Dilexi Te: Moving the Goalposts

Delixi Te is a study in how to mis-represent reality so that you can force it into the cherry-picked version of the Gospel you've decided to preach today. Pope Leo XIV has inadvertently highlighted exactly why it is increasingly difficult to take Catholic teaching seriously. Not only does he fundamentally alter the teaching, he points out why terms must be continuously redefined in order to keep the Church relevant.

13. Looking beyond the data — which is sometimes “interpreted” to convince us that the situation of the poor is not so serious — the overall reality is quite evident: “Some economic rules have proved effective for growth, but not for integral human development. Wealth has increased, but together with inequality, with the result that ‘new forms of poverty are emerging.’ The claim that the modern world has reduced poverty is made by measuring poverty with criteria from the past that do not correspond to present-day realities. [emphasis added] In other times, for example, lack of access to electric energy was not considered a sign of poverty, nor was it a source of hardship. Poverty must always be understood and gauged in the context of the actual opportunities available in each concrete historical period.” [10]

~Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi Te

TLDR: The Church must continuously redefine the meaning of the word "poverty" so as to make sure someone, somewhere, is always in poverty. 

Leo's assertion, that poverty is socially defined, is fundamentally absurd. The most severe form of poverty - the deprivation of life itself - is the baseline. That baseline perdures regardless of century or social culture. A person needs a basic amount of food and water to live, period. That minimum amount of food and water is a substantially unchanging constant across the centuries and around the globe. Food, water, life - this isn't hard. It isn't complicated. The criteria match across past, present and future. 

So, let us use that baseline as the starting point for comparison. Life expectancy in the 1st century AD Middle East was generally low, averaging between 20 and 35 years at birth. 90% of the population died before they turned 55 or 60. Today, life expectancy in the same geographic region of the world is 77 to 80. 

Wow. That doesn't help Leo's case at all.

Well, let's take a different tack. Let's look at how much labor it takes to avoid starvation. A first-century Middle Eastern peasant engaged in subsistence farming, that is, engaged in enough labor to avoid starving to death, would need to work approximately 8 hours a day, at least 250 days per year: roughly 2000 hours per year. Today, to achieve that same goal (i.e., not starving to death), the Middle Eastern laborer would have to put in roughly 22 hours per week, or 1144 hours per year. 

Huh. 

Apparently, poverty ain't what it used to be.

And that forms the basis for Leo's dilemma. He MUST insist that poverty is socially defined, because if he doesn't, he would have to admit the truth: by first century standards, no one in the world today is poor. Even the poorest person today works only half as hard for survival-level rations. Worse, there is no more smallpox, rinderpest or polio. Leprosy is essentially unknown and easily treated when it does pop up. Malnutrition and famine are now created by malevolent or inept politicians, not by plague, locust or bad weather. We have become so wealthy around the globe, that poverty is now really just something politicians choose to inflict on populations by enforcing inept governmental policies.

Jesus was wrong about the mustard seed being "the smallest of all seeds." Similarly, if we judged physical poverty according to the standards of the world Jesus lived and preached in, then Jesus was also wrong about the poor always being with us. The poor, by His definition, are literally gone, disappeared, poof! no longer available for scrutiny. We don't have any Jesus-level poor with us anywhere and we haven't had for centuries. Obviously, that is decidedly not an acceptable conclusion. 

27. For this reason, works of mercy are recommended as a sign of the authenticity of worship,

Sure. But what are these works of mercy? "Literally half of the work of the Church [the corporal works of mercy] is either already irrelevant or on the verge of being rendered irrelevant." 

But it gets worse. Seriously worse. In first-world populations, poverty is overwhelmingly generated by single mothers: women who have chosen to divorce their husbands (80% of the time) or who never bothered to marry their baby-daddy. And just as politicians are now the major creators of general poverty, this single-mother poverty has largely been created by the Church itself. After all, as Pope Leo inadvertently points out, the Church has actively worked to destroy the very families She claims to desire:

71. Many female congregations were protagonists of this pedagogical revolution. Founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Ursulines, the Sisters of the Company of Mary Our Lady, the Maestre Pie and many others, stepped into the spaces where the state was absent. They created schools in small villages, suburbs and working-class neighborhoods. In particular, the education of girls became a priority. [emphasis added, barely]

Apparently, the Popes do not realize that educating women destroys total fertility rates and family formation. [cf., for instance: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] The very thing the Pope celebrates in his first apostolic exhortation, female education, delays the formation, or destroys the stability, of the family, the "original cell of social life" (CCC 2207), thereby creating the very poverty that very same Pope excoriates. 

Higher female education correlates with later marriage. Educated women have higher divorce rates. Educated women tend to have fewer children. Why? Well, because educated women improve child health/education outcomes. Fewer children die in infancy, so infant mortality falls. High infant mortality encourages high fertility rates, while low infant mortality removes the woman's felt need to have multiple children. [1, 2, 3, 4]

TLDR: if you want lots of large families with low divorce rates, you should not be educating women. These are two contradictory goals.**

Oddly enough, though the UN recognizes single mothers as a cause of global poverty, stating:

Single mothers are particularly vulnerable in this respect and are over-represented in poverty statistics.

Pope Leo is completely silent on the subject. Not even a hint of this can be found in his apostolic exhortation. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

But not to worry, Pope Leo moves on from these early logical contradictions and stunning silence to begin spouting outright fabrications: 

90. The bishops stated forcefully that the Church, to be fully faithful to her vocation, must not only share the condition of the poor, but also stand at their side and work actively for their integral development. Faced with a situation of worsening poverty in Latin America, [emphasis added] the Puebla Conference confirmed the Medellín decision in favor of a frank and prophetic option for the poor and described structures of injustice as a “social sin.”

The Puebla Conference was held in 1979, over 45 years ago. While poverty may have been worsening in 1979, during a world-wide economic crisis, that crisis is also long-since past. Invoking it now, as if it were a real present danger, is simply a bald-faced lie. This is how poverty has changed since 1980. Maybe the Pope hasn't heard.

Now, you might argue that the Pope was just bringing forward an older example of a "structure of sin" created by injustice. But, for that to be true, he would have to demonstrate that the 1979 global economic crisis was intentional. That case is not made. 1979 was not a good year for anyone. Exactly what "structure of sin" did the Pope or the bishops claim to have discovered? We never find out.

Nor does he mention how this whole social "structure" thing works. If those same people were later brought out of poverty, did they emerge due to a "structure of virtue"? If so, none of the bishops or Popes mention it. Which is strange, given the advances made against global poverty in the last 50 years. If poverty has decreased, doesn't that speak to increasing "structures of virtue" around the world? Shouldn't Pope Leo be lauding the good where it can be found? 

You would think there would be room to praise the economic decisions and systems which have cut poverty to the bone. Instead, we get this: 

92. We must continue, then, to denounce the “dictatorship of an economy that kills,” and to recognize that “while the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap [emphasis added] separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation...

