Problems With Fatima

Now that Pope Francis is in office, traditionalists are convinced the end-times are upon us. "It is the time of Fatima! Prepare for the end!". Etc.

Now, let me once again make clear that I believe the sun danced, that Mary appeared May 1917 to October 1917 during World War I at Fatima, that the three children are rightly held up as examples by the Church, etc. But visionaries sometimes get messages wrong, and Fatima is no exception.

Remember also that when the church approved Fatima in 1930, it only gave approval to the events that happened initially. The Church has technically never given formal approval to the subsequent statements and revelations from Sr. Lucia. This is problematic since all three secrets - the vision of hell, the set of prophecies we will examine here, and the notorious "third secret" - were only revealed by Lucia in August 1941 and October 1943. These "secrets" were thus never formally approved by the Church.

Finally, recall CCC 67 teaches us that private revelation is completely unnecessary, and many Doctors of the Church warned against anyone believing or following private revelation, even if it is approved by the Church. 

So, with all that in mind, let's take a look at the unapproved "prophecies", which were supposed to have been given to Lucia on 13 July 1917, but which she didn't bother to reveal for thirty-five years:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.

(1) The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, (a) a worse one will break out (b) during the Pontificate of Pius XI.

(2) When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

(3) To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace;

(4) if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.

(5) In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world”

This is the Second Prophecy, and it has a lot of problems. Some of them have already been discussed in other venues, others, not so much.

Prophecy Failure #1: Which Pope?

The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI.

The problem is obvious. This prophecy did not occur.
Pope Pius XI reigned 6 Feb 1922 to 10 Feb 1939.
Pope Pius XII began his reign on 2 March 1939.
World War II didn't start until 1 Sept 1939, 6 months after Pope Pius XII was elected.

Now, you can try arguing that the historians are all wrong, and some aspect of the conflict leading up to World War II was actually the beginning of World War II.

The Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931 was followed by a rising crescendo of treaty violations and acts of aggression. Adolf Hitler, when he rose to power (1933) in Germany, recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest; in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered (1935–36) Ethiopia for Italy; and from 1936 to 1939 the Spanish civil war raged, with Germany and Italy helping the fascist forces of Francisco Franco to victory. In March, 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and in Sept., 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement toward the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Pact.  (Read more here).

In fact, this is precisely the argument that Sister Lucia makes - the war began with the annexation of Austria:

World War II, in truth, began during the reign of Pius XI. "The annexation of Austria was the occasion for it," she explained. The invasion of Austria (in March 1938), the annexation of Czechoslovakia, the formation of military alliances and the decision to invade Poland were the beginnings of the war, though war had not yet been officially declared. 

Well.... ok... But notice that the very last element prior to Pius XI's death is a peace treaty (the Munich Pact) that gives the Germans Czechoslovakia. Great Britain and France don't abandon appeasement until the Italians seize Albania in April 1939, well into the reign of Pius XII. If a war began under Pius XI, wouldn't a peace treaty under that same Pope end it?

Now, there are some who will argue that World War II actually began with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and that DID happen during the reign of Pius XI. Fine and dandy. But according to the second part of the prophecy, the war doesn't break out until we see a "night illumined by an unknown light", and according to Sister Lucia, the surviving Fatima visionary, that light doesn't happen until January 25, 1938 (see below). So, the Japan-Manchuria argument isn't in line with the prophecy either.

Sister Lucia's argument at least puts the heavenly light, the annexation of Austria and the beginning of war in the proper order, but the surrounding explanation is... weak. Hitler's demands on Polish territory did not begin until March 1939. Hitler's specific plans to invade Poland weren't drawn up until April, 1939. If we say he had plans prior to that, well, sure. As any historian is happy to point out, Germany had been making military plans to destroy Poland since it came back into existence following WW I. So, if Sister Lucia meant to say that the formation of military alliances is the beginning of the war, that's wonderful, but the secret Soviet-German non-aggression pact that allowed Germany to invade Poland without fear of a two-front war was not concluded until August, 1939 - well into the reign of Pius XII. Sigh. No matter how you try, it's just hard to shoehorn her prophecies into the actual history of the war.

Worse, Sister Lucia doesn't bother to reveal any of of these prophecies until 1941, years after the events already take place. Were her memories of a decades-old vision muddled by intervening events? We really don't know.

In any case, the various European states don't declare war until 1 September, 1939, which is why that date is generally considered the beginning of World War II. Given that Catholics are always very precise in their dates ("X happened on the Feast of the Assumption" or "Y happened on the Feast of the Annunciation"), it seems most odd that the Blessed Virgin would shoot six months wide of the mark, and get the Pope's name wrong to boot, in her description of exactly when a "worse" war than World War I will break out.

It's much easier to assume that the visionaries simply mis-heard, mis-understood or mis-remembered the Blessed Virgin on this point. Now, that would be bad enough, but the failures just get worse.

Prophecy Failure #2: The "Worse" War
Here's a question whose answer is not as obvious as it appears. Which was worse, World War I or World War II? You might say World War II based purely on the number of body bags produced: 60-70 million vs. 15-20 million. But is that the only way to look at it?

Well, no. Instead of looking at pure body count, we could look at percent of the world's population killed. And when we compare numbers, should we or should we not include the Spanish flu epidemic (1918-1919), the third worst pandemic in human history, a pandemic that killed off 1-3% of the world's population all by itself? In absolute numbers, it killed off more people than any plague in human history. And it happened before the reign of Pope Pius XI.

But, we digress. The Austria-Hungarian Empire had a 90% casualty rate among its military in World War I, Russia suffered a 75% military casualty rate prior to her civil war and withdrawal. No one in World War 2 had a comparable military loss rate. Similarly, judging by overall death rates, World War 1 was a much worse experience than World War 2, for at least several major countries around the world.

Total Casualty Rates	WW1	WW2
Australia	1.38%	0.57%
Romania	9%	4%
Canada	0.92%	0.4%
Belgium	1.62%	1.05%
New Zealand	1.64%	0.73%
United Kingdom	2.19%	0.94%
France	4.29%	1.35%
Italy	3.48%	1.03%
Bulgaria	3.41%	0.38%

Ironically, Portugal suffered more losses during WW I (12,000 Portuguese troops dead) than from WW II (8,787 Portuguese died... 6,232 confirmed and 2,555 estimated). And that doesn't count the 220,000 civilians deaths from starvation during WW I, which have no equivalent during WW II. So even for their own home country, the "visionaries" were grossly incorrect. (map link)

And here's the World War II map

Prophecy Failure #3:

"When you see a night illumined by an unknown light..."

The night of January 25, 1938 saw a tremendous aurora borealis, visible throughout all of Europe. This light DID happen during the reign of Pius XI. Sister Lucia said this aurora was the sign. But the problem is, again, obvious. It wasn't an unknown light. It was a known light - the aurora borealis. By 1896, Norwegian Professor Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) had hypothesized that the northern lights were linked to solar radiation. True, in 1917, the theory was not widely accepted; it would not be fully accepted and confirmed until satellite data became available in the 1970s. However, auroras had been observed in Europe since at least 1560. There were similar auroras throughout the 1870s and a similar storm was seen on Feb 11, 1958. Consequently, some have argued the unknown light was actually the Trinity nuclear bomb test. Of course, there was no great war that followed that event, so that doesn't seem to work either.

Prophecy Failure #4: Famine
Famine is mentioned as a punishment on the world. But this one is very, very hard to entertain. Now, sure, since Fatima, there have been a lot of terrible famines in various countries. For instance, Stalin's Ukraine saw massive famine. Communists China's "Great Leap Forward" produced a man-made famine that killed tens of millions and drove the countryside to cannibalism. North Korea is under perpetual famine and cannibalism for decades. Communism produces famine - everyone knows that now in a way that no one did in 1917.

