Creationism and Geocentrism

Recently, our pastor announced that the parish was inviting in Hugh Owen, defender of Creationism and main speaker for the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, to give a parish talk on what he and Mr. Owen consider to be a doctrine of the Church. Given what I have written in the past, this piqued my interest. Much as I would have loved a personal conversation on this topic, I am unable to attend the talk due to a previous engagement. So, I sent his institute a question on their contact form:

Do you teach geocentrism as well? It is attested to by all the Doctors of the Church, so I'm certainly hoping you do.

This was his reply:

Please forgive me for taking so long to write back to you.

Many of our members are geocentrists, but not all, mainly because we have concentrated our efforts on educating people about the doctrine of creation rather than the geocentric controversy.  However, all of us who have looked into the matter agree with you and do not shy away from saying so when the topic arises.

One of the main tenets of traditional Catholic theology that has been almost completely abandoned in our time is the distinction between the order of creation and the natural order of providence which only began when the work of creation was finished with the creation of Adam and Eve.  Atheistic and theistic evolutionism are both based on the false premise that one can extrapolate from the natural order of providence in which we live all the way back to the beginning of creation--and that is false.  Thus, all forms of evolutionism are based on a fundamental error.  The relations among the Earth, the sun and the planets in the solar system on the other hand is a part of the natural order of providence and is thus a legitimate object of study for the natural scientist.  This is one of the main reasons why we do not place the Church's traditional position on geocentrism in the same category as her dogmatic teaching on creation which concerns things which are beyond the legitimate ken of the natural sciences.

Please keep the Kolbe Center in your prayers.

                                   Yours in Christ through the Immaculata,

                                                        Hugh Owen

So, apparently the existence of human persons is not part of the natural order of providence, while the relations among heavenly objects is part of the natural order of providence. 

Now, if we "cannot extrapolate from the natural order of providence in which we live all the way back to the beginning of creation", then presumably we cannot extrapolate a Big Bang, nor any universe that is not geocentric. But he also says that the relationship between heavenly bodies is "a legitimate object of study"...

So which is it? If we can study the relationship between heavenly bodies, then it would be possible to do so all the way back to the beginning of creation. Certainly the planets were created before Adam and Eve. But he denies that we can go all the way back to "the beginning of creation." Now, what constitutes the beginning? Does he mean "Let There Be Light"? Or does he count the whole "six days" of creation as one unit, and therefore mean we can only go back to just after the creation of Adam and Eve? If the latter, then when it comes to studying the relationship of heavenly bodies, he is saying both "no" and "yes" in the same answer. 

And, notice, the question I asked concerned geocentrism - the question of whether the earth is at the center of the universe, not just at the center of the solar system (which, if Mr. Owen were correct about geocentrism, would render his "solar system" phrase itself erroneous, but I digress), so his answer is somewhat contradictory. His response seems to imply that his members teach the earth is at the center of the "solar system" and at the center of the universe, simultaneously. If so, this is a brand-new model. Even Tycho Brahe didn't attempt to prove both could be simultaneously true.

Finally, if he does teach geocentrism as well as creationism, why not proudly put both on the website so that the necessary distinctions between natural order of providence and the supernatural order of providence could be made clearly? Why would I have to send him an e-mail to discover that he teaches geocentrism as well as creationism? 

Here is my reply:

I'm afraid you mistake me, sir.
I agree with neither creationism nor geocentrism.
However, I *did* very much hope that you were logically consistent enough to recognize that to insist on creationism is necessarily to insist on geocentrism, for the foundation of one subsumes the other.

I just wanted your response so I could make it public. As you aver, none of your group shies away from saying so when the topic arises. Thus, I am somewhat saddened that your institute does not publish your geocentric views anywhere on your site, at least not as far as I can see. If you do have a link to a page on your site where you make your full position clear, that would be most helpful.

If you would like to have a public conversation on the topic, you may feel free to reply on this website:
http://skellmeyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/creationism-and-geocentrism.html 

 Thank you for your reply!

Steve Kellmeyer

Pope Francis and Hot-Buttons

"In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships."

The sentences above represent the heart of what Pope Francis has to say. These are what makes sense of everything else.  

“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. The confessor, for example, is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ‘This is not a sin’ or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.

When talking of confessors, as he does above, he gets specific. In the passage above, he tells us why he is wary of the traditionalist, the rigorist. He also tells us why he defrocked an Argentinian priest for promoting homosexual marriage. 

He is not denying the moral or dogmatic teachings of the Church. He's saying that the current methods for trying to help people embrace these teachings do not work:

The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

He's absolutely correct in every detail. But he isn't finished:

A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. [emphasis added]There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.

But that is nothing compared to this:

The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the world is—these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within the church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure conservation, as a defense. No: God is to be encountered in the world of today.

“God manifests himself in historical revelation, in history. Time initiates processes, and space crystallizes them. God is in history, in the processes. [emphasis added]

“We must not focus on occupying the spaces where power is exercised, but rather on starting long-run historical processes. We must initiate processes rather than occupy spaces. God manifests himself in time and is present in the processes of history. This gives priority to actions that give birth to new historical dynamics. And it requires patience, waiting.

...in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. [emphasis added] It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. 

There is too much brilliance in this interview. I can quote no more. You must read it.

UPDATE:
And for those who think Pope Francis has gone soft on life issues, read today's remarks.
Here's a similar link.

Keep in mind, this man wants union with the East. Eastern Catholics permit contraception. How can he get the EO bishops to at least privately admit that contraception is a bad idea? Well, first he has to give them public reason to talk to him. The whole interview revolved around his openness to dialogue.

The Pope isn't just talking to Americans or Europeans. He is always talking to the whole world. He knows that, even if we forget it sometimes.

