How susceptible we had been to rhetoric and ritual. We had yearned for something to believe in, like justice. We had been made vulnerable and sent off to war, passed a sense of obligation by our elders to believe in the glory of war. Inspired Catholic boys and girls rallied to the call of JFK to fight communists everywhere, to satisfy not only our parents, teachers and priests...but God, Pope and President. War seemed beyond all doubt a good thing and a form of virtue. However, our belief in all authority became disillusion along with a sense of loss which made us feel like orphans cut off from a sustaining world of church, state and parents. All sources of moral truth and authority dissolved exposing us to human culpability and brutality and to wonder.
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