Render unto Caesar... and only unto Caesar

Melancholicus received the following by e-mail, and thinks it worth sharing with his readers:

This is a statement that was read over the PA system at the football game at Roane County High School, Kingston, Tennessee, by school Principal, Jody McLeod:

"It has always been the custom at Roane County High School football games to say a prayer and play the National Anthem, to honor God and Country. Due to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, I am told that saying a prayer is a violation of Federal Case Law. As I understand the law at this time, I can use this public facility to approve of sexual perversion and call it "an alternate lifestyle", and if someone is offended, that's OK.

I can use it to condone sexual promiscuity, by dispensing condoms and calling it, "safe sex". If someone is offended, that's OK.

I can even use this public facility to present the merits of killing an unborn baby as a "viable means of birth control". If someone is offended, no problem...

I can designate a school day as "Earth Day" and involve students in activities to worship religiously and praise the goddess "Mother Earth" and call it "ecology..."

I can use literature, videos and presentations in the classroom that depicts people with strong, traditional Christian convictions as "simple minded" and "ignorant" and call it "enlightenment...."

However, if anyone uses this facility to honor GOD and to ask HIM to Bless this event with safety and good sportsmanship, then Federal Case Law is violated.

This appears to be inconsistent at best, and at worst, diabolical. Apparently, we are to be tolerant of everything and anyone, except GOD and HIS Commandments.

Nevertheless, as a school principal, I frequently ask staff and students to abide by rules with which they do not necessarily agree. For me to do otherwise would be inconsistent at best, and at worst, hypocritical... I suffer from that affliction enough unintentionally. I certainly do not need to add an intentional transgression.

For this reason, I shall "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", and refrain from praying at this time.

"However, if you feel inspired to honor, praise and thank GOD and ask HIM, in the name of JESUS, to Bless this event, please feel free to do so. As far as I know, that's not against the law — yet."

One by one, the people in the stands bowed their heads, held hands with one another and began to pray.

They prayed in the stands. They prayed in the team huddles. They prayed at the concession stand and they prayed in the Announcer's Box!

The only place they didn't pray was in the Supreme Court of the United States of America — the Seat of "Justice" in the "one nation, under GOD."

Somehow Kingston, Tennessee, remembered what so many have forgotten. We are given the Freedom OF Religion, not the Freedom FROM Religion. Praise GOD that HIS remnant remains!

JESUS said, "If you are ashamed of me before men, then I will be ashamed of you before My Father."

No comment necessary, except to say Ms. McLeod is a brave woman. Someone could have denounced her to the Gestapo.

Or worse, to the ACLU.

A new low

Is Britain determined to destroy itself?

Perhaps not, but the currently ensconced Labour government seems to be hell-bent on doing so.

From Yahoo! news:

'Give young children sex education'

Primary school children should get basic sex education, a Government review is expected to find.

The study is likely to recommend a shake-up of lessons to combat concerns that current teaching of the subject in England is too patchy.

Schools minister Jim Knight is due to present the findings later, as well as the Government's responses.

The review is expected to say that sex education should be compulsory in all schools.

This could include teaching young children basic classes on the human body and relationships, with more detailed information being given as a child moves up through school.

Last week Mr Knight told MPs he had received "strong recommendations" for making sex education compulsory in all schools but said it had to be done without "sexualising young people too early".

International evidence suggests that teaching certain aspects of sex and relationship education before puberty has a "positive effect" on issues like teenage pregnancy, Mr Knight said.

Britain has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe and figures suggest rising numbers of young people are catching sexually transmitted diseases.

Current rules say pupils must be taught the biological facts of reproduction, usually in science classes, and every school must have a sex education policy.

But there is no statutory requirement for teaching about relationships and the social and emotional side of sexual behaviour.

Although Melancholicus is a teacher, at least part-time, his charges are not children but young adults (with a sprinkling of mature students older than himself). Since he is not yet married, he has no children of his own. Consequently he has no experience of dealing with primary school age children other than his memories of having been one himself about thirty years ago.

He would like to know more about the state of innocence (or lack thereof) that Catholic primary school teachers find in their charges, and the degree to which they may have been corrupted by the moral and cultural degradation of our society, a degradation more advanced today than when Melancholicus was in primary school circa 1980.

