The Catholic Church Failed by the Tenth Century

While I was involved in a conversation on the internet, I finally realized that Designed to Fail is incomplete because it doesn't explicitly lay out the problem. Remember, the pastor's primary mission (bishop or priest) is to form parents/adults in the Faith. That's what the Magisterium says. Adults, not children. 

Arguably, the existence of Catholic schools for children merely demonstrates that the Church began to fail in its mission of forming adults roughly one thousand years ago, The Church did not begin to establish schools for children until the ninth or tenth centuries. Prior to that, parents taught their own children the Faith. The fact that schools for children became necessary meant the Church was no longer properly teaching adults/parents. 

Now, you might argue that in the Middle Ages, there were many more orphans who may have lost parents and godparents. These orphans had no one in the world to care for them except the monastics. And, just as a child's natural parents are lay people, so most monastics are lay people. Most monastics are not under Holy Orders. A man can be a monk or brother without being a priest, and most were not ordained priests. So, we still had well-formed lay people teaching children the faith, so where's the harm? 

The harm lies in the fact that monastics began to supplant even surviving parents. Since lay monastic religious instruction was seen as superior to lay parental instruction, everyone - parents, monks, nuns, priests, bishops, popes - everyone lost sight of the proper ordering of society. When the Church began to take over the role of children's catechetical instruction, parental formation was neglected as superfluous. By allowing parish schools and monasteries to be viewed as necessary to children's instruction, the Church tacitly admitted it had failed to properly catechize the parents.

The parish came into existence at roughly the same time parish schools did. By creating the monastic school, the cathedral school, the parish school, the pastors proclaimed that none of the parents or other responsible non-monastic lay adults in the parish were properly catechized. The Church had failed in her primary mission of catechizing and making holy adults. It had lost control of adult culture, which meant it had lost control of its mission to make every culture holy.

So, the problem isn't Vatican II or Vatican I or the Council of Trent. It goes back to at least the time of the First Lateran Council (1123) and possibly the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869). It goes back to the first parish and monastic schools. For a thousand years, the Church has taught that parents are the primary educators in the Faith of their own children, while it has functionally denied parents that role and failed to form them for that role. 

For the first thousand years, the Church fought a new heresy every century. It fought by calling councils, puzzling out doctrine, laying down new norms and more nuanced teaching. It fought back by catechizing and teaching adults. Adults contested with and taught each other the Faith. There were always new groups of adult pagans to catechize. But, once every adult was baptized and there were no more adult catechumens... that was the end of adult catechesis.

And, with the rise of monastic, cathedral and parish schools for children, the Church thereby admitted it no longer had the skills to instill the Faith in the average lay adult. More and more, it switched to teaching primarily children. The first crusade to free Jerusalem took place in 1095, the first crusade against the Albigensians in 1209, but by 1212 we already see the Children's Crusade, in which children are expected to do the work of the adults in converting the Muslim invaders to the Catholic Faith. 

Today, you will often hear Catholic school teachers, priests, even bishops proclaim that they teach Catholic children who then go home and proclaim the Gospel to their parents. Think on that. The children do the work of the priests and bishops (catechizing adults), the priests and bishop do the work of the parents (catechizing children), and the parents become children, with no responsibilities to anyone. This is a complete perversion of society, and this was clearly in place and going like gangbusters by 1212 AD. 

Another example of the failure to properly catechize adults can be found in the high number of decrees of nullity regarding marriage. And to understand what level of importance the Church assigns to marriage preparation, consider this: while canon law requires a novice to be 21 to declare religious vows, and 26 to be ordained, it also stipulates a person need only be 16 (if male) or 14 (if female) to be married. Up until 1981, the ages were 12 for women, 14 for men). In canon law, for the purposes of sacramental reception, one is considered an adult at age seven (the age of reason, CIC 11). 

So, the Church assumes that adults between the ages of seven and twelve (fourteen for males) can be prepared for sacramental reception of the life-long vows of marriage. If you want to enter a convent or religious orders, that is, if you want to work directly for the Church, then you must get more formation and you have to be older, but for marriage, yeah, twelve or fourteen is good enough. 

