Glad to be of service John, Ian
On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 6:00 PM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote: > Greetz All, > > I was toodling around yesterday, following a link Matt sent, (thanks Matt) > and came across a book review Pirsig did in 1975, about a man going through > divorce. > > http://www.psybertron.org/stpaulnews.html#Review > > It's also got some keen snippets on Texas Protestants, Mary! > > --------------- > > I once taught a college course where I asked the class, "Is there an > absolute external morality?" And I was astonished to discover that, without > exception, every Catholic student said yes, and every Protestant student > said no. There is a profound division here. > > For the traditional Catholic layman, morality is external. The author > remembers vividly the terror he felt in parochial school when he saw what > happened to Cecelia after she defied Sister Anastasia. He still feels it. > For him the other-directed authoritarian system of his moral education has > become the pattern of his life, and we see in page after page his professed > love of, and obedience to, authority. He is a system player. That is how he > had to learn it. You love the system and the system loves you. Now the > system is failing and he is without a clue and in terror as to why this > should happen. > > Protestants, including his own wife, tend to take more heed of their own > consciences when coming to moral decisions. This is more true among > Methodists than many other sects, more true of all, I think, among > Protestants residing in the state of Texas. In fact, if there's one thing > the traditional Texas Protestant knows how to do better than anything else, > it's how to make up his *own* ornery mind about what is right and what is > wrong, and *keeps* it made up, come hell or high water, or anything else you > might want to run in front of him. Texas girls see this in their fathers and > grow up unconsciously expecting to find it in every man. This, tragically, > in the one thing the author cannot supply. He must run to authorities for > every moral decision and every major idea in his head. And by Texas > Protestant standards this makes him a moral weakling and a failure, and > this, I think, is why his wife cannot love him. And there is nothing he can > do about it. > > Nevertheless, I think this book will provide a happy ending for its author. > It is, among other things, a 278-page marital advertisement which should > produce dozens, if not hundreds, of matrimonial offers. I hope, for his own > sake, that his final choice is someone who really appreciates him for the > good man he is. Preferably, it should be an Eastern, Polish, Roman Catholic > woman, heavy-boned and big-breasted, domineering and authoritarian, from a > childhood of poverty like the one he got away from by marrying the little > ballet dancer from Texas. She should love him earthily, and also her > children and her church discipline and the suburban life, because she finds > in these things the meaning of life itself. He deserves it. > > As for his divorced wife, I don't know what will happen. She has a hard life > coming. > > But there's a feeling, rising up from deep inner sources, that in the end, > when it is all over for all of us, it will be she who goes to heaven long > before he does. > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
