The Failure of Renewables

 "An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy."  Texas Tribune, 2/16/2021

So, 1/3rd of the energy loss was from renewables, 2/3rds from standard sources.

Standard sources failed due to lack of weatherizing pumps, i.e., a maintenance issue.  That failure is fixable.

Renewables failed because of the nature of renewables - the wind didn't blow.
That failure is not fixable. 

Green energy cannot do what liberals say it can do.
Either:

1. we get more nuclear and get better maintenance on power transmission equipment or 
2. we get used to freezing to death. 

There is no third option. 

On the Crazy Gamestop Stock Price

 For those of you who haven't heard, Gamestop is a dying mall retail chain store that re-sells used CDs, games and game equipment. If you don't mind buying second-hand, you can go there to get your electronics fix. Gamestop has no web presence to speak of, and no real future. It is the 2020's version of Blockbuster Video.

A retail store like that should be seeing constantly falling stock prices. Instead, the stock is booming. Why? Well, apparently the nation's millennials have declared war on the corporate world. So far, it looks like the millennials are winning:

did some redditt research:

mellenials are pissed.  they cant buy a house, because the boomers drove the prices up and wages didnt follow.  they wont ever retire,  ss and medicare are bankrupt.  saving 10-20K is nothing--its a paltry sum in these days--not enuf for down payment on a condo.  so.....they will buy they whole float (69 mil) of any stock with more shorts than longs (or a very high short %) and force the shorts to buy from them at their price (with their paltry $1-20K collective savings--chump change in this world until collectively used---genius, actually.).  In march...when the market crashed....the redditt crowd mocked the boomers for having the fed save their asses. "boomers cant handle a bear market' --stocks never go down?  "we'll teach you stocks never go down". the stock the millenials target will never go down (gamestop) until they get hedge funds to pay their price  to unwind their shorts. its a war---millenials versus the establishment/boomers.  $1000/share price target for starters.  The millenials feel (correctly) they have nothing to lose, because the boomers have fooked valuations and rigged this market for decades at the millenials expense. Next stock on the queue for short crushing--->BB???

correct me where im wrong---this is the way i understand it.   you need 5-10x cash reserves to short this potato and wait it out until capitulation.

If you like rooting for the underdog, this makes for a very entertaining show. Joe Biden, in office all of seven days, has just thrown down on the side of the big corporations, and expressly screwed the college graduate population. This is unlikely to go well for China Joe and his corporate puppet masters. 

A friend of mine asked me what the deal was with GME, ELI5 style. I told him:

A big investor bet that a stock would go down, and they orchestrated giant sales in order to make it so.

It was so profitable that they sold more stock than was even available, which is super-greedy, but not unusual. But we found out.

When you sell a stock expecting it to go down, you are required to buy it back at some point. But because we found out, we bought all the stock there was to buy.

And now, they’re super pissed because we’re playing keep-away with the stock they HAVE to buy- and we’re using Reddit to warn each other about the shady bulk sales and scare tactics they’d normally use to get us to sell.

So as long as we stick together, they’re going to keep losing money, and the price they have to pay keeps going up.

There is no limit to how much money they can lose if we all agree not to sell. So now they’re going on TV and using words like “collusion”, and “fraud” to justify some legal intervention because we’re doing to them what they normally do to us.

TL;DR: We’re playing keep-away against the billionaires, and Reddit is allowing us to win.

Read the comments on the Zerohedge story. Gamestop is just the beginning. Corporate traders, if you have short positions in any company, you are about to get your face torn off. 

UPDATE:
The corporate suits and brokerages have done a very, very stupid thing. The halted trading on GME and have begun to sell their users' positions without getting the users' permissions first. Now, sure, this is criminal theft, but that isn't the stupidest part of this scenario. 

There are something like 4 million people in on this GME trade right now. They just seriously pissed off EVERYONE in that group of 4 million. What are the chances that at least one of those 4 million people is described by this Leverage quote from the San Lorenzo Job:

Nathan Ford: You know what I have? I have twenty-four year old genius with a smart phone and a problem with authority. You never really stood a chance.

This is going to get very ugly for the corporate suits. If they are lucky, they get jail time. If not, they get the mob. 

How Infallibility Works

Some people think papal infallibility is crazy talk, but it isn't magic nor is it nuts. It is actually very simple. And it isn't the encyclical or the bull that is, or is not, considered infallible. It is the teaching within the document, whatever that document might be.

Look, the Pope is the Pope whether he arrives at a location in the Popemobile or in a VW bug. Doesn't matter. The vehicle isn't the important thing, it's the person in the vehicle.

Same with teachings. While certain types of documents are associated with a certain level of authority (e.g., apostolic constitutions are considered the document with the highest level of authority within the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium), it is the content of the document that is considered infallible, not necessarily the document itself.

So, changes to the liturgy (e.g., raising a person to the altar of sainthood) are infallible teachings. But an infallibly true statement can be made in ANY kind of document. Heck, I can make an infallibly true statement in this post... watch me, "God is one God in three distinct Persons." There.

By echoing the constant teaching of the Church, I just made an infallibly true statement. That is all the Pope does when he speaks infallibly. He simply teaches what the Church has always taught.  That is literally all there is to papal infallibility. Nothing more. 

That's all the Pope does when he promulgates in infallible teaching - he just states the constant teaching of the Church. Now, in some cases, this teaching is not - for whatever reason - very well known. Worse, not only is it the case that not everyone is fully aware that something is a constant teaching of the Church, but in a few cases, some Catholics are actually actively opposed to a constant teaching of the Church. In those cases, the Pope has to promulgate the teaching with a very high level of authority. That's an exercise of the Extraordinary Infallible Magisterium.

