The Original Rad-Trads

"It is outrageous! The Vatican Council was so imprecise that anyone could use the conciliar documents to promote heresy if they wanted! And Pope Francis is even worse! I don't even want to read what he says anymore, because it doesn't make any sense!"

This is the mating call of the rad-trad. They use it to find dates, rally their families, and collect beer-drinking buddies on the back porch. It is an old call that goes all the way back to 325 AD.

Yes, if we use rad-trad principles, we can see that the first failed council was the Council of Nicaea, the first failed Pope was St. Sylvester I. Why? Well, we need look no farther than that dastardly word "homo- ousion".

In 300 AD, the "normalcy bias" for that word was that it stank of heresy, which it did. While the word had at first been used in a licit sense, Paul of Samosata had used it to argue that the Father and the Son are one Person, not two distinct Persons. He was condemned for the idea, and the word fell into ill odor as a direct result. In fact, the word was a touchstone for the Arian heresy, the heresy which built upon Paul of Samasota's error, and the very heresy which the Council was called to discuss. Yet, despite its bad reputation, this arguably imprecise, heretic-associated word was used in the Nicene Creed. Worse, to add injury to insult, not only was the word considered imprecise because of its heretical past, its use also constituted the first time a creed had ever used a non-Scriptural word. It was a complete mess.

But the council didn't stop there. It also dared to make changes to the ancient liturgy, laying its conciliar hands even upon the dating of the mother of all feasts, the date of the Easter celebration! What new craziness was this?  The Council of Nicaea ruled that all churches should follow a single rule for Easter, which should be computed independently of the Jewish calendar, as at Alexandria. However, in its typically imprecise way, the council did not make any explicit ruling about the details of the computation. It was several decades before the Alexandrine computations stabilized into their final form, and several centuries beyond that before they became normative throughout Christendom.

"Why did the Council even go there? Why did the Pope sign off on such foolishness? Why couldn't they have been precise, so there would be no confusion?"

The rad-trads of the 300s were the Coptic Christians. Their dislike of the documents and distrust of the Pope became so great that the Copts would schism off within less than a century, Although they eventually accepted the liturgical changes, they couldn't stand the - from their point of view - virtual heresy of the Christians who used this nonsense word in the liturgy and the creed.

So, like today's traditionalists, the Coptic Christians refused to trust the council and the Popes. As a direct result of their obstinate refusal to submit to ecclesial authority and use a little Christian charity in their dealings with Rome, they suffered some rather disturbing consequences. Within 300 years of their rejection of the council, they were overrun by Muslims and are, today, barely hanging onto Christian Faith in Egypt. More than one historian has argued that the Muslim takeover of North Africa was due in no small part to the immobilization of the Copts that resulted from their inability to deal with theological heresies following their split with Rome. Though they are closer to unity with Rome than any of our separated brethren, to this day they are still separated from the Church.

We have the world we live in today because the rad-trads of the 300s simply couldn't find a way to accept a new way of phrasing ancient truths. They refused to have faith in a Pope and a council who used language they weren't comfortable with.

It is normal for every council to have its "rad-trad" community. Let us hope that the 21st century group fares better than the Copts have.

Pope Francis is Crazy

This is crazy. Why is the Pope teaching standard Catholic doctrine instead of teaching my personal, biased, twisted version of Catholicism?

The Pope's antics are exactly why the Church is in crisis right now. He needs to resign and let me, or at least people who think the same way I do, take over.

Our Lady of Fatima said this would happen, which is why God created me. I am here to save the Catholic Church. If the Pope isn't willing to listen to me, he's a Freemason and the Anti-Christ.  Sure, Martin Luther taught that the Pope was the anti-Christ, and Luther was a heretic, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Either Catholics can start listening to me, or they will all go straight to hell. And don't think it won't happen - I have dozens of Magisterial documents that say what I am saying. If you just read the chain of out-of-context quotes I provide below, you will see that what I say is true.

It amazes me that the Pope seems completely unaware of Church documents. Instead, every time the Pope speaks, he contradicts what I think, and I'm getting pretty tired of it. This Pope is a complete disaster. To be fair, earlier popes were sometimes a little off, but they weren't able to access my thinking because there really wasn't any social media presence through which they could have learned what I think, so they aren't at fault. But this Pope... this Pope has no excuse. I've posted on Facebook, I've tweeted on Twitter, I've even put up Instagram photos and used hashtags. I've done it all. He really should know my thinking by this point. He has had endless opportunities to conform himself to the way my friends and I think, but he still refuses to comply.

It is so tiresome. He simply does not listen. Instead he goes off on these crazy rants on planes, in front of reporters, no less, pretending that he has greater authority than me and my absurd personal interpretations of various papal bulls, exhortations and conciliar documents. And let me be clear on this - as a lay person who has spent almost a dozen hours studying the entire Magisterium, I am absolutely a subject matter expert compared to this Pope, or, for that matter, compared to any bishop who has only a few lousy years of seminary and theology grad school. Apart from Masonic, demonic or similar influence, there is simply no explanation for why they don't pay more attention to what I have to say.

