Some say the money given to re-build Notre Dame is being wasted. It should be spent on the climate, or the poor.
God is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
We help the poor the best by helping them understand God.
When we build beautiful things, we reflect God's beauty.
It was the poor we donated their treasure and their lives to building Notre Dame, because, poor as they were, they were richer than we are. They understood that they were giving their lives in dedication to reflecting the beauty of God, a gift they gave to the countless generations that followed them.
Sadly, we don't appreciate what the poor have given us, so we would prefer the gift of the poor not be re-built in their honor, in God's honor. We spit on the tuppence that is Notre Dame, the mite of beauty the widow has placed in history's coinbox for us. We instead say, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
I prefer to honor the poor who died to give us this gift.
I prefer to re-build.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Wednesday, April 03, 2019
Abortion and Immigrants
Does America have a moral obligation to open its borders and accept immigrants. Do the states have a moral obligation to support the immigrants, legal or illegal?
To answer, let's look at a similar situation.
After WW II, Germany made amends to the world for the Holocaust in part by opening its borders to Jewish immigrants.
America, you didn't want to pay to raise your own children, so now you are going to pay to help the immigrants who replace the innocents you murdered. Given that we have murdered far more people, we have at least as great a moral obligation to pay for our sins as Germany does.
Absolutely.
America has to make amends.
So, yes, we have to accept the immigrants.
And yes, we have to pay for them.
That's the pro-life position.
To answer, let's look at a similar situation.
After WW II, Germany made amends to the world for the Holocaust in part by opening its borders to Jewish immigrants.
"For decades, Germany has tried to make amends for the murder of more than 6 million Jews by supporting survivors and descendants, at home and around the world, including an unusual program to offer citizenship to nearly any Jew from the former Soviet Union — which has built the Jewish community back to more than 100,000 people."America has committed a Holocaust against itself, a genocide of much greater size and depravity than anything committed in 1940s Europe. If America hadn't been aborting it's children for the last 50 years, we wouldn't need the immigrants who are currently flooding in. As it is, we do need them, because our own children have been murdered, ground up in Insinkerators or thrown into biohazard bags and tossed into the mass graves we call garbage dumps.
America, you didn't want to pay to raise your own children, so now you are going to pay to help the immigrants who replace the innocents you murdered. Given that we have murdered far more people, we have at least as great a moral obligation to pay for our sins as Germany does.
Absolutely.
America has to make amends.
So, yes, we have to accept the immigrants.
And yes, we have to pay for them.
That's the pro-life position.
Saturday, March 16, 2019
When People Say Trump or the Republicans Are "Prolife"
Quoting LiveAction.Org. Notice how Trump is willing to veto an omnibus bill in order to keep Mexican Catholics out of the country, but never once mentions the murders of millions of children.
"Despite a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, and a Republican president in the White House, today, the omnibus spending bill, which continues to fully fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion corporation, was signed by President Trump after a threat earlier in the day that he might veto.
Despite promises from GOP leaders, including Trump, regarding their intentions to defund Planned Parenthood, this provision was not included in the bill in the face of a potential government shutdown.
The Daily Caller took the president to task over the continuation of half a billion dollars annually for the abortion giant:
The spending bill breaks Trump’s campaign promise to his voters, but it does fulfill a promise that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, made on the campaign trail in 2016. Clinton promised to continue funding Planned Parenthood if elected president, while Trump assured his voters that he would defund the abortion giant if he won.
The "Alt-Right" Are Actually Leftists
I could never figure out what this "Alt-Right" tag was supposed to mean, nor did I have the energy to investigate it and try to figure it out. Now it has been explained. "Alt-Right" means "these are damned socialists leftists that the leftists are afraid to own."
How do his views compare to those of other Alt-Right terrorists?
His views are in keeping with other white nationalist extremists who have resorted to violence. Jeremy Joseph Christian, an Alt-Right terrorist arrested for murdering two Muslims at a Portland train station in 2017, supported Bernie Sanders over the issue of tariffs and economic interventionism.
Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik – whom Tarrant says he contacted and asked for a “blessing” before the Christchurch attack – wrote in his own 1,500-page manifesto that his economic views fell between socialism and social democracy. He favored the “development of alternative energy” to “save the environment” and argued it is “essential” that “national states have a controlling stake in” multinational corporations.
James Wenneker Von Brunn, who opened fire inside the Holocaust Museum in 2009, wrote in his book Kill the Best Gentiles that Christianity is a “hoax,” denounced “JEW CAPITALISTS,” and concluded that “WESTERN SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.” (Capitalization in the original.)Thanks, Acton, for making this clear.
Saturday, March 09, 2019
Father Michael Rodriguez of El Paso
As of tonight, March 9, 2019, I have just been personally informed by the bishop of El Paso that Father Michael Rodriguez of El Paso diocese does not have faculties.
While any Mass he offers is valid, it is certainly not licit.
His absolutions are likewise invalid.
Please act accordingly.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
The Mystery of Abortion
Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.
We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion....While the church’s opposition to abortion has been steadfast, it has become a stand-alone issue for many and has become disconnected to other issues of human dignity....The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable.
This is an excerpt from a pastoral letter written by the Rev. John Stowe, bishop of the Diocese of Lexington, concerning the kerfluffle at the recent March for Life.
Now, I don't entirely disagree with the good bishop's sentiments. Certainly, it is true that no good Catholic can support Trump's politics, Trump's wall, or Trump's insistence on characterizing immigrants as subhuman criminals. We can never forget that Donald Trump happily signed off on a bill, produced by a Republican House, a bill that gave one-half BILLION dollars to Planned Parenthood. We can never forget that Trump won his presidency, in part, by publicly attacking Pope Francis. What was Francis' sin in Donald's eyes? Well, Pope Francis had CORRECTLY pointed out that no Catholic can support the building of walls to keep out immigrants and refugees.
Just as the MSM used the Covington high school kids to trash the whole March for Life, so Trump used the Pope's preaching of the Gospel to successfully leverage America's anti-Catholic, anti-papal culture to his own electoral benefit. Outrage is all about the clicks, you see.
No, my concern in the bishop's letter is the bolded sentence. Bishop John Stowe is not remarkable in constantly being concerned about the Catholic laity's singular upset over abortion.
So here are a couple of rhetorical questions for America's bishops:
- Why, bishops, might it be the case that, out of all the life issues, so many Catholics consider the abortion issue pre-eminent?
- Why do Catholic laity place the issue of abortion higher than issues like racism, care for the poor, the immigrant, the elderly, the ill, etc?
| Sin | Canonical Penalty |
| Racism | None |
| Sexism | None |
| Neglect of immigrant | None |
| Neglect of poor | None |
| Neglect of refugee | None |
| Neglect of ill | None |
| Neglect of elderly | None |
| Rape | None |
| Murder | None |
| Abortion | Automatic excommunication |
So, why do Catholics view abortion as a sin that is worse than pretty much any other sin? I'm sure I don't know. But maybe, if we study the documents of the Church, we can eventually figure that one out.