One thing at least is certain: it is unnecessary to disturb young children with lessons detailing sexual acts which will only confuse and frighten them. Melancholicus’ own innocence was preserved until puberty, as was right; and, having had the mechanics of sexual intercourse explained to him experienced a certain sense of significant discovery, almost a rite of passage, and felt privileged to be growing up. But his brother and sister (both younger) discovered the facts of life about the age of nine or ten, before they were ready, one through the accident of watching daytime TV (!), the other through the ministrations of some ‘expert’ invited for that purpose to visit her (Catholic) school.

Both, incidentally, were shocked and disgusted by their discoveries, as one can only expect from children of that age.

The story quoted above finishes with an observation which, though particularly telling regarding the thoughtlessness of this Labour government, nonetheless fails to mention that there is also a moral dimension to the exercise of human sexuality in addition to “the social and emotional side”.

There is only one potentially positive aspect to this story. It is impossible to live in western society and not be aware of the omnipresence of sexuality and eroticism in books, in magazines, in advertising, on the radio, on the television, on the internet, everywhere in fact, not excluding shop windows on the high street. Ostensibly family programmes on both radio and television broadcast well before the watershed may contain some quite advanced sexual content (BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live has trespassed more than once in this area—and it is aired on Saturday mornings between 9 and 10am). Consequently, it is not a source for wonderment that children growing up today are by and large much more knowledgeable about sexual matters than Melancholicus’ generation was in the 1970s. An increasing proportion of today’s children have been sexualised early anyway, and may often be more knowledgeable about adult matters than their years would warrant. If there is to be early discussion of sex in schools at all, it ought best to focus not on explicit depictions of popular sexual acts (many of which are little more than perversions anyway) but on attempting to inculcate a sound moral sense in these young souls, and a reverential respect for persons of the opposite sex and for what is one of God’s greatest gifts to fallen man.

But of course Melancholicus is dreaming. This Labour government will certainly not attempt to impart a responsible and moral approach towards human sexuality in those children already sexualised early by exposure to inappropriate media, much less ever mention God or recommend abstinence until marriage. No, it will prefer instead to go to great lengths (and expense) to instruct young innocents of both sexes how best to utilise this or that contraceptive device, or to perform this or that sexual act, even to the extent of the “homosexual technique” mentioned in this famous episode of Yes, Prime Minister:

Humanae Vitae at 40

Forty years ago on this day Pope Paul VI issued what really ought to have been a pretty unremarkable encyclical letter, all things considered: Humanae Vitae, on the transmission of human life and on sexual ethics within marriage.

Unremarkable because Humanae Vitae contained nothing new. Its teaching ought not to have been a surprise to anyone endowed with a Catholic sense of things. Pius XI had already condemned contraception and the contraceptive mentality in Casti Connubi (1931), as a response to the Anglican bishops’ approval of contraception at the Lambeth conference of the previous year. What could be more natural, therefore, than that Pope Paul should uphold the constant teaching of the Catholic Church on married life and human sexuality? This is what he did, and his reiteration of the Church’s constant teaching was greeted by howls of protest and dissent, not only by the secular world but even by priests, religious, theologians and even bishops.

1968 has been described by some as the year in which the Church fell apart. Anne Roche Muggeridge in her book The Desolate City, refers to Humanae Vitae as the triggering incident which allowed the revolution within the Church to emerge full-blown into the open, and openly to defy the authority of the Pope, the Holy See, Canon Law, and indeed the entire doctrinal and liturgical tradition of the Church across two thousand years.

Forty years later the revolutionaries are still in a state of defiance and open revolt—a state which some of them still describe, even today, as “loyal dissent”, an oxymoron if ever there was one. But today they are less confident, less sure of themselves, less convinced that the future belongs to them and to their fellow secularizers within the Church. For forty years on, as one might expect, they have aged considerably; they have not achieved the overthrow of Catholicism, for which they strove; and most ominously of all for their hopes of success, they have inspired none to follow in their footsteps and take up the cudgels in defence of peace, love and rock ’n’ roll once they have retired or passed on. They look—and sound—like relics of the groovy ’sixties and ’seventies, outdated tie-dyed hippies still tripping on the spirit of Vatican II (or should that be the spirit of Woodstock?). They are so completely contemptible that no one today—not even those thoughtless youth most in agreement with their heresies—wants anything to do with them at all.