95. As it is, “the current model, with its emphasis on success and self-reliance, does not appear to favor an investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life.” [100]

One might ask if educating women necessarily teaches women an "emphasis on success and self-reliance", but let us pass by this question and address the new point Pope Leo has raised. The Pope complains of a growing gap between the rich and the poor. He seems  completely oblivious to the growing gap between his "poverty porn" fantasy and the actual world his increasingly un-impoverished people inhabit: 

What caused this extraordinary drop in the number of people experiencing extreme poverty? Hint: it wasn't the Catholic Church. Yet the Pope seems not only completely oblivious to this drop in extreme poverty, he actively denies the processes we know do help the poor:

114.  At times, pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty.

Notice: the papal claim lacks any footnote supporting his bald assertion. But how could he support his claim? What Pope Leo asserts is simply false. Poverty has dropped dramatically, that is simply beyond question. It was and is capitalism, and the legal structures which favor the protection of private property, which lifted the poor from their poverty. World Bank data estimates that titling programs in Latin America increased household incomes by 20-50% for participants. [cf., 1, 2, 3, 4] : 

"Without land tenure systems that work, economies risk missing the foundation for sustainable growth, threatening the livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable the most. It is simply not possible to end poverty and boost shared prosperity without making serious progress on land and property rights."

And keep in mind, not only is the Pope denying lived reality, he is arguably and actively contradicting Scripture, the Divine Word itself. After all, even the Apostles recognized the right to private property:

While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. (Acts 5:4) 

Notice, Peter did not take the line Leo takes. Peter did not chastise Ananias and Sapphira for having private property. Peter did not chastise either of them for refusing to share their private property with the community's poor. 

Instead, Peter, the first Pope, expressly recognized  and affirmed their right to do with their own property whatever they chose. At no point did he say that they sinned by refusing to share their wealth. Rather, Peter insisted their sin lay in pretense: they shared only a small portion of their wealth while pretending to have given everything. Their sin was in lying, not in refusing to give what they had to the poor.

How is it that neither Popes Leo nor Francis, nor even St. John Chrysostom, references this very telling passage when they discuss the plight of the poor and the duties of the wealthy?  

Now, is poverty a problem? Certainly. Roughly 9% of the world still lives in extreme poverty, defined as a significant risk of starving to death. We must continue to work to end this. But this extreme poverty is largely the result of legal structures which do not protect private property, economies which are not built around capitalism, women who refuse to stay married to the father of their children, and government officials who do not enforce laws on private ownership, thus preventing the poor from protecting anything that they may manage to accumulate. Where private property laws are strong, poverty disappears. Where laws are weak, or weakly enforced, poverty grows. The Pope has no memory of these things. To whom can he appeal for succor?

Of all the saints who understand the need to protect the poor, and the importance of staying married to her husband, certainly the Blessed Virgin figures most prominently. Why then, does this Pope, alone among all the popes in the last several centuries, refrain from referencing the Blessed Virgin Mary in his closing panegyric on the poor? 

You will search in vain through the apostolic exhortations and encyclicals of the previous several centuries for a papal document that closes without referencing or invoking the Blessed Virgin. The only such document that comes to mind is Mit Brennende Sorge. Pope Leo has now added his very first apostolic exhortation to this very short list of papal documents with BVM-free closings.

Which is sad. After all, doesn't that reflect in him a certain.... shall we say... poverty?

**And the goals are contradictory in part because the Church absolutely refuses to teach 1 Timothy 2:15. When discussing marriage, poverty and parents, Christianity calls on men to die for their wives. Men mostly do. Christianity says "a woman will be saved by the bearing of children", but Christ apparently does not demand that women die for their husbands or children, so women mostly don't. And absolutely nobody invokes 1 Timothy 2:15. Both the Council of Trent's Catechism and the Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church studiously avoid mentioning that women are saved through the bearing of children (although both catechisms take pains to point out to men that men need to die). Similarly, John Paul II's badly mis-named "Theology of the Body" discusses Ephesians 5:25 extensively while remaining totally, conspicuously, even suspiciously silent on 1 Timothy 2:15. You would think a theology of the body would somehow find time to mention how Scripture says a human body producing another human body has bearing on women's eternal salvation and everlasting communion with God, but you would be wrong.

Well, what about Mulieris Dignitatem, on the Role and Dignity of Women? No.... no... try again...

How about the Second Vatican Council, especially its section on the Laity? Ahhh.... no, we're fresh out.

Absolutely no one... and I mean NO ONE... since Augustine and Chrysostom talks about 1 Timothy 2:15.

But the Catholic Church is the finest Scripture shop in the district.

 

Why Global Fertility Rates Have Fallen

The "demographic transition" has been observed for two centuries, but the reasons behind it are not clear. Simply put, as a society becomes wealthy due to industrialization and economic development, fertility rates fall. The trend was first noticed over two centuries ago. It has replicated in every country around the world since then. As countries become rich, they stop having children

The problem is, no one knows precisely why this happens. There are some clear correlations: a drop in infant mortality rates and a rise in female education certainly cause fertility to drop. If you can make sure pre-teen and teenage women attend school, fertility rates drop. If you can make sure children do not die in their first year of life, fertility rates also drop.

People who try to explain this don't understand how long this has been going on. They talk about the introduction of the Pill, the 1960s Sexual Revolution, or the laws on car seats. But none of those things explain the two-century drop in America's fertility rate.

This theory does. It has to do with vision. As my son pointed out, technology is just the material instantiation of ideas. As the number of ideas you interact with proliferates (via tech and education), the number of possible futures available to you proliferates.

In order to become parents, a man and a woman have to share a common vision for the future, a vision that includes common agreement on when to have children. But, the more ideas, the more possibilities, the more technology, available to both the man and the woman, the less likely the visions of both will be common. If they don't start with the common vision, they have to discuss, which takes time. They may never actually agree, so they never both choose that single vision: children.

If women aren't educated, they are exposed to ideas primarily through their parents and their husband, thus the vision the woman has for the future is much more likely to be in common with her husband's vision. Female education destroys fertility not just because every minute spent in the classroom is not a minute spent in the bedroom. Education is the beginning of a divorce from the common social vision.

In this sense, female education is a variation on homeschooling. Parents homeschool children to make sure the children share a vision that is common with their parents. Because of homeschooling, the family has a common vision.

If you hand your children, or your spouse, to other people to be educated, they won't have your vision. People who attend college together have common instructors, thus more likely to get married, more likely to have children. People who have common religion have common instructor and a common vision.

Notice the Baby Boom after World War II. World War I saw only 4.5% of the male population under arms, and the nation at war for only nineteen months.

In contrast, World War II saw 12.1% of the male population under arms, the entire nation intensively trained together in a common vision for over five years. The Baby Boom was the result of that common, national vision. But the 1956 Orphans Educational Assistance Act destroyed the common vision. This act expanded eligibility for college education to include education benefits for spouses and widows of veterans. Not coincidentally, the Baby Boom peaked in 1960, just four years later. It was essentially over by 1963. College education of women had shattered the common national vision, destroyed family formation and total fertility rates.

The presence or absence of a common vision explains everything.... the steadily falling fertility from 1800 through now, the Baby Boom, forged by WW II into a common vision for most Americans, which fell apart as female education and even more technology, even more ideas, were introduced, shattering the common vision into a thousand pieces.

Global fertility decline was kicked off almost entirely by normative and cultural processes, not strictly economic ones. The effect of income on fertility is not even remotely consistent across cultures or even across times. When whole societies become richer, they do not necessarily have fewer children.

