A Mission for Old Married People

May 23, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

If you have been faithfully married for a long time, you are likely out of touch with just how different the world of sex and dating is now than when you were young and single.

(By “long” here, I mean “decades” not “it feels like forever”. Not in any way minimizing the challenges and victories of the earlier years, but if you are still in the early years, you probably know more about the contemporary single-world than those who’ve been out of that game for a couple decades or longer. And the “faithfully” is important, since a fair bit of what faithfully-married persons don’t go doing is precisely what brings us to the mission.)

When you were young-and-single, Old Married Reader, it is likely that no matter how much you bungled it, there was still a generalized belief that faithful, lifelong marriage was a real, attainable, desirable thing.

It is likely you had doubts, of course, because if you are part of the under-80 set, you have spent your entire marriage under steady pressure to cut your losses and run if things aren’t as fulfilling as the magazine says they ought to be. And of course you understand that sometimes one or both spouses is simply incapable of behaving with the remotest shred of decency, and genuine abuse is not, at all, the same thing as sticking it out with your notably flawed but genuinely loving and committed other-half.

Old Married Reader, what you need to know is that a whole lotta single persons these days have no concept of the value of marriage that you yourself took for granted back in the day. You yourself perhaps never even gave it much thought, back then. It simply was. Fall in love, get married, hope it works out because you know that’s the good life, and you want a good life. That was our world.

That world is not the one known to most younger adults — nice kids, who mean well, and who want to live a fulfilling life for themselves and for others — their world is not at all like the world we dated in.

They live in a world where sex is entirely, totally, radically divorced from marriage and procreation. They live in a world that has no hope that faithful, committed, loving marriage can be a thing.

How hopeless are they? It’s not just the porn addiction and relentless promiscuity and the online sugar daddies. On the other end of the spectrum are those who won’t date anyone, because none of the candidates are divorce-proof enough, no matter how keen the other person is to settle down and raise a family. They want to date but somehow never can, because they’ve seen how many different ways a spouse’s faults can be marriage-ending, and thus are terrified to commit to anyone who isn’t the picture of Perfect Marriage Material.

They have, in short, become unable to fall in love.

Old Married Person, I know your marriage isn’t all that great. You’ve been at this for two or three or four decades or more, and your spouse still doesn’t have it together, and neither do you. Whole self-help books have been written about your glaring faults, with bonus chapters devoted to your lesser ones. If you had kids, they’ve turned out to be just normal people like yourself, not winning any Picture of Total Perfection awards.

And yet, by simple fact of choosing to keep on loving each other (even though you bungle it sometimes) and keep on staying faithfully committed to each other, you two who are really not that impressive on most measures of human achievement have managed to accomplish this amazing thing. Your marriage is far, far greater than the sum of you two parts. Indeed, the fact of your still loving each other (bungled, but genuine) and still being faithfully committed to each other is the most impressive thing you’ve ever done.

It’s involved denying yourself many, many other opportunities. You’ve set aside dreams that really mattered to you. Your spouse has been, at times, a source of pain to you, and likewise you to your spouse. Caring for him or her has meant letting go of parts of you. In exchange you’ve created, together, a world that doesn’t look like much on the outside, but when you probe it you discover depth and meaning that, frankly, it’s darn unbelievable someone like you could even pull off.

Single people need to know about this world.

They need to know that entering into the vocation of lifelong faithful commitment to the man or woman you fell in love with is fulfilling. It is meaningful. It is worthwhile. And above it: It is possible.

It doesn’t require two people who are ideal marriage material. It requires two people who are 100% committed to faithful, lifelong love for one another, and who acknowledge there’s going to be some bungling, it’s honestly not going to be glamorous, and that good-enough in the marriage department doesn’t play well for an audience, but hello? It’s not a show. It’s a life. A real life. A hard life. A good life.

***

Old Married People, I write to you because what you have is no longer a commonplace. Many young people have zero exposure to the reality of faithful, lasting, good-enough marriages. They think it’s impossible, or they think it’s a luxury for rare specimens of extraordinary perfection. They have not an inkling of how good a faithful marriage is.

And thus, OMP, there is a genuine mission calling your name: Let people know.

If you’re widowed, speak openly of the years you had with your spouse, both the good and the difficult. If you are both still alive, be available for single people who want to spend time with the two of you, seeing what this marriage business is really like.

For all OMP’s, be open to conversation with younger married couples who need some realistic feedback on the problems they are facing, and how to fruitfully (and safely — abuse is real, it does happen) work through them.

***

This isn’t a new mission, its just that the missionaries are fewer on the ground than in previous generations. I’d like to say right now that I’m incredibly grateful for the many older relatives and friends who have been an example and an inspiration for my own marriage. Not because they are perfect people, but because they are imperfect people.

Lessons on how to stay faithful when both of you are perfectly-perfect are utterly irrelevant to me. An example of faithfulness when both of you have some pretty obvious weaknesses and foibles? Yep, we needed that.

We still need that.

***

OMP, your life isn’t shiny and it doesn’t always photograph well. But your life is important. It’s important to you and it’s important to your family and friends, of course. But dear one, your life is desperately important to the legions of young people who have grown up without any exposure to old married persons like yourself.

