Inheritance: Wretched 20th Century Generations

As time progresses, Western society is beginning to learn that the generations following the Baby Boomers are none too happy about the “legacy” being left behind by that mid-20th Century generation.  In fact, it can be safely said that current Generation X and Millennial memories of the hippies that have run ruined our country for the past handful of decades have been filled with nothing but disdain.

The following comment from the Vox Popoli blog has resonated with me for a month and a half, now:

The Boomers are the generation that received a prosperous family farm complete with a barn filled with the bounty of a generous harvest. The Boomers quickly ate the whole of the harvest, and, still hungry, mortgaged the farm so they could glut themselves further. 

Not content with that, they pushed their children off the farm so they could bring in sharecroppers to grub the soil until its fertility and richness were spent.

When the sharecroppers got upset with declining yields and their meager wages, the Boomers promised them the land and proceeds of all future harvests.

Heedless of the damage already done, the Boomers made sure to hunt through the barn and eat the seed corn. Every single kernel.

Then, to the wonder of all, the Boomers got angry when their children pointed out the fact that the farm land is barren and sterile, the finances hopelessly in arrears, hostile sharecroppers are looking to take the land for themselves, and and there is not a seed left to plant.

This kind of an opinion about the Baby Boomers is nothing new.  And really, is there any other way to look at it?  This “prophet generation” as Aurini calls them, spawned from what is regarded as a “hero generation.”  Yet they are reactionaries who react against their heroic forbears with ingratitude and recklessness.  The results of their “free-spirited” thoughtlessness is a generation of disaffected nomads, underprotected runts, and a broken society that has lost its bearings.

Criticizing the Boomers has become a sort of sport among the latest generations, and a cursory look through various search engines will turn up plentiful amounts of editorials, scorchers, and negative assessments.  For example, in a tongue-and-cheek video about the subject, not only does Gavin McInnes declare the Boomers to the the worst generation, but he takes it even further, declaring them to be a “horrible, vile, disgusting, selfish, overindulgent, immature, retarded generation.”

The Spiritual Destruction

But it is not just online editorials that acknowledge this dark legacy the Boomers have dumped onto their children.  Even renown clergy will attest to the problems that come from the Boomers; although, wizened clergy take it a step further, pointing to the Greatest Generation as well.

According to Fr. Ripperger, The Greatest Generation (GG) actually qualifies as one of the worst generations in the history of the Church.  Though most consider them to be “great” because they fought in World War II, they went to war because they had to.  When they came back from the war, they were disgruntled.  Discussions of virtue stopped with them.  They did not embrace their cross or appropriate their suffering.  Instead, the GG complained about their suffering.  Unlike those before them, the GG lacked a virtue of mortification.  Living members of the GG refuse to admit to the faults and errors that have increased under their watch, and they look at the last 40 years as a stepchild to be forgotten.

But worst of all, it was under the watch of the Greatest Generation that the Catholic Church was handed over in shambles.  They “blocked the passing of the Tradition of the Church intact.”  It was their generation that brought us the horror that was the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, the loosening of Church discipline, dissent, unorthodoxy, and the spread of immorality.  Homosexual clergy was swept under the rug.  On their watch, the priest pedophilia scandal began.  In spite of official announcements from the hierarchy, the priests of the Greatest Generation appear to have rejected the teachings of contraception.

And so, because the GG indulged their children and failed to pass on the virtues of self-denial, they beget children who, having no hardship, gave in to various behaviors of intemperance, lacking docility and judgement.  The impious Boomers did not honor their ancestors, and they rejected the tradition that their forefathers blocked from them.  The Boomers have since become impossible to lead, and having a disrespect for all forms of authority, they are dictators of their own appetites, demonstrating that with power they become ruthless and selfish.  By rejecting the cross, the GG ensured the licentiousness of their Boomer children.

Looking back, it is not just material wealth that has been robbed from us by the previous generations.  It is not merely the fat of the land that has been taken away.  Our very legacy–our very identity–has been stripped away from the generations that came after the Boomers.  It is true that Generation X and the Millennials will now have to fiscally struggle harder than the Boomers did, that the economy is always teetering on destruction, that the housing market is destroyed, that retirement may not exist.  But even our very morality and spirit has been crushed under these people.

Returning to the state of the Church, organized religion in the West–Christendom–has been reduced to a burning dumpster fire.  Consider recent words from Monsignor Williams:

“When everything in the world around us is being turned upside down, it should not surprise us to find the Pope talking like a Communist politician and the leader of Russia talking like a Catholic Pope.”

Leftism and crass disrespect for reverence is the widespread “spirit” running rampant throughout the Church.  It becomes an Easter egg hunt to find wholesome traditional priests and parishes that will deliver a reverent and traditional Mass with the time-tested teachings.  Charles Coulombe has to cheerfully joke to the clergy that “the Church is not the mystical body of the pope,” and that Pope Francis will make his mark on history in the same way as painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.  Ann Barnhardt, taking a more direct and grim approach, acknowledges that the clergy “don’t actually believe any of that Catholic bullshit,” relating that

“the aging-to-death religious orders are HAPPY that they are dying out because they HATE the Church and view The Church and their own orders as they were founded as “unjust”. These orders not only do not lament that they have no new incoming vocations, but they consciously, actively drive away any young people who come inquiring, because they consider any young person joining a religious order OF ANY KIND as a “waste of their life”. Needless to say, these auto-destructing religious orders hate with a fiery passion the traditional orders, which have young vocations out their ears, because THEY WANT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TO DIE”

These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine said in 1776.  Many times, animals will eat their young.  Yet, the Generation X and the Millennials who are alive have managed to survive the dangers of the 20th Century womb.  We haven’t been aborted.  So at least we have a fighting chance for life.  It may be that, after the devastation is complete and the Boomer generation has passed, the West will be left a blackened smoking crater.  We may have hardships and our spirits will be jaded and angry before all is said and done.

So pray for the graces to survive what seems a punishment from God.  Examine yourself and your character, and refuse to fall into the traps that our forefathers fell into.  Cleanse your line and raise a good family that breaks the old spell of your ancestors.  Prepare yourself and your progeny for a future of challenges.

As John Adams says:

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

So it must now be for us.  Get your heads on straight, fix your generational curses, live cleanly, and don’t cower.  My friends, I’m afraid we are left to sweep up the party favors of the 20th Century.

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