Without a vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). If nations wish to restore their total fertility rates, they have to find a way to rebuild a common national vision, a self-perception shared across a significant section of society. Given internet access and technological advances, that is nearly an impossible ask.

Charlie Kirk Was Stupid

"When people stop talking, that's when you get violence, that's when civil war happens."

Charlie Kirk was not only stupid, he was dangerously wrong.

He suffered under the delusion, a feminist delusion, that if we all just sat around a campfire and talked things out, then everything would work out and violence could be avoided.

This is nonsense. Once you have made your position absolutely crystal clear, once your opposition has absolutely no illusions about where you stand, then to the extent that your position contravenes his on a position of central importance, he has no choice. One of you will be fired, be removed. One of you will die. 

The Socratic dialogues is the story of a man who spent a lot of time trying to be as crystal clear as possible. The state executed him. President John Kennedy publicly pleaded, quoting Isaiah, "Come, let us reason together!" Isaiah was sawn in half, Kennedy was shot in the head. Charlie Kirk insisted on repeating his arguments over and over until his positions were crystal clear. He wouldn't stop, so he was shot. 

Poor communications permit compromise. The refusal to define terms, the willingness to engage in equivocations, allows your opponent wiggle room. As Sun Tzu says, "When you surround an army, leave an outlet free." Always give your enemy the means to escape, so he doesn't decide to die on his feet instead of on his knees. 

Crystal clear communications removes the enemy's ability to escape. Unclear communications allows the opponent to think he may have misunderstood, that perhaps you do share common ground and he can eventually bring you around to his way of thinking. But clarity... clarity is the death of this hope.

This is why bureaucracies engage in obfuscation. They are designed to make sure no one knows exactly what the government means or wants. Entire decades of foreign policy are built around deliberately refusing to clarify what America's position is on Taiwan or Korea. Israel won't say whether it does or doesn't have nukes. The examples could be easily multiplied.

This is the female mode of communication. Women are weaker than men, they will consistently lose in direct confrontations, so they obfuscate. They hint, they misdirect, they play mind games, redefine language, do whatever is necessary to avoid clarity, to give themselves wiggle room in front of a superior foe.

This is not the way men communicate. This is also why Ephesians commands men to die in the marriage. Women aren't capable of the direct, clear communications necessary to carry on a marriage. The Scriptures specifically deny that women are good at any of this. Women are described as honey tongued, smoother than oil, but more bitter than wormwood. According to Scripture, women are the source of infidelity and sin, not men.

According to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, the person closest to a task should bear the most responsibility and direction for that task. Men have headship precisely because Scripture sees men as closer to the absolute heart of marriage, of personal relationships, the master of communications and interpersonal connections. Women don't have headship in a marriage because women aren't very good at being married. Women are not at the heart of marriage.

The traditional three purposes of marriage are: 

1. improving the sanctity of the spouses, 
2. the procreation of children
3. remedy for concupiscence

But procreation, which is the specialty of women, is not at the heart of marriage. If it were, Josephite marriages could not be a real thing. Yet the Church teaches that Josephite marriage, which shuns all sexual intercourse, is actually superior to a procreative marriage. 

If women were really better than men at communications, personal relationships, or marriage itself, then women would have headship. Women don't have headship precisely because they aren't good at any of these things. Women initiate 80% of the divorces because in general, women are lousy at communications, lousy at interpersonal relations, lousy at marriage. That is Scripture. That is why Scripture says men must die in marriage, but women must only submit.

In Holy Orders, the parishioner is required to submit to the priest, the priest required to submit to the bishop. The grace of the sacrament means the bishop is better at carrying authority than the priest, the priest better than the lay person. Marriage is also an ordo. So, similarly, in the ordo of marriage, the grace of the sacrament makes the man better than the woman at all these things.

But now I am communicating Church doctrine far too clearly. Yet, the heart of the Christian message is simply this: 

The minute Charlie Kirk insisted on clearly communicating his position, clearly repeating his position, clearly removing all possible doubt about what his position might be, he had to die. 

If you teach your children that they can "talk it out" without resorting to violence, you are either lying to them, or you are teaching them how to lie. If they really, truly, talk it out, someone is going to die.

Heddy Lamar Did Not Invent Frequency Hopping

 I'm just a little tired of seeing this trope on various social media platforms.

Heddy was a beautiful women, she ran naked through the woods and was filmed doing it, which was the basis for her later success, but she really did not have a head for engineering. She mostly just stole stuff from the men around her and acted as a marketing girl. 

It is true that Lamarr and her unlikely partner, the radical modernist composer George Antheil, hold a patent for an important radio-transmission method that finds its way into several modern communications technologies, including Bluetooth. But it is equally true that their patent was hardly the first in this area. It is further true that the earliest operational systems employing this technique were created after World War II independently of their patent, and the essential idea can be traced back nearly to the birth of radio itself.

And more:

Now incontestable evidence shows that the U.S. Patent Office itself dismissed the idea that Lamarr and Antheil were first to propose frequency hopping. David R. Irvin, a patent agent and engineer with 44 patents to his credit, has examined the original documents related to the invention, which are preserved by the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History

And still more:

Abstract: Analysis of primary-source documents archived by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the U.S. Patent Office refutes the widely accepted legend that actress Hedy Lamarr and musician George Antheil invented frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) communication.

Polytheism Guards Against Divorce

 According to Pew Research, Hindus have the highest rate of marriage and the lowest rate of divorce.

When the survey breaks down the various religious groups by marital status, the findings show that Hindus (78%) and Mormons (71%) are the most likely to be married. These two traditions, along with members of evangelical churches, also have the lowest rates of never-married members. Hindus also have the lowest divorce rate of any group; only 5% have been divorced.

So, apparently converting to Hinduism is a great way of assuring you have a long and happy marriage.

Also, if you want children, Christianity may not be the way to go. Again, Hinduism and Islam are apparently more "pro-life" than any Christian group.

The more ya' know, huh? 

Bacchanal and the Olympics

What does the Bacchanal have to do with the Olympics?

According to Livy, the Bacchanal was a murderous cultic instrument of conspiracy against the Roman state. Livy points out that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. He considered the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome's inexorable moral decay. The earliest version of the Bacchanalia was open to women only. The cult held particular appeal to those of uneducated and fickle mind (levitas animi), such as the young, plebeians, women and "men most like women". It was confined to the Italian peninsula.

The Olympics, on the other hand, were officially sponsored and recognized by all participating GREEK city-states with a universal peace treaty. Greek athletes modelled themselves on the physical competitions of the gods themselves. It was restricted to an all-male audience, and only the strong were permitted to compete and attend. The point of the games was to win prizes by displaying the highest ideals of masculine honor and courage.

In short, Bacchanal, a privately-funded Roman festival, has absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics, a multiple state-sponsored Panhellenic Greek festival.

Persons are Products and Always Have Been

The pro-life position is that human persons are not products, and should not be turned into a commodity. While that may be true in a theological sense, it has almost never been true in a practical sense. Humanity has commodified persons for all of history.

That's what slavery is, and slavery appeared in every culture on every continent for all of recorded history, universally.

Out of the entirety of history, there has been a period of only about a century when people were not commodifying other people. Between the English-American anti-slavery movement of the early 1800s through roughly the mid-1900s, cultures were forced to back away from slavery by European military fiat. During that same period, we were unable to widely implement abortion due to medical risks.

