Comments for The Virtues of the City at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 4 out of 4 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:41:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-virtues-of-the-city.html#comment-7582 Nice column, Randy. - Maureen Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:05:08 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-virtues-of-the-city.html#comment-7554 Grump, With all due respect to your experiences, I wonder if you are appreciating the spiritual desolation, loneliness, anxiety and uncertainty that this generation feels. I wouldn't call these burdens easy. They are different from your generations. We do have ubiquitous air conditioning though. That makes it a little easier to deal with virtually intolerable spiritual suffering. - Air conditioned hell Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:00:11 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-virtues-of-the-city.html#comment-7552 Grump, Amen. I am almost as old as you and see the same thing. I am blessed to have raised two children who know that no one owes them anything. If you want, you must work. They do not whine or sigh. Daily I experience what you wrote about - the whining, demanding, complaining. My mother would have slapped me!!! The cashier at the store who would rather be somewhere else and whines to me about it! The driver who feels she is entitled to be rude on the road! Even our pastor who whines about being tired and can't wait for retirement - from the pulpit!! My life has never been easy and I have managed to survive - with gratitude and a smile. - Liz Sat, 30 Jul 2011 06:22:22 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-virtues-of-the-city.html#comment-7550 I've curled up with Augustine many a nights and slogged through his often obtuse but often profound prose. City had its moments but Confessions bared much more of his soul. Never could forget his anguish about stealing pears. Now, as for this statement: 'We have some tough times in America right now.' When, in all of history, was there a generation that did not experience 'tough times.'? One cannot point to any era or span of years when the vast majority of people did not suffer or complain. Did not Christ say we'd always have the poor? Now on the verge of my seventh decade, it pains me to say that I have never seen so much whining in America, especially by the younger folk, who complain about anything and everything including whether they have the latest cellphone or designer jeans. America has gone soft and fat and yet the masses are lost and anxious and they can't understand why. They either don't know about or have forgotten the past when times really were tough; when unemployment was 25%, families of 10 lived in two rooms, bread lines dotted the cities and people sold apples for a nickel. The unspeakable horrors of World War II in which tens of millions died, a sizable majority of whom were innocent civilians including women and children, have all but faded from the national consciousness. I suggest TCT visitors read 'Give us This Day' by Sidney Stewart, the lone POW to survive a Japanese prison camp following the infamous Bataan death march during which thousands of Americans and Filipinos died horrible deaths. Stewart, who died in 1998, was a Protestant who came to rely on the spiritual guidance of a fellow POW, Catholic priest Bill Cummings, famed for the quote, "There are no atheists in fox holes." Father Cummings' last words before dying were "give us this day" as he was reciting the Lord's Prayer amid his sick and dying fellow prisoners, from which Stewart took the title of his book, written in 1956. Tough times? Read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand or Escape from Davao by John Lukacs and then complain about the 'tough times' of today when a few hot days cause such national anguish and the biggest crisis facing the nation is getting a new line of credit. America's gone soft. The final words go to Augustine who said: "If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times." - Grump Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:44:51 +0100