memorable line in one of his poems that said, when I consider how my light has been spent. While he measured his life in its “light” I find that time has been the literal measure of my life. One of the real facts of life is that time waits for no man or woman. It is not how much of the world’s wealth I may have amassed or how many honors I might have received but what good I might have done with the nearly 38 millions or so minutes I have “used” since my birth in 1943. I am sure God will have His accounting on just how I spent my time amidst His generous gifts.
Being an only child I always seemed alone and bored. I regret having wasted so much precious time as child. I guess that’s what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said youth was wasted on the young! As an adult I painfully recognize how really short life on earth is. To squander even a precious moment seems sinful when there is so much we could be doing—reading, praying, giving of ourselves or just enjoying this beautiful gift God has bestowed on us. My uncle had the right idea. He spent his retirement smelling both the roses and his coffee.
We all have a built-in time clock that is ticking just like one of my many watches. Just like John Donne’s poetic bell, it ticks for you and it ticks for me. My college roommate Peter died suddenly in 2004. I had written him a letter because I wanted him to know how much I enjoyed being his roommate and how much he had taught me. My letter was six months too late.
He was a year younger than I but his time had taken flight. He would never know how I felt about him because I had waited too long to tell him. I had spent his last few ticks holding back my brotherly love from him. I have now vowed to tell the members of my growing family and my friends how important each and everyone of them is to me because I don’t want to be six months late ever again.
In a 1978 segment of Saturday Night Live, Co-anchor Jane Curtin welcomed a new member to our Update team, the former All-Star second baseman for the New York Mets, Chico Escuela. Chico, a Dominican ballplayer, deftly played by Garret Morris has a thick Dominican accent and speaks very little English. He starts by saying Thank you, berry, berry much. … Base-ball … been berry, berry good to me. … Thank you, Hane. …
I can easily second Chico appreciation of how good baseball has been. Especially for a young boy trying hard to get a focus on life and his place in it.
In 1950 my father took me to see John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima in 1950.
Even at age seven, though I found war movies exciting, my concept of hero was reserved more for the baseball diamond than any tale of sanguinary combat.
The Brooklyn Dodgers were the darling underdogs of the 1950s. While they won a number of pennants, they always lost to the Yankees in the World Series — until 1955.
While all the Dodgers were heroes that year, to my adolescent mind, the quiet Kentuckian at shortstop, Pee Wee Reese represented to me everything a hero should be.
He was the team’s leader and he played the game with the same grace and dignity that my contemporaries in St. Louis must have seen in Stan The Man Musial.
These were the players that writer, Roger Kahn called the Boys of Summer. To me they were my men for all seasons.
When Reese was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1984, I was there to honor him.
As a player I calculate that I only had 50 at bats, which might be considered a part of an organized baseball game. Most of my experience was playing with a few friends but hardly ever in a game with two nine-man teams.
My success rate for those games was 12-50, for an even .280 mark, mediocre at best. I could run and I was a fearful but determined player at 3rd base, my favorite position. I had one bunt single and only two extra base hits. One year I did steal 7/8 bases. A perfect throw nailed me at third base.
Two derivatives came from my baseball participation. During my 8th Grade team in 1957, we had a single man coach us and I use the word coach loosely. I don’t remember any practices or teaching. He basically kept order and assigned who would play where. One night before a game, he called me and asked ME if I would take over the team for the next game. I was only 13 years old! The first thing I did was recruit my neighbor who was a year below me in our school and therefore eligible to play. Gerry lived just down the block and if I had a best friend while I was growing up, he was it. I knocked out his two front teeth during a roller hockey game years later.
With Gerry on the mound and me at shortstop we prevailed 5-3 and I had my first victory as a manager.
I spent most of my adolescent years in the country, staying with my maiden Aunt Mal as we called her. With my country friend a Jewish boy from the Bronx, named Stevie Gardos I played all kinds of ball. One year we organized a team to play the older boys from Coolidge Trail. They had such intimidating names as Butch, Whitey, Spider and his younger brother Hoss. Two of their Jewish players were known as Big Beak and Little Beak, names than not even Roger Kahn could have conjured.