Make no mistake - this is all the fault of Freemasonry. And believe me, I know. I've read dozens of Freemason-inspired works that describe how the Freemasons have already taken over the Church. Why would the Freemasons lie about a thing like that? Now that the Freemasons have admitted it, I know the great truth: I can't trust the Pope. Why? Well, because the Freemasons have told me that the Pope himself is a Freemason. Again, I know it is true, because the Freemasons have no reason to lie about that. They infiltrated Vatican II, which is why the liturgy is no longer to my liking and is thereby proved to be false liturgy. They infiltrated the papacy, which is how they foisted their false liturgy onto me.

That is obviously why the Pope's teachings, why Vatican II's teachings, do not conform to my own understanding of the Catholic Faith. The Holy Spirit guides me into right understanding. The Holy Spirit does not guide the Pope, because I now know the Pope is a Freemason. It didn't guide the Council, because the Freemasons have made clear that they controlled the council.

Also, this is the end-times, and no one can trust the Pope during the end-times. How do I know? Well, because my personal interpretation of the private revelation of Our Lady of the Latest Apparition makes that perfectly clear. My rosary turned gold for a few minutes when I meditated on the Freemasonic takeover of the papacy and Vatican II.  All the signs are there.

That is why I have had it up to here with Pope Francis. It's time for the Pope to stop trying to foist his secret Masonic, New World Order, communistic socialism on good Catholics, by which I mean, me and those who think like me. It is time for him to read Church documents exactly the way I do. It is time for the Church to recognize that the Holy Spirit is in charge, as channeled through me.

Sigh.
It's not easy bringing the Church into conformance to God, but that's what I'm here for.
If they want to be saved, it will only be by following what I say. The Church has had bad popes before, She will survive, if only in the remnant that consists of me and my right-thinking friends. The rest of you will burn in hell. I will pray for you.

The Robot Apocalypse

Should we be as terrified of artificial intelligence as Elon Musk and Bill Gates?

The number of books, movies and other cultural references that use the killer robot as the central meme is almost countless. From the Jewish legend of the golem, through Frankenstein, to the current fascination with murderous AI, we have long understand that our being made in the image and likeness of God means we may, indeed, have the ability to form life from the earth.

We know such life would not be human, would not have the divine breath breathed into it, but would be less than that. Would such a creation, formed by the supernatural hand of man instead of the divine hand of God, would that creation know how to love, or would it know only how to destroy?

If a man-made being were possible, in order for the being to be like us, it would have to understand love. Is this possible?

We could argue that since love is a relationship between persons, and robots aren't persons, it would not be possible for such creatures to understand the relationship that is love.

On the other hand, we can argue that God is perfectly logical and that God is Love, so love must be the result of perfect logic. If that is true, then logic-based intelligences would be able to understand love. Of course, to do so, we would have had to program them correctly. Insofar as we inadvertently wrote errors into the program logic, the creatures we created would not be able to love.

There is a further wrinkle to the difficulty. Emotion is the result of endocrine levels that wash through our system, influencing brain function in ways we do not understand. God does not have a body, so God does not have emotions, but our emotions must, somehow, reflect the pure rationality that is God, so they must somehow be accounted for in our programming. To date, we have no knowledge of how to make that part work. We do not understand the logic of emotion, or of emotional love. Because we don't understand it, we can't code for it. As a result, any golem we create will necessarily be incomplete, it can be nothing more than the sum or our own incomplete self-understanding.

And that is the heart of the problem. An artificial intelligence is, ultimately, nothing more than a programmer, or a team of programmers, producing their own partial reflection, using silicon and steel instead of a silvered glass mirror. Since every AI is the result of a program written by a human being, robots are - at best - merely a reflection of us. Robots, computers, programs, all of it, is just us looking at ourselves through the glass darkly, using Boolean logic as our incomplete lenses as we peer into our own fallen souls.

Deep down, we know that.
And that, perhaps, is why robots frighten us so much.

The Role of Faith

Can research really say something (anything) about the inner life of faith and doubt, trust and uncertainty that is religious belief?

It is important to remember that doubt and uncertainty are not, strictly speaking, part of the life of faith. Faith is trust. Doubt and uncertainty are lack of trust.

Thus, we may speak of the waxing and waning of faith, but we cannot speak of doubt and uncertainty as being part of the faith life any more than we can speak of cholera and dysentery as being part of the healthy lifestyle.

You might say, "But doubt and uncertainty are a necessary part of faith! To deny that all faith includes doubt would be both untrue and, to me, a sign of hubris!" This isn't true, as is easily demonstrated. Simply take that phrase and substitute the appropriate terms: "To deny that all health involves dysentery is both untrue and a sign of hubris!" Does that make sense?