Friday, January 18, 2019
Scott Hahn is Wrong on Laicized Priests.
Scott Hahn has now decided to become his own Magisterium, lecturing the Pope and the bishops on how priests accused of molestation should be treated. Surely, Scott knows best, right? He thinks all priests accused/convicted of molestation should be excommunicated, because simple laicization is too light a punishment, and therefore "an insult" to the laity.
Dr. Scott Hahn has spoken, the matter is closed, right?
Get a copy of canon law (here's the original, here's a summary), and look up the offenses which automatically impose excommunication. It is essentially imposed only for offenses against, or denial of, the sacraments. Abortion and physical attack on the Pope are the only real exceptions to that rule of thumb. Rape is terrible, but it certainly doesn't qualify as an excommunicable offense according to the rules of canon law.
But Scott Hahn, the ex-Protestant minister who still doesn't quite get how Catholicism works, doesn't agree. He knows more than the Church, an amazing skill, really. Has anyone who agrees with Scott's stupidity ever MET a laicized priest and talked with them?
Get over your personal decision to excommunicate the laicized priest accused of molestation, and try talking to some of them sometime. These men typically have zero prospects in life. They have no useful skills, they have little or no experience in the workplace, as former priests, they have no resume they can list... what are you going to put down? That you were kicked out of the Catholic priesthood for suspicion of molesting children? Yeah, THAT will go over well in an interview.
These men end up doing manual labor or lucking into a job at Walmart as a greeter. Or, they just kind of wander around, hoping some former friends maintain enough of a friendship to let them sleep on a couch. Some will find temporary refuge amongst heretical or semi-heretical religious orders as spiritual advisors, but even there, they are lucky to get bed and board.
They have no prospects, no support, no future.
Laicization is an absolute destruction of everything they ever thought they would have. It's not unlike being released from prison after a murder sentence... Yeah, you're "free", for all the good it will do you.
Don't underestimate how harsh the current sentence is.
It is DEFINITELY punishment.
Do they deserve it?
SURE, if they committed the crime.
But, just as the secular judgment systems sometimes convict the innocent, so do the Catholic canon law courts. Innocent men are sometimes laicized. And the problem is, as lay people, we have no idea which ones might be actually innocent of all charges, but still punished with laicization and a completely destroyed life.
Scott Hahn is an ex-Protestant minister who essentially excommunicated himself from his old Protestant community. He thinks of laicization in terms of what HE has experienced. He leveraged his excommunication into literally a multi-million dollar empire, monetizing his own life experience in much the same lucrative way that Zuckerberg monetizes everyone else's life experiences. He has now decided to imitate Facebook and monetize the publicly destroyed lives of these priests, pursue the "culture of outrage" to make a few bucks off of that.
Hahn apparently thinks his personally satisfying and financially rewarding excommunication experience translates to that of laicized priests, that it gives him the right to make money off of their sins and their punishment. It doesn't. He thinks he has the right to lecture the Pope, the bishops, the Church itself, on what is or is not appropriate punishment for priests. He doesn't.
Pretending that he has such rights, and inflicting his pretensions on the rest of us ... THAT insults the laity.
Dr. Scott Hahn has spoken, the matter is closed, right?
Get a copy of canon law (here's the original, here's a summary), and look up the offenses which automatically impose excommunication. It is essentially imposed only for offenses against, or denial of, the sacraments. Abortion and physical attack on the Pope are the only real exceptions to that rule of thumb. Rape is terrible, but it certainly doesn't qualify as an excommunicable offense according to the rules of canon law.
But Scott Hahn, the ex-Protestant minister who still doesn't quite get how Catholicism works, doesn't agree. He knows more than the Church, an amazing skill, really. Has anyone who agrees with Scott's stupidity ever MET a laicized priest and talked with them?
Get over your personal decision to excommunicate the laicized priest accused of molestation, and try talking to some of them sometime. These men typically have zero prospects in life. They have no useful skills, they have little or no experience in the workplace, as former priests, they have no resume they can list... what are you going to put down? That you were kicked out of the Catholic priesthood for suspicion of molesting children? Yeah, THAT will go over well in an interview.
These men end up doing manual labor or lucking into a job at Walmart as a greeter. Or, they just kind of wander around, hoping some former friends maintain enough of a friendship to let them sleep on a couch. Some will find temporary refuge amongst heretical or semi-heretical religious orders as spiritual advisors, but even there, they are lucky to get bed and board.
They have no prospects, no support, no future.
Laicization is an absolute destruction of everything they ever thought they would have. It's not unlike being released from prison after a murder sentence... Yeah, you're "free", for all the good it will do you.
Don't underestimate how harsh the current sentence is.
It is DEFINITELY punishment.
Do they deserve it?
SURE, if they committed the crime.
But, just as the secular judgment systems sometimes convict the innocent, so do the Catholic canon law courts. Innocent men are sometimes laicized. And the problem is, as lay people, we have no idea which ones might be actually innocent of all charges, but still punished with laicization and a completely destroyed life.
Scott Hahn is an ex-Protestant minister who essentially excommunicated himself from his old Protestant community. He thinks of laicization in terms of what HE has experienced. He leveraged his excommunication into literally a multi-million dollar empire, monetizing his own life experience in much the same lucrative way that Zuckerberg monetizes everyone else's life experiences. He has now decided to imitate Facebook and monetize the publicly destroyed lives of these priests, pursue the "culture of outrage" to make a few bucks off of that.
Hahn apparently thinks his personally satisfying and financially rewarding excommunication experience translates to that of laicized priests, that it gives him the right to make money off of their sins and their punishment. It doesn't. He thinks he has the right to lecture the Pope, the bishops, the Church itself, on what is or is not appropriate punishment for priests. He doesn't.
Pretending that he has such rights, and inflicting his pretensions on the rest of us ... THAT insults the laity.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Why FUS Theology is Problematic
There was a recent kerfluffle about an English teacher at FUS assigning a risque book to a group of graduate students. Some people took offense because the book was apparently blasphemous.
In reference to that problem, I have no brief. If adult, well-catechized Catholics can't handle blasphemy, they should probably go live in a cave, far from the madding crowd, and spend their snowflake time in prayer, that God may strengthen them. They certainly aren't cut out for the apostolic work of evangelization.
No, my issue with FUS is rather more substantial.
It simply doesn't teach the whole Faith.
A strong charge requires strong evidence.
This is my personal experience.
During the course of my MA in theology there, I was taught that the missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify. For two solid years, that was what I heard.
When I graduated and got job with a parish working under a wonderfully orthodox assistant priest, he pointed out that I had been mis-taught. The three-fold mission of the Church is
He was right, of course.
