Page 163 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 151%u201cYou think Christopher Dryden has a vocation?%u201d I asked.We stood looking at the bulletin board. Gunn had tacked up new specific mimeographed rules. He renewed the ban on fiction books, and, backed by the faculty, stipulated only textbooks and authorized collateral reading in our rooms. Protestant and Jewish theologians, who had crept in during the year, were collected by very senior boys and locked away in a cage in the library.%u201cPogrom,%u201d I said. %u201cInquisition.%u201d Philosophers like Paul Tillich and Martin Buber returned underground with the transistor radios. %u201cDo not ask the %u2018I%u2019 for whom the %u2018Thou%u2019 tolls.%u201d %u201cKarg and Gunn are missing the point.%u201d Lock was disgusted. %u201cNever throw the baby out with the bath water.%u201d He was tearing up a copy of Sartre which in itself was Sartrean. %u201cRules of grammar and laws of theology they understand, but anything modern proves they%u2019re more medieval than this wonderful new Pope.%u201d%u201cBut look at their logic,%u201d I said. %u201cThe worst sin has indicted the whole progress of theology.%u201d%u201cVatican II and Father Dryden. Sheer coincidence.%u201d %u201cWere those priests spying on us all year?%u201d I could imagine Gunn and Karg rooting through our underwear drawers, flipping through my notebooks, picking at my treasures in my shoe box. %u201cDryden maybe proves them right in their caution.%u201d Many boys%u2019 rooms in the last twenty-four hours had been ransacked. %u201cDryden ruined whatever he was trying to do.%u201d%u201cYou never liked him,%u201d Lock said. %u201cEver.%u201d%u201cHe scared me.%u201d%u201cYou%u2019re amazing, Ryan. What is it about you? It%u2019s like you can smell a sin of impurity at a thousand paces. I%u2019m not sure that%u2019s a virtue.%u201d%u201cI hated him, even though he breezed through in a fresh way.%u201d%u201cDryden%u2019s ruined everything,%u201d Lock said. %u201cAt least because of him everything%u2019s ruined.%u201d%u201cHe told us,%u201d I said, %u201cabout T. S. Eliot, and then he went and did the wrong thing for what reason I don%u2019t understand.%u201dIn the room, the boys come and go, posing for Michaelangelo. %u201cRector Karg has acted even worse,%u201d Lock said, %u201chandling this situation with all these gossiping boys. Old-guard priests don%u2019t like to see the new-guard church replacing them.%u201d%u201cMaybe,%u201d I said, %u201cFather Dryden really did nothing wrong. No more wrong than me translating H%u00e4ring. Maybe he%u2019s only a symbolic target.%u201d%u201cBut Mike said...%u201d