This year's anniversary of the moon landing has come and gone, and yet, memories of my original, youthful impressions seem to be lingering overlong, as if to fill a void, something lost. Perhaps I'm grasping at continuity between the bright, shining moment of "then" and the somewhat dull and directionless "now."
The moon landing harkens back to a time when, as a people, we stood together on the seemingly immovable foundation of human tradition in uniting ourselves with the great explorers of history.
In the Catholic Church, the faithful were united in a form of worship which connected them to Catholics throughout the world as well as to Catholics throughout time.
In that moment, in the U.S., we stood for God and country. We shared an intention to resolve the ancient paradox of mankind by continuing the great gambit played out through a history of exploration and migration, uniquely consummated by Neil Armstrong's first words after he set foot on the moon: "...one giant leap for mankind," a declaration of victory and, yet, a challenge to go so much further.
In chess, a gambit is a strategy in which a player puts one or more pieces at risk to gain an advantage in position, and that's how anyone who grew up in the '60's thought of the space program: mankind's ultimate gambit. It was a national dream, a credo, in which we stated a collective belief that life must be accommodated. The future was where it had always been, even in the time of the ancient migrations: "out there."
The solar system was the unknown territory that would balance material resources and an expanding population. The astronauts had risked their lives to build a bridge to this new territory. Our country had invested time and money in this endeavor, but more importantly, our nation committed to a dream. There was much at risk, but, as a people, we believed there was a shining future to gain.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to Mars.
The "spirit of Vatican II" turned the Catholic Church upside down by so radically changing the manner of worship as to impart a sense of subjectivity into our very faith. The law of prayer, for all intents and purposes, suddenly seemed malleable, the Mass being adapted diocese by diocese and even parish by parish. The law of faith seemed to follow suit.
Perhaps coincidently, or perhaps as a consequence, contraception became the norm across the country, and when abortion became legal, our collective approach to life on earth seemed to capsize. Our country's national dream turned away from accommodating life and became focused on containing it. The challenge and accomplishment acknowledged by Neil Armstrong's famous words on that historic day have been relegated to little more than a self-congratulatory victory lap, the hope of the Space Age eclipsed by the despair inherent in the precepts of the Age of Bioengineering--zero population growth, vertical living, synthetic/hormone-injected food, and genetically modified people.
The opening of mankind's gambit had been played out perfectly, but when the moment came to take our position "out there," to approach that unknown space which had held the gaze of Man from the beginning, we turned our eyes unto ourselves in our tiny slice of time, and there they have remained these past decades. Salvation and the moon have seldom seemed so obscure.
The moon landing harkens back to a time when, as a people, we stood together on the seemingly immovable foundation of human tradition in uniting ourselves with the great explorers of history.
In the Catholic Church, the faithful were united in a form of worship which connected them to Catholics throughout the world as well as to Catholics throughout time.
In that moment, in the U.S., we stood for God and country. We shared an intention to resolve the ancient paradox of mankind by continuing the great gambit played out through a history of exploration and migration, uniquely consummated by Neil Armstrong's first words after he set foot on the moon: "...one giant leap for mankind," a declaration of victory and, yet, a challenge to go so much further.
In chess, a gambit is a strategy in which a player puts one or more pieces at risk to gain an advantage in position, and that's how anyone who grew up in the '60's thought of the space program: mankind's ultimate gambit. It was a national dream, a credo, in which we stated a collective belief that life must be accommodated. The future was where it had always been, even in the time of the ancient migrations: "out there."
The solar system was the unknown territory that would balance material resources and an expanding population. The astronauts had risked their lives to build a bridge to this new territory. Our country had invested time and money in this endeavor, but more importantly, our nation committed to a dream. There was much at risk, but, as a people, we believed there was a shining future to gain.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to Mars.
The "spirit of Vatican II" turned the Catholic Church upside down by so radically changing the manner of worship as to impart a sense of subjectivity into our very faith. The law of prayer, for all intents and purposes, suddenly seemed malleable, the Mass being adapted diocese by diocese and even parish by parish. The law of faith seemed to follow suit.
Perhaps coincidently, or perhaps as a consequence, contraception became the norm across the country, and when abortion became legal, our collective approach to life on earth seemed to capsize. Our country's national dream turned away from accommodating life and became focused on containing it. The challenge and accomplishment acknowledged by Neil Armstrong's famous words on that historic day have been relegated to little more than a self-congratulatory victory lap, the hope of the Space Age eclipsed by the despair inherent in the precepts of the Age of Bioengineering--zero population growth, vertical living, synthetic/hormone-injected food, and genetically modified people.
The opening of mankind's gambit had been played out perfectly, but when the moment came to take our position "out there," to approach that unknown space which had held the gaze of Man from the beginning, we turned our eyes unto ourselves in our tiny slice of time, and there they have remained these past decades. Salvation and the moon have seldom seemed so obscure.