Too many people view the word "faith" as they do the word "cleave" - they treat "faith" as if it were its own antonym. It isn't. Doubt is not a necessary part of faith. To say that doubt happens to otherwise faithful people is identical to saying that dysentery happens to otherwise healthy people - a true statement, but a non sequitor.

Theology is a science. Faith, at least in Christian experience (and arguably in Judaic experience) is an evidence-based attitude. You could make arguments against this position in other traditions, of course. Hinduism is not faith-based, and Buddhism isn't even, properly speaking, a theology. But the whole purpose of the OT in Jewish tradition is to record evidence that God is trustworthy, the whole purpose of the NT is to record the evidence of what the trusted God has done.

If we were to look at experimental science, we would see the role of doubt as appropriate only to one's own interpretation of available data. I don't doubt the facts. I doubt - at most - that I personally have correctly collected, interpreted or presented the facts. The role of doubt for a theologian is the same - I don't doubt reality, I doubt my own ability to grasp it correctly. So, I can only struggle with faith in myself, I cannot, properly speaking, struggle with faith in God..

In short, I trust God, I don't trust me.
THAT is the only proper way to discuss doubt in regards to faith.

Why Orlando Was A Tragedy

[Calling the Orlando shooting a tragedy] is a misuse of the term, one that enables our evasions of political reality. It is exactly the opposite of “tragedy” in its classical sense. In his Poetics, Aristotle says that an action is “tragic” when it unfolds in a way that causes the protagonist to suffer, not by happenstance, but in accord with an intrinsic logic. The suffering of the tragic protagonist is fitting. The upshot is catharsis, a release of strong feeling that restores emotional equilibrium. An event is classically “tragic,” then, when suffering is meaningful. We resonate to suffering cathartically when we sense its meaning—and sense that we are implicated in it. 

But when we apply “tragedy” to mass murder, our sense of the word is exactly the opposite of Aristotle’s.

Thus asserts R. Reno, of First Things. Sadly, Reno is exactly wrong. Not in his reference to Aristotle. Tragedy does, indeed, refer to the protagonist's suffering in accordance with intrinsic logic. Rather, he is wrong to refuse the Orlando shooting the title of "tragedy."

Now, the ancient Greeks would agree with Reno. Since Aristotle's confreres had no particular issue with homosexuality, they would see a homosexual wreaking violence upon other homosexuals as senseless, illogical - certainly not a tragedy. Rather, this would be a crime or an act of war.  But Christians cannot agree with the pagan Greeks on this.

Christians recognize that homosexual activity is a sin against God. Now, if we were blinkered, malformed Christians who looked only at the gravity of the sin against God, we would be tempted to agree with the independent Baptist preachers who insist that the suffering and death of the homosexuals in the Pulse was completely just and logical. We would, if we were so spiritually immature, see this as real Aristotelian tragedy: both shooter and victims reaped in their bodies the spiritual violence they had attempted, through their sins, to inflict on God. Cold justice has been served. The pagan necessities are satiated.

But, of course, Christians are not permitted to look only at the gravity of any man's sins against God. Christians are required to look also at how the debt incurred by sin, the debt of suffering and death, is paid. The heart of the Christian message lies not in man's debt, but man's redemption: Christ, an innocent man, paid for our sins; an innocent man suffered and died for sins He had no part in.

For the pagan, for the spiritually immature, this makes no sense. The Greeks did not believe in the all-encompassing love of God. To a society that did not recognize love, the story has no logical coherence. It is a meaningless, pointless death. Thus, as Paul notes, the pagan Greeks saw the Gospel - the innocent Christ Who suffered and died for everyone else's sins - as a folly, not a tragedy.

This is where Christians differ from the pagan Greeks. For the Christian, the Gospel is most certainly a tragedy, because we view it not through the cold logic of the pagan Greek retributive universe, but through the eyes of divine Love. The Cross follows the logic of Love, not the logic of retribution. Thus did the Cross transform the Greek understanding of tragedy into the Christian understanding.

If the Gospel teaches us anything, it teaches us the divine, as opposed to the human, meaning of tragedy. It tells us the complete story: what sin really is, why we deserve to suffer, how Christ took what we deserve onto Himself, leaving us with only the bare dregs of suffering to endure. Once we have Christian eyes, we see that the injustice of history, the illogic of human suffering, lies not in the fact that we suffer and die, but rather in the failure of the world - even the natural world - to recognize the debt Christ's suffering has already paid.

