MEMORIAL DAY AND A CATCH-UP

I was watching all the soldiers and sailors on TV on Memorial Day and the parades and the National Concert and thinking about a line from Andy Rooney’s book on his war. They didn’t give their lives, he says, they were taken. Every last man and woman who went (goes) into a war fully hopes to do their bit and return home. Sometimes they don’t because somebody took their lives and their hopes. No matter what my personal politics may be, I have respect for every single man and woman in the service. They go and do what they have sworn to do. If they go to a war the price is usually pretty damn high and nobody comes home from that unchanged.

I think especially of Dad, my favorite person and hero in the whole world, and I see him as The Sailor as well as Dad. He was a Medic in two wars and two continents and he got to feel it all. I know something of what he went through because he told me some of it before he died. World’s finest Dad too!

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IRELAND PART 2: It is eight days since the Ryan Report on clerical abuse of children came out. In spite of the 2004 deal, the leaders of most of the religious orders involved have contacted the government to affirm their willingness to further contribute financial and human service to the victims. They know that all the cats are out of the bag. They have slime on their collective faces and their final chance at public redemption will be to further assist the victims in generous fashion.

The Government and the victims are setting up a loud hue and cry for the Orders to release the names of their members who abused the kids so that the legal arms of the country can begin some consequences for those still living. The 2004 deal was a tit-for-tat – we pay and you don’t release the names. The names will eventually be released, I’m certain. When your back is against the wall, especially if you are the Catholic Church in Ireland, redemption means biting the bullet. The alternative is loss of credibility forever. In Ireland. The shame! The Vatican remains silent, which it does with the appliqué of a fine art. The Pope will be forced to speak sooner or later too. The Irish Catholic priests and nuns who for centuries were listened to, trusted, and yes, feared are just not part of the equation anymore except as whipping posts. Karma! Like author Ken Bruen says , “Their day is so, like, over!”

These posts on Ireland are rants because I know what it’s like to be afraid to stick my head into the kitchen in case a belting or switching was getting ready to happen. It worked better on bare legs. Our pants were worn out at the waist from being pulled down for whippings. You were never sure what Mom’s mood was like from hour to hour and Dad was at work, miles too far for safety. When we kids went to school the nuns would see the inch-wide swollen purple welts on our legs and say “Oh you were a bad boy last night, I see.”

The priests and nuns never beat us. Their character formation was worse. We were never good enough, sin festered in our youthful gene pools and hopped on us when we least expected it. Of course we were born flawed – Original Sin – and we had to get baptized so we were legitimate and whole. There was something wrong with sex in any form and the sex road, even thinking about it, was a rocket straight to hell, to mention nothing of having the occasional free wank in the night. Of course, a good confession, if you made it in the nick of time before you died, made you all wonderful again and heaven was right next door. It would be hilarious if we hadn’t believed it, the Word of God from the religious people we little kids trusted with our eternal salvation.

So, the rant. I guess when I multiply that with 900 priests and nuns taking it out on 30,000 kids over the years it beings out something pretty vengeful in me. I’m peaceful with my personal past. It took me years of work to learn that I was whole and good and had a lot of innate stature and that my abusive parent, for all their faults, was only doing the best they knew how at the time. But there are still some feelings in me that pop out from time to time.

Nextwise, I almost promise, I will write something so funny and profane that it will have you laughing out loud into the sunset. Ta!