Scriptural FourSight Scripture Project Launched!

My Scriptural FourSight Catholic Scripture project has finally launched!

Please take a look and contribute if you can.

Child Abuse in California

California has now passed a law lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse claims. The law specifically retains the statute of limitations for public schools and other government entities. The government can abuse your children, private citizens cannot.

Why not lift the exclusion for public schools as well?

Here's your answer.
You should especially like this sub-link, where the GAO finds sexual abuse by public schools and subsequent hiding of the abuse to be a NATIONAL problem.

According to a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, in compliance with the 2002 "No Child Left Behind" act signed into law by President Bush, between 6 percent and 10 percent of public school children across the country have been sexually abused or harassed by school employees and teachers.

Here's The Economist on the New York habit of "passing the trash" - covering up teacher sexual abuse, along with the money quote:

A 1995 study of 225 cases in which pupils were sexually abused by teachers or other staff members found that in only 1% of the cases did the school-district superintendent attempt to revoke the culprit's teaching licence.

Education Week ran a six-part story on it in 1998, with an update in 2003.

Here's a DOE synthesis study

That's what I found on Google in 60 seconds.
There is a lot more.
Just google "passing the trash sexual abuse public schools" or "sexual abuse public schools".

The Angler Fishes For Atheists

The Pope wrote a letter to an atheist that seems to have stirred up the secular press, and no few number of traditionalists. The full text of the letter can be found here.

It's a brilliant reply to an avowed atheist.
Francis doesn't begin by refuting the atheist, he begins by thanking the atheist for being willing to even discuss it. He follows by giving a personal witness of why the Faith matters to him. 

He then moves the conversation from a discussion of the points the atheist is concerned with to the central problem: Who is Jesus?

Only after he deals with this central question does he move to deal with the questions the atheist raises. The heart of the answer he gives the atheist lies in this section:

First of all, you ask if the God of the Christians forgives those who do not believe and do not seek faith. Given that - and this is fundamental - God's mercy has no limits if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart, the issue for those who do not believe in God is in obeying their own conscience. In fact, listening and obeying it, means deciding about what is perceived to be good or to be evil. The goodness or the wickedness of our behavior depends on this decision.

Second of all, you ask if the thought, according to which no absolute exists and therefore there is no absolute truth, but only a series of relative and subjective truths is a mistake or a sin. To start, I would not speak about, not even for those who believe, an "absolute" truth, in the sense that absolute is something detached, something lacking any relationship. Now, the truth is a relationship! This is so true that each of us sees the truth and expresses it, starting from oneself: from one's history and culture, from the situation in which one lives, etc. This does not mean that the truth is variable and subjective. It means that it is given to us only as a way and a life. Was it not Jesus himself who said: "I am the way, the truth, the life"? In other words, the truth is one with love, it requires humbleness and the willingness to be sought, listened to and expressed. Therefore we must understand the terms well and perhaps, in order to avoid the oversemplification of absolute contraposition, reformulate the question.

The Pope hits on precisely the problem: it is one of definition. In most cases, the atheist denies God because he misunderstands the meanings of the words being used in the conversation. Correct definitions, a correct understanding of exactly what is under discussion, is crucially important to see the crucis, the Cross.

And here the Pope merely repeats what the Church has always taught, what St. Paul wrote down in Romans 2:15, "Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another." It is also a fine explication of the essence of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1950-1960, especially #1956.

God is Truth. Those who seek the truth, those who doubt the existence of God because they are afraid of being fooled, seek the Idol of the Unknown Name that Paul describes in the Areopagus. They know not Christ's name, but they know the importance of truth, the critical importance of seeking out the truth. And, as the Church teaches, it is their relentless search for truth that may save them. 

The FSSP and the Sadducees

A recent blog post describes the teaching of an FSSP priest who asserts that aborted babies do not go to heaven. The FSSP priest's erroneous teaching led the blogger to an extended, and unfortunately erroneous, meditation on why the lie taught by this "good priest" would be true.

The crux of the argument: while baptism of blood and desire exists, both require the use of reason. According to the priest's erroneous line of reasoning, since infants have not the use of reason, aborted infants cannot receive either baptism of blood or baptism of desire.

Furthermore, according to this priest's version of the Feeneyite heresy, if we were to assume that such babies were baptized by blood via their abortion, that would make abortion into a sacrament. The unfortunate blogger, a good man dazed by this dizzying line of clerical absurdity, labels the priest's reductio ad absurdem argument "irrefutable". 

Many unfortunate Catholics have fallen under the spell of this particular priest. Even though the blogger takes care to explicitly deny that this nonsense is dogma, his use of the word "irrefutable" implies that the blogger thinks the priest's false line of reasoning is of doctrinal quality.

Unfortunately for both the FSSP priest who teaches this error and the poor Catholics who follow his frequently erroneous reasoning, the liturgy of the Church specifically and explicitly denies the priest's entire line of thought.

Consider the feast of Childermas, the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. Note the word "Holy" in the title of the Feast. Childermas celebrates the entry into heaven of those infants slaughtered by Herod as he fruitlessly sought to murder the King of Kings. 

Those infants had not the use of reason. Their only virtue was to be slaughtered for a saviour whom even their own parents did not yet know, yet every irrational infant slaughtered by Herod and baptized only by his own life blood is celebrated by the Church as a saint in the heavenly choir.

Obviously, martyrdom is not a sacrament, yet according to the eternal liturgy of the Church, martyrdom sends people to heaven, even people who have not the use of reason. In fact, martyrdom is so effective at sending infants to heaven, that even the infant's parents need not know anything of Christ in order for the infant, slaughtered as a mute witness, to attain the heavenly kingdom.