Christ's suffering follows the logic of love. A mother gladly suffers for her child, the beloved suffers for the loved one. The lover takes the punishment so that the beloved does not suffer at all. So, according to the pagans, once Christ paid our debt, we should, according to human eyes, suffer no more. If we follow human understanding, Joel Osteen is right - we should have only a Gospel of Prosperity. According to human understanding, if Christ' suffering really does pay for all, then any suffering we experience is truly meaningless, meaningless in a way that was literally impossible before the Cross. We suffer for a debt that has been paid? How absurd!

Before the Cross, suffering was not absurd. We could honestly see that we deserved our suffering and death. Thus, if the Pulse had happened before the Cross had happened, the Pulse would be a true tragedy: we gain our comeuppance.

But, after the Cross, after the payment is made, our suffering makes no sense, unless... unless...

The only way our suffering has any intrinsic logic, any tragic element, is if our suffering shares in His suffering. Our suffering only has meaning if we suffer for love of Him.  He was innocent, yet He took on our suffering because of His abiding love for us. His suffering made us innocent.

Because He has made us innocent, we can now suffer as only the innocent suffer, as only the Truly Innocent One suffered, and we can now do it as He did it - we can accept our suffering only out of our pure love for the Beloved. Because Christ wiped out our sins, our suffering now can truly conform us to Christ, transform us into Christ. Only when our suffering is united with the suffering of the Cross, only then does our suffering attain truly tragic status again.

Our suffering is not tragic because of the pagan logic of a cold justice, but rather it becomes tragic through the fiery logic of our burning love for God, and more important, His fiery love for us. Our love is a love He taught us, our endurance is now an endurance He taught us, Our love, our willingness to endure suffering, truly becomes a pale, flickering imitation of the God Who is Fire.

We deserved to suffer because we have each fallen short of the glory of God. Christ removed our guilt, and with it, our suffering. And, now that He has made us innocent, we once more gladly shoulder for Him the suffering He gladly shouldered for us, so that we may imitate Him Who loved us.

Once the Cross is in place, our suffering only becomes unjust, it only becomes non-tragic, it only becomes illogical, if it is separated apart from the Cross. Our suffering and death only lacks logic insofar as it fails to recognize or acknowledge that Christ has already paid our debt. It only lacks meaning if it is not endured for love of God.

After the Cross, suffering only fails to share in tragedy insofar as suffering fails to share in the Cross. And it is only in THIS sense that we can refuse to call the Pulse shooting a tragedy. If we refuse to call the shooting a tragedy, we must necessarily assume the people who suffered and died there did not do so in Christ, that they suffered apart from the Cross, that they had no union with Christ whatsoever. To refuse the title "tragedy" to this scene of carnage and death, we must hold these suffering and these dead to be a people unreedemable, condemned to hell.

And thus do we see both First Things' and R. Reno are actually preaching a message indistinguishable from the independent Baptist preachers who chortle over the shootings and revel in the thought that victims and shooter alike burn in hell. Unless we know with mathematical certainty that they are all truly consigned to hell - which no man can know - such revelry is the complete antithesis of the Christian life and worldview. We cannot, in Christian charity, even think such a thing. Christ died for all, for them as well as for us. He may have drawn some or all of them to Himself in ways unknown to the small, shrunken, wizened person, the tremendously finite individual who is me. I have not the mind of Christ. All I know is that it is entirely possible for prostitutes and tax collectors to enter the Kingdom of Heaven before me.

What happened in Orlando was not an attack on our society, for the activities at the Pulse is not what anyone wants society to be. We do not want our society to sin against God. A homosexual gunning down dozens of homosexuals is a sin against God. A Muslim slaughtering victims while he called upon ISIS and Allah so that he might be redeemed by the human slaughter may thinks he commits a redemptive act, but what he commits is evil.

At the Pulse, we saw a non-Christian offering human sacrifice, as all non-Christians eventually do, for all men desperately wish to imitate the Man who sacrificed Himself for men. Even those who openly reject the Cross secretly desire it, even the man who inflicted the slaughter might, despite his most grievous sin and only through the love of Christ, might yet have been saved. And, if he be saved from hell, it is not because of the tremendous evil he committed, but despite of it, not because of the evil he inflicted, but because of the faint, dim image of the Good he, in his twisted understanding, blindly, desperately wanted to do.

Do not hesitate to call Orlando a tragedy, for it was.
It was a tragedy for every soul involved, victims, perpetrator and spectators.
May God have mercy on all our souls.
Amen.

The Sinner Who Would Not Be Broken

"He spoke of his encounter with a woman in Buenos Aires who “reproached” him. She said that priests study for the priesthood for years and can get permission to leave the priesthood to marry and have a family. For the laity, this woman said, “we have to do the sacrament for our entire lives, and indissolubly, to us laity they give four (marriage preparation) conferences, and this is for our entire life.”"

