Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 20, 1990 TAG: 9007200550
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A/8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I have learned that a little band of zealots has finally - after struggling to do so for a year - driven a fine young Episcopal minister from the pulpit of his church in the small town where I live.
The mail has brought, among other assorted junk, the catalogue of a dealer specializing in what he calls "lifestyle books" - boasting titles, presumably reflecting current "lifestyles" in such arcane areas as bilking the feds, buying up bankrupt companies and "victory by vengeance."
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has bowed to pressure and fired Nicholas Ridley, her trade and industry minister, for a few remarks derogating German reunification that might offend West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl but are surely no worse than the thoughts of millions of us, everywhere in the world, who quake at the rise of a resurgent, unified Germany.
I have been solicited, yet again, by Virginia Military Institute to contribute to a `'defense fund" to fight a federal suit seeking the end of all-male admissions to VMI.
No doubt wiser heads will remind me that lunacy has always flourished. But I am perennially hopeful, if not precisely optimistic, and the morning's tidings do not help. Taking it item by item, I scarcely know what hope I or anyone can draw.
The Episcopal minister in question made the mistake of being young, handsome and compassionate. More than a year ago he journeyed, like many other clergymen, to the Southwest Virginia area being struck by Pittston coal miners. There he was arrested (though never charged).
His real blunder, though, was that his good looks made him photogenic; the newspaper photographers quite naturally photographed him; and next day, clerical collar and all, there he was on the front page of this newspaper.
Some of his parishioners - by no means all - have been moaning ever since, blaming him, it appears, for everything they don't like since the Mexican War, including the policies of the national Episcopal Church over which he had no control.
They pilloried him both privately and very publicly, and Sunday, though still a minority, they got their will: He quit. Newspaper headlines called him "embattled." A more accurate word is "persecuted."
I do not know what to say about books teaching "How to Get Revenge" or "Mayhem by Mail," let alone something in two volumes called "The Greedy Bastard's Business Manual."
But no serious jest is intended; these books mean business. I can only assume that, like so much in our sick society, they reflect the essential morality of Reaganism.
Ridley, however, said only what many of us who've had to confront German might already believe: Reunifying Germany, though it now appears beyond halting, is a "racket" in which France has played "poodle" and the rest of the world saps.
If for no other reason, the German extermination of 10 million in its gas chambers, 6 million of them Jews, should exclude it from the civilized world forever. Kohl might well be left where he lured his pal Reagan, in Bitburg.
Which leads us, last and certainly least, to VMI and its attempt to win financial and moral support for its doomed struggle to keep women out of the corps of cadets.
It is typical of VMI, I am ashamed to say, that it continues to refuse to recognize that changing times demand changing behavior, that what worked at Chancellorsville in 1863 will not work in the United States of 1990. The effort of VMI alumni to hold back time tells you a lot about the quality of VMI education, alas.
The day is handsome. We had a splendid weekend rainfall after weeks of near-drought. The sun is shining. The air is clear, the coffee aromatic. But, on the evidence so far, it looks like a bummer ahead.
by CNB