To Serve Man: An Interim Report

ABSTRACT:  A report on recent developments in the feeding, care, and harvesting of human beings (hereafter, ‘cattle’).

HISTORY: Approximately 5,000 SPO (Standard Planetary Orbits) ago, an agent of our corporation discovered that the third planet orbiting Yellow Star 57429 was infested with a more or less intelligent mammalian primate species. Being rather hungry after a long period of induced hibernation, the agent harvested and consumed a member of this species. The agent thereby discovered the delicacy which is the primary product of our boutique corporation, with a niche market of five amphibian or reptilian customer species, including our own.

It is better to light one small stick of dynamite, than to curse the silence.

This is a wake up call, for me and for my five or six readers now. I’ve mourned the death of my late wife, Beth, for long enough. I have also mourned the death of all that I have loved in the Church of my youth for long enough.

It is time to wake up to what we must become, rather than who we now are.

Apocalyptic for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

Albrecht Durer, ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

For me, I suppose it started, not with The Late Great Planet Earth, but with an idle comment made by a guest of the late William F. Buckley’s television talk show, Firing Line, back in 1979 or so. Buckley asked his guest, a brilliant and consummately educated Jesuit priest, just what the priest thought of Hal Lindsey’s little potboiler.

The priest paused for a second, and then said, “Let me tell you this story. I was at a great Eucharistic Convention which took place in Philadelphia a few years ago. At that convention there was a European Cardinal who spoke warmly, articulately, and knowledgeably throughout that Convention. At its end, His Eminence said to the vast audience there: ‘It is good that we are here together now, my brothers and sisters in Christ. But it is perhaps good also to consider that these may in fact be the Last Days.’

The priest paused again, and then said, “And the following year, that Cardinal was re-named as Pope John Paul the Second.”  Buckley nodded, was silent for a few seconds, and then changed the subject. I was silent too, for a time. But I kept that memory in my heart.

That memory nagged at me, and a part of me for long afterwards has been putting together an occasional fact here and there ever since. Let me tell you what I found.