We played four games and we did win one of them. That was the game I recruited another pitcher. This fellow was a lanky Italian who had played freshman ball at LaSalle HS not too far from my Xavier HS.
Little did I know that these childhood experiences had prepared me for coaching my two sons and well over a 100 young boys in a modestly competitive league, the Ladue Baseball League, which I served with pride for 13 years. I once calculated my composite record as 110-48 and I can still remember many of the losses.
Several years prior to Pee Wee’s induction (1973-74) I taught what is arguably the first accredited Baseball History course in the Midwest at then Maryville College in Suburban St. Louis. James Cool Papa Bell, a player from the old Negro Leagues who later enshrined in Cooperstown was my guest speaker.
My first choice had been the aforementioned Roger Kahn but I never heard from him until the following year when he was in town promoting his BOS. While it was too late for him to speak we did have a wonderful leisurely dinner before I drove him to the radio station for his interview. The class also warranted an invitation from NBC’s Today Show. I spent an exciting 3 and half minutes with Gene Shalit on May 9, 1974.
Local sportswriter, Bob Broeg who is honored in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame in the writers’ wing started calling me the professor of Baseball. I turned it around so that the sobriquet has been part of my identity ever since. It is part of who I am. I treasure that name and have used it ever since in my e-mail ID and on my vanity license plates. I officially registered it as a service mark over 30 years ago.
It was at Pee Wee’s induction that I got the idea for the St. Louis Browns Fan Club, an organization that is still going strong, despite the demise of most of its players, who now number a mere 19 out of 795 men who wore the uniform from 1902-53. It is truly a dying franchise since it is the only team name that has been stricken from the modern history of baseball, save the short-lived Seattle Pilots who moved to Milwaukee in 1970 after just one season.
On August 17, 2015 the St. Louis Cardinals honored my fan club with a night at Busch Stadium. We had 200 people buy tickets. Our Cardinals’ host, Brian Finch regaled us with an informative history of the Browns. This was quite a big step since the relation between the two teams was never that good when they were rivals for the affections of the St. Louis public.
The owner of the Cardinals, William DeWitt II has a very strong interest in the Browns. His father owned them when he was a little boy. It was his small uniform that they used to clothe the most famous pinch-hitter in baseball history, the 3’7” Eddie Gaedel who had one major league at bat. As Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up.
While my participation in the game has waned as I have grown older, my passion for the game is still vibrant. When Walter O’Malley broke a 13-year old boy’s heart with his move of the Dodgers to the Gold Coast for the 1958 season I longed for a team like them.
While the New York Mets probably have broken my aging heart more times than the Dodgers ever did and no player can compare to Pee Wee, save maybe Tommy Terriffic, I feel strongly that God is in His Heaven and all is right with my world.
This past month’s experiences with the Kansas City Royals underscored that my ability to feel and experience the thrill and abject pain of a bitter and devastating defeat at the hands and bats of a superior team has not lessened in any way. Though it hurt badly, I do not want to lose the inner ability to feel because it is part of what makes us human. Baseball brings it out every April and October.
I have to chuckle every time my fellow Catholics pray for world peace. It reminds me of an irreverent bumper sticker I saw years ago that encouraged us to pray for whirled peas. While praying for universal peace is a noble gesture, the thought of actually achieving real world peace on this deeply flawed earth is a fruitless exercise in self-delusion.
Peace on earth will never be possible because of what philosopher Emanuel Kant called the crooked timber of humanity. Wars, violence and other human evils are a regrettable but undeniable part of the human condition. Like the poor, wars will always be with us. To pretend that we can eliminate them is foolhardy and a sign of the materialistic disease of the spirit that has infected our culture.
Fantasies are fine for football leagues or poetry recitals but in the real world, utopian goals can only serve to distract us from our eternal destiny. In chasing such windmills of the heart as peace on earth, many of us have lost our moral equilibrium.
On the way to Sunday Mass, I often remark about how religious all the runners, bikers and other exercise fanatics are with their physical regimens. They are out there every Sunday and on many weekdays in all kinds of hot and inclement weather. What dedication they show for maintaining their sleek bodies. I can’t help wondering if they pay as much attention to their souls.