Now, if we followed the "very good priest's" logic, we would be forced to conclude that infanticide is a sacrament. But I bet it isn't.

Like infanticide, like abortion, martyrdom is not to be sought, for it may send the one who murders the martyr to hell. Yet martyrdom may also bring about conversion in the murderer, and for this reason, the saint who is faced with martyrdom may embrace it, even embrace it joyfully, as long as he offers his death for the conversion of the one who murders him. 

We don't know what happens to innocents who die unbaptized. But the liturgy of Childermas gives us a solid hope, as does the infallible teaching of the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium. Any priest who says otherwise contradicts the infallible Church. Such a priest may be many things, but "good" is not one of them. 

When Jesus faced the Sadducees, he faced a group of men who accepted only the Torah as holy Scripture. Much as many traditionalists adhere only to the EF Mass and reject the OF Mass as somehow false or contaminated, the Sadducees refused to accept the prophets or the writings as inspired. Only the eternal Scripture of the Torah was good enough for them. 

Jesus used quotes from their own Torah to refute them, and admonished them by saying, "You are quite wrong. You know neither Scripture nor the power of God." 

Similarly, the Church, via Her liturgy, rebukes this "good priest" and uses the very EF liturgy he embraces to demonstrate his error. He is quite wrong. He apparently knows neither liturgy nor the power of God. 



UPDATE:
In fact, the CCC specifically denies that Limbo exists.

CCC 1283 With respect to children who have died without Baptism, the liturgy of the Church invites us to trust in God's mercy and to pray for their salvation.

It is a condemned heresy to say that you can pray for those who are in hell. Limbo, as is commonly envisioned, is the first circle of hell. If Limbo existed, then the CCC would be teaching heresy. The CCC is promulgated by an Apostolic Constitution, the highest expression of the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium. Thus, Limbo does not exist.

Syrian Chemical Weapons and Obamacare

Syria is one of five nations that never signed the Chemical Weapons Ban Treaty.
The Geneva Convention on which it is based only bans the use of chemical weapons by one state against another, it never actually banned the use of chemical weapons within a country's own borders against internal opposition.

So, Obama will bomb Syria for not having violated a treaty it never signed.

With ObamaCare, Americans are bombed with a tax for not having paid for insurance we never wanted.

Is there a pattern here, or is it just me?

The Mystery of Chemical Weapons

OK, I'm officially mystified. I mean, I would be if I wasn't sure that Obama was a terrorist sympathizer at the very least.

But, Obama's response to chemical weapons use in Syria isn't what mystifies me. It's everyone else's response.

Everyone is yelping about this international chemical weapons ban being violated. Nobody seems willing to admit that the use of chemical weapons in this instance is not really the problem.

Now, let's leave aside the fact that no one really knows which side used the chem-weapons. Reports conflict. The Syrian rebels may very well have gassed their own people, either via an accident they were having with THEIR chemical weapons, or on purpose to make Assad look bad. They've done this kind of thing in the past - Muslims think nothing of using their own children to blow up the opposition.

But that's not the point.
Everyone is upset that civilians, especially children, were killed with chemical weapons. Since when did we become concerned about using the correct kind of violence when killing civilians, even civilian children, in a war?

Both Assad AND the rebels killed children with bullets and high explosives. Is this somehow saner and cleaner than killing them with chem-weapons? I don't get the logic - either way, you end up with a corpse.

The international chemical weapon ban was a ban on use against SOLDIERS. The idea is that we retain at least a modicum of chivalry in warfare. If you're going to fight somebody, at least give them a chance to fight back (artillery, and their drone-strike children, get a grandfather-clause waiver here).

NOBODY is supposed to be using ANY weapons against civilians. Yet EVERYBODY who fights Muslims uses weapons against civilians because Muslims are cowards who hide behind civilians every chance they get. Thus, there are something like 100,000 civilians dead in Syria. The vast majority were killed with conventional weapons, with a few thousand killed by chemical weapons. Yet somehow, the few killed with chemical weapons are more dead than the great mass who were killed by more conventional means?

Obama's "thin-red line", his grotesque "distinctions" - indeed, most of the commenters absurd "distinctions" - are just incredibly stupid. I use the word "stupid" instead of "ignorant" because these Ivy League graduates are supposed to already KNOW the distinctions between a civilian and a soldier. They are supposed to already KNOW that civilians aren't to be killed at all, while soldiers are to be targeted only with conventional weapons. If they don't know these differences, they must be stupid.

And how will we respond? By drone-striking Syrian targets. As the brilliant Sarah Palin points out, it isn't clear why us bombing Syrians is superior to Syrians bombing Syrians. I guess we just use morally superior high-explosives or something.

Michael Voris and Catholic Answers

I have been asked my opinion on the Michael Voris-Catholic Answers dust-up.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about Catholic Answers, from Kathy Schiffer (who did not mention Michael Voris) to Dave Armstrong and Fr. Dwight Longenecker (both of whom most certainly did).

In order to be fully clear about my history with both, I have during the last 20 years applied for employment to Catholic Answers and been rejected. On numerous occasions I have proposed doing business with Catholic Answers on various things and been roundly rejected in the few instances when I have not been entirely ignored, which latter was much more frequent. Truth to tell, I almost never managed to get those guys to even return a phone call or an e-mail. It was worse than trying to work with EWTN, and attaining THAT level of inscrutable weirdness is really an accomplishment.

On the other hand, I have worked with Michael Voris and found him quite easy to get along with, extremely responsive and quite open to discussion. In fact, apart from one other individual who shall remain nameless, he's the only public Catholic I've had consistently positive experiences with. This is no small statement. I've worked with a lot of the big Catholic names, I've worked with some quite closely. Most of the "public Catholics", including myself, have some kind of ego problem - that's why we're interested in being in the spotlight, after all. And that undoubtedly plays into this whole kerfuffle.