So, why was the third mission never taught, never even breathed to me, during my entire time at FUS? This puzzled me.
After this revelation, I made a point to question other theology grads, both FUS students and non-FUS students, on precisely this point, just to see if this was, perhaps, something I had missed. To a person, every FUS-taught person answered the question EXACTLY the same way that every non-FUS grad answered: the TWO missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify.
In every case, when I pointed out the third mission, the FUS students were struck suddenly dumb, staring at the third phrase "as a cow stares at a new gate", while one Notre Dame student reacted very badly to the third phrase, going so far as to scratch it out and say, "I don't like that one."
So, again, how is it that the graduate theology program at FUS consistently omitted the third mission? I don't know. All I know is, it did. Consistently. And this omission includes teachers like Scott Hahn and Barbara Ann Morgan. All of them failed to explicitly teach the third mission. For two solid years. To everyone.
Second story. I had a similar experience in regards to the teaching on the sacraments. When taking the undergraduate Sacraments course, the sum total of the instruction on the sacrament of marriage from the priest who taught it was "you'll learn about that in marriage prep."
That was it. Now, as it happens, I did marriage prep at FUS. I can't call it a waste of time, because almost no time was spent doing any marriage prep. The entire experience consisted of one, diocesan required pre-Cana weekend which was ... underwhelming... in its theology.
In my personal experience, FUS isn't passing on the whole Faith. Omitting one of the three missions of the Church is an incredibly basic mistake, not unlike omitting one of the sacraments. It is absurd. FUS theology instruction may be better than most schools (I have no basis for comparison, so I can't say), but in my experience, it is substandard by any objective measure.
I have NEVER recommended FUS as a place to learn theology.
In reference to that problem, I have no brief. If adult, well-catechized Catholics can't handle blasphemy, they should probably go live in a cave, far from the madding crowd, and spend their snowflake time in prayer, that God may strengthen them. They certainly aren't cut out for the apostolic work of evangelization.
No, my issue with FUS is rather more substantial.
It simply doesn't teach the whole Faith.
A strong charge requires strong evidence.
This is my personal experience.
During the course of my MA in theology there, I was taught that the missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify. For two solid years, that was what I heard.
When I graduated and got job with a parish working under a wonderfully orthodox assistant priest, he pointed out that I had been mis-taught. The three-fold mission of the Church is
- to teach,
- to GOVERN and
- to sanctify.
He was right, of course.
So, why was the third mission never taught, never even breathed to me, during my entire time at FUS? This puzzled me.
After this revelation, I made a point to question other theology grads, both FUS students and non-FUS students, on precisely this point, just to see if this was, perhaps, something I had missed. To a person, every FUS-taught person answered the question EXACTLY the same way that every non-FUS grad answered: the TWO missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify.
In every case, when I pointed out the third mission, the FUS students were struck suddenly dumb, staring at the third phrase "as a cow stares at a new gate", while one Notre Dame student reacted very badly to the third phrase, going so far as to scratch it out and say, "I don't like that one."
So, again, how is it that the graduate theology program at FUS consistently omitted the third mission? I don't know. All I know is, it did. Consistently. And this omission includes teachers like Scott Hahn and Barbara Ann Morgan. All of them failed to explicitly teach the third mission. For two solid years. To everyone.
Second story. I had a similar experience in regards to the teaching on the sacraments. When taking the undergraduate Sacraments course, the sum total of the instruction on the sacrament of marriage from the priest who taught it was "you'll learn about that in marriage prep."
That was it. Now, as it happens, I did marriage prep at FUS. I can't call it a waste of time, because almost no time was spent doing any marriage prep. The entire experience consisted of one, diocesan required pre-Cana weekend which was ... underwhelming... in its theology.
In my personal experience, FUS isn't passing on the whole Faith. Omitting one of the three missions of the Church is an incredibly basic mistake, not unlike omitting one of the sacraments. It is absurd. FUS theology instruction may be better than most schools (I have no basis for comparison, so I can't say), but in my experience, it is substandard by any objective measure.
I have NEVER recommended FUS as a place to learn theology.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Glenn Reynolds: Fetal Organ Farms
Glenn Reynolds, professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, frequent contributor to USA Today and Popular Mechanics, and popular blogger at Instapundit (Pajama Media), has just publicly admitted that he supports women acting as baby organ farms.
From his point of view, a woman can conceive, abort, then sell the baby's hair to stuff pillows, the baby's skin to make lampshades, the baby's fat to make soap and (since they lack gold teeth) the baby's organs to fill bank accounts. This policy got men tried and hung at Nuremburg. But it's now just another legitimate opinion at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
He has admitted to it in the comments to one of his posted articles.
Here's the screen snip of the relevant portions.
From his point of view, a woman can conceive, abort, then sell the baby's hair to stuff pillows, the baby's skin to make lampshades, the baby's fat to make soap and (since they lack gold teeth) the baby's organs to fill bank accounts. This policy got men tried and hung at Nuremburg. But it's now just another legitimate opinion at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
He has admitted to it in the comments to one of his posted articles.
Here's the screen snip of the relevant portions.
Were the Holy Family Refugees?
Comment: The Holy Family were NOT refugees! They went to Bethlehem to pay taxes!
Answer: Sure, the trip to Bethlehem was to pay taxes. But the trip to Egypt was as a refugee family fleeing a violent persecution that threatened to kill their son, as it had already killed all the male children under the age of 5.
The Holy Family were ABSOLUTELY refugees before the second chapter of Matthew's Gospel ended.
Comment: No, they were NOT refugees! They didn't cross a national border! It's like fleeing Illinois for Texas! That's not a refugee move!
Answer: While it is true the refugees remained in the Roman Empire, it is not at all like the move from Illinois to Texas. The Roman provinces held different legal statuses depending on their relationship with Rome. We aren't used to this kind of thought, but it was commonplace in the Roman Empire.
For instance, we have only two levels of citizenship: you are or you aren't. In the Roman Empire, it wasn't so simple. There were all kinds of different rights and degrees of citizenship, governing even whom you could marry. These rights and degrees of citizenship were often bound to specific geographic regions, so you had "citizen's right X" if you lived in one city or region, but you lost it if you moved to another (Ius migrationis).
Judea was a client state, with Herod as its Roman-chosen ruler. Rome's relationship to the Judean province was a client-state relationship, rather like the relationship between the US and Cuba after the Spanish-American war, when the US ambassador held more power in Cuba than the Cuban president did.
As the ruler of a client-state province, Herod had a relatively free hand to slaughter whom he liked. And he had already demonstrated a serious malevolent intent to slaughter the Holy Family's child. We know this because he had slaughtered every child that even looked like his target (note: I am publishing this on Childermas, the Feast of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents).