Our country is a sick society–morally sick amid a cornucopia of boredom, violence and material excess. We are restless and unhappy with the state of our society yet we can’t understand why. We have developed a propensity for ignoring the spiritual causes of our maladies that have given rise to a victimhood philosophy that has sapped the very strength of the American spirit, giving rise to a litany of social and moral pathologies such as pornography, infidelity, homosexual marriage, abortion and euthanasia. In other words we are knee-deep in a culture of death and the faucet is wide open.
To offset the emptiness in our souls we have vainly attempted to fill it with a culture awash in a flood of sex, exercise, weight reduction programs, jogging, marathons and spa visits to the extent that our lean bodies, which have become our personal idols, stand it stark contrast to our empty souls! This painfully evokes strong Biblical images of whiten sepulchers filled with dead man’s bones. Too many of us have substituted neuroses and psychoses for our venial and mortal sins. We often try to medicate away our feelings of inner conflict.
This is just one facet of the imbalance or the lost of moral homeostasis that our society has created. Just watch television or attend the local Cineplex. It is difficult not to see the nihilism perpetuated in the anti-heroes of the silver screen or on the average sitcom each evening on TV.
I used to read all of Robert Ludlum’s novels many years ago until I noticed that his characters and vapid plots always seemed to meld into a seamless garment of emptiness and despair. His protagonists, more energetic but less philosophical than Hemingway’s existentialist code hero, recognized no other power than their own physical skills or mental acumen. Ludlum’s heroes, especially the long-lived Jason Bourne, had no religious or moral faith. In that he reflected the barren spirituality of our own times. The current and ever-popular Lee Child’s protagonist, the infamous Jack Reacher is cut from the same amoral whole cloth.
Before the advent of the shrink’s couch and confessional TV, like Mother Oprah, philosophers stressed the need for keeping equilibrium between the spirit and the body. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, whose TV show Life Is Worth Living used to be more popular than Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle’s show in the 1950s, warned that peace of soul was the only way to rid society of many of its psychological afflictions.
A few presidential candidates, such as Michael Huckabee and Dr. Benjamin Carson seem to be saying the same thing. Bishop Sheen constantly admonished Americans for standing outside the psychiatrist’s’ office when they should be kneeling inside the confessional.
Life in America has become so busy and so demanding that it is too easy to lose sight of our ultimate goal. Like Ludlum’s characters, too many of us never stop to contemplate the question all men and women must ultimately confront — the universal eschatology of what happens at death?
Gen. John Black Jack Pershing underscored this nearly forgotten reality when he challenged his troops, as they embarked from the New Jersey piers in 1918 en route to the war in Europe to consider the three possible outcomes of their service — Heaven, Hell or Hoboken.
Yoga has always fascinated me though I am not certain what possessed me to take some lessons. Quite possible it could be just another thing I had never tried and wanted to before I became too old to do so—maybe a bucket list entry.
I knew very little about it except that it had something to do with Hinduism, breathing and quiet time. Its advocates always looked graceful and even mysterious in performing all their various positions and exercises. That should have dissuaded me from even thinking about it.
I have been taking Yoga for well over a year. I knew I did not want to take a class with a sorority of women, not because of their sex but because I knew I would not be able to keep up with them because of my age and a minor case of rigor mortis.
I am amazed how women can bend and twist into positions that would delight a contortionist. But that’s natural for them. Anyone whose body is designed to give birth to a football-sized being can do Yoga in her sleep.
So I arranged for private lessons at the local Yoga and Pilates studio. Its primitive conditions disqualify it from ever calling itself a spa. First of all there is no separate locker facilities for men and women.
I wonder what the gender equality mavens would say about that. In fact there isn’t a facility for either of us. When I change into something more suitable I have to use the only restroom in the place.
When I first entered the Y&P, it reminded me of some of the very narrow Italian restaurants in New York City that seem to be a block long and a doorway wide. The room appears even smaller when filled with a receptionist desk, and two lines of Pilate’s machines. Students use these to stretch and sometimes inflict self-damage. I quickly learned to prefer the touch of the live instructor.