So, in that narrow sense, the children's vision was VERY prophetic. They correctly predicted that anyone living under communism would suffer great physical want. In 1917, before anyone had actually attempted to implement communism or socialism, it was not at all obvious that this would be the case.

But if you want to use Fatima to argue that the world was going to undergo or has already undergone some kind of unusual famine, it's an impossible argument to support. After all, famine is not exactly unusual in human history, and it is demonstrably less likely today. Don't believe me? Look at the numbers.

We have not yet hit the century mark on the Fatima prophecies, but the world has gone from roughly 1.6 billion in 1900 to a bit over 7 billion today. That is, the world has over 4 times as many people today as it did at the time of the prophecy. If famine were really hitting us hard, how did we get four additional planets' worth of people in the intervening century?

The consensus is clear: famine has become less common over the previous century, it is not increasing. And it looks likely that this trend will continue. As Norman Borlaug points out, 17% of the world's cultivated land produces 90% of its food. If we can get the other 83% to adopt Borlaug's techniques, we can increase food production 5-fold. That means we can support 35 billion people on the planet before we have to till any new ground. Sadly, we'll probably never accomplish that population level. But that isn't due to lack of food. It's due to lack of interest in having children among populations that have low infant mortality rates.

There is, of course, one more aspect that should be considered. Perhaps God had promised the world famines, but unknown to three children, God had already delivered the solution to world-wide famine three years earlier. On the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1914, Norman Borlaug was born. Sister Lucia had no way of knowing this, but Borlaug's research would feed over 1 billion people in the decades following World War II - he quite literally fed the world. His work stopped the very famines that Sister Lucia thought she heard Mary warn about.

Prophecy Failure #5: Russia and her errors
This is a nasty one, and a lot of it hinges on how free you wish to get with definitions. Technically, monarchical Russia fell out of existence after the Russian Revolution. It was replaced by the United Soviet Socialist Republic. So, prior to the reign of Pope Pius XI, the first nation which is annihilated is Russia, replaced by the USSR in 1922. But if Russia no longer exists, it can't very well spread it's errors throughout the world, can it?

Sigh. Of course, we can argue that it was really just a name change, and insist it is still Russia in all but name. In fact, we have to make this argument for the Fatima prophecies to work. But, in order to make this argument, we must ignore that Russia had been ruled by monarchy for over 1000 years (the Ruriks, 862-1598, and the Romanovs, 1613-February Revolution of 1917). We know the Romanovs and the Czarists who supported them won't take issue with our argument, because they caught nine grams of lead in the back of the head on 17 July 1918. The prophecies are given six months after the Romanovs had abdicated, and almost exactly one year before the Romanovs are executed, although the world won't find out about the executions for decades.

At the time the Fatima prophecies were made, the only error Russia had made was to allow her Tsar to abdicate. It was operating under a Provisional Government which had amnestied all political and religious prisoners, guaranteed free speech, and promised free elections, among other things. Specifically, three days after the Fatima prophecies, the Russian Provisional Government was putting down the "July Days" protests (July 16-20, 1917 of Gregorian calendar). The first Provisional Government (run by Georgy Lvov, a noted Russian statesman who was NOT a socialist) arrested many socialists for insurrection. Though Lenin and many of his Bolsheviks escaped the July Days crackdown, they were forced into hiding.

Meanwhile, in the war itself, Russia's Kerensky offensive took place from 1 July [O.S. 18 June] to 19 July [O.S. 6 July] 1917. It was the last Russian offensive of World War I. Russian General Aleksei Brusilov ordered the 7th, 8th and 11th Russian Armies to attack 18 miles (29 km) of the Austro-German line in Galicia in what became the last major Russian military campaign of World War I. On 11 July, two days before the Fatima prophecies, Russian forces captured Halicz, Galicia, putting them within striking distance of Lemberg. 

So, on the very day, at the very hour, the prophecies were being given to the three visionaries, the Russian government was actively beginning the suppression of socialism, and was actively destroying the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Were those Russia's errors: the suppression of socialism and the destruction of monarchy? Because if those were Russia's errors, that's the exact reverse of every interpretation I've ever heard.

So, here's the problem: which part of Russian practice was error?

1. Was it the Tsar's resignation six months before the prophecies? Was that the error?
2. Or was it Lvov's Provisional government, the one in power when the prophecies were made? Because two weeks after the prophecies, it collapsed and was replaced by Kerensky's Provisional government. Was Lvov overthrown by the Queen of Heaven?
3. If so, he was replaced by Kerensky. Kerensky was a Menshevik (socialist). Clearly, Mary would never put a socialist in charge, would she? So, was his government the error? 
4. Or was it the Russian Republican that came into existence September 14? Were the visionaries warned against republics? America is a republic...
5. Or was it the Russian Revolution about a month later? 

There's at least five political systems here to choose from, and the prophecy doesn't say which one was the error which gets "spread throughout the world." A GREAT argument can be made that the error wasn't socialism or communism at all, but rather the loss of European monarchies.

But, as I said, let's ignore every bit of this inconvenient history and cut straight to the chase by assuming:

• a Georgian (Stalin) = a Russian
• the USSR = Russia
• a General Secretary = the president of a republic or a monarch
• democracy = socialism
• and socialism is the problem.

OK. If we assume there is no substantial difference between all those things, then we're good to go.

Prophecy Failure #6: Nations Annihilated
Then, let's look at the next part of the prophecy:

[Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.

Various nations will be annihilated due to the errors of Russia, that is, presumably due to the Communists. Hmmmm. Really? Here's a list of nations that were annihilated in the 20th century. Let's take a look at which ones can be chalked up to Communist influence.

Name changes: Since we have already discounted the idea that name changes count, we can toss out the following as not really being annihilated, but merely undergoing a name change:

• 1939: Siam changed its name to Thailand.
• 1946: Transjordan: Became the independent kingdom of Jordan.
• 1958-1961: United Arab Republic. Non-neighbors Syria and Egypt merged to become a unified country. In 1961 Syria abandoned the alliance but Egypt kept the name United Arab Republic itself for another decade.
• 1966: Basutoland changes its name to Lesotho. 
• 1971: Taiwan: stopped representing China in the United Nations but is still an independent country.
• 1972: Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka.
• 1980: Rhodesia changed its name to Zimbabwe.
• 1990: Southwest Africa: Gained independence and became Namibia.
• 1997: Zaire changed its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• 1998: Western Samoa changed its name to Samoa 

Weren't There: Since these countries didn't exist at the time of the prophecy, it seems unfair to count them as being annihilated when they again disappear:

• 1918: Czechoslovakia didn't exist until 14 Nov 1918. It doesn't exist now, having split in 1993 into the Czech and Slovak Republics, respectively. The largest religious group within the Czech Republic is Catholicism (10%). The largest religious group in the Slovak Republic is Catholicism (62%). So, how do you count this? 

• 1939: Catalonia: Autonomous region of Spain independent from 1932-1934 and 1936-1939. 

• 1954-1976: South Vietnam: Now part of a unified Vietnam, South Vietnam existed from 1954 to 1976 as the anti-communist portion of Vietnam. While it was wiped out by communists, it didn't exist in 1917, so it's hardly fair to count it. 

• 1964: Neither Tanganyika nor Zanzibar existed as independent countries in 1917, so when they united to form Tanzania, that can hardly count as annihilation can it?

• 1967: Yemen splits into North Yemen and South Yemen but in 1990 the two rejoin into a unified Yemen.

• 1971: East Pakistan: A province of Pakistan from 1947-1971 when it became Bangladesh. It became a country, it didn't stop being a country. 

• 1990s: Yugoslavia: First created 1 December 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, it was officially recognized in 1922. The Axis invaded in 1941, which led to its re-creation as Democratic Federal Yugoslavia in 1943 when the Partisans took over, then renamed again to the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946 when the communists took over. In 1963 it became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then in 1991 it began the breakup up into what is now Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro and Slovenia. This essay originally incorrectly categorized Yugoslavia as having fulfilled the prophecy. But, since the country didn't exist at the time of the prophecy, it really falls into this category. 