It’s scary, because you know your weaknesses. You know very well your marriage is not fully accomplished until one of you have breathed your last, and even after it still unfolds. But put it out there anyway. There are legions of single persons whose lives could pivot towards genuine happiness, albeit the hard kind, if only they knew how real and attainable is your humdrum exceptional world.

A Week in Politics and Church Scandals

November 11, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

Happy Veteran’s Day! My favorite veteran-related post (from my own archives — many other people have done more and better) is here. The deceased veteran, a young man I never got to meet in person, son of a longtime internet friend and whom every year at this time I remember the most among all the veterans I have known more personally, is memorialized here.

***

Blog silence over the past week or so is because I haven’t had anything helpful to add to the public discourse. But, in summary form, before getting into Church talk below, here are my responses to the great debates in the wake of the presidential election:

My personal opinion is that Biden is probably the legitimate winner of the popular and electoral college votes, though obviously the race was quite close. I would be surprised if it turned out otherwise.
Given the obvious stakes in a close race for a powerful office, it would not be surprising for any losing candidate of such a race to request recounts and investigations into possible fraud. I think the time and expense is a good investment in upholding the republic. If there has been no fraud, wonderful. It will do Biden, and the nation, well to be shown the clear and honest winner of the election. If there has been fraud, regardless of whether it changes the outcome of the election, it is of benefit to everyone that we detect and root it out. I see no reason why anyone would object to giving careful scrutiny to a matter of such national and international import.
Because I have the seen the dishonesty, bias, and hype generated by partisans on both sides of the race, I find that the bulk of my Twitter feed is now full of opinions and assertions from both left and right that I must simply disregard. No dearies, I am not going to go fact check every single one of your hysterical memes and outrage-tweets. Consider that developing a reputation for credibility can only help your cause, and that lying does the opposite.

And on that theme, moving on to the McCarrick report:

Michael Brendan Dougherty’s comments here seem to be right on point.
If you need a refresher, at this placeholder site you can download the Pennsylvania Grand Jury’s report on Catholic cover-ups of abuse. Of particular connection to the McCarrick case is the involvement of McCarrick’s protégé, Cardinal Wuerl.
And in my reading this week I stumbled on this highly-localized blog devoted to abuse cases at two New Jersey Catholic schools; it provides some good context for understanding the higher-level actions mentioned in the McCarrick report.
Here, for example, is a news report on a jury award for a school coach who claims that in 2005 he was fired when the headmaster “retaliated against him because he reported the headmaster for making two students uncomfortable when he excessively hugged them and patted them on their buttocks.”
I would like a “What did you know and when did you know it?” report from the Catholic University of America.

I think the McCarrick report should be required reading for any man discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Not to dissuade him; if God calls you, that’s where you go. Rather, so that he understands what he’s walking into.

Does every seminarian get groped by a superior? Not that I’ve heard. But is every priest working under a hierarchal culture where covering-up is the norm, and where generations of ordinaries have been selected for their willingness to keep their heads down and see-no-evil? Yes indeed.

The Lord tells us to count the cost before we follow Him. We still follow. But, the more you understand the immensity of the sacrifice you are undertaking, the more sanely you can accept the suffering that comes from the moments when the sacrifice is felt most keenly. Your heart will be pierced with a sword, so better to understand that’s part of the program.

***

I don’t have magic consolations to share in the face of the horrendous evils reported in the McCarrick report.

I certainly can’t assure anyone contemplating the Catholic faith that you won’t experience horrible things at your local Catholic parish and diocese — of this type, of some other type, perhaps of just the mundane low-level indifference that typifies so many bureaucracies. Maybe you will luck into a fantastic Catholic experience, but maybe you won’t.

I can say that McCarrick is the reason I added the chapter on “Integrity” in the evangelization book.

I can say that my reason for being Catholic is not because I have always had a good Catholic experience. I sometimes have wonderful Catholic experiences, and sometimes I do not.

I can say that Jesus always shows up in the Holy Eucharist, and that is the center of my faith.

I can say that my reason for being Catholic is because the Catholic faith is true.

***

Horrible people at a parish or a diocese or a Vatican pseudo-investigation can’t change that reality.

I have known many beautiful, wonderful, good, holy people in the Catholic Church. They are not the reason I am Catholic — though I am daily grateful for their presence and company.

The reason I am Catholic is that this is the Church Jesus Christ founded, and my goodness with the way Catholics behave, if it weren’t the Church He promised would prevail against the gates of Hell, it wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes.

When Christ became Man, He became one with a fallen human race. He did not fall, yet He bore our fallenness. And so, likewise, His Church continues to bear the suffering of unity with fallen man. It is a hard thing. But it is a temporary thing. Come Lord Jesus.

***

In my final, lighter bit of news-related commentary: I, too, like the devotional song “On Eagle’s Wings” — I know! — though I would not think to quote it in a political speech. All the same, I’d rather a good Dies Irae at my funeral. Thanks.

Photo: Arlington National Cemetery, courtesy of Wikimedia, Public Domain. Two of my grandparents are buried here, though their graves are not shown in this photo. If you wonder why I get all Bill of Rights on people, this is why.

