Nye elektroniske dingser og stadige nyhetssendinger er ikke til noen særlig nytt for menensker, kanskje blir vi bare dummere av det. Det kan vi lese om hos BBC (jeg leste dette etter tips fra min kone).
One of the more embarrassing difficulties of our age is that most of us have quite lost the ability to concentrate, to sit still and do nothing other than focus on certain basic truths of the human condition.
The fault lies in part with our new gadgets. … But we can’t just blame the machines. There is a deeper issue at stake – the feeling, so rife in modern secular culture, that we must constantly keep up with what is new.
Så knytter forfatter dette til gleden og nytten vi kan ha av kirkeårets gang; både for hver dag, og for hver måned gjennom hvert år.
The news occupies in the secular sphere much the same position of authority that the liturgical calendar has in the religious one. Its main dispatches track the canonical hours with uncanny precision. Matins have here been transubstantiated into the breakfast bulletin and Vespers into the evening report. …
… on the 25th day of January they must always think of the Conversion of Saint Paul, and on the morning of the 2nd of July reflect on the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and imbibe the moral lessons of Job.
How free secular society leaves us by contrast. It expects that we will spontaneously find our way to the ideas that matter to us and gives us weekends off for consumption and recreation …