Apropos the continued American snooze over the threat of radical Islam, I'm reminded of these words:
I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet.
Substitute "nation" for "island" and you've pretty much nailed our national psyche (and the dominant Catholic psyche in America, too).
The "island" in the original was England, and the author was Winston Churchill. The year was 1936, four short years before England would face utter defeat and subjugation. She would be rescued, in part, through under-the-table help from this country.
But who will rescue us? No one, that's who.
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
