The Luddites Were Right

No one argues against the idea that automation improves our lives. Clearly, automation improves our lives. The very fact that 7 billion people are all living better lives today than ANYONE did when there were only 1 billion people alive (1804), speaks to that. But, similarly, no one can argue against the idea that automation takes jobs. In 1804, when the earth's population was 1 billion, everyone between the ages of roughly 8 years old and dead worked a minimum of 6 days per week, 12 hours per day. There were no 40-hour work-weeks, no retirements, precious little time spent in education, and child labor was the norm. The population is now 7 billion. If everyone were correct about how technology and jobs interact, then all 7 billion of us would still work our 6-day per week, 12-hour per day jobs from the age of eight until death, with essentially no breaks for education or retirement, just like we did in 1804. But, we don't do that. We can now afford to have child labor laws, education that takes 30% of the population out of the workforce for decades on end, retirement, and a 40-hour work week, headed towards a 30-hour work week. In fact, the very fact that this isn't what we do now is precisely why we call machinery "labor-saving." Machinery saves labor. That is, the Luddites were correct. Machinery takes jobs, and doesn't give back as many jobs as it takes. The Luddites were wrong on one point - machinery doesn't hurt us, it helps us. They were right about the other point. The number of jobs relative to the population size do, indeed, go away as a result of machinery.
In fact, computers, in the form of robots and other automation, are taking jobs at an increasing rate, and are making jobs at a decreasing rate. One-half of the population has an IQ below 100. Their jobs are generally simple to automate. So, machinery is eating the low-IQ jobs. The few jobs machinery creates are jobs only high-IQ people can perform. The new, few jobs cannot possibly be done by one-half of the population. Indeed, even many jobs requiring high-IQ are disappearing. For instance, the computer industry does not need nearly as many server admins per server or computer techs per desktop machine as it did 20 years ago. As computer design improves, the need for all those highly intelligent support people disappear. The same future looms for lawyers and doctors. Well, and pretty much everyone else. So, one way or another, at least one-half of the population, possibly more, is being rendered completely unemployable. Unfortunately, these people still need food, clothing, housing and medical care. They also need self-respect. Automated machinery is the new slave labor. It doesn't need food, clothing, housing or medical care. All the profit the machinery produces goes to the person who owns the machines. That person will become very wealthy, everyone else will not. Thus, the income gap will steadily increase. As Hans Rosling has pointed out, increasing income inequality is not necessarily a bad thing, unless there are unemployable people who do not get the food, clothing, housing and medical care they need, or the self-respect every person deserves. If there are such people, then something has to be done to get them the basics they need, including basic self-respect. You may not like the idea of universal basic income. You may be strongly opposed to the idea of taxing robots. You might (correctly) argue that a tax on automation is a tax on efficiency, and efficiency is how we got to be rich. Taxing efficiency does not seem a very bright idea. Strong arguments can be made against both of the above ideas. But, if you dislike these ideas, you have to come up with an alternative way to take care of the people who can no longer be employed. The machines have eaten their jobs. This group will have smart people, stupid people, capable people, deficient people, but they will all have one thing in common - they cannot be retrained to take the jobs that are left, either because they can't be retrained or because there simply aren't enough jobs left. These unemployable people will need help. Either they need help now, or they will within a decade or two. The pool of unemployables will grow every year. The next unemployable person could be you. The next unemployable person could be your child. Or your grandchild. Or your nephew, your niece. So, consider carefully how you want this problem handled.

Pledging Corporate Allegiance

It is a commonplace in Catholic theology that there is no necessary disagreement between being a Catholic and being a patriot. Following the example of Socrates, who chose death rather than disloyalty to the state that had raised and nurtured him, Catholic theologians have long held that we have a Catholic duty to be patriots.

But that raises an interesting question. If we owe loyalty to a country because of the laws and benefits it gives us, a la Socrates, then do we owe loyalty to a corporation for all the laws and products it gives us?

