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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 127Everyone laughed. I pulled at my Roman collar.%u201cResist institutionalization to the degree you must,%u201d Dryden said. %u201cYou must resist, if you have,%u201d he glanced my way, %u201cany conscience. Make a stand, passive if need be, but a stand, a commitment, someplace in your intellectual life. There%u2019s no difference between praying and thinking.%u201dHe took a long dramatic pause that pulled the focus of every boy to him.%u201cIf pushed by any institution to give up your intellect, your will, or your personal conscience, you must consider rebellion, civil war, disobedience. Even the bishops eventually to be seated at the Vatican Council cannot legitimately sit and argue about granting the right to the individual conscience. Every person has that right, bishops%u2019 ruling or no bishops%u2019 ruling. There is no such thing as a correct theology. The Church speaks, yes, but the Church has spoken, and the Church will speak. The verb tenses evolve. What the Church has said is not necessarily what the Church will say. The individual conscience, in the present, can live by anticipated future morality.%u201d I almost liked him for redefining vocation in terms of the person who was called, and responsible personally. %u201cYou all in one way or another,%u201d Dryden said, %u201cmust resist adolescence, isolation, and the lack of counseling the best you can. Opt for the original, personal experience of life,%u201d he said. %u201cDon%u2019t settle for the institutional ritualization of experience. That can change, and is changing in Rome at this very moment.%u201dHe looked at his wrist watch, and gestured to a boy eagerly waiting to turn on the TV.%u201cThis is no commercial,%u201d he said, %u201cbut I%u2019m available at any hour to any one of you.%u201dHe dimmed the overhead chandelier. His twelve-inch television sprang crackling snowy to a stark rectangle of black and white coming live from Chicago.Senator Kennedy smiling.Vice-President Nixon nervous.Questions.Answers.Quemoy and Matsu.Kennedy trouncing Nixon with the two names of those two disputed Asian islands.The television picture clicking, podium to podium. Kennedy puncturing the air with his driving forefinger.