• 1991: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR): Technically, it doesn't come into existence until 1922. When the Tsar abdicated in February 1917 (March 1917 in the Orthodox calendar), the Russian Provisional Government was established. In September 1917, this was reformed as the Russian Republic. The Republic was overthrown by the Russian Revolution of 1917, establishing the Soviet Russian Republic. In 1922, this became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. By 1936, this was renamed the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, but most people continued to call it the USSR. By 1991, the whole scheme collapsed and it broke into fifteen new countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldovia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Again, this essay originall mis-categorized the USSR as having fulfilled the prophecy. Technically, the "Russia" which existed at the time of the July 1917 prophecy had already disappeared by either August or October/November of the same year (depending on your definition). Now Russia exists again, so does it count as being annihilated or not?

Tricky: These countries are trickier. They existed when the prophecy was made, they fell out of existence for a time, then they came back into existence, albeit with somewhat changed boundaries. Poland is the weirdest exception:

• 1917: Poland had actually been completely annihilated in 1795. It only came back into existence in November 1918, after Germany surrendered. It technically didn't exist at the time of the prophecy. But, does the reconstitution of a fully Catholic country count as a kind of anti-annihilation? Does it count against the prophecy instead of for it?
• 1980s: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were invaded and annexed by the USSR during WW 2, but most Western countries refused to recognize the annexation, and they all came back into existence during the 1980s. So do they count as having been annihilated or not?
• 1989: Germany existed in 1917, but it was divided into East and West Germany by WW 2. Today, of course, they have again merged together to form a unified Germany. Does that count?
• 2011: Same problem with South Sudan. Sudan technically was an independent nation at the time of the prophecy, but Britain ruled is as she did all of her other colonies. Worse, she ruled the north and south halves independently, since the differences between the regions were well-known. Sudan gained independence from the British in 1956. South Sudan began in July 2011. Does the new-found independence of Christian South Sudan from Muslim North Sudan count as the annihilation of Sudan?

Annihilated the Wrong Way: These countries really did fall out of existence and have not come back. But not only do they have to be annihilated, their annihilation should be the result of Russia's errors. These clearly don't qualify: 

• Oct 1918: Austria-Hungary: Established in 1867 and included not just Austria and Hungary, but also parts of the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Romania, and the Balkans. But it didn't disappear as a result of Russia's errors. It disappeared as a result of the Allied victory in WW1
• 1923: Ottoman Empire disappears, replaced by bits of contemporary Russia, Turkey, Hungary, the Balkans, northern Africa, and the Middle East. It disappeared as a result of the Allied victory in WW1
• 1932: Prussia: effectively abolished in 1932, officially abolished in 1947. It disappeared as a result of the Allied victory in WW1
• 1975: Sikkim was an independent monarchy from the 17th century until 1975, when it joined India. This was an internal Indian political affair and had nothing to do with communism.

Now, you can make the argument that these four countries should be counted, but it's hard to see how. The Russians were on the side of England and France in WW 1, they were fighting WITH the Allies, not against them. Her withdrawal from the war made Allied victory LESS likely, not more likely. And the Allies still won, even without Russia.

So, how exactly would Russia's withdrawal spread Russia's (unspecified) errors through the world given that she was on the side of the winners up until she withdrew and the winners still won? Should the Axis powers have won? If so, America is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Perhaps you want to argue that those empires should NOT have been broken up? That all the monarchies and czardoms were supposed to stay in place? That the breaking up of monarchy and the institution of democracies in all those countries is a consequence of Russia's error? Ok, you can make that argument, but again, it's different from any argument I've ever heard laid out about the proper interpretation of Fatima prophecies. I have a hard time constructing an argument that would make these four countries fit popular Fatima interpretations.

The Winners!: These countries not only existed at the time of the prophecy, they fell out of existence directly as a result of the errors of Russia, that is her communism, and to this day, do not exist: 

• 1950: Tibet was invaded by Communist China (which got its communism from the USSR) and is now known as the Xizang Autonomous Region of China. Alright, this one counts. But Tibet was no Shangri-La. In fact, some Tibetans argue they are better off under the communists than they ever were under the Dalai Lama. 

And.... that's all.

Hmmm... That's rather... uh... well... that's rather disappointing. We don't actually have nations annihilated. We actually have just "nation."

So the second "prophecy" clearly has its problems. Which calls into question the first prophecy and the third.

The Other Prophecies
Now, I'm sure that hell exists. What am I not sure of? I'm not sure that the visionaries correctly understood the Blessed Virgin there either. A lot of people have used the first prophecy to preach fire and brimstone concerning all kinds of things, and they may well be right. But you can see why using prophecy, especially the Fatima prophecies, to preach doctrine can quickly become a problem. If these three little kids got some of the essentials on the second prophecy a little (cough, cough) messed up, then what about the other two?

And as for the third prophecy, no Fatima endorser can even agree on what it really is. It's something horrible, they are all sure about that. But the details.... well... that's murky. Just be assured that the third prophecy is really horrible. Really.

So, if the message of Fatima is to pray, that's a great message and I'm all for it.
However, if the message of Fatima is to obsess over the prophecies, I think, from a spiritual perspective, I'd be better off playing a video game. Really.


UPDATE:
Hey, I just noticed this. According to the first vision, "more souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason."

Hmmmm.... Now, the traditionalists who push Fatima often like to say that you have to be baptized with water to be saved. If you aren't, according to them, you just go to Limbo. Limbo is supposedly the first circle of hell. Limbo is just a theological opinion, but traditionalists often pretend that it is doctrine of the Church which every Catholic must accept, even though that's impossible to prove. But let's go with their opinion on this.

Given that most of the people who have ever lived have lacked baptism, and would therefore go to hell for original sin even if they never committed any sin of the flesh, you would think that more souls go to hell because of lack of baptism than for any other reason.

But according to Fatima, lack of water baptism isn't the reason most people are in hell, it's sins of the flesh. So could the first vision be used as a bit of evidence AGAINST the idea of Limbo?
It certainly seems possible.

UPDATE II:

According to the supposed "visionaries", Our Lady of Fatima said Portugal would always keep the Faith. In 2020, Portugal had a 94% divorce rate, so that aged like milk in the sun. 

Traditionalists: Eat Your Heart Out

Traditionalists claim to be fascinated with preserving the Great Tradition of the Church.
They alone understand what this constitutes.
Even the Popes don't understand it as fully as they do.

Anyone who is *REALLY* a traditionalist should be shouting for joy that the Ecumenical Patriarch will be attending this papal inauguration for the first time in nearly a thousand years. This is HUGE, this is ENORMOUS, this is an UNPRECEDENTED victory for traditionalists everywhere! They should be dancing in the streets and hugging each other over the incredible success that Pope Francis has achieved even with his inauguration! The East and the West breathing together in the same liturgy for the first time in a thousand years! Oh, my heavens, how loudly the bells should ring and the Te Deum sung!

Instead, what do we hear from "traditionalists"?

Crickets.

Or, worse, this constant carping whine, "He has to grow into the job, you know. He doesn't understand Tradition the way we do, therefore he's wrong. Pray for the Pope, that he can become more like us. We already know how he should handle the job, and look how badly he's muffing it out of the blocks! Why, oh WHY didn't the conclave choose me instead of him?"

Yes, the Church needs immense reform.
No, it ain't just the liberals that need reforming.

How Vatican I Destroyed the Church

I've been hearing a lot of caterwauling from "traditionalists" who claim that Pope Francis, and indeed all the Popes since Vatican II, were really sub-par, assuming they were even valid Popes. At the very least, the last three Popes have not been "friends of Tradition."

Well, if the last three Popes are not friends of Tradition, then neither were any of the bishops who voted in favor of the documents of Vatican II, because - in nearly every case - those documents were voted on favorably by nearly all the bishops present.