But sometimes, there isn't active opposition, there is just confusion or lack of clarity, or certainty, etc. The lack of certainty by a large swath of Catholics doesn't merit a high level of forcefulness, so the Pope just puts the constant teaching out in a vehicle that is associated with a lower level of assertiveness. This is the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium.

The lower level of assertiveness does not mean the teaching is "less" true, it just means the Pope feels we only need a gentle reminder. For these teaching, we don't need a slap across the face to get our attention. Various documents within the Ordinary Magisterium may be vehicles for various teachings of the Church - while some teachings certainly derive from others, all of these constant teachings are equally true, all are infallibly correct, all are co-equal in these respects. The document the teaching is promulgated in shows us how the Pope assesses our grasp of the Faith. The more assertive the document, the more obvious it is that the Pope wants us to pay close attention to this teaching. The more assertive the document, the more important it is to our life of faith. Thus, since liturgy and sacraments are central to the life of faith, those are always put out with a very high level of Ordinary Magisterial authority - apostolic constitutions. Other teachings are equally true, but perhaps not as central to every-day life, so a lesser vehicle is used. 

That is the role of the various kinds of documents, why we have several kinds. Hopefully, this clarifies the understanding of infallible teachings and the various documents that transport them safely to our doorsteps.

Will the Pro-Life March Get Burned?

If Antifa and BLM infiltrated Trump's march, you can bet they'll try their hand at the DC pro-life march. That march has been a stick in the liberal craw for fifty years.

It will be interesting to see if they can turn the pro-lifers into violent terrorists via a false flag operation. I give 'em better than even money that they manage it.

The job is easy. The Antifa/BLM groups dress as pro-lifers, act as pro-lifers during the march, then one group breaks down a barricade or opens a closed/locked set of doors while others use their bodies and signs to shield the crowd from seeing what is going on.

Once the doors are open or barricades are down, the A/BLM group then acts as traffic cops, directing unsuspecting crowd members into the forbidden area.

If they do the job right, the crowd never fully realizes that they've just been turned into a set of "rioting terrorists". That's how the complicit MSM will paint them as soon as they cross into the forbidden area, no matter how pacific or well-mannered they may be.

If the A/BLM group is REALLY good, once the crowd starts surging into the forbidden area, the A/BLM agitators will then start enough of a fight with police to incentivize the cops to tear gas the crowd. As the crowd is trying to figure out what the hell is happening, the tear gas canisters escalate and the A/BLM members fade away.

Since Trump/Pence have so closely identified with the pro-life movement, they have really set up this year's marchers for the slam-dunk into being labelled "violent terrorists."

Even if the previous fifty years have been peaceful, the MSM will claim that the crowd is primarily crazy Trumpkins, and that explains the 2021 violence.

All those "pro-life" things Trump did?
The promise to jail women who have abortions?
The promise to murder born children?
The continuation of Obama's policy of separating parents from children?
The gift of a half-billion taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood? 
The way he linked pro-lifers to the KKK?
The way he linked pro-lifers to the commission of international war crimes?

Remember all those pro-life things he did? 

We'll get burned.

Donald Trump is the worst "pro-life" president we've ever had, but he isn't done screwing us over yet.

21st Century "Running Man"

 Does anyone remember The Running Man? From Wikipedia: 

The Running Man is a 1987 American dystopian action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto, and Jesse Ventura. It is very loosely based on the 1982 novel of the same title written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The film's story, set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, is about a television show called The Running Man, where convicted criminal "runners" must escape death at the hands of professional killers. The Running Man was a moderate box office success in the United States, grossing $38 million on its $27 million budget, but opened to mixed reviews from critics.

Has anyone considered that this film is a nearly perfect, wonderfully prescient, description of this year's events? 

Think about it. Over the last year, The Running Man has essentially been the plot-line of the year. It has been our newest Reality TV show, "Politics in the USA." I'm interested in seeing the next episode.

So far, all the episodes this past year have just been endlessly entertaining. There's nothing like watching multiple, live-action, real-life episodes in this snuff film series, followed by posturing on both sides, to make me realize what a skilled set of rulers we have in our oligarchs. We may just be peasants, but it's wonderful the way both sides are willing to set us up for violence and death, so long as they maintain hold on their wealth and power.

They have provided us with one hell of a Hollywood-curated show. I'm just amazed so many people are willing to volunteer to be contestants. 

Stupidity or Efficiency?

Everyone is claiming the Republicans are stupid for not contesting this fraud, and Trump  - the 3-D chess player - somehow marvelously missed the possibility of fraud that was telegraphed for almost a year prior to the election.

But look at it from the oligarch's point of view, of which Trump is one of the founding members.

What makes you think it was stupidity?

Certainly the Democrats have lost confidence in the people, and have therefore dissolved the people and elected a new set of "people", i.e. Dominion machines. 

Certainly, our jobs as voters are now gone, lost to automation.

But, from the oligarchs point of view, what is stupid about moving voting over to machines and away from the fickle masses? 

Certainly both sides of the oligarchy understand the marvelous efficiency this gives them in getting the election results they want. They don't have to spend nearly as much money, they can spend a lot more time in their basements, and they still win, as long as they have the best hackers. 