Pope Francis has called for a one-year preparation for reception of marriage. Meanwhile, canon law requires someone to prepare for at least three years prior to taking religious vows (CIC 658), to be a deacon requires five years of preparation (CIC 1032) and ordination cannot happen prior to age 23 (CIC 1031 ff), if he is married, he has to wait until he is 35 (CIC 1031.2), while a priest must be at least 25  and have at least six months to a year of preparation beyond that of the diaconate (CIC 1031.1). 

Those rules are enshrined in canon law. That pretty much sums up where preparation for the Sacrament of the Order of Marriage rates in comparison to Holy Orders or even the mere discipline of monastic vows. Suffice it to say that adult formation has not been at the forefront of Catholic praxis for at least a millennium. 

For these reasons, and for others I lay out in my book on Catholic schools, Designed to Fail, I can only say Catholic schools for children delenda est. 

What Are The Odds?

2.4% of the US population is Jewish:

• Kamala's husband is reform Jewish
• Ashley Biden's husband is reform Jewish
• Hunter Biden's current (second) wife, Melissa Cohen-Biden, is Jewish
• Beau Biden's wife Hallie is Jewish (Hunter screwed her)
• Ivanka Trump's husband is orthodox Jewish
• Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism
• Chelsea Clinton's husband is Jewish

Trump's inner circle has many prominent Jewish advisors

Obama's inner circle had so many prominent Jewish advisors that he held a private Seder at the White House for eight years running.

The United States is 25% Catholic.

Of the above, only Ashley and Hunter are nominally Catholic.

Olympics and Genetic Disorders

Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) appear to affect roughly 1 in 5000 births, or 0.018% of births. 

Two dozen U.S. boys under 17 swim faster than Katie Ledecky in her best event.

DSD certainly does affect athletic performance. Olympic testing has shown Olympic athletes are much more likely to have a DSD than is the general population:  

All women were screened in Olympic competition from 1992 onwards, with over 2000 tests performed at the 1992 Barcelona games. Fifteen tests were reported positive, with a further eight out of over 3000 positive tests at the Atlanta games in 1996.

1 in 5000 births only works out to 0.018% of births, but if the 1992 Olympics tested positive 15 of 2000, that is 0.75%, which means, in 1992, DSDs were 41 times more common among female Olympic athletes than expected. Similarly, 8 of 3000 positive tests in the 1996 Olympic means 0.266% positive, or a DSD rate nearly 15 times more common than expected. That's way, way above normal distribution. 

The incidence can create enormous disparities in women's sports. For instance:

Here are a few recent examples just from Olympic podiums in track and field: In Tokyo in 2021, an XY DSD sprinter took silver in the women’s 200 meters. In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, three XY DSD athletes swept the women’s 800-meter podium. In London in 2012, the same athlete who won gold in Rio rose from silver to gold after the winner was caught doping.

Some might claim that androgen insensitivity and similar DSDs confer no special advantage, but the numbers tell us this is not true. 

Clearly, if DSD conferred no advantage, there would not be an enormously disproportionate number of DSD athletes competing in the women's Olympics. The fact that the numbers clearly demonstrate this disproportion also demonstrates that someone isn't telling the truth about DSDs and their effect on women's sports competitions. 

Apparently, the Olympics is now much more about the athletics of genetic disorders than it is about female athletics. It's sad that the Olympics allowed this to happen.

Bruce Jenner weighs in

Duke Professor of Law weighs in

Why all the Illegal Immigrants?

Why are so many first-world countries accepting inordinate numbers of immigrants? It is obvious that the immigrants, legal and illegal, are changing the very fabric of first-world society. Why allow this?

There are many people who would default to the easy answer: political groups allow it because they hope for more votes from the immigrants than they can get from their native citizens. While this isn't wrong, it also doesn't really deal with the heart of the problem: total fertility rate (TFR).

