A few thoughts on ancestors. GKC:"Have we indeed outstripped the warrior and passed the ascetical saint? I fear we only outstrip the warrior in the sense that we should probably run away from him. And if we have passed the saint, I fear we have passed him without bowing. . . .

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. GKC

St. Thomas: In the second place our parents and our country, of whom and in which we were born and reared, are the principles of our being and government. And therefore, after God, man is most in debt to his parents and to his country.

Walter Rose (Good Neighbors): To these, my revered fathers, I owe a great debt, for they passed on to me much village lore. They are all gone, and I am quite unable to repay them, save by passing on to others what they passed on to me.

GKC: "Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back."

Cardinal Ratzinger: "History makes humanity possible—for without the necessarily transtemporal relationship of person to person, humanity cannot be awakened to itself."

St. Augustine: "We are all members of one Body, whether we are here or anywhere else on earth, now or at any other time from Abel the just to the end of the world.”

We've been flattering ourselves and our children for far too long now, and we've unleashed something that will not be easily contained.