But that's all done with now. As Islam surges, slavery resurges, and as tech grows, abortion predominates. That golden century has passed. Persons are, again, products.

The Soul of the Matter: A Theological Problem

This is a problem for Catholic theology.

In 2002, Lydia Fairchild, a mother from Washington State, faced a baffling and distressing situation when DNA tests required for public assistance showed she was not the biological mother of her two children—despite having physically given birth to them. The results raised suspicion of fraud or surrogacy, and authorities even considered removing her children from her custody. When she gave birth to her third child in a hospital under supervision, the same outcome occurred: DNA tests again claimed she was not the mother.

Fairchild’s legal battle intensified, and she stood on the verge of losing her children based on genetic evidence alone. Her attorney, Alan Tindell, began researching unusual biological conditions and came across a similar case involving a woman named Karen Keegan. This led to the discovery that Lydia was a chimera—a person with two sets of DNA. In her case, it was caused by absorbing a fraternal twin in the womb.

A cervical DNA test finally matched her children's DNA, confirming her biological relationship to them. This critical breakthrough not only saved Lydia’s family but also raised important concerns about the reliability of DNA evidence in legal settings. Her case became a landmark example of how rare genetic conditions like chimerism can challenge long-standing scientific and legal assumptions.

Lydia absorbed her twin. The first and most obvious theological question: what happens to the soul infused at conception? 

Different reproductive tract vs somatic DNA raises the question of whose DNA she is transmitting when she has children. Is the different DNA considered hers by right of conquest, for having essentially eaten her twin in the womb? This is not an isolated problem. About 8% of fraternal twins could end up with blood chimerism. In the case of triplets, the chance for blood chimerism rises up to 21%. True tetragametic chimerism (such as Lydia's case) is believed to be rare, with only 100 documented cases in the medical literature, but it may be more common than once believed. It is possible that up to 10% of singleton births may have started as twin pregnancies.

Lydia's case is a less obvious form of the even more pressing problem presented by Abby and Brittany Hensel, conjoined twins who share a common torso and common reproductive tract. Abby Hensel, one of the conjoined twins, married Josh Bowling. Now, the only difference between Lydia Fairchild and the Hensels is the latter has two fully developed brains. But, as noted, the Hensels do share a common reproductive tract.

So, if it was licit for Lydia to conceive, carry and give birth to children that do not share her DNA, then why would it not be licit for the Hensels to have children, especially since Abby and Brittany have the same DNA? In what sense is the Hensels' marriage valid, given that the two were already conjoined into one body, so that both women are having sex with one man, but only one of those women is married to that man? Is the other woman always committing adultery? Or is Josh actually married to both women? 

But if the Hensel's marriage is invalid, then in what sense is Lydia Fairchild's marriage valid? Unlike the Hensels, Lydia's reproductive tract is actually someone else's body. Now, true, the other body belongs to someone who is not ensouled and alive, as far as we know, but her reproductive tract is certainly not "hers" in the same way her somatic cells are "hers", are they? If we argue that a baby in the womb is someone else's body because of DNA, then Lydia's reproductive tract is also someone else's body because of DNA. If we argue that her reproductive tract belongs to her, then the baby in the womb also belongs to her in very much the same way, and the somatic argument against abortion collapses.

But, if we try to keep the pro-life somatic argument alive, and insist her reproductive tract is not hers because of its different DNA, then is having sex and conceiving with Lydia a form of necrophilia? The organs are alive, but the soul that animates the DNA is not the original infused soul, again, as far as we know. When a person dies (that is, when a person's soul separates from the body), individual organs within the corpse can stay alive for hours or even days. This is what allows for organ transplant. If we argue that the soul of Lydia's twin has departed, then Lydia's body has just kept her deceased twin's body on "life support" for Lydia's entire life. Thus, a strong argument can be made that having sex with Lydia really is really just necrophilia with her dead twin. The Catholic Church does not permit necrophilia. 

So, can marriage with a true tetragametic chimera be valid? Under what circumstances? And how would you know that you married a chimera if no DNA testing has been done? Is that grounds for an annulment? 

The Catholic Church isn't equipped to deal with this. 

Silicon-Based Persons

Jimmy Akins is not the brightest bulb on the tree. He is of the opinion that AI cannot be a person, cannot be ensouled by God. He's got absolutely no theological reason to hold this position.

Remember when the fake Bayside apparition claimed IVF children had no immortal souls, because the IVF embryos were created outside the human body? Condemned by the Church.

Consider that sperm and egg cells can now be created by manipulating normal somatic cells. It's called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), and it works: 

"Japanese scientists describe how they've already perfected IVG in mice. The researchers used cells from the tails of adult mice to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and then coaxed those iPS cells to become mouse sperm and eggs. They've even used those sperm and eggs to make embryos and implanted the embryos into the wombs of female mice, which gave birth to apparently healthy mouse pups."

Would a human being created this way NOT have a soul? Obviously, that's absurd. Any human being created this way would have a soul.

The question is, would God create and infuse a soul, create a person, in something made of silicon instead of something made of carbon? There's nothing in Scripture that says He won't. And if we can manipulate carbon-based materials to create a new human life, then what's so holy and sacred about carbon?

Alien life forms are not beyond the ability of God to create, and we participate in God's creation of new human persons, so why would He deny us the ability to participate in the creation of silicon based persons? Perhaps we are meant to participate in the creation of every new person, human or alien, so God is just waiting for us to figure out how to build the silicon soma so that He can create and infuse the necessary rational soul. 

Akins is just making up shit because he needs clicks, and he's more likely to get clicks from stupid and ignorant people than he is from others, so he's playing to his audience.

The Vaccine Paradox

1. Vaccines work.
2. Vaccines have negative sequelae
3. Diseases have negative sequelae

Discussion: at some point an effective vaccine will drive the incidence of disease so low, that your are more likely to be injured by the vaccine than your are to catch and be injured by the disease.

Consider polio. For the inactivated virus, the risk of anaphylactic shock is 1-2 per million doses. For the oral polio virus, the risk is estimated at 1 case per 2.4 million doses distributed, with higher risk for the first dose (1 in 750,000). This equates to a probability of approximately 0.00004% per dose, or 400 chances out of 1 billion. The attenuated virus in OPV can circulate and revert to a virulent form, causing outbreaks. This is rare, with fewer than 1,000 cases globally since 2000.

The global population stands at roughly 8 billion. In 2024, there were 62 confirmed cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) globally, all reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only two countries where WPV1 remains endemic. Afghanistan reported 23 cases, and Pakistan reported 39 cases.

So, the polio vaccine has 400 chances out of 1 billion of harming you, while you have less than 8 chances per billion of catching and suffering adverse consequences from polio.

At this point, for most people in the world, the polio vaccine is far, far more dangerous than the probability of catching polio.

The 21st Century Information Barons

Information technology corporations own

• the data storage space, 
• the data transmission space, 
• the data analysis space, 

and those same corporations will soon start locking up the energy space in order to guarantee their holds on storage, transmission, and analysis.

Data determines everyone's future, so IT corporations determine everyone's future. They know this. The politicians also know this. 

