In reply to Kathy Pluth’s great observation in “Brick by Interminable Brick” Randolph Nichols offered a very astute counterpoint to someone’s comment:They’ve been laying down heavy amounts of fertilizer for nearly 50 years, and the grassroots have still not taken hold. Nichols: “It seems to me it very much has taken hold. Where do those enthusiastic 24,000 LA Religious Education Congress attendees come from if not individual parishes across the nation. Brick by Interminable Brick indeed.”
+1 Mr. Nichols. Quite right you are to point out the obvious. I think we underestimate the hermeneutic of consumerist convenience and overestimate, probably for psychological self preservation, the rapidity and progress of CMAA/NLM/RotR advocacy in our own local and internet domains. I will advance an analogy, using a favorite medium of mine: films. It’s called “The Gracchus Theory” from the Ridley Scott film, GLADIATOR. Gracchus and an ally senator, Gaius, are sipping wine when Gaius bemoans Caesar Commodus’ instituting of months of gladiator spectacles at the Collosseum under pretense of honoring Commodus’ late father, Marcus Aurelius, upon whom Commodus committed patricide to boot.The senator derides Commodus’ leadership as inept. Gracchus reminds his fellow that, au contraire, Commodus knows exactly what he’s doing catering and pandering to the true spirit of what Rome “is,” namely “the mob.” Gracchus observes that, right or wrong, a leader’s ability to read and satisfy “the mob” reflects and indicts the moral or ethical vacuum of both the leader and the people. Here is the actual dialogue:
Gaius and Gracchus are at a restaurant, discussing the games which Commodus revived to lure the mob. Outside can be seen a juggler, merchants calling out their wares (wine), and the crowd visiting and moving about.]
GAIUS: Games! 150 days of games!
GRACCHUS: He’s cleverer than I thought.
GAIUS: Clever. The whole of Rome would be laughing at him if they weren’t in fear of his Praetorian.
GRACCHUS: Fear and wonder. A powerful combination.
GAIUS: Will the people really be seduced by that?
GRACCHUS: I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. He will conjure magic for them and they will be distracted. He will take away their freedom, and still they will roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble floor of the Senate, it is the sand of the Colosseum. He will give them death, and they will love him for it.
I haven’t read it, but I believe this is also the premise of Anne Coulter’s latest book as well. What astounds me, and I’m a broken record about this, is that all that glitters and is gold in Anaheim is celebrated by the same folks who then decry pontifical EF Masses and j’accuse good and faithful bishops such as like Cdls. Burke, Arinze and Bp. Slattery for “mincing and prancing” like Florentine Doges in Cappa Magnas and the like.
Oh yeah, “LAREC’s got rhythm, there’s division, have we schism? WHO would ask for anything more?”