So, if essentially none of the bishops who attended VC II were in favor of Tradition, then the seminaries which formed those bishops are at least partially at fault. That means most of the seminaries in the world from about 1910 onward were opposed to Tradition. 

And if those seminaries were opposed to Tradition, that means the men who ran those seminaries between 1910 and 1960 were also, and almost everywhere, opposed to Tradition.

So, if Vatican II is at fault, we must conclude that Vatican I was the cause. 

And it makes sense, right?

I mean, we didn't NEED another council after the Council of Trent.
We hadn't had one for 300 years, and we had gotten on just fine.

You could even argue that God Himself stopped Vatican I because He sent in the Italian army to shut it down - the only ecumenical council that ever had such a thing happen. Clearly, God didn't like Vatican I. Note the angry thunder at the definition of papal infallibility: obviously, God was ticked off by that.

And we know that Vatican II saw itself as a continuation of Vatican I.

So, we can clearly conclude that Vatican I was a Freemason's dream, and Vatican II was the fruit of Vatican I, the Freemason's council. Pope St. Pius X was therefore not a valid Pope, being elected by a bunch of stinking Freemasons, and the SSPX is a heretical schismatic branch that pretends to hold to the teachings of the Council of Trent while actually insinuating their Masonic heresies into the minds of people who would otherwise be faithful Catholics.

We need to return to the last Pope who really embraced Tradition, Pope Pius IV (1559-1565). The innovations to the Roman Missal of 1570, introduced only a few short years after this Pope of happy memory had passed, were clearly a violation of the Tradition that Pius IV had tried so hard to preserve, and a violation of the teachings of the Council of Trent, which had just ended in 1563.

Clearly, the innovations of Pius V were merely a Masonic attempt to undermine the foundations of Catholic Faith by introducing a false Mass whose sacraments were, under even the most charitable interpretations, barely valid. As we can now see, the papal see can really be considered vacant since that unhappy time, etc., etc., etc.


You know that when Pope Pius V CHANGED the Roman Missal in 1570, just five years after the death of the previous pope and just seven years after the close of Trent, you can see the rot had already set in! Yes, it's true! If you study it, you can clearly see that the changes introduced by Pope Pius V were catastrophic to the Church. It's obvious. After all, following those changes, Protestantism wasn't destroyed, it FLOURISHED.

And flourishing Protestantism was clearly nourished by the enervating changes this obviously Masonic Pope, Pope Pius V, made to the hallowed Missal of 1570! The succeeding Popes were no friends to Tradition, since they never changed the Missal BACK to what it had been prior to 1570!

Oh, be still my heart!
Now it is all clear to me!

EVERY POPE since Pius IV has been a dirty Masonic Protestant, allowing the tentacles of the New Mass of 1570 to spread its slimy hooks into the minds of good Christians everywhere!

Oh, the humanity!

But we, we faithful few, we maintain the flame of Catholic Faith by adhering to the Missal of 1570, and rejecting this Novus Ordo Mass that followed the Council of Trent!


So, we can blame Pope Pius V for why we now are forced to labor under the "reign" of Pope Francis.

For those of you who are upset about Vatican II, I hope this little slice of history has been edifying.
I could use future postss to delve into the exact details of how the Masons and the Protestants insinuated their slimy tentacles into the barely valid Missal of 1570, how this Protestantized Mass undermined the Catholicity of the Faith, etc., but I have to stop now, as "My Favorite Martian" reruns are playing, and I don't want to miss decoding any of the secret messages that are embedded in the dialogue.

Pope Francis and Divine Love

Some people are complaining that Pope Francis is not showing the high culture, pomp and ceremony we have come to associate with the office of the Pope. They argue that he should celebrate Mass using Method B instead of Method A, that he doesn't have the right to use B instead of A. A is objectively better, you see, and he is depriving the whole of the Church by using B. It shows his immaturity, his lack of understanding of the gravity of his office, yada, yada, yada.

Now, wait just one freakin' minute.

The purpose of the Mass is to fill us with the sanctifying grace that will lead to our salvation. Through the Mass, and the reception of the Eucharist it swaddles, we are supposed to be so filled with the love of God and the love of God's image in man that this divine love cannot but overflow into the people around us.

Clearly, this man knows how to use the graces of the Ordinary Form of the Mass in *EXACTLY* that way. He has so tuned himself to the outflowing of grace from this liturgical form that it spills out into his life of poverty, his care for the poor, his humility. He is living EXACTLY what Pope Benedict described in his encyclicals. He allows the liturgy and the sacraments to change him, then he lives the change in his life.

What he is doing is THE POINT of the liturgy and the sacraments.

Now, some of us are complaining that the Mass he celebrates isn't sufficiently "sacred" for us. There's no Gregorian chant, not enough incense, he isn't facing the right way, ad nauseum.

But isn't this man limited to teaching what he knows? He clearly knows and makes use of the graces of the Ordinary Form of the Mass to a much greater extent than any of us make use of the graces of ANY Mass, either Ordinary Form or Extraordinary Form.

Yet we're all going to chastise him because his competence at using the grace of the liturgy is clearly better than ours, and he dares to exhibit this extraordinary competence by using a liturgical form at which he is expert, but that we don't happen to like?

That's called "making an idol of the Mass".
We're doing it.
And we damn well better stop.

Grace and Works

One of the reasons I write is to help me think through things.
I often write out ideas in order to get them in order, then throw away the writing and speak extemporaneously. I can speak well because I have written first.

In that spirit, I offer you this, which I just wrote and don't wish to lose quite yet.
At least, not until I have it more firmly in my thick skull.

Saving grace is a free gift from God which we can do nothing to merit, and which God gives freely to us. But, once we receive it, our whole being must necessarily respond to it. So, our mind responds to grace with faith, our body responds with works.

In liturgical theology, both faith and works are responses to grace.

Non-liturgical theology (such as Reformation theology) would say that the mind responds to grace with faith, and then the body responds to faith by exhibiting the fruits, which are works.

The difference is subtle, but profound. Liturgical Christians see human beings as having a two-fold direct response to grace, a mind-body response that is simultaneous. Non-liturgical Christians say there is only a one-fold response to grace: mind alone. Works are a response to faith, not grace.

Thus, in liturgical theology, man's works can actually participate in the life of grace directly, our whole being can participate in the very great promise of God, our whole being can be sharers in the divine nature.

In non-liturgical theology, only your mind can share in the divine nature; the works of the body, being a secondary response and not a primary response, do not share in the divine nature.

Heaven is living a total response to the divine nature.

So, Catholics believe we can live heaven on earth (thus, the Catholic saints), while non-Catholics don't believe that. Our understanding of what the resurrection of the dead means is much more profound as a result.

Pope Francis

As archbishop of Argentina:

• He did not wear bishop’s regalia,
• He used public transportation, travelling on the bus in a simple priest's cassock,
• Lived in small apartment, not bishop’s palace,
• In that apartment, he cared for an elder sickly bishop, and cooks for both of them himself,
• He wandered the slums, looking for people to catechize and baptize,
• Helped people flee Argentina's dictatorship,
• In 2000, he ordered all priests in Argentina to wear garments of penance to atone for sins committed during Argentina's military regime, 
• Said to be a capable administrator,
• Refused a Curial position with the plea, "Please, I would die in the Curia.",
• In 2001, he washed and kissed the feet of 12 AIDS patients.
• When elevated to cardinal, he forbad people to come and celebrate with him. He ordered them to give the plane fare they would have spent to the poor. 
• Rejects liberation theology
• He is believed to be close to Comunione e Liberazione (their site)  
• Hated clericalism
• Probably not a fan of the Traditional Mass
• Additional evidence of no love for the Traditional Mass
• "Arranged for Latin Mass to be offered within his diocese within 48 hours of Summorum Pontificum"
• He is not at all squeamish about attacking major political figures.
• His archbishop motto: "Miserable yet chosen"

Some quotes:

On abortion: “Abortion is the death penalty for the unborn”

On homosexual marriage: “Let's not be naïve, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

In 2010: "Homosexual adoption is discrimination against children."