For most of human history, the elite were the people who controlled communication with the gods or with God (for the monotheists). As technology advanced in the Middle Ages (500 to 1500 AD), via horse collars with heavy plows and three-field agriculture, the control of society shifted to secular kings, royalty who were not viewed as gods. The new agricultural and transport techniques permitted by literally harnessing the power of the horse permitted nations to develop military power without necessarily referencing religion.

Notice, that throughout the Middle Ages, religion is still important. In fact, it grows at an accelerating rate in Europe throughout this period, but the locus of power had already begun to split. This was reflected in things like the investiture controversy and the calling of the Crusades. The first four Crusades were powerful and called by Popes, but subsequent crusades, such as the Children's Crusade, were either not called by popes at all, or were essentially useless. While the Pope called the Albigensian Crusade, the northern crusades local royalty had already put those crusades in motion well before the Pope sanctioned them. By 1200 AD, religious power had already begun to fracture. 

As control of communication shifted from the clerical monastics to royalty, and subsequently to anyone who owned a printing press, knowledge of additional technologies, like gunpowder and time-keeping, also spread and shifted. The Church tried to control information by establishing an Index of Forbidden Books and by burning books in public ceremonies. It didn't work. 

Religion didn't just lose control of information, but of time itself. Cathedrals used to be constructed as enormous master seasonal clocks, but by 1800, the cathedral's time-keeping function began to be eroded by tech that had reduced the size and cost of clocks so they could be used even in homes. Society built itself around time that was no longer sacred. Religion no longer controlled the military. It no longer controlled time-keeping. It no longer controlled the transmission of information. 

Religion still exists, but the locus of power has shifted to those who controlled the technology that defines society. Advanced tech allowed secular politicians to step into the role that god-kings once held, that the priesthood and Church once held. But even as politicians rose to power, the corporations that controlled the technology rose to supplant them. England endured a 300-year long struggle between Parliament and the British East India Company, vying to see who would dominate. The EIC dominated agriculture and transport in multiple countries around the world, but  it wasn't enough. The EIC eventually lost. 

It's not clear who will win this time around. Many science fiction/fantasy novels posit a future in which corporations rule worlds. The tech companies have already vertically integrated data. If it can add  power generation into the stack, that should cover all the bases. Like priests, politicians will continue to exist, people will continue to vote for them, thinking the politicians can actually do something. But, like the priests, the politicians will be useless. Information technology corporations will rule the world. 

Israel is Antisemitic

 If Israel didn't exist, the enormous amount of antisemitism we are currently experiencing probably wouldn't be happening. 

Between 1795 and 1918, Poland ceased to exist. After WW I, the League of Nations brought Poland back into existence, taking territory from Germany, Austria and Russia in order to accomplish the deed. This created an enormous amount of anti-Polish hatred during the inter-war period in those nations, as both Russia and Germany viewed the League of Nations intervention as outright territorial theft. Poland was seen by many Eastern European Axis supporters as an illegal state, created out of whole cloth by the Western Allies who had conquered them. 

So, what was the very first act of WW II? Germany and Russia invaded Poland and repartitioned it, taking back the territory that the League of Nations had stolen from them.

That whole sequence of events worked so well, that after WW II, the UN repeated the mistake. The UN tried to bring Israel back into existence, with similar consequences. But the attempt to reconstitute Israel failed for an even more foundational reason. Poland had been out of existence for less than two centuries. Israel had been out of existence for nearly two millennia. The new Poland had never lost its majority Catholic population, but that wasn't true for Israel. The original Israel was a religious state built around Abrahamic faith. But the 20th-century version of Israel was created by secular atheists, socialists who weaponized Christian ignorance and stupidity in order to guilt the West into attempting to recreate the country. Ben-Gurion himself saw socialism and Zionism as two sides of the same coin. 

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Zionist socialist ideology has nothing to do with post-Temple Judaism. And post-Temple Judaism has literally nothing to do with Temple Judaism. The current state of Israel is founded on socialism and nominalism, the idea that words are just interchangeable labels. But words mean things. As Lincoln pointed out, if you call a dog's tail a "leg", that doesn't mean a dog has five legs. 

The current state of Israel has literally nothing to do with any preceding entity, much less any Biblical entity. Israel is a bullshit country that exists by fomenting antisemitism in other countries in order to force Jews to emigrate to Israel "for their own safety". Apart from redefining "Jewish" (which is also a constant work-in-progress), it was, and still is, the only way to keep the Jewish population at high enough levels to justify the existence of the country. Recall that between 1948 and 2010, the country with the largest Jewish population in the world was the United States, not Israel. 

Israel can only work if Jews feel unsafe everywhere else and think their only hope for safety lies in moving to Israel. Wherever non-Israeli Jews live, Zionists must drive them out of that location and into Israel. 

In December, 1938, David Ben-Gurion, one of the founders of the state of Israel, specifically said, "if I knew it was possible to save all children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, because we are faced not only with the accounting of these children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish people." This was not just rhetoric.

In 1945, Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders vetoed the immigration of 1,000 orphans from Germany to England, even though the necessary permits had been secured and these children were in grave danger of death due to the harsh winter. Zionists also managed to stop another group of roughly 500 children from reaching France, where rabbinical institutions had offered them safe haven. 

As 1930's Germany demonstrated, the best way to drive Jews out of an area is to make it impossible for Jews to live there. Antisemitism serves the political purposes of the state of Israel. Antisemitism is a nation-building activity for the state of Israel. Zionism is functionally antisemitism run by a nation-state actor for their own political purposes. Seeing the Zionist success, Palestinian-wannabees imitate it. This is why both the Muslims who attack Israel and the Jews who defend it are so politically insane that both sides literally sacrifice their own children in order to attain their nation-state objectives. 

Parents who care about their children move to safe locations to raise them. Israel is not a safe location. Only politically insane people would move to Israel/Gaza/West Bank, or stay there, to raise a family. Raising a family in that area necessarily involves you, as a parent, to be willing for your own children to be killed so that the greater good of the nation-state can be attained. This attitude is purest socialism, the elevation of the state above everything, including the family, just as Marx and Engels commanded.

But this is not a surprise. Again, most people in the 21st century forget that Israel was founded as a socialist state. Most conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, find it impossible to grasp that nearly all modern Jews are extreme leftists, generally socialists. Jews always vote for the most extreme left-wing candidate available. Christians are so blinded by Biblical references that they literally cannot see that post-Second-Temple Jews are not Biblical Jews, or that the 1948 socialist-founded state of Israel is nothing at all like ancient Israel. 

Christian conservatives created the phrase "Judeo-Christian morality" in order to facilitate conversion of Jews to Christian faith. It didn't work. But the Christians used their invented phrase so frequently that they successfully fooled themselves into thinking there was some commonality between Jewish and Christian worldviews. In fact, Judaism shares as much, if not more, of a worldview with Islam than it does with Christians. Jews can worship in mosques, but not in churches. Most medieval rabbis agreed that Jews could pray with Muslims, but not Christians. According to this Jewish expert, the Torah says Jews must kill Christians. Jews and Muslims share a morality that Christians consider self-centered, even bordering on narcissistic. 

Zionism is antisemitism. Period. 

