Catholic Analysis

On my way from Rome last year, I stopped at Amsterdam for a flight layover. Now, what I saw of Amsterdam impressed me: very clean and very neat, polite people, and honest cab drivers. But, when in an Amsterdam hotel, don't just start innocently channel surfing at random on your TV to get a taste of local culture--hard core pornography is blatantly pushed on you even if you don't seek it out or special order it. There is also another very clean, neat, and even more beautiful place in Michigan--the Traverse City area. Yet, I recall reading the account by a physician from the area who told of the amazing problems, involving, as I recall, STD's among her affluent patients.

Then there is one of my favorite places, Boulder, Colorado, with very clean and very safe streets, a wonderful downtown, beautiful panoramic mountains, a place full of culture and youth, with an attractive university campus to boot. So, I was surprised to see these comments by a local college professor, apparently and likely a cultural liberal, in the local media:

We wonder why kids choose to go under this general anesthesia of alcohol. They suspect there aren't two atoms of honesty in the world around them, from the highest position in the country on down. They see a world that's not a pretty place, and so they make it pretty on the inside through drugs and drinking, and it's a tragic waste of humanity.

Dennis Van Gerven, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder Magazine, Summer 2007, at p. 41.

Other than the apparently derogatory, implied reference to the President, I agree with the excerpt. We see tremendous signs of unhappiness and alienation even in very neat, clean, and affluent places like Amsterdam, Traverse City, and Boulder. You can add many other places to the list. The phenomenon reminds me of those surveys which tend to show that people in poor countries actually say they are happier than people in privileged Western nations. The phenomenon of unhappy privileged people reminds me of my encounters with poor people in these United States who seem to be able to laugh more freely than those with all the big degrees, big houses, big vehicles, and big incomes--and big egos. In French, what many of the poor have is joie de vivre; in Spanish, alegría; in Latin, jubilatio. Mary prophesied it in the Magnificat: God sends the rich away empty and fills the poor with good things.

Now, while I agree with the professor's analysis of youthful alienation in Boulder and similarly affluent places, I have to complete his list. The escape is not just to self-destructive substance abuse only but also to sex outside of marriage, lubricated by these very substances which make it easier for people to exploit others and to let others exploit them. And, sometimes, I bet the causation is also the other way around: the disillusionment of sex outside of marriage leads to further use of substances to smother the pain of shame, dehumanization, betrayal, and exploitation. But, of course, the socially and culturally liberal mentality does not want to go there. Yes, lack of honesty makes the young and others want to escape reality in self-destructive ways. One of the many assorted great lies that contributes to that "waste of humanity" is the lie that sex outside of marriage is a harmless and even healthy recreation.

These observations lead to a label I like to use: "Zoned Evil." In a sick secular culture, we plan for and allow certain very real and serious evils to exist, in the same way that Amsterdam "zones" its red light district and apparently allows use of drugs that are illegal in the U.S. We "zone" the evil of alcohol abuse by making alcohol so readily available and by accepting it as part of college and even high school life. My own native city of New Orleans has a promiscuously alcoholic culture that specializes in that type of debauchery--all with an increasing death toll. We actually "zone" the evil of drug abuse by accepting it as a fact of life in many of our high schools. I recall a police officer in an affluent community telling me that drugs were just a fact of life at the local prestigious high school of a very desirable and nationally famous suburb. Of course, we "zone" the evil of sex outside of marriage by accepting loss of virginity as a great good and by accepting with great understanding, denial, and tolerance that our daughters and sisters will copulate and shack up with one male after another. And the greatest evil that we "zone" is in a way a consequence of the other evils of substance abuse and promiscuity: the killing of preborn and partially born babies through abortion. We "zone" abortions under insidious euphemisms such as "Planned Parenthood" or "reproductive rights," and we "zone" abortion in clinics scattered everywhere like extermination camps in the countryside of Nazi Germany.

So, we "zone" evil and allow it to flourish. Affluence, education, culture, even panoramic natural beauty are not enough to salve the deep emotional pain of the evil we inflict on ourselves and allow others to inflict on us. You would think that we would stop trusting in all those idols for our escape from the pain. You would think that we would try to focus on human dignity as the bedrock for escaping the pain of our wounds. You would think that we would take another look at the great healer whom Mary consented to give us.