Author Topic: carpetbagging maternal ancestress's road to Redemption  (Read 2323 times)

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Offline franksolich

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carpetbagging maternal ancestress's road to Redemption
« on: February 11, 2009, 09:31:31 PM »
In between alternating reading Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead, once in a while I switch off to another work of psychological, sociological, or anthropological value when examining the primitives on Skins's island, by any one of various authors, all of them with "M.D." or "Ph.D" after their names.

I've always been fascinated by that one can usually discern if a primitive is a lapsed Roman Catholic (disclosure: I happen to be Roman Catholic myself), by his or her or its comments on matters NOT relating to God, religion, or theology, but on matters personal, social, and political.

I disremember the name of the book, and its author--there's been so many of them-- that I read about a month, six weeks, ago, dealing with the phenomenon of how, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, and began wondering about the carpetbagging maternal ancestress, the mother of the Bostonian Drunkard.

I have her all figured out now.

One of the most common perceptions of Roman Catholicism, especially by outsiders, is that the Church teaches that one attains Grace and Redemption by suffering and fortitude, uncomplaining in the face of adversity.

This is of course wrong, wrong, wrong, but it's a common perception by outsiders precisely because most raised in the Roman Catholic Church think that's the rule.

The real rule in Roman Catholicism is that God (or Christ), and only God (or Christ) gives one Grace and Redemption.....and that the pupose of suffering and fortitude is simply to make one a better person in this time and place, nothing more.

Anyway, it's obvious that the carpetbagging maternal ancestress, a lapsed Catholic, absorbed this erroneous perception as a little lass, and it dominates her today, many decades later.  She thinks she's rejected all she was taught as a child, but she's wrong, it's still within her.

This is best exemplified by her feelings towards her utterly worthless son and heir, the Bostonian Drunkard.  Even though he shames her, embarrasses her, humiliates her, causing her much grief and sorrow, she still "loves" him "unconditionally" because the carpetbagging maternal ancestress still has this attitude that one attains Grace and Redemption by suffering.

Now, I was less than half the age of the Bostonian Drunkard (who turned 37 years old late last year) when the parents left this time and place, and so I'm treading on unfamiliar territory here, trying to figure out how the parent-child relationship evolves as the child reaches maturity and middle age.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here; remember, I really don't know.

I reasonably assume that if a parent, or both parents, of mine were still alive today, there would exist a notion inside of myself to refrain from, at least in their presence, things that might embarrass, shame, or humiliate them.

But that wouldn't only be me; I assume most people would be that way too, or are that way.

Well, here we have the case of the Bostonian Drunkard, using his gutter-mouth constantly in a place visible to his own mother, the woman who gave him life, and of course the carpetbagging maternal ancestress is well aware of his particular brand of sordid alcoholism; his flabbiness, his flaccidity, his wilful ugliness.

I'm sure the carpetbagging maternal ancestress didn't wish for him to turn out this way, but there he is, in all his unmitigated Squalidity.

So why does she "love" him still, and so "unconditionally"?

Again, it's necessary for me to trod on unfamiliar terrain again--I've never been a woman, or a mother, and if I'm wrong, anyone is free to correct me.

I am reasonably assuming that a woman who is a mother has a strong instinct to love her child no matter what; and that it overpowers any feelings of hurt or dismay that the child heaps upon her.

But that can't be all of it; surely even a mother has her limits.

And so I suspect the carpetbagging maternal ancestress is still practicing the Roman Catholicism imprinted in her girlhood; that one achieves Grace and Redemption by suffering and fortitude.

In other words, that the Bostonian Drunkard is the Cross that his mother must bear, and she bears it not only because she's a woman and a mother, but because she (erroneously) believes that by enduring the boorishness, the borishness, the boarishness, of her son, and without complaining, she is on the road to Redemption.
apres moi, le deluge