February 09, 2010
 
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| Thank You, Lord, May We Have Another? |
| by John Zmirak |
| 11/25/08 |
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As Rudyard Kipling, who was right about nearly everything, once wrote:
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die." "Work" in Kipling's sense entailed producing things, and "thrift," as that good Victorian would have used it, meant refraining from purchasing stuff until one had accumulated the money. Conservatives used to understand such things, just as liberals once treasured liberty. As we watch the transition of power from the Pyramid Schemers to the Diversity Police, we might stop to wonder at what point we lost our collective minds. Offhand, I'd say it was around the time a music critic described Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees as a genius.
The depth of our economic collapse is still to be measured in shattered retirement fantasies, deferred dreams of college, second jobs, double-shifts, and bitter squabbling over scraps. I don't envy our incoming president, the one-term senator and longtime "community organizer" who promised us change. Soon enough, millions may very well be cadging spare change from strangers, insulating our underheated homes with quarterly 401(k) statements, and growing potatoes in the yard.
But at least we put an end to Evil, spread freedom throughout the Islamic world, balanced the federal budget, left no child behind, preserved our constitutional liberties, captured Osama bin Laden, reversed Roe v. Wade, and maintained a modest foreign policy. They can't take that away from me.
Now I look forward eagerly to universal health insurance, free scholarships for the needy, the return of our troops, the disarmament of Iran, victory in Afghanistan, and the melting of racial hostilities into a single, sustained national chorus of Kumbaya. Best of luck with all that, Barry.
If we want some grounds for gratitude, we won't find it in the news.
Perhaps we can find it in church. In the Church, I mean -- where conditions have ceased to be catastrophic, and now are merely mixed. Looking on the bright side, there were bishops all over the country who spoke out clearly on the sanctity of life. The orders that led the heresies of the 1970s are quickly dying off, while new groups like the Fraternity of St. Peter are so overwhelmed with applicants they actually have the luxury of screening them. Like Solzhenitsyn blinking back tears in Moscow, the classical liturgy of the West has returned from exile and is spreading the graces of reverence and contemplation to younger generations. Where Catholic schools are closing, homeschoolers are closing ranks, reclaiming the stern task parents once felt safe delegating: the education of their children.
At last, when we're done sifting through all the tainted rubble of our mistakes, it is things like this that are left us, the things that God gave us and has not taken away. The love that's woven of self-sacrifice for a cause, a spouse, or a son. The exquisite tapestry of natural Creation, whose vitality so far resists our waste and willfulness. The marble altars and stained glass left us by our forefathers. The symphonies and polyphony great men composed, the novels and poems they sweated to write -- let us blow off the dust and revere them. The enclaves of freedom and order remaining in America, and what real wealth outlasts the winnowing. The gorgeous Art Deco lobbies of New York City, the well-ordered farms of Iowa, the missions still standing in San Francisco, the libraries (if not always the faculties) of our Catholic colleges.
None of this have we earned, but we have received it. And we can pass it on, if we make the effort. We must do a better job. We've lost the luxury of laziness, spent all our surplus and eaten half the seed corn. We are entering the lean years. It's no time for grandiose fantasies, or projects of mass redemption. (You want change? Start with that diaper.) Like our countrymen in New Orleans after Katrina, we stand in the wake of a flood that washed away our vanities, our necessities. We squint in search of a rainbow.
Tough times will test spoiled souls like mine, and some of us will snap. We've all got to pray for each other, and for ourselves. And for the virtue of forbearance. We are walking the stony path our grandparents trod, through the thorns that made them the "Greatest Generation." In other countries, the Great Depression drove men to war and genocide. But not in America. The memory of that is grounds for hope. And for that I give thanks.