This is a much smaller, more efficient business model for both sides. This is the glory of capitalism at its highest. What's not to like? What is stupid about being more efficient in running your business?

Our job, as voters, is simply to make sure we are registered. Whether or not we vote, who we vote for, none of that matters anymore. Both sides just need us registered to vote, and that's enough. They take care of the rest, their hackers make sure we have voted correctly. We don't have to bother our little heads about our individual votes - that will be determined by people who know better than us. We don't even have to be alive. All that matters is that we register, and they take care of the rest for us. 

This is easier for them, and easier for us. Who doesn't admire the efficiency of this new setup? Are you all opposed to free market capitalism? Heck, when it comes to elections, now ANYONE can play, as the Chinese have already demonstrated. It's much more egalitarian, much more inclusive, much more streamlined, than the old system. 

Who would stand against progress? 

Seen on the Internet

"So now that Trump is not president is he going to prosecute the Clinton's.  Now he is going to start doing things?

Trump played his supporters from day 1.  He hired swamp and tribe creatures, he increased the wars, the illegals have increased,

He derailed the movement to take back America, that was the job he was tasked with.

He never used the FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security to investigate and prosecute Antifa/BLM or even the election fraud.  He just made a show and made noise.

He made big talk to encourage the rally in DC, hinted at something BIG he would do, implied a bold move would occur -- all to lure them in for their destruction.

He stirred them up to action, and then made them into the bad guys to be shunned.  His Vice Pres. called them criminals to be prosecuted, the repubs rejected them, they were shot dead, Trump told them to obey orders, Trump called in the military to prepare to shoot more of them if they approached the White House and Trump called in the FBI to shoot them if they did not leave congress building (funny how Trump can use the FBI quickly when he wants to)

And then Trump CONCEDES at the perfect time for the full effect. 

Thus destroying their momentum and belief in their movement.  They now go home with their tails between their legs, their strong talk silenced with the deaths of their members, spat upon by those they thought were their heros, their idolized hero surrenders, their military called in to shoot them if they continue --- 

Trump played them perfectly, from the beginning to the very end.  Now they are lost."

Addendum:

"ask yourself why would Trump supporters interrupt the planned objections to the electoral count? They wouldn't. This was a false flag designed to get Republicans to drop the objections and make Trump supporters look bad and it worked. "

Why January 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

We celebrate January 1, the start of a new year, as the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. But why is January 1 the start of a New Year, and why would we choose that day to celebrate Mary's maternity? After all, didn't her maternity begin with the conception of Christ, so shouldn't her maternity be celebrated on March 25th, the Solemnity of the Annunciation? Or, if not then, than why not celebrate Mary's maternity at Christmas, December 25th, with the birth of Christ? Of all the days in the year, why choose January 1? And why do Christians consider January 1 the start of a New Year?

Therein lies a tale...

The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, circa 2000 B.C. That celebration – and many other ancient celebrations of the new year following it – were celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, around March 20. Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the autumnal equinox around September 20. And the ancient Greeks celebrated on the winter solstice, around December 20....

...According to tradition, during [the reign of the Roman king Numa Pompilius]  (c. 715–673 BC), Numa revised the Roman republican calendar so that January replaced March as the first month. It was a fitting choice, since January was named after Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings; March celebrated Mars, the god of war. (Some sources claim that Numa also created the month of January.) However, there is evidence that January 1 was not made the official start of the Roman year until 153 BC....

...However, following the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD, many Christian countries altered the calendar so that it was more reflective of their religion, and March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation) and December 25 (Christmas) became common New Year’s Days. ...  Pope Gregory XIII introduced a revised calendar in 1582. In addition to solving the issue with leap years, the Gregorian calendar restored January 1 as the start of the New Year. 

Why did the Pope choose January 1 as the start of the new year instead of retaining March 25th or December 25th as its start? Well, follow the chain of reasoning.

The ancients believed that great men left the world on the anniversary of the day they entered the world, so as to complete the circle of divine providence. So, if a great man died on March 25th, it must be due to the fact that he was conceived on some earlier March 25th. Since Christians agreed that the day of the Crucifixion was March 25th in the Julian calendar, then Jesus must have been conceived on March 25th. And, of course, if Jesus was conceived on March 25th, then He must have been born exactly nine months later, on December 25th.

But, because Jesus was born a Jew, this likewise means He was circumcised and given the name Jesus exactly eight days later, on January 1, in fulfilment of Old Testament Law.* So, it was common-place among Christians to recognize that Christ's first shedding of blood happened on January 1. But, in the most ancient times, the City of Rome also celebrated January 1 as the Feast of Mary, Mother of God [Lumen Gentium, 66]. This practice spread from Rome to other Christian locales, so that by the 7th century, the January 1st date was widely observed as a celebration of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Why that date?

In Hebrew tradition, the giving of a name is very strongly connected to the person's soul, "It is said that parents receive a glimmer of divine inspiration when they give their child a Jewish name." As Chabad.org notes, "Since Jewish identity is established maternally, it’s the mother that connects the soul to G‑d." And notice the prayer associated with the naming of the male child at his circumcision:

Opposite the standing sandek, stands the one who will be honored with naming the child (some specifically honor the mohel, the ritual circumciser, with this blessing). A goblet of wine is poured, and the person who will name the baby recites the blessing on the wine, followed by the blessing of the naming of the child:

Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, who sanctified the beloved one from the womb, set His statute in his flesh, and sealed his descendants with the sign of the holy Covenant. Therefore, as a reward of this [circumcision], the living G‑d, our Portion, our Rock, has ordained that the beloved of our flesh be saved from the abyss, for the sake of the Covenant which He has set in our flesh. Blessed are You L‑rd, who makes the Covenant.

