By Fr. Denis Wilde, OSA, Catholic Exchange, Dec. 16, 2021
Fr. Denis Wilde, OSA, Ph.D., is the associate director of Priests for Life. A concert pianist, he was formerly an associate professor of music at Villanova University.
Charles Dickens begins his classic A Tale of Two Cities, about London and Paris during the French Revolution, with the familiar contrasting phrases: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..” and in a sense, though not the mayhem of the French Revolution boiling past the Bastille and gushing poison into provincial France, yet the horrifying, senseless slaughters in Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere in our own United States have ricocheted into the outlying regions of the country with rapid TV and network transmissions. Bombshells bursting in the fear-driven arena of Covid make this day-shortening season a dark experience mirroring Dickens’ “worst” upon us.
Pervasive rootlessness in the meaning of life and its expectations, especially as experienced by the young – more prone than ever to suicide – represents the climate of a non-biblical world view, even an anti-biblical one. With due respect for the sincere efforts and advances science has made to bring this other plague, Covid, under control, it has become the breeding ground for fear, insecurity, and an all- too willing condescension to the State as its commandeering Captain through a storm enveloping minds and hearts. …