"We should commit ourselves to 'eucharistic coherence', that is, we should be conscious that people cannot receive Holy Communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortion, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals."

In 2005: "Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you. No child should be deprived of the right to be born, the right to be fed, the right to go to school. No elderly person should be left alone, abandoned." 

St. Francis of Assisi is commonly acknowledged to have cleansed and saved a corrupt, wastrel Church bureaucracy by living a holy, simple life that caused everyone to flock to live his example. His simple life embarrassed the rich and pompous priests and bishops. Many began to imitate him, and so the Church was transformed.

Sandro Magister believes that Pope Francis is in the line of Benedict, trying to cleanse the Church of the influences of secular humanism.  This is the greatest struggle in the Church today.

We may have just seen the election of a saint.

The Big Lie

One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

                     ~ Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, Joseph Goebbels, 12 Jan 1941

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success

            ~"War Propaganda", volume 1, chapter 6, Mein Kampf (1925), Adolf Hitler

I recently discovered the consequences of this in the classroom. I was teaching an ethics class comprised entirely of military veterans. During the course of the conversation, I asked them "What percentage of the population do you think is homosexual?" 

In every case, each student put the percentage at above 30%. A few put it as high as 45%. I pointed out that the actual percentage was between 1% and 3%.

And that's when I got my surprise.

They uniformly (no pun intended) refused to believe me. They simply rejected the facts out-of-hand. "I know a lot more homosexuals than that," was the common response. 

I tried to reason with them, brought forward scientific, peer-reviewed studies, pointed out that the International Lesbian and Gay Association testified to this number themselves in their amicus curie brief to SCOTUS in Lawrence v. Texas just a couple of years ago. I spent 20 minutes trying to convince them that their estimates were off by a factor of at least ten. They were having none of it. 

"That percentage is too low," they replied, "People lie on questionnaires. They won't reveal their real sexuality."

"Oh," I replied, "so YOU know the truth, but none of the people who ran any of these surveys do?"

The answer, boiled down, was, "That's right. We know the truth. They don't."

So, why would a bunch of military vets refuse the facts of the matter? I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect it has something to do with a decade of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". From the soldiers point of view, the military emphasizes only what is necessary to survive in combat. That includes handling personal relationships so they don't interfere with combat duties. If the brass were so insistent on blowing up DADT into a big deal, then it MUST be the case that homosexuality was far more prevalent than just 1-3% of the population. DADT was nearly as big a deal as welcoming women into para-combat situations, and women make up 50% of the population, so...

Now we see the same thing happening in regards to guns in the hands of American citizens. Consider the response to this young man's pastry incident. A 7-year old took bites out of his poptart until it was in the shape of a gun, then pointed the pastry at his schoolmates and said "Pow." That was so serious that it merited a three-day suspension for the boy and, as icing on the cake, an offer of professional psychological counseling to any child who might have been traumatized by the event.

Make no mistake, because our opponents have not.
We are at war.

Splinters, Logs and Papal Fantasies

For reasons which are not entirely clear, some Catholics have chosen to make Mahatma Ghandi a surrogate for the new Pope, on the off-chance that said Pope is from the third world. The argument is both simple and simplistic: everyone likes the idea of Gandhi, but no one actually listens to what he said. Specifically, those darned liberals never actually listen to what Gandhi said about contraception. He was against it, you see, and those shameless Gandhi-promoters are for it, which demonstrates their shameless philosophical eclecticism.

Eclecticism is bad because it means you take just the pieces of a philosophy that you like and you leave behind the nasty bits that you don't like. Eclecticism, or "cafeteria philosophy" describes a large range of logical incoherence, including cafeteria Catholicism. And you know how logically solid the latter is.

Now, from what I can tell, we are supposed to get up in arms about this ignorance concerning Gandhi's anti-contraception attitudes. Why? Well, because his attack on contraception proves Gandhi was the Great Non-Christian Pro-Lifer, the man we Christians point to when we want to show off natural law. Gandhi, you see, is the Christian poster boy for how everyone who is open to natural law rejects contraception.

The message seems to be, "How dare those nasty MSM-types try to steal our poster boy!"

Yes.
Well.

Before we jump up and down, trying to extract the splinter from the eye of the MSM, let's take a look at the log in our own eye, shall we?

To put it bluntly, both liberals and Christians should avoid Mahatma Gandhi like the plague he is. Gandhi was a war-mongering ignoramus, and anyone who knows his story can tear apart the "Gandhi was right on contraception!" parade as easily as Joe Biden's wife takes out little fishies with her shotgun.

You see, Gandhi didn't just oppose contraception. He also opposed the use of penicillin. Yes, you read that correctly. When his own wife lay dying of an eminently treatable pneumonia, he refused to allow her to receive penicillin, despite the pleadings of his own son:

In August 1942, Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba, among others, were imprisoned by the British in Aga Khan Palace, near Poona. Kasturba had poor circulation and she’d weathered several heart attacks. While detained in the palace, she developed bronchial pneumonia. One of her four sons, Devadas, wanted her to take penicillin. Gandhi refused. He was okay with her receiving traditional remedies, such as water from the Ganges, but he refused her any medicines, including this newfangled antibiotic, saying that the Almighty would have to heal her.

“The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi” quotes him on February 19, 1944; “If God wills it, He will pull her through.” “Gandhi: A Life” adds this wisdom from the Mahatma: “You cannot cure your mother now, no matter what wonder drugs you may muster. She is in God’s hands now.” Three days later, Devadas was still pushing for the penicillin, but Gandhi shot back: “Why don’t you trust God?” Kasturba died that day. 

The next night, Gandhi cried out: “But how God tested my faith!” He told one of Kasturba’s doctors that the antibiotic wouldn’t have saved her and that allowing her to have it “would have meant the bankruptcy of my faith.”

But Gandhi’s faith wasn’t much of an obstacle a short time later when it was his ass on the line. A mere six weeks after Kasturba died, Gandhi was flattened by malaria. He stuck to an all-liquid diet as his doctors tried to convince him to take quinine. But Gandhi completely refused and died of the disease, right? No, actually, after three weeks of deterioration, he took the diabolical drug and quickly recovered. The stuff about trusting God’s will and testing faith only applied when his wife’s life hung in the balance.

Elsewhere he wrote, "the will to live proved stronger than the devotion to truth." He was fine with the Nazis killing Jews in the ghettoes. He hated blacks, supported apartheid, went on a hunger strike to prevent the British from treating the Untouchables as human beings with equal human rights, and encouraged Hindus to kill Muslims after the British left India.

It has been reported that Gandhi “half-welcomed” the civil war that broke out in the last days. Even a fratricidal “bloodbath” (Gandhi’s word) would be preferable to the British.

And suddenly Gandhi began endorsing violence left, right, and center. During the fearsome rioting in Calcutta he gave his approval to men “using violence in a moral cause.” How could he tell them that violence was wrong, he asked, “unless I demonstrate that nonviolence is more effective?” He blessed the Nawab of Maler Kotla when he gave orders to shoot ten Muslims for every Hindu killed in his state...it is not widely realized (nor will this film tell you) how much violence was associated with Gandhi’s so-called “nonviolent” movement from the very beginning. 

He adored the British soldier, was a sergeant-major in the British army, led troops into combat, won a military combat medal from the British for his valor in the Boer wars, and petitioned the Queen of England to be allowed to raise regiments of all-volunteer Indian soldiers to fight alongside the British in WW I.

We won't discuss at length his predilection for both giving and receiving enemas, the delight he took in sleeping with young, naked Indian girls or his encouragement of young boys and girls to bathe and sleep together, but even in mentioning these things, I hope you begin to see the problems inherent for any Westerner who wants to use Gandhi for any kind of moral model.

