In some ways, I have to admit, I can relate to Peter Kane. (I hope you are prepared for totally deep stuff.)
For one, I have had my “fare” share of traffic violations with this “alternate-side” parking rule that has apparently been in place since November. I, too, eagerly write my check on time in order to meet the 10-day deadline and avoid some pending court date or, heaven forbid, a bigger fine. But traffic violations don’t exactly make me think of Peter Kane, and I hope it doesn’t any of you either.
As some of you may know, I am the assistant coach of the girls Tyburn basketball team, which means I get the girls water and tell them they are great because the real coach yells at them the whole time.
At a recent away game (at a public school), we walked by a teacher’s door that had a sign stating:
“If you have to think about whether it’s right or wrong, it’s wrong.”
I had just read Peter’s recent post on Americans’ lack of “practical wisdom,” so I thought it quite comical in one sense yet tragic in another. This statement presupposes either that we are not able to think well or that thinking is wrong. If we do not know how to think, then we are in no way advised to seek formation here; therefore, I see this as a pure criticism of thought in general and just seeping with satanic undertones.
Without a doubt, culture has lost all sense of true virtue. Prudence, the ability to make good judgments (and thus act accordingly), is perverted, here, into a state of non-thinking, therefore, non-action–the p.c. word being “abstinence”.
There’s an article by Chesterton where he says (something about how) Chastity isn’t the mere abstaining of an act; it’s something flaming like Joan of Arc. Virtue, to the modern mind, is abstinence: just [DON’T] do it. Of course, we know it in its traditional definition, “the ACT of DOING good.” In accordance with ol’ Gilbert, I’ll have to make my own claim that prudence isn’t the mere absence of thought; it’s something grilling like St. Lawrence.
That said, we lost the game 70-10….long night.
