Dr. Esolen is starting to sound like a 'grumpy old man' too?

But it can't be helped--The Age of Credulity.

When I was a kid, people used to call it a "tragedy" if a child lost his mother or father, by death or divorce. That seemed about right to me; I knew a couple of those kids. But now one of my colleagues, a nominal Catholic, unmarried, has adopted a healthy little boy to raise as her own, without a father. I am supposed to believe that this is a wonderful thing, and throw a party. I can't believe it, as I cannot believe that our children of divorce and of shacking up are just fine, not hurt by it, no, not a bit. It would take a long and tedious post for me to recount what divorce and shacking up has done to just the families of our five or six closest friends in Canada; but I am supposed to ignore all of that, and believe, with a toss of the head, that marriage would have been worse. I have seen, closely, marriages that were terrible; and I have seen rotten husbands and wives grow even worse because of the possibility of divorce. I have seen them go on and make other people's lives miserable, like free radicals ranging through the system. I am supposed to ignore it, and believe, just believe.

It's a lovely day out there, and I am going to spend some of it picking blueberries. I could go on and on, listing the absurdities I can't bring myself to believe: that the purpose of our schools is to educate; that Catholics generally wish there would be more young priests; that Hillary Clinton loves her country; that soccer is a greater game than football; that Europe is not dying; that it is a wonderful thing to know that a movie like The Sound of Music (recently requested by my 14-year-old son) not only would not be made now, but could not be made; that people who believed in chastity in my parents' generation are just like the Taliban; that marriages of nitpicking duty-sharing are superior to marriages of complementary gifts and gratitude; that kindergarteners ought to know about sodomy; that a 120-pound girl lifeguard could save me if I were sinking; that men who stay at home to take care of their children will be fulfilled in their manhood and will be well-treated by their wives, who will work to earn money so that their husbands can have all the good things they would like for themselves and the family; that higher education is not a bloodsucking cheat; that a city without children is a great place to live; that anybody who drives a car with an automatic transmission, uses a clothes dryer or an air conditioner, lives more than a few miles from work, or owns a house of more than 500 square feet per occupant may be an "environmentalist" qualified to tell everybody else what to do about global warming; and so on.