So I guess it was courtship that you thought should be done honestly
and responsibly. I was hoping to hear something about sex, but I guess
you don't think it is a sin like, oh cannibalism. And here I am veering
into a different kind of sin, not the ftpotd sin, but that kind of
religious taboo sin. That stoical, religious, thou shalt not, kind of
sin, where the sin is in the act itself. Let's call that the stoical
sin. And since I am mentioning that, I will have to include the
utilitarian sin where you have to determine the consequences of action
to determine if it is a sin. So now we have three kinds of sin, whereas
the Catholics only had the venial and the mortal.
Jimmy was right on the beam. St Nicholas didn't want anybody to go
around examining the meaning of any of the words because they might get
it wrong, and worse, they might think they didn't need the priest at
all, and maybe they would get to thinking they were even smarter than
the priest, and there you go getting into heresy and leading people
straight into hell. By the way, who told you that you wouldn't go to
hell for not being a Catholic? The Methodists? What the hell did you
expect them to say?
It's all about authority, you obey it, you don't question it. You got
the pope and then the cardinals and the bishops, right on down to the
priest and then Sister Rita with the ruler ready to rap your knuckles
and enjoy doing it (the author is pretty hard on the nuns, but what I
gathered from our catholic pals, they were pretty fearsome). And then
you had the president, and the mayor, right on down to the cop on the
street or maybe the teacher at Sawyer who didn't approve of jeans no
matter what the majority thought (I don't quite remember the story, but
didn't she hold some kind of election and when it came out in favor of
jeans, she overruled it? Why did she ever allow an election, and why
didn't she stuff the ballot box?).
I don't recall that there were any rebels, back in those days. You had
like Elvis Presley, but it was all a pose, he acted all snarly and sexy,
but he never did anything rebellious, and when the army called he went
in without a peep. You had the hoods, and they were reputed to do
rebellious things. Stealing hubcaps seemed to be something that they
were always being accused of, but I don't know anybody who did that.
Well not that I knew any hoods, hanging out in those stupid honor
classes. I tried to look and act like one, but there was nothing tough
about me.
And for all that the hoods never really questioned authority, they maybe
didn't want to obey it, but they didn't much care whether other people
did or not. It seems like the first people to come along and challenge
authority were the civil rights guys. And you know they didn't come out
of nowhere, they followed the same code that America pretended to
believe (all men are equal), and tried to enforce it, but the
authorities, fearing the loss of authority, successfully fought them
down. You know there is a parallel in Lost City between Father McDonagh
and Father Flynn. A parallel even in young Beagles who seemed like an
upstanding young man, but became disillusioned when it turned out that
not everybody was upstanding.
Authority pretends to a sort of nobility as being the upholders of high
ideals, but since it is composed of fallible men, it is often just
concerned with maintaining itself.
You say according to biblical Christianity, but what you are
really giving me is according to Beagle's interpretation of biblical
Christianity, because according to the catholics, who are also based on
the bible, you can get into heaven by good works, and really everybody
interprets that book every which way, and like you said, even you don't
believe it. So why does it keep coming up? Are you like neighborhood
Jimmy who has memorized something and likes to just keep repeating it?
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