Considering how many crucial matters were at stake
during the recent election, including the right to life and
religious freedom, and the preponderant bias in the media
and opinion polls, it did not seem melodramatic to hope for
a prudential hand to guide things. There will be much
thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day.
Some who trusted pundits were shocked that
their perception was an illusion, confirming T.S.
Eliot’s words in his “Four Quartets”:
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”The New York Times, fearful of further declines in
its dropping influence, apologized for misreading the
demographics of our culture, and came as close as it could
to admitting that it had been wrong, by confessing that it
had not been right. But thousands accustomed to life in a
parallel universe and impervious to the rebukes of reason
expressed their befuddlement at the results of the
presidential election by demonstrating and even rioting when
facts shattered their expectations.
Our college campuses have been breeding grounds
for self-absorption and corruption of the senses. Professors
who had never attained moral maturity themselves, reacted by
providing “safe spaces” for students traumatized
by reality. In universities across the land, by a sodality
of silliness in the academic establishment, these
“safe spaces” were supplied with soft cushions,
hot chocolate, coloring books, and attendant psychologists.
At least one university provided friendly kittens and
puppies for weeping students to cuddle. A college chaplaincy
invited students to pray, the implication being that their
petitions might persuade the Lord to rethink his political
leanings.
The average age of a Continental soldier in the
American Revolution was one year less than that of a college
freshman today. Alexander Hamilton was a fighting
lieutenant-general at 21, not to mention Joan of Arc who led
an army into battle and saved France when she was about as
old as an American college sophomore. In our Civil War,
eight Union generals and seven Confederate generals were
under the age of 25. The age of most U.S. and RAF fighter
pilots in World War II was about that of those on college
junior varsity teams. Catholics who hoped in this election
for another Lepanto miracle will remember that back in 1571,
Don Juan of Austria saved Western civilization as commanding
admiral when he was 24. None of these figures, in the
various struggles against the world and the flesh and evil,
retreated to safe spaces weeping in the arms of grief
therapists.
What will the frightened half-adults do when
they leave their safe spaces and enter a society where there
is no one to offer them hot chocolate? Christ formed his
disciples in a more practical way: "I am sending you
out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as
snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). We
are here today because those disciples did as they were
told, and were not shrewd as doves and innocent as snakes.
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