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“Thirty rouble for your sportshoes Nike! Forty rouble!”
The fartsovschiks whispered to us, a class of eighth-grade American boys, on streetcorners, during the cold, windy Moscow March of 1983. One evening we encountered some of the last Soviet-era stilyogi themselves, our teenage Muscovite peers. They wanted to hear Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on a Sony Walkman which one of us had.
Through the communist era in Russia, the stilyagi rebelled–by wearing Western clothes and singing Western pop songs. Even in the 1980’s, fartsovschiks risked prison to traffic in this kind of contraband. Under Stalin, in the forties and fifties, the stilyagi themselves could go to prison camp for wearing zoot suits or listening to jazz.
Now, political campaigns in the U.S. often include charges that the incumbent party has led with un-American tyranny or authoritarianism. Paranoia about election rigging doesn’t seem to me to serve any purpose, especially when there’s no evidence.
But: can we identify a reigning ideology which our powers-that-be maintain, even at the expense of the truth? A state-sponsored mythology that provokes free-thinking people to rebel?
Yes, and it has to do with birthing babies.
The Soviet Union never had a post-WWII baby boom. The Bolsheviks made abortion legal in 1918. Through the twentieth century, demographers came to identify “the communist system” as a scientific factor–a fertility suppressor in and of itself.
But, since the 1970’s, we Americans have danced around replacement-rate fertility. And since the onset of the recession of 2008, we appear to have cratered well below it. Pope Francis called Europe a “haggard grandmother, no longer fertile.” That applies to the USA now as well.
Doesn’t a below-replacement-level birthrate indicate an unhealthy society–pretty much, by definition? Young people living under Soviet rule had to contend with Marxist uniformity poisoning social life. The stilyagi of 21st-century America have to deal with the mythology of the sexual revolution.
No zoot suits. But what about this:
We do not accept that pornography has a place in a civilized community. We reject the idea that such abusive and disgusting trash can be “mainstreamed.”
We believe in marriage. We believe young people have the courage to make commitments. We believe that God provides for couples that trust Him.
Stilyagi literally means “stylish people.” What could be more stylish in 21st-century America than a church wedding involving a lot of kneeling and praying–with no pets, no prenups, and no preening?
Also, how about these three principles:
- A child has a right to be conceived in his/her mother’s womb, by his/her father.
- A child, once conceived, cannot intentionally be killed.
- No one has a right to engage in sex that is inherently unfruitful.
Doesn’t seem like a reasonable person could quibble with any of these. Of course, these basic principles of marital decency and societal fertility leave procured abortion, artificial contraception, IVF, masturbation, and sodomy on the cutting-room floor. Where they all belong.
The Soviet regime eventually succumbed. The unholy Playboy/Planned Parenthood regime will fall one day, too. In the meantime, we can cultivate our zoot-suit rebellion by seeking the holy joy of real Christian chastity.
Sorry. I have fallen a few months behind in my 
On the other hand, a real man has the inner strength to be gentle—a gentle man. This is the truly strong and powerful man. He has within himself the strength to keep his conversation, his friendships, and his actions pure. He does not injure others, does not drag them down to a dirty level. Instead, he lifts other people up. He inspires other people to believe in themselves, like he believes in himself.
The dark, pagan world labors in self-destructive agony without this interior light. Without the light that makes the Heart of Christ so luminous. The pagan world grasps vainly in the darkness, without divine love, without the serenity of resting in the gaze of the eternal Father.
What do I mean? The desperate, unchaste pagan heart that does not know the peace of the loving Father’s gaze—the hearts of many of our neighbors; even our own hearts, in dark moments, when we let the light of faith fade. The darkened pagan heart of our culture: cutting, gashing, wounding itself with repeated unchaste acts.
When I was in the third grade,
The Lord DON’T say,
They lived with their eyes on the crucifix. They had one decisive priority: Remain united with Christ crucified. Whatever comes my way; whatever opportunities open before me; whatever the choices I have to make—I will have one decisive criterion: Christ crucified.
The Pope reminded the world of something immensely powerful, which lives deep in the heart of every man and woman. Namely, that we have been made, male and female, to give life. You don’t need to be a Christian; you needn’t even have heard of Jesus Christ, to discover within yourself that what the Pope taught is true. A lot of people did not see it at the time; they had honest disagreements; people of good faith dissented; there’s no sense in judging anyone over that. The real question is, where do we stand now?
If Christ crucified is the criterion; if Christ crucified is the tattoo that emblazons my mind; if I want above all to be an apostle of His Kingdom, then how could I ever act in the way that the culture of sexual self-satisfaction proposes? How could I traffic in those implements that they peddle? Or wink at it when others do?
We wondered how we camels will get ourselves through the eye of the needle and into the kingdom of heaven. Chapter V of Vatican II’s 
The history of our nation has seen admirable civil-rights movements. Inspiring leaders have helped us to perceive the fundamental dignity of every individual human being. Thanks to these movements, we wonder now: How could any of our ancestors have held our other ancestors as slaves? And how could our forefathers have regarded our excellent foremothers as anything but perfectly capable and intelligent?
Does saying this make us the enemies of a human right? We call it love to try to inspire people to have noble aspirations and seek God’s help in rising above the concupiscence of the flesh. But we have to face the sobering facts: A strong and self-assured social movement, with tons of money and prestige, calls what we say not love, but hate.
Father Mark White Blog 