For it is certainly the case that corporations give us at least as much in this culture as our country does. Sure, the country lays down basic laws (speed limits, zoning ordinances and the like), but corporations also lay down laws concerning how to handle their products. If we don't change the oil in our cars according to the owner's schedule, the product will wreak it's due punishment on us as surely as the state would for violating a speed limit.

Socrates had the benefit of living in a simple world, wherein no corporate entities existed. Chesterton lived in England, where the international corporation really got established, but his life was not nearly as dominated by international corporations as are our own. Given that most of the original US colonies were founded by corporate business entities, did the British colonists properly owe loyalty to corporation before country? Given that most US laws are put into place through the lobbies of corporate America, do we owe loyalty to business corporations first and foremost, for having conceived and pushed through the great bulk of our laws?

When the international corporation that has paid my mortgage, fed and clothed my family and bought my car requires me via its by-laws or internal policies to do something that is contrary to the laws of the country I happen to currently reside in, which loyalty should hold sway, and why? For, certainly, the business corporation has fed and clothed me at least as much as the state - probably more so. Am I being unpatriotic when I quit my company for a higher-salaried position in another business entity? Am I disloyal when I whistle-blow on my company to the state? Am I a traitor, a treasonous individual, when I choose Walmart vs. Kroger as the patron who feeds and clothes me in exchange for my monetary allegiance?

If I am not a traitor by switching allegiance between corporations, why am I not? Given how intertwined corporation and country are, and apart from the paperwork, how is changing countries different from changing corporations?

At the behest of various corporations, our forefathers gave up allegiance to their home country in order to immigrate to America. Is their decision to switch country allegiance a sin, a moral shortcoming, a lack of virtue? What would be wrong with us switching national allegiance according to how we like different sets of national laws in the same way that we switch allegiance to which cars we drive or which supermarkets we frequent or which house we choose to buy and inhabit?

Why should choosing national allegiance be so much more of a difficult thing than switching allegiance between sports franchises? In such a world, would we look down upon or punish people who wanted to join our team?

Given our current economic and legal situation, in what does patriotism consist?

Trump Lied, America Cried

Notice the nearly complete lack of overlap between the presence of unauthorized immigrants and actual, you know, crime. It's almost like Americans are responsible for most criminal activity, not illegal aliens. The data for the cities with the most illegal immigrants comes from a Drudge link to Pew Research. The numbers on the most dangerous cities comes from this link:

All Roads Lead To Rome

At the beginning of the video, a minute-and-a-half long, the Pope cites the fact that the majority of the earth’s inhabitants profess some sort of religious belief. 

This, he said, “should lead to a dialogue among religions. We should not stop praying for it and collaborating with those who think differently.” 

The video goes on to feature representatives of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, who proclaim their respective beliefs in God, Jesus Christ, Allah and Buddha.

Some people are upset that Pope Francis recently taught yet another truth of the Catholic Faith: all religions ultimately lead to God. Many Catholics mistakenly believe this is an error. It is not.

Keep in mind that Jesus Christ is THE path to God - no one can come to the Father except through Christ. Likewise, the only way to fully know Christ is through the Catholic Church. But the point the Pope wanted to stress was simple: all roads lead to Rome.

Every pursuit of truth, no matter where it starts, if followed deeply enough, leads to Catholic Faith.

When I taught RCIA, I used the example of math to show how this worked.
When we are first learning math, we begin with arithmetic and progress through algebra, geometry, trig, calculus.

So, let us keep that in our hands as we recall some basic truths:

1. All creation was made for, by and through Christ,
2. The heavens, in fact, all created things, are telling the glory of God.
3. Thus, anyone who starts to believe in God as a result of observing the natural world (as pagans do), has come to believe in God through the evidence provided by Jesus Christ.

That conclusion is a point of Catholic Faith. If you accept the first two points, you cannot deny the conclusion. Now, there are three ways to know God:

1. Nature - the heavens are telling the glory of Christ. 
2. The prophets - Adam, Abraham, Moses, etc.,
3. Christ Himself. 