Everyone commenting on the Pope's recent remarks on marriage are up-in-arms. Why? That part is not clear. I haven't talked to a priest in the last 20 years who says anything different. Priests who work on marriage tribunals have been saying what the Pope just said for a long, long time. Marriage preparation is terrible, most people getting married (or getting any other sacrament, for that matter, from baptism to confirmation to the Eucharist itself) don't really understand the sacrament they are receiving.

But what I want to focus on here is something quite different. By including the priesthood in with the comparison to marriage, the Pope wasn't making new remarks on marriage - anyone paying attention to the situation agrees with the Pope's remarks - he was making interesting remarks about the priesthood.

Think of all the priests who are badly formed. Priests who abuse the liturgy, priests who refuse to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass or refuse to celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass. Priests who attack the pope from the ambo or praise homosexuality or refuse to teach the evils of contraception and abortion, refuse to acknowledge the laity's right to defend themselves with a gunpowder weapon (a right which is simply a corollary of just war doctrine), etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.

As the papal remark points out, priests receive years of training, but they are generally just as crazy as the laity. The papal remarks are so stunning precisely because they strike at the heart of a popular American conceit, the conceit that education solves everything.

If we just teach people well enough, send them through enough training classes, perhaps even give them a lovely degree, they will be educated out of original sin. It is the American belief that the associate's degree is more salvific than God's grace, that the university professor, teacher, instructor priest, in short, some man or woman standing in front of a classroom, can do a better job than Jesus.

If anything proves the falsity of that idea, it is the priesthood. We train them for years, but they still don't necessarily understand the sacrament they receive any better than the burbling infant whose head is doused with water or the couple that exchanges vows in front of the altar.

God's grace is a great mystery, a mystery none of us understand very well. We receive this wrapped gift, we spend our lives trying to unwrap it and use it, and in the end, despite all of our training and our discussions and books and seminars and conferences, the vast, vast majority of us still simply, utterly, completely fail.

We are broken and we don't like to hear that we are broken. The remaking of a single fallen man is a work greater than the original creation of the world. We know that, but we don't really think the fact applies to us.

That's why so many people, especially traditionalists, are upset with this Pope.
We don't want to face the reality.
We don't want to face how broken each of us really is.

We Don't Want To Hear It

After 9/11, everyone was up in arms about the vicious attack on America that killed 3,000 people. At the time, America's abortion clinics killed 3,000 children every 48 hours. Democrats, then and now, routinely ignore the violence of abortion. The MSM refused to point out that abortionists were as violent every day as Muslim terrorists. No one wanted to hear that second fact. It didn't fit the popular meme.

When a white cop shot a black perpetrator in Ferguson, the cities rioted. Despite the outrage, we know that, in this country, most blacks are actually killed by other blacks. In fact, 6% of the population (black men between the ages of 16 and 30) commit 50% of the murders in the United States. The victims of these violent young black men are almost always other young black men between the ages of 16 and 30. Democrats routinely ignore the violence within the black community. No one wants to hear that second fact. It doesn't fit the popular meme.

95% of black voters are Democrats, which means half of America's murders are committed by Democrats. No one wants to hear that. It doesn't fit the popular meme.

Islam is, according to Democrats, a religion of peace. 95% of the world's conflicts involve Muslim combatants on one or both sides. In 2015 alone, 450 of the year's 452 suicide terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslims. Democrats routinely ignore the violence within the Muslim community. No one wants to hear those facts. It doesn't fit the popular meme.

Homosexuals have higher rates of addiction in every category of addiction you can name, including interpersonal violence. The homosexual community is very violent: they beat each other up. A lot. In fact, much of Islam's violence can arguably be traced back to Islam's essentially homosexual orientation. As with the blacks and Muslims, Democrats routinely ignore the violence within the homosexual community. No one wants to hear this. The facts don't fit the popular memes.

Homosexuals make up 1-2% of the American population. Between 14% and 69% of America's serial/mass murderers have been homosexual. Everyone routinely ignores this. No one wants to hear this. The facts don't fit the popular memes

Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat, and a Muslim. He was also a regular at the homosexual bar, Pulse. Omar had an active profile on a homosexual dating app. In fact, reliable reports indicate he was homosexual. His ex-wife agrees that he was. The mass murder he committed, ending in suicide-by-cop, matches everything we know about how Democrats, Muslims and homosexuals act. Within hours of Mateen's death, a second non-Muslim homosexual shooter on the west coast targeted a gay pride parade for mass murder. Since he wasn't Muslim, this went almost entirely unreported.

Today, people are blaming Christians and guns for the mass murder committed by a homosexual Muslim. Many will focus on the fact that he was a Muslim. They will claim he was inspired by ISIS. No one will mention that he was just one more in a long line of homosexual mass murderers.

No one wants to hear this.
The facts don't fit the popular memes

The Greatest Threat to Homosexuals: Themselves

The recent Orlando shootings has bequeathed much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how to keep homosexuals safe. The answer: It cannot be done. The homosexual lifestyle is inherently as dangerous as a Muslim with a fully automatic rifle.