Take Europe, for instance (although America is really no different). Europe's "Christians" are not having children, so they aren't really Christians. Whatever basis in Christian society Europe has had, has been fading since at least the Protestant Reformation, if not earlier. Western society has slowly been moving away from Christianity for centuries, which is how today's political monsters got into power to begin with. But politics isn't the practical problem. TFR is.

Every nation's leaders know this: if immigrants are not brought in, the nation disappears within a century as native citizens die off without having offspring... and the immigrants will move in ANYWAY because the country grows emptier each year. It's not like anyone can stop this. Look at the numbers:

• Median age of Europe is 42.5
• Median age of North Africa is 24.7
• Median age of Africa overall is 19.2

European leaders are hoping that if they bring in immigrants, legal and illegal, while Europe is still somewhat youthful(!), maybe they can assimilate the migrants and enculturate them with European values before the current European population ages out and the REAL deluge of youthful migrants starts.

They're wrong, of course, but you can't blame them for trying. You think waiting until the median European age is 50 or 70 is going to work better?

Hint: it won't.

What else can they do? They can't start an African war. Wars just increases infant mortality. High infant mortality increases TFR. Nobody wants Africa's TFR to go up. Europeans want it to go down. That means they have to reverse centuries of policy in regards to Africa. They have to figure out how to make Africa wealthy, ASAP. 

For centuries, Europe and the US has been deliberately keeping Africa poor and starved so it can mine African mineral resources. Well, that worked just great. Europe got rich on African mineral wealth. But, it turns out that the resulting European wealth depressed European TFR while the resulting African poverty and high infant mortality rates kept Africa's TFR high. 

Nobody thought about that.

So, they sowed to the wind, now they are reaping the whirlwind. Europe got wealthy at Africa's expense, now Africa comes to Europe to get their share of the pie. 

North America is similarly getting its come-uppance, and for similar reasons. America stole literally half of Mexico, we illegally occupied the Philippines for most of the 20th century, and we have been having fewer and fewer children each generation since 1800. As our wealth steadily increased, our TFR steadily dropped. For the last forty years, America's TFR has been below even that of 1930s Depression-era America. We're one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and without immigration, we would essentially disappear within roughly the next century. Already, America's median age is 39, in some states it is nearing 45. That's post-menopausal.

Mars Needs Women, and every country in the world needs immigrants. We're stealing other countries' populations in order to prop up our own. Europe is doing the same. That's why this is happening. 

Failed Bible Prophecies

In a previous post, we saw how Jeremiah 33:17-18 was a complete failure. God told Jeremiah that the re would come a time when the throne of David was never empty, a time when the Levitical priests would forever offer sacrificed, burnt animals on the altar. Indeed, the Catholic Douay-Rheims translates it "kill victims continually." The problem, of course, is that Catholic priests are of the line of Melchizedek, not Levi, and the Mass is not killing anyone "continually," rather, it is union with the one sacrifice of Christ. So, even if we ignore the 500 year interregnum before Christ sits on the throne of David, for the last 2000 years, the Messianic age has lacked both Levitical priests and continual animal sacrifices.

Jeremiah isn't the only failed prophet. Isaiah whiffed on several items:

Isaiah 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold Damascus shall cease to be a city, and shall be as a ruinous heap of stones. 

Damascus is, instead, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. 

Isaiah 19:4-5 And I will deliver Egypt into the hand of cruel masters, and a strong king shall rule over them, saith the Lord the God of hosts.  5 And the water of the sea shall be dried up, and the river shall be wasted and dry.

The Nile river has never run dry.

Isaiah 52:1 Arise, arise, put on thy strength, O Sion, put on the garments of thy glory, O Jerusalem, the city of the Holy One: for henceforth the uncircumcised, and unclean shall no more pass through thee.

Obviously, Jerusalem has had uncircumcised men within its walls constantly. Now, this can be explained away by spiritualizing the entire section. One can argue that Sion is a reference to heaven, and the uncircumcised are those whose hearts are not circumcised, i.e., joined to God. So, it would read as only the holy will enter heaven. 