Feeling Pushed Towards Trump

October 23, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

This is a post about my feelings, and if you aren’t too thrilled with these feelings, welcome to the club. I write about them not because I’m going to tidy up the loose ends at the conclusion with a neatly reasoned-out policy recommendation, but because I think I am not alone in feeling this way, and so I think my current feelings are pertinent to the public discourse.

Here is the feeling I am having: I am a never-Trumper who is probably going to vote for Trump.

Longtime readers know that I find Trump, as an individual and as a leader, to be abhorrent. You also know that I have repeatedly made the case for voting third party. My reasoning is that we’re in a Don’t Blame Me I Voted for Kodos situation, and that voting third party provides valuable information and incentives to the major parties about how they need to shift their platforms, and thus provides a longer-term policy-directing effect.

The reason I am feeling pushed towards Trump, and at such a late date, and despite my strong inclinations otherwise, is that I no longer feel this is a Kang v. Kodos scenario. From the right, I continue to see the usual callous indifference to the lives of ordinary people, but it’s just indifference. The message I am getting from the left is that I am a target they mean to destroy.

I’m not real comfortable with that.

***

One of my frustrations revolves around the Affordable Care Act. I absolutely agree that our health care system did and still does need reform. I am grateful for the expansion of government-provided healthcare coverage to the poor, even if that expansion comes with significant weaknesses. You can always improve on an imperfect first step without hating the first step. However, I also know middle-income families who were literally being bankrupted by the no-win choice between paying a hefty fine or making a mandatory purchase of a product they could not afford and could not afford to use. Lowering the penalty to zero at least allowed them to not lose all their savings and go into debt while they continue to lack access to medical care.

Just yesterday morning I spoke to a friend who fears for her life when she goes into work as a gas station clerk in a part of town where armed robberies are a persistent threat, but she can’t afford to give up the job, because it’s full-time and thus comes with benefits, unlike most other unskilled service jobs in her area. No one — left or right — in leadership is taking the initiative to unchain workers from the gig economy and the lack of employment mobility that comes from needing to hang on desperately to a benefits-providing job if you can get one. The ACA was good for her family when she was a single, homeless mom. Now that she’s married and her husband has regular work and she has regular work? The ACA has nothing for them but instructions to keep on going in every night and hope for the best.

With that perspective, watching Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearings was . . . repulsive. Democrat after democrat came at her with sob stories, as if she, personally, were out to destroy the lives of people who benefit from the ACA. Repeatedly she said she was not hostile to the ACA, and that furthermore there was hope that all the benefits of the ACA would hold up in court even if the penalty component were found unconstitutional. What’s never on the agenda? The obligation of Congress to write laws that are constitutional.

***
I value the US Constitution. I think that it is a powerfully effective document for holding together our republic. I think that the many amendments that have been added to it over the past two centuries are evidence that we are able to improve upon the original vision of the founders of this nation, and we are able to continue to rectify the injustices that were pervasive in times past.

So when there’s a party that is aggressively campaigning on the idea that a given act of Congress — no matter how perfect, and in this case we’re speaking of one that is dreadfully, life-destroyingly imperfect — is so vital to our nation that the Supreme Court needs to set aside the rule of law as laid out in our Constitution and just vote to uphold the act . . . . I have a problem with that.

Even if the entire ACA were overturned because the court found the unconstitutional sections were not severable, you could just take that 1000-page document, mark out the unconstitutional bits with sharpie markers, and pass it again (if in fact that’s what the American people want, after all these years of living with that law). So what I saw from Democrats in the ACB hearings was indifference to the importance of abiding by the US Constitution. That is a threat to me.

***
From Biden himself comes, and has come, a more specific threat. It’s an older promise, but which feels more ominous in light of seeing the rest of his party in action. He made it a point of his campaign platform that he’d require religious employers to provide services that are in direct violation of firmly held religious beliefs.

Now let’s review here: There is no reason that religious employers — whether part of a religious order like the Little Sisters of the Poor or just ordinary people who own a business or hire contractors — can’t simply pay cash to their employees cover the cost of the objectionable services. If your religious beliefs keep you from paying for xyz medical service, then instead you can be required to give your employees a cash payment they can use to purchase a rider from the government covering that service, or to cover other out of pocket health care costs. Problem solved.

This is easy. Piece. of. cake. Everyone can get the medical care they want, no one has to directly pay for services that violate their conscience.

Biden won’t do that. He is determined to carry on the Obama-era mission to destroy religious employers who dare ask for an alternate way to resolve this conflict — a way that respects all parties.

As I say, this was already a grave concern earlier this year. The reason I am feeling more keenly this sense of threat is that I’ve now seen how brazenly the Democrats do not care about the constitutionality of the legislation they pass. That combined with the ominous threat of court-packing to buy themselves enough justices to do their bidding . . . that’s a serious concern.

***
Another reason I feel more ill at ease is that I’ve seen how much the left will not tolerate the reality of religious belief. One of the wonders of the US Constitution is that it protects the freedom of individuals to be wrong. Majority opinion legislates, but minority rights are protected: You remain free to speak, to think, and to govern your private affairs according to your own beliefs, however unpopular.