Consider just this single fact about semen: it is an immunosuppressive.

The fact that semen is immunosuppressive has been known for decades. Search for "semen + immunosuppressive" and PubMed Central will come up with more than 240 results.

The reason semen is immunosuppressive is obvious: if it weren't, there wouldn't be any babies.

The body recognizes everything which enteres as either self or non-self. Every human body recognizes entering semen as non-self. The immune system attacks and eliminates semen as soon as it enters ... or it would if semen did not carry a lot of agents that suppress the immune reactions of the receiving body.

As early as 1977 Lord, Sensabaugh, and Stites wrote in their paper Immunosuppressive Activity of Human Seminal Plasma:

A high molecular weight fraction prepared from human seminal plasma by gel filtration chromatography suppresses human lymphocyte transformation and DNA synthesis induced by mitogens (PHA, Con A, PWM), antigens (Candida albicans, tetanus toxoid), and allogenic cells. This same fraction also suppresses the stimulated response of mouse lymphocytes to allogenic cells and to various mitogens, including T cell-dependent and T cell-independent mitogens. The induction, but not the expression, of cell-mediated cytotoxicity is also suppressed. ... These observations support the concept that a local immune response against sperm in the female reproductive tract is actively suppressed by a component in seminal plasma.

In 1984 James and Hargreave reported in the abstract of their paper Immunosuppression by seminal plasma and its possible clinical significance:

Several components of semen have immunomodulatory effects; these include spermatozoa1–3 and a variety of seminal plasma factors. In addition semen may contain a small number of immunocompetent cells4. In this review Keith James and Timothy Hargreave discuss the immunological effects of human seminal plasma, including its suppressive effect on in vitro and in vivo immune responses, the nature and action of the factors involved and their possible clinical relevance.

In 1989 Quayle, Kelly, Hargreave, and James continued with Immunosuppression by seminal prostaglandins:

In this paper we report studies undertaken to determine the contribution of seminal prostaglandins to some of the known immunosuppressive properties of human seminal plasma. Initial studies revealed that fractions of seminal plasma enriched in E series prostaglandins, obtained by reverse phase chromatography, had a pronounced inhibitory effect on the PHA-induced proliferation of peripheral blood lymphocytes and on the NK-cell-mediated lysis of K562 target cells. Additional investigations revealed that similar inhibitory effects could be achieved with purified PGE2 (10(-6) to 10(-9) M) and 19-OH PGE1 (10(-6) to 10(-7) M), both of which are present in uniquely high concentrations in human seminal plasma. In contrast, 19-OH PGF1 which is found in lower concentrations in semen was slightly stimulatory in proliferative assays and had no effect on NK-cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Removal of the seminal prostaglandins by absorption chromatography resulted in a dramatic decrease in immune suppressive activity. Further studies with fractions obtained by ion-exchange HPLC of desalted seminal plasma indicated that prostaglandins complexed with seminal proteins, and these too were immunosuppressive. The possible relevance of these results to sexually transmitted disease is discussed. (Emphases added.)

Kelly and colleagues announced in 1991: Extracellular organelles (prostasomes) are immunosuppressive components of human semen.

In 1995 Kelly published a paper on his own: Contraception: Immunosuppressive mechanisms in semen: implications for contraception. In this paper he said:

The immunosuppressive effects of human seminal plasma are mediated by several factors. The prostaglandins (PG) of the E series (PGE and 19-hydroxy PGE) predominate and raise intracellular cAMP in leukocytes. By this mechanism they suppress lymphocyte proliferation, natural killer (NK) cell activity and are likely to modify cytokine release from antigen presenting cells (APC). In this way, acquired and innate responses (including immune surveillance) in the reproductive tract will be curtailed, at least temporarily, after intercourse. ... A thesis is proposed that the balance between maximum chances of survival for spermatozoa and minimum chances for micro-organisms has been disturbed by an increased use of non-barrier contraception, an increase in population mobility and sexual contact and the arrival of new diseases such as AIDS. A further major concern is that following infection of cells of the cervix with virus, repeated exposure to human seminal plasma may accelerate the progression of disease.

Szajerka and Jablecki's 2007 paper Kaposi's sarcoma revisited said the same:

Kaposi's sarcoma is a puzzling condition of unclear, possibly endothelial origin. ... The exact etiopathogenesis of Kaposi's sarcoma continues to elude its researchers. Nonetheless,  it has been discovered that human herpesvirus 8 is essential but not sufficient for sarcoma development. ... The epidemic Kaposi's sarcoma is strongly associated with HIV's detrimental effect on immune system and HIV's Tat protein proangiogenic properties 

Because Kaposi's sarcoma is found also in men having sex with men without AIDS, it has been proposed that certain lifestyle features (e.g. massive semen exposure and inhalant nitrites) may promote transformation of endothelial cells of both lymphatic and vascular origin. Despite numerous studies on Kaposi's sarcoma, it continues to be an incurable disease.

