This is the fortieth anniversary of the protests of 1968, a time of significant unease and uncertainty. In retrospect, nothing that happened in the United States or France comes close to matching the bravely inspiring Czech and Slovak people. And it is worth pausing, I think, to remember a summer and fall of discontent that presents us with a timeless lesson: it is not possible to live well without self-sacrifice. This was a period when abstract justice and grand theories of global liberation overwhelmed mutual, unconditional, personal love, communal tradition, and valuing the things of enduring personal significance, namely family, tradition, and place. For example, sexual and women’s so-called liberation – encouraged by men eager to take advantage – only trivialized both sex and love, leaving the emotional and spiritual wreckage of a cold, impersonal disconnection. Eros absent procreation is commodification – and may we never forget it….our species is erotic, social, relational, generative, and, in the end, transcendent. We must recognize that human political will cannot liberate unfulfilled human capabilities: freedom as a supreme principle is an empty end unless there is an understanding of what it is for. We must know, therefore, what is good in the human life. The supposed liberating impersonalities of organization, structure, and technology follow, in the good society, the constraints of personal subordination required for authentic community, communion, and emotional bond: Christian self-sacrifice and Christ in the Sacraments. This is our true purpose. Any insistence of justice and freedom that is to not descend into destruction and self-parody should articulate such a compelling standard.
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