[MD] until death do us part

[Ian Glendinning]

Glad to be of service John,
Ian

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 6:00 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetz All,
>
> I was toodling around yesterday, following a link Matt sent, (thanks Matt)
> and came across a book review Pirsig did in 1975, about a man going through
> divorce.
>
> http://www.psybertron.org/stpaulnews.html#Review
>
> It's also got some keen snippets on Texas Protestants, Mary!
>
> ---------------
>
> I once taught a college course where I asked the class, "Is there an
> absolute external morality?" And I was astonished to discover that, without
> exception, every Catholic student said yes, and every Protestant student
> said no. There is a profound division here.
>
> For the traditional Catholic layman, morality is external. The author
> remembers vividly the terror he felt in parochial school when he saw what
> happened to Cecelia after she defied Sister Anastasia. He still feels it.
> For him the other-directed authoritarian system of his moral education has
> become the pattern of his life, and we see in page after page his professed
> love of, and obedience to, authority. He is a system player. That is how he
> had to learn it. You love the system and the system loves you. Now the
> system is failing and he is without a clue and in terror as to why this
> should happen.
>
> Protestants, including his own wife, tend to take more heed of their own
> consciences when coming to moral decisions. This is more true among
> Methodists than many other sects, more true of all, I think, among
> Protestants residing in the state of Texas. In fact, if there's one thing
> the traditional Texas Protestant knows how to do better than anything else,
> it's how to make up his *own* ornery mind about what is right and what is
> wrong, and *keeps* it made up, come hell or high water, or anything else you
> might want to run in front of him. Texas girls see this in their fathers and
> grow up unconsciously expecting to find it in every man. This, tragically,
> in the one thing the author cannot supply. He must run to authorities for
> every moral decision and every major idea in his head. And by Texas
> Protestant standards this makes him a moral weakling and a failure, and
> this, I think, is why his wife cannot love him. And there is nothing he can
> do about it.
>
> Nevertheless, I think this book will provide a happy ending for its author.
> It is, among other things, a 278-page marital advertisement which should
> produce dozens, if not hundreds, of matrimonial offers. I hope, for his own
> sake, that his final choice is someone who really appreciates him for the
> good man he is. Preferably, it should be an Eastern, Polish, Roman Catholic
> woman, heavy-boned and big-breasted, domineering and authoritarian, from a
> childhood of poverty like the one he got away from by marrying the little
> ballet dancer from Texas. She should love him earthily, and also her
> children and her church discipline and the suburban life, because she finds
> in these things the meaning of life itself. He deserves it.
>
> As for his divorced wife, I don't know what will happen. She has a hard life
> coming.
>
> But there's a feeling, rising up from deep inner sources, that in the end,
> when it is all over for all of us, it will be she who goes to heaven long
> before he does.
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