Augustine's Rule of Magisterial Interpretation

I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the [manuscript] is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1:350)

If you encounter an apparent error or tension in the Bible, check for textual errors or translation difficulties. But be prepared to blame your own (fallen, finite) powers of understanding before blaming the Bible or any other Magisterial document. Remember, the Bible is the foundational Magisterial document, but the saints, the popes, the Fathers and the Doctors are similarly free from error. That's why they are held up for example. 

So, it is simply impossible to take a statement from one pope, even the current pope (whoever he may be), and claim that another part of the Magisterium (another pope, a saint, a Father or Doctor) contradicts him. There are no contradictions in the Magisterium.  Augustine complains about readers who try to wriggle out from under what the Bible is saying by claiming textual corruption:

When these men are beset by clear testimonies of Scripture, and cannot escape from their grasp, they declare that the passage is spurious. The declaration only shows their aversion to the truth, and their obstinacy in error. Unable to answer these statements of Scripture, they deny their genuineness. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 4:178)

Similarly, a lot of traditionalists and liberals both make the same claim about papal statements, or other Magisterial statements, they don't like. They claim, "Oh, Pope XXX is mis-teaching, because his statement doesn't match the statement of Doctor YYY. Thus, it falls upon me to correct the Pope!" So, unable to bear the idea that they may have a wrong understanding of Catholic Faith, an understanding that has to change, a lifestyle that has to change, these people deny the genuineness of papal teaching by claiming it is erroneous.

Yeah, that's not how it works. I don't look for errors in Scripture because I don't judge Scripture. Scripture judges me. In the same way, don't bother looking for errors in papal teaching because I don't judge papal teaching. Papal teaching judges me.

And it isn't just me who cannot make these judgements. Even ecumenical councils cannot make these judgements. Nobody can. Nobody judges the pope. No one has the authority to do so. 

Now, the next refuge of the scoundrel is to claim that I am advocating some kind of papal idolatry. Ironically, the same people who cheer on Pope Pius IX's statement  “I am the church! I am the tradition!” will immediately deny the principle when anyone points out that this statement applies to every single one of Pius IX's successors. 

But the very denial betrays the fact that these same Catholics, whether liberal or trad, don't actually accept the Magisterium. They aren't actually Catholics, they are actually Protestants, differing from Martin Luther only in the specific papal statement they have chosen to deny. 

Catholics need pay attention to only three people in the world: their parish priest, their diocesan bishop and the Pope. If there is a question about either of the first two, the teachings of the first two are to be weighed against papal teaching.

No priest, no bishop, no parish, no religious order can be trusted to accurately represent the Faith. Ultimately, we can trust only the saints, the Fathers, the Doctors and the popes. When faced with a doctrinal conundrum, we may not have a saint nearby to ask, we are less likely to have a Doctor on call to consult, and all the Fathers of the Church are dead, so that's done. But we always have the pope. He is the one who tells us how to steer course through current problems, how to apply, into any current situation, the principles given by the saints, the Doctors and the Fathers. 

So, in questions of doctrine and dogma, the Pope is always correct. In areas of discipline, his opinion is to be preferred over our own, for we are the children and he is the Holy Father, not the Random Stranger. While he may be wrong on discipline, we start by assuming he is correct, as any child would assume when directed by his father. Augustine had the right of it. Follow his lead. 

Why "Systematic Racism" is a Conspiracy Theory

I have recently come to realize that the left's insistence on "systematic racism" is a canard, a knee-jerk habit, pure drivel. It is the left's conspiracy theory that racists will take over the world. The left's previous conspiracy theory, back at the turn of the 20th century when eugenics had the fresh-car smell of solid science, held that Jews were going to take over the world. While 21st-century progressives still retain remnants of that original eugenic anti-Semitism (Governor Cuomo, call your office), they now use the new "systemic racism" conspiracy theory because it plays to a wider audience. At the end of the nineteenth-century, pretty much everyone hated Jews, so the old anti-Jewish theory worked to bring liberals together and outsiders into the fold. Today, pretty much everyone hates racists, so they play that conspiracy card instead.

But that doesn't make it any less a nonsensical conspiracy theory. After all, systems only exist where intent, acted out logically, exists. Logic is not natural, in the sense that fallen man is not naturally attracted to being logical. God is pure reason. Logic is participation in a divine attribute, and systems require logic to operate.

In order for systematic racism to exist, you have to be able to point to powerful government or non-governmental organizations that are intentionally enforcing rules that explicitly differentiate on the basis of skin color. The old Jim Crow laws and other segregation rules, all of them created and enforced by Democrats, were certainly systematically racist. But all of those rules are gone. There is no intentional system, there is no governing body saying "Do this to blacks, but don't do this to non-blacks" or "accommodate whites in this way, but do not extend this accommodation to non-whites."

Certainly the simple fact that Asians, Jews and Nigerians are arrested much less often than whites show that no such "skin test" system exists anywhere in the US. Even Harvard (which famously denied Jewish and Asian students entrance, and even tracked its own Jewish students through the 1980s), admitted as much. The systems are gone, which means the forethought and expressed intent is gone. At most, all we have left is habit.