As indicated elsewhere, homosexuality is an addictive disorder with a lot of negative sequelae. Pretending that Muslim shooters are the greatest threat to homosexuals is simply denial of the obvious reality: homosexuals are a greater danger to themselves than anyone else could be to them.

UPDATE:
I predicted this on a Facebook post a few hours ago, but didn't expect to get confirmation so quickly. It looks like the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, was a regular at the homosexual bar, Pulse, and had a profile on a homosexual dating app. In fact, reliable reports indicate he was homosexual.Why is this not a surprise?

Rates of interpersonal violence are much higher within the homosexual community than they are in normal communities. Straight people don't beat up homosexuals. Homosexuals beat up homosexuals. They always have. No one talks about it, and attempts to deny it are legion but the facts are clear: homosexuals make up 1-2% of the population, but 43% of America's mass murderers.

Traditionalist Catholics and Their Musical Blind Spot

I frequently see traditionalists bemoan the fact that no one wears suits and head scarves to Mass anymore. There's no proper respect shown, it's all part of the Freemasonic reforms of the Second Vatican Council, etc.

But, oddly enough, I never hear them complain about this:

13. On the same principle it follows that singers in church have a real liturgical office, and that therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir. Whenever, then, it is desired to employ the acute voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church. (emphasis added)

Tra le Sollecitudini, the Instruction on Sacred Music, was a Motu Proprio promulgated on November 22, 1903 by Pope Pius X. The direction is quite clear. But one could already see cursed Modernism entering the Church with a few short decades:

74. Where it is impossible to have schools of singers or where there are not enough choir boys, it is allowed that "a group of men and women or girls, located in a place outside the sanctuary set apart for the exclusive use of this group, can sing the liturgical texts at Solemn Mass, as long as the men are completely separated from the women and girls and everything unbecoming is avoided. The Ordinary is bound in conscience in this matter."

Musicae Sacrae, Pope Pius XII's 1955 Christmas Encyclical on Sacred Music, had already begun to loosen the reigns, apparently because men had stopped participating in the divine liturgy.

"Impossible!" you say. "The men didn't leave until the Latin Mass left!" Well, actually, this is proof positive that the traditionalist position is wrong. The men and boys were already heading out the door by 1955, to such an extent that Rome had to recognize the lack in the sacred liturgy itself. Rome, the most slow-acting organization on the face of the Earth, had by 1955, figured out that men were largely gone from the choirs, so we know the men had departed quite a bit before 1955.

And, just as they had disappeared from the Mass prior to 1955, so they continued to bail on the Mass after 1955. In fact, within 12 short years, the documents had to be revised again. Thus we see the 1967 Vatican II document Musicam Sacram admit total defeat:

22. The choir can consist, according to the customs of each country and other circumstances, of either men and boys, or men and boys only, or men and women, or even, where there is a genuine case for it, of women only. (emphasis added)

On the bright side, we haven't yet had to resort to re-admitting the castrati. Which again, oddly enough, turns out to be something the traditionalists refuse to advocate, or even mention.

So, while we hear traditionalists whine about the lack of suits, ties and head scarves, where are their complaints about their own traditionalist mixed-sex or female-only choirs? The answer is clear: I blame the traditionalists, both men and women, who fail to wear gloves to the sacred liturgy. It is pure scandal that must stop.

Rape Version of "Suicide by Cop"

You know, most people are familiar with "suicide by cop", wherein someone with mental problems sets themselves up as a danger to others, hoping that the cops will kill them. They aren't personally able to pull the trigger on themselves, so they goad others into killing them.

Family and friends called the sheriff's department when Dillon, who doctors said had a total break with reality and a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal driving limit, started firing a gun in the house....Dillon's lawyers Richard Lubin and Jonathan Kaplan said recordings of the negotiations between deputies and Dillon reveal he repeatedly begged them to kill him.

Given the recent events, I wonder if there may not be a similar "rape by bystander" motivation, wherein someone with self-destructive tendencies sets themselves up in a dangerous situation in the hopes that a bystander will act in a degrading way towards them, thus giving them the satisfaction of "independent" confirmation that they should be treated badly. Take the example of the Turner case:

Turner’s victim was unconscious when police found her, and she had no recollection of the assault. Her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit for driving. 

The victim's own statements about the events that night, even in the opening paragraph, indicates she had low self-esteem and a fairly lousy personal body image. She tries to imply both that she was an experienced drinker AND that she "accidentally" got to a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit, which is an interesting juxtaposition from a self-image point of view. She clearly went to a party where she had no friends, felt out of place. Events proved that even her own sister was, at best, not keeping track of her welfare or her drunken state. This is how she ended up in a sexual encounter with a random stranger behind a dumpster in an alley by a frat house, so drunk that she can't even remember if she attempted to give consent before she passed out, as the drunken man insisted she did.