Yet when it comes to the teaching on contraception, Christians, especially Catholics, love to trot this man out as some kind of non-Christian guru, deeply in touch with the natural law.

Now I've taken hundreds of words to explain something that could have been summarized very easily. Both liberals and conservatives, Christians and atheists, like to name-drop people who will support their points. We leave out the unhappy facts that swirl around and obscure the blessed narrative we try to construct.

The liberal MSM has their Gandhi fantasies, we Christians have our Gandhi fantasies, and both sides will use their own fantasies to "illuminate" the deep-seated fantasy we each carry about the future pope. But none of it - none of it - is real.

I am no fan of the liberal establishment media. But it isn't entirely fair to beat the press up for doing exactly what we do. So let us all simply allow Gandhi to molder in his grave and get on with the business of life without him, shall we?

The Thomas Mirror

I just had a long conversation with a good friend about the new revelations coming out of Rome. Apparently, Pope Benedict XVI received a fully documented report on one or more homosexual rings of bishops and/or cardinals operating within the Vatican. These homosexual rings were affecting Vatican policy and praxis. According to the reports, Benedict resigned, in part, because he was overwhelmed by the extraordinary evil these homosexual rings represented.

My friend was concerned.

"Which priest," asked my friend, "can we trust anymore? How can a sodomite priest in a state of mortal sin actually pretend to give me a sacrament? How can I take the Body and Blood of Christ from a pervert?"

Good questions.
There are many aspects to the answer.

To the first question, the answer is "None of them. You can't trust any priest not to be a pervert, you can't trust any man to be as holy as he is held out to be. Ordination does NOT guarantee holiness, it does not protect a man against sinning. In fact, it makes him open to MORE temptations, more opportunity for sin, precisely because he becomes satan's special target by the fact of his ordination."

"But, to answer the second question, we have to realize that our trust is in the sacrament, not in the priest. I am saved by the sacraments, not by the priest. The sins of the priest are not communicated to the Body of Christ nor to me. He cannot sin for me, he cannot give me his sin or take away my grace, and he certainly can do nothing to God, present in every one of the sacraments. His sin is his own, to clutch to his breast as he descends into the horrors of hell. An active sodomite commits the most grievous sin of sacrilege when he consecrates the Eucharist or gives absolution. But his sin of sacrilege does not change the holiness of my encounter with Christ."

And as I spoke with my friend, it occured to me that we are all the Apostle Thomas now.

Remember Thomas?
He had lived for years with his friends, the apostles, all following Christ around Galilee, listening to Him, watching Him. He knew the kind of men his friends were. Jesus called His apostles many things, and almost never did He call them nice things.

When these men told Thomas, "We have seen the risen Christ!", Thomas recalled all of this.
He knew these men.
He had lived with them.
He knew the kind of men they were.

So when they told him this, Thomas responded in a reasonable way.
"Yeah, I don't believe you festering idiots, you cowards."

And how did Christ respond?

"Thomas, come and put your fingers in my side. See? It really is me.
Yes, I know the people who told you I was risen are cowards and idiots. I don't disagree with you. You should have believed them anyway. Not because THEY are trustworthy. They aren't. But because you knew ME."

"Thomas, you walked with Me.
You knew I could do it.
You knew I had the power to do it.
Yeah, they are idiots, but you should have trusted them because you trusted ME."

I don't trust that the priest is holy.
In fact, there have been occasions when, given a choice of priests, I have deliberately chosen to go to confession to the priest who had been unjust to me, because I knew I had to trust Christ, not the priest.

We encounter Christ in the sacraments, not the priest.
And insofar as we encounter the priest in the sacrament, the priest has injected himself into a relationship he has no business in. The priest is superfluous, unimportant, essential only in the sense that God chooses to deliver Himself to me through the priest.

The sacraments matter.
The priest, and whatever sins he commited, do not.

Oh, yes, he shouldn't have committed those sins.
Absolutely the Church should be cleansed of the sodomites - you'll get no disagreement from me on that. It is a sin for a bishop to ordain even a non-active homosexual.

But, ultimately, the Church is about my relationship with Christ via the sacraments. The priest is the janitor in the house of God. His service is important, but the house doesn't exist to keep the janitor employed. The house exists for me to meet and live with my Spouse, the living Christ.

We are not meant to look through a mirror, darkly.
We must look past the idiots, even the idiots in our morning mirrors, so that we can gaze upon the face of God.

Hilarious

Remember the Oath of Fidelity to the Magisterium that all Catholic theology professors are supposed to make, but almost none ever do?

Remember how strongly the bishops enforced that rule (cough, cough, cough)?

Well, it looks like the cardinals will get to try it out for themselves. The Pope is making some changes to the ritual for the installation of a new Pope:

One of the most visual changes, he said, would be the restoration of the public “act of obedience” in which each cardinal present at the pope’s inaugural Mass comes forward and offers his allegiance.

Why is it that when I read this, I can't stop laughing?

Peoria's Pea-brain Protocol

I was recently asked about the role of emergency contraception in cases of rape. Can a Catholic accept such a thing? The answer is a resounding "NO!", although the USCCB is rather confused on the issue.

As CatholicCulture.com website says:

Here's what the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Institutions (ERDs) from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops say about it:

"A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum."

A hospital in the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, developed a protocol for Catholic hospitals that face this situation. Called (appropriately enough) the Peoria Protocol, it was put together by the staff at OSF St. Francis Medical Center and theologians in the diocese working under then-Bishop John J. Myers. 

According to this theory, then, since the woman hasn't ovulated yet, the man's sperm can be considered an attacker, like bacteria. Since you can take prophylactic antibiotics, you can take anti-spermicide or anti-ovulatory agents. According to this theory, it isn't considered contraception since the sperm is in "attack" mode - I guess they have little green berets on or something.

The whole argument is absurd, and the monsignor who was instrumental in developing it (I knew him and worked with him on the chancery staff a few years after the protocol was developed), apparently neglected to consider the theology involved.

The only way a human life comes into existence is through God creating and infusing a human soul. If He doesn't do that, it doesn't matter how many sperm make it to the egg - no fertilization, no new life, will exist. Human life is the combination of soul and body. No soul, no human life, no embryonic growth, no way to implant, yada, yada, yada.

Now consider what would happen if no spermicide or anti-ovulatory agent is used and God never got around to creating and infusing the human soul. What would be the result? There would be no result. The sperm would do no harm to the woman. None. They would just curl up, die and disappear. They might make it to the egg, but without a human soul, what difference would that make? None. The sperm couldn't fertilize the egg in such a way that a new human life would appear. 

So, you can certainly say the rapist or whoever is attacking the woman. You can certainly try to prevent that attack. But you can NEVER say the sperm is attacking anything, because the sperm is not capable of causing any damage. The worst it does, in conjunction with God, is cause a human life to begin.

And if we're going to call the creation of a new human soul and a new human life an attack, then God is a serial rapist.

So, the Peoria protocol is complete crap, as I said. Human life is always a gift, unless you get in front of this particular monsignor and the bishops foolish enough to follow him, in which case human life is sometimes the combination of an embryo and God gang-raping a woman. 

But this is what passes for high-falutin' theological scholarship nowadays, don'tcha'know.

Sauce for the Gander

Here's a shocker.
More men then women report being subject to domestic violence.
Yes, you read that correctly.

The CDC 2012 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that each year as many men as women are victims of intimate-partner physical violence (Tables 4.1, 4.2 at p. 41). Per capita, more men than women each year are victims of psychological aggression. (see Tables 4.9, 4.10 at p. 46).

Prevalence Among Women (p. 39) More than one-third of women in the United States (35.6% or approximately 42.4 million) have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime (Table 4.1)

Prevalence Among Men (p. 39)Nearly half (45.3%) of American Indian or Alaska Native men and almost 4 out of every 10 Black and multiracial non-Hispanic men (38.6% and 39.3%, respectively) in the United States reported experiencing rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime (Table 4.4).