Egypt, on the other hand, was considered the personal property of the Emperor. The Holy Family fled the Judean client state to enter the personal property of the Emperor, i.e., Egypt, where Augustus was considered pharaoh. By this flight, they were thus placing themselves under the personal protection of Augustus. That is, they were refugees in EVERY modern sense of the word.
Again, Egypt was the personal property of the pharaoh, i.e., the personal property of Emperor Augustus. Judea wasn't.
By moving from Judea to Egypt, they removed themselves from the authority of a man trying to kill their child and placed themselves under the personal protection of the Roman Emperor. That's a refugee move.
Conclusion: Yes, the Holy Family were refugees. And, yes, if Egypt were ruled by Trump, Mary and Joseph would likely be denied entry, perhaps they would even be sent back to suffer the execution of their child, God.
Why We Hate Illegals
For those who like to post news stories about the crimes of illegals.
It is fact that illegals commit fewer crimes, in every category, than US citizens do. So, for every "illegal commits dastardly crime!" story you post, anyone with sense can find a dozen similar crimes committed by American citizens. (Google "illegal immigrants crime" to verify)
If you consistently highlight stories about illegals who commit crimes, you are cherry-picking anecdotal incidents in order to paint illegals as something the numbers tell us is simply not true. You're trying to show that illegal immigrants are a major cause of crime, when they aren't.
If I wanted to paint Catholics as career criminals, I could easily do the same thing using the same technique. In fact, the press currently does EXACTLY this kind of cherry-picking with priest sexual abuse cases: the MSM highlights priest cases and ignores or downplays sex crime committed by other faiths and sex crime committed by lay people (e.g., public school teachers, homosexuals, coaches, businessmen, etc.).
Even though statistics show that every other class of people you can think of actually commits MORE sex crime than Catholic priests do, we are being conditioned by the MSM to equate "sex crime" with "Catholic priest."
Is that fair?
Obviously not.
So, why do you do the same damned thing to illegals (many of whom are your Catholic brothers and sisters) that the MSM already does to Catholic priests? You're just stirring up hate against a class that has no way to protect itself against your false allegations.
The statistics are quite, quite clear: my children are safer being alone with a Catholic priest than they are being alone with a public school teacher, an evangelical preacher, a sports coach, a homosexual or the manager of a fast food restaurant.
You are safer being alone with illegal immigrants than you are being alone with one of your next-door neighbors.
If you want safety, deport all American citizens, bring in only illegal immigrants. Crime will drop like a rock.
According to legal experts, each American commits, on average, three felonies a day. If you REALLY wanted safety, you would be advocating for the deportation of all American citizens who commit crimes. I don't see you doing that.
You really DO NOT want safety.
What you want is the deportation of people who are not like you.
They are more law-abiding, they are Catholic, but they speak a different language and have different customs. THAT is the basis for your antipathy.
Is that fair?
It is fact that illegals commit fewer crimes, in every category, than US citizens do. So, for every "illegal commits dastardly crime!" story you post, anyone with sense can find a dozen similar crimes committed by American citizens. (Google "illegal immigrants crime" to verify)
If you consistently highlight stories about illegals who commit crimes, you are cherry-picking anecdotal incidents in order to paint illegals as something the numbers tell us is simply not true. You're trying to show that illegal immigrants are a major cause of crime, when they aren't.
If I wanted to paint Catholics as career criminals, I could easily do the same thing using the same technique. In fact, the press currently does EXACTLY this kind of cherry-picking with priest sexual abuse cases: the MSM highlights priest cases and ignores or downplays sex crime committed by other faiths and sex crime committed by lay people (e.g., public school teachers, homosexuals, coaches, businessmen, etc.).
Even though statistics show that every other class of people you can think of actually commits MORE sex crime than Catholic priests do, we are being conditioned by the MSM to equate "sex crime" with "Catholic priest."
Is that fair?
Obviously not.
So, why do you do the same damned thing to illegals (many of whom are your Catholic brothers and sisters) that the MSM already does to Catholic priests? You're just stirring up hate against a class that has no way to protect itself against your false allegations.
The statistics are quite, quite clear: my children are safer being alone with a Catholic priest than they are being alone with a public school teacher, an evangelical preacher, a sports coach, a homosexual or the manager of a fast food restaurant.
You are safer being alone with illegal immigrants than you are being alone with one of your next-door neighbors.
If you want safety, deport all American citizens, bring in only illegal immigrants. Crime will drop like a rock.
According to legal experts, each American commits, on average, three felonies a day. If you REALLY wanted safety, you would be advocating for the deportation of all American citizens who commit crimes. I don't see you doing that.
You really DO NOT want safety.
What you want is the deportation of people who are not like you.
They are more law-abiding, they are Catholic, but they speak a different language and have different customs. THAT is the basis for your antipathy.
Is that fair?
Thursday, December 20, 2018
The Founding Fathers and Immigration
Immigration is crossing a country’s borders with the intent to remain in that country. Naturalization is the process by which immigrants become citizens and gain access to political institutions. A naturalized person becomes a citizen and has a right to
Declaration of Independence: One of the reasons the colonials revolted against the King and the English government was precisely over the King's regulation of immigration:
The Constitution says nothing about allowing the federal government to restrict immigration. This is as close as you get.
Similarly, the interstate Commerce Clause was not understood to give Congress the power to forbid the migration of Americans from one state to another. The Constitution literally uses the same phrase to cover both, giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” At the time of the founding, the individual states were supposed to have power to regulate themselves that was almost the equal of individual foreign nations. States were very much like "little nations."
Some say the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 restricted immigration, since it gave the federal government the power to deport foreigners and added restrictions to the naturalization of immigrants. Also, it allowed fines and imprisonment against those who "write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government.
Now, under the terms of this law over twenty Republican newspaper editors were arrested, some were imprisoned. No one was deported. All but the Alien Enemies Act was repealed within four years. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is still in force in modified form and authorizes the President to detain, relocate, or deport enemy aliens in time of war.
The problem, of course, is that none of those acts ever actually put any restriction on immigration. They allowed for deportation, but said not a word about immigration. Worse, both Thomas Jefferson (the vice-president at the time) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) publicly condemned the Acts as "unconstitutional."
So, if the Founders intended to establish an open borders country, what changed? The answer is simple: Darwin. In 1859, only a year before the Civil War, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published 24 November 1859). Twelve years later, at the same time a Republican Congress was passing the first Civil Rights legislation and giving citizenship rights to black Americans, Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).
By 1883, Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, creates the term “eugenics”, which means “good genes”, and “dysgenic” or “bad genes.” Galton will go on to fund a Chair of Eugenics at University of London, 1904. America and England will become leaders in the implementation of eugenics throughout the world, teaching Europe, especially Germany, the glories of eugenic thinking. By the 1870s, educated Europeans and Americans spoke of the “German race” the “French race”, the “Italian race”, the “English race”. The American elite wanted a pure “American race”.