The natural world is not a person, so it doesn't explain much beyond "God exists and He rewards those who love Him." That's why pagan religions tend to have a lot of empty spots.

Prophets are persons, so they explain Who God is much more thoroughly, but like a matchmaker describing the Bridegroom to the Bride, even the prophets cannot explain all of it.

Ultimately, the Bride can only know the Bridegroom, through meeting Him. Only Christ Himself reveals the fullness of Himself.

Theology is formal science just like math. Since we have now laid out the basic truths, we can marry these truths to the formal science of math and see how all of it ties together:

1. Pagans only understand the theological equivalent of arithmetic, and nothing beyond it.
2. Islam is a haphazard conglomeration of Judaism, Christianity and paganism. It can get to theological algebra. It knows that God is All-Merciful, All-Compassionate. It knows that Mary is a sinless virgin mother. It knows Christ is sinless and the Judge on the Last Day. Islam knows that we are to submit ourselves totally to God, become a "slave of Christ" as Paul says, although Muslims would say "Allah" instead of Christ. But beyond these basics, Muslims cannot go. 
3. The Jews understand geometry, they first gave us the theological measure of the universe. They know God is the Lawgiver, that God does not deceive, that He wants us to choose life, so that we and our descendants might live. Through the Jews, God revealed the importance of liturgy,  even though the Jewish liturgy was just "practice" and has no real effect. They taught us the central truth that is monotheism. 
4. Non-liturgical Christians, like the Protestants, can do trigonometry. They know God is three Persons in one divine Substance, but they don't get any farther. They have two sacraments,baptism and marriage, but they don't understand very much about either of them. They don't understand liturgy at all. So, we can say they know a lot about triangles, but they don't know much about other geometric shapes or how everything fits together. 
5. Liturgical Christians, such as the Eastern Orthodox and the Coptics, have access to the full spectrum of liturgical and sacramental life. Through the power of the seven sacraments, they plumb the measure of the infinite Godhead, doing the equivalent of single-variable calculus. That is, they understand how the Son works (to teach us), how the Spirit works (to sanctify us), but they don't fully understand how the Father works (to govern us).
6. Only Catholics can plumb the divine infinity to its depth, only Catholics have mastered not only calculus but all the other branches of the theological spectrum as well. We understand, as fully as men can, the relations between the Father, Son and Spirit, we understand the full spectrum of how He has always intended to govern us (Father), to teach us (Son) and to sanctify us (Holy Spirit).

Thus, it is not that all the other religious faiths are wrong. Rather, none of the other faith systems can provide the comprehensive knowledge of Christ that only Catholic Faith can.

All religions, pursued deeply enough, lead to Catholic Faith.
The study of truth always leads to Truth.
Every ladder we climb, every road we walk, leads us to Rome.

That's why the Pope wants dialogue among religions. He wants the various peoples to help each other forward on the journey to Rome. We are supposed to help him get that done.

Porn and Rape

A lot of Catholic commentators want to connect porn and rape. I understand their wish, but it ain't happening.

Consider the facts:

On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, inviting collaborators....By January 1993 there were fifty Web servers across the world; by October 1993 there were over five hundred... The Web was first popularized by Mosaic, a graphical browser launched in 1993 by Marc Andreessen's team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)...

Now, look at this:

Given the explosive growth of the internet and the access to free porn that it makes available (statistics here), can anyone honestly argue that the incidence of rape increases as porn use increases? Seriously?

