LAW AND ORDER --

Oh, Boy!  Law and Order.  There has been a lot of noise in the politisphere about this lately.

Law and Order!  What is that?

Easy - Law is what is on the "books" before I got here.  [I refer you to the Mosaic LAW.]

           Order is the way I tell you to act according to my reading of the LAW.

Here's a simple example of order according to Joseph Thibault, my one and only Grandfather and the living patron saint of EFR Dion, my father.

"Never cross the street in the middle of the block.  Always go to the intersection to cross the street.

Now, I am rarely a pedestrian on a city street in this, the 21st century.  Now,  I tell you that I am aware of the wisdom of the order cast upon me at the ripe old age of 5 years, 9 months old.  ( 1942 )

Can you see the connection between our venal lawmakers (AD 2020) and the hypocritical Pharisees of  BC ?? to AD 100?  

Law is what takes place in the courtroom.  Order is what I can get away with.

Law is what the Supreme Court says I can do.

So now, what I opined was right.  I arrest you, you disagree.  We seesaw back and forth in court appeals until we get an order.  By the time we think we have a resolution, other court decisions have superseded the one that we have on the dockett, so we amend our position to accommodate our desires to fit the elements of the newly proclaimed legal reality.

You see the path here.  Law is nothing but an embryonic reality that has quasi infinite potential for evolutionary replication.  

To quote the famous person against whose life my father dedicated my name,    

     "...because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression."

                      (Paul, Romans 4:15)

Think of this as you wonder why any intelligent human being would think that a conservative person and a progressive person would have different understandings of the law.  Isn't the law, law?

BTW:  Smile. There are three topics that have eternally, non-ending half lives:

law

politics

theology

I bring my musings to an end by expostulating without regret or fear of having erred:

It is essential that to save the constitutional republic of the United States of America a constitutional convention must be convened NOW.

Might be a good idea not to forward this one!

RULE OF LAW; LIFE OF VIRTUE

St. Martin of Tours

 I have been mulling this over in my mind for a long time.  I know what I want to say.  I was blocked for a while, until I thought of this fellow who lived some 1,700 years ago.  He is one of the famous people who gave up a life of luxury and comfort for a life of shared love and compassion for his fellow humans.
We tend to go through life wondering if there are any of these people left.  We go through life hearing that the "redistribution of wealth" is not right.  We live with the legality of abortion;  we live with the legality of alcohol and the unlawful use of marijuana; we live with the "blind eye" towards employers who hire the people for whom it is illegal to be here and therefore illegal to be hired.  We hear of usurious practices that enslave the borrowers, enrich the lenders but nevertheless are legal.  So many times we also hear "I am going to abide by the law.  My religion is one thing, the law of the land is another."  That's the rub.
I am not talking religion here.  I am talking morality.  There is morality outside of religion.  There is a morality that belongs to all of us as human beings.  We do not need a law to tell us that it is wrong to kill another person.  We do not need a law to tell us that it is wrong to steal the widow's last dollar.  We do not need laws to tell us a lot of things.  We have conscience and virtue to guide us through life.  We do need law to help us resist the temptation to be nasty now and then.  We need law to support and guide our conscience and our virtue.  Law is the external force that is meant to make us all abide by the common expectations of the community in which we live.  
In a democracy we give the people whom we elect the delegated authority to underpin morality and virtue with "obeyable" and enforceable laws.  The people we elect are expected to know how to do this.  They are expected to legislate in such a way that morality and virtue will be sustained, not demolished.  They are expected to legislate in such a way that the common good will be assured.  They are not expected to legislate in such a way that their personal comfort will be assured before that of the community.  They are not expected to compromise the morality of the community by their legislation.  They are not expected to be so venal in their life style that their personal morality will be so weak that their moral authority will be demolished.  When that happens, they abdicate the trust of the electorate and therefore the right to continue governing.  So, yes, morality and law do go together.  No matter what anyone says, that is the truth.  
When morality and law part ways, humans degenerate into a lower species.  When morality and law part ways, democracies fail.  Not only democracies, I might add, Empires, Kingdoms, Dictatorships, you name it.  
So, yes, that is my thought for the day.  
I will therefore leave you to your devices, since I have been burdened with some remunerative work that has to be done in the next three hours.


Peace and joy to you all.

LAW vs VIRTUE

Cover them all you want by law.
It's what's inside that counts.

