WriteWithFire

FIRST SCOLD

April 25, 2009

"tryin' to make it real compared to what?" -- Charlie Mingus

"Who am Us anyway?" The Firesign Theatre

I am known by many names. Blue-eyed devil. Big-nosed demon. Great satan. Pale, patriarchal, penile implant person...

In the age of identity, I am overidentified.

And, inauthentic in everything but a conscience blackened by the social injustices of my ancestors.

At least I think that is what the First Lady was referring to when she told a group of English school children (all girls, of course) that she came from the "South Side of Chicago -- that's the REAL PART [my emphasis] of Chicago."

She had just ended a self-praising sermon on why she was the First Lady. Telling the school girls that it was "because of education. I never cut class... I loved getting A's. I liked being smart... I thought being smart was the cooler than anything in the world."

Funny how we always come back to "cool." When was the last time Mrs. Obama visited a school in the "real part of Chicago," or South Central LA (the real part of Los Angeles), or the east side of Detroit (the real part of Detroit)... But why go on?

Why do children "cut classes" in the inner city? Could it be fear? Could it be the guards who impregnate young girls. Could it be the cynicism of teachers? Or the sexual predators among them. Could it be the message that "street smarts" trump Mrs. Obama's -- let's face it -- "european" understanding of what an education is? Could it be the filthy class rooms or the disgusting lavatories? The gangs? The drugs? The sexualization of the very young?

But why go on?

Mrs. Obama and her class always look for "root causes" of any dysfunction or "man-made disaster." Yet Lois Hatton, a black writer who wrote in USA Today of Mrs. Obama's royal progress through an English school, also seems oblivious to what a typical, inner city union school has become. She writes, "slavery is now just an American scar... no barriers except those of our own making prevent us from getting a good education."

"Who am Us anyway?" as the Firesign Theatre once asked. I doubt "us" for Ms Hatton is the urban leadership or union executives or judges or preachers who have morally and emotionally abandoned generation after generation of black children. Nolan Finley -- who has finally taken off the editorial gloves at the Detroit News -- calls it what it is: "genocide of the minds" of black children.

As one black Detroiter said recently in the media, he was ashamed of the city council and gringed everytime the council president opened her mouth. Or after yet another casual murder of a Detroit man, a neighbor begged "we have got to stop doing this to ourselves..."

Of course, Mrs. Obama -- and her hagiographer, Ms. Hatton -- may be unaware of the white underclass -- male and female -- in England. The white underclass is certainly invisible in this country. Not authentic, not real enough? But, if one judges by the results, the authenticity of Black America is equally unreal. An America equally bereft of pity.

But Mrs. Obama's concern is with Authenticity and the equally exhausted idea of Cool. The obsessions of baby-babyboomers and the graying children that they have become. Like so many in the new adminstration, she chops up America into Identity Groups, some, obviously, more "real" than others. Even when the results -- despair, ignorance, disease, and crime -- are the same.

Washington D.C. is now, officially, a town without pity. The loveless scolding and passionate self-regard of our First Lady is a chasm beyond Laura Bush's genuine concern for those without her many blessings of love, family and faith -- no matter what part of Chicago, LA or Detroit they might come from. But if you want to hear Mrs. Obama truly excited about a cause, listen to a 2008 recording of her appearance before yet another Human Rights Campaign audience. Redefining marriage is something she can really get behind. The culturally-propogated wounds of a small minority group make it Authentic enough to be simultaneously praised and deprived of human compassion.

Anyone who, as I did, witnessed the AIDS epidemic in 1980s New York listens to Mrs. Obama with horror at her inhumanity. By contrast, look to the Christian compassion toward those same Americans of two New York priests: Cardinal John O'Connor and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Or listen -- really really listen -- to the words of Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Cameroon.

It is the Left that now scolds without understanding or human feeling. The Squire Thwackems of the 21st century.

Sam Macomb

AN UNWANTED PRESCIENCE

April 1, 2009

"In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me./Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue." Psalm 120, KJV

One reason for the infrequency of my postings has been that since September of 2008, I have been attending adult catechism classes at a nearby Roman Catholic parish.

The instructor is well educated and a lively speaker. He would have to be to keep me awake for two hours on a Sunday morning. My enthusiasm and even devotion to this parish grew. For the first time in a long time I was engaged in something beyond this blog and my other writings. Something outside of myself. A rare place for a babyboomer.

That enthusiasm was precipitate.