OK, if you still hold that porn use increases the incidence of rape, we should see high per capita incidence of rape in cities with high porn usage. We happen to know which cities have high porn usage, because, every year, Pornhub publishes the list of cities and countries with the highest porn traffic rates. Compare their list to Statista's list of the US cities with the highest rape rates (I couldn't find a world list of cities with high rape rates, or I would use that). Notice how there is ZERO overlap:

US Metropolitan statistical area (2019)	Rape Rate per 100,000 population	Top porn-using cities, worldwide (2019)	Porn Traffic Rank
Anchorage, AK	178.4	New York, NY	1
Rapid City, SD	129.3	London, England	2
Danville, IL	121.2	Paris, France	3
Fairbanks, AK	116.1	Los Angeles, CA	4
St. Joseph, MO-KS	115.6	Chicago, IL	5
Niles, MI	109.5	Osaka, Japan	6
Lincoln, NE	106.4	Sydney, Australia	7
Jackson, MI	102.4	Melbourne, Australia	8
Jonesboro, AR	99.5	Houston, TX	9
Gainesville, FL	93.7	Bangkok, Thailand	10
Springfield, MO	92.5	Rome, Italy	11
Odessa, TX	92.4	Warsaw, Poland	12
Altoona, PA	91.2	Dallas, TX	13
Lubbock, TX	88.9	Milan, Italy	14
Lansing, MI	88.8	Yokohama, Japan	15
Victoria, TX	88.3	Toronto, Canada	16
Watertown, NY	86.8	Washington, DC	17
Casper, WY	85.5	Seoul, South Korea	18
Wichita Falls, TX	85.2	Brisbane, Australia	19
Kalamazoo, MI	85	Atlanta, GA	20
Carson City, NV	84.7
Lawton, OK	83.9
Fort Smith, AR-OK	82.9
Bismarck, ND	80.7
Battle Creek, MI	80.6
Grand Rapids, MI	79.4

Not a single city on the high porn use list has a high rape incidence per capita. And, keep in mind, the rape list from Statista goes out to the top 50 cities. There's a couple of university towns in the top 50 (including Urbana-Champaign, IL, which surprised me), but exactly none of those top 50 cities were on the top porn usage list. 

OK, well, let's try this another way. Let's compare highest porn traffic levels per country to highest per capita rape rates by country. Surely THAT will show the correlation between rape and porn, right?

Country (2019)	Rape Rate per 100,000 population	Top porn-using countries (79% of all porn traffic in 2019)	Porn Traffic Rank
South Africa	132.40	United States	1
Botswana	92.9	Japan	2
Lesotho	82.7	United Kingdom	3
Swaziland	77.5	Canada	4
Bermuda	67.3	France	5
Sweden	63.5	Germany	6
Suriname	45.2	Italy	7
Costa Rica	36.7	Philippines	8
Nicaragua	31.6	Australia	9
Grenada	30.6	Mexico	10
Australia	28.6	Brazil	11
St. Kitts/Nevis	28.6	Spain	12
Belgium	27.9	Netherlands	13
United States	27.3	Poland	14
Bolivia	26.1	India	15
New Zealand	25.8	Ukraine	16
Zimbabwe	25.6	Thailand	17
Grenadines	25.6	Russia	18
Barbados	24.9	Argentina	19
Iceland	24.7	Sweden	20

Oh, dear. According to Internet porn traffic, nearly 80% of all porn traffic world-wide goes to Europe, Southeast Asia and North/South America, with the US using more porn than the next several nations combined (because we are the 3rd most populous country, after all, and have a larger population than the next several nations combined). The areas with high Internet porn traffic should be absolute hot-beds of rape. But, apart from the United States, that simply isn't true. All the rapes are happening in Africa, small island countries, Central America and Australia. There is only ONE country on both lists, and that is the United States. And even there, the correlation is not great - first by orders of magnitude in porn traffic, but only fourteenth in number of rapes per capita.  

It gets worse. Apart from Australia, the list of countries with high per capita rape rates are countries too poor or too geographically isolated to have a lot of internet connections. Thus, they rapiest nations have the worst access to porn, comparably speaking. 

So, to sum up, the countries with superb Internet (and porn access) cannot hold a candle to the rape rates of poor countries and island nations. This is called an INVERSE correlation. The more porn, the fewer rapes, the less porn, the more rapes. Christians who want to tie the two together with a positive correlation have it exactly backward.

And, to add to the injury, two of the greatest doctors of the Church would take issue with the argument many modern Catholics make. As St. Augustine pointed out: 

“If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.”

and St. Thomas Aquinas agreed:

Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace: take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil-smelling place.