The Mayo Clinic recognizes the problem. Women are more likely to be "domestic terrorists".

The findings revealed just as many women as men could also be classed as abusive, coupled with controlling behavior with serious levels of threats, intimidation, and physical violence. Women were more likely to verbally and physically aggressive to their partners than men. “This study found that women demonstrated a desire to control their partners and were more likely to use physical aggression than men. “It wasn’t just pushing and shoving,” said Bates, Medical Xpress reported. Some of the survey respondents circled boxes for things like beating up, kicking, and even threatening to use a weapon. (emphasis added)

Time Magazine recognizes the problem.

Family and intimate relationships—the one area feminists often identify as a key battleground in the war on women—are also an area in which women are most likely to be violent, and not just in response to male aggression but toward children, elders, female relatives or partners, and non-violent men, according to a study published in the Journal of Family Violence....

...sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire found that women were just as likely as men to report hitting a spouse and men were just as likely as women to report getting hit. The researchers initially assumed that, at least in cases of mutual violence, the women were defending themselves or retaliating. But when subsequent surveys asked who struck first, it turned out that women were as likely as men to initiate violence—a finding confirmed by more than 200 studies of intimate violence.

So, now that women are combat-ready, why is everyone is making such a stink about renewing the Violence Against Women Act? And if combat-ready women need this kind of a law, then where is the Violence Against Men Act?

Update:

Extensive Research: Women Initiate Domestic Violence More than Men, Men Under-report It.

1. “Analyzing data gathered from 11,370 respondents, researchers found that “half of [violent relationships] were reciprocally violent. In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more that 70% of the cases.”

Are We Due For A Council?

Given that the next pope will almost certainly not be personally associated with the Vatican Council II, I raised the question of whether the next pope might lead us into a council.

The question is not purely speculative. Let's take a look at the numbers.

Council	EndYear (AD)	Length (weeks)	Interval (Years)
1st Council of Nicaea	325	4
1st Constantinople	381	8	56
Ephesus	431	6	50
Council of Chalcedon	451	4	20
2nd Constantinople	553	4	102
3rd Constantinople	681	44	128
2nd Nicaea	787	8	106
4th Constantinople	870	20	83
1st Lateran	1123	4	253
2nd Lateran	1139	2	16
3rd Lateran	1179	2	40
4th Lateran	1215	3	36
1st Lyons	1245	3	30
2nd Lyons	1274	10	29
Vienne	1312	30	38
Constance	1418	130	106
Basel-Ferrerra-Florence	1445	728	27
5th Lateran	1517	216	72
Trent	1563	936	46
1st Vatican	1870	44	307
2nd Vatican	1965	164	95
		Average	81

People frequently say that the "average time between councils" is about a century, but this is highly misleading. In order to get this number, they use what is called the "arithmetic mean" to calculate what most people think of as the "average" of the intervals between the councils.

But the arithmetic mean or average is only appropriate to use in a data set that has no outliers, no data that is significantly above or below the norm. As can be easily seen, this data set has two ENORMOUS outliers - the distance between the Councils of 4th Constantinople and 2nd Lateran (253 years), and the distance between Trent and the 1st Vatican Council (307 years). I've highlighted those two intervals in red in the data set. Every other interval is at least half the 253 years between , several are only a quarter of that interval, three are only around 10% of that interval. Those two big gaps, totaling 560 years out of 2000, are really skewing the data.

So what do we do to fix this?
We use the geometric mean. As ehow says:

Statisticians use arithmetic means to represent data with no significant outliers. This type of mean is good for representing average temperatures, because all the temperatures for January 22 in Chicago will be between -50 and 50 degrees F. A temperature of 10,000 degrees F is just not going to happen. Things like batting averages and average race car speeds are also represented well using arithmetic means.

Geometric means are used in cases where the differences among data points are logarithmic or vary by multiples of 10. Biologists use geometric means to describe the sizes of bacterial populations, which can be 20 organisms one day and 20,000 the next. Economists can use geometric means to describe income distributions. You and most of your neighbors might make around $65,000 per year, but what if the guy up on the hill makes $65 million per year? The arithmetic mean of the income in your neighborhood would be misleading here, so a geometric mean would be more suitable. (emphasis added)

That's exactly the situation we have here.  About one-quarter of the values in the data set vary by a factor of ten from the largest value in the data set. So, the arithmetic mean is really not the appropriate way to calculate this, the geometric mean is. When we apply the geometric mean, we find the interval between councils is actually about 60 years (59.806, if you want it to 3 decimal places).

Pope Benedict is leaving office on Feb 28, 2013, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II (11 Oct 1962). Of the 21 ecumenical councils of the Church, 12 of them occurred less than 60 years after the previous council, 11 of them (just over half) occurred within 50 years of the previous council. This matches pretty well with what the geometric mean tells us.

In other words, we have exhausted the time interval that the Church has typically had between councils. Statistically speaking, we are definitely due for another council.

This, of course, raises a second question: if another council is called, how long will it last?

I've normalized the length of the councils by expressing the length in weeks, instead of the more common months and years. This makes it easier to compare the various council lengths.

The printing press was invented in 1453. Ignoring Vatican I, which was invaded by the Italian army and forced to an early end, no council in the last 500 years has lasted less than 130 weeks - that's over two years in session. Apparently, when it is easier to record the council, the council length extends to accommodate that technological advance.

Alternatively, you might argue that after the Pope voluntarily left office in 1415, the length of councils suddenly jumped to a new and sustained high. Is this causation or merely correlation? I don't know.

But, putting that aside, why would a council be called? There are a lot of reasons. Demographic winter now affects about 40% of the countries in the world, and nearly all the richest, most technologically advanced countries. Islam is a continuing threat. Growing rates of apostasy in the richest countries are a plague on all Christianity. There are the internal problems posed by the SSPX, the appropriate way to handle the new Anglican Ordinariate, the problem of creating a better coordinated response to corruption within the hierarchy. There are doctrinal problems created by the post-VC II catechetical crisis, and the problem of Modernism, which Vatican I was intended to address, but which has never really received adequate treatment.

Do any of these problems rise to the level that requires an ecumenical council? That's hard to say. We seem to be living in a new era. Never before has a Pope left office for reasons of poor health. If the Pope could leave office for a reason never before given, a council might be called for a reason never before deemed important enough to do so. I don't know the answers. I'm just raising the questions.

So, there you have it.
We might not just get a new pope, but a shiny new council to go with him.

Something Old, Something New

Benedict's resignation has set the Catholic (and non-Catholic world) a-twirl. Here, in no particular order are some thoughts to consider as Benedict's two-week notice runs its course.

1) Whether for good or ill, the two-week notice has given the cardinals a running start on electing a successor. This is certainly going to be at the top of a voting cardinal's conversation starters when he communicates with his confreres before they enter into the external silence of the conclave. Will this time period be useful in speeding the process along or will it create and harden voting blocs, making the process more difficult?
We haven't done this in 600 years, so anybody's guess is good on that subject.

2) Like anyone else, cardinals vote their issues. That is, they talk amongst themselves about the problems each one has, and each takes notice of how common any particular problem is amongst the others. Then they consider who among them is best equipped to handle whatever the most common problems are.

From where I'm sitting, the Church faces two pressing and inter-related problems: the demographic winter that most countries have now clearly entered and the problem of Islam. Since most Islamic countries have had decreasing fertility, but still show fertility rates in the 2.5-4.0 range, it is clear that world-wide Islamic populations will have a demographic momentum that most advanced countries no longer have. Meanwhile, most technologically advanced countries are slowly (or not so slowly) aging out.

Japan is actually losing population each year. It is living the future of the rest of the world. Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. 25% of the conclave cardinals are Italian.