These days we have been hearing a lot about "Social Issues" as the central topic of interesting the in political skirmishes in the United States.  We all know that "Social Issues" mean that our august statesmen and women are talking about sex, women, religion and song.  They are not confronting the hard governmental issues of war, peace, domestic and international economics and perhaps maybe even a word or two about how to treat the threat of failure of the United States Postal Service.  These are things that the government should be doing.  It is not the place of the government to attempt at legislating morality.  Here's why.
When I was younger I discovered a disturbing trend in this country.  It is the attitude that a proliferation of laws, rules and regulations can solve all behavior problems.  I was in my early teens and I could see that all the laws in the world were not going to be able to make the world a morally better place in which to live.  The proof of that was even in my own personal behavior.  I did not obey the speed laws.  I was under 21, yet I was allowed to have a glass of wine at the meals when wine was available.  Despite the death penalty people still were committing murder; banks were being robbed; young people were "ditching" classes and wandering the streets; hunters and sports fishermen would bring home illegal game and over-the-limit catches.  The minor breeches of the law were fodder for family gathering stories of bravado and humorous scoff-law braggadocio.
I could never figure out why we had government because I wondered how they could spend all their time at the capitol making laws that no one would obey.  I'm serious.  I was 16, 17, 18 and I couldn't figure it out.  I still can't.
I have to admit that I have come a long way since then.  I now know that we need government.  We need someplace for all these ne'er-do-wells to go.  No matter what they do, they are not going to make anyone's life better, nor worse.  They are just going to take up space and spend time gathering more and more mug shots of George Washington for their own welfare.  Here's how I came to know this.
Start with God.  He creates people.  He gave people the Law.  The people that He makes, break His law constantly.  Have been for centuries.  I could even say, "millennia."   So what are we here trying to do?  Out-perform God?  Think about it for a minute.  PLUS, God gives us the tools we all need to not even need the law if only we would use them properly.  He endows us with a thing called "virtue."  You know what that is.  Stuff like patience, love, honesty, generosity, understanding one another, humility, justice, hope, meekness, kindness and some others that I don't have to enumerate.  With all of that inner ammunition, humans still find a way to do nasty things to one another and to themselves.  So, God went out of His way to give us external guidelines, over and above virtue, for good behavior.  God gave us these things out of the goodness of His heart.  He is the source of all goodness and sacredness.  Now, if He has a hard time with us, how are the money grubbing, arrogant, self centered, self-aggrandizing politicians ever going to be able to make things better for anybody by providing and improvising an infinity of  external rules and regulations?  If God, Who is all good and all sacred can't do it for everybody, how can we, well-practiced law breakers that we are,  pretend to be able to change our fellow humans through an infinite proliferation of more and more external guidelines?  It is insane.  
Only VIRTUE, the internal fortitude to always choose the right thing, can make things better in this world.
I finish by saying that to think that we humans can get by with virtue alone is also insane.  There is no such thing as an absolute and pure unity that is able to solve this conundrum.  It is only through judiciously applied wisdom that we can hope to make life here below better, happier and more peaceful.  Sadly, the application of that wisdom also includes the judicious use of fear.  Oh, boy, this topic can really get to you.  So I leave you with a quote on fear:  "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."  Some how I wish that our politicians would take that to heart.
Finally.  You now know that I haven't solved the problem I started to have at 17 years old.  I know that I will find the answer in heaven.  For that to happen, I have to die.  So, keep that in mind at my funeral and you won't cry because you'll know that I finally have an answer to this mighty tough question.

LASTING MARRIAGE -- NOT LAST MARRIAGE

"HOUSE AND RICHES ARE AN INHERITANCE FROM ONE'S ANCESTORS, BUT AN INSIGHTFUL WIFE IS FROM THE LORD." (Proverbs 19; 14)
The ex-Voice from the Kitchen, now Belle, and I had an interesting experience this evening.  We were at the church where we spend a lot of time.  We sat in on a reflection/instruction about marriage given by a Catholic priest.  You know, the kind of people who don't get married by choice.  They still think that  the have what it takes to make sense when they talk about marriage.  Belle and I are Catholic.  Very Catholic, as a matter of fact.  We do believe that celibate priests have something to contribute to the knowledge base of how to live so that you can be successful at marriage.  This guy didn't do too badly.  I wasn't sitting next to Belle.  I was sitting next to my Puerto Rican colleague from New York.  So you know that she and I had a good time whispering nasty remarks to one another during this whole thing.  Especially when he said that women think that men are so uncomplicated that there is no mystery to them at all.  I leaned over and said, "That's 'cuz we only have one thing on our minds all the time."  She laughed and said, "Even you?"  Wow, and I thought that she knew me.  The guy was kinda cool.  He is an Irish guy originally from Maine.  He is good company away from the Altar too.
I did have a serious thought through this whole event.  I ran it by Miss P.R. and she agreed with me.  I mentioned that when you hear a Catholic priest talk about successful marriage you hear a lot about Love and Law.  Love is the real glue of the relationship.  Since Matrimony is a Sacrament in the Catholic Church, Love is the key element that has to be present to make a marriage successful.  Law is a stand-by reality in case Love and spirituality need something to lean on.   I agree with that, as long as you're not talking about Romantic Love.  Romantic love is fine, but it sure is a roller-coaster ride.  When it comes to identifying the core of successful marriage, I have come to side with the more scientific crowd, usually called psychologists or whatever else.  I think that they have a better take on what the foundation of a successful marriage is.  This includes the Sacrament of Matrimony.  No, it is not because the scientists are married and the priests are not.  In fact, the intellectual product that you hear from these scientists is far from being 100% connected to their own personal situation.  No, no.  Socrates was right when he said that knowing is not the key to morality.  Believe me, I agree with the scientific results of the scientists, but I have to abstract from their personal behavior.  But you knew that already, right?
Anyhow, they say that successful marriage is based on a well constructed mutual understanding relationship.  This well constructed understanding between the spouses serves as the foundation for Love.  It produces deeper love than Romantic Love.  Through understanding, the love that develops is based on intellectual strength rather than on emotional flexibility.  This does not obviate the need for the law, both legislative and moral, but it makes the relationship more stable and more satisfying. Since this is a more comfortable and satisfying state, Romantic Love episodes are also more gratifying and contribute more effectively to the stability of the union.
So, what do you say?  Interesting thought, right?  Say yes.  
I don't disagree with the priests, at least not with those who have some brains and who use them.  I do, however, think that they should incorporate a little more psychological science into their sacramental and moral reflections.  Challenge us a little bit.  Challenge themselves a little bit more too.  
In case you're wondering, I do believe in the Sacramental power of Matrimony.