He then names the child...

The prayers at circumcision echo the idea of the Incarnation, where God, sanctified in the womb, takes on flesh and seals His law, His covenant in His human body. Similarly, the ancient Christians recognized that the smallest drop of Christ's blood is sufficient to save the whole world. Since the first drop of His blood is shed not at the Passion or Crucifixion, but at the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus, the circumcision is the beginning of mankind's redemption.**

Thus, we can say that Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Person of Jesus, became fully a mother, that is, she became Mother of the Body of Christ, the Church, not at the conception or even the birth of Christ, but at the Circumcision, when the first drop of His blood was deliberately shed. It is the blood of Christ which empowers all the sacraments, so it is this first drop of blood which makes Mary the Mother of the Church. For this reason, the City of Rome and the wider ancient Christian world celebrated January 1 as the feast of Mary's maternity.

Now, this connection between Mary's maternity and the circumcision was so strong, and the first shedding of Christ's blood so important, that by the 13th century, the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ had begun to replace the feast honoring Mary's maternity. Having the Feast of the Circumcision on January 1 meant the celebration of Mary's maternity was migrated to the first Sunday of May and, by 1914, it was moved to October 11. Meanwhile, from 1568 to 1960, January 1 was celebrated in the Roman Breviary as the Feast of the Circumcision.

However, this movement of the celebration of Mary's motherhood to a day other than the Circumcision shattered the unity of the ancient understanding. In 1974, with the revision of the liturgical calendar after Vatican II, the Feast of the Circumcision was subsumed and rejoined, to again follow the ancient practice of dedicating January 1 to the Mother of God. But, this time, it would be celebrated as a universal feast, and the circumcision would clearly be the force that gifted Mary with her maternity. 

By making January 1 the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, the day truly becomes a joint feast, in which Jesus, through the deliberate shedding of His blood, bestows on Mary her full, complete, divine motherhood. To this day, the Gospel reading at the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, is Luke's description of the circumcision and naming of the child Jesus (Luke 2:16-21).

With the shedding of His blood, a new age began. Circumcision is the sign of covenant with God. At Jesus' circumcision, God enters into covenant with Himself to save all mankind. A new age, a new promise, a new covenant, born of a woman, born under the old law, but completing that same old law with this new covenant, establishing in His own flesh and blood, and celebrating the fact that this flesh and blood was a gift from His mother, within whom He incarnated, creating and connecting His human soul to His own Godhead. Christians are grafted onto the root of salvation, which is the Jews, so the ancient Jewish understanding echoes: "it's the mother that connects the soul to God." They were nearly right. It is God, incarnate in the child Jesus, Who connects Mary to her full motherhood via the shedding of His blood. 

This is why January 1 is the beginning of a New Year, celebrated as the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Christ's first gift to humanity, Mary, our Mother, is given in the gift of a new age and a new year. 

Notes

*Note: Similarly, Mary's period of purification following the birth of Jesus was forty days, which would end on February 2, the traditional end of the Christmas season.

** Note: for those who argue that the birth and the shedding of placental blood was the first shedding of blood, keep in mind that the ancient Christians held that the birth of Christ was painless and without bloodshed. In ancient tradition, Jesus passed from Mary's womb out into the world just as a ray of light passes out through a prism. Mary experienced the pain of birth not on Christmas, but rather during the Passion of Christ, when, as Pope Benedict XV said, she nearly died from the suffering of watching her Son beaten and crucified.

Joe Biden: Catholic Transgender

When Teddy Brewster charged up the stairs in Arsenic and Old Lace, believing it was San Juan Hill, the audience laughed, as well they should. It is certainly a sign of insanity to think we are something we are not, and poor Teddy was certainly not in touch with reality. But Teddy Brewster has nothing on the 21st century.

Transgenderism is a mental illness in which a man or a woman claims to be a member of the opposite sex. At times, the illness leads the victim to not only cross-dress, but even to attempt bodily mutilation, via a combination of drugs and surgery, so as to conform the external appearance of the body to the internal mental dissonance. The attempt is the most futile form of play-acting. Transgender victims cannot, of course, change their DNA, their biological identity. All they can do is play dress-up, via either clothes or the more insidious somatic manipulations. As a mental affliction, the victims are at least as unfortunate as Teddy Brewster.

The question is, to what extent should such an affliction be humored? Should we imitate Cary Grant's example and acquiesce in Teddy's lunacy (and the emerging lunacy of his aunts) in order to keep all of them from facing their mental disorder? Or should we refuse to participate in the insanity? The Church has several centuries of example in how to handle such people which we can use as a guide.

It is a point of Christian doctrine and dogma that there is but "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph 4:5). Put succinctly, once a person has been validly baptized, that person has become Catholic. The Methodist or Lutheran or Baptists minister and the person he baptizes may both believe that the subject has been baptized into the Methodist or Lutheran or Baptist faiths, but all of them are mistaken. Since there is but one baptism, every baptism is a baptism into Catholic Faith.

A sacrament is created through proper form, matter and intention. Proper form is using the liturgical words and actions, drawn from Scripture itself, to perform the sacrament. Proper matter, in the case of baptism, is that the person be unbaptized. Proper intention, in the case of baptism, is simply the intention to join the person to Christ.  As long as these three things are present, the baptism is valid, the subject is now Catholic.