This is the only way for a pluralistic society to survive. What I am seeing is that the Left which Biden and Harris pander to cannot tolerate this pluralism.

Here’s yet another example of campus movements to shut down free debate among disagreeing points of view.
Here’s Dianne Feinstein of all people being censored by the left for behaving in a civil manner across party lines — not caving, not compromising, just being polite. The audacity!
Here’s the letter from Harper’s that made woke heads spin because the Old Left still believes in free speech.
Here’s the Associated Press being horrified that a private, church-run school would dare hold beliefs that its church has accepted as doctrine for 2,000 years, and would therefore discourage those who disagree with those beliefs from attending and teaching at such a school — even though it means turning down tuition money, and even though this is an entirely private, 100% voluntary initiative which nobody is required to support in any manner. We are not speaking here of legally-mandated attendance at your local public school. This is people doing their thing entirely privately, and no one needs get involved who doesn’t care for that thing.
Here’s a whole Twitter feed of nothing but radical feminists standing up for the reality of the female sex against the woke-left that wants to shut down anyone, left or right, who insists that human biology is a thing.
Here’s The Atlantic on the real fear that left-leaning academics have if they fail to be woke enough and end up getting cancelled.

I could spend all day producing examples from both the right and the left of how strong is the pressure to conform or be ruined. What’s distinguishing here, as far as the presidential campaign is concerned, is that Biden seems to be on board with pandering to and carrying out initiatives that suppress individual freedoms.

Given two parties that will both focus on self-enrichment while give lip-service to trending ideals and throwing the odd biscuit to the American public, voting for a narcissistic womanizing demagogue seemed like a no-go until it became apparent that his opponent isn’t just going to leave you in your mess, he’s willing smear you flat if that’s what it takes.

***

I want to briefly discuss COVID-19. I think Trump has utterly bungled the handling of pandemic, and that had previously firmed up my decision to vote third party. That said, I find it dishonest to blame him for every single life lost, as if he were personally responsible for the varying policies from state to state, personally responsible for every person who decides to ignore public health advice, personally responsible for the utter nonsense propaganda from WHO and the CDC condemning and shaming those who wanted to use masks and face coverings early in the pandemic, and personally responsible, I suppose, for the virus itself. However, he’s done his fair share. At least a few bodies can be laid at his feet, and as president he should have been a better leader. No argument there.

Alas, I have seen nothing whatsoever that indicates a Democrat administration would be any better. Early in the pandemic, when a whole slate of Democrat senators were campaigning in the primaries, they had nothing to say about how to handle the pandemic. There has been no counter-plan. Even as late as last night’s debate, Biden had no real plan to offer. Vague threats and promises are not a plan.

I wish we had candidates who were serious about public health, but we don’t.

***
Something else that is pushing me towards Trump is the double standard in certain Democrat-run states towards freedom of worship. I’m not against public health measures in the face of a deadly pandemic. But when religious gatherings are subject to rules far stricter than any other equivalent public event, that’s a violation of religious liberty. As a religious believer, yes, that makes me feel personally targeted.

***

The final reason my feelings are shifting so dramatically is seeing the role of the mainstream media in all this. What distinguishes a Trump presidency from a Biden presidency is that under Trump, the press will investigate. We’ll continue to have a working fourth estate.

In contrast, when a possible scandal concerning Biden came to light this month, Twitter actively suppressed the news, while the mainstream media stood by whistling and declining to get curious about what the facts might be. This would be the same Twitter that’s just fine with pornhub tweeting away. It’s not about integrity. It’s about Biden at all costs. Here’s those right-wing shills at Harper’s discussing the media blackout of news that makes Democrats look bad:

Once again, the suppression of bad omens is accompanied by the suppression or airbrushing of bad news. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and NPR have all grossly underreported the destruction from riots and looting this summer. Many of the cities where protests occurred have Democratic mayors, and in most cases, these mayors understated the violence and chose not to call in the National Guard until the rubble was piled high. Instead, they addressed the rioters as if they were a slightly unruly group of students who probably meant well. An ABC News tweet on July 26 offered an unintentional parody of the tendency: “Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified.” “Intensified” there functioned as a revolutionary euphemism for gutted shops, broken windows, stolen goods—just as, in the second stage of the French Revolution, “effervescence” became a euphemism for terror.

“They don’t hear us” has become “They don’t know about this” (because we are playing it down). But the image-saturated and scandal-rich online environment affords access to anyone. Readily available photos and video clips show police stations and government buildings on fire and city shops with broken or boarded-up windows. Conservative papers such as the Washington Examiner and the Daily Mail are online, too, and they say out loud and freely display the things the Times and Post hint at. The divided coverage of the riots has continued a pattern from an earlier stage of the university-to-media cultural revolution. One had to look to the conservative press to catch a glimpse of the miscarriages of #MeToo, for example, or abuses of authority in the early hunt for a Trump-Russia connection. On the other hand, one relied on the corporate liberal media for truths suppressed or ridiculed on the right, concerning the reality of climate change or Trump’s likely reasons for firing five inspectors general in April and May. The ideological division of labor in honest reporting, taken to this length, is new in this country, and it is ominous.