Of course the most infuriating thing about the dissidents’ revolt against Humanae Vitae is that—as in every other area in which they have challenged Church teaching—the dissidents are quite simply wrong. They have backed the wrong horse—one that will not even pass the post, never mind win the race. Contraception is NOT a good thing. While it might at times be convenient for individuals, it is ruinous for society. There is not one country in the entire European Union—apart perhaps from Malta—which is producing sufficient children to replenish its population. This means that population is falling across the EU. The birth rate must be at least 2.2 children per woman if a given population is to be sustained. This is what is known as the “replacement level”. No EU state—and certainly not Ireland, which has embraced the contraceptive culture with gusto—has a birth rate anywhere near replacement level. Some states—Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece, for instance—have birth rates so alarmingly low that these countries will assuredly experience dire economic and social problems in a generation or two.

A low birth-rate spells disaster for society. It always means more older people and fewer young. As the population ages, and begins to retire from the labour force, there will be fewer younger people available to meet the demand for workers and to keep the economy moving. Fewer workers means the state has a much reduced tax revenue—but not reduced costs, since there are now disproportionately large numbers of older people requiring pensions and expensive medical care. At a certain point, in order to avert the unsavoury prospect of an unsustainably large proportion of society being dependent on the support of an insufficient few, the state will begin to take certain measures. Old or chronically ill people requiring constant and costly care, will be required to be “put to sleep”. Able-bodied elderly people will not be permitted to retire at 65, but be required to remain at work for several years more. And the deficit in the working population will be further relieved by importing young immigrants from the third world, not a few of which will profess the religion of Islam. These latter, of course, will have more than 2.2 children per woman, not having embraced the contraceptive culture that has already sounded the death-knell of the west. Over time, the proportion of Muslims in the population will steadily increase—as it is in France, Britain and the Netherlands—with further chaos and destabilisation the only result of such a process.

We are already seeing and living through the endgame of the contraceptive mentality in so many different countries in the west; but will anyone sit up and take notice? Or are we now too firmly attached to playing God with our marriages, and with our children?

When one practices contraception, especially if one is aware of the Church’s teaching on the matter, one does not please God; one pleases oneself. To persevere with one’s own will against the holy will of God is always—in whatever matter—to invite catastrophe. Those who in the ’seventies, ’eighties, ’nineties and today took it upon themselves to have but a single child—or even no child at all—are precisely the same generation that will most feel the pain when the looming demographic crisis finally hits home. They themselves will be euthanised for purely pragmatic reasons by the same offspring they raised to be godless and secular, under the same laws permitting abortion and euthanasia for which they will have striven so hard to keep on the statute books. As all historical precedent has shown, wherever contraception is approved and practiced, the legalisation of abortion is sure to follow. For abortion is in the final analysis simply an extension of contraception, one that seeks to remove a conception rather than merely prevent it in the first place. For if one can in so cavalier a fashion interfere with human life at its very beginnings, why not also at its end?

Pope Paul was prescient. Humanae Vitae is the true teaching of the Catholic Church and may not be gainsaid without consequences, either in this world or the next. Defy it at your peril.

You have been warned.

Something must be done about the dead-eyed scum

Lest the visitor be alarmed at the strident, militant and even threatening tone to the title of this post, Melancholicus wishes to assure his readers that dead-eyed scum is a common enough expression in Ireland, denoting a particularly extreme form of soulless and feral youth, of the sort sensible folk cross the street to avoid since on several occasions the same have been known to strike with lethal force in the absence of any provocation whatsoever.

First let us define our terms. The dead-eyes are not the same people colloquially known in Dublin as skangers, or in Britain as chavs. There is of course considerable overlap, but it would be a serious misrepresentation, if not altogether libellous, to claim that all such persons are murderous sociopaths completely devoid of human feeling and conscience.

With the acceleration of the social breakdown fomented by the 1960s, society in Ireland (as elsewhere in the western world) has become increasingly lawless, violent and dangerous. This is indisputable. It is a fact, borne out empirically by every statistic one might use to measure the extent of law and order — or lack thereof — in the social fabric. The numbers of violent assaults causing bodily harm have far outstripped the levels of similar crimes in the mid-twentieth century. Murder and manslaughter were once so uncommon in Ireland as to be an occasion for nationwide shock and a nine-days’ wonder whenever they occurred. Today, murder is so routine as to be unremarkable.

Except every now and then there takes place a crime of such meaningless brutality that it shocks even the jaded denizens of twenty-first century Dublin.

Just such a crime took place last weekend. Two men were set upon by a gang of youths in the Dublin suburb of Drimnagh and stabbed fatally with a screwdriver. The two men were friends, construction workers from Poland who had been in Ireland for less than nine months. The youths who attacked them — I should say who murdered them — were dead-eyed scum.

