"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Wednesday 9 November 2016

NOT THEIR FINEST HOUR

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post ""THE COMFORTABLE PEW"": 

I'm curious to see your reaction to  the US election. 

Posted by Anonymous to  Our Town and Its Business at 9 November 2016 at 13:43

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Third grade primary school in Scotland more than eighty years ago was First Communion Class.
According to Church teaching,children reached the "age of reason ". At seven we could tell right 
from wrong. 

My birthday was in December. I was a few months shy of the requisite age when I started learning  about the  Sacraments.

Baptism was  first. The message was  firm: 

"Unless  a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven".

We learned  an infant, born with the stain of original sin, deceased before christening could never see the Face of God.  Limbo was the place for throw-aways.

It struck me as less than fair but at six you don't argue with the teacher. Especially  a nun. Priests and nuns enjoyed superior status. 

My sister trained as a nurse in her teens. She worked full shifts for less than pocket money. Was required to attend lectures and pass hefty tests over a period of three years. At the end, she was allowed to wear a special cap and badge of registration and still work for next to nothing. 

When Kathleen came home,she passed on what she learned from lectures. Years later,I recalled lectures she didn't, to her great exasperation. 

A choice tidbit was how in mediaeval times, French priests put dirty hands inside a mother's body to administer the Sacrament before delivery. 

I would be  sixteen then. I was not impressed. 

Reading was a large part of my life. Much of it,after the war, about fascism and how it took hold in Europe. 

Hitler took a page from the  teaching manual of Holy Mother Church.  Children learned fascism from earliest years. They were encouraged to report parents if anything disloyal to the concept was heard at home. 

Hitler's Youth were magnificent physical specimens. Tall, fair, well fed, daily physical exercise, summers at the farm, marching ,singing; as close to automatum as possible for humans to be. 

At war's end, allied soldiers were shooting children of fourteen,taken from their classrooms,
put into uniform, given a gun and sent to the Russian front. Russians didn't take prisoners. They 
 hung them from tree branches in the forest. 

In final irony, Hitler married his mistress then committed suicide in a bunker.

Mussolini had a different fate at the hands of his countrymen. 

The church has changed it's teaching since then. Now they hold that life begins at conception. Abortion is murder. A woman's right to choose is not an option. 

What I learned when I was six is history. Seldom mentioned. 

The deaths of six million Jews in Nazi death camps in Poland and Austria are history. 

Denied by some. 

A belligerent bigot has been elected President of the United States.

It is what it is. 

History. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was a big Sanders supporter. Hillary had a lot of baggage behind her. Some good, some not so good. Sorry Eve, I know you were a huge supporter, but Trump tapped into that baggage and ran with it, and the media helped him every step of the way. Bernie could have made the difference. I say "could have" because after last night's results...who knows. 4 yrs isn't that long. It will be enough time for all to learn some hard lessons. We can only hope.

Anonymous said...

Interestingly while all of the liberals were running around yesterday crying foul or just crying period, the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht (1938) and 94th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch (1923) was lost on them.

All of the chest pounding of Hitler-like comparisons did not realize that two of the Nazi's early milestones both occurred on November 9th.

But, I woke up both yesterday and today and the sun did come up. My RRSP portfolio grew about 1 per cent yesterday. I looked at how Trump's presidency will impact me personally and I cannot think of anything. He is one man at the top of a million + federal workers in the US.

I also know that tomorrow the sun will also come up. Every day that I wake up it's a good thing. Don't sweat what you can't do anything about.