Now, that having been said, I have benefited greatly from the work of Catholic Answers in general and Karl Keating's in particular. In fact, his work inspired my own first book.

I like both organizations and I see them both as having done great work.

All that having been said, the Catholic Answers supporters seem to be beating Voris up in a way that does not comport with the reality on the ground. I don't know why they are doing this.

Catholic Answers has obviously been around a lot longer, and perhaps that is why it has gone begging for money a lot more often than Voris' operation has. Does it need more money? I don't know. Certainly it is begging for money now.

So, what is my opinion?

I think Connecticut Catholic Blogger has done a MUCH better job of addressing this situation than I could. Given the evidence laid out there, I concur with Connecticut Catholic's most excellent assessment.

Voris hasn't said what most people attribute to him.
Catholic Answers and their supporters for some reason seem to want to make him their enemy.
And St. Jerome didn't get on very well with St. Augustine.

But I guess it generates website hits.
Whatever.

UPDATE:
I just noticed this passage in Fr. Longeneckar's post:

"The next problem with Voris’ attack is that his method is unscriptural. The Sacred Scriptures teach us that if you have a problem with your brother you are to go to them first in private. Did Voris sit down in a meeting with Keating, Kresta, Keck and the others? If he thought it was his business did he make an appointment and say, “Fellas, there are some criticisms about the level of your salaries, could we gather some more information?” I don’t know, maybe he did or maybe he simply got in front of the camera and started blasting away. "

Maybe? MAYBE? You mean, Father, that you DID NOT contact Michael Voris to find out?
Pot, meet kettle...

Hope and Change

"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards.....We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves." 
 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1961, quoted in the WSJ from a 1961 Harper's Magazine profile on MLK.

"...in 2006, blacks were 37.5% of all state and federal prisoners, though they’re under 13% of the national population. About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006, compared with one in 205 white men and one in 79 Hispanic men. Eleven percent of all black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison or jail.
From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed more than 52% of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3% of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3% of all robbery and 34.5% of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4% of all property-crime arrests."

Manhattan Institute, 2008

Modern Poverty

As little as two hundred years ago, most of the people in the world lived in grinding poverty, bone-crushing, mind-numbing, earth-shattering poverty. At least by today's standards. Yet for almost two thousand years, those same bone-crushingly poor people built some of the most beautiful buildings the world has ever seen. They were physically poor but spiritually rich.

Today, there is no such thing as a poor person, at least not by the standards of the 1800s. Every person today is richer than ANY person was in 1800 - more physically comfortable, better medical care, better food and lodging, longer life, healthier.

Today's population are physically rich, but poor in spirit. Today, we can't design a church that looks better than the average gymnasium. Don't WANT a church that looks better than a supermarket.

And the bishops, by and large, have decided that the traditional understanding of beauty is not the way to evangelize these spiritually poor people. They believe that well-stocked supermarkets and gymnasiums will work better. So, they fund social justice instead of encouraging beauty. They won't pay for beauty, you see, because it doesn't "feed the poor."

Which is kind of ironic, given that today's poor are much less likely to be hungry or naked or homeless or ill than any previous generation of poor in the history of the world.

It's a conundrum. Back when you would expect bishops to be worried about feeding the poor, they spent decades building cathedrals. Now, when feeding the poor is something the government does, and does pretty well, actually, the bishops change their tune. Now, exactly when most people don't really need the physical assistance, the bishops stop worrying about beautiful cathedrals and start worrying about feeding the poor.

It's pretty remarkable, when you think about it.

Zimmerman's City of Refuge

This essay at First Things highlights a substantial and basic difference between Jewish and Christian theology. In the Torah, any man who killed another was required to flee to a city of refuge in order to avoid being killed according to the "eye for an eye" principle. But why cities of refuge? Why couldn't the family sinned against simply forgive the murderer?

In Jewish theology, only the one sinned against can forgive. If I sin against another man, God cannot forgive that sin, only the man who I sinned against can forgive it. If I murder him, there can be no complete forgiveness because (1) he is no longer here to forgive me and (2) God can't forgive it because the sin wasn't against God, or at least, it wasn't JUST against God.

Christian theology views the entire situation differently.

According to Christian theology, the cities of refuge solution was necessary because mankind was not yet endowed with the ability to love as God loves. Before Christ, we had no access to the full grace of God.

Once Christ comes, He provides for the forgiveness of sin in every situation. That's what the sacrament of confession is about: "Whose sins you retain are retained, what sins you forgive are forgiven." Christ not only insists that God can forgive ANY sin regardless of origin or object, He also insists that this divine power to forgive sins devolves upon His apostles. The divine power to forgive can be wielded by men.

As a result, in Christian society, cities of refuge are no longer necessary, or, perhaps, it is better to say that they have been transformed. Whereas before we fled to a city of refuge, now we flee to the confessional of refuge. Those who have sinned can be really and fully forgiven in every circumstance. Those sinned against are required and empowered by God to forgive. Both sides need only ask for the grace, the power, and it will be received.

Thus, from the Christian perspective, the fact that Zimmerman appears today to need a city of refuge merely demonstrates how far America has wandered from Christian ideals and perspectives.

The Math of Pornography and Rape

In First Things today, Bishop James D. Conley tries to make the case that pornography is fueling a culture of rape, based in large part on an NPR article authored by someone named ANONYMOUS.

I understand his interest in doing this. Rape is a mortal sin, pornography use is a mortal sin. They both revolve around sex, so it would be pleasant if we could show a correlation, or, better yet, a causation in one or the other direction.

