Legal Commentary

Over at First Things, Lutheran pastor Gregory Alms uses his recent experience as a pallbearer at his grandfather's funeral as the catalyst for a number of reflections on the human condition. Among those are the importance of tradition, Chesterton's "democracy of the dead," and how secular disdain for it continues our atomization as a society, as we slide downhill in our pursuit of individual "authenticity."

Many customs and traditions in many areas of life are disappearing from among us. Liturgy in the church, national ?rites? such as the Pledge of Allegiance or taking off one?s hat at the National Anthem, and countless other shared activities are being lost. There is some advantage to the rejection of a ?we?ve always done it that way? mentality. But there is also a danger. More is lost than simple habits. We become more and more isolated, more alone when we mark times and feelings such as birth and marriage and war and patriotism and death in idiosyncratic ways. It becomes ?just us? and our decision. Any other greater meaning is gone. When we do things that have always been done, even when it seems antiquated or strange (such as pall bearing), we are affirming that we are not free agents who have landed on the planet in the last twenty years. We have fathers and mothers, grandfathers, great grandmothers, ancestors, who worked and gave birth and believed and raised children, and we are the beneficiaries of that struggle. We have a past to which we are connected through ritual and the shared experience those rituals bring.

Pastor Alms has much more to say about that and related concerns, and it's well worth reading. One theme struck a particular nerve in this male, one about the idea of what it means to be a man in a post-feminist "culture."

Pallbearing is archaic in other ways. I served with male cousins and sons of my cousins. This is one of the few roles I have yet to see a female perform. I am sure pallbearing is performed by females in many places, since most all-male roles are fast disappearing. Being a pastor (in many if not all ecclesiastical locales), a warrior, a statesman, and much else, is no longer synonymous with being a man. All this sounds very chauvinistic, I know. Much of this change, if not all, is good. I have four daughters. I have no desire to close doors of opportunity for them. Yet it cannot be evil to think that there must be something that is still reserved for men alone. The words ?Be a man? still echo when one is carrying a casket. To stand up straight and do what must be done is an honorable calling. The urge not to weep, to look forward toward the altar as one processes in, and not to succumb to one?s emotions must still call forth admiration somewhere.

That "somewhere" is in a little corner of North Texas. It's in other places around around the globe, as well, where, to paraphrase Orwell, rough men do rough things so that all of the rest of us can sleep well and safely in our warm beds at night. Gerard Vanderleun asks, "Where do we get such soldiers and why do we deserve them?" I have an idea as to where we get them, but as Clint Eastwood's character William Munny in the movie "Unforgiven" puts it, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."