Habit is the result of a previous logical sequence which, by its very definition, is no longer being thought about. I am ruled by habit precisely because I am NOT thinking. For example, while Harvard opened up its entrance requirements so that Jews were as acceptable as any other kind of student, they did maintain the habit of tracking their Jewish students for decades. Why? Force of habit. They had established the system for a reason at the beginning of the 20th century, and continued it even after the reason no longer existed.

To say that a society has a habit is NOT the same as saying society has a system. System implies rational thought, it implies foresight and intent. Habit implies no rational thought, nor foresight, nor even intent. Habit implies unthinking, knee-jerk response.

Habit might be what bureaucracies do, but insofar as a bureaucracy does it, that bureaucracy is not a system, it's just a convulsive reaction. It may be a pun, but it is also true: bureaucracies are considered "unthinking" and irrational for a reason. People who reject rational thought, or find it difficult and burdensome, embrace bureaucracy precisely because its habits replace the need for rational thought and rational thought is too much a participation in the divine nature, it is too much work, to embrace.

Unfortunately for those who wish to wage a war so as to unite their coalitions, "habitual racism" has not the power of "systematic racism".  Precisely because "system" implies intent, "system" implies a legitimately bad actor. "Habit", on the other hand, implies lack of intent, lack of thought. Anyone can fall victim to habit. There is no bad actor to attack, no evil person around which we can coalesce, no malice to wipe out. The person who falls prey to a habit is barely a victim, and without victims there can be no war to unite our side.

But, given that there is literally no system of racism left to identify, all that is left is the vestiges of habit. If you want to talk about habitual racism, I'm not prepared to disagree. But systemic or systematic racism? That's ridiculous.

UPDATE:
Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Walter Williams and Coleman Hughes all question whether there is such a thing as systemic racism

The End of Logic

As automation takes on more and more aspects of life, human beings will be boxed into smaller and smaller areas of activity. Paid work is increasingly circumscribed into that which is not, or cannot easily be, automated. Automation only works where systems exist. Computers excel at implementing systematic, logical thinking. They are not very good with non-systematic, emotional reaction.

Everything that is systematized will be automated because that's what computers do: they automate systems. Any systematic body of knowledge with rule-based procedures is subject to automation. Remember, people are the largest cost in any production system. Once an area is automated, once people are removed from the equation, the human work value associated with that area drops close to zero. Which means, as time goes on, humans can increasingly generate value only by engaging in areas where logical, systemic organization is not an advantage.

So, as automation advances, available job categories decrease. The primary job areas that will survive the current automation apocalypse will be in entertainment, as the explosion of Youtube entrepreneurs and social media "influencers" already demonstrates. But this won't last long. As people pour into the entertainment space, among the last spaces that cannot be automated, the income  streams for entertainers will drop across the board. Too much product, not enough audience. 

Thus, ironically, as the remorseless logic of computers take over various aspects of industry, the value of logic and systematic thinking in human interactions drops. Why should I train myself to think logically if the job which requires me to be logical is already automated by a machine, a machine which can do logic much more remorselessly, effortlessly and speedily than I can? Similarly, it is useless for me to train myself in logic if the only place I can earn money is in the entertainment space, that is, the only way I can earn money is by generating emotions. These twins, disincentive to be logical, incentive to be emotional, are even now driving society away from logical thought.

This is the world of Star Wars, where the robots do the logic, and all rigorous training goes into "feelings". "FEEL the Force, Luke!" The Apostle Luke "carefully investigated everything from the beginning", providing logical evidence of God's incarnation. The 20th century Luke trains only in feelings, refusing the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.  In the 21st century, Jesus is not God, He is a Sith Lord. 

Just as technology lowered the social value of motherhood to essentially zero, so, technology will render the social value of logic obsolete. Society will become more and more subject to wild emotional swings because logic will no longer carry human economic value. Any logical, systematic approach to the universe, whether it be Aristotelian, Thomistic, even deconstructionist, is increasingly discarded as irrelevant within the human interaction space. While the people who move in this direction are to be pitied, the people who move in this direction are not wrong. Euclid alone may have looked on beauty bare, but the beauty of Euclid's logic, which has always been somewhat esoteric, is becoming increasingly ephemeral. Machines apply logic. Increasingly, people apply only emotion. Man is no longer homo sapiens, the creature of logic, reason, and it's fruit, wisdom, but now only homo motus, the being that can only feel and react. 

Kente and the Slave Masters

In order to represent their position in reference to George Floyd, Democrat leaders wore the kente cloth of African slave traders. Politifact has tried, and failed, to change the historical facts on this, facts which are quite, quite clear.

As the Ultimate History Project points out:

"While Kente cloth was a product of a global trade route which stretched from Asia through Europe to Africa, this cloth and the people also came to be associated with another global trade route---the slave trade. In fact, the history of the Ashanti people, who lived on the West Coast of Africa, is strongly tied to the history of the slave trade.