The most startling exhibit of a selective approach to facts and logic arrived as soon as the Floyd protesters broke the rules of the novel coronavirus lockdown. One began to see medically certified notices of approval and solidarity with the crowds. The most remarkable specimen may have been an open letter publicized in the first days of June and signed by 1,288 “public health professionals.” The mass demonstrations, this letter asserted, might seem to violate previous orders on the health restrictions necessary in a time of pandemic. However, the exception was justified because racism itself constitutes a health crisis, and perhaps a greater one than the pandemic. The double standard was jaw-dropping.

Read the whole thing.

***

Which reminds me: I’ve got a problem with the uncontrolled rioting and looting, which appears to be chiefly a problem in Democrat-run states. I care about racism. I care about police brutality. I wish Senator Tim Scott’s limited-but-not-nothing legislation to begin tracking incidents of police brutality had not been shut down by House Democrats. And I care deeply about freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and the right to protest. I do think that peaceful protests need to be protected even in a pandemic.

But rioting and looting? That’s a problem for me. That is a direct threat to the well-being of all Americans. What I am seeing is a clear partisan divide on who tolerates the violence who does not.

***

So, in sum, I am feeling pushed towards voting for Trump because on so many different levels it seems that my inalienable rights and my personal well-being are actively targeted by the ruling powers among the left, and that Biden and Harris are integral to that threat.

I remain deeply disturbed by some of what I see from Trump and his administration. I don’t like being in this corner. But what I am feeling right now, a couple weeks before the election, is that a second Trump administration will be four more years of what we’ve gotten thus far, but a Biden-Harris administration will be four years of sitting in the bullseye while they do what they can to destroy my freedom as a religious person and as a private individual.

And that doesn’t feel good.

Photo: Strawberry Topshell, Clanculus pharaonius, via Wikimedia, CC 3.0.

How to Create a Safe, Fun Autumn’s Night Activity for Children

September 12, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

There’s a pandemic on, and it can be tough to find ways to let kids get out and have fun in a safe manner, especially if you want to do something that brings the whole community together in, say, a traditional cultural celebration. So here’s an idea:

Think up a theme for your event that makes it easy to include masks in a fun, playful way. Perhaps something involving costumes?
Create a “drive by” (walk-by) type event, where rather than congregating in large groups, children stop for a very short (less than one minute) visit at a neighbor’s house, staying outdoors at all times and traveling in sibling groups or paired with just one or two close friends from their usual bubble or pod.
Insist that all treats related to the festivity be store-bought, individual servings, fully sealed.
Build up a culture of parental supervision over the consuming of treats, so that it is fully ingrained, through generations of public service announcements, that children must not eat their treats until the parents have looked over the offerings.

Some additional special-to-COVID precautions:

Have the children collect all their treats in a bag, so that parents who have extraordinary concerns about germs on the sealed candy wrappers can simply give their children different treats to snack on the night of the large, festive, communal activity, and children can eat their collected candy later in the week after any germs have had a chance to die.
Elderly or vulnerable persons who want to participate can set out their bowl of treats for children to self-serve, while the hosts watch from behind the safety of a glass storm door or window.

Wouldn’t that make a great neighborhood event for a dark, chilly autumn evening? What a great way to safely add a bit of fun and communal spirit to the vigil of All Saints, for example?

Maybe we should try it this year, as a safe alternative to gathering in large groups indoors. Maybe we could give it a catchy name to help build up enthusiasm. Perhaps, “Trick-or-Treating?” Something like that.

Photo: Halloween masks on display, courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 3.0, by Lyd0286.

Stepping Off the Political Fear-Mobile

September 8, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

Full disclosure before we begin . . . I’ll be getting in line at my local polling place this November (I anticipate no problems, it’s a well-run precinct) to cast my three-for-the-price-of-one vote, if my critics are to be believed: One vote for a third-party candidate TBD, and therefore, I’m informed, that also means I’ll be casting one vote each for Trump and Biden. Okay, that’s fine. Let’s talk about why.

This afternoon I commented to the SuperHusband that the present political climate makes clear to me how Hitler came to power. Not because I think either of our presidential candidates are “basically Hitler” (though they do each have their moments), but because I am seeing how the sale of paranoia causes otherwise-reasonable people to set aside reason in supporting one terrible candidate over the other.

Note well here: Given a slate of miserable options, I am sympathetic to any voter who looks over the options and determines that one or the other of the major party candidates is the better choice. So be it.

What astonishes me is the level of vitriol I have seen among previously-respectful persons who now are declaring that any acquaintance who supports the opposing candidate is, by definition, an evil person. The wrong candidate is nothing but evil, and therefore someone who votes for the wrong candidate is a bad person, plain and simple.

This is the actual thinking, if I am to believe the words they are saying, of real people I know on both sides of the political spectrum. Not far-right or far-left extremists. These are not people slinging molotov cocktails with this year’s hot new version of anarchists, nor people training with a like-the-Klan-but-without-the-sheets white-supremacist militia. These are normal people. White middle-class people, as it happens. And they are full of vitriol for other white middle-class people who have the gall to publicly support the opposing side.