Their opinion was given well before erotic imagery was widely available, yet their point seems to be borne out in today's rape-porn statistics. As porn use increases, rape decreases. In fact, the same thing happens with violent movies - the more violent a movie is, the more it suppresses actual violent acts out in reality. 

Sorry if you find this offensive, modern Catholics, but that appears to be the reality. Being Catholic is all about being in contact with reality. Stop pretending something is true when we know perfectly well it isn't.

If we, as Catholics, wish to argue against porn, we will have to find a better argument than "It causes rape!" Because it doesn't cause rape. In fact, it arguably reduces rape, as our own Catholic theologians (both Doctors of the Church) predicted it would. 

Argue against porn because it is intrinsically evil, it consumes too much electricity, it uses too much Internet bandwidth. Use arguments that you can back up. Don't use arguments that are stupid on their face. 

Should We Ban Chicago?

According to the FBI statistics referenced by US News and World Report, violent crime overall remained near 30-year lows last year (2016), even as Americans' concern about crime hit a 15-year high in March. Most Americans believe the fake news reported by the mainstream media, they have no idea what the reality is. After all, 7 in 10 Americans last year erroneously said crime was rising.

Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks have committed half of homicides in the United States each year for nearly 40 years (1980 to present). That number doesn't change much. But, 90% of all homicides, black or white, are committed by men, and not just any men, but men between the ages of roughly 16 and 30.

According to the US Census Bureau the black male population in the United States was 21.5 Million in 2013. Murders are almost always committed by men between the ages of 16 and 30. Roughly 24% of that 21.5 million, or 5.3 million black men, are in between 16 and 30. According to USA Today, nearly half of black men have been arrested by age 23. Or, to put it another way, half of all American black men have had a travel ban imposed on them until they are no longer of a dangerous age.

So, out of a population of 330 million, about 5.3 million citizens contain within itself the malcontents that are responsible for 50% of the murders each year. Those same black men are also generally the victims of the crime. Half of all murder victims are likewise drawn from that same 5.3 million person pool.

5.3 million out of 330 million: that means that this 1-2% of the population is responsible for 50% of all murders (and 50% of all murder victims) in America.

According to Pew Research, Muslims make up about 1% of Americans. According to Vox, Muslims accounted for about one-third of one percent of all murders in the US. We don't know how atrocities would scale. If Muslims made up 30% of the population, would they be responsible for 10% of the murders (one-third)? Or would it be more?

Before Hitler seized power (in 1933) only 850,000 out of 66 million Germans were card-carrying Nazis. After the Nazi seizure of power, there was a big surge in membership. At its peak, Party membership reached 8 million out of 80 million Germans in 'Greater Germany' or about ten percent of the population. What percentage of Germans actively participated in, or even knew about, the mass murders?

It's hard to say. After all, FDR rounded up the Japanese and sent them to internment camps. If he had begun ordering their deaths, would American soldiers have refused? Probably not - it was war-time, and people trusted their president. If ordinary civilians heard about mass slaughters of the interned Japanese, would the stories be believed? If the stories were believed, how many Americans would simply assume that the Japanese had it coming? After all, didn't their cousins attack Pearl Harbor? Would Americans really have complained if FDR sent those of Japanese ancestry into the ovens? We don't complain about abortion today. Why would we complain about we would be told was a necessary war-time measure against the invidious enemy in 1941?

So.

We know, for a fact, that a distinct sub-population in the United States causes 50% of the murders. Oddly, no one is talking about putting a travel ban on all Chicago residents, or even just the residents from the South Side. But that would make at least as much sense as banning refugees from Syria.

Would your neighborhood accept refugees from Chicago, Detroit or Baltimore? Couldn't gang-banging murderers be hidden among such refugees? Couldn't they be just waiting to establish drug-running gangs in your neighborhood, where the pickings are easy, and the cops sleek and sleepy? Don't we have a lot more reason to believe it? Why wouldn't we instantly suspect that Chicago's murderers are fleeing to our city to escape the wrath of some home-grown drug lord?