Subverting Nature

"The entire leftist regime is an artificial construct reliant on the subversion of nature via a leviathan capable of wealth extraction. They treat the return of the natural order as an existential threat because it is"

While the sentiment is, in a certain sense, laudable, it is also pretty selective. Part of that same "subversion of nature" is air-conditioning, vermin control, antibiotics, combustion engines, fresh oranges in winter, etc.

Putting a uterus into a man's body is the leftist version of putting air-conditioning into private homes. When even genetics can be manipulated (thus the leftist hard-on for mRNA vaccines), then there are no limits.

It's a real existential question. Are we subverting nature? It's not like we aren't still bound by the laws of physics and chemistry. It's just our power in physics and chemistry, our intimate knowledge of THOSE laws, allows us to manipulate biology to a hitherto unequalled degree.

The "natural order" is that our lives are brutish, painful, disease-ridden and short. Pretty much EVERYONE rejects at least some part of the "natural order." That's why we wear clothes and use fire to cook our food. The question is whether there is a line that can/should be drawn.

The whole transgenderism push is insane for those of us who see biology as a fundamentally different science than physics or chemistry. But, to those who see biology as a mere extension of physics and chemistry, who see biology merely as an application of physics and chemistry, than a uterus transplant into a man is no more "subversion" than any other application of physics and chemistry we have hitherto made.

And it is probably as likely to be something we can stop as any other technology has been, which is to say, it can't be stopped. 

The Israeli Grift

 Israel gave over one billion dollars to Hamas via Qatar. Think about that. Hamas' charter states it intends to wipe out Israel, yet Israel funnelled over one billion dollars to this known terrorist organization.

The Hezbollah explosive comms op was run side-by-side with this overwhelming Israeli financial support for terrorism. On Oct 7, "music festivals" were run near both the West Bank (Abu Gosh, Oct 3-7) and the Gaza Strip (Supernova, Oct 7), while Israeli military forces stood down. 

Hamas/Gaza fell for it and ran the inevitable terror op on Oct 7, generating 1100 Jewish corpses. Suddenly, 1100 deaths was given the same label as 6 million deaths and the "new Holocaust!!!" became the excuse to wipe out Gaza, invade the West Bank (which had done absolutely nothing), invade southern Lebanon, bomb Syria and permanently annex the Golan Heights. 

Coincidentally, all those areas either had total fertility rates (TFR) which threatened Israeli sovereignty or occupied territory the Israeli government had long coveted, or both. 

But, fortunately, the terror attack, which Israel paid over a billion dollars for, allowed Israel to obliterate Gaza's TFR and also allowed all the above land to be invaded by or claimed for Israel. What a strategically fortunate tragedy! What luck that Israel had apparently prepared for it for years by giving money and explosive comms to the right people! 

The Education Grift

People are complaining about grade inflation again. They simply don't understand how education works.

You have to understand that education actually has nothing to do with education.

McDonald's LOOKS like a fast-food franchise, but it's actually a real-estate company that happens to sell fast food:

Former McDonald’s CFO, Harry J. Sonneborn, is even quoted as saying, “we are not technically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.”

Rental car companies arbitrage the difference between buying new cars in bulk, then reselling each car individually. Rental fees are just gravy collected between the purchase and the resale.

Education works the same way. Educational institutions exist to suck in state and federal funding. The students are just there to plump up the funding levels. In lower education, it's about butts in seats, in higher ed, it's about warm bodies signing for loans. In both cases, the state and federal money goes into the admin and faculty pockets - that's the point.

That's why there are more administrators than teachers. The administrators who grease the paperwork, the admins are the REAL money-makers. The teachers are just the grift to get people in the front door. 

In higher ed, the students sign for the loans, the college admins/faculty get the cash, then the students are on the hook to pay the loans back. It's the perfect grift. To keep the marks from finding out they've been grifted, you have to pass as many as you can, make sure they get their graduation ceremonies and framed pieces of paper. I've worked middle school, high school, college - it's all the same. You are REQUIRED to pass a certain percentage of each class, or your life is made into hell or you are fired. So, yes, of course, grade inflation. 

And, yes, of course, student IQ has to drop in higher education because the colleges must keep the same number of students at least (better if more each year, but at least the same number) signing loans and grants. The same amount of money must keep flowing in or the doors close. So, as the success of contraception and abortion drives the raw number of students lower and lower each year, the colleges must allow in a larger and larger number of unqualified students. That, or a larger and larger number of foreign students. Or, better yet, both. But they all have to pass, or people will stop coming, so appeal to their egos (DEI) and make sure they pass (grade inflation). 

That's also why most institutions of higher education have mostly adjunct faculty. There is no such thing as adjunct administrators, just adjunct faculty. The faculty aren't important, they can be part-timers, and in most institutions, more than 70% of classes are taught by part-time faculty. But all the admins are full-time, because the administrators who maintain conformance for government loan and grant guidelines are the ones actually bring in money. The classroom costs money, the admin suite brings in money. The classroom is a loss-leader for the back-end administrative profit center. 

Once you understand the economics, it all makes perfect sense. The system is designed to produce the results you see. If you thought it was supposed to do something else, well, then the system works.

This Is Of God

Hinduism dates back to at least 2300 BC in the Indus Valley civilization. Some scholars suggest origins as far back as 4000 to 10,000 BC

Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, in the late 6th century BC.

Taoism was founded in the 6th century BC, with the teachings of Lao Tzu considered its foundational inspiration.

Zoroastrianism was founded by the prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathushtra) in the 6th or 7th century BC

Jainism was founded by Mahavira (c. 599–527 BC).

If we insist on arguing that any religion which survives millennia of sin and divisiveness must be of divine origin, then since all of the above still exist, all of these theological systems are of divine origin.

Indeed, it is pretty clear that Islam is nowhere near collapsing, and is only 600 years younger than Christianity, so Islam is likely also of divine origin.

Obviously, this is a ridiculous argument. Christians should really stop mouthing this nonsense. It is not a defense of the Church, it is just a public exhibition of the Christian's complete ignorance concerning the histories of other theological systems. Making this argument just makes Christians look really stupid. 

Why Pope Leo?

The world's cardinals have elected South Americans twice in a row. 

They are clearly concerned about South America.

During the decade Pope Francis was in office (elected 2013), Argentina's Catholic population fell from 76% to 49%.  That clearly didn't work, so now they're trying a more conservative version of Pope Francis. That won't work either. 

Watch Peru's statistics over the next decade. If it drops - and the Catholic population percentage in South America will most definitely drop during Pope Leo's pontificate - then what happens? 

I've got nothing against Pope Leo. I'm sure he is a good man and will be as good a Pope as anyone can be. But this kind of thing has been tried before. During World War I, the French were certain that technology could not overcome the human spirit. Vital impetus, or "élan vital", a belief in the power of a strong, offensive spirit to overcome any obstacle, turned out to be much less effective than a wall of high-velocity lead spewed out by machine guns and the power of tons of explosive from long-range artillery shells. 

Similarly, a marvelous papal personality is not going to overcome technology. If anyone were going to succeed by force of personality, it would have been John Paul II (1978-2005). 

A 2012 document reported that for more than a quarter-century [Poland's] church attendance and declarations of religious faith have been stable, decreasing only minimally since 2005 when the grief related to the death of Pope John Paul II led to an increase in religious practice among Poles. In a 2012 study, 52% of Poles declared that they attend religious services at least once a week, 38% do so once or twice a month, and 11% do so never or almost never. Meanwhile, 94% of Poles consider themselves to be religious believers (9% of whom consider themselves "deeply religious"), while only 6% of Poles claim that they are non-believers.

