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# Saturday
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/23138/
- Published: 2012-02-11T11:09:58.000Z
- Updated: 2012-02-11T11:09:58.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Miscellaneous, #wpChunk

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Week-in-Review-300x56.png "Week in Review")

The big news this week? Flannery O'Connor. Not really, of course, but *Dappled Things* ran a [great essay about O'Connor's influence on Bruce Springsteen](http://dappledthings.org/1148/naming-sin-flannery-oconnors-mark-on-bruce-springsteen/?ref=thedailyeudemon.com). Excerpt:

> Springsteen began reading O'Connor's stories in his late twenties, which was at same the time he was working on *Darkness on the Edge of Town*, released in 1978\. In his review of *Darkness* in *Rolling Stone*, Paul Nelson writes, “Many of the characters in the songs on Bruce Springsteen's new album appear to be trapped in a state of desperation so intense that they must either break through to something better (or at least into something ambiguous) or break down into madness, murder or worse.” In the words of O'Connor, “Either one is serious about salvation or one is not.”

> Springsteen wrote over seventy songs for the *Darkness* album, and many of those songs appeared on his next album, *The River*. Of course, one wonders whether Springsteen pulled the album title directly from O'Connor's story of the same name. It seems a safe bet, especially since he also penned a song during that same period entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

I've always enjoyed Springsteen, though his politics has made him difficult to stomach. This kind of information helps me forgive his politics. He's coming out with a new album shortly. I'll have to give it a fair hearing.

Number Two

Finishing number two this week in significant essays? This piece, appearing, of all places, at *Business Insider*: [Time To Admit It: The Church Has Always Been Right On Birth Control](http://www.businessinsider.com/time-to-admit-it-the-church-has-always-been-right-on-birth-control-2012-2?ref=thedailyeudemon.com#ixzz1m4NlG9mW).

It's a great piece, definitely one of the best I've seen in awhile. It merits reading and forwarding. It deserves lots of blog links. Please spread it around. Excerpts:

> Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

> General lowering of moral standards  
> A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy  
> The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.  
> Government coercion in reproductive matters.

> Does that sound familiar?

> Because it sure sounds like what's been happening for the past 40 years.

> As George Akerloff wrote in *Slate* over a decade ago,

> By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father. . . .

> How else are we doing since this great sexual revolution? Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted 72 days. Illegitimacy: way up. In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8% \[PDF\]. In 1960 married families made up almost three-quarters of all households; but by the census of 2010 they accounted for just 48 percent of them. Cohabitation has increased tenfold since 1960.

> And if you don't think women are being reduced to objects to satisfy men, welcome to the internet.

I had to read *Humanae Vitae* during my second year at law school. I was a Lutheran and not remotely interested in becoming Catholic. I read the encyclical because I was serious about getting good grades, and it was going to be on the test. As I read it, my jaw nearly hit the floor. It might have been the most intellectually-shocking moment of my life, reading words from nearly 25 years earlier that predicted with unnerving precision the societal breakdown that I was living through.

I've never seen a decent rebuttal to *Humanae Vitae* that society itself didn't refute within five years. The rebuttal nowadays, of course, is simply to ignore it and drive over it like 40-year-old road kill. The Obama administration's abomination is just the most-recent manifestation of this response.