A little rant from Thomas Merton . . .
When I think of the Catholic parents who sent their children to a school like that, I began to wonder what was wrong with their heads. Down by the river, in a big clean white building, was a college run by the Marist Fathers. I had never been inside it: indeed, it was so clean that it frightened me. But I knew a couple of boys who went to it. They were sons of the little lady who ran the pastry shop opposite the church at St. Antonin and I remember them as exceptionally nice fellows, very pleasant and good. It never occurred to anyone to despise them for being pious. And how unlike the products of the Lycee they were!
When I reflect on all this, I am overwhelmed at the thought of the tremendous weight of moral responsibility that Catholic parents accumulate upon their shoulders by not sending their children to Catholic schools. Those who are not of the Church have no understanding of this. They cannot be expected to. As far as they ca see, all this insistence on Catholic schools is only a moneymaking device by which the Church is trying to increase its domination over the minds of men, and its own temporal prosperity. And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.
It is any wonder that there can be no peace in a world where everything possible is done to guarantee that the youth of every nation will grow up absolutely without moral and religious discipline, and without the shadow of an interior life, or of that spirituality and charity and faith which alone can safeguard the treaties and agreements made by governments?
And Catholics, thousands of Catholics everywhere, have the consummate audacity to weep and complain because God does not hear their prayers for peace, when they have neglected not only His will, but the ordinary dictates of natural reason and prudence, and let their children grow up according to the standards of a civilization of hyenas.
The experience of living with the kind of people I found in the Lycee was something new to me, but in degree, rather than in kind. There was the same animality and toughness and insensitivity and lack of conscience that existed to some extent in my own character, and which I had found more or less everywhere.
But these French children seemed to be so much tougher and more cynical and more precocious than anyone else I had ever seen. How, then, could I fit them in with the idea of France which my father had, and which even I had then in an obscure and inchoate form? I suppose the only answer if corruptio optimi pessima. Since evil is the defect of good, the lack of a good that ought to be there, and nothing positive in itself, it follows that the greatest evil is found where the highest good has been corrupted. And I suppose the most shocking thing about France is the corruption of French spirituality into flippancy and cynicism; of French intelligence into sophistry; of French dignity and refinement into petty vanity and theatrical self-display; of French charity into a disgusting fleshly concupiscence, and of French faith into sentimentality or puerile atheism. There was all of this in the Lycee Ingres, at Montauban.
Merton goes a little off-the-rails in this passage. He is passionate about this subject, obviously, this belief that, by neglecting the religious and spiritual teaching of the youth of the world, the adults of his time were raising a pack of hyenas. Ravenous and cruel and hungry. While I don't necessarily prescribe to the notion that lack of religious upbringing leads to lack of morality and ethics, I do see his point about adults being responsible for instilling in their young charges a strong notion of right from wrong, compassion, love for all humankind, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or identification, religious faith (or lack thereof), age, or social status. In short, it's all about the Golden Rule: treating others as you would want to be treated.
Unfortunately, in American society (and around the world right now), there seems to be an alarming lack of this Golden Rule value in adults. Perhaps we are seeing the fruits of what Merton is talking about in the passage above --the youth of Merton's time have grown into the parents and grandparents and great grandparents of the current generation of adults. So, we are dealing with racists and xenophobes and misogynists and homophobes and Islamophobes and bullies who are crawling out from under their rocks, into the sunlight, and beating their chests from the pulpits and podiums of the world.
Right now, I would say that we have the exact inverse of what Merton describes. The majority of young people get it. They understand the need for compassion and love and understanding and activism. They are the Greta Thunbergs, Emma Gonzalezes, Malala Yousafzais, David Hoggs, and Desmond Napoleses of the world. These children are leading the way because we adults have fucked things up so much. That fills my heart with hope.
I, myself, am willing to step aside and let these young people run the show. They will certainly do a better job than we have over the last 50 years. They can't do much worse. I've spent nearly three decades of my life teaching them about the power of kindness, among other things. (They still don't understand what a comma splice is, but that's the subject of another blog post.) When I see old, middle-aged men and women trying to minimize the concerns of young people, it fills me with shame for my generation.
Now, I'm not saying everyone around my age or older are Donald Trumps. Absolutely not. In my life, I have surrounded myself with friends and acquaintances who are as just concerned as I am about feeding and clothing the poor, passing sensible gun legislation, getting health care for everybody, protecting the most vulnerable inhabitants of our planet, and saving said planet from destruction. There are adults who get it. They are the Thomas Mertons of the world.
In this time of Covid-19, when everyone seems to be worrying only about themselves, we need to remember the Golden Rule even more, especially if you claim to be a Christian (that's pretty much the core message of Jesus Christ). Treat each other with love and kindness. Check to make sure your neighbors are alright. If they don't have toilet paper, give them some of yours. If they're struggling with money, ease that burden if you can. If they're hungry, share some of the ground beef from your stash in the freezer. We are all in this together.
My children give me so much hope right now. The other night, I went up to my daughter's bedroom and spoke with her about the virus, stressing the importance of self-monitoring and social distancing. She listened to me and finally said, "I'm already doing all of those things. I'm just worried about the people who don't have anybody to look out for them."
"And a little child shall lead them . . ." Thomas Merton would have been proud.
Even though things seem dark right now (Saint Marty is sitting masked at hospital entrance, stopping visitors) the future is going to be bright.