John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor and is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He writes weekly for InsideCatholic.com. Readers have left 4 comments. I admire your optimism, I really do. But I don't believe this catastrophe will elicit the kind of response that is most needed. Have you not heard? God is dead. We have killed him. Where does the capacity of reflection come from, where does illumination come from, if not the Spirit? As you said, there will be blaming and recrimination, but nobody will ask the only questions that matter, because those questions are no longer officially sanctioned. And because they won't be asked, there won't be a real solution. Only props and gimmicks. I'll ask them anyway. Actually, just one. The real question is, who in the world thought that free-market capitalism could ever sustain itself without Christ as the center of our lives? Who was it that led free markets into the public square with one hand, and forced God out with the other? On what possible basis were we to expect that men would behave with charity and decency in the free market system? Charity and decency aren't incompatible with capitalism, we're quite capable of managing both; yet we winked and closed our eyes and pretended that all's fair in love, war, and finance. Our corporate cultures evolved from simple envelope-pushing to experimental accounting, and finally grew up into the hideous, insatiable beast we shield our eyes from today even as it loots our Treasury to feed itself. I lost a ton in this collapse. I don't miss a dime of it. I miss Christ in the public square. Written by Jeff Great read John, thanks. It is a shame we have to get there the "hard way." All we had to do was what Solzhenitsyn warned us to do, REMEMBER GOD. I remember thinking when he died this past August that God's timing is always pefect, as if God put Solzhenitsyn out there (in the news) one more time for us to "maybe get", his prophetic message that the elites booed and many of the so called "religious" ignored. Once again, we booed (or snored), and thanks to American Catholics, voted in the king of baby killers. The good news is, God's mercy is always behind or with his justice. If we have to go through hell in America for the salvation of souls, so be it. That's our dear Father in Heaven, doing for us what we can't seem to do for ourselves. What a honor to be a Catholic in these times. The only thing that really matters, our faith, is, thank God, the only thing they can't take, regardless of how bad it gets. You are wise John to remind us to pray for each other (and give thanks for each other). We are really going to need it! Written by Klaire Jeff, I agree with your comment about free market capitalism and further. In my opinion, nothing good can be sustained without Christ. However, our government, overwhelmingly the Democrat side of the asile, have taken God out of our country. They cite the so called "seperation of Church and State". They do this to further their marxist agenda. Remember Marxist = no God. The Second Amendment is just the opposite of what the Marxist Party wants us to believe. It protects our religions from the government and not the other way around. The leftists control the news media, the entertainment industry and the educational systems in our country, thus the truth is staying burried beneath the dung. Free market capitalism is the best system in the world - just as long as the government doesn't get involved. Unfortunately, the government has totally immersed itself in the system with all kinds of impediments to the system. Thus, we find ourselves in this mess which is turning into a meltdown. There is no stopping it and I do believe it is Divinely inspired to bring us to our knees. Every day more people go to their knees, possibly when they never have. We have nothing but the worst to look forward to until we rightfully acknowledge 'Where' our blessings come from. To kill 48 million unborn in the name of privacy does not sit well with our Creator. Written by John Valenti John Valenti: You say that there is nothing wrong with free market capitalism, except government intervention. The problem is that pure free market capitalism does not exist, cannot exist. Why? Because nothing exists in this world in a pure state. Everything we have is contaminated by everything else. Ask any chemist if you do not believe me. Historically free market has developed along with quite an amount of government intervention - not to mention practices that had little to do with freedom. That shares in sugar or cotton plantations were traded in what could be called a free market, those plantations depended on the labor of slaves to exist. Slaves were traded through the laws of the market. (I saw the movie about John Paul II on EWTN the other night, and I recall the scene in which the Pope visits Goree in Senegal, the warehouse of slaves being sent to America, and he looks with horror at the signs saying "here they kept young girls", "here they kept children" - and then he stands by the sea and says "and those who did this had been baptized") I suspect that God and Jesus was kept away from the market when their presence could affect the business, just as those slavers did, who managed to forget all about "do unto others" when it threatened the bottom line. Written by Adriana |
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