There is an answer to every question: simple, easy, and wrong.
Trump is good at giving us these answers.
Why are we willing to accept them?

Why Creationism is Wrong

When it comes to creationism, the guiding principle of subsidiarity applies. Subsidiarity is the organizing principle within Catholicism. It states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. In particular, political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority, but in general all decisions should be taken at the most local level which still resolves the problem.

So, here's the problem.

Experimental science was invented by the Catholic Church. There has been no lack of good Catholic scientists, centuries and centuries of them, who would have been happy to demonstrate that the Bible is a good experimental science textbook - if that were true. 

Experimental science is unquestionably good at discovering physical truths. We have clearly undergone tremendous scientific progress over the course of the last two millennia, and absolutely explosive progress in the last two centuries. Most of this progress was due to experimental scientists who were priests, bishops, a few Popes, more than one Doctor of the Church and even a few saints. These gentlemen would have liked nothing better than be able to show that the Bible is a superb science text.

But, they were GOOD CATHOLIC scientists, who followed the evidence of natural revelation and came to the conclusion that, even though the Bible gives us many examples of how to run a scientific experiment, it is not actually any good as a science textbook. They tried to show it for centuries. But, as Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmine (a doctor of the Church) both agreed, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven. It does not tell us how the heavens go.

The Catholic scientists who invented experimental science, who showed the world how to do experimental science, these are the men who tell us the Bible cannot be used that way.

Following the principle of subsidiarity, and the clear evidence of my senses that these gentlemen know what they are talking about - for I have benefited from their knowledge of the natural world in the physical comfort these generations of Catholic scientists have given my family and myself - I am not going to second-guess them. The Church says the Bible is not a science textbook, the Catholic scientists say the Bible is not a science textbook, and I believe both of them.

So, I reject Creationism.

Why Creationism is Dangerous

Indeed, I would argue that the Creationists are the major drivers behind atheism and have been for centuries. As St. Augustine pointed out nearly two millennia ago:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. 

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?  

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. " 

-- Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis. vol. 1, Ancient Christian Writers., vol. 41, Translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, S.J. New York: Paulist Press, 1982

That is, by insisting the something is Catholic doctrine when it definitely is not, Creationists have brought into doubt points of Catholic doctrine that the Church actually DOES teach. Their refusal to accept subsidiarity, their refusal to submit to the authority of natural revelation ("the heavens are telling the glory of God") is a model of disobedience. Creationists refuse the authority of natural revelation, so those who study natural revelation refuse the authority of supernatural revelation (the prophets, the apostles and Christ Himself).

Catholics embrace "both-and". Truth cannot contradict truth. Both natural AND supernatural revelation are true. But creationists force men into a duality, "Accept our understanding of supernatural revelation OR accept natural revelation, but you can't have both!" Worse, by claiming to judge those who actually do study natural revelation, the creationist claims a level of expertise in regards to natural revelation that they really do not have. When creationists mis-represent or misunderstand the natural world, is it really much of a leap for someone to conclude that they also cannot be trusted to correctly represent supernatural revelation?

As the priest, bishop, Father and Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, noted above, this is not a recipe for success.

What does the Church Teach?

Catholic teaching is on faith and morals. Experimental science describes the mathematical, quantitative relationship between objects. Catholic theology describes the quality of the relationships between persons, human, angelic and divine. Quantity vs. quality. Objects vs. persons. These are two different areas of expertise.

What, exactly, is "faith and morals"?

"Faith" is about the trust relationship between persons, how one person can have trust in another person. If I have faith in you, then I trust you to do something, because I know you. Faith requires evidence. It is based on the evidence of my past interactions with you. Faith is not blind, it REQUIRES evidence.

So, in Christianity, "faith" is a shorthand way of asking the following questions: "Does God exist? if He does, Who is He?"

Put yet another way, "faith" is the same as asking "What evidence do I have to show that He exists and/or Who He is and what characteristics does He possess?"