None of this, of course, justifies the rape, anymore than it would be justified for police to deliberately kill a known suicidal victim. We already know sado-masochistic pursuits are popular among those with low self-esteem:

some....want to be beaten because they have low self-esteem and think they deserve it. They are forlorn, absent and unresponsive during and after a scene, in this case, S & M ceases to be play and becomes pathological.

We also know that being a rape victim can generate interest some people may find appealing.

Just as we know the majority of cop shootings are justified, so we also know between 2% and 50% of rape claims are valid. But not every shooting, not every rape claim, is as black-and-white as the involved parties claim. Is there such a thing as "rape by bystander"? It does not seem unreasonable to say that there is.

How to Rape Yourself

A lot of people seem upset with the rape sentencing handed down in this instance. The argument is that the young man should have been much more harshly sentenced than he was.

Now, many commentators, such as the one below, have been pointing out that alcohol is the fuel that drives student-student campus rape:

Yet columnist Scott Herhold had called earlier in the day for the judge to follow a probation recommendation for the county jail term rather than state prison. He noted Turner wrote probation authorities that he “would give anything to change what happened” and said he “can never forgive myself” for the incident. 

“You don't have to buy Turner's story that he so was drunk himself that he did not realize she had passed out,” Herhold wrote. “But it's hard to review this case without concluding that it has roots in a culture of campus drinking, the unindicted co-conspirator here.”

Slate has even gone so far as to have a female columnist point out that college women wouldn't get so frequently raped if they didn't get so frequently drunk. None of this commentary sits well with the politically correct crowd.

The problem lies precisely in the argument that a drunk person cannot give consent. In this particular instance, the woman was so drunk (three times the legal limit) she remembers none of what happened. The only person who was there for the entire encounter, the young man, was also drunk. In short, neither is a very good witness to exactly what happened.

So, for the sake of argument, let us say she was conscious at the beginning of the encounter and attempted to give consent (failing, of course, because she was drunk). We don't know if she did because she was so drunk she doesn't remember anything. But, if she did attempt and fail, we have to remember that HE couldn't give consent to the sexual encounter EITHER because HE was ALSO drunk. So, according to the "drunk" rule, if they were having any kind of sexual interplay when both were conscious, they would - technically speaking - be raping each other.

That's bad enough, but it gets worse. Remember, according to the "too drunk to consent" rule, Person A cannot functionally form consent or intent. If Person B has sexual relations with A, it is rape, regardless of Person B's state of mind. Drunk or sober, it doesn't matter. We judge rape purely by A's ability to consent. B's intent and/or consent is irrelevant.

But, if  Person A (whether male or female) is stipulated to be too drunk to give consent to someone else, arguably Person A is even too drunk to be able to consent to his/her own actions.

Put another way, if Person A is drunk, and therefore cannot be responsible for his/her actions towards Person B when B is conscious, why would the drunk A suddenly become responsible for his/her actions when B is no longer conscious? Perhaps B was never conscious to begin with - why would that change A's inability to consent to the sexual actions? Remember, Person B's state of mind is not relevant here. The rape of A revolves entirely around A's ability to consent.

As in the case of the young swimmer above, Person A is drunk, too drunk to even notice whether or not B is conscious. So drunk, in fact, that A cannot give consent to sex. Precisely because A is drunk, all sex is rape for Person A, because A cannot consent. Thus, by sexually interacting with B, A is being raped by B regardless of whether B is conscious because A cannot give consent for his/her own actions. Now, as the unconscious B is raping A via A's actions, it certainly may be the case that B is ALSO being raped by A via A's action, But because A is drunk, A is now in the peculiar position of raping himself or herself, using B as the conduit, simply by engaging in sexual action while drunk.

If we accept the "too drunk to consent" rule, then Person A is not responsible for the sex, even if Person A was the only one conscious and the only one acting. Which means the logic can be taken yet another step. In this situation, Person A's body is engaging in sexual conduct while his/her mind is unable to form the consent necessary for sex. You have heard of the victimless crime? This now becomes the perpetrator-less crime - everyone is getting raped, but no one is actually doing the raping.

This is where political correctness and the "too drunk" rule has taken us.

Update:
Rod Dreher has an interesting story: What is Consent to a Drunk?

Update 2 (Aug 2019)
Well, Maryland's highest court appears to agree with me - it's possible to criminally sexually exploit yourself. It seems a 16-year old made a sex tape of herself and gave it to friends. She was convicted of spreading child pornography. So, although she was not old enough to consent to making the tape, she was essentially convicted of exploiting herself, that is, she exploited herself without her own consent.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same argument made when we convict people for solicitation of prostitution.