The problem, of course, is that the incidence of rape has fallen more than 60% since 1993. In fact, reported rapes hit a 20 year low in 2009. Meanwhile, porn addiction is INCREASING. And I don't even know why I bothered to link that last fact, since anyone familiar with the growth of the Internet over the last 20 years is also familiar with the fact that porn is a significant subset of that use, making up around 13% of Internet searches each year. In fact, male porn use is so common that one 2009 study which needed to find a control group of men in their 20s who had never seen an X-rated flick literally couldn't find any. Another group tried in 2013, and ran into exactly the same problem. Female porn stars themselves have about the same history of abuse as accountants, though they definitely use more drugs.

The bishop is assuming causality where there is, at best, only correlation, and not even much of that. This is a common logical fallacy. For instance, it is well-known that ice cream sales on the beach are correlated with increased drowning. Does eating ice cream make one more likely to drown?

Well, obviously not. Both increases are driven by a third factor - when it gets hot, there are  more people on the beach, more people in the water, and more people eating ice cream.  More people in the water means more people likely to drown.

So, even if we COULD prove a correlation between rape and porn (which we can't), how do we know that one causes the other? It could be an "ice cream/drowning" trick, where some unmentioned third factor is actually causing both.

And relying on the testimony of the near-drowning victims isn't going to help much. Some of them WOULD refer to their ice cream consumption after their near drownings. When you were growing up, didn't your parents tell you not to go swimming for an hour after you ate?

It's a common old wives' tale in the United States.
There's actually no correlation between eating and drowning.
But a lot of people THINK there is, so they blame one on the other.

The same is true with porn - a lot of people THINK there is a connection, so they'll make the connection consciously in their personal testimony, especially because it makes them feel innocent. "It wasn't may fault, it was the porn's fault." That's why we can't necessarily trust their testimony.

Given the abundant evidence to the contrary, we can certainly be concerned about the possibility that the single sociological study he refers to, like most published studies, is wrong. Some (female) sociologist wants there to be a correlation between rape and porn, so she "finds" one in her studies. Pornography is obviously a mortal sin, but there isn't much hard evidence linking it to other sexual mortal sins like rape.

As Catholics, we are supposed to witness the truth.
Bishop Conley's errors in quoting sociologists on the make are understandable, but they are errors.

TLDR:

Number of rapes:

• 19 - 35 per 100,000 in the 1970s (rising - no computer tech) 
• 33 - 38 per 100,000 in the 1980s (steady - PC revolution)
• 32 - 41 per 100,000 in the 1990s (falling - Internet starts)
• 29 - 33 per 100,000 in the 2000s (falling) - smart phones)
• 25 - 28 per 100,000 in the 2010s (steady - no significant tech change)

Looks like the availability of porn dropped the rape rate. For the year 2016 and beyond the FBI report includes all genders of rape in the Forcible Rape category.  Prior to 2016 rape reports counted were by females only.

When they added men in, the per capita rape rate popped back up to the worst of the 1990s, which is why people are decrying the "rise" of the rape rate. It's an artifact of counting differently. 

https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

The Math of Martyrdom

It has been said, correctly, that the 20th century produced more Christian martyrs than any previous century, and probably more than several previous centuries combined.

It is also said that the attacks on Christians are increasing.

Both statements are undoubtedly true.

But, to be fair, let's consider the math for just a moment and consider carefully what we mean by "increasing."

There were 1 billion people in the world in 1804.
There are 7 billion people in the world today.
So, do the math.

Even if Christian persecution dropped by 50% since 1800, such persecution would STILL produce many more individual martyrs today than it had in 1800, if only because there are a lot more Christians today than there was then. In order to show that the rate of martyrdom were increasing, we would have to measure martyrdom on a per capita level, rather than simply a raw numbers level. I've never seen anyone make such a measurement.

This doesn't make the sacrifice of any individual martyr less important, nor is it any less sad that someone would see fit to kill a Christian simply because that person is a Christian.

It's just that we can't very well say, "Ah! Three hundred Christians were killed this year while only 200 Christians were killed in 1913, therefore persecution is 30% worse today than in 1913!" nor can we say with complete certainty, "Oh, Christian persecution is increasing because the number of martyrs this century is so much higher than in the previous century!"

Christians are supposed to be deeply devoted to the truth. Thus, we need to keep these facts in mind when we discuss persecution and martyrdom.

Pope Francis, Women and Homosexuals

There's been a huge brouhaha over the Pope's recent remarks following WYD 2013. Many bloggers have already thrown their two cents into the ring, but I have held off for quite some time because it wasn't clear to me I had anything interesting to say on the subject.

What there is to say now isn't new, but I think it sheds light on exactly how the Pope is refusing the media's narrative.

According to the MSM, the Pope's remark may signal a shift in the Church's attitude towards homosexuals. Catholics know that isn't true, but they have a tough time articulating why they know this. I was even interviewed on Fox News, and failed to make the necessary connection.

Although the questions directed at the Pope were unscripted, and the MSM reporters appeared to be asking questions about a variety of subjects, only two subjects are really being reported in headlines: homosexuals as priests and women as priests. And, as I am thick-headed, I failed to recognize how similar the two questions were.

Now, keep in mind that, to my knowledge, there is no complete transcript of the conversation between the Pope and the reporters - this is just a bunch of reporters writing down what they remembered him saying. As far as I know, no one has a complete recording of his 80 minutes' worth of remarks, so there's no way to verify that everyone is remembering correctly. It's quite possible they garbled some aspect of what he said.

