Time for a Return

To Time Honored Traditions

When they came for organized religion I actually applauded. Steeped as I was in Catholic doctrine, yet seeing the reality of horrors within the church, I wanted to see the hypocrisy, deviance, and institutionalized corruption dismantled.

Not realizing that the moral foundations that guided my own behavior, that was webbed and threaded throughout my own community, that was sewn by the church. Never understanding that foundational principles that I took for granted, behavior I expected was commonplace and natural, were instead rooted deeply in the teachings, tenets, and resolve to be found at the heart of organized religion.

So we threw the baby out with the bathwater.

We withdrew from weekly attendance, we ignored all the sacraments. A pox on their house for their sins and transgressions. Not realizing, never associating, that we personally had been inculcated so deeply in the catechism and lessons through almost sixteen years of a Catholic education that we were defined by our association completely.

Which is not to say we were a moral being, it is not to claim we were a pious or even an honorable being, which we most certainly were not. But it is to say that we knew right from wrong. Each and every time. And that over time we came to an unspoken acknowledgment that following the righteous path led to a truer happiness.

We saw the concerted effort of others in positions of authority attack the church. We read the newspapers of record who condemned and questioned, we saw the media question faith itself. The very influential Time magazine from that time period inquiring in 1965, “Is God Dead”?

Make no mistake, organized religion was attacked, went under a prolonged attack, that continues today. Subtle at times, overt at other times, but always undermining, questioning, the flaws exacerbated, the virtues unnoticed.

I went along for both convenience, and out of a sense of disgust. I’d seen behind the curtain where the priests preyed on the young. I’d heard all about vows of poverty, as the newly ordained priest raised a gold plated chalice heavenward. As the Monsignor stopped in his brand new Cadillac on his way leaving the residency to admonish us all misbehaving on the playground.

Oh but a grateful and wealthy member of the congregation had given that new car to the head of our church. Yes, but he didn’t then trade it in on an older model and use the difference to assist the poor, now did the Monsignor?

The church itself sinned and I turned my back, not realizing that as we all turned our back, the virtues, the morals, the teachings, the very local sense of a community, would begin to decay.

Threads not worn, but torn. Sliced one college lesson at a time, snipped one newspaper or magazine article at a time. Cut completely on television news broadcasts, or one new television show at a time.

But why?

I went along but look back now with a sense of regret.

Because I can also look around and see the decline, and connect the lack of morality, the abject worship of material goods as false idols, the lust for money and power, and know that all of this has been accelerated due to a detachment from organized religion. It was all purposeful, and now I sit and ask “why”? And I do see so clearly the results of the detachment. We are no longer the same society from 1960, not even close, we’ve declined. A lack of connection to faith and church has contributed to our demise.

And I was there on the sidelines watching and cheering another huge development over this lifetime.

I heard my sisters much older than me, sixteen years older to be exact, lament they were born too early for the feminist revolution, and how they’d wasted their talents and drive because the only avenues they saw “up and out” were through either nursing or the secretarial pool. I mourned with them for their lost opportunities, for the fact they felt so penned in, and hidebound by a tradition that bound them.

When Helen sang “I am women, hear me roar”, I was happy for them all, this breaking down the fences and escaping their constraints. Too young to really understand the newfound freedom provided by “the pill”, or to understand just how profound that impact, I instead saw siblings reviewing a laundry list of college majors, I saw women giving us the news on television, one prominent women broadcasting from Washington, DC and an early pioneer, Cassie Mackin, was a distant relative of mine.

I was fully behind these newfound freedoms, these unbridled opportunities.

As such I paid no mind, we all paid no mind, to what might be lost in the process. No one ever sees big gains and wonders what is lost in the process.

The self-fulfilled woman took time to develop. Chasing a career path required time, levels of attainment, emotional investment.

It was all me time at the expense of we time.

Where pre-1965 women married early, in the post feminine wave they worked on “self”, dated later in life, married much later. Some so busy in chasing personal career dreams they sacrificed their reproductive years to the corporation, and woke up one day to find out that they could no longer procreate, and that a corporation doesn’t love you back.

And make no mistake at all, all of this was championed by the powerful amongst us. The New York Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine, television news, television programs, all championed the single working woman. This was a revolution, this was exciting, this was a new freedom to be exulted and cheered.

Pay no attention to any potential downside, this is a new dawn, and a new day, one of pure celebration, and no one is to question. Yes, yes indeed, women can have it all.

Repeat a lie in every direction using every available megaphone and do so at full throat, in a literal scream, and not only will you find willing support, you will find blind faith.

That initial euphoria over murdering the consequences of casual sex for half the population that paid the highest price for engaging, that newfound freedom absent restraint heralded in song, the new pursuits, the available opportunities, the self-supportive idea of not needing a man, and deciding if we even wanted a man in our lives, how intoxicating a notion.