As was true of many pre-modern societies in Africa, Asia and Europe, the Ashanti practiced slavery. When Europeans, specifically the Portuguese, came into contact with the Ashanti during the sixteenth century, both Europeans and the Ashanti traded gold, ivory, and slaves."

The University of Pittsburgh agrees, but notes that it is a part of the area's history that no one wants to acknowledge. History professor Rebecca Shumway wrote The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (University of Rochester Press). The university's review of her work includes this:

"While at the University of Ghana, Shumway studied with a Fante professor, John Kofi Fynn, who earned his PhD in the United Kingdom and wrote about Fante state formation. He was a proud teacher, a man of noble birth who was unafraid to critique Ghanaian politics and who often held class in a local pub. He rarely, however, covered Fante history and never even whispered about the slave trade. It was almost as if the slave trade didn't exist, recalls Shumway. The silence only made her more curious about those unspoken years.... 

In documenting an era when it was either enslave or be enslaved, Shumway's own march across the archives and fields of Fanteland reveals the light and the dark sides of Africans' agency in the slave trade. Here, the elite Asante were among the most powerful and wealthiest in West Africa, but they were also the main slave traders in Ghana. In the 18th century, their brilliant Kente cloth was woven with threads of silk, cotton, and wool— textiles imported from abroad and often paid for in human lives."

In All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, the author notes:

The slave trade... brought treasure to warrior tribes like the Ashanti of Ghana, who displayed riches from the slave trade in gold furniture and regal kente cloth, in which they wove silk from the Orient together with native cotton. Adinkra cloth, also made by the Ashanti and decorated with their ancient symbols, even had a special marking for the lucrative traffic in captives: two interlocking squares meaning "You are the slave of him whose handcuffs you wear."

Suppressing the Rioters.

The 2nd Amendment says that we are armed so we can form militias if we want.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 says the militias are supposed to "execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."

So, the one thing the Constitution does NOT say, is that we have the right to bear arms to START an insurrection against the government.

On the other hand, the only time a sitting president ever personally led troops into battle was when President Washington mounted up and led troops into the field to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. At no point did he disarm anyone, not even the men and women who were rebelling against the government.

Should the federal government suppress the rioters by calling forth the militia? Well, Washington's action certainly looks like precedent for that.

Over 80% of black men die at the hands of other black men. In America, black men constitute 6% of the population, but they comprise 50% of the murderers and 50% of the murder victims.

Corrupt, racist cops are a serious problem, a problem that should be dealt with and eliminated.

But, the black community has much more serious problems than corrupt, racist cops. If we saw riots, with widespread burning and looting, every time a black man killed a black man, not a building in the black community would be left standing today.  Martin Luther King Jr. said it best. The black community needs better responses to their own violence.

A List of Looting

Seen on the web

Man stomped and stoned for trying to defend a bar from being looted

https://streamable.com/xkcvkk

Destroying store and beating unarmed woman and her husband

https://streamable.com/rvrwil

Beating and stomping guy on the ground Santa Monica

https://streamable.com/x6ue5x

Restaurant manager beaten and stomped for trying to defend his workplace

https://streamable.com/ila4dh

Stopping, beating and stomping a truck driver while protesters yell to kill him

https://streamable.com/8zk9dq

Protesters attack a media member and then pummel him

https://streamable.com/p4i3jb

Chasing guy and kicking him in the face for defending flag in Portland

https://streamable.com/ky6jyh

Police officer beaten on the streets

https://streamable.com/je4ki5

Car runs over a cop

https://streamable.com/q4nat7

Protesters set homeless man’s belongings on fire

https://streamable.com/sdjvfa

Throwing fireworks at the cops

https://streamable.com/7sv4a9

Looting a FedEx truck then looter gets dragged when truck tries to escape

https://streamable.com/n1azx3

Chasing and beating guy with red had

https://streamable.com/rcsmi0

Rioter sets himself on fire while trying to set a building on fire

https://streamable.com/w5wa8l

Fireworks thrown into CNN hq / Police officers

https://streamable.com/7dw6g7

Protester runs over the cops with an SUV

https://streamable.com/ttijvn

Destroying/looting/setting on fire Old Navy

https://streamable.com/oceqqg

Guardhouse in front of WH set on fire

https://streamable.com/vfopia

Dozens of cars destroyed/torched near CNN hq – Atlanta

https://streamable.com/ubjohz

St Louis neighborhood on fire

https://streamable.com/8lnd7v

Building on fire while self-proclaimed Mexicans say fuck white people

https://streamable.com/yvkek4

Destroying police SUV

https://streamable.com/2b7fic

Near a torched car audio speakers propaganda that all crime is legal

https://streamable.com/t76kdn

Destroying/looting bank in Montreal

https://streamable.com/3hwkx2

Pharmacy destroyed/looted in Dallas

https://streamable.com/fl7e5z

The remains of whole neighborhood destroyed

https://streamable.com/dtptr1

Destroying stores – Dallas

https://streamable.com/hn1qng

Destroying police SUV – Austin

https://streamable.com/v8zk1e

Police SUV torched LA

https://streamable.com/61mdlo

Looting target/beating disabled person in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/oyjgbk