Riding the wave of scientific "eugenic" thought, America passed the 1875 Page Act, the first federal law restricting immigration. Like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, it and most subsequent federal immigration law was meant to prevent the diseased and the subhuman from entering the US. The first targets were the yellow Chinese, followed soon by most Asians and, then those of Mediterranean stock, whose skin was too dusky and whose religion was too Catholic to be trusted.
The educated elites were at war with the general culture. Most of America viewed itself as giving warm welcome to all immigrants. Thus, we see to this day, embossed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus (1903):
But the elites would have none of it. They wanted a pure American race, unpolluted by the mongrel hordes of American citizens who welcomed those dirty, subhuman immigrants. Prior to 1906, an immigrant could be naturalized in any U.S. "court of record", but the federal government usurps that role by 1907. In that same year, Indiana passes the first law in the world empowering the government to involuntarily sterilize its own citizens. Cold Spring Harbor creates the first eugenics laboratory, and supplies advisors to Congress on what immigration laws should be passed to keep out the dysgenic riff-raff.
Money from the millionaire elite rolled in. Margaret Sanger, wife of one of those millionaires, began referring to blacks, Catholics and Jews as "human weeds" who needed to be contracepted and sterilized in order to maintain America's racial purity. Adolf Hitler studied America law and policy closely and liked what he saw. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf (1925), he explicitly praised American eugenics law, thereby demonstrating how deeply American elites had formed his own thinking.
In the years since Darwin captured the imagination of the elites, nearly every American president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, and virtually all the moneyed interests who put those presidents in office, have championed the cause of eugenics. Thus, America no longer follows the Founding Fathers' vision of an open borders country. Instead, we implement the eugenics vision we taught the Nazis. Keep the dysgenic out! Make America Pure Again!
PS
As the Mises Institute points out, Constitutional scholars like Ilya Sommins and Judge Andrew Napolitano agree that the Constitution doesn't actually authorize the federal government to create immigration restrictions.
- Hold office
- Vote in elections
Declaration of Independence: One of the reasons the colonials revolted against the King and the English government was precisely over the King's regulation of immigration:
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”We see three reasons for revolt listed in this paragraph: (1) restriction on naturalization, (2) restriction on immigration and (3) not enough open land. Reason number (2) is the kicker: the Founding Fathers revolted against the King in part because the King wouldn’t allow open borders.
The Constitution says nothing about allowing the federal government to restrict immigration. This is as close as you get.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 The Congress shall have Power… To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;The Constitution gives the federal government power to establish whatever naturalization laws it wants, but it says nothing about immigration law. 18th century Americans considered slaves and indentured servants to be “articles of commerce,” even though the indentured servants migration was voluntary. During the Founding era, the Foreign Commerce Clause was considered to give Congress power to regulate the international shipment of articles of commerce (including slaves and indentured servants), but not to forbid mere migration, as such.
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States…
Similarly, the interstate Commerce Clause was not understood to give Congress the power to forbid the migration of Americans from one state to another. The Constitution literally uses the same phrase to cover both, giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” At the time of the founding, the individual states were supposed to have power to regulate themselves that was almost the equal of individual foreign nations. States were very much like "little nations."
Article I, Section 9: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.The word "migration" is mentioned in Section 9, but it isn't what you think. Again, the Founders explain. As John Jay – the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and coauthor of the Federalist Papers – pointed out in an 1819 letter discussing the Clause:
“It will, I presume, be admitted that slaves were the persons intended. The word slaves was avoided, probably on account of the existing toleration of slavery and of its discordance with the principles of the Revolution, and from a consciousness of its being repugnant to the following positions in the Declaration of Independence, viz.: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”James Madison, author of the Constitution, said the phrasing of the clause was due to “scruples against admitting the term ‘slaves’ into the Instrument.” In Federalist 42, Madison decried
“[a]ttempts [that] have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it…as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America.”Congress could and did outlaw the importation of slaves by 1808, and did enforce that ban on the importation of these “goods”. Thus, it was physically possible to place a ban on immigration, if that were within Congressional authority. However, for the first century of the country’s existence, Congress passed absolutely no law restricting immigration.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Because of the 10th Amendment, any power not listed in the Constitution does not belong to the federal government. The power to restrict immigration is not listed in the Constitution. Therefore, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to restrict immigration.
Some say the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 restricted immigration, since it gave the federal government the power to deport foreigners and added restrictions to the naturalization of immigrants. Also, it allowed fines and imprisonment against those who "write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government.
Now, under the terms of this law over twenty Republican newspaper editors were arrested, some were imprisoned. No one was deported. All but the Alien Enemies Act was repealed within four years. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is still in force in modified form and authorizes the President to detain, relocate, or deport enemy aliens in time of war.
The problem, of course, is that none of those acts ever actually put any restriction on immigration. They allowed for deportation, but said not a word about immigration. Worse, both Thomas Jefferson (the vice-president at the time) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) publicly condemned the Acts as "unconstitutional."
James Madison argued that the Alien Friends Act (which gave the president the power to deport aliens that he “shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,” as well as any suspected of “treasonable or secret machinations against the government.”)[1] “exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government.”[2] Thomas Jefferson adopted much the same position in his October 1798 draft of the Kentucky Resolution, which stated that “ALIEN-friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the state wherein they are; that no power over them has been delegated to the US. nor prohibited to the individual states distinct from their power over citizens.”These men helped both Kentucky and Virginia pass resolutions which essentially nullified the federal laws. In summary, the Alien and Sedition Acts:
- say nothing about immigration,
- were never used to actually deport anyone,
- expired at the end of two years,
- caused two Founding Fathers to declare them unconstitutional,
- caused two states to pass resolutions which nullified the Acts, making Kentucky and Virginia "sanctuary states" from unconstitutional federal law.
“I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration….”A week after Lincoln’s message a bill to encourage and protect foreign immigrants was presented in the Senate and passed, establishing the Federal Bureau to Encourage Immigration. Lincoln’s Republican Party in its 1864 convention wrote into their platform a principle stating: “That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”
So, if the Founders intended to establish an open borders country, what changed? The answer is simple: Darwin. In 1859, only a year before the Civil War, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published 24 November 1859). Twelve years later, at the same time a Republican Congress was passing the first Civil Rights legislation and giving citizenship rights to black Americans, Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).
By 1883, Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, creates the term “eugenics”, which means “good genes”, and “dysgenic” or “bad genes.” Galton will go on to fund a Chair of Eugenics at University of London, 1904. America and England will become leaders in the implementation of eugenics throughout the world, teaching Europe, especially Germany, the glories of eugenic thinking. By the 1870s, educated Europeans and Americans spoke of the “German race” the “French race”, the “Italian race”, the “English race”. The American elite wanted a pure “American race”.
