Question Authority

All Authority

How old were you when you began to question authority? Can you remember back, can you remember your childhood, being introduced to discipline in the family, discipline in the community, discipline in the classroom?

How did you react?

I’ve got to say I didn’t do too well.

I’ve always chafed under authority. Sad to say even from the parents, I guess I was God’s way of telling the parents they kept at some things a little too long. I was the youngest of six, and I’m pretty sure I was God’s way of telling them there should have been only five. They persisted, I was the lesson. Mom said the neighbor told her they didn’t even realize we had kids until they had me. I guess my questioning authority came with an elevated voice. This was back when houses had no air conditioning and you left all the windows open six months out of the year, they had screens. I’ll bet the neighbors used to turn off the TV or radio when I decided to tell the parents “no”, that had to be a better show than anything on in their home.

I pretty much questioned all authority figures from the first years of being exposed to the world at large. I can vividly recall sitting in church, listening to the priest discuss the poor, his sermon leading to some second collection plate during the end of the service meant to be given to some local Catholic charity. The Monsignor up there shaming everyone into reaching deep into their pockets for that second collection.

I recall being solely focused on the chalice at the center of the altar. Every priest had their own. The priest speaking was a Monsignor, leader of our particular parish, and his personal chalice was a real piece of art. A golden cup bejeweled with rubies around the base of the cup. A heavy looking thing, I remember thinking in my head, “well, maybe if you melted that chalice down for the gold, and sold off those little jewels in your cup, there’d be a lot of money for charity, you wouldn’t have to ask my father, a welder struggling to feed the family, to contribute to the poor.”.

I saw hypocrisy everywhere I looked as a small child.

I remember hearing about some vow of poverty the priests and nuns had taken. But the Monsignor used to pull up next to us kids in a fancy Buick, the kind with the faux leather roof, and landau windows etched in the back. A far better car than we had in the family. I questioned my mom about that vow of poverty and the fancy Buick, she said some parishioner had donated it to the Monsignor. For his use. But I still thought he should have traded it in on a basic Ford, and sent the difference to the poor. And he should have admonished the wealthier parishioner that there were others in need of help far greater than his own needs.

The nuns and priests of my youth were always concerned with the poor. And these poor, well, they were always off someplace else. Some other neighborhood. I looked around our own neighborhood, I didn’t see anyone doing too well. Seemed to me a lot of those donations would have gone a long way toward helping our own.

I saw kids come to school in ragged shoes. Ripped ties. We all had “uniforms”, navy blue pants, a white dress shirt, a navy tie. Some kids would rip the shirt elbow running around on the macadam playground after lunch. For the rest of the school year every other day they’d show up with the same ripped shirt, badly sewn back together at the elbow. Some families couldn’t even afford a new shirt mid-year.

I don’t know why we were so all concerned with some poor people somewhere else, when it didn’t seem to me the families right there in our own parish weren’t doing too well. We all could tell who they were. Some hit growth spurts early in the school year, but right up until the end of the semester there they were, wearing the same shirt they’d bought way back in August, now straining at the neck, waist, and arms at Christmas.

But you could really see it in the shoes. Kids would show you the bottoms with holes worn clean through. Didn’t stop them from finishing the semester in the same shoes.

I look around today and I see a lot of “Monsignors” in authority in our government. And in our leadership class.

Fanni Willis hired her boyfriend to go after her political enemy Trump, and overpaid him so they could take lavish vacations together, go on cruises, paid for by her largesse in juicing her boyfriends employment contract. She speaks behind the podium just like the priests of my youth, full of righteousness. But just like the Monsignor using the push buttons to close the window to all us alter boys he’d just admonished as heathen, in an age when everyone had roll-up windows and push button windows were a luxury item, Fanni Willis is full of shit.

Down in New Orleans the mayor Latoya Cantrell, another “public servant”, took a thirty-five thousand dollar junket to France on the public dime. She has a well documented habit of spending money from the public coffers to keep herself in luxury. She defends it all. She too is as full of shit as the Monsignor of my youth.

Hillary got rich in “public service”, Joe and Hunter Biden got rich in “public service”. So has Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama.

I grew up wanting to question authority. I thought the idea of “public service” was to be of service to the public. I didn’t realize it meant “grab all you can for yourself, put a few jewels at the bottom of your cup, it looks great”.

I must be alone in wanting to question authority. No one in the press or mainstream media seems concerned about money spent going to Ukraine, or taking a cruise with your boyfriend on the public dime, or Hillary managing to create a hundred-fifty-million dollar slush fund, uh, charity, from her years in “public service”.

I feel like that little kid in the uncomfortable wooden pew. My tiny bony ass hurting like hell, wanting to kneel down on that velvety covered kneeler, except mom keeps pulling me up saying it isn’t that time in the service to be kneeling, and so I shift, and shift on the balls of my backside, hurting like Hell. And listening to the priest lecture me the same way these politicians do. About how we have to help the poor pouring across our borders. Or to create programs to help the poor Blacks and Browns, or how we all need to dig deep and contribute as in a second collection to assist others.

All while I want to question why it seems so many of those preaching are just helping themselves.

Wanna know what is even crazier?

We couldn’t just vote the Monsignor out of the parish, but we can sure vote those feeding themselves well at the public trough right on out.

But get this, we don’t.

Out in the secular parish we just keep voting the self-serving to keep helping themselves.

I guess I’m the only one left that wants to question authority.