Future apartment building destroyed with fire in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/dxmc0w

Looting pharmacy – Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/53nl1p

Destroying business in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/5lm779

More businesses on fire in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/f1zcmy

Ransacked Target Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/b3u92p

Building burning in neighborhood Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/vh5nyu

Boy drove car into a store

https://streamable.com/nrm2pn

Post office looted/destroyed

https://streamable.com/v4vflf

Minneapolis third police precinct set on fire

https://streamable.com/o27w75

More buildings on fire Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/8au2lf

Autoparts Store getting destroyed/looted

https://streamable.com/dum1r8

Autozone on fire

https://streamable.com/vq9hrp

Looting in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/jfor5g

Adults loot with their children

https://streamable.com/m4cr5j

Cars torched – Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/mmk9gr

Looting an ATM in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/ht2oxv

Remains of destroyed/looted Cub Foods

https://streamable.com/qhzlm7

Business and stores on fire in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/jcpdvv

Brenda Lenton’s home and belongings destroyed by a fire – Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/3s9l17

Aftermath of whole neighborhood being set on fire in Minneapolis

https://streamable.com/eat2c0

Nashville city hall set on fire while rioters cheer

https://streamable.com/b3y0ep

Fox reporters chased out with projectiles thrown at them near White House

https://streamable.com/1qzyua

Attacking drivers Tulsa, Okla

https://streamable.com/ixpxh9

Setting St. John’s Church on fire

https://streamable.com/u3y4ch

Destroying/looting stores Montreal

https://streamable.com/92h4rr

Destroying/looting store in Downtown Oakland

https://streamable.com/y9s4x9

Bar destroyed/Trying to loot a safe

https://streamable.com/yzprm5

Stolen Bulldozer in Oakland

https://streamable.com/lhf5ze

Two police SUVs torched in Seattle

https://streamable.com/eketpr

Multiple cars torched in Philadelphia

https://streamable.com/13784m

Ohio Statehouse being destroyed

https://streamable.com/k13b3l

Trying to breach Justice Center/central police precinct Portland

https://streamable.com/avcfq0

Destroying/Looting Justice Center Portland

https://streamable.com/1j6fof

Looting small business in Portland

https://streamable.com/bfs08c

Destroying/looting small business Portland

https://streamable.com/adfxxt

Looting Louis Vuitton store

https://streamable.com/f4ysu9

Driving stolen cars into stores – Portland

https://streamable.com/o1w92j

Destroying Chase Bank – Portland

https://streamable.com/o1wtom

Setting Chase Bank on fire – Portland

https://streamable.com/nanakz

Destroying/Looting Apple Store – Portland

https://streamable.com/2wncgk

Looting in St. Paul

https://streamable.com/6fouwt

Looting Shoe Store

https://streamable.com/60v3xh

Looting apple store

https://streamable.com/1wzq39

Looting North Face store – NYC

https://streamable.com/ux7djn

Nike Store being looted – NYC

https://streamable.com/6sdcb3

Looting in Union Square – NYC

https://streamable.com/jiz3zd

Looting T-mobile store

https://streamable.com/ag5kwc

Shop owner saves store from looters with a firearm

https://streamable.com/5oj1jl

Business owner defends his store from looters with a firearm

https://streamable.com/pmdjkb

On the Death of George Floyd

Fact 1: The death of George Floyd was not divisive. Everyone agrees it was murder.

Fact 2: Everyone wants the same thing for that cop: try him for murder, throw him in jail for murder. In fact, try and jail every cop who commits any crime. In fact, cops should be subject to special guidelines wherein they have to serve TWICE the normal penalty for any crime they commit. Get rid of "qualified immunity" for cops and politicians. SCOTUS invented that in 1982, and it has been an unqualified disaster.

Fact 3: The riots ARE divisive. Blacks are destroying the lives of other blacks. IF we are not supposed to stand by while whites kill blacks (and of course, no one should stand by), then why do you want us to stand by while blacks destroy blacks? That is exactly what the riots are doing. One black man died at the hands of a white man, and already over 170 black businesses in the black community have been destroyed, the lives of thousands disrupted and destroyed, by these riots.

Fact 4: The riots are not being caused by locals. This isn't local outrage, this is manufactured outrage, people who were imported, or who imported themselves, to destroy communities they are not themselves a part of. Shouldn't we be trying to stop that?

Fact 5: 50% of murderers are black males between the ages of 15 and 30, 50% of murder victims are black males between the ages of 15 and 30. Of the 3203 black murder victims in 2017, 2627 were black on black murder. That's 82% of murder victims being killed by their own community.

Most murders in the US result when two young men who know each other get in a fight and one kills the other. Half the time it is young white men, half the time it is young black men. But, since young black men only make up 6% of the population, yet commit 50% of the murders, it is pretty clear that young black men do this on a per capita basis far out of proportion to other young men.

