As I was leaving Rome, watching out the window of the da Vinci airport, after five days of hot, sunny weather, the rain began bucketing down. It must have been almost exactly that time that a bridge suddenly collapsed in Genoa, 300 miles to the north, killing at least 37 people and injuring untold more. They say the deluge may have had something to do with it. One knows neither the day nor the hour, and our own private ‘apocalypse’ can arrive at any time. Pray for the victims, their families and loved ones.
A sobering thought, as I just stepped off a plane, an aluminium tube traveling at 500 miles an hour at 40,000 feet, which hit more than one belt of turbulence.
And, on other tragic news, of a spiritual sort, it seems Trinity Western University has blinked, removing their ‘community covenant’ requirement, which requires, or that is, required, that students refrain from any sexual activity outside of marriage. This was seen as discriminatory (of course, primarily to the usual suspects, ‘gays’ and ‘lesbians’), and was cited as the primary stumbling block in the recent denial of their accreditation of a law degree.
Now, it seems the vaunted Christian college has joined the madding crowd, selling their covenant, as they now hope, for the coveted LLB. This plays into something quite personal for me, teaching at a Catholic college. The forces of darkness are closing in, but we must stand with the light.
I will have more to write on this later, in light of the role of the Church and her teaching in education, at all levels.
And the news from Pennsylvania is also not good, alas, revealing harrowing records of abuse (much of it, albeit, not fully substantiated) in six diocese stretching back 70 years. Corruptio optimi pessima, and the priesthood, which attracts the best (see Pope John Paul and countless others self-sacrificial men, who make up by far, far the majority), but also the worst (those who must have seen the ‘job’ as an easy access to victims of various sorts). As others have written, we cannot discount the role of homosexuality in all of this sordid mess, the vice that dare not speak its name, as Oscar Wilde might say; or, at least, once did not, and now, it is just not permitted to speak its name in certain contexts, like what underlay, and underlies, these, ahem, ‘problems’ in the priesthood.
Ah, well, a house cleaning is well past due, even if the light exposes much filth. And this applies to all of us.
So hope, dear reader, on this solemnity of the Assumption. For the light always, always overcomes the darkness.