Now, there are different ways of being Catholic. One might be Franciscan, Jesuit, Dominican or a follow a host of other perfectly reasonable spiritualities, in very much the same way that a secular man might be a butcher, a baker or a candle-stick maker. All are noble and useful ways of living out one's baptismal grace. 

And living baptismal grace is a matter of being, a matter of ontology. Grace is more central to our existence than even our DNA. It is, after all, the foundation by which DNA exists. So, to deny the sacrament of baptism after having once received it is to deny something even more basic than one's own identity, one's own DNA.

When the baptized individual refuses to acknowledge that s/he is Catholic, but insists instead that s/he is Methodist or Lutheran or Baptist, they have wandered far afield from their core identity. A Franciscan or Jesuit, by living out the flavor of Catholicism which resonates with his soul, is living his core identity. A Methodist, Lutheran or Baptist is (un)knowingly distorting aspects of Catholic Faith in order to accommodate some malformed aspect of his own soul. But, even here, while such a baptized person is repudiating some logical consequence of his baptism, he certainly is not repudiating his baptism in total. 

Such a repudiation would only come from a baptized person who has become atheist or agnostic, someone who has attempted to fully embrace Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. Only a person who attempts to step entirely out of the divine economy of grace has truly denied his own identity, in a way similar to Teddy Brewster or any garden-variety person claiming to be transgender. 

Even in these cases, however, the reality cannot be contravened. Anyone who has been validly baptized cannot be baptized again. A Lutheran or Methodist who wants to enter the Catholic Church is not baptized, for that has already been done. He is merely confirmed and given first Eucharist - the sacraments of initiation are completed. Even if that Lutheran spends a decade as an avowed Muslim or Hindu, nothing changes. The person who then desires to enter the Catholic Church is still not baptized, because he has merely denied, for a time, a reality which is greater than himself - he is baptized. He may have left the realm of the real, but the real has not left him.

The Church has used a variety of methods to deal with those who have left the realm of the real. In some cases, often the best-remembered cases, harsh punishments were imposed. But any honest study of history also demonstrates the Church engaging in decades or centuries worth of patient conversations with the people suffering these delusions and the poor souls who follow them. Indeed, entire religious orders, such as the Dominicans, were often founded simply to act as "psychologists", dialoguing with those who had gone astray.

Teddy Brewster denied his own identity in order to take on the identity of a man more powerful and renowned than himself. Transgenders deny their own sex in order to take on a sexual identity they find more powerful or beloved than their own. But what do you do with people like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, people who affirm their Catholic baptism but insist their Catholic identity permits insanity like support for murdering children or enabling euthanasia?

Such individuals display a new level of crazy. They are like a man who acknowledges himself to be male, but insists his testes produce eggs, or his intestines allow him to carry a child to term. The Catholic transgender clothes himself in the word "Catholic" but lives the delusions of the serial ax murderer. 

But are Joe and Nancy different than many other Christians? The Catholic Church calls Lutherans, Methodists, Unitarians by the names they have chosen for themselves, even though these names forsake the baptism they received. Even the baptized who have denied their own baptism, who have joined Hinduism, Islam or Buddhism, are named by the Church with the names they have chosen for themselves. Joe and Nancy are as Catholic as any other baptized Unitarian, but they wish to be called not Lutheran or Unitarian, but "catholic." 

They aren't wrong, in the sense that every validly baptized person is certainly Catholic, but they aren't right either, because their beliefs and actions more closely conform them to some Lutherans, or most Unitarians, than to any Catholic spirituality.

Mortimer Brewster : The name Brewster is code for Roosevelt.

Teddy Brewster : Code for Roosevelt?

Mortimer Brewster : Yes. Don't you see? Take the name Brewster, take away the B, and what have you got?

Teddy Brewster : Rooster!

Mortimer Brewster : Uh-huh. And what does a rooster do?

Teddy Brewster : Crows.

Mortimer Brewster : It crows. And where do you hunt in Africa?

Teddy Brewster : On the veldt!

Mortimer Brewster : There you are: crows - veldt!

Teddy Brewster : Ingenious! My compliments to the boys in the code department.

If we are willing to call someone Anglican instead of Catholic, we are telling them the same thing Mortimer Brewster told Teddy - a just-so story meant to keep the peace. And if we call a man "she" or a woman "he", it is another just-so story meant to keep the peace. But can we call Joe or Nancy "Catholic"? If we do, we are not wrong, but there are many caveats that need to be acknowledged with a nod, a wink, and a "sure you are, bub, sure you are" smile. The easiest way to do this is, perhaps, to just acknowledge them as Transgender Catholics. 

Act Utilitarianism

 Act Utilitarianism – The justice of the individual act does not matter, what matters is that the consequence be for the greater good. 

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-i-learned-at-dartmouth.html

In the Fall of 1991, shortly after the Clarence Thomas nomination and the Anita Hill hearings, the Class of ‘95 matriculated at Dartmouth College.

One of the freshmen—or “first years”, as they were beginning to be known—was accused by another first year of sexual assault and harassment. In the hot-house political environment at the time—product of the Thomas/Hill hearings, which revolved around workplace sexual harassment—these were serious allegations.

The young woman making the claim against the freshman said that he had visited her in her dorm-room around lunchtime one day during Orientation Week, and had “forcibly tried to kiss” her. She had rebuffed him, told him he was being “selfish”, after which he had left, without further incident.

This was the sexual assault allegation.