Fact 6: Blacks are in FAR MORE DANGER from their own community than they are from cops. But, as Van Jones points out, racist whites - who tend to be white liberals - refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Conclusion: be careful
Now, I have undoubtedly upset some of you. Your feelings are raw, jaded, etc., and you want to deny one or more of the facts above, because you FEEL that there is something wrong.

Aristotelian logic says:
Facts are infallible.
Feelings are facts.
Therefore feelings are infallible.

Yeah, that is a valid line of reasoning, but it isn't true. "Valid" means you constructed the argument properly, according to the rules of logic. "True" means the conclusion accurately describes reality. But the conclusion does not do so. Why is the argument wrong? Because the terms don't match.

Now, facts are infallibly true, and you truly do feel the way you feel,

BUT

A fact is a statement that accurately describes external reality.
A feeling is an emotion that accurately represents your internal reflection/reaction to reality.

And your internal reflection/reaction absolutely can be wrong. You may not have all the facts, you may think about those facts in the wrong way. Your reactions, your emotions, your feelings can be totally wrong. Feelings are NOT infallible, feelings are often complete bunk, wildly inaccurate. You aren't infallible, so your feelings are not infallibly correct.

The facts are listed above.
They cannot be controverted.
Your feelings are facts, but your feelings are an internal state that don't necessarily match or accurately respond to external reality.

What is Worship?

From a friend of mine on Facebook: 

I asked a simple question in this new theological discussion forum I'm in. Answers so far are enlightening. It is a question I have pondered and meditated on for years and years. So, I thought I would ask it of my broad range of FB friends out here as well.

What is worship?

...Catholics have a very specific focus in answer to this question, or can, by pointing to the reality of what happens in the consecration at Mass. Non-catholics have the same general sense of personal union with God, but sometimes it seems diffuse in its expression because of a lack of a sort of experiential category.

My reply: To be fair, they can't afford to have a precise language. The purpose of the Mass, and all liturgy, and all the sacraments, is our divinization. "God became man so that men may become gods." That sentence, right there, sums up the entire purpose of everything in the Catholic Faith.

Throw that sentence in front of any Protestant and watch them run, wild-eyed, away from your "heresy". But that's what union with God requires - divinization. Can't get union without it. And Protestant theology has literally no mechanism by which to accomplish that, nor can they even create language to describe it because it is totally at odds with their "total depravity" theology.

So, all they can do is talk about "a sacrifice of praise" and such. They try plowing around the stump because they can't afford to acknowledge it.

Friend's response:

"I have brought 2 Peter 1:4 up repeatedly, in many contexts. In my experience, before being Catholic, there really are certain parts of the Bible that just go like water off a duck's back. They don't necessary meet any disagreement, just sort of like no handle, no way to pick that up."

My reply:  Right. Exactly. They literally have no words. Even though their particular denomination may not buy into total depravity, the fact is that their CULTURE does, at least to some degree. Apart from the Mormons, there is no Protestant culture that has the ability to even conceptualize what Peter is talking about.

The whole purpose of the communion of saints is to introduce divinization at a child's level of understanding, without the need for precise language. The Protestants don't even have that much, thus they don't even have the symbolic language of the cult of the saints to build on.

Now, to be fair, if you told most Catholics about divinization, they would ALSO call you a heretic. I've had FUS grads tell me that divinization is heresy, and I've had to point out CCC passages to break it to them. Most individual Catholics literally have no words for it either.

But Catholic CULTURE endorses divinization, and Catholic theology DOES have actual, precise language to describe it, so Catholics are more able to handle the concept once the precise language is brought forward.

You know, back in the first century, Catholicism was a mystery cult, like all the other theological systems. A mystery cult is a system whereby the candidates who wish to enter are not told everything until after they have already committed to it and entered. That's how Catholic teaching worked.  Candidates would be taught for a couple of years about the basics of the Faith, but they wouldn't find out about the Eucharist, they wouldn't even know the Eucharist existed, until AFTER they were baptized.

As catechumens, they were never permitted to attend a complete Mass. As soon as the homily ended, they were ushered out, the doors were locked by certain women in the assembly (deaconesses - that was pretty much their only job) and only the fully formed Catholics were allowed to be present for the consecration.

Thus, it was only after their Easter baptism that the catechumens were finally allowed to attend a COMPLETE Mass, it was only then that they found out about the consecration of the Eucharist. They would be soaked from their baptism in the baptistry outside the church, they would be smelling sweetly from the baptismal chrism, each clothed only in a white robe, they would enter the darkened nave, the room lit by hundreds holding candles to light their way. Holy Saturday readings were a summation, a completion of all they had learned, followed by a Holy Saturday homily that taught them, for the first time, about the Eucharist.  This was the very last lesson imparted to them before they saw their very first consecration and received Jesus for the first time.

It took literally years of education before the pagan Romans, Greeks, even the Jews, had built up the vocabulary necessary to understand what they would experience on Holy Saturday night at their very first complete Mass.

Well, I got news for you - we still ARE a mystery cult. We don't teach RCIA candidates about the sacraments and divinization until roughly Lent, at the earliest. We cannot teach it any earlier. We have to build up in the catechumens and candidates a vocabulary and culture that allows them to grasp 2 Peter 1:4.