A woman with her own money, her own apartment, her own direction and career, her own ability to face the world boldly absent the requirement of a partner of any kind.

The shock of this new development in the 1960’s, galvanized in the 1970’s, on to a lived reality in the 1980’s, and 1990’s. An entire new segment of society, the single working woman, making up half the population of society, now chasing the American Dream themselves with a reckless abandon.

But we all woke up this morning, over sixty years later, and we find that none of these women are happy. They are empty and unfulfilled. Today’s headlines claim that women’s mental health has become a serious issue, and women today take more drugs than ever before to stabilize their emotional state. We hear about these problems with “third wave feminism”, as if the first two waves crashed in a lack of fulfillment, promises unrequited.

Who knew that “having it all” would lead to a lack of fulfillment, an unhappiness felt all the way down deep in the soul?

Some return to a more traditional path, and early marriage, a coupling, procreation, the stay-at-home path so tried and true over centuries, could solve these problems.

Modern media is still on board with “having it all”, and so these “pioneers” today of younger marriage, earlier procreation, seek out their choice under duress and condemnation. Forced to wear the cloak of shame of “not having it all”, a traitor to their gender.

The daily drum beat for “girl power” from Hollywood, from Washington, DC, from all of the mainstream media, from even newer platforms such as Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram and more, the message is clear, those that fail to seek the feminist ideal are weak, have succumbed to the patriarchy, and are to be pitied at best, scorned, scolded, and “cancelled” at worst.

The Patriarchy. Such a modern concept, man as the enemy, not the life partner.

I was all on board. Watching from behind the male gaze at events unfolding, my gender would not allow me to understand or comprehend fully. I saw only the upside and no downside. Female empowerment in corporate America was a great advancement, and well worth any and all sacrifices to outmoded models of society. Those were all constraints to be broken, left wrecked in the wake of a new beginning for women all across our land.

I didn’t see the infantilization of the male population as a byproduct. With grown men into their mid-thirties sitting in a dank, dark, basement playing video games, instead of working hard to support a growing family. Shunned in their teens and twenties by the female half the population, they didn’t fight, they instead retreated to a solitary existence.

Is there anything more pathetic than a thirty-five year old man living at home, playing video games and watching sports center alone, night after night? Intimidated by this new career driven and powerful female, pitied by them.

I didn’t see the vast number of women who’d witness their own ability to procreate sacrificed on the altar of feminism, broken late in life as they realized too late that a job doesn’t love you back.

I didn’t realize the complications in relations between a man, and a women, to the extent that just dating might require a formal contract, lest a misunderstanding lead to a rape claim or worse.

I didn’t realize that the two rails of pursuit, from the feminist icon marching forth in self determination, while their sister “settled” to marry early, stay-at-home and raise a family, become a “housewife”, cannot live side-by-side as equals.

I never realized or saw how “choice” of lifestyle might become such an issue, where one lifestyle, the trad wife, could receive only condemnation and shame.

We could never have predicted that when Helen roared in song, it would change the face of the American family profoundly and forever.

We could never have predicted that after sixty years of this great experiment that women would be unhappier than ever before.

Unseen powers had a hand at work removing the threads of connection between citizen and church.

Unseen powers had a hand at work breaking down the traditional family in favor of the feminist revolution. And in some cases very seen powers, go back and view a few covers of “Cosmo” from the early 1970’s and into the 1980’s. I was going to include some in this column but they are embarrassing in their content, as well as their trumpeted advice to this new woman “having it all”.

Looking at where we are today I can’t say that either development has led us to become a better society.

The church had its flaws, and some rather egregious. But the moral teachings informed our lives in thorough.

Women having it all as an ideal has merit, no one should be hidebound by history. But the pursuit of happiness should not be measured by one’s commitment to the new cause of feminism, but by the methods and lifestyle of a true self-fulfillment.

Demonizing the “Ozzie and Harriet” America has come at a price.

If you don’t recognize that, you are too engulfed in the flames of the cause to step back and see the world as it is.

I participated. And now I regret not taking a more moderate stance.

Today I see something profoundly beautiful in the nuclear family. In a mother who views her highest and best commitment to the children she bears, in a father that believes it is his sacred duty to that family to provide.

And for them both to raise those children with some measure of an organized religion so that the foundations of morality, decency, and faith are inculcated into the next generation. Which will serve them best as they go through life facing all the difficult choices, standing at all those forks in the road.

I see the men today infantilized, broken, weak, and ineffective. I see the women today strong, powerful, and miserable. Deeply unhappy.

Whether by design of a guiding hand manipulating media and news, or the changing mores of the times, I do not know.

But I do suspect that if we can all move back towards some sanctioned vehicle to provide a foundational morality, and if we can all move back toward the benefits of a nuclear family structure, we will become a better neighborhood, which promotes a better community, and eventually a better nation.

I regret my own participation in these experiments, and can only hope we collectively have learned from our mistakes.