"Morals" is likewise just a shorthand way of asking, "If He exists, do I relate to Him at all, and if so, how do I relate to Him?"

So, faith answers the question "Do I trust Him?" and morals answers the question "How do I relate to Him?"

In order for Young Earth creationism to be part of God's self-revelation in faith or morals, that is, in order for creationism to be integral to Catholic teaching, then creationism would have to tell us something about Who God is or how we relate to Him that can be known in no other way. Further, what creationism tells us about God would have to be non-contradictory with the other aspects of God's self-revelation.

But creationism doesn't do any of these things.
Thus, creationism is not a part of either faith or morals.

What creationism DOES tell us - God created everything, and He loved us into existence - can be equally told to us via evolution and the Big Bang theory. Creationism doesn't really say anything special.

Creationism might be true - Catholics are not forbidden from being creationists if they really believe that's where the evidence leads - but, since it isn't part of faith and morals, Catholics are not bound to believe it, and most post-industrial Catholics who have looked at it don't buy it. That said, a lot of pre-1900s Catholics did buy into creationism. But that isn't relevant to the Catholic Faith.

Pre-1900s Catholics believed a lot of things about the natural world that turned out to be incorrect. Priests, bishops, popes, doctors of the Church, even saints, had wrong theories about human conception (they did not know about the human egg), human nutrition (they did not know about vitamins), germ theory (did not know about cells), etc. Their wrong theories on these subjects are not part of faith and morals any more than creationism is. Pointing to their wrong theories in order to buttress creationist assertions is pointless at best, deliberately misleading and wrong at worst.

St. Augustine had the right of it.
Would that we followed his advice.

Cardinal Burke's New Adventures As A Jackass

So, now Cardinal Burke claims he never said the Pope was a heretic.

That's alright, Cardinal - the people you deliberately stirred up are saying that is really what you meant.

So, it looks like your language has been pretty damned imprecise. Maybe someone should issue a formal correction to you, eh?

As for his statement about the pope and heresy, let's just say better theologians than Cardinal Burke have already dismissed his opinion as ridiculous.

UPDATE:
Wow - looks like I'm precisely in line with Pope Francis.
This makes me very happy.

All Dogs Go To Hell

If dogs can go to heaven, then dogs can go to hell as well.
So, maybe all dogs go to hell.

Which would actually be much more logical, since:

1. All of creation is fallen,
2. Thus dogs are fallen
3. Heaven is only attainable through sacramental grace.
4. Dogs are not baptized
5. Therefore, dogs don't receive sacramental grace,
6. Thus, if dogs have rational souls, their souls must be fallen (along with the rest of creation), they have no baptism to save them, and thus no means to be healed of their fallen state.

CONCLUSION: All dogs go to hell.

QED.

Either accept that conclusion or stop pretending pets are persons. Pets don't have immortal souls - they die, they are done. They disappear. Period. End of story.

NOTE:

Aquinas pointed out that if animals have rational souls, then the vegans are correct - killing an animal (for consumption or euthanasia) would be a mortal sin. But killing an animal is not a mortal sin, therefore animals do not have rational souls. Without a rational soul, an animal cannot join itself to the Pure Reason Who is God. Heaven is defined as union with God.

So, anything that lacks a rational soul cannot enter heaven.

Some will say Aquinas was wrong on the Immaculate Conception, so he might be wrong on this. But Aquinas was not wrong on the Immaculate Conception. 

The Problem of Intent

The bishops of Buenos Aires have issued a teaching on how to deal with chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis has lauded their summary, saying "There is no other interpretation." 

Many people have read what the bishops of Buenos Aires have said about Amoris Laetitia, found fault with it, and - based on Pope Francis' acquiescence with the bishops' writing - concluded that Pope Francis is teaching error. If we take into account the inexplicable hatred some people have for Pope Francis, this reading is understandable, but not supportable. 

It is possible for two groups of people to read and write exactly the same words, yet have completely different understandings of the meanings of those words.