But even during John Paul II's reign, the percentage of Catholics regularly attending Mass dropped consistently from year to year, until it fell off a cliff:

The new data, released by Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency, show that in the 2021 census, 27.1 million people (71.3%) identified themselves as followers of the Roman Catholic church. That was down from 33.7 million (87.6%) at the last census a decade earlier.

The election of John Paul II solved several pressing European problems in the late 20th century. Among the most significant? He kept the Catholic population from melting away in Poland. The cardinals gambled that Pope Francis could solve similar problems in South America. That didn't work. So, they're trying again with a Peruvian candidate. Below is a graph of Catholic percentage in Peru's population:

Pope Leo XIV is supposed to solve the problem of  the disintegrating Catholic population in Peru and in South America as a whole. It can't work. Pope John Paul II got away with it due to a unique set of circumstances surrounding communism, trade unions and Catholic Faith. That's not going to repeat in Peru or any other South American country. 

Given his apparent good health, and the advances that will be made in medicine over the coming decades, Pope Leo XIV will probably have a fifteen to twenty-year pontificate. By the time the next papal conclave convenes, South America will no longer be majority Catholic. All eyes will be on Africa. The next Pope will be African, because it will be a hotspot by then, and the cardinals will have given up on South America, just like they have already given up on Europe and North America.

The Status Quo Can't Quo

Capitalism depends on growing global TFR and growing population. That's gone.

Capitalism was a SUPERB ride, gave us everything we have, but it can't work anymore. We don't have the population growth to make it work. We won't have it for the foreseeable future. For all we know, capitalism might be giving us both obscene wealth and absurdly low TFR.

Socialism, anarchy, communism, have always been worse than useless. Mercantilism stopped working in the mid-1800s.

We need a new paradigm. Maybe Trump's tariffs are it. I don't know. Now, make no mistake. I despise Trump as a human being. I have never voted for him and never will. Furthermore, if a politician were doing this, I would scream bloody murder. Politicians are empty-headed fools. They don't understand what they are doing half the time. 

But Trump isn't a politician, he is a business man. He may not be likeable, but he isn't stupid and he is very experienced. He routinely negotiated huge deals with some of the biggest sharks in one of the richest countries in the world. For him, tariffs are not politics. If he implemented tariffs, it is part of a larger negotiation. He's playing a game. I don't know what the game is. And while I wouldn't trust Trump in many, many situations, if he's arguing the American side in a business negotiation, I trust him ahead of any politician.

Again, is he right in this? I still don't know. But what everyone is doing simply cannot continue. We no longer have population growth, or even people attempting to grow the population. This is not normal. Something has to change. The economics we have used up to this point cannot work. 

The TFR is dropping, and no one knows how to fix it. Keep in mind, Christianity has been completely unable to assist with the problem. Christianity has been essentially moribund since industrialization came on the scene.

The Enlightenment was a reaction to the increasingly obvious failures of the Christian world view to explain reality. Christianity arguably created the scientific paradigm, but none of the religious structures in any culture have really survived contact with the scientific paradigm, and that includes Christianity.

Judaism birthed Christianity but became a postage stamp as a result. Christianity birthed the scientific paradigm and has become mostly irrelevant as a result. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity - none of it works, not now. Capitalism has never been shown to work with a decreasing TFR. The social safety nets that capitalism and growing population allow cannot survive a dropping population. Once the social safety nets collapse due to population collapse, the economics will collapse along with it. Nobody knows how to fix this.

Going forward, for the next century at least, something will have to change. The economics, the TFR, the safety net, the work we do... something has to change. The status quo can't quo. 

The Problem with Embryo Ownership

 First Things has published an essay with the same name, in which the author bloviates about the moral problems with IVF, which are - admittedly - legion. But the author fails to address the central problem.

God participates in IVF by creating and infusing the human soul.

He doesn't have to, but He chooses to.

So... what do you do with that?

Now, you can argue that this is part of God's magnificent freedom, part of His gift to human persons. After all, in an act of pure love, God created and formed the universe. He lets us do whatever we want with this universe. He holds it in existence from moment to moment, while our sin abounds. If we turn lead into bullets and fire a bullet into someone's skull, He will hold that bullet in existence and allow it to smash open a brain pan. It's a radical freedom to give us suzerainty over the universe like that. 

But this is a bit different. This isn't just God holding some pre-existing something in existence. This is an honest-to-God act of ex nihilo creation. During the IVF process, God creates a new human soul and infuses it.

Think about that.

He has to actively take part in our attempt to create a new human being. He has to actively create the new human soul out of nothing and infuse that newly created human soul into the attempted embryo as part of the process. God is as much an active participant in this process as the lab tech infusing the sperm. God ACTIVELY PARTICIPATES in the creation of the life of the new human embryo. If He did not, the embryo would never form.

Christians don't believe souls pre-exist conception, so that makes God an ACTOR, a PARTICIPANT in the IVF sequence. And He appears to be fine with it, because He makes sure the human soul is present and operational.

So... what do you do with that?

Four Cups, Pure BS

Scott Hahn's book, The Fourth Cup, turns out to be pure bullshit. The Seder ritual Hahn wrote his book about was developed long after the destruction of the Temple, long after Christ was crucified. It was invented by rabbis who never sacrificed in the Temple, nor did they ever actually even see the Temple. They couldn't, because the Temple had already been destroyed centuries before. Arguably, Judaism died out when the Second Temple was destroyed and animal sacrifice, the centerpiece of Judaism and Hebrew worship, was completely eradicated. 

Remember, neither Jesus nor the apostles nor even Paul ever met a Jew who didn't participate in Temple sacrifice and Temple maintenance. Every adult male Jew in the world was required to come to the Temple at least three times a year to assist in Temple sacrifice. Every adult male Jew was also required to contribute a half shekel to Temple maintenance before the first of Nisan each year. From Noah, through Abraham's first vision, for all of Hebrew history, animal sacrifice was the centerpiece of Hebrew worship. When the Temple was destroyed and Temple sacrifice eradicated, the Hebrew religion was also thereby eradicated. When the last Levitical priest who had offered animal sacrifice died, Judaism ceased to exist.

The Seder as we know it, and as it has been practiced since the sixth century, was not an organic development of Temple Judaism. The Last Supper could not have been a seder meal. 

That Jesus ate a meal in Jerusalem, at night, with his disciples is not so surprising. It is also no great coincidence that during this meal the disciples reclined, ate both bread and wine, and sang a hymn. While such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal.

Not only the Seder, but the entire rabbinic-Talmud system was an invention created long after the Temple was destroyed. It was invented in a manner very similar to the way Joseph Smith invented Mormonism and Mormon ritual, tacking it onto Christianity as best he could. The rabbinic-Talmud system was invented by Rav Ashi (352–427 AD) and Ravina II (d. 475 AD), two lay people who had nothing better to do with their time but write down a layman's thoughts on how best to read the Torah. Rav Ashi or Ravina II writing commentary on the Torah was no different than Martin Luther (Ph.D. in theology) or John Hus (MA in theology) writing down their commentaries on the New Testament. In terms of divine inspiration, the versions of the Talmud the two Ravs wrote down have roughly the same theological weight and insight as Luther's Table Talk. 

