Bringing Our Values Back

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – My little office in which I write this column has a nice window next to me through which I can see my front yard, the street in front of my house, as well as the plants and trees that inhabit my property. At least I think it’s my property; I haven’t checked with that place on TV that will tell me for sure. But I digress, maybe I can check later.

Right now, I’m just enjoying a beautiful spring day through the window pane. Of course, it’s not warm out there; in Iowa spring comes wearing a winter coat. But it will get better, leaves will appear on my tree, and there will come an abundance of birds to keep my cat amused for hours.

But when I think of days like this I tend to think of spring and summer days when I was young. I remember seeing the brand-new Plymouth sitting in our neighbor’s driveway, my dad’s black and white Oldsmobile in our drive, and on the other side of the house a few nondescript Fords. We were, automobile wise, an already integrated neighborhood; kind of a mixed marriage from Detroit.

I, of course, was just starting elementary school then, learning the tenets of our faith from the old Baltimore Catechism by nuns who wanted nothing more than to shape the future of our faith as well as instilling in each of us a good dose of patriotism as if it went hand-in-hand with Catholicism. 

Those days, of course, provide many wonderful memories — at least until my pesky little brother came along, but that’s for another day. We watched the news every night on the old black and white DuMont, viewing events from around the world and feeling so lucky that we could live in such a great place — a place for which we could be very proud.

I remember watching a football game on TV with my Dad. He told me that a Catholic senator was there and when I asked, he said he might be the first Catholic president in history. I may not have been really ready for politics at the time, but that conversation stuck with me and I began following a man named Kennedy.

Now I knew there were such things as elections, and people disagreed on who should win. Earlier there was the ’56 Eisenhower-Stevenson election and my family was for Eisenhower, but my best friend in school was for Stevenson. I think that was because his first name was Steve.

Anyway, as the election approached, I became aware of a discordant note: There were people who opposed Kennedy because he was a Catholic. That didn’t sound like it was coming from such a great place, but there it was, bigotry. But the country fought back and on Election Day when all the stolen ballots in Chicago were counted, our guy won and those on the other side soon got over their belief that the Pope would be installed as king and things settled back to normal.

But the country was not polarized nor was it irreparably torn asunder, in fact had Dallas not occurred I believe the president would have been easily re-elected in ’64.

 So why talk about this now? What is the point?

My point is that while everyone — or almost everybody — must remember his early years with fondness, I don’t see the current time anything like the years in which I grew up.

During this past week we have been inundated with the results of a Wall Street Journal-NORC (National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago) poll showing just what might be wrong with the country today: Those values that made the United States the envy of the world are no longer held in great esteem.

Key to me were the results concerning patriotism and religion. In the poll only 38 percent of Americans responding to it said patriotism was very important to them, and 39 percent said the same thing about religion. When this poll was first conducted in 1998 the results were 70 percent and 62 percent respectively.

Today 32 percent report that they never attend church services, while only 19 percent reported they are weekly attendees, and 52 percent reported not having any religion at all. It seems like what those nuns taught had lost its luster on those who followed my class.

Of course, those who have eyes to see such things may have noticed. The old DuMont has morphed into today’s Roku. But what is offered to the viewer is far different from the Eisenhower-Kennedy days in which I was raised. There is crime that for political reasons is overlooked; there are riots where people are killed, but reported as peaceful; there are children that are being indoctrinated into believing that race, gender, or family history is more important than merit; that most of us are victims of an oppressive society, and anyone who supports the wrong political party is a bigot, an enemy of society, and a threat to our very existence. It’s a wonder that anybody believes anything anymore.  

And people are pessimistic about nearly every poll question asked: The economy, poor or not so good, 80 percent; will it get better, 15 percent; better life for your children, confident 21 percent, not confident 78 percent; job prospects, not easy 52 percent; college degree, not worth the money 50 percent; confidence in public schools, 26 percent yes, 33 percent no.

As you can see by examining all the poll’s responses, the American people hold negative views about our current situation: social, economic, political, and spiritual. Yet there is one statistic that bothers me as much as the patriotism and religion answers. It is this: Tolerance for others has dropped to 58 percent from four years ago when it was 80 percent.

Why the drop? That is easy to figure out; they use different pronouns than we do, they claim to be oppressed and my group is the oppressor, you’re the wrong color, or nationality, your kids will get preference for scholarships and college admissions because of your (pick one) gender, color, victim status, etc.

This, of course, is not the way a great nation should act. So how do we correct it? Well, I’ll leave that question to sociologists and folks smarter than I. But for me I think there is a simple start to the solution. We have two great documents with which we need to re-familiarize ourselves.

The first is the Bible, our Christian scripture. The second is our American scripture, our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Read them, believe what you read, and practice same. We’ve been around long enough to know we can trust Jesus, the Word of God, even if we sometimes do not understand. And the same for our Founding Fathers. Between those documents there is a spiritual and political blueprint for our lives.

Get back to the foundation of our faith and nation, and encourage your children and friends to do the same.  It is there that we will find the answers we need, in fact the only place we will find them.

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(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial or podcast at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/ episode 355 is on the Message of Fatima.)