They are being played.

Friends, let us consider the last two election cycles. In 2016, the Republican party, handed an election that was theirs to lose after all the many ways the Obama administration exasperated budget-minded conservatives, mounted a slate of candidates so milquetoast and out of touch with their base that Donald Trump won the Republican primary. What? How? How can your party be that pathetic? And yet it happened. Also in 2016: The Democrats mounted the one and only candidate in the world capable of losing to Trump. Not by much, but it happened.

Alas Republicans don’t get a fresh slate for 2020, but you would think that the Democrats would recognize their opportunity to grab at a landslide; instead we have a presidential candidate who may or may not have dementia, and a vice-presidential candidate who is known for policing the poor into prison . . . in a year when the nation is up in arms over police corruption. Um–? What? How?

But they can do this, because both parties know that they have a 50-50 chance of winning no matter who they run for president. If you are politician at any level other than chief executive, it is in your interest for the other party’s terrible presidential candidate to win office. Why? Because then voters will be terrified into keeping you in office lest the other terrible party get too much power.

You are not obligated to support this system.

If you truly think your presidential candidate is a good person? Great. Vote your conscience. But if your candidate’s chief attributes are “at least he’s not the other guy” than we can see right through your bluster.

If you continue to vote for pretty-bad candidates, you will continue to get pretty-bad candidates. It is possible for darkhorse candidates to win in the US. We know this because for goodness sake Donald Trump has already won once and he might do it again. By refusing to settle for voting into office a terrible person, you can create a large enough swing that half-decent candidates . . . well, okay, I’m cynical too.

But come on. Quit voting for people you despise. Quit falling for the hype of the other guy is a fate worse than the death. The other guy is not the next Hitler. The other guy is going to pander to his corporate donors, he’s going to profiteer off his office, and he’s going to institute a combination of good and bad policies.

Even if the other guy is, say, announcing that killing innocent children is a non-negotiable part of his platform . . . he’s only able to get away with it because plenty of people you know are desperate to kill their children and can’t bear the thought of losing the means to do so efficiently. That’s the reality of American politics. Real-live Hitlers are rare. Much more common: Power-hungry people lusting for the chance to be king-of-the-world will say whatever it is they think you want to hear.

Use your vote to let the next round of candidates know what you want to hear.

When you vote a terrible candidate into office, the real effect is not that your terrible candidate magically becomes a good person. The real effect is that citizens who can see how terrible your candidate is become more willing to overlook the serious problems in your candidate’s opponent. Voting for bad candidates fuels the paranoia of the other side.

If you know that both candidates are terrible choices, please consider stepping off the merry-go-round of fear and instead voting 3rd party this year.

But most of all, quit hating your fellow Americans.

Even if, for whatever reason, you determine that one of the major parties truly does offer a good-enough slate, consider letting go of your vitriol. Consider the possibility that your fellow citizens are not, in the main, out to destroy all you hold dear. Maybe they are misguided. Maybe they are deceived. If they are engaged enough to bother voting — or disenchanted enough to have given up on voting — the odds are they are just trying to live an ordinary, comfortable life, same as you.

You do not benefit from pitting yourself against other ordinary people who are, for the most part, just like yourself.

Who benefits from the divisiveness? Politicians, that’s who. Vote for whom you will, but don’t fall for their hate-games. Thanks.

Here, have a horse photo. Courtesy of Wikimedia, public domain.

IVG and Poly-Parenting vs. Adoption and Step-Parenting

August 22, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

“IVG” is in vitro gametogenesis, an emerging technology that allows the creation of babies (baby mice, at the moment) from the genetic material of one, two, three, or more parents. You can have a baby genetically descended from a lone parent, a baby genetically descended from a half-dozen gene-donors . . . whatever suits. It is the next-level in designer baby-making.

[False cognate alert: “IVG” in French means interruption voluntaire de grossesse, aka avortement — abortion. So take note in translating back and forth that you don’t mix-up the two reproduction-related initialisms.]

At Public Discourse Matthew Lee Anderson writes about the importance of considering how poly-parenting and sole-parenting would affect children — both in the present generation and in the future. I’d like to discuss here a single aspect of that question: How does IVG and poly-parenting, as well as lone-parenting, differ from adoption and step-parenting?

We Start with Good People

Many of us can point to people we know who stepped in as an adoptive parent or step-parent and made life so much better for the children in question, often in a heroic manner.

This could be a single person who adopted an orphaned child despite the incredible work involved in rearing any child alone, and the far more daunting reality of rearing a child from a traumatic background.

This could be a group of adults — perhaps a religious order, perhaps a team of foster parents at a group home — who together work to provide a stable, safe, loving environment for children who have no other place to call home.

This could be an adoptive couple who set aside their prospect of a wealthier, more carefree life, in order to provide a home for a child in need.

This could be older parents who make room in the home, and accept as one of their own, a friend or school mate of their teen or adult child who has been disowned by the family of origin.

And finally, it could be a beloved step-parent or a non-parent family member who took on parental responsibilities after the death or tragic departure of a biological parent.