Now, that having been said, here's a full quote of the headline the reporters say they got:

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalised because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society.... The problem is not having this [homosexual] orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem." [Editor's Note: Those of Traditionalist Catholic bent, notice that he is concerned about Masonic lobbies within the Vatican. Make of that what you will.]

Assuming the quote is correct, clearly, he's not saying homosexual activity is acceptable. From the remarks ("he searches for the Lord, and has goodwill"), Francis clearly assumes the homosexual priest is not acting upon his inclinations.

But notice how he talks about integrating them into society. While he attributes this language to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that was a mis-statement on his part, because the relevant articles of the CCC nowhere use that word. Instead, the language of "integration" is taken straight from a 1975 document on sexual ethics, Persona Humanae. The distinctions he make in this interview seem to echo the ideas found in that document.

So, is Pope Francis in favor of homosexual priests? Well, an Argentinian priest, Fr. Alessio, was defrocked just three months ago (April 10, 2013) - with Pope Francis' knowledge and assent - after that priest had begun promoting homosexual marriage and transgenders in the diocese of Cordoba. Cordoba is only about a two-hour drive from Buenos Ares, so it's quite possible Pope Francis even personally knew this priest. The man lost all his priestly faculties with Pope Francis' full knowledge and consent. I don't remember either JP II or Benedict breaking a priest for simple agitation like this. Francis broke him.

Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. In a July, 2010 statement, Bergoglio essentially called the homosexual marriage movement satanic:

“In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family... At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children... At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts....Let us not be naive: This is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan... It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” 

Conclusion A: He's not a fan of homosexuals in the priesthood, but he recognizes that some of his priests and bishops are homosexual, so as long as they don't sin, he knows he's stuck with them.

Conclusion B: He doesn't like homosexual lobbying. AT ALL.

Now, notice something else. Francis said absolutely nothing about whether such a man should have been ordained to begin with. The press completely ignored this aspect of the question.

Again, let's get some context. There is a 1961 directive forbidding the ordination of known homosexuals. This was reiterated in 2002 and again in 2005. It is obliquely referenced in Persona Humanae. That teaching is well-known to Pope Francis and is certainly not changing anytime soon.

All Pope Francis told the reporters is, if he discovered a homosexual had been ordained, but the man wasn't actively sinning, he wasn't going to do anything about it. This is not a surprise. The man would have canonical rights at that point, and those rights can't be violated. As long as the priest was not doing anything in violation of the Faith, the Pope COULDN'T do anything about it.

Is he willing to accept homosexual ordination? Well, he signalled that he was not at all in favor of it. How? By the question on whether women can be ordained.

When asked if women could be ordained, he firmly denied that they could. He's all in favor of giving women a greater role, but ordination was out of the question.

A church without women would be like the apostolic college without Mary. The Madonna is more important than the apostles, and the church herself is feminine, the spouse of Christ and a mother. The role of women doesn’t end just with being a mother and with housework …we don’t yet have a truly deep theology of women in the church. We talk about whether they can do this or that, can they be altar boys, can they be lectors, about a woman as president of Caritas, but we don’t have a deep theology of women in the Church. On the ordination of women, the church has spoken and said no. John Paul II, in a definitive formulation, said that door is closed.

The Church has many reasons She can put forward for why that is the case, but I will restrict myself to only one, a point Pope Francis made very subtly and obliquely, yet he still made it. The Church is the Bride of Christ and a mother. The relationship between the priest and the Church is the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the New Adam and the New Eve. The liturgy is a sacred action between the Man and the Woman, not two people of the same sex.

Christ was not a woman.
Catholics are not lesbians.
That's one reason women cannot be ordained.

So, when MSM reporters ask about homosexual priests and women priests, they are subtly asking two different forms of a very similar question. Pope Francis answered the second question definitively, but was not really asked the first question. Given the evidence, we have no reason to think he would be anything but opposed to the ordination of active homosexuals.

The Role of the Extraordinary Form

I get into all kinds of arguments. Some people think I'm antagonistic because I'm a jerk, and they are correct about that. But argument, sometimes quite vociferous argument, is the way I integrate information. By arguing about something, often with extremely annoying tenacity, I figure out what the limits of the idea are, what its strengths are, what its weaknesses are. By bluntly questioning the people who advocate it, I find out what kind of people support it.

Over the last several years, I've had many arguments about the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Mass, over proper dress at Mass, over private devotions, private revelations, the whole life that adheres to one form versus the other form.

Recently, all of this came to a head with Pope Francis' decision that the Franciscans of the Immaculata would no longer be permitted to celebrate the EF form of the Mass unless the priests requested special permission. This ruling seemed to contravene both the letter and the spirit of Summorum Pontificum, which explicitly permits any priest to celebrate the EF without asking permission from his bishop.

A lot of people in the EF community were upset by that. But that argument, along with another argument I had been in about whether men should be wearing suits to Mass, crystallized something for me.

When Pope Francis made this ruling, he ruled in favor of the ORDINARY FORM. Given that it's the ORDINARY form, this is not really a surprise, right? Ordinarily, you do the ordinary thing.

If you are doing extraordinary and ordinary things, and some odd problem pops up, you revert to the ordinary thing to see if the odd problem goes away. This is probably why Francis ruled as he did on that particular religious order.

Benedict created this situation by naming the forms "Ordinary" and "Extraordinary" instead of "Form 1" and "Form 2".

If Benedict wanted equivalence between the forms, he could have named the two forms so that they would have been equivalent. But he deliberately named them in such a way that it recalls the difference between the Ordinary infallible Magisterium and the Extraordinary infallible Magisterium.

We've only had 21 Ecumenical Councils in the history of the Church - they don't happen very often. Same goes for ex cathedra statements - they are really unusual.

