Random thoughts on magic, the traumas of Gen X childhood and other bits...
Rocky and I visited the chapel of the Comboni Missionary Sisters in Richmond. The sister who showed us around was Italian and so kind. It's a lovely chapel and they have a retreat house for big groups. After than we went to the Botanical Garden and spent hours walking and sitting amid the plants and flowers.
Once, the Vatican rebuked the author Alexander Dumas because he portrayed a member of the clergy in an insulting way. Today we have a Vatican official writing on behalf of the pope to a lesbian who writes pro-gay books for children. I'm reminded of the last scene from the movie , The Manchurian Candidate where a grief stricken Major Marco can't go on anymore with what he is saying and just leans back and moans "Hell....Hell."
The deliberately ignored Christians of the Middle East have a message for us. I don't think most of us in Europe and North America are going to like it but maybe tears and blood has to be shed, maybe the scourge of Islam is what is needed to restore people to their senses.
Am I the only one who can't wait for the pope's visit in September to be over? It looks like Philadelphia is going be a public relations failure. Besides the pro abortion involvement in the planning of the World Meeting of Families, Philly people are not going to be happy with closed roads, bridges and towed cars. Much like Evilene from the musical, The Wiz, Archbishop Chaput seems to be singing "Don't bring me no bad news." and in DC the diocese don't seem to be managing the logistics as well as it did when Benedict came to DC.
There is no such thing as good magic. In rural South Carolina, where my parents come from, witches are known as root doctors. A skilled root doctor can give you a potion to make your arthritic hands hurt less, he can also give you a tea that will cause a heavy menstrual cycle--an abortion really---, or give you a powder that will make someone you don't like very sick or dead. All magic seeks to take the power belonging only to God. All magic is evil. Certain forms are very flexible which is in part, why they are so sucessful. My mother remembers that a person could go to the root doctor on a regular basis and still go to church. This shocked her as a girl but only a few adults that she met seemed to be troubled by it.
I don't want to get into Harry Potter because even decent people lose their minds over it and can not be reasoned with but magic is pushed heavily by our media. Remember Buffy,the Vampire Slayer? That was one toxic show. Fathers were either useless or cruel. Mothers, even the one gentle and loving one on the show, were useless and needed to be kept ignorant or their own good. Sex outside of marriage was normal. Sex with non-humans was also normal. In fact fornication of all kinds was ok, except for that between a normal man and woman. Conjugal relations were never mentioned and there wasn't a single happy marriage. Witchcraft was normal, and so-called white magic was held in high esteem. A whole lot of girls were influenced by that show and their daughters and younger sisters were captivated by Twilight, another toxic series of novels that portrays normal humans as boring and cursed humans and lessor demons, as beautiful, exiting, eminently superior and worth dying for so long as you can be with them forever. Somone is reading this and asking "What about Narnia?" Oh bother, Narnia. I was eight years old and realized that it was an allegory and that Aslan was supposed to represent Jesus. The White Witch was not at all appealing and was clearly a satanic figure.
Hilary White has an interesting post on science fiction where she wonders if the constant drumbeat of hopelessness, and godlessness of 70s and 80s sci-fi didn't help cause the anxiety that seems to be so much a part of Generation X. It wasn't just science fiction though, Lurleen McDaniel made a fortune writing teen-aged liebestod novels. I think I picked up one and it depressed me so badly I never touched her stuff again but think of all the poor silly girls who did read that stuff and grew up believing that you better grab "love" now because you could die young and miss it all. I'll bet that some of those girls are the ones who impulsively divorce their husbands, blow up their families but do it because they have a right to be happy NOW and life is too short to miss out.
After an apparently homosexual reporter slaughtered two people in Roanoke the media had a quandary. They can't bring themselves to criticize the murderer so they blame weapon that he used. Some people have been shocked by the conduct of the female victims family. How could you talk politics when your child is dead? I think it's because the lure of being on TV is so powerful that it trumps all natural inclinations. I've seen people being interviewed who had glazed eyes and goofy grins while a dead body lies only a few feet away. It's like a drug. Later they may cry or go silent but while the camera is on them they go through the motions like zombies. It's astonishing and frightening to watch.