Melancholicus has no wish to make light of this incident, much less present it as a pretext for amusement. He urges the Catholic-minded among his readers to pray for the repose of the souls of the two unfortunate victims. Nevertheless, some words about dead-eyed scum are here in order, that the reader might have a clear idea of the sort of creatures we are dealing with, as well as their habits and typical behaviour.

The dead-eyes are amoral, wild, feral, and in their behaviour totally ungoverned and ungovernable. I say “amoral” rather than “immoral”, since the dead-eye has no conception of right and wrong. He may have an intellectual knowledge that if he should commit such-and-such an act, the police will be looking for him. But his conscience does not trouble him with wrongdoing, since he has no conscience. The dead-eyes are consequently incapable of remorse. They are also incapable of taking responsibility for their own acts, and this makes them especially dangerous. Dead-eyed scum are found everywhere — even the smallest rural hamlet has its share of them. Only yesterday, while buying bread and milk in a local grocery, Melancholicus encountered two specimens of this genus, who could not have been more than fourteen years old but whose very presence exuded malice and intimidation. There was a queue in the shop; the dead-eyes promptly skipped the queue as soon as they were finished choosing their snacks and sodas, but no-one objected, neither the other customers waiting in line nor the sales girls at the tills. Nobody considered his place the in the queue to be worth dying for. While he waited, Melancholicus studied the all-too-familiar features of these dead-eyed scum — the ubiquitous hoodie, the flat, vacant, expressionless visage, the dead eyes (hence the name), the absence in this face of anything that might indicate the presence in the brain behind it of thought, or morality, or conscience, or knowledge of right and wrong, or of any cognizance at all of (much less regard for) any other creature save itself and the appeasement of its own base appetites. And God forbid that they might catch you looking at them; people have died merely because their glance happened to fall in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

The favourite pastime of the dead-eyes is what is euphemistically called “anti-social behaviour”. This behaviour is engaged in without either fear or respect for the law. The dead-eyes fear nothing and no-one. They respect nothing and no-one. There is in their minds no regard for authority, for law, for established custom, for persons or property. They do not fear the police. On the contrary, the police fear them.

The acts of the dead-eyes are random, destructive, and singularly devoid of purpose and meaning. Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos died for nothing. There was no reason for their deaths, and no meaning to the motiveless snuffing out of those poor men’s lives. They were not killed because they had wronged the dead-eyes who encompassed their slayings; nor were they killed for reasons of robbery. They were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the dead-eyes decided to lash out.

They had been approached by these feral youths who had asked them to purchase alcohol for them in a nearby off-licence. The two men declined, whereupon their fate was sealed. The scumbag who inflicted the fatal blows on the pair did not do so at once; he had time to retrieve the screwdriver from his house, and to return to where he had left the two men and catch up with them before they had retreated to safety. Thus his acts were wholly pre-meditated. He never seems to have stopped for a moment to think about what it was he intended to do with that screwdriver. But now, two innocent men are dead.

During his days as a seminarist, Melancholicus spent some time on parish apostolate with a certain priest of a certain diocese in the north of England. One day during his apostolate he visited the local prison, spending some hours in the company of young offenders, many of whom had been convicted of serious and violent crimes. It was a sobering experience, as Melancholicus was startled to notice how wild and feral most of these young men were, and how totally lacking in sympathy, empathy and conscience. Violent crime was a matter for boasting, for raising one’s status in the pecking order of one’s peers in prison. One of the prisoners (a youth of eighteen) had on his person a copy of his criminal record, which he proceeded to show to Melancholicus with all the pride and delight wherewith a schoolboy shows off a prize-winning essay. Melancholicus will not recount the dismal record of the fellow’s egregious trespasses, which were without number, save to say it was not pleasant reading. Some of the imprisoned youths were sad and dejected, but their sorrow stemmed not from guilt, or from remorse for the horrible things they had done to other people, but simply because they were in prison and hence deprived of their liberty. They were all guilty, but not one of them felt guilty. Inasmuch as any of them was sorry, he was sorry only for himself. The victims of his violence never received a second thought.

This is the sort of person to which Melancholicus refers by use of the term dead-eyed scum. He will not labour the point, since he is sure that his readers understand by now what he is trying to say. We must not fall into the same error as the socialists, and imagine that this violence can be explained by recourse to economic factors — poverty, inequality, unemployment and the like — as though this somehow excuses such monstrosities, even if it were true. Nor must we make the facile mistake of blaming a “lack of youth facilities” or “boredom”, or even alcohol and drugs for the evil behaviour of certain youths, as some have sought to do. We are Christians, and we recognize through bitter experience the evil of which fallen human nature is capable when not assisted by grace, or when grace has been rejected.