I cite these examples because in discussing IVG, we don’t want to compare only to the “bad examples”of volunteer-parenting, whether that be the scandal of some self-serving, orphan-collecting adoptive parent on Instagram, an abusive orphanage past or present, the money-raking or child-molesting foster parent on the nightly news, or a couple for whom the divorce and remarriages cast doubt on the virtue of the parents and step-parents. We know of such cases (or think we do) and they do not make a useful comparison for the purpose of pinning down what is different between a “good” IVG parent and a “good” adoptive or step-parent.

So: Whatever scenario it takes for you to allow that a foster parent, step-parent or adoptive parent is “good,” no matter how strict or expansive your definition, put that set of circumstances in your mind before we continue.

If you can, try to think of a particular foster, step- or adoptive parent you particularly admire. Think of someone who is truly attentive and responsible as a parent, who is truly a blessing to the entire family, and who has made a notable difference for the better in the life of the child they have reared or helped to rear. Think of someone who is good in general. Someone who is virtuous. Someone you like.

I can think of many such people, but then I’m particularly blessed in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I hope you are too.

Good Intentions are Not the Whole Story

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that the people seeking a poly-parenting or lone-parenting situation may well be acting with good intentions. The desire to love a child, care for a child, and sacrifice for a child are normal, natural, healthy desires. In another age, that lone- or poly-parent might have been the foster, adoptive, kin- or step-parent who took in an orphaned child, back when early-adulthood mortality rates were so much higher. Given this death-haunted, fallen world, the species needs people with an open heart towards loving and caring for a child who is not theirs by the usual route of marriage and biological parenthood.

The reality is that few, if any, young couples just getting married or just conceiving their first child have any real notion of just how magnificent and all-encompassing their vocation as spouse and parent is going to be. No amount of second-hand knowledge, no matter how close on the bench you sit, is a replacement for actually being the spouse or the parent. If the first year of marriage or parenting is eye-opening, a quarter-century is another animal altogether. I expect none of us truly understand the full scope of our vocations until we are able to digest the whole from the viewpoint of eternity.

So. On the face it, here we have one person, or a group of persons, whose intention might be to purchase themselves a designer baby, but who just as likely are intending to create a happy, loving family in which to raise a cherished new person.

That said, we must distinguish between good intentions and the objective nature of the way we seek to carry out those intentions.

To Orphan and to Purchase

I wish I could find the meme in order to give it proper credit (if someone has it, post it at the discussion group and I’ll update here), but I wish to share the paraphrase of a quote that captured, for me, the intensity with which laudatory public monuments to slave-owners and slave-traders perpetuates the wounds of slavery. It went something like this:

If someone kidnapped your child and trafficked it, what kind of statue would you like to erect for that person?

This jarring summation captures two aspects of the debate over public monuments.

Ancestry Matters

The first is the power of descent: We as human beings naturally feel a deep, personal connection with our forebears. Such-and-such long-dead person who is not our kin is simply not as important to us, emotionally, as our own personal forebears. For the descendants of Confederate soldiers and leaders, the personal, biological, and historic connection engenders a natural desire to honor their ancestors’ virtues, no matter how egregious their faults; for the descendants of the victims of slavery and Jim Crow, the crimes of past generations are not dead-and-gone — a profound, living connection with the suffering of one’s forebears, and the way that suffering impacted subsequent generations, is real and powerful.

If this genetic connection were of no importance, there would be no national debate over Confederate monuments and the like. Those who look up to the virtues of honored-but-sinful ancestors would shrug and say, “The past is the past, let us not cling to the dead. Go ahead and knock down that memorial, it means nothing to me, I never even met the guy!” Likewise, if there were no power or importance in genetic or familial descent, the question of such memorials would be strictly academic for those who trace their family history back to persons who were enslaved or otherwise abused by past evildoers. The question of removing certain monuments and replacing them with memorials to more virtuous persons would have no personal meaning or importance, it would just be a matter of tidying up the public theater.

But we know that this is not so.

We know from our experience that our genetic and familial history is deeply meaningful.

IVG seeks to intentionally, knowingly, deprive a child of their natural right to a profound, intimate genetic and familial connection to a biological mother and father. If an adopted orphan must work through the intensely emotional question of “Who are my people?” the child of IVG will have to face a starkly more horrifying answer: “My parents chose to deprive me of even the genetic heritage of having a mother and father. I don’t get to have ancestors the way that other people get ancestors.”

This is not a right we can shrug off as being of no consequence, any more than we can consider, say, the legacy of slavery to be of no consequence for the descendants of that system living generations post-abolition.

Children are Not for Manufacture

So the first effect of IVG is to intentionally orphan a child from the outset. This would be a bit like planning, on your wedding day, to eventually divorce and remarry, just so that your child could experience the unconditional, self-sacrificial love of a growing up with a virtuous step-parent. It would be like planning to conceive in order to place your child in an orphanage so that someone else could step in and be a foster- or adoptive-parent.

