You'll be older too...
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Did you know that both Barbara Nicolosi and Fr. Z are technically baby boomers themselves? I know! They are sooooooooooooooo old. Creepy.
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Barbie was born in 1964 and Z-man was born in 1959. The official range date to qualify for the baby boomer label is 1946 - 1964!
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They too are amongst the condemned! They too will be dying off; part of the natural attrition of the boomer generation... err, the biological solution as fans of WWII might refer to it.
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Isn't that special.
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ReplyDeleteI suspect that Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington (whom I've met and talked with and who is a very down-to-earth person) and Fr. Z are both very aware that they are baby boomers. My mother (b. 1949) has made similar critiques of her own generation.
ReplyDeleteI confess that as a young person (26), it is sometimes tempting to blame this or that group of people for the troubles in the Church. The people in charge at my parish are almost all of a certain age. My husband and I, musicians both, suffer most at the hands of our music director, who is 64. He actually forwards email "reflections" to my husband that talk about how young people in the Church are just going through a rebellious phase and will learn better as we get older (i.e. we'll realize how awful Latin and chant and incense are).
On the other hand, these people were not in charge in 1970. They were, like us now, in their first real jobs or still at school. The so-called "greatest generation" were in charge. And the collapse of academic theology has been an on-going battle since the reformation.
Anyone who believes that the "biological solution" will really be a solution has only to read a recent issue of "Pastoral Music" magazine in which the authors of the articles were all 18-25 years old. It was enough to make me despair of my own generation's sensibilities.
When you break it down, it was really the Silent Generation that created a lot of the initial nonsense we live with today, The Beatles, overthrowing tradition, etc... The Boomers just bought into it and turned it into a diabolical art form through their excessive narcissism.
ReplyDeleteWhat generation was more pampered with material advantages, stable 2 parent homes and so forth? And what did they do with it? Turned the world upside down to justify pleasure seeking of all kinds.
Can we really pin everything on them though? All the furies of hell were unleashed in the 20th Century and the Boomers were used as victim instruments. I think they genuinely thought they were doing good.
Generational stereotyping, barf, I'm getting so sick of it! The so-called "baby boom"; 1946 to 1964 is 18 years; a long time and a lot of people. Everybody in that group is not alike, a lot of times individuals in that demographic have more in common with other groups than they do with their peers. I was born in 1951; my youngest sister was born in 1969. Which makes me a boomer, but not her. But we are more alike than we are different; we have similar values, like the same things, have a similar sense of humor. Which isn't too surprising, we were raised by the same parents in the same home.
ReplyDeleteI think one's family has more influence on who we are than what year we were born.
Stereotying is just a lazy way of putting labels on people and pigeonholing them without getting to know them; and seems often to project one's resentments on them. You know, all those foreigners, or trailer park people, or people whose skin is different than ours.
And events and problems cast a long shadow. A lot of economic, social, and yes, religious problems have their roots in things that happened 50-100 years ago, so it is useless to blame them on one generation, they have been a long time in the making.
Anonymous - the Beatles are your diabolical art form? So I'll probably go to hell for listening to them too.
ReplyDeleteI all reality, it was indeed the generation born after WW2 that tried to change a lot, and Anonymous is right - they really did in many ways think they were doing good. But the great wars and miseries of the 20th century came about as an abandonment of tradition, not because of it.
Now we're just nihilists.
And yes, I think we also have to realize that most people born in the 50s just grew up and worked hard - they didn't have time or money or interest in hippy crap.
Humph....
ReplyDeleteI'm a 1964 baby...right on the cusp...my brother is 1966..
We consider ourselves Beatles babies :)
Sara
Praise God!! Just found out tonight that I got the top score in my class on my last math exam!! First time that has ever happened!!
ReplyDeleteI can officially wear my nerd button now :)
Sara
Go gettum', Sara!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that Sir Vortex is a baby-boomer as well!
ReplyDeleteAce
According the the wiki on both, technically some of us are "Generation Jones". And some would even include us in Gen X. (Not the band, although they rocked.)
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