For my instructor they paired me with Valerie, a lithe and deceptively strong and shapely woman with beautiful silver hair and an infectious smile that betrayed a nurturing soul. She was exactly what this old dog or is it down dog needed! From the first moment she twisted and bent me, I think we had a kind of mentor/disciple simpatico.
I think she had been an occupational therapist or had worked in a pretzel factory before she heeded her true calling in life. Val is as equally at home discussing the mysticism of Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, as she is the Biblical imperative of the fictitious Lisbeth Salander.
To make things even more private we have virtually all of our sessions up in the Loft, a semi-private, unenclosed though elevated section of the restaurant I mean studio where they hide their worst students, mostly the men. I was happy for the privacy venue because Yoga has an intimacy to it, not unlike massage therapy, except in Yoga you usually have clothes on.
I have read about some people who actually do all the Yoga positions in the Nude. I mean being free, natural and uninhibited is fine but they have to admit that some of their positions lend themselves to full exposure of every appendage, crack and crevice the human body has. Perhaps this variation is the direct result of what my daughter takes—Hot Yoga, where they turn the thermostat up to 750 Fahrenheit.
Personally Yoga is one thing I want as much support and protection as I can get. In fact after working out in shorts and a tee the first two times, I decided to adopt the attire that most of the women used. They all seemed so comfortable and moved so easily in their tights. Surprisingly most of the ladies wore just black tights.
Maybe it had something to do with evolution or body consciousness. But as a male I feel compelled to dress in more colorful plumage though I am well past my mating game years.
So a shopping I did go! O. K. my first two pair were black. But the third one was a beautiful royal blue Under Armour pair of tights in a snakeskin design. They are so cool!! To date they are still my favorite.
It seems that my exercise wardrobe is not complete until I have one for nearly every day of the week. What followed was a silver snakeskin tight, a camo black and blue pattern, and a tasteful-done plain navy blue that can be worn for more formal affairs like weddings and funerals. I am into tights so deeply that when I see a well-rounded woman in colorful tights, I am tempted to ask her is where she bought them.
For my 72nd birthday my only daughter told her mother that she had a surprise for me. But neither of them would tell me. Come the night of my party, I approached said daughter and asked her what my surprise was.
She would not answer. Is it a pony? She shook her head! A motorboat–I always wanted a motorboat! No! How about a new car. I really need a new car. Same answer. Some fur-lined tights? No answer.
Well I just decided to end the mystery and open the box. Staring me in the face was my first Yoga outfit, replete with matching shirt and jacket…a Yoga ensemble! No fur but that wasn’t really necessary…too itchy… No pony, motorboat or car keys. Four choices not bad!
And what cool tights they are…a medium dark green with a lime border. I don’t do well with greens and blues since I was diagnosed with traditional white male bl/gr color blindness a few years ago, which was 45 years after my wife told me I was color-blinded. It is not official until the doctor says so! I have worn them a few times already and noticed that they seem to exaggerate my manhood a little more than any the others. Maybe that’s why they are fast becoming my favorites.
Up until my birthday, I guess my silver tights were the sexiest. I had just seen an old Richard Gere movie, Breathless, which displayed more of his naked body than it did any nascent acting ability. This way before he started playing, fully clothed, brooding, angry and intellectual roles.
The movie was really terrible but what sold it for me were his frequent dialogues and personality exposures while reading comic books about the Silver Surfer, one of the lesser known action heroes.
When he would finish one he would do this Elvis-like gyrations of his hips, with his finger pointed, collar up and eyes cast down that was liken to John Travolta’s manly walk near the end of the movie Pulp Fiction. Not only was it very manly, it was an energizing tonic to an old man like me, wearing silver tights in public.
There are only a few other men that I see when I go to the Y&P. If my mother were alive and I told her I was going to the Y&P she would ask me to pick up a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. Most of these other guys seem to be a few years older than me. They usually wear regular clothes or maybe long ugly shorts.
They look very uncomfortable to me. One works with Val just before me. I was up on the landing leading to the loft because someone else was up there, doing my stretching, bending and twisting to the virtual enjoyment of not a one among the gaggle of women sweating and grimacing below me. So I could watch him and the women of course.