Sure, pretty much all of them know, walking in the door in August, that Catholics teach the Eucharist is the flesh of Christ. But they do not understand the implications of what that means: divinization. We hold that back until the very end. They need to have the cultural vocabulary built up before they can get a handle on this last, this supreme, teaching.

So, they don't understand what worship is, not really, until they fully grasp and accept divinization, which is union - UNION - with Christ.

Friend's response:

And of course there are a whole lot of the Catholic baptized who have never really experienced mystagogy (or evangelization) at all, and so the sacramental experience is sometimes reduced to mechanics and ceremonies amidst (or, kind of "next to") stirrings of faith. What I try to wrap my head around is "how to be" in the face of all of this reality.

Exactly. All you can do is try to give them the vocabulary, the culture. Feed them milk, not meat. Answer their questions about statues and idols and Mary and yada, so that they can see the language makes sense, even if they can't understand what the language says yet.

On Foreign Aid

What's the difference between sending foreign aid to a foreign country vs sending checks to foreigners who are living in this country?

Well, when we do the latter, the money stays in the US. Since the aid goes directly to the foreigner without any foreign government middle man, waste and corruption are greatly reduced.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

So, if we are going to spend money on foreign aid anyway, I would much rather it go to illegals in this country. It's a lot more efficient than our usual shenanigans.

Marx and Engels on Race

In 1894, for example, Friedrich Engels wrote a letter to the German economist Walther Borgius. In it, Engels noted, “We regard economic conditions as that which ultimately determines historical development, but race is in itself an economic factor.”

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”    ~ Karl Marx, The Jewish Question (1844) 

In his 1877 Notes to Anti-Dühring, Engels elaborated on the subject of race, observing “that the inheritance of acquired characteristics extended … from the individual to the species.” He went on, “If, for instance, among us mathematical axioms seem self-evident to every eight-year-old child and in no need of proof from evidence that is solely the result of ‘accumulated inheritance.’ It would be difficult to teach them by proof to a bushman or to an Australian Negro.”

Marx used the word "nigger" in the original German:

Eine der großen Entdeckungen unsers nigger

And again in reference to Ferdinand LaSalle:

wenn nicht seine Mutter oder Großmutter von väterlicher Seite sich mit einem nigger kreuzten)... Die Zudringlichkeit des Burschen ist auch niggerhaft

Here's the original text, go to page 786, and the translation:

It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.

Marx's second daughter, Laura, married Paul Lafargue who, Engels said, had:

"one eighth or one twelfth Nigger blood".

In 1887, Paul was a candidate for the Paris Municipal Council, in a district which contained the Jardin des Plantes and the Zoo. In a letter to Laura (April 26, 1887), Engels said about Paul:

"Being in his quality as a nigger a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district."

While Marx described his daughter Laura's husband, a man from a Creole Haitian-Cuban family with African, European and Caribbean ancestors, "African", "Negrillo", "Nigger" or "Gorilla“. The men agreed on this assessment in their conversations. In a Letter from Engels to Marx, October 2, 1866:

"I have arrived at the conviction that there is nothing to his [Tremaux's] theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism. One could laugh oneself sick about his stories of the nigger Santa Maria and of the transmutations of the whites into Negroes. Especially, that the traditions of the Senegal niggers deserve absolute credulity, just because the rascals cannot write! . . . Perhaps this man will prove in the second volume, how he explains the fact, that we Rhinelanders have not long ago turned into idiots and niggers on our own Devonian Transition rocks . . . Or perhaps he will maintain that we are real niggers."

There were still, in Marx's view, be races that would have to be exterminated. That is a view he published in January-February 1849 in an article by Engels called "The Hungarian Struggle" in Marx's journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the point was recalled by socialists down to the rise of Hitler.

Auschwitz was socialist-inspired. The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism was already giving place to capitalism, which must in its turn be superseded by socialism.

Entire races would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age; and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.

"True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt's: "Give back Alsace and Lorraine". For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?"   ~Engels, The German, 1841

"...Allerdings ist es eine fixe Idee bei den Franzosen, dass der Rhein ihr Eigentum sei, aber die einzige des deutschen Volkes wuerdige Antwort auf diese anmassende Forderung ist das Arndtsche 'Heraus mit dem Elsass und Lothringen!' Denn ich bin - vielleicht im Gegensatz zu vielen, deren Standpunkt ich sonst teile - allerdings der Ansicht, dass die Wiedereroberung der deutschsprechenden linken Rheinseite eine nationale Ehrensache, die Germanisierung des abtruennig gewordenen Hollands und Belgiens eine politische Notwendigkeit fuer uns ist. Sollen wir in jenen Laendern die deutsche Nationalitaet vollends unterdruecken lassen, waehrend im Osten sich das Slawentum immer maechtiger erhebt?"

Engels described Slavs as non-historic people deserving of extermination.

(...)Justice and other moral considerations may be damaged here and there; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance? (...)

Following that, Bohemia and Moravia passed definitely to Germany and the Slovak regions remained with Hungary. And this historically absolutely non-existent "nation" puts forward claims to independence? (...)