When I began attending mass at the parish some two years ago, I wrote to Fr. Neuhaus at First Things to express a new-found spirit of faith and possibility, but with reservations. It would still be a while before I took that step to enter the Church, but already I worried that men such as myself might not be welcome. Men who, as boys, had been swept up, or, rather drgged down, into the gay subculture that had taken root in the priesthood and whose members were sexually out of control. That scandal and moral abandon is now incontrovertible public knowledge. I have written about my personal experiences -- the one-time-only pathetic fumblings of a middle-aged priest -- and the psychological warfare he waged thereafter as punishment for an imaginary betrayal and my unwillingness. Or, let's call it what it was and is -- my disgust.

It has never been something I talked about and I had told no one at the time -- not family, not teachers, not friends. I was determined not to reveal ancient history to anyone at the parish that I hoped would be my religious home. I suspect many of us "boys" are wary; watch what we say; and do not react to the negligent consciences and prejudices of the laity. Part of the struggle to forgive. Or so I thought.

Keeping the secret was the plan and keep the secret I have. But, for the second time in my life, I have been subjected to an indecency made all the more so for being done in public. A disturbed and unhappy person? No doubt. Oblivious to the damage inflicted on me? Certainly. That indecency rationalized and my humiliation dismissed by authority? Instantaneously.

The pain has not been less because the person involved was not a priest or anyone in an official or ecclesiastical capacity. But someone not completely in control of impulses and actions in public.

I was stunned; too stunned to react at the time. The frustration and humiliation accumulated over the week. I slept for only three or four hours a night. Exhaustion finally overwhelmed feelings.

The instructor now looked at me as if I had invited this pathology.

My collegialty and my pity may have been misconstrued but it seemed to me a radical misconstruction. A casual observer would have seen this person's unhappiness -- little more than a servant to a self-absorbed spouse. Going for food and drinks and receiving nothing, not even a nod of thanks. If she amplified my kindness; I underestimated her misery.

This past Sunday required all catechists to come to the communion rail for a final blessing. I could not make myself do it. It has always seemed perverse to me that the innocent party often feels more uncomfortable, more restricted while the guilty strut about like the unthinking children they are. A perversion only a conscience could produce.

When I ran into this couple yesterday evening at the local Macdonalds, I grabbed my Wall Street Journal, my coke, my coat, and fled. Literally. I hope they got the message. But the defenses seem thick.

Psalm 120 epigrammed above is from Mass this evening. As I watched my instructor assisting a visiting Orthodox priest I wondered for a brief moment if conscience, or a momentary burst of imaginative sympathy produced the thought that, just possibly, I was the injured party.

But no, as I watched him... nothing. No recognition. Before mass, a member of the class turned away with a faint smile of knowledge that he could not possibly possess.

On Holy Saturday, ten days from today, I am scheduled to be confirmed and receive Holy Communion. In spite of financial worries and an employer lurching toward bankruptcy, I still believed that the Easter Vigil would be a moment of joy and hope and anticipation. Now the outrage, the burning humiliation, the depression, make that seem unlikely. And there is always the possibility that I will be denied the Sacrament. My need for the Sacrament fights with a desire to flee these people and this parish.

Since that morning of March 22nd, the temptation to despair has been more than I want to admit. That this incident has been, in all that really matters, history repeating itself as a painful farce, makes it no easier to bear.

Prescience beyond anything wanted. I had always expected the struggle to be inside; warring within to forgive the Church; instead the conflict is visible for everyone to see. At least everyone in that room. And once again, the Church attacks my reputation.

So, the prodigal son becomes what he feared most: the prodigal stranger. Unwelcome, unwanted, wary, suspicious, outcast -- again. This past Sunday, as I stopped myself from joining the other catechists at the rail, a woman in the next pew looked at me, recognizing me from blessings at the altar on previous Lenten Sundays. She said nothing, but the question was on her face. Why aren't you up there?

I have cycled through all the emotions and only one is left. A grieving loss. Loss not of personal faith, but of sacramental recognition of that faith by the Church.

My alternatives are not the lawyers and psychiatrists of the episcopacy. Nor the cynical exploitation of a crisis by SNAP and Voices of the Faithful. And I am not welcome in the communion of saints.

The words of William F. Buckley, Jr. come back again and again. The last words of his Playboy interview. "I know that my Redeemer liveth."

I know that my Redeemer liveth. I have no heart to speculate what the Church knows.

Sam Macomb