The young woman also claimed that the freshman had then started to harass her via electronic mail, in the days and weeks after. She claimed he had sent her “obscene messages”, which she had purged from her e-mail account, as she hadn’t wanted any of that “filth” on her computer.
This was the sexual harassment allegation.

The young woman said she wanted to “protect” the Dartmouth campus—and the other women at Dartmouth College—from the danger that the freshman represented. This was why she was reporting this incident three weeks after it allegedly took place.

The accused freshman, being unsophisticated, went through the disciplinary channels of Dartmouth College without contacting attorneys or even his parents. He was confident that the allegations would be shown to be lies—because he knew they were lies.

More to the point, he could prove that they were lies.

The young woman claimed she had thrown away the obscene e-mail messages he had sent her. But the computer science department at Kiewit Hall—in charge of the e-mail servers—said that that wouldn’t be a problem. This was 1991—few people had e-mail, and fewer still realized e-mails can never really be thrown away.

The techs at Kiewit duly looked through all of the e-mails the freshman had sent—as well as all of the e-mails the first year woman had received: None were obscene. In fact, there was only one e-mail between them: From when the first year woman had taught the freshman how to use the Dartmouth e-mail system. The only word on the message was “test”.

As to the sexual assault allegation: The freshman produced witnesses—ironically all of them women—who confirmed that he could not have possibly been in the first year woman’s dorm room around lunchtime—when she claimed—because the freshman had been with them.
Nothing salacious in these encounters: One of these women the freshman had been with was a senior in charge of hiring for a dining hall job he was applying for. Another was a sophomore from down the hall in his dorm, with whom he had talked about earthquakes (she was from California) and how to use the campus computer network. Three other women also placed him in innocuous situations during the entire day of the alleged assault.

As the freshman produced unbiased witnesses who could absolutely confirm he had been elsewhere at the time of the alleged assault, the first year woman kept changing her story—until she claimed that the assault had happened after 8 o’clock at night: A time for which the freshman could not produce a witness for where he had been. (He claimed he had been at an Orientation Week event at Warner Bentley Theater—ironically, where a sexual harassment and assault awareness skit was being play-acted by seniors up on stage.)

However, the freshman was confident that it didn’t matter that he couldn’t produce witnesses who remembered him attending the performance at Bentley Theater: The first year woman had changed her version of the events so many times—and had been shown to be outright lying about the nonexistent obscene e-mails—that the freshman assumed that all the charges would be dismissed, when the disciplinary committee met.

The disciplinary committee, known as the COS, the Committee On Standards, was made up mostly of students—juniors and seniors, divided roughly equally between men and women—plus a smattering of faculty, and chaired by the Dean of the College.

When the entire set of circumstances was aired out, even the chair of the COS was openly skeptical about the first year woman’s story.

Nevertheless, the accused freshman was suspended for an entire academic year.
There was no evidence he had committed any crime or transgression—only the first year woman’s word. There was ample evidence that the first year woman was lying—she had lied about the e-mail messages, and the blatant changes in her story showed that she was lying about the alleged assault.

As the freshman said at the time: “Everything I said that could be proved true turned out to be true—and everything she said that could be proved to be a lie turned out to be a lie.”

Though she had made demonstrably false allegations, the first year woman was allowed to continue her stay at Dartmouth, without hinderance or prejudice.

The freshman had to leave Dartmouth. But since there were still four weeks left until the end of the academic term, the Committee On Standards allowed him to stay on campus until after exams were done.

So much for being a “danger” to the other women on campus.

He didn’t have family in the U.S.—or practically any money: He had spent all he had earned before arriving in Hanover on tuition, books and supplies. He didn’t even have a car—and even if he had had one, he had no place to go to.

But somehow, he talked his way into a job in Washington, D.C., where he moved to for a year, working as an office drone at a law firm. It was a scary time for him—he lived literally hand to mouth, during that year.

He returned to Dartmouth, after his suspension was over. It was not pleasant. He was actively ostracized, and on occasion, openly cat-called terrible names by some of his classmates. All sorts of insane rumors swirled around him—but fighting rumors is like fighting the tide: Impossible, not to mention pointlessly self-defeating.

He couldn’t leave Dartmouth—no school anywhere near as prestigious would accept him as a transfer student. Not even lower tiered schools would take him—he applied, and was rejected, even though he had the grades and the test scores.

So he sucked it up: He kept himself to himself—watched a hell of a lot of TV—took extra coursework to make up the time lost to the suspension, and managed to graduate with honors alongside the rest of his class, the Class of ‘95.

At the graduation ceremony, he shook Bill Clinton’s hand.
He never returned to Dartmouth College after that.
That’s a true story. It’s a story, of course, that happened to me.

Good Advice

 In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Anecdote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them."

A Word on Papal Interviews

After every MSM kerfuffle on some amazing and innovative thing the Pope is rumored to have said, there are a sub-population of "faithful" Catholics who decide to critique (i.e., denigrate) either the papal delivery or the papal message or both.

"Why didn't he say X??!?" 
"How could he have been stupid enough to have said Y?!?"
"If he would only provide full context, explain more, stop being so opaque!"

Let me put this as simply as possible: the people who raise these objections are idiots.

I have done numerous TV, radio and newspaper interviews. The problem is not in the papal delivery, the problem is in the secular editor's hack job on the response.

I have personally had 10 and 20 minute interviews mangled down to a 15-second soundbite that even I barely recognized. When they don't like what you are saying, they abuse camera angles, set up ambush interviews, condense, cut and misrepresent you. If it's a newspaper, they literally make up stuff, put it in quotes and put it in your mouth.

