text: And so it began. L.A. was in flames. Mobs of young men – some children, some women – rioted in the streets, looting and killing. Soldiers, with weapons locked and loaded, tactically descended upon the city. Violence festered in death and destruction. And it should have come as no surprise; in a land that worships at the altar of materialism; that sinks ever lower in the muck of immorality; that sanctions the slaughter of its unborn; that is host to the gravest decimation of the family the world has ever known. It’s to be expected. Welcome to 21st century America.
  Such a rampage should be no surprise, for the indicators are all there. Consider two crucial and interwoven American trends – morality and law. America’s moral course can be characterized by the steady increase of abortion and divorce rates. During the past thirty years there have been close to 30 million infants licitly slaughtered in utero; while nearly a majority of new first-time marriages have been severed with state sanction. Love and life are held cheaply, it is pleasure and pretense that is valued.
  Paralleling America’s moral decay is her juridical course. The law of the land has been defined by an amalgamation of diverse policies – both liberal and conservative. Liberal courts have aggressively eroded the privileged status and authority of the family in the name of equality, while conservative courts have slowly increased the power of the police in the name of the war on crime and drugs. In California, for instance, the rate of incarceration quadrupled during the 1980s. Things have been out of control for a long time.
  Whether Americans like it or not, Los Angeles, via the entertainment industry, defines America to the world and to America herself. And L.A. is at best pretentious. But L.A., like the whited sepulcher, is putrid inside. The riot was only the rot made manifest. The impoverished ghetto will always be the place where the ills of society first fester. The deceptive placebo of material comfort can’t be afforded there – save in the brutal escape of drink, drugs and debauchery. In the ghetto there is not the leisure for sophisticated sin. In the ghetto the truth of our societal values emerges without the glitter.
  Most American won’t riot over an incident. But it’s debatable whether such restraint stems from their virtue or from the fact that they have too much to lose. For most Americans will not even stand up for a virtuous cause (e;g; the slaughter of the unborn); they’re too satiated. But take away their anesthetizing comforts, and beware of an eruption of evil. America was shocked by the riots. But one wonders if they would not be just as taken aback by one clear glimpse of their own hearts.
  In the ghetto rudeness rules. In the ghetto superficial sociability has no place. In the ghetto sin is crassly manifest. Abortuaries are prevalent and notorious, rape and robbery commonplace. The ghetto, even in relatively peaceful times, would shock the rest of America. But it is not so much the sin, but its resulting and unchecked chaos that would most disturb America. For America has come to accept sin so long as it is sterile and polite. It is not premarital sex that upsets America, but the inconvenience and stigma of the resulting “maladies,” be it disease or pregnancy. So they have clean contraceptive sex, remaining coldly calculating even in their passion. It is not adultery that disturbs America, but jealousy and the loss of economic and social equilibrium. So they have sane and civil divorce, then smugly render unto their children their fair – and court ordered – share of financial support and quality time.
  The truth is that the ghetto thug and the corporate executive often share common values. Among white-collars and blue-collars, among welfare recipients of all colors, can be found an espousal of consumerism. They worship the same bitch of acquisition and success – the monstrous whelp of American ideology gone awry.
  The rioter’s wanton disregard of life and property struck fear into the heart of America. But what else can be expected in a land where they family is being devastated to an unprecedented degree; where motherhood is relegated to secondary status in favor of wage-earning; where fatherhood has lost all but its biological meaning?
  What other than hatred can America expect when a generation of young adults emerges without experiencing the unconditional undivided love of a mother; without knowing deep in their heart that they are loved merely for their own sake, merely because they are the child of that mother. Such children grow up deficiently unaware of their own intrinsic human dignity.
  What’s surprising about the outbreak of anarchy in a society where fatherhood is becoming at best a parody? Any educator can tell you that when there is a weak or absent father there is bound to be disciplinary problems with the student. When there is no father there is bound to be lawlessness. There are, for all intents and purposes, no fathers in the ghetto; they have ceased to exist. American fathers of all social strata have likewise begun to disappear. And where they do still reside with the family more often than not they are a mere patriarchal parody, having shirked the mantle of fatherly authority and leadership.
