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Say it
ain’t so, Joe
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
When I was a kid in high school (and before), baseball was a big deal.
Born and raised in Anderson, I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan in those days,
no doubt inspired to be so by another Andersonian who was a great Dodger
star: Carl Erskine. During his career, Carl threw two no-hitters and
appeared in five World Series.
Back then, great players tended to spend their entire careers with the
same team. Babe Ruth was the most famous exception. The Boston Red Sox
traded him to the Yankees and were forever cursed for doing so, or so
the legend went. One of the reasons players were great heroes in those
days was because they weren’t here today and gone tomorrow. They had
team loyalty (at least that was the perception) and could be counted on
to stick it out through thick and thin.
Doing anything that tarnished baseball was unacceptable to fans. That’s
what turned the Chicago White Sox into the ignominious Black Sox. The
game was disgraced when they “fixed” a World Series. A famous cartoon
became part of baseball folklore. A broken-hearted young fan looks up
into the face of Shoeless Joe Jackson and says with tears streaming down
his cheeks: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
My childhood fascination with baseball is long gone. The last baseball
strike and the fact money means more in the world of sports today than
team loyalty has thrown cold water on my youthful passion for the game.
The thought that a baseball player can make between $25,000 to $35,000
every time he steps to the plate is something I can’t ingest. (Ty Cobb
had a lifetime batting average of .366, the best in history, which means
he failed 63 percent of the time.) Give me a break! But, I’ll never
forget that cartoon of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the tearful question:
“Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
That cartoon came to my mind again recently as I read a Newsweek article
reporting a survey taken on the cost involved in having a baby. Using
U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, the article reported that the
first two years of a new baby’s life cost his family $32,000. The
two-year cost for each additional child was tabbed at $24,000. It
reported further that a middle-class family will spend $190,980 to raise
a baby to the age of 18. If college savings and lost income of one
parent staying at home is added in, the total comes to $1,589,793. I
said to myself: “Self, say it ain’t so.” No wonder ours is a
birth-control culture! The tension between the American standard of
living and the cost of raising a family demands making choices previous
generations never faced.
My mother liked to remind me from time to time that I cost a whopping
$34, or somewhere in that category. I was never sure whether she was
contemplating asking for a refund or if she considered me some kind of a
Depression era bargain. That didn’t include the cost of diapers and/or a
closet full of toys. (Back in those days, it was “toy,” not toys, and
you never, never, never, would take your toy to Mass.) If I’m not
mistaken, if you were part of the work force and became pregnant, that
would be the end of your job. But then few women except nurses,
telephone operators and secretaries were in the work force. Eating out
was so rare most of us from that time insist to this day it never
happened. Car seats had not been invented. Day-care meant grandma or an
aunt or a neighbor kept an eye on you. Buried somewhere in the deep
recesses of my memory I recall being told my father made a whopping $9 a
week during the Great Depression. The fact he had work at all was
considered a blessing. It was an era of hard times and simple living.
Things obviously have changed. However, the teaching of Jesus Christ
about marriage and parenthood has not changed: Marriage continues to be
defined as the union of one man and one woman for life in a covenant
wherein intimacy always is open to conception. While the high cost of
living is a reality, the focus is not on the cost of marriage and/or
children, but on the selfless sacrifice which is part and parcel of a
husband and wife establishing a “domestic Church” and working toward
their eternal salvation. When apprised of this, however, otherwise
faithful Catholics in the thousands (millions, perhaps) tend to shut
down. Living without birth control is as unthinkable to them as Shoeless
Joe Jackson’s betrayal of baseball was to the little kid in that famous
cartoon.
There is an alternative to birth control, of course. It’s called Natural
Family Planning. Those who embrace it testify that it enhances their
marital relationship. It’s said to be so because it requires a total
giving on the part of husband to wife and wife to husband.
Cohabitation is another Catholic no-no to which many respond: “Say it
ain’t so.”
The teaching of the Catholic Church about same-sex unions is not rooted
in discrimination, but in insistence that marriage is a union of male
and female where intimacy is open to procreation. Yet, the response is
“say it ain’t so.”
The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults gives the Catholic
response to the “say it ain’t so” mindset of our hedonistic culture:
“There are attempts by some in contemporary society to change the
definition or understanding of what exactly constitutes marriage.
Efforts to gain approval for and acceptance for same-sex union as
marriages are examples. While the Church clearly teaches that
discrimination against any group of people is wrong, efforts to make
cohabitation, domestic partnerships, same-sex unions, and polygamous
unions equal to marriage are misguided and also wrong. The Church and
her members need to continue to be a strong and clear voice in
protecting and understanding of marriage, which is rooted in natural law
and revealed in God’s law.”
Let those who push aside the teachings of the Church about marriage and
parenthood protest they have opinion polls that support their “say it
ain’t so” mindset, polls that show the Catholic Church is out of touch
with modern life. We hold up Jesus of Nazareth who looked Pontius Pilate
in the eye and told him that he had come into the world to bear witness
to the truth.
On June 1, the commemoration of St. Justin Martyr, I was reminded that
this is nothing new. Justin Martyr was put to death with several
companions during the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius about
165 A.D. He and his companions refused to sacrifice to pagan gods. It
was no big deal for most people to do so. If there had been opinion
polls at that time, a huge percentage of the population would have said
“no problem.” Not Justin and his companions. He is reported to have
said: “No one who is right thinking stoops from true worship to false
worship.”
Fidelity is not easy, especially when the world disagrees with what the
pope and the magisterium of the Church teaches. But then, the call to
holiness isn’t easy. |
