On a pleasant Sunday such as this what could be better than a smoker contemplating Sen. Ralph Recto and sin?
The contemplation begins from a movie now playing on cable television starring Robert Deniro and Mila Jovovich entitled “Stone”. In this movie the latter plays the role of Lucretta, an absolutely amoral vamp. Her own husband describes her as “alien”. The word may be taken in many ways, “strange” being the most tame of them. She plays the role of a devil who eventually succeeds in corrupting her covict-husband’s parole officer played by Deniro into signing the papers for his release. Along the way, the husband actually finds his “god” and so becomes about the only”saved” person in this drama of lost souls.
What else can Lucretta be but a kindergarten teacher? In a pivotal scene she addresses her kids: “Today we learn all about doing something and not ever letting anybody else know we did it.”
In another part of the planet, this time in a reality away from the movie, as in “real life”, or as in a “real” newspaper headline, Pope Benedict complains about “spiritual desertification”. The contemplator is of course testing the veracity of this observation in his head. He cannot help himself. He lights up a cigarrette. He wonders if he proves the Pope right by this act.
He tells himself: Of course he does! But it is spiritual desertification only in the sense of spiritual weakness or moral impotence, the disability to say “no” with finality. Otherwise, it is not really spiritual desertification as in the sense that he does not think at all about the spiritual consequence of his actions. Sin.
He has 3 young children who might end up smoking because of him. And he knows he sins by putting them in harms way this way. He sets a bad example. And yet, he hides nothing from them. They know he smokes. But not just smoke, he is addicted to the act. And try as he might, he cannot stop. Tobacco is his beautiful devil. Perhaps the last beautiful devil he must exorcise from his spirit or die trying.
And he had many and more interesting devils in his past. He remembers each one of them now with a mixture both of remorse and, yes, nostalgia. But he knows he is spiritually “cleaner” now. He is spiritually retired from most sin although he is only a little bit more religious. As for “devout”, that might still be. But it will be many decades from now if he lives that long. It is not statistically likely if he keeps smoking.
His kids talk to him regularly about God. They pose questions to him about His existence. And it is always an interesting conversation. He tells them he has no proof of it but he believes anyway. They argue from time to time. At times they only nod their heads.
He wonders if they can tell the exact texture of his faith, the exact extent of it. He believes they can. They instictively sense it. He wonders if the more exact phrase should be “spiritually sense it.” It seems that way to him. After living together for so long, such things become possible. For himself, he seems to sense also that if there is any “spiritual desertification” here, it is not coming from his kids.
Once they were driving home from school in their van when a sudden downpour brought knee-deep flooding in the streets. Traffic came to a halt for over an hour as it grew darker. Trapped this way, the kids got extremely hungry and bored. There was never really any danger. More out of boredom than fear the youngest child proposed praying the “Rosary”. They had a booklet of the mysteries in the van. It was a Friday and so the pertinent mysteries were the “Sorrowful Mysteries”, which as he learned that day was for Tuesdays and Fridays. He learns even in his old age. It took two Rosaries before the traffic ran again and they struggled slowly to get home. The act seemed stranger to him than to his kids, even if he had to guide the youngest child through the prayers.
And yet, all these reminded him of when he was only a child and they prayed the Rosary almost every night on his mother’s orders. He remembers himself hating it mostly. But even so, he still knows how to pray even when there is no one to order him to do it. He finds himself praying more sincerely now. Thanks in part to his own kids. But by now, he has lighted up another stick. He wonders how many sticks he smoked without thinking to get him to this point nearing the end of this essay. He wonders if he feels any contrition at all.
Modern people have an obligation to look at their world from a position of disinterest. The common good is not altered whether or not one smokes. Neither is it altered whether or not one has made a deal with the tobacco industry, albeit secretly or indirectly. God have mercy on Recto’s, the Senate’s and my soul.