And if you think the Vatican needs to offer clarifications, why do you think that would help? If the press is deliberately misrepresenting the first set of remarks, why would they suddenly stop the misrepresentations in reporting on subsequent remarks?

It is the editorial equivalent of being scourged and crucified. You started out fine, but after the editorial beating, you are barely recognizable as a living being. But that's the price of trying to get in front of a lot of people to preach the Gospel - you have to be willing to have your words crucified.

The Pope is willing to do that because he's the Vicar of Christ. It is our job to trust him and help put his message into the context of the larger Gospel message, of which it forms a part. It is NOT our job to critique his content or delivery. We need to concentrate on doing OUR job and stop critiquing how he does his. 

Stop talking like a bunch of Protestants and trust the Pope. Unlike you and me, he actually knows the Gospel and he preaches it better than either one of us ever will. He gets enough scourging every day from the jackels in the press, he doesn't need you and me piling on. 

Pope Francis and "Civil Unions"

Note from MercatorNet: 

Spanish-speakers are reporting that the Pope has been misquoted and misrepresented once again by the mainstream media — he did not even mention “civil unions”. His words were “convivencia civil”, not “unión civil”. This is best understood to mean that people with same-sex attraction should be protected legally by civil law, a protection which for the past 12 years has been in place in Australia since the radical changes made to 85 federal laws. So the Pope is talking about a civil coexistence and not the endorsement of same-sex unions.

 A friend has asked me if Pope Francis has changed Church teaching on homosexual marriage, as some news sites aver. The answer requires careful consideration.

To begin, I have read several reports on this, but haven't seen the complete transcripts so I'm not sure how accurate the report is. A Catholic news organization quotes him this way:

“I have always defended doctrine,” he said. “It is a contradiction to speak of homosexual marriage.”

But he also told the interviewer, “Homosexual persons have a right to be in the family; persons with a homosexual orientation have a right to be in the family and parents have the right to recognize a son or daughter as homosexual; you cannot throw anyone out of the family, nor make life impossible for them.”

In “A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society,” a book-length series of conversations with the French sociologist Dominique Wolton, the two spoke about gay marriage and civil unions in the context of a discussion about tradition, modernity and truth.

“‘Marriage’ is a historical word,” the pope said, in the book published in French in 2017. “Forever, throughout humanity and not only in the church, it’s been between a man and a woman. You can’t change it just like that. It’s the nature of things. That’s how they are. So, let’s call them ‘civil unions.'”

And here is where we can see the important distinctions being made.

“Marriage is between a man and a woman,” [Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio] said. “Secular states want to validate civil unions to regulate different situations of cohabitation, driven by the need to regulate economic aspects between people, such as ensuring health care. These are cohabitation pacts of various kinds, of which I could not list the different forms.”

“It is necessary to see the different cases and evaluate them in their variety,” he said, implying that some forms of civil unions would be acceptable.

In the early Church, St. Augustine, one of the greatest Doctors the Church ever produced, said it was permissible for the state to tolerate prostitution on the grounds that if it did not, "the whole world would be convulsed by lust." That is, we tolerate a lesser evil in order to prevent it from becoming a greater evil. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest Doctor the Church ever produced, agreed with St. Augustine. Thomas used the same reasoning: "In human government . . . those who are in authority rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says: “If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.” Hence, though unbelievers sin in their rites, they may be tolerated, either on account of some good that ensues therefrom, or because of some evil avoided."

Pope Francis has long opposed allowing the state to recognize homosexual marriage, arguing that this is a contradiction in terms - marriage is about the making of a mater, a mother.  By definition, homosexual marriages cannot make anyone a mother, so it is as impossible to have a homosexual marriage as it is to have a round circle. But, in order to avoid having the state call these partnerships "marriages", he was, as cardinal, willing to allow them to be called "civil unions." As Pope, it is possible he continues to follow the tradition of St. Augustine and St. Thomas by allowing the secular state to call this a "civil union" in order to keep the secular state from leading people astray by incorrectly labeling it a "marriage." But, as the note from MercatorNet points out, he didn't even mention "civil unions".

Now, some might say this is a distinction without a difference. Would it be a distinction without a difference to say that it is licit for the state to allow prostitution? Two of the greatest Doctors the Church ever produced said exactly that. Nor is this the first time the Church has faced secular society condoning homosexual unions. Ancient Rome and Greece were both debauched enough to give these unions legal status. Ancient Christians faced exactly the same issue we face today. Precisely because Catholics have failed to evangelize the culture for the last several centuries, secular society has devolved back into pre-Christian lawlessness.

But even so, "legal" does not mean "moral". There is a significant difference between those two phrases. That is what Pope Francis is emphasizing. 

He wants people legally protected, without necessarily saying that what they are doing is moral. God allows the sinner to live, He doesn't strike the sinner dead, even though we certainly deserve that punishment when we commit mortal sin. Instead, He protects us from the consequence of the sin. That's what the Pope is doing here - encouraging the state to act towards homosexuals as God acts towards all of us by encouraging the state to make sure that even mortal sinners are protected, at least in some measure, from the consequences of their sins.

Is homosexual "love" really love? Of course not.
Are homosexual relationships still intrinsically disordered? Of course.

But that doesn't change the fact that persons suffering from the intrinsic disorder of homosexual attraction (or the intrinsic disorder of lust in general), like every other person, are still human beings, deserving or respect and protection. God lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust. He lets His mercy fall on all, regardless of their sins. The Pope would like the state to emulate God in this.