Ezekiel suffers similar problems: 

Ezekiel 30:10-12 Thus saith the Lord God: I will make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon. 11 He and his people with him, the strongest of nations, shall be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their swords upon Egypt: and shall fill the land with the slain.  12 And I will make the channels of the rivers dry, and will deliver the land into the hand of the wicked: and will lay waste the land and all that is therein by the hands of strangers, I the Lord have spoken it.

In 568 BC, Nebuchadnezzar tried to conquer Egypt, but failed. Aahmes ruled for another generation over a prosperous Egypt and lived to see Nebuchadnezzar die. The Egyptians were not scattered or dispersed.

Ezekiel 29:10-11 Therefore, behold I come against thee, and thy rivers: and I will make the land of Egypt utterly desolate, and wasted by the sword, from the tower of Syene, even to the borders of Ethiopia. 11 The foot of man shall not pass through it, neither shall the foot of beasts go through it: nor shall it be inhabited during forty years.  12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the lands that are desolate, and the cities thereof in the midst of the cities that are destroyed, and they shall be desolate for forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

Egypt has never had a 40-year period in which it was uninhabited. 

Truth vs Victims

Christianity is the source of the victim mentality. Prior to Christianity, victims were considered to be stupid chumps who deserved what they got. But once you had a victim that claimed to be God, a God who could punish you for all eternity for having victimized him, that started a new narrative about victimhood. With the triumph of Christianity, victimhood became the source of ultimate divine power.

So, now everyone wants to be a victim. Christians want to be martyrs, but they can't find anyone who cares enough about Christianity to want to kill them. So, they make up narratives about Christian persecution because it feeds their ego to be Christ-like. The stories are absurd (see here, here or here), but even the Pope pretends it is true, because the persecution story has historically been so powerful. 

Post-Christian populations simply adopt and adapt the narrative, dropping all the God references, but keeping the powerful victimhood mythos rolling. 

Unfortunately for the post-Christians, victim mentality is the ultimate self-betrayal. 

The character never develops, the story never ends. 

You're just stuck in an endless doom loop of personal hell. 

That's why the liberal victimhood mentality doesn't work. They have no god to extract them from the doom loop. The only source of power in a godless victim doom loop is victimhood itself: if you lose victimhood, you lose power, so no one can afford to NOT be persecuted. Christians at least retain a god who can ultimately pull them out of the victim doom loop and elevate them above it. Sure, it doesn't happen until after your dead, but there's a source of hope in Christian victimology that is totally lacking in liberal victimology. Christians can break the eternal cycle and reach a personal perfection somewhat akin to Hindu/Buddhist nirvana, while liberals have no way to break out of the cycle without ceding everything they wanted to gain. Liberals have to be permanent victims in a way Christians do not.

Now, neither victim mentality is ultimately sustainable because neither one conforms to the actual reality of the current situation. Persecution requires unjust punishment or at least unjust negative sequelae. Christians really aren't being persecuted to any significant degree, and liberals aren't persecuted at all. Remember, persecution is unjust consequences wreaked on an innocent victim. If the consequences are normal, logical, reasonable and justified, then it isn't persecution.

The LGBTQ crowd get the natural consequences for acting out an addictive lifestyle. Marxists/socialists get the natural consequences for trying to enact an incredibly stupid, childish economic fairy tale. As the poet Stephen Crane might have said, jumping off a cliff and finding out gravity is real isn't persecution, it is simply solid contact with an indifferent universe. 

At this point, the social problem is obvious. Victim mentality, whether the liberal or the Christian version, is not ultimately compatible with social cohesion. This is part of the reason Christianity is failing. It's very success has removed it from victim status. Once the victim status is gone, Christians have no way to image the victim God at its center. If Christians aren't victims, the whole rationale for the world view and lifestyle is.... gone. For Christians, God is the source of truth. The truth is, Christians cannot image the crucified Christ if no one is willing to crucify them. No one is. 

Liberal victimhood suffers from a very similar problem. If it ever gets out that liberals aren't being victimized, if people realize liberals are actually just stupid people making poor decisions in the physical world, the entire liberal power base collapses. 