The rabbinic-Talmud system they developed is as authentically Jewish as Mormonism is authentically Christian. Today, roughly 20% of the people who claim to be Jews reject both rabbinic authority and Talmudic authority. They reject it for the same reasons Christians reject Mormonism: they know both systems were manufactured by men long after the fact. 

But this invented system of Talmudic "Judaism" is the system from which Scott Hahn lifted his four cup theory. Keep in mind, rabbis are not descended from Levitical priests. Rabbis are just lay people who gave themselves authority and pretended it was theirs to take. In 1935, fully 80% of the Christian "ministers" in the United States had only a high school degree. Some had less. But during that same Prohibition period, a substantial number of American rabbis had no formal education at all. 

“if you said you are a rabbi, who was going to say you weren't a rabbi?” Okrent continued. “There were rabbis with names like Kelly and Hosanna Han and there were black rabbis. There was a real racket.”... Basically, anyone – no matter how unlikely – could say they were a rabbi because there was no recognized standard for the rabbinate...A dozen Jews or even non-Jews can get together and call themselves a Jewish congregation. They can proceed to elect one of themselves or anyone else, male or female, Jew or non-Jew, as their “Rabbi” and there is absolutely no authoritative, central Jewish body that can dictate to the pseudo-congregation what qualifications its rabbi must possess, or even interfere in any way with its management.

As even those who call themselves Jews today readily admit,  

The original ordination, passed down from Moshe to Yehoshua and continuing from teacher to student, was lost in the year 358 CE

This is how the rabbinate has always operated. As long as twelve people agree that you are a rabbi, then you are a rabbi. That's why it was important Jesus have twelve disciples. A rabbi, like an American congregationalist minister, is anyone who (a) decides to call himself that and (b) can convince a few people to agree that he is one.  

Instead of taking this authority for themselves in 1830 AD like old Joe Smith, they did it in 400 AD. Only the Ashkenazi (Eastern Europeans) buy into this nonsense. Unfortunately, Ashkenazi make up about 80% of the people who pretend to be Jewish today. Ashkenazi come from Eastern Europe, so the Ashkenazi rabbi-Talmud system is the only kind of "Jew" that Europeans know. As a result, everyone descended from Europeans thinks rabbis and the Talmud are normal and "Jewish". They aren't. America's view of Judaism is no more an accurate view of Judaism than what America's view of Christianity would be if everything Americans knew about Christianity was what the Mormon Church taught. 

But these fifth-century AD lay people who called themselves "rabbi" are the people who wrote the Talmuds. Just as a group of congregationalist ministers might gather today to write a Scripture commentary, so a bunch of lay people who claimed authority after the Temple was destroyed and the Levitical priesthood disbanded, wrote down what they considered to be the correct way to interpret the Torah. The results don't have to be imagined - the results are the Talmud.

However, let us ignore all this. Let's pretend the rabbis really do have authority, that the really are actually Jews. Let's pretend the Seder ritual they invented really is really accurate and not just something they wrote down because they were grasping at the few straws left to them after the true Jewish style of worship, animal sacrifice, i.e., the Hebrew worship offered since Noah and Abraham, had been completely crushed, eradicated, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. 

What about Hahn's four cup theory then? Well, Hahn's theory depends on the Seder being a prophetic foreshadowing of the Crucifixion, and the four cups being a prophecy of Christ's passion, when it is actually no such thing. 

Just where did the rabbis themselves determine the idea of instituting four cups of wine? The rabbis wrote these instructions in Tractate Pesachim during the time of Roman rule in Israel, and during that time it was customary at Roman feasts or banquets (known as symposiums (sym – together, posium – drinking wine)) to begin the festivities by drinking wine.

Tractate Pesachim, part of the Mishnah, was compiled around 200 CE in Palestine by Patriarch Judah haNasi and his school.

The tractate Pesachim was written at least 200 years after the Catholic Mass had already begun being celebrated. The Mass certainly was based on the Seder meal, but the structure of the original Seder meal isn't actually known. The oldest documents describing the Seder may not actually be doing that. After all, even: 

the Book of Deuteronomy clearly stipulates that the Pesach sacrifice may not be made “within any of thy gates” but rather at the Temple. (16:5-6)

so it has literally been impossible to celebrate any kind of Seder since the 70AD destruction of the Temple. But even what we do know of the Seder as it was practiced when the Temple still stood is not.... harmonious:

The Passover Seder is one of the most recognized and widely practiced of Jewish rituals, yet had our ancestors visited one of these modern-day celebrations, they would be baffled. Not only does our modern Seder wildly diverge from the Passover of old: during antiquity itself the holiday underwent radical changes. Below we chart as best we can - considering the shortage of historical documentation - the origins of Passover, from the dawn of Israelite people to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE

What we know of it tells us it originally only had two, or perhaps three, cups, not four. 

The obligation to drink four cups of wine on the seder night was another rabbinic provision introduced within several decades after the destruction of the temple (Talmud Pesachim 109b). 

The Talmud is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and exists in two versions: the vastly studied Babylonian Talmud, compiled by scholars in Mesopotamia (Babylonia) around 500 CE, as well as the Jerusalem Talmud, compiled earlier, around 400 CE, but much shorter, incomplete and in consequence, for centuries studied less frequently. Usually, ‘the Talmud’ refers to the Babylonian Talmud.

But the tractate Hahn used to develop his four-cup theory does not restrict the Seder to four cups:

On the eve of Pesah close to minhah one may not eat until nightfall. Even the poorest person in Israel must not eat [on the night of Pesah] until he reclines. And they should give him not less than four cups [of wine], and even from the charity plate.

There's also a fifth cup, that Hahn doesn't mention:

Rabbi Tarfon says: over the fifth cup we recite the great Hallel.

So, Hahn's theory is a Just-So story, based on nonsense from a bunch of random lay people making up and writing down random "Jewish" rituals centuries after Judaism's destruction. They didn't even invoke an angel delivering golden tablets. They simply invoked divine inspiration for Rav Ashi:

Rav Ashi's composition of the Talmud is considered divinely inspired, reflecting his spiritual greatness. Rav Ashi, a pivotal figure in Jewish history, completed the Babylonian Talmud in the 5th century CE, a text central to Jewish law and tradition.

But notice, in order to consider Rav Ashi and his Talmud divinely inspired, we have to EXPLICITLY REJECT the authority of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

CCC 66 "The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Neither the Jerusalem Talmud nor the Babylonian Talmud nor the rabbis (i.e., lay people) who compiled and interpreted both, can be considered by Christians to be divinely inspired, much less considered to be contributions to Christian public revelation. In order to buy into Hahn's theory, we have to assume some level of authority on the part of the Jerusalem Talmud and its tractates. Yet we also have to acknowledge that, from a Christian perspective, or even from the perspective of many "Jews" who reject the Talmud, the rabbis have no authority, nor is their compilation of either Talmud, or the rituals described within, endowed with any authority. 

From this mid-sixth century AD theological dog's breakfast, Hahn simply grabbed ritual passages, added a Catholic veneer, and sold it to Catholics, making a ton of money by doing so. 

Which, good for him, I guess. After all, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.