UPDATE:

I have been exhorted by various friends to read the rabidly anti-Catholic commentary generated by many "Catholic" pundits attacking the Holy Father's remarks. I decline to do so because none of the commentators have the authority to question the Pope, either in what he teaches or in how it is taught. Indeed, the very existence of the screeds remind me of the Abbott and Costello comedy sketch in the Gospel of Matthew (Ch 16):

"5 When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. 6 “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

7 They discussed this among themselves and said, “It is because we didn’t bring any bread.”

8 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?"

These pundits entirely miss the point. None of them are guides. We must instead, follow the advice of the Doctors of the Church:

“Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom. He who rebels against our Father is condemned to death, for that which we do to him we do to Christ: we honor Christ if we honor the Pope; we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the Pope. I know very well that many defend themselves by boasting: “They are so corrupt, and work all manner of evil!” But God has commanded that, even if the priests, the pastors, and Christ-on-earth were incarnate devils, we be obedient and subject to them, not for their sakes, but for the sake of God, and out of obedience to Him.” — St. Catherine of Siena, SCS, p. 201-202, p. 222, (quoted in Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 5: “The Book of Obedience”, Chapter 1: “There is No Salvation Without Personal Submission to the Pope”). 

As Catholics, our job is not to critique the Pope's content and delivery, but to properly contextualize his message within the larger message of Christ's Church. This sometimes requires hard, careful thought on our part. Stop grumbling amongst yourselves and get to work. In his method of teaching Christ's Vicar is often like unto Christ Himself. If you remember, Jesus taught many hard things, some almost impossible to understand, yet Peter had the right of it, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life." 

So, again, our job is not to critique the Pope's delivery or message. Our job is to provide the proper context for the Pope's message, showing people where his message fits within the larger Gospel message. How about we do OUR job?

Physics and Theology

Experimental science describes the quantitative relationship between objects.
Theological science describes the qualitative relationships between persons.

Physics is non-theistic, but it is not antithetical to theology. Physics does not "equate" to an antithetical approach. It simply isn't even in the same arena.

If I use a hammer to crush a human skull, you can tell me by examining the skull about point of impact, angle, force used, damage to skull and brain, etc.

However, you cannot tell me whether the action was moral. There is no tool in the physics toolbox that can measure the morality of the action.  Does that mean that all the answers about point of impact, angle, force, etc. are "antithetical" to morality? Obviously not. It's just that none of them are RELEVANT to the morality of the act, nor is the morality of the event relevant to any of the physics calculations concerning point of impact, angle, force, etc.

In order for two discussions to be antithetical, they have to occupy the same part of the universe, and these two don't. One discusses objects, the other discusses the persons that were involved in the use of the objects.*

To discuss the morality of the act, I would need to know if one of the two was an aggressor (perhaps it was an accident?). If one was an aggressor, which one? Were they both aggressors? What caused the aggression? Were both alive at the time of the event, or was the one with the crushed skull already dead? Did the one who crushed the skull KNOW that the victim was already dead? What aspects of the moral act are known (act, circumstances, intent)? The question set is quite large, and this is just an outline.

Given what I've said, we only know the physical act. We can't judge the morality without knowing the other two aspects of the moral act.

If physics is theistic, then it HAS to possess tools that judge person-to-person relationships, because that is the ONLY way to discuss God. God is three Persons, the divine Persons are distinguished ONLY by their interpersonal relations, and our personhood is founded on our relationship with the Three Persons.

But physics has no tool to measure interpersonal relationships. It cannot distinguish, it does not even pretend to distinguish, between virtue or vice. It cannot detect the presence of grace (God) or the absence of grace (sin).

Physics is a subset of the discussion of human interaction, and it ONLY rises to the level of subset because our spirit-souls inhabit bodies. Physics has no part in the discussion of divine-angelic relationships because neither God nor angels have bodies. Physics has no part in the discussion of the disembodied human souls in hell, purgatory or heaven prior to the resurrection on the Last Day.

Physics is not an antithetical non-theistic set of propositions. Physics is, instead, an IRRELEVANT set of propositions as far as theology, the study of interpersonal relationships, is concerned.

Similarly, it is incorrect to say that physics admits teleology, a discussion of man's proper end. Sure, the PHILOSOPHY which EMPOWERS physics admits teleology. No argument there. But that is different than saying physics itself admits a teleology. Physics is a tool. The idea of "tool" is a philosophical concept, but the technique by which the tool operates in the world is not a philosophical concept, it is an act that physics describes without regard to teleology at all.

So, a hammer is an object which may drive a nail or crush a skull - two different philosophies are embodied in these two different uses of the tool, but the actual operation of the object in the world has no philosophy at all. The hammer, as it strikes an object, simply acts to concentrate force into a point. That is not philosophical. It is simply mindless action, action that can happen without any operator at all. "The hammer hit the nail" describes action, but not teleology. "The carpenter swung the hammer, hitting the nail"... now teleology begins to be described.

*Note: As an aside, this is why it is absolutely wrong to think of God as some kind of energy field. Energy and matter are interchangeable, as Einstein's famous E=mc^2 equation described. Matter is solid energy, energy is liquid matter, as it were. Energy=Matter, they occupy the same part of the universe and are, for that reason, interchangeable terms. If we think of God as some kind of energy field, like the Force in Star Wars, we ultimately claim God to be an element of the created universe, which is a directly condemned heresy.