February 18th, 2012
I may be a squish, but doggonit, I’m a Christianist squish.
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Wish more people could grok this (^— JVL above), cuz the way-out atavistic reaction on display lately doesn’t make sense except in the context of 1960s mass psychology. Whether it’s Ann Richards’s daughter or some college sophomore too young to even remember when condoms weren’t handed out at high schools, the intensity is way out of proportion to the practical implications. For the other hot-button desperados (NRA, gay marriage, Israel, Cuba, etc.) there is at least some modicum of intellectual scaffolding underlying. With abortion/sex it always boils down to, “I do what I want!!!” They can’t justify it more seriously.
p.s. it reminds me of the AIDS razzmatazz, too, though perhaps sleeping dogs should be let lie. Or, see Michael Crichton making a germane point in Playboy 20 years ago, “Panic in the Sheets,” which I’m sure is online somewhere.
Galley Friend J.E. February 20, 2012 at 11:20 am
“The hippies stopped dropping acid and got high-paying jobs in the tech sector.” Very nice.
Catholics, if not the Church, aren’t blameless in this. As soon as the Berrigans, wearing their collars and citing doctrine, became leaders of the antiwar movement, average priests went full Gandhi. And once in bed with the left, they slept.
It seemed to me (a non Catholic) that during the 70s, Catechism quickly became catechism, and ordinary parishioners began believing that they could pick from a Chinese menu of choices sanctioned by a wink and a nod, from birth control to divorce. In time, I met more self-identified “former” Catholics than I did any other apostate group. The Church, they insisted, needed to “modernize.” It’s no wonder the administration calculated that there won’t be an electoral price to pay.