Good foster, adoptive, kin-, and step-parents are heroes! Lord give us more of them, please. There are so many children who do not have in their life a loving parental-figure, and who desperately need someone to self-sacrificially fill that gap. If you are doing that right now? Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

Likewise, mothers who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy and selflessly do whatever it takes to give their child as good of a home as they can manage are heroes!

But all of these are heroic because they take on a duty in the face of disaster.

You would no more be heroic for organizing in advance the orphaning of a child, such as by using IVG to become a lone-parent, or using it to deprive a child of clear ancestry by becoming a poly-parent, than you’d be a hero for setting a forest fire in order to show what a great firefighter you are.

Furthermore, the very nature of IVG is the trafficking of children. It is the decision to manufacture a human being for the purpose of gratifying the desires of the would-be parents. The intentions of the parents may be entirely good, but the manner of their becoming parents requires self-deception.

This is the same kind of self-deception involved in kidnapping a child in order to raise it as your own — perhaps even, in times past, purchasing an enslaved child in order to satisfy a parental desire.

This does not mean the would-be IVG parents have evil intentions. We can only assume that they have good intentions. What they want is to give life to a child and rear that child in a loving home. However, the fact of choosing to create in the laboratory a child with a specified lone-parent or multi-parent genetic design is the act of manufacturing a child for selfish purposes.

We often refer to sexual intercourse as “making babies” but in fact the couple is not manufacturing a child. We know of course that sex confers a biological mother and father (which is a fundamental right and human need, discussed above), but the two parents do not get to decide what genes will be passed on in what combination, nor the gender of the child, nor even how many children, if any, will be conceived.

Sexual intercourse involves lovingly accepting your child as a gift. A surprise. The gift-nature of the child conceived through intercourse is fundamental to the parents’ unconditional love of that child, and thus to the child’s knowing he or she has intrinsic worth that does not hinge on meeting certain pre-conceived requirements.

IVG is the opposite of a gift: It’s going to the store and purchasing a child, or quantity of children, ordered to set of required specifications. The made-to-order child has to live with the fact that his or her existence and value to the parent(s) depended on being “good enough” at the time of conception to satisfy the buyer.

It is human trafficking and it is evil — no matter how much good the would-be parents are trying to achieve in the process.

Artwork: Albert Gebhard, Orphan, courtesy of Wikimedia (Public Domain).

How to Treat Gentiles and Tax Collectors

August 12, 2020 By Jennifer Fitz

Today’s Gospel is the instruction on what to do with erring members of the Church:

If your brother sins against you,
go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
If he does not listen,
take one or two others along with you,
so that every fact may be established
on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church.
If he refuses to listen even to the Church,
then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

It’s a timely message, as we have a presidential candidate who is campaigning on his Catholic faith and on his support for killing innocent people and a pledge to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to fund contraception (instead of, say, requiring employers with objections to any given medical treatment to simply give employees an equivalent amount of cash in a health care savings account, which employees can then use to cover that treatment or any other).

Longtime readers can easily predict who I’m not voting for. I’m sticking to 2016’s strategy because we still have no morally viable candidate from either of the major parties; I think my rationale for doing so has in fact borne some fruit. That said, I recognize there are no easy answers for persons of goodwill in the coming election, and refer you to the USCCB’s document Faithful Citizenship for more authoritative guidance.

(If you have a proclivity for Godwin’s Law, you might enjoy Mit Brennender Sorge instead. And see below at the photo explanation for more on that theme.)

Meanwhile, back to the Gospel.

What to do about the Bidens of this world?

In terms of voting, today’s Gospel seems to leave open the possibility of voting for a terrible Catholic: If you could vote for a pagan or tax collector (what is the Commander in Chief if not a tax collector?) with the same qualifications and policy positions, then perhaps you simply scratch out “Catholic” in your brain, set aside the issue of scandal for the faith, and proceed to vote for whichever pagan is least objectionable.

Scandal for the faith and concern for the well-being of Biden’s soul, however, involve far more than just voting. I’ve analyzed previously the question of whether Joe Biden should receive communion.

For those wondering about the merits of excommunication, here’s a reputable canon lawyer on that topic, and here’s an example of a recent case of an excommunication (on other grounds) that gives a good feel for what excommunication is and what it does.

Important notes:

Denial of communion is not the same thing as excommunication.
Neither denial of communion nor excommunication are meant to be permanent.

The firm hope for all pagans, tax-collectors, and terrible Catholics is that we will come to our senses, turn to the Lord, and discover the joy of a loving, intimate, eternal relationship with God.

If your base instinct is to hope that the wretched person who wounded you so cruelly and destroyed all you hold dear is dammed to hell, that’s a pretty normal reaction; it is not, however, to be our final word.

So. What exactly are we to do about pagans, tax collectors, and presidential candidates? 300 pages right here, readable and to the point.

Photo: An American flag with “Merci” (“Thank You”) written on it, at the grave of Sgt Robert B. Seyler in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, public domain. This was the best of the early results when I searched for a photo of “Cross and American flag.”

–> For something completely different, here’s the Epic Vacation pages 1 and 2 from several years back, including all kinds of fun stuff and also my post “What it Takes Not to Be a Nazi”, where I tour a concentration camp and also a military battlefield cemetery containing some grave markers you might not have expected.