RUDIMENTS, pt. 1071
(descended from apes?)
I was always thrown off by
the way it was said we were
'descended' from apes. It
never did make any sense
to me, in the normal use
of words, even though, in
many respects it often did
seem certainly so. I would
have been feeling much
better about it if they said
'ascended' from apes? Or
somesuch - to whom does
one complain about something
like that? Does Darwin have
an 800 number?
-
What struck me so deeply
about that was how, and
especially in light of my
'Catholic' and seminary
upbringing, it was otherwise
never mentioned - like some
black and forbidden holy grail.
I knew little of any of this, and
the name 'Darwin' was somehow
never even mentioned in our
daily schooling or programs;
much like the subject of sex, to
which celibate Catholic priests,
probably most of them strangely
perverted anyway, were later to
be thought of as expert enough to
counsel and guide troubled church
couples, those about to be married,
and couples about to break themselves
and their families apart. Pretty odd.
Like going to a baseball player for
advice about a toothache.
-
Anyhow, descended from apes
sure made little sense to me. It
only made me wonder about all
the other imprecise and imperfect
things that were being foisted on me
as dogma and doctrine. When I was
about 11, I guess, my father gave me
this large, well-illustrated, book about
the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle -
that was Darwin's ship - to the
Galapagos Islands. Which is where
he studied the animals and the rest
by which he formulated his theories.
As far as books went, it was pretty
interesting, though I can't recall the
text being of any great depth or
knowledge. Nevertheless, it stayed
with me, but later on, in the seminary,
I could never talk about it or learn
any more about it. It was off-limits,
so to speak.
-
Another thing about all this church
stuff - to jump back a few - is
how cleverly they took the rather
otherwise strange premise of that
'water into wine' scene and used it
for marriage-prep, pre-marriage
sessions for couples, called Cana
Conferences; using the name from
the Wedding at Cana where this
transformation of water into wine
story took place. I never quite knew
what they were driving at, but I
always found it absorbingly funny
to have wedding couples, supposedly
still celibate and well-behaved,
attending a 'marriage' conference
named after some oddly obvious
named after some oddly obvious
booze-fest of the far, distant past,
with a quite magical bartender, to
boot. Pretty funny. Almost as funny
as imagining those priestly fellows
and their instructional admonitions:
: "Now, fellas, you're going to have to
position yourselves nicely over your
wives; and, ladies, there will be nights
when, we know, you'll really not want
to be doing this, but you must submit,
even if it means going against your
momentary will. By the way, this
sex must never be used for pleasure,
only for procreation and for making
new little Catholics." Who in the
world thinks this stuff up?
-
Then I realized it was all just part
of that large mix that goes into all
the parts of the society which makes
people, as a people, what they are.
I guess it was much the same as
not running people down in an
intersection. Though I've never yet
seen an ape driving, would they
know enough to stop for pedestrians?
Is that what 'descended from' was
getting at? Without rules, after all,
what really is a society about, and
at what point does accepting rules
become acceptable? Laws of the
jungle not applicable? So, who says
'descended' anyway, and that did
they really mean?
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