Demography might not have been on the plate a decade ago, but it certainly is now. Similarly, Islam can no longer be dismissed as a passing fad. More and more cardinals will be remarking on these two issues to one another. That is going to affect the voting.

Within the last century, three Popes were clearly chosen in order to deal with specific geographic problems: Pope Pius XII vs. the Nazis, Pope John Paul II vs. Communism, Pope Benedict XVI and Europe. Will the new pope be a member of that group? Once he is elected, a study of his background will yield an answer to that question.

3) Vatican II continues to recede into the rearview mirror. Pope Benedict XVI was the last pope who had a personal stake in that particular council. The next pope, whoever he is, won't be personally or emotionally attached to it, at least not to the extent that a peritus like Benedict was. I've long argued that Vatican II is a rather unimportant council in the grand scheme of things, and that it is destined to be remembered as Fourth Constantinople or Fifth Lateran is - that is, in another century or so, it won't be remembered at all because its "reforms" turned out to be fairly useless. The next pope will put it quietly to bed.

That leaves a host of unresolved problems, of course. The SSPX, the Novus Ordo liturgy, the catechetics crash, the Anglican Ordinariate, these are all things that require greater consideration.

If you throw out the unusual interval between the Council of Trent and Vatican I, ecumenical councils are generally separated by a period of about 50 years. Technically we are overdue for another general council.  Are we likely to get one with the next pope? It seems unlikely, but then, Vatican II wasn't exactly on anyone's radar screen when John XXIII swept into office.

The Church seems to do best when there's a council once every couple of generations. It gives all the bishops a chance to sit down and really consider what's going on in their respective dioceses, get a little perspective on the world.

We haven't had a papal resignation in 600 years. In the entire history of the Church, there hasn't been more than a handful of such resignations. Is the resignation good or bad? That I can't say. All I can do is recall a verse:

"Look", says the Lord, "I am doing something new."

Yes.
Yes, indeed.

It Doesn't Take A Weatherman

As our current American administration used to say, it doesn't take a weatherman to know the wind is changing.

The last Pope to resign did so in 1415 to end the Great Western Schism, when three different men were all claiming the papacy. Two were anti-Popes, so the real one resigned in order to allow the Council of Constance to resolve what had become an extremely nasty political situation.

That is, historically, the only real reason a Pope has ever resigned: to resolve a really nasty problem somewhere. Now, maybe this time is different.

Maybe.
But maybe not.

When Germany was at the height of its power in 1939, the man who was elected Pope had been papal nuncio to Germany for ten years. He understood the political situation in Germany as well as anyone alive. He was also instrumental in undermining Nazi authority and influence.

When the Soviet Union was at the height of its power, the Church elected a Pope who had lived under both Nazi and Soviet domination. Pope John Paul II (Cardinal Kaqrol Wojtyla) was the first non-Italian in four hundred years and the only Polish citizen ever to be elected to the papacy. He understood the Soviet Union as well as anyone alive. He, Reagan and Thatcher helped engineer the destruction of the Soviets.

Between 2004 and 2007, Europe's Eurozone reached its height as several former Soviet satellites entered the union and joined the Euro. As Europe rocketed forward economically, the conclave elected the first German pope in centuries. Only nine of previous 266 Popes could claim German heritage. Hadrian IV (1522-1523) hailed from Holland, Stephen IX (1057-1058) from the French-German Lorraine region, and Victor II (1055-1057), was a Swabian. Again, the pick proved prescient. Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict. The conclave turned out to have chosen a man with a superb understanding of Germany, Europe's most important partner, to stand at the helm of the Church as the European Union began its current course of self-destruction.

In short, in three out of the last six elections during the course of the last century, the cardinals have correctly predicted where the next world crisis would take place.

It would appear that the current major threat is Islam. As has been noted elsewhere, Muslim oil producing nations are probably at the peak of their power right now, as oil revenues are likely to start dropping with the invention of fracking and the discovery of shale oil reserves world-wide.

If the next Pope hails from a Muslim nation, if the next Pope understands and has lived under Islam for a significant period of his life, his election may signal a significant shift in the world's power equations.

Islam, this may be the end for you.

Learning To Swim in Ice Water

Reading this essay, I was struck by the hypocrisy of it all.
These teachers cling bitterly to the gun-free zones, their religion.
This essay is the difference between lefties and conservatives.

It is the difference between a pet owner and a parent.

First, notice this man has a pet, he has no children.
Why?

Because pets never grow up, pets never learn enough to be mature and "wild", pets are always subject to the benevolent dictatorship of the master, pets must have neutered sex, pets can never be free.

Why is the country moving to the left?

Perhaps because America has four times as many pet owners as parents.
Whether it is a cause,  a result or merely a correlation, the connection is significant.
Parents raise their children with the sure knowledge that these children will one day be independent, thinking adults, mature enough to make their own decisions, live their own lives. Parents who have children that may never gain such independence, due to physical or mental disabilities, experience sorrow and loss as a result of that knowledge. Parents don't want pet children, they want adults who were once their children.

Parents teach their children about violence because the world is a place of violence.
The classroom is a mirror of the world.
The classroom is a place of violence.

Always has been.

Teachers do violence to the ideas that the students carry into the classroom.
There is no other way to teach.

Teachers are fine with violence, the idea of violence.
As long as it is TEACHERS who are wreaking the violence upon the student.

This particular instructor is apparently upset by the idea that teachers aren't the omnipotent, benevolent dictators he thought they were. He isn't what he thought he was. He doesn't want his illusion shattered.

He is the only adult in the room, everyone else is a child.
He is the only one who can be counted on not to throw a tantrum, his students cannot be so trusted.
It is HIS religion that must be protected, and to hell with anyone else's.

Islam has suicide bomb jockeys, and this guy is their soulmate, willing to blow up the classroom by leaving rather than have actual discussions with other actual adults.

He doesn't want his students to teach him about the world by tracking bits of it in.
He doesn't want reality tracking into his classroom, he wants the Ivory Tower (tm).

Yes.
And people in hell want ice water.
Welcome to the Real, kid.

Notre Dame Zombies

Here's a question for the moral theologians among you.
"there is much concern over the direction Notre Dame has taken, especially with the diminishing number of Catholic faculty as well as the scandalous honoring of President Barack Obama in 2009, "

Let's say there were a pro-abort politician out there who had a policy on cleaning up the number of dead cats on the street. I *LOVED* the dead cat policy.

I want to donate to make sure the pro-abort politician is elected. I don't like his pro-abort policies, but I'm fascinated with his dead cat policy. I want to make a substantial donation: $200,000. But I don't have that kind of money.

So, I took out a $200,000 loan gave it all to the pro-abort politician, and spent the next 20 years of my life working to repay the loan.

Formal cooperation in evil occurs when the organization freely and directly participates in the objectionable action of another agent and/or shares in the object of that agent’s intention, either for its own sake or as a means to some other goal.

Because of the loan, I have now essentially dedicated my life's work to making sure the pro-abort politician can accomplish his goals. Is that moral?

How is a Notre Dame student, who gives ND at least $200,000 or more via tuition, different?

Homosexuality and Sharia

Riddle me this: how is homosexuality like being Muslim?
Answer: Neither one allows you to convert away.

In Islam, those who commit apostasy can be legally killed by anyone. 
Homosexuals deny that anyone can stop being homosexual.
Anyone who converts to heterosexuality is considered dead by society.

Whatever happened to the sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship, into which government was not supposed to enter? Or has that all changed with Obamacare?

Just another reminder that leftists and Muslims are cut from the same cloth.

Why Outlawing Guns Will Work

You see, havnig the really smart people get together and agree to outlaw guns will absolutely work.

As an historian, I know it will work because the Kellogg Briand Pact of 1928 worked so well.

You see, the Kellogg Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, outlawed war. Just about every nation on earth signed it, with France, Germany and the United States the first ones to ratify it.

Notice that we have had zero armed international conflicts since that 1928 pact.
QED.