We had to present one side of the argument, then the other, and decide one way or the other, when I went to high school.

We quickly came to realize there can be many sides of an argument.

Opposing camps can find common ground, and from a thesis-antithesis model, achieve a synthesis. Or one side might be bent on the other side’s annihilation. Skilled in rhetoric, for argument’s sake, one tries to tidy up an issue into a manageable form, but the audience is quick to pounce on the grounds that it’s not as simple as that.

Jesus was often presented with choices: pay tax to Caesar, or not, and to refer that all back to God, or not; stone the woman, or not; talk to her, and have a conversation that might actually help her and do some good, or not; declare the primacy of a commandment, or not, but, so often, that was a losing game for the questioners. People have to play with fire, and it’s a dangerous game, but we have to play with fire.

Would that Jesus were here to answer some of our questions! Like Camus’ protagonist  in “The Fall,” I sometimes think, “If only…. Ah, but what a relief that we’ll never have that chance!”

Nearby, a Catholic high school just fired a high-ranking gay member of the staff, because he had just gotten a gay marriage. Gay marriage is legal in Washington.

What type of society should we have in Washington state? We could select a random group of a 25 Washingtonians and assign them the task. After they had completed their work in amicable, productive, reasonable fashion, one finds out that in the group were Wiccans, Christians, Jews, Native Americans, Buddhists, Atheists, Hindus, Muslims, and three types of Catholics. The group members look around and grin, knowing it’s not necessarily easy to guess who is who.

A theocracy is a different type of world from that. So is high school. If ever a religion sought to create a hotbed of dissent against its very self, it would find its model in Catholic high schools. They’re well-supplied with kids who went to Catholic grade schools and are adept at countering the psychological warfare that goes on between educators and schoolkids. Unreasonable demands are commonplace, and come from those who cannot meet the demands on themselves. The kids are judged by those who demand, “Thou shall not judge.” There can be tensions. The adults actually aren’t a whole lot further down the road of self-knowledge than the kids.

Everyone has a part he has to play.

The gay vice principal has to be himself. He loves someone, and they have to live their unique lives, as men, as a couple. He can choose not to put his position at risk, but he has higher priorities, and faces the consequences of his actions.

The Catholic high school has to be itself. It has its own set of rules, consistent with Catholic doctrine. The school administration has to carry on the governance of the school. They are answerable to the Church, and the parents. Employees of the school must be acceptable to the administration. An employer tries to hire the best candidate for a position. It’s easy to see that a Catholic school might hire someone for a position other than a person in a gay marriage, which is something the church has made a vocal point of unequivocal opposition. 

Students have to be themselves. If a student spots hypocrisy– someone doing something he says noone should do– the student will not be mollified with condescension. What is wrong with a gay marriage? As long as we’re talking about sexual issues, what about all the other frowned-upon activities? Lust? Pedophilia? Adultery? Masturbation? Premarital sex? Pornography? Divorce? These things seem relatively okay to gay marriage, because a gay person who gets married gets fired, whereas everybody else doing the other things doesn’t have to worry so much. Who decided homosexuality and gay marriage are different, and much worse than those other issues? What is the compelling rationale?

Catholics understand that we have a Catholic theology of marriage. Not everybody can have a Catholic marriage. Not everybody wants one. Not everyone is Catholic. A Catholic mariage is a thing unto itself no more threatened by a civil gay marriage in Washington state than by a nondenominational wedding in Oregon. Catholics willing and able to have Catholic mariages will have them.

A civil marriage is not a Catholic marriage. As a Catholic Washingtonian, I absolutely support the right of all Washingtonians to have a legal marriage that is appropriate to their sexuality, that prevents discrimination, that solidifies their status as equal citizens.

If the high school in question had decided they would evaluate their vice principal’s employment on the merits of his work, taking into consideration the complexities of a changing society, and would discuss the issue openly, I would support the school’s thoughtful approach. Sometimes– not always, but sometimes– the adults are wrong, and the kids are right. Sometimes the state is ahead of the Church.

One can throw stones, or one can talk. Nobody should have to let anybody make him throw stones, either at someone else, or at his own true self. 

Professional sports is as intricate, subtle, baffling, and deceptive as any endeavor in the sphere of modern life. How does a society create an effective political system? How does a political system manage a successful economy? How does a family manage a viable family farm? Hard to know. How does one put together a championship sports team? This question, the sports fan readily embraces and expounds upon.

When teams fail, sometimes it’s because fundamental mistakes were made. The observer is pained that what is obvious to him is not apparent to the professionals in charge.