I later told her that she should suggest he get some tights or something better suited for Yoga. She told me that she had no interest in seeing this 77-year-old Harvard brain surgeon in tights. Of all her male students and maybe a few females, she said I was the only one who could pull it off. Surely she did not mean the tights because they can be difficult and even dangerous to remove.
In fact one time I almost took her words literally. After she has finished cleaning and sanitizing the mats we have used, Valerie lets me change up in the Loft after my session. Funny I noticed all the other students, men included seem to have to clean up after themselves with handy spray bottles, filled with bleach, disinfectant, and antibiotics. Only once has she asked me to do that. I think I will add pampering to nurturing.
I have a modest way of stripping while there are a half-dozen women just below me, mostly of sight. I sit on my shirt and then in one swift movement I yang them off, underarmoured shorts and all…only this time they got caught around my ankles and I almost fell to the floor.
If I had hurt myself, unable to move and started screaming, a room full of women would have quickly come to my rescue and found me, lying on the carpet with my modesty around my ankles. A fantasy or nightmare?
Another time I noticed that the doctor was limping a lot. I asked Valerie if he had that limp when he first came in. That’s relevant because the one downside to Yoga is the pain. I know the adage—no pain, no gain.
If that is true I must be far ahead of the pack because Val works me so hard and so thoroughly that there is not one muscle, bone, nor hank of hair that has ever escaped her physically demanding routines. At times her level of exercise rivals that of a medieval rack, chain and rope…even when she is being easy on me.
I should be flattered that she has encouraged me to push the cart of my limitations to the edge of the cliff. I can tell that is true by how much more flexible my limbs have become. I can get into some positions that should be unnatural for a man. My feet can get cozy with parts of my body that had not touched since the womb.
Surprisingly I can do some of the basic positions with aplomb and maybe if I dare say finesse if not grace, such as the up and down dog, the plank, forward fold, cat, cow and table top to name but a few.
One time when Valerie was trying to get me to separate my legs from my torso, with out the benefit of any horses, she told me to imagine I was at the gynecologist’s office. Now when I was first married I took my wife there several times but I never ventured past the waiting room. I told Val that if she introduced stirrups, I was out of there. Come to think of it we have used a Pilate that does resemble stirrups.
When at last we are nearly the end of the hour, Valerie brings me down from my lazy man’s high with a gentle neck massage, soft and relaxing words of peace and harmony until she tells me to wiggle my toes and my feet and roll slowly to one side. We both sit up with our legs in the Lotus position, hands folded upwards and say a short prayer. Since we are both Catholic it becomes a celebration of God’s gift of life rather than any Buddhist incantation. Then a hug and maybe a quick peck and we are finished for the week.
Why do I call it Polish Yoga? Many years ago someone told me the story of a man, named Joe Yamikoski standing in the street and hitting himself in the head with a hammer. When asked why, he said because it feels so good when I stop!
Every Latin student had to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars in sophomore year of high school. In English the translation succinctly began: all Gaul is divided into three parts—Gallia Celtica, Belgica and Aquitania.
Today the United States has become divided into just two different sets of diametrically opposed camps of revolutionary ideas. The first began in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago and the other arguably goes back to a fruit tree in the first Garden.
Virtually all ideas of revolutionary change have sprung from their wellspring. We use mainly easy terms, such as left and right or possibly liberal and conservative. Even they have their own derivatives, such as Marxism, Communism, Progressivism, traditionalism and so on.
Like, dramas they are all just variations on a theme
Since the Biblical Fall of Man the world has been caught in a maelstrom of revolutionary fervor that has bifurcated the pages of history into a brace of conflicting ideas that have set the world on fire.
These intellectual wars have assumed many new skins, pigmentation and hues over the centuries. The early Christians found their nascent faith under attack from the religion’s first notable heresy, Gnosticism, an elitist faith that assigned special privilege to the chosen few whose intuitive knowledge would rule the world.
This early conflict evolved into a formidable conflict that St. Augustine called the City of God versus the City of Man. In today’s parlance this plays as traditionalism vs. relativity.
In the 18th century the French Revolution attempted to remake the world and with it change the moral nature of mankind. This was the most revolutionary idea to come down the path since Jesus Christ instituted a new religion that promised, not an earthly paradise but a future life with the Triune God in a kingdom with many mansions.