Riding the wave of scientific "eugenic" thought, America passed the 1875 Page Act, the first federal law restricting immigration. Like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, it and most subsequent federal immigration law was meant to prevent the diseased and the subhuman from entering the US. The first targets were the yellow Chinese, followed soon by most Asians and, then those of Mediterranean stock, whose skin was too dusky and whose religion was too Catholic to be trusted.
The educated elites were at war with the general culture. Most of America viewed itself as giving warm welcome to all immigrants. Thus, we see to this day, embossed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus (1903):
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Money from the millionaire elite rolled in. Margaret Sanger, wife of one of those millionaires, began referring to blacks, Catholics and Jews as "human weeds" who needed to be contracepted and sterilized in order to maintain America's racial purity. Adolf Hitler studied America law and policy closely and liked what he saw. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf (1925), he explicitly praised American eugenics law, thereby demonstrating how deeply American elites had formed his own thinking.
"There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."
Thirty American states followed Indiana's example and began their own involuntary sterilization programs, targeting specific subpopulations: criminals, imbeciles, Mexicans, Indians. When these laws were challenged, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld the state laws:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. (Buck vs. Bell, 1927)
To this day, the SCOTUS ruling in Buck vs. Bell has never been overturned. Hitler will explicitly model his own laws and policies on America's example, using American lawyers and advisors to help him craft Nazi Germany's national policy.
PS
As the Mises Institute points out, Constitutional scholars like Ilya Sommins and Judge Andrew Napolitano agree that the Constitution doesn't actually authorize the federal government to create immigration restrictions.
""[T]he Constitution itself — from which all federal powers derive — does not delegate to the federal government power over immigration, only over naturalization.""
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
The Fall of the Humanities
The self-destruction of the humanities on college campuses proves the study of the humanites was never actually a bulwark against despotism.
After all, the people who could lay a claim to being most steeped in the humanities were both:
(a) unable to teach and appoint their own worthy successors
(b) unable to keep themselves from falling into the abyss.
(a) unable to teach and appoint their own worthy successors
(b) unable to keep themselves from falling into the abyss.
So, the very fact that the humanities have fallen so far provides a strong argument that study of the humanities never really brought the kind of abiding wisdom that such study claimed to provide.
That failure is worth contemplating.
While the colleges were filled with Christians who supported the humanities, the disciplines served their purpose. When Christianity was stripped from higher education, the humanities failed.
Perhaps that is a coincidence, but I bet it ain't.
Perhaps that is a coincidence, but I bet it ain't.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Nightmare Number 3
We had expected everything but revolt
And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking--
But there’s no dice in that now.
I’ve heard fellow say
They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.
Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,
Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the wop
Or the roto press that printed 'Fiddle-dee-dee!'
In a three-color process all over Senator Sloop,
Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that
Was, how could it walk upstairs? But it was upstairs,
Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.
They had to knock out the wall to take it away
And the wrecking-crew said it grinned.
It was only the best
Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,
The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone,
But the cars were in it, of course . . .
and they hunted us
Like rabbits through the cramped streets on that Bloody Monday,
The Madison Avenue busses leading the charge.
The busses were pretty bad--but I’ll not forget
The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the show-room
And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps
Or the long howl of the horns when they saw men run,
When they saw them looking for holes in the solid ground . . .
I guess they were tired of being ridden in
And stopped and started by pygmies for silly ends,
Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars
Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair
And letting six million people live in a town.
I guess it was that, I guess they got tired of us
And the whole smell of human hands.
But it was a shock
To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office
(Noboby took the elevators twice)
And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,
The octopus-tendrils waving over his head,
And a sort of quiet humming filling the air. . . .
Do they eat? . . . There was red . . . But I did not stop to look.
I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time
And it’s lonely, here on the roof.
For a while, I thought
That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.
But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor
And dragged him in, with a squeal.
You see, they coöperate. Well, we taught them that
And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.
We taught them to think for themselves.
It was bound to come. You can see it was bound to come.
And it won’t be so bad, in the country. I hate to think
Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields,
And the transport planes like hawks on a chickenyard,
But the horses might help. We might make a deal with the horses.
At least, you’ve more chance, out there.
And they need us, too.
They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.
They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and tuning up.
Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t.
(I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty-parlor
And seen what was happening there.
But those are female machines and a bit high-strung.)
Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.
It won’t make sense to wipe out the whole human race.
Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now
(Of course you’d have to do it the tactful way)
And said, 'Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?'
He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;
At least I don’t think he would.
Oh, it’s going to be jake.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t--
And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance--
I’m a good American and I always liked them--
Except for one small detail that bothers me
And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,
The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,
And it looks like just high spirits.
But, if it’s got so they like the flavor . . . well . . .
And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking--
But there’s no dice in that now.
I’ve heard fellow say
They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.
Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,
Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the wop
Or the roto press that printed 'Fiddle-dee-dee!'
In a three-color process all over Senator Sloop,
Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that
Was, how could it walk upstairs? But it was upstairs,
Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.
They had to knock out the wall to take it away
And the wrecking-crew said it grinned.
It was only the best
Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,
The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone,
But the cars were in it, of course . . .
and they hunted us
Like rabbits through the cramped streets on that Bloody Monday,
The Madison Avenue busses leading the charge.
The busses were pretty bad--but I’ll not forget
The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the show-room
And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps
Or the long howl of the horns when they saw men run,
When they saw them looking for holes in the solid ground . . .
I guess they were tired of being ridden in
And stopped and started by pygmies for silly ends,
Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars
Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair
And letting six million people live in a town.
I guess it was that, I guess they got tired of us
And the whole smell of human hands.
But it was a shock
To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office
(Noboby took the elevators twice)
And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,
The octopus-tendrils waving over his head,
And a sort of quiet humming filling the air. . . .
Do they eat? . . . There was red . . . But I did not stop to look.
I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time
And it’s lonely, here on the roof.
For a while, I thought
That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.
But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor
And dragged him in, with a squeal.
You see, they coöperate. Well, we taught them that
And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.
We taught them to think for themselves.
It was bound to come. You can see it was bound to come.
And it won’t be so bad, in the country. I hate to think
Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields,
And the transport planes like hawks on a chickenyard,
But the horses might help. We might make a deal with the horses.
At least, you’ve more chance, out there.
And they need us, too.
They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.
They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and tuning up.
Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t.
(I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty-parlor
And seen what was happening there.
But those are female machines and a bit high-strung.)
Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.
It won’t make sense to wipe out the whole human race.
Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now
(Of course you’d have to do it the tactful way)
And said, 'Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?'
He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;
At least I don’t think he would.
Oh, it’s going to be jake.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t--
And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance--
I’m a good American and I always liked them--
Except for one small detail that bothers me
And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,
The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,
And it looks like just high spirits.
But, if it’s got so they like the flavor . . . well . . .