So, when he named these two forms the way he did, he seems to have been envisioning precisely that the EF would NOT be commonly celebrated. Even though SP talks about letting any priest do it on his own authority, the naming conventions undercut the words. Benedict really didn't expect it to be commonly asked for or all that popular.

In that sense, the Church seems to be envisioning traditionalists as just one more religious group in the Church, like Franciscans or Dominicans or Jesuits.

Traditionalism via SP (like Anglicanism) is apparently meant to be a kindness for people who tend to like that sort of thing, but even Benedict never meant this to be the first step towards a universal return of the EF. The EF is not coming back as the normal form because it DIDN'T come back as the normal form.

Dominicans aren't required to do the Spiritual Exercises, Franciscans aren't required to visit a Carmel, and ordinary Catholics aren't expected to have more than a passing interest in the EF.

If he HAD meant it to be otherwise, he wouldn't have named it the EF.

If I'm right, then a lot of people haven't figured this out yet. All those bishops calling EF trads dangerous and stupid, etc., they don't realize that they are calling a religious order those names. All the EF trads who think the EF is where the Church is headed, and who get really, really defensive and angry when anything happens that indicates the Church isn't headed that way... they haven't realized it yet either.

So, if everyone would just recognize the EF for what Popes JP II and Benedict and Francis seem to think it is, a lot of the antagonism and theater would go away. EF trads are a legitimate spiritual strand in the vine of the Catholic Church, but a strand that is not going to become kudzu, it isn't going to take over the entire life of the Church again. It's not meant to. And that's ok for everyone involved.

The different spiritualities preserve different kinds of memories. The Franciscans preserve the memory of how to treat the poor, the Jesuits preserve the memory of how to handle human knowledge, the Dominicans preserve the memory of preaching, the EF trads preserve the memory of a specific kind of prayer/liturgy. Every one of the memories is important to the Church. But none of them are the future of the Church. God is doing something new - we don't know what it is yet, so we have to hold onto what we remember, in order to be prepared to handle the new thing that God is preparing and incorporate it into the life of the Church.

The Day the Sun (ahem) the Bishops Danced

When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart....

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death. (2 Samuel 6)

Now, some people are upset about this video:

In fact, one famous Catholic "conservative" blogger priest whose name begins with Z specifically and visually compared the bishops who participated to Nazis. Imagine - a priest of God calling Catholic bishops "Nazis". Reminds one of... oh, maybe the leftist heretics who do the same thing, doesn't it?

In reply to the incredible amount of criticism unleashed against the bishops, one commentator (Henry Babek) on Rorate Caeli blog had this to say:

The young people participating at WYD are planning on doing the largest organized flash mob skit in history. What you see in the video is the bishops simply watching them practice and participating. They will not be participating during the actual skit and this is not for a mass or spiritual gathering. It'll be a small show for the pope done by the youth only. Unless you know the full details, then do not criticize. 

Finally, I absolutely love how many of you come and rush to comment on the critical articles of HH Pope Francis while lovely articles such as "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" or the "Juventutem" articles only get about 10-20 comments. 

I truly cry when I see how easy it is for soo many of you to criticize or attack instead of commend or love.

Now, I'm not a dancer, I don't like to dance, etc. But calling bishops "Nazis" for emulating King David seems untoward. Having lay people, or worse, ordained men, chastising bishops for emulating King David seems downright evil. 

These "orthodox" people don't mind a bit if the sun dances, but may the Lord have mercy on us all if a bishop does the same! Celebrate Fatima, castigate bishops! 

If anyone wonders why the kind of people who get upset with this can't seem to grow their parishes much... well, ask Michal. 

UPDATE:

Everybody thinks scenes like this are cute.
Nuns can do it, but bishops can't?
Double standards abound.

Why Penn Jillette May Go To Heaven

Penn Jillette is a famous magician, atheist and debunker whose anger and hatred towards religion are legendary. Despite this, he demonstrates an outstanding Christian understanding of the universe.

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us.”  ~ Penn Jillette

Exactly. Perfect! He understands that Nature is out of harmony with man. He knows it is fallen. That's the beginning of understanding the Fall.

“Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around” ~ Penn Jillette

There is much to laud in this paragraph. He is correct - none of us can be forgiven except by one of two things - either kindness or a faulty memory. And the conclusion is superb - I have to try to treat people right the first time around. Yes. Exactly. 

“Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.” ~ Penn Jillette

“We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.”  

Each one of these sentences contradicts the other one, of course, but he doesn't know what faith is, so he can hardly be faulted for that error. Faith is trusting other people, respecting what they have seen, felt, heard, witnessed. That's all there is to it. I trust my butcher because he has given me reason to trust him over the historical course of our relationship and because I should love and respect all people.  So, if I love and respect all persons, I cannot possibly hate and destroy all faith. My faith in my butcher, that he will sell me only good pieces of meat and not misrepresent his product to me, is based on my love and respect for him, and on my history with him. 

Faith in God is faith in persons. The power to have faith in God is, of course, a power that comes from God Himself. It is superior to faith in other kinds of persons because God is a superior being. The power He gives me to trust Him derives from His perfection and from a much longer history He has maintained with all mankind. It is therefore more perfect in origin, more extensive in content, than the faith I have in my butcher. 

“Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore. Knowledge is always good, and it's a really cool thing to see.” 

No Christian could say it better. That's why we taught the world to do science - God is Truth, and we must explore Truth, seek it out, both in spirit and in the physical world. 