This pie in the sky was repulsive to the intellectuals of the French coffeehouses and the soirées that proclaimed a new world of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. The French Revolution gave life and sustenance to a squad of imitation revolutions in Russia, Asia and Africa.
The heirs to this thinking later conceptualized their dogma into Marxism, Socialism, Liberalism and Progressivism all of which attempted to create a utopian paradise that promised more a new Eden, a veritable garden of earthly delights. As quickly as inchoate utopias cropped up, they were dashed on the rocks of reality.
In the United States it was the brilliant socialist, Robert Croly, whose book, The Promise of American Life, published in 1907, created a reliable paradigm that has propelled progressives in this country into the driver’s seat amid a declining Christendom.
His new thought turned American thinking on its head and led to the breakdown of a 1000 years of Western Civilization.
To effect this Croly melded the Big Government philosophy of Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, designed specifically to establish American capitalism with the agrarian philosophy of Thomas Jefferson that despised government of any kind and sought to sustain the farming class.
By turning this part of the American giveness on its head, Croly succeeded in establishing a historic paradigm where a political elite used the power of big government to help and entitle millions of the poor and indigent.
In the 20th century these ideas assumed the shape and form a full-fledged war of two distinct cultures. On the one side was the traditional thinking of Western Civilization with its profound respect for law, marriage, sexual morality, the family and private property.
The left countered with a relativistic morass of moral relativism that produced a moral and spiritual chaos of spirit that will impact the United States for generations to come.
Barack Obama was the first Democratic president to push the envelope of checks and balances off the table of reality to accelerate this transformation.
As president Obama has played his part as a country disorganizer like a virtuoso. He has religiously followed the primary rules of his posthumous mentor, Saul Alinsky’s in giving power, not to the Princes but to the poor.
In seven very dangerous years he has stabilized the abortion industry as a veritable American institution. He has promoted gay culture to the extent that homosexuals have a veto power over the free practice of property rights and religious freedom.
He has brought more social democracy to America and with it, higher taxes, draconian relegations, a decline in the private economy and investment, the transfer of millions of jobs to public unions and billions to crony supporters.
Law enforcement has declined to the extent that policemen are afraid to do their jobs for fear of Justice Department prosecutions. Public safety has mirrored this with a huge increase of murders in all major metropolitan areas as gangs, many composed of illegal immigrants, roam with impunity.
Under Obama the left way of thinking has won several battles on several cultural fronts. As hard as valiant traditionalists have fought the battle, the left has too many willing accomplices in academia, the mainstream media and every level of government that it feels a kinship in as George Armstrong Custer was in South Dakota.
Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United States has also underscored how vast the transformation of American culture has come. His attacks on capitalism and free trade, as well as his calls for economic equality in an unequal world, not only world betrays a vast ignorance of how prosperity is created but smacks more of Karl than it does Jesus.
Despite his bromides about taking care of the planet, his acceptance of the unsubstantiated and an agenda-driven theory of made-man climate change.
In doing so the pope has put his papal power and moral authority in league with a legion of population control fanatics, abortionists, euthanasia promoters and death panel advocates, putting the pope’s beloved poor at greater risk.
Noted economist, Thomas Sowell points out how little the pope understands the root causes and solutions for poverty. In the 1980s the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, published a document, entitled Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy. This document has worked at cross-purposes with the traditional teachings of the Church and the prosperity and culture of the United States.
The specifics of the Pastoral Letter reflect far more of the secular Enlightenment of the 18th century than they do Catholic traditions. Archbishop Weakland admitted that such an Enlightenment figure as Thomas Paine is now coming back through a strange channel.
Perhaps some of the Cardinals and bishops are unaware that Paine rejected the teachings of any church that I know of, including the Church of Rome. To base social or moral principles on the philosophy of the 18th-century Enlightenment and then call the result Catholic teachings is disingenuous and unworthy of any Catholic prelate.
This set of secular ideas does nothing to predispose the traditional faithful to the sermons, admonitions and teachings of Pope Francis. It anything it further divided the Catholic Church.