  And who steps in to fill the familial void, but the state? And who supplies the discipline, but law enforcement and the courts? Witness the growth of police authority, and the growth of the penal system. Witness America incarcerating more of its citizens per capita than any other country in the world.
  America was rightly shocked at the video-taped police beating of a handcuffed prisoner. But it came as no surprise to Southern California pro-lifers who have witnessed Los Angeles Police Chief Gates liberally enjoying the brutal arrests at the 1989 Holy Saturday rescue, joking and smiling with his lieutenants, while his officers vigorously applied pain compliance holds.
  It is a war out there. The policeman’s mentality that “it’s us against them” is an honest reflection of the circumstances on the streets. But the police themselves are products of broken families. Indeed cops are notorious for it. The fact that the police at times wield authority imprudently, even viciously, should come as no surprise.
  People were dismayed that the police officers that inflicted the beating were pronounced “not guilty.” But activist pro-lifers, having time and time again been pronounced, “guilty, “were not taken unawares.
  America’s legal system, made up of her crème de la crème, is filled with judges and attorneys force-fed on judicial travesties such as Roe v. Wade. Mastering the complex rules of the law has replaced discerning justice. The highly competitive world of the legal profession leaves the student of law no time to consider right and wrong – other than as a correct answer on an exam. Justice is efficiently equated with that which accords with enacted laws and statutes. As such, the reduction of jurisprudence to a search for loopholes is to be expected.
  Liberal courts have long chipped away at the privileged status of family. For privilege is a pejorative to liberalism no matter how richly or intrinsically deserved. Favoring the family discriminates against those who embrace an “alternative lifestyle.” Maintaining the unique status of marriage is an impossibility when the judicial trend is toward easy, no fault divorce. In fact marriage has been reduced to a mere legal contract, viewed no differently than any other business transaction between two parties.
  With the recent ascendancy of conservative courts the impetus has not been on overturning liberal decisions that have eviscerated familial authority, but instead on re-instating and augmenting the power of the state to deal with the ills that are a direct result of weak familial life
  Hence, the family is being supplanted by state agencies, and with hardly a protest. And the process continues to gain momentum as police power waxes in response to the waning of familial authority; thereby exacerbating familial breakdown by increasing state intrusion into the family domain. So America finds itself in a quandary. As societal lawlessness increases so does the need for police presence. It’s a vicious circle, that if not broken, will only lead to a society where anarchy is held down by totalitarianism.
  They remedy required to avert the inhumane dynamics of anarchy and totalitarianism is nothing short of a miraculous one; the restoration and rejuvenation of the American family. Politically the dynamics of American societal evolution has got to be reversed. The bureaucratic statist assimilation of power must be remanded to the community and to the family. And the family must once again become the sanctuary of womanhood and the domain of manhood.
  They catalyst for such a momentous undertaking must be the Church. Unswayed by the demonic currents of contemporary society, she must provide both the truth and the leadership. In the ghetto, where the crisis is most manifest and hence most urgent, the Church is aptly situated to begin the process. Yet the Catholic educational system has as of late betrayed her charges. When a Washington, D.C., exists where one cannot help but notice throngs of black children clad in parochial school uniforms, and yet is dubbed “murder capital of the world,” someone is not doing his job. The Catholic school system, so prevalent in inner cities, has got face up to its duty of preaching the Gospel. The myriad parochial schools, in the ghetto and out, have got to produce the leader – and the fathers, and mothers, and families – that will rejuvenate America’s cities.
  The future can be salvaged given the freshness of each new generation, the heritage of freedom, the plenty of American, and God’s good and all powerful grace. America can be saved, but to do so leaders must arise to courageously reclaim their families, their communities and the nation. If not, a bleak future should come as no surprise.