Of course, matters of this kind cannot be accomplished without many a tender national blossom being forcibly broken. But in history nothing is achieved without power and implacable ruthlessness, (...)

To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which we are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. (...)

Then there will be a struggle, an "unrelenting life-and-death struggle" against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and most determined terrorism -- not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!      ~ The German, Engels, NRZ 15. Feb. 1849 

Engels liked the idea of a "Thousand year Reich" too

    This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.

"Among all the nations and sub-nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and are still capable of life -- the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (...)

This remnant of a nation that was, as Hegel says, suppressed and held in bondage in the course of history, this human trash, becomes every time -- and remains so until their complete obliteration or loss of national identity -- the fanatical carriers of counter-revolution, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution. (...)

Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the human trash of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. (...)
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is progress." MEW a.a.O. 6, 176. 

"By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium -- by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor -- which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution"  ~Friedrich Engels, NRZ 10. Sep. 1848 (NRZ = Neue Rheinische Zeitung)

"The plentiful meat and milk diet among the Aryans and the Semites, and particularly the beneficial effects of these foods on the development of children, may, perhaps, explain the superior development of these two races."  ~ Engels, "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", Fourth revised edition, 1891, in Marx & Engels, Selected Works In One Volume, Lawrence & Wishart: London, 1980, p 464. 

Free Market, Open Borders

If you are really a capitalist and you really, really believe in a free market, then you necessarily believe in the free movement of people to pursue the market in whatever way they want.

Insofar as you want controlled borders, you are opposed to free market capitalism.

Amazing how many Trump supporters are socialists.

An Open Letter Abeba Birhane

Your endorsement of "a person is a person through other persons" is a brilliant one-sentence summary of Christian Trinitarian theology. As you know, the word “person” was itself invented by Christians to describe the three Persons of the Trinity. Tertullian adapted it from the Latin word "personae" (Greek prosopon), which referred to the mask worn by actors on the stage, and it has been used in Tertullian's sense ever since.

What few non-Christians realize is that the three Persons of the Godhead are distinguishable ONLY through their relationships (Father begets, Son is begotten, Father and Son breathe forth Spirit, Spirit is the One breathed forth). If any other aspect of God is examined, the Persons of the Trinity cannot be distinguished or identified. This is why God is One, but also Three - as you imply, only the relationships reveal the Three.

Likewise, we are persons only because of our relationship to the original three Persons. God calls us into intimate relationship with Himself, the original three Persons, thus we bear the “image and likeness” of those Persons, we are - by that call - made persons. It is the call to relationship which makes us persons. This is straight Thomistic understanding.

In fact, this understanding explains what many people consider a peculiarity of Christian theology. It is de fide that Jesus is fully God, fully the Second Person of the Trinity, fully human, but NOT a human person at all. Fully human, but NOT a human person: to say that He is a human person is the condemned heresy of Nestorius. Why not a human person? Because He, via the relationships within the Trinity, is already in full, perfect, intimate relationship with two other perfect Persons of the Godhead, He is already fully a (divine, perfect) person.

A human being, by himself, does not possess a nature not capable of this full, perfect, intimate communion, with the divine nature. Human nature has to be perfected, elevated, deified. This is the role of the sacraments. Sacraments impart grace so that the human nature is capable of something outside of itself - perfect communion with perfect Personhood. We are already fully human, but the sacraments make us, as it were, fully persons, every relationship to every other existing person is perfected. Since the Second person of the Trinity already has the perfect communion, the full divine nature capable of this perfect communion, is already perfectly a Person, He has no need for human personhood. Thus, Jesus has a full, complete human nature, but is not a human person at all.

When Descartes insisted on cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am) he thereby denied the role of relationships (and grace) in his own personhood. True, God is pure rationality, but reason leads to conclusion, and the conclusion is Love. Descartes' statement was an emphasis on process, without mention of purpose or end. Thus, all subsequent philosophies built on Descartes' foundation would necessarily get lost in the forest of process. They will all necessarily deny some important aspect of personhood as originally defined and used for millennia in Western culture. In short, they won't be able to properly handle Love.

A person is a person through other persons. Exactly right. That’s the substance and foundation of the word "person" as Tertullian originally intended it. It is the substance and foundation of Christianity.

The Ubuntus have a basic understanding of this, but the Zulus have summarized it best.

Thanks for the essay!

Smallpox, Polio and Wuhan

As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted smallpox and that two million died in that year. In 1967, smallpox killed 2 million people out of a world population of 3.463 billion, for a world-wide death rate of 0.00057753. That was enough to spur a world-wide vaccination effort to successfully wipe that disease from the face of the earth.

The first major polio epidemic in the United States occurred in 1916 and reached its peak in 1952. Of the 57,628 reported cases in 1952, there were 3,145 deaths. The 1952 US Population: 157.6 million. So, in the worst year we ever experienced, the US had a polio death rate of 0.00036. That kind of death rate was enough to spur a world-wide campaign to eliminate polio forever, a campaign which is still ongoing.