“The word “holiday” comes from “holy day” and holy means “exalted and worthy of complete devotion.” By that definition, all days are holy. Life is holy. Atheists have joy every day of the year, every holy day. We have the wonder and glory of life. We have joy in the world before the lord is come. We’re not going for the promise of life after death; we’re celebrating life before death. The smiles of children. The screaming, the bitching, the horrific whining of one’s own children. The glory of giving or receiving a blow job. Sunsets, rock and roll, bebop, Jell-O, stinky cheese, and offensive jokes.For atheists, everything in the world is enough and every day is holy. Every day is an atheist holiday. It’s a day that we’re alive.” 

Indeed true. Life is holy. We should be celebrating every day of life. If more Christians acted this way, this man might not be an atheist.

“If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.” 

Yes, Penn Jillette. This applies to atheists most of all. This man could be Christian, if it weren't for the bad example we Christians set. 

Of Contraceptives and Colt .45s

It has recently occurred to me that the discussion about gun control parallels the Catholic discussion on contraception. 

Consider: how do liberals and the USCCB (but I repeat myself) deal with the problem of social violence? They all insist that the best way to stop violence is to remove the tool - outlaw guns.

"Oh, if you just stop using guns, if we could outlaw guns, we would stop murder!"

Yes. 
Well. (cough)

But isn't that the exact same argument we make about contraception? 

"Oh, if you just stop using contraception, if we could outlaw contraception, we would stop abortion!"

Both a Colt .45 and a condom are tools, manufactured to answer a perceived need. It is the perceived need which brought about the research that developed the tools. We had the need, then we created the tool.

When Margaret Sanger gave the Catholic physician John Rock the money to research hormonal contraceptives, he took on the task because he perceived a need for contraception. The contraceptive mentality preceded the production of the contraceptive. 

Everyone keeps talking about the contraception problem as if it arose out Minerva's head in the 1950s. It didn't. The demographic transition, the decline in family size in the Western world, began way back around 1800. It began back when contraceptives were universally condemned by all Christians as deadly sin. It began back when the use of contraceptives was absolutely socially unacceptable. 

In short, most modern contraceptives were invented when social stigma was much, much worse than it is today. Even if we got everyone to stigmatize and deride contraception in the same way that it had been in the 1800s, we wouldn't solve the problem.

The Comstock Laws which rendered contraceptive advertising and sale illegal were passed in 1873 by a Protestant Congress. The fact that the laws were passed indicates that America, for the first time, saw itself as losing the battle against contraception. It had to pass laws in order to stop the social evil because social stigma and promise of hellfire was no longer enough to keep people away from contraceptive use. Those laws were overthrown in the 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut case, but they had already been functionally rendered useless by 1915, when Margaret Sanger got her arrest and conviction overturned on appeal. The Pill isn't a cause, it's a consequence.

We can't get rid of contraception anymore than we can get rid of guns. It isn't because anyone has a constitutional right to contraception. Rather, it's because a large proportion of the population sees an economic need for contraception. 

Precisely because sexual activity is no longer linked to procreation, it has now become linked to social status. How a person uses their sexuality - who they sleep with, what acts of sexual congress they allow themselves to engage in - defines their status. Tom Wolfe researched and wrote an entire novel explaining this new conceptual meaning and language. 

Because we are soul-body composites, sex has always, and will always be, a language. For the person who associates sex with biology and babies, sex will be the language of love. For the individual seeking sterility, however, sex is no longer the language of love, but of social standing. How else can we explain the insanity of women who happily go on "slut walks" but then denounce anyone who calls a contracepting woman a slut?  They aren't arguing against the word, they're arguing against the cognitive dissonance created by two languages clashing in the night.   

The Church denounced jousting and its cousin duelling for a solid millennium before dueling finally ended in the West. Duelling didn't end because the Church denounced it. Duelling ended because social values changed - money replaced honor as the most important social value. The language of sterile sex has been coalescing for over two centuries. It isn't at all clear how that language can be overthrown, nor is it clear that its replacement, whatever that may be, will be any less morally heinous.

But perhaps we should rethink how we approach the conversation on contraception control. It seems unlikely that we can succeed by using the same approach we already know is failing with gun control.

On Martyrdom and Zimmerman

A lot of people are questioning George Zimmerman's use of force against Trayvon Martin.

According to the law, that use of force was legitimate because Zimmerman feared for his own life. 

But in Christian ethics, this isn't sufficient. Indeed, we aren't even supposed to consider whether someone fears for his life. That is irrelevant. As Christians, we must be concerned with our divinely delegated duty to protect innocent life. We are required to protect all innocent life, even if that innocent life happens to be our own.

"But what of martyrdom?" I hear you ask.

Martyrdom is the result of a prudential judgement, in which you willingly suffer the loss of your own life because you have good reason to believe that your death will bring about someone else’s conversion. Martyrdom is never a duty, but it is always an opportunity to embrace a greater good.

George Zimmerman had not only the right, but the divinely delegated duty to protect an innocent life (his own) from harm. Because this innocent life happened to be his own, he had a choice to make. The only way he could surrender his duty to protect his own life is by embracing the even greater good of martyrdom.

However, since his death would not have happened within a religious context, it is hard to see how he could have snatched martyrdom out of this situation. Thus, he chose correctly in defending his own life.

For all of those who dislike his choice, and think he should have chosen otherwise, consider: you can choose martyrdom for yourself.  You cannot choose that someone else be martyred. 

Thus, we don’t have a right to second-guess George Zimmerman’s execution of his divine duty to protect innocent life. He did the right thing. 

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's.⁶⁶ 

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

How To Bring Eucharistic Adoration Into Public School

According to a California court, as long as we rename Eucharistic Adoration something adorably cute, we can train public school students to do it without violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

I recommend we call it "Apple Peel Kneel" - an innocuous connection to the Fall. Tell them to clear their minds in the manner of the French peasant... "I look at Him, He looks at me."... and we should be good.