At this point, the only force upholding the victimhood narrative is national government. Governments now base their power in "protecting the little guy", the victim. Governments cannot afford to let anyone realize that there really isn't much persecution going on. To stay in power, they have to manufacture persecution, so they can still claim a protective function. Thus, for the last few decades, governments have been identifying various "victim" groups, rallying forces to protect them. Once that group becomes powerful enough, government identifies another group to "protect". Setting one group against another is the only way to stay in power, and keep the money rolling in. But that game cannot be played forever. 

Truth is the natural enemy of modern victim status. At some point, the victimhood game will collapse, because none of it is true. Jews aren't victims of Muslims, Muslims aren't victims of Jews, liberals aren't victims of conservatives, Christians aren't victims at all. The center cannot hold. Victimology worked for a couple of millennia, when there really were outside forces intent on violently enforcing identity politics, but endless wars have killed off a lot of the most violent genetics in our global society. Victimhood doesn't work in peaceful societies. We need a new organizing principle. It isn't clear what that will be. 

Why Everyone Loves Socialism

 

"Rep. Jamie Raskin

@RepRaskin

The democratic world must stand up for the rule of law in Venezuela and oppose Maduro’s assault on the electoral process and free speech. The right-wing attack on democratic institutions anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere."

Now, Maduro is unquestionably a socialist, a left-wing dictator. This is impossible to dispute. So why did Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin denounce Maduro as right-wing? The answer is very simple. Maduro is no longer a socialist, Maduro is right-wing, because no one likes Maduro. That's all there is to it.

Hitler isn't repudiated as "right-wing" because he committed mass murder. Stalin committed mass murder and no one calls Stalin "right-wing". Rather, even though he was unquestionably a socialist, Hitler is repudiated as right-wing precisely because people were horrified by the mass murder.

True socialism does not horrify anyone. Socialism is, by definition, a philosophy that every correctly educated person loves and welcomes.  

So, if any socialist actor, process or consequence results in the general unwashed masses feeling horror, then - by definition - that cannot have been socialist. It must have been something else. It must have been the only true enemy to socialism. It must have been... right-wing. Either that, or the masses must be uneducated, not awake (woke) to the reality of the thing they incorrectly labelled "horrible". 

Sometimes the reaction of the masses is both due to their being unwoke and to it being right-wing. But no matter how socialist the actors, the process or the consequence, if the people do not love it and welcome it, then it cannot be true socialism.

This simple concept lies at the heart of every political conversation with a socialist: “right-wing” is just the label some socialists use to delegitimize other socialists.  From the socialist point of view, the term has no other use. It has no other meaning. That's why a man who was clearly socialist, such as Hitler or Maduro, is necessarily "right-wing." True socialism can never be legitimately repudiated. What Hitler and Maduro did has been repudiated. Therefore, what they did was "right-wing" and not true socialism. 

This is why socialists hate Christianity. Christianity says that Christians will be hated by the world. But I do not want to be hated by the world. I want the world to love me. So I cannot be a Christian, because that is hateful. I will be a socialist, because everyone loves socialism. Only haters hate socialism. Socialism will rid the world of haters. All that will remain is love. If anyone hates, it is because Christianity exists. Christians even admit that they cause hate - they admit that people hate them. Jesus even admitted that He intended people to hate them. Christians wear hate as a badge of honor. That is not rational. That is hateful. As long as anyone hates Christianity, not only will I refuse to be a Christian, but I will use that hate as evidence that Christianity should be wiped out.

This is also why "true socialism" has never been tried. There is no actor, process or consequence that has been universally accepted as good by everyone. But, we know true socialism is loved and welcomed by everyone. Thus, by definition, true socialism has never been tried. QED. 

Now, this also means that we, who are loveable, can hold out hope that the world will finally awaken and realize how loveable we are. If true socialism ever were implemented, everyone would love and accept it. Thus, not only has true socialism never been tried, it is also why we know it will work this next time, because unlike the previous group, we are truly loveable people, so everyone will love it when we do it.