Approximately 70% of all polio infections in children are asymptomatic. Another 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. Nonparalytic aseptic meningitis occurs in 1% to 5% of polio infections in children. Typically, symptoms last 2 to 10 days and are followed by complete recovery. Together, this accounts for more than 99% of cases.

Less than 1% of polio infections in all children result in flaccid paralysis. Of that "less than 1%" population, only 2% to 5% of paralysed children and 15% to 30% of adolescents and adults will die, although up between 25% to 75% will die if there is bulbar involvement. Of the "less than 1%" population, 21% will have bulbar involvement. So, 75% of 21% of less than 1% = 0.1575% worst case fatality rate, although the polio fatality rate could be as good as 0.0525%. That's a 99.85% to 99.95% survival rate for polio.

In the United States, coronavirus has produced a death rate of 43,995 in a population of 330 million (that's as of 4/21/2020. Today, 5/16/2020, it's 87,697. In three weeks, the death count doubled). The first case of the Wu-flu in the US was January 19, 2020, just about three months ago. So, in three months, CCP-virus has produced a death rate of 0.000133. But that’s just three months. To get the full year death rate, multiply by 4.  It is not unreasonable to project an annual death rate from coronavirus of 0.000533 by the end of December.

Now, you may argue that the death rate in the US has been artificially inflated, because officials are including all kinds of deaths into the Covid 19 virus death rate that shouldn’t really be counted against the Chinese virus. But we also know that China definitely lied about the death rate they experienced with Wuhan virus, deliberately under-counting deaths by at least tens of thousands.  Do the two miscounts balance each other out? We don’t know. We can only work with the numbers we are given. Even if there is fudging in the US, I trust the US numbers more than the China numbers, which is why I'm doing US death rates instead of world mortality death rates. . The world death rate would be 177,230 out of 7.8 billion, which yields an annual world mortality rate of 0.00009, which is likely an undercount (as of 5/16/2020, it is 308,899 out of 7.8 billion, annual mortality rate: 0.00016).

Annual mortality rates

• Smallpox (1967)    0.00058
• Polio (1952)           0.00036
• Wu-Virus (US)       0.00053
• Wu-Virus (World)  0.00009 
• US Deaths WW II: 0.00076 (average per year)

So, our current epidemic is killing people faster than polio did in the US in the worst year we ever had for polio, and nearly as fast as the death rate smallpox delivered to the world in 1967.

If you don’t think the precautions being taken are worthwhile, then be logically consistent. You must also insist that too much fuss has been made about smallpox and polio as well.

Update: 7/12/2020
Wu-Virus (US) has had 136,621 deaths as of 7/12/2020, roughly 6 months.
That yields an annual mortality of 273,242 and a mortality of 0.00082
Annual mortality rates

• Smallpox (1967, world)    0.00058
• Polio (1952, US)               0.00036
• Wu-Virus (US)                  0.00082
• Wu-Virus (World)             0.00009 
• US Deaths WW II:           0.00076 (average per year)

Polio, at it's height, only killed about 3,000 people. That's all. A drop in the bucket compared to Wu-flu:

"For the next four decades, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.”

In the outbreak of 1916, health workers in New York City would physically remove children from their homes or playgrounds if they suspected they might be infected. Kids, who seemed to be targeted by the disease, were taken from their families and isolated in sanitariums.

In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 deaths."

Cut-And-Paste response for those who dismiss Covid:

Covid has somewhat worse morbidity/mortality effects than polio.
As long as you consider polio a "mild seasonal virus", then Covid is certainly nothing more than that.

If you don't believe the comparison is accurate, look at the numbers. In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 polio deaths, out of a total US population of 157 million people. Polio morbidity was equally paltry: In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States. 1200 people paralyzed, 3145 people killed, out of 157 million. That's it. For THAT we launched a decades-long world-wide vaccination campaign.

For the first half of the 20th century, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.” In the outbreak of 1916, health workers in New York City would physically remove children from their homes or playgrounds if they suspected they might be infected. Kids, who seemed to be targeted by the disease, were taken from their families and isolated in sanitariums.

Of the 57,879 who were infected in 1952 (the worst year), roughly 21,000 were paralyzed to some degree. Of those whose lungs were paralyzed, most only required an iron lung for one or two weeks. Doctors felt a much larger health threat was tuberculosis, which 34,000 people died from in 1950. Also, the deadly flu epidemic of 1957 killed 62,000. By contrast, 3200 people died during 1952, the worst year of the polio epidemic.

The survival rate for polio was 99.95%. The survival rate for Covid is 99.96%. Covid also produces long-term morbidity in terms of lung, circulatory and brain damage, although the exact extent of this morbidity is still not clear. For better or worse, the Covid scare is essentially the 21st century version of the polio scare.

This UK doctor also likened Kung-Flu to polio:

Covid has a far lower mortality rate than smallpox, or indeed malaria, the subject of another WHO initiative. But its high infectivity, capacity to overwhelm hospital services, and legacy of Long Covid make it a formidable problem comparable to polio.