Melancholicus was prompted to a reflection on these matters by reading the following piece by Martina Devlin in today’s Irish Independent:

Polish deaths were result of yob culture

By Martina Devlin
Saturday March 01 2008

In its mindlessness, its recklessness, its vicious and unprovoked excess, it is behaviour which leans disturbingly close to a Clockwork Orange society.

The screwdriver murders of two Polish construction workers who came to Ireland to earn a living was not racist. No, it was wanton violence -- carried out for no other reason than the thrill of inflicting harm.

And while it happened in Dublin in this case, evidence of such yob culture is visible the length and breadth of Ireland. Village or city, it makes no difference.

"Ultraviolence" was dystopian chronicler Anthony Burgess's account of this gratuitous aggression, this ferocious hostility. Ultraviolence just about describes what happened in Drimnagh, when a group of teenagers assaulted and murdered two passing men.

That they were Polish was, I suspect, incidental. Ultraviolence requires the dehumanisation of victims, but targets can be drawn from any nationality or sector.

Thuggery on the scale we have just witnessed is an affront to every one of us -- a signal that civilisation has started forgetting how to be civilised. It acts as a reminder that we should not wring our hands, condemn the incomprehensible and then mentally cross over to the far side of the street.

Above all, we should not fall into the trap of defining that frenzied confrontation in Drimnagh as a racist attack; to do so is is to start constructing reasons for it. If that happens, on some level we lay the groundwork for rationalising and subsequently making excuses for the bloodshed. Once you label it racist -- distasteful though racism is -- you can field experts to discuss changing demographics, community interfaces, pressure-points and economic insecurities.

They will remind us how Irish society has altered radically in a compressed space of time, with one in 10 of our population now drawn from overseas.

It's inevitable the native population should feel threatened and not wholly surprising some may choose to express it through violence, goes the subtext to this interpretation of the double murder.

We must stop right there. Yob culture is not based on racism, nor should it be viewed as an explanation for its existence. Yobbery may contain strands of racism but this particular brand of bigotry is not among its guiding principles; those are brutality, disrespect for the rule of law, a lack of parameters and the complete absence of any fear of consequences.

It is a social disorder, one which can and should be tackled. Ignore it -- and the Clockwork Orange society takes a step closer.

Some of the criminality we are experiencing is drink-fuelled, some drug-enflamed, and some is the upshot of an abdication of parental control.

Ireland has always had a drink culture, and the tradition of the Saturday night brawl after heavy alcohol intake is no new phenomenom.

But it used to be a case of fist fights. Then broken glasses or bottles became part of the equation.

Now it's knives -- or in the circumstances that engulfed Mariusz Szwajkos (27) and Pawel Kalite (26), the stomach-churning image of a screwdriver to the head of one man and the throat of another.

If such behaviour continues to escalate, we will be condemned to a CCTV society where constant monitoring is the only way in which citizens feel safe outside their homes.

Inevitably, emotions are running high about these murders. People feel frustration, anger, fear, shame. We are alarmingly aware of how all of us are at the mercy of this lowest common denominator element. Many of us have witnessed hooliganism in our neighbourhoods, and been loathe to remonstrate with the perpetrators. With just cause.

Tough questions need to be addressed. How do we inculcate respect for authority? How do we restore a certain level of discipline without allowing free rein to the "hang 'em, flog 'em" brigade? How do we persuade certain parents to take responsibility for their children's behaviour?

There are a number of possible solutions. We could reduce some of the effects of excess alcohol consumption by raising the legal drinking limit to 21.

Most adults, let alone teenagers, are incapable of handling drink at the current binge levels. We should also move away, in media and advertising terms, from presenting the pub as the focal point of any community.

Local authorities could consider diverting some of their funds into amenities specifically aimed at young people.

Let's get them off the streets and offer them something to do, even if it's no more than a room where they can play board games and share soft drinks.

Finally, for a demonstration of dignity and compassion in the wreckage of tragedy, we need look no further than the words of a sister to one of the victims.

"My family do not wish to blame the people of Ireland and would prefer to think this attack could have happened anywhere in the world," said Gosia Szwajkos. Let's honour Mariusz Szwajkos and Pawel Kalite by taking to heart some lessons from their deaths.

Requiescant in pace.