The Ideological left in the Vatican blithely throw around the phrase the poor, blaming poverty on what other people are doing to or for the poor. According to Dr. Sowell it is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining.
Consider which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie? In 1900, only 3 percent of American homes had electric lights but more than 99 percent had them before the end of the century.
Infant mortality rates were 165 per thousand in 1900 and 7 per thousand by 1997. A scholar specializing in the study of Latin America said that the official poverty level in the United States is the upper middle class in Mexico.
The much maligned market economy of the United States has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left.
Poverty is a natural given but prosperity requires many things — none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.
Geographic settings are radically different, both among nations and within nations—especially climate factors. So are demographic differences, with some nations and groups having a median age over 40 and others having a median age under 20.
Pope Francis’ own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions of social democracy he is now promoting around the world.
This means that some groups have several times as much adult work experience as others. Cultures are also radically different in many ways, especially in the way they approach work, development, education and personal responsibility.
As economic historian David S. Landes said, The world has never been a level playing field.
No one can make that a reality. But they can do is turn the world into an armed camp or a one world dictatorship that will splintered apart before the ink on any agreement has dried.
This is all the result of the loss of the Garden–or what David Hume called the twisted timber of mankind.
The new millennium began with the devastating and psychologically damaging attacks on 9/11, followed by a decade of lost and confusing wars on terror, amidst the general decline of American cultural life. This has given many cause to revisit our fundamental religious beliefs with a new urgency.
Years ago Robert Fulghum wrote a best seller entitled, Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten. I can top him easily! His book reminded me of the third question in my first-grade religion book, the sorely missed Baltimore Catechism. Succinctly, it asked Why did God make me? This may be an elementary question but it is one pregnant with deep philosophical and theological mysteries that have sparked bitter debates, wars and persecutions for two millennia.
The answer my 6-year-old mind was given was To know, love and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him in the next life. It is a simple yet profound thought that provokes serious soul-searching into the meaning and direction of one’s life. If we really believe it, everything else we do, crave, strive for, lust after or sell our souls for to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas on his 14th-century deathbed, is cotton candy.
I wonder how many of the 50 Catholic 6-year olds that learned this basic question with me in 1949 still believe its inherent wisdom. Given the intellectual and moral drift of this past half century, I fear not too many. American cultural life has suffered a regression that has warped our very institutions, such as our Constitution, political process, the sacrament of marriage and even the meaning of the English language.
Thanks to the putative rigidity of some religious strictures and a long-range decline in organized religion and its devotions and practices, the left has made measured progress in the unfinished business of the French Revolution’s subversion and relegation of all religious values to the ashcan of history.
Most Americans are essentially seekers, looking for that spiritual lift that will help them get through the dark nights of doubt, fear and insecurity that plague mostly everyone. Without the support of religion and a moral compass, they are left to flounder aimlessly on a beach of doubt and despair. Unfortunately millions of Americans have chosen the winding, lazy road of shallow thinking and empty spirituality to fill the existential void the decline of religion has created.
In search of an inner holiness they have substituted a New Age spirituality for the black-and-white honesty of the Baltimore Catechism. Their refrain of I’m OK, you’re OK is nothing more than a jargon of psychobabble that provides nothing more than the warm and fuzzy feeling of thinking oneself a good person for helping the poor build a house or two.
Too many pride themselves on these good feelings while ignoring a slough of sordid personal behaviors that would make a Marine blush.
A real commitment to the Catholic faith and a mature belief in the afterlife has seemingly descended into the dark void of society’s self-consciousness. This trend is arguably in league with the world’s pagan forbears, who made gods out of the sun, rivers and anything in nature that they feared or respected. In doing so they have lost sight of their reasons for being born.
We have forgotten the Baltimore Catechism because few teach it any more. The sad fact is that without the longstanding anchor the catechism once provided, it is just too easy for people to float adrift with nothing more than their own petty selves to cling to.
Having lost or discarded the basic metaphysical knowledge in the third question of the catechism, too many Catholics have no clue why their lives don’t seem to make any sense. Unless the Church returns to that vital third question in the Baltimore Catechism, there will be little hope for any real progress in human rights and the end of futile wars.
The Gospel Truth 