Sunday, December 02, 2018
A Word of Warning
Fr. RP: Let me say this, and please everyone pay attention to it for it is very real and a serious problem: Active sodomites in the clerical order often seek out a non sodomite orthodox priest for confession, with the sole intention of binding him to silence about them and their activities. They are not seeking to truly repent, they are effectively shutting him up permanently about their evil activities.
I have never seen this mentioned or reported anywhere, but it is very real. And it's one of the reasons why many 'good' priests and bishops are silent when it comes to specific clerics and their grievous sins. For they have been manipulated via the sacrament of penance to permanent silence on certain members of the clergy. And this is also how many of these deviants make it through seminary. My advice to all good priests is that if a cleric wants to come to confession to you and you have any doubts or suspicions about them that are serious, then you must refuse to hear their confession. Don't get manipulated by these vile men! If you don't know them then refer them to someone else! And I promise you, every priest who has been around for a couple of years or more, and is known to be solidly orthodox, knows by experience what I am saying is true.
I have never seen this mentioned or reported anywhere, but it is very real. And it's one of the reasons why many 'good' priests and bishops are silent when it comes to specific clerics and their grievous sins. For they have been manipulated via the sacrament of penance to permanent silence on certain members of the clergy. And this is also how many of these deviants make it through seminary. My advice to all good priests is that if a cleric wants to come to confession to you and you have any doubts or suspicions about them that are serious, then you must refuse to hear their confession. Don't get manipulated by these vile men! If you don't know them then refer them to someone else! And I promise you, every priest who has been around for a couple of years or more, and is known to be solidly orthodox, knows by experience what I am saying is true.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Trans-Eunuchs
We now have allowed "cis-gender" and "transsexual" to enter our vocabulary. We use these words as if they actually mean something. So, we need an accurate word to describe contraception users.
I propose "trans-eunuchs", or perhaps "trans-castrati".
Either word accurately describes the intention and purpose of the contraception user.
Choose your favorite meme
I propose "trans-eunuchs", or perhaps "trans-castrati".
Either word accurately describes the intention and purpose of the contraception user.
Choose your favorite meme
Thursday, November 29, 2018
America: Brave New World
"In the liberal total state, sex plays the same role as vodka did in the old Soviet Union."
That is a BRILLIANT one-sentence summary of Brave New World, and an automatic comparison to 1984's use of Victory Gin.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
FSSP: Compare and Contrast
According to Vogue, Womenpriests was founded 29 June 2002:
According to the FSSP, which was founded July 18 1988:
"Today, there are approximately 145 women Catholic priests in the U.S. and about 204 worldwide, according to the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization"
According to the Parish Priests initiative, which was founded by nine parish priests in 2006 to promote heresy concerning homosexuality:
"the initiative says it now has around 350 members from the ranks of the official Church and more than 3,000 lay supporters"
Priests: 330
Non-deacon seminarians (including postulations): 162
For people who say Traditional liturgy is our salvation
Today, Orthodox Christians represent only 4 percent of the world’s population. Additionally, Orthodox followers account for 12 percent of Christians worldwide, down 8 percentage points from the levels in 1910, according to the Pew report.
Discussion:
If the traditional liturgy were what converted people, the Eastern Orthodox would be growing like mushrooms after a rain. Instead, they are wilting like mushrooms in the desert. The FSSP has been around twice as long as WomenPriests or the "Parish Priests Initiative", but the numbers of ordained (or, in the case of women priests, invalidly "ordained") between the three groups are comparable.
Conclusion:
There is no serious demand for the traditional liturgy. People aren't flocking to it. The best-known and most successful group of traditional-liturgy-minded Catholics, the FSSP, are about as numerous as any other fringe group in the Catholic Church.
Sunday, September 09, 2018
Philosophical Parasites and the Cuckoo's Egg
There are two kinds of philosophies in the world:
1) those that encourage adults to have children and
2) those that discourage adults from having children.
Any cultural group that follows the second philosophy will extinguish itself. If we consider these philosophies in total, it doesn't matter deeply what the pro-life philosophy is. It could be religious, e.g., Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Confucianist, Taoist. It could be economic, e.g., capitalist, socialist, communist, hunter-gatherer, whatever. It could be some philosophy based on experimental or formal science. It could even be a philosophy based on astrological symbols and homeopathy. Doesn't matter. All we care about is, does this philosophy encourage fertile adults to have and raise children?
Similarly, it doesn't matter deeply what the anti-life philosophy is. Again, it could be religious, economic, scientific, pagan. Doesn't matter. The question is, does this philosophy encourage fertile adults to avoid having children?
Natural growth cultures, if they are functioning correctly, naturally have the children necessary to carry on the next generation. Anti-life cultures naturally don't have any children. The only way they maintain themselves is by successfully converting (stealing) adults from the Natural Growth cultures.
Notice, it doesn't matter what the children think. Children, by definition, don't generate. Only adults generate. So, if children are raised in an anti-life philosophy, it doesn't matter. Only the adults matter. The adults - at some point during their fertile lives - will necessarily adopt one philosophy or the other. Converting children is a complete waste of time. Conversion of adults is the only thing that can effect outcomes. So, we might summarize these philosophical families this way:
Now, Catholicism, and Christianity in general, has traditionally considered itself pro-life. We think of ourselves as an evangelical culture that grows by converting adults to Christian belief. Let's see how we have been doing for the last couple of centuries. TFR stands for Total Fertility Rate. It refers to the total number of children a fertile woman in the culture will have over the course of her lifetime.
The entire world has consistently lowered its TFR. Not one culture, anywhere in the world, has maintained or raised its TFR over the course of the last 200 years. Not one. This victory of anti-life philosophies is called the "demographic transition." Over the last two centuries, pro-life philosophies have failed to win converts. Anti-life philosophies have consistently won the converts necessary to flourish. People who participate in the pro-life culture are having the children and raising them to adulthood. As adults, those former children are being converted to prefer not having children.
Obviously, this cannot continue. Insofar as every fertile adult adopts in anti-life philosophy, that adult's DNA disappears from the gene pool, that adult's philosophy dies with him or her. The numbers indicate that the anti-life adults are, during their lifetimes, converting other fertile adults to their own sterile philosophy at a much, much higher rate than any of the pro-life philosophies convert adults to a fertile philosophy. This is true even when the people pushing the anti-life philosophy show a marked contradiction between what they say they believe and what they actually do to live out their purported "beliefs".
If evolutionists honestly believed that only the fittest survive, then they clearly don't consider themselves or their philosophy fit. People who teach evolution don't have children, at least not enough to replace themselves. Thus, they must believe themselves to be unfit to procreate, they must consider themselves an evolutionary dead-end. The person who accepts evolutionary theory apparently becomes evolutionarily unfit.
1) those that encourage adults to have children and
2) those that discourage adults from having children.