The Seattle Sounders and the University of Washington football team are cases in point.

New people are brought in to improve the team. How can one tell who is likely to be successful, and who is not? Sometimes one wants an experienced player. Sometimes a player with youth and potential is preferred. It’s easy to bring in a player or coach who has been successful for many years and hope he will play at a high level for a few more years. More difficult is to spot the player on the verge of stardom who will be great for many years to come. The ability to acquire such players is the mark of a successful team.

A young player who is hungry, ambitious, inexpensive, and unscathed by the years augurs better for a team than the veteran who has accomplished much with bigger teams, commands a high salary, and is increasingly injury-prone.

A Northwest college football team who signs a coach from a big California program will always be at risk of losing that coach to a bigger, more glamorous college, in California, or elsewhere. When the Washington State Cougars signed a coach from a smaller school in Washington, that was a sound move. For the Huskies to sign a coach from Boise State is a sound move, because Washington is a bigger school, and offers the coach an opportunity to achieve goals not achieved in Idaho.

When the Sounders sign an older player from a bigger league, that is risky. The player might well look back at the glory days of his career, and be happy to collect a substantial paycheck and a glamour position with a smaller team, whose accomplishments couldn’t rival those of his former club. Unlike the youngster from the Seattle suburbs, who has dreamed of playing for the Sounders (and bigger clubs) who dreams of winning MLS championships and, perhaps, moving to a bigger stage.

Better the team that brings out success in its players than the team that hopes players successful in the past will bestow success on the team in the present and future.

You don’t know it, until you become a father, but a father quickly realizes he is in uncharted personal territory. One would not trade the experience for anything, but is it “priceless?” Not if one accepts that love and suffering are the albeit-unpriceable prices of fatherhood.

The potential for absorbing pain that a father must accept is unprecedented in his life. The vulnerability is unknown and unquantifiable. Some dangers are common and well-known, but in the golf swing of life, what went wrong last time isn’t the thing that will go wrong the next time. While fixing one thing, something worse goes wrong, with a worldwide television audience watching.

In accepting the presence of a child, one accepts the possibility of the irreplaceable loss of the child. Even the thought that “something might happen” is terrifying enough to keep a parent awake at night.  

As intense as a father’s feelings are for his child, so immense and vast is the suffering that may lie in wait for the parent as the child undertakes his solo combat with his life and his world. A child arrives innocent (leaving aside the obtuse issue of “original sin”) and undefeated, and remains blameless throughout toddlerhood. That the child is utterly dependent is a defense for parents against accusations of self-interest in their all-encompassing efforts to protect the child.

The father, for the first time in his life, is actually “needed.” Parents don’t “need” their children. But a child doesn’t come into the world without a father. Father figures can be many, and superior in almost every meaningful way to the biological father, but if the baby is to have his biological father, there is only man qualified. Without the biological father, the child is left with a missing link to his past, with questions no one can answer as well.

To understand one’s self as a child’s father, a father looks to himself for insights into the child. My father died when I was very young, so that has shaped my understanding of it, but my perception is that, above all else, the individual is unique, and sovereign. I know only myself. I did not know my father to know in what personal ways I am descended from him. I know my brothers, but not how they are descended from our father. I know myself and how I have been influenced by events, but I do not know what qualities I inherited from my father that made me the person who was influenced in unique, particular ways by those events.

Having one son, he is the only possible son I could have had, if my wife and I only had one, although I know well from my brothers that two people can produce a wide range of children. Each is as inevitable, and random, as the others, brothers who define themselves more by their differences than their similarities.

To my son, I am, and will be, “father:” an archetype, the only person who could have been his father, the only one who could have been the husband of his mother, the only one who could have been the father of his siblings. But I will also be just one more father among fathers, one more parent among parents, one more obstacle in his way. He will be the unique person, the sovereign being who is transcendent, above and beyond all the historical and family baggage, the one who will discover for himself, not his “potential,” as my teachers used to say, but his aptitudes, and passions, and inclinations, while his father sometimes wonders where it’s all coming from.

As he settles into himself and looks outward, and inward, he will not look up to me, or down on me, but he will see me alongside himself, not just as his father, but as a fellow man. A fellow human being, who, like himself, was once upon a time his age, once upon a time had dreams that never came true, once upon a time had problems that had no solutions, once upon a time was a drifter without a wife and son, with a future with everything uncertain.

Perhaps he will marry, and have a son, and eventually, the details will fall into place, and he’ll appreciate all the very good reasons why his father had always seemed to think, sometimes for no apparent reason, that never was anyone so special as his son!