Service Men by Robert Hart

Service Men

Robert Hart on Men Who Are Not Savages

When I was a young man, I tried to make money by selling (I was never any good at it). Once, as I was going through paperwork with a customer after having closed a sale—a rare experience for me—the man began to pour forth the strangest piece of boasting I have ever heard. “I told my wife that if she becomes pregnant, she is on her own. I’m leaving.” He said this with no apparent sense of shame.

Having just married my wife and in those days going through the process of adopting her child who had been conceived by rape, I wanted very much to tell him about the duties of being a man, but I remained silent and finished the paperwork. He went home, probably thinking that the average guy approved of his attitude. To this day, I wish I had been strong enough to show my disapproval.

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Robert Hart is rector of St. Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Anglican Catholic Church Original Province). He also contributes regularly to the blog The Continuum. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.

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