Any cultural group that follows the second philosophy will extinguish itself. If we consider these philosophies in total, it doesn't matter deeply what the pro-life philosophy is. It could be religious, e.g., Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Confucianist, Taoist. It could be economic, e.g., capitalist, socialist, communist, hunter-gatherer, whatever. It could be some philosophy based on experimental or formal science. It could even be a philosophy based on astrological symbols and homeopathy. Doesn't matter. All we care about is, does this philosophy encourage fertile adults to have and raise children?
Similarly, it doesn't matter deeply what the anti-life philosophy is. Again, it could be religious, economic, scientific, pagan. Doesn't matter. The question is, does this philosophy encourage fertile adults to avoid having children?
Natural growth cultures, if they are functioning correctly, naturally have the children necessary to carry on the next generation. Anti-life cultures naturally don't have any children. The only way they maintain themselves is by successfully converting (stealing) adults from the Natural Growth cultures.
Notice, it doesn't matter what the children think. Children, by definition, don't generate. Only adults generate. So, if children are raised in an anti-life philosophy, it doesn't matter. Only the adults matter. The adults - at some point during their fertile lives - will necessarily adopt one philosophy or the other. Converting children is a complete waste of time. Conversion of adults is the only thing that can effect outcomes. So, we might summarize these philosophical families this way:
Philosophy
|
Natural Growth
Culture flourishes unless adults abandon
it
|
Cuckoo’s Egg
Culture must convert adults or die
|
|
Pro-life, encourages adults to have children
|
X
|
||
Anti-child, discourages adults from having children
|
X
|
||
Now, Catholicism, and Christianity in general, has traditionally considered itself pro-life. We think of ourselves as an evangelical culture that grows by converting adults to Christian belief. Let's see how we have been doing for the last couple of centuries. TFR stands for Total Fertility Rate. It refers to the total number of children a fertile woman in the culture will have over the course of her lifetime.
So, we see that in the United States, Christianity has consistently failed to impart its ideas to the next generation of fertile adults. You can try to argue that we succeeded for 20 years out of the total 200 years in the chart, but that really doesn't work well. It means we failed for 180 years out of the total 200 on the chart. Worse, it is obvious the anti-child philosophers have been consistently successful in convincing fertile adults to follow an anti-child philosophy.
But that's just the United States.
How has the rest of the world done? Well, the numbers are clear.
How has the rest of the world done? Well, the numbers are clear.
The entire world has consistently lowered its TFR. Not one culture, anywhere in the world, has maintained or raised its TFR over the course of the last 200 years. Not one. This victory of anti-life philosophies is called the "demographic transition." Over the last two centuries, pro-life philosophies have failed to win converts. Anti-life philosophies have consistently won the converts necessary to flourish. People who participate in the pro-life culture are having the children and raising them to adulthood. As adults, those former children are being converted to prefer not having children.
Obviously, this cannot continue. Insofar as every fertile adult adopts in anti-life philosophy, that adult's DNA disappears from the gene pool, that adult's philosophy dies with him or her. The numbers indicate that the anti-life adults are, during their lifetimes, converting other fertile adults to their own sterile philosophy at a much, much higher rate than any of the pro-life philosophies convert adults to a fertile philosophy. This is true even when the people pushing the anti-life philosophy show a marked contradiction between what they say they believe and what they actually do to live out their purported "beliefs".
If evolutionists honestly believed that only the fittest survive, then they clearly don't consider themselves or their philosophy fit. People who teach evolution don't have children, at least not enough to replace themselves. Thus, they must believe themselves to be unfit to procreate, they must consider themselves an evolutionary dead-end. The person who accepts evolutionary theory apparently becomes evolutionarily unfit.
So, how does this apply to Catholics?
Well, obviously, we have not previously, nor are we now, successfully evangelizing any modern culture. This is not a post-Vatican II problem. This is not even a post-Vatican I problem. This problem has existed since at least the dawn of industrialization. We have had this problem ever since industrialization started making us physically rich.
Christianity, and the world's other pro-life philosophies, do not know how to evangelize the modern, wealthy industrialized world. We were quite, quite good at evangelizing the world when it was mostly agricultural. We have had no success since it has become industrial and post-industrial. Quite the reverse, in fact. The modern industrial world has a very good idea of how to spread its anti-child gospel to successfully convince fertile adults, whether Christian or not, that humankind should become extinct.
We obviously cannot yet answer their outlook or arguments because we obviously have not yet successfully answered those outlooks or arguments.
Everything we have tried in the last 200 years has failed.
The things they have tried in the last 200 years have succeeded.
We have God on our side, but we are losing.
That's worth pondering.
Well, obviously, we have not previously, nor are we now, successfully evangelizing any modern culture. This is not a post-Vatican II problem. This is not even a post-Vatican I problem. This problem has existed since at least the dawn of industrialization. We have had this problem ever since industrialization started making us physically rich.
Christianity, and the world's other pro-life philosophies, do not know how to evangelize the modern, wealthy industrialized world. We were quite, quite good at evangelizing the world when it was mostly agricultural. We have had no success since it has become industrial and post-industrial. Quite the reverse, in fact. The modern industrial world has a very good idea of how to spread its anti-child gospel to successfully convince fertile adults, whether Christian or not, that humankind should become extinct.
We obviously cannot yet answer their outlook or arguments because we obviously have not yet successfully answered those outlooks or arguments.
Everything we have tried in the last 200 years has failed.
The things they have tried in the last 200 years have succeeded.
We have God on our side, but we are losing.
That's worth pondering.
Saturday, September 08, 2018
Pope St. Pius X on the Papacy
Distracted with so many occupations, it is easy to forget the things that lead to perfection in priestly life; it is easy [for the priest] to delude himself and to believe that, by busying himself with the salvation of the souls of others, he consequently works for his own sanctification. Alas, let not this delusion lead you to error, because nemo dat quod nemo habet [no one gives what he does not have]; and, in order to sanctify others, it is necessary not to neglect any of the ways proposed for the sanctification of our own selves.
...
The Pope is the guardian of dogma and of morals; he is the custodian of the principles that make families sound, nations great, souls holy; he is the counsellor of princes and of peoples; he is the head under whom no one feels tyrannized because he represents God Himself; he is the supreme father who unites in himself all that may exist that is loving, tender, divine.
It seems incredible, and is even painful, that there be priests to whom this recommendation must be made, but we are regrettably in our age in this hard, unhappy, situation of having to tell priests: love the Pope!
And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. [Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth - 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, "si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit," [if any one love me, he will keep my word - Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.
Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey - that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.
This is the cry of a heart filled with pain, that with deep sadness I express, not for your sake, dear brothers, but to deplore, with you, the conduct of so many priests, who not only allow themselves to debate and criticize the wishes of the Pope, but are not embarrassed to reach shameless and blatant disobedience, with so much scandal for the good and with so great damage to souls.
Saint Pius X
Allocution Vi ringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union
November 18, 1912
“Tradition? I am tradition!”
- Bl. Pope Pius IX
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