I know this from personal experience, and therein lies a tale.

My undergraduate degree was in computer science. One of my courses was on database structures, one class of which was devoted to the structure of something called the "b-tree." Now, the instructor spent quite some amount of class time explaining the structure of the b-tree and providing code examples for how to implement it. As he spoke, I built in my mind a model of what it should look like and how to traverse it. When the mid-term exam rolled around, the instructor asked us, in one of the questions, to write a paragraph describe how to traverse a b-tree. I dutifully wrote my understanding out.

On receiving the exams back the next week, I was pleased to see I had gotten full credit for my b-tree answer. But, as the professor reviewed the answers to the exam, his discussion of b-tree traversal was radically different than mine. Impossibly different. I couldn't figure it out. What he was describing didn't match my understanding at all. But he had given me full credit. Why had he given me full credit?

I read my answer over and over, and suddenly it hit me. My description of b-tree traversal had been so imprecise that, depending on whether or not you assumed I had the correct model in mind, it could be read either as a completely correct or a completely incorrect traversal of the b-tree. I nearly laughed out loud. I didn't, of course. I didn't want the instructor to notice me just then. 

Now, make no mistake, my mental model was completely wrong. But my instructor inadvertently gave me the Christian charity of the doubt, he assumed the model in my head matched the model in his head, and so he read my answer in a hermeneutic of continuity with his own, thus giving me full marks when I actually deserved none at all. 

Think on that a moment - he and I both read the same answer, we both affirmed the answer was true, we might each have said about these very same words that "there is no other interpretation." Yet, my instructor's understanding was correct, and mine was thoroughly wrong. 

There have been many negative articles that pretend to "summarize" the Argentinian bishop's teachings. Are those summaries accurately depicting what the bishops have in mind? I don't know. I suspect not. But let us assume the negative summaries are accurate. 

The Pope has said that he agrees with the Argentinian bishops. Does Pope Francis really agree with the bishops, or does he merely "agree" with them in the same way that my instructor thought I agreed with him? Again, I don't know. What I do know from personal experience is this: it is possible for the bishops and the Pope to agree on exactly the same paragraph and its wording, yet the bishops might be thoroughly wrong, while the Pope is, at the same time, entirely correct.

There are a number of instances where Popes have made, or agreed with, statements that they may have intended in one way, but which could be, and subsequently were, read by either the people or the Magisterium in another. So, even if the worst happens to be true, even if the bishops are wrong and the Pope has affirmed their wrong understanding, does that mean the Chair of Peter has failed? Not at all. Amoris Laetitia did not explicitly say anything that violated the Faith. Even if what the bishops wrote is wrong, even if Pope Francis thoroughly agreed with the erroneous bishops when he said "there is no other interpretation," his statement is his view as a private theologian. As a private theologian, he could easily be wrong about whether or not there is another interpretation. That is, even if we grant error on the part of the Argentine bishops and the Pope, a Magisterial document could easily overrule his off-the-cuff remark concerning how to read the Argentinian bishops' document.

You may agree with all that I have written, but reply that the Pope has no right to make pronouncements that are not precise. That argument is completely insupportable. As the eminent historian Father Phillip Hughes points out, the Nicene Creed, the very first Creed produced by the very first major council of the Church, contained the word "homoousion". "Homoousion" was so imprecise, so constantly associated with heresy, that its inclusion in the Creed arguably forced the the Church to hold four subsequent ecumenical councils just to hammer out exactly what that vague and vaguely heretical word meant. The presence of that word, "homoousion", in the Nicene creed actually caused the Coptic Church to schism off rather than sign off on any Creed containing such infamous phrasing. 

The examples could easily be multiplied. Popes and councils have a long history of imprecise wording. They think it is precise when they write it or say it, but then some wag in the corner comes up with an interpretation they hadn't considered, and it's back to the drawing board we go! 

The Church is made of people. Anyone who writes for a living knows that it is nearly impossible to phrase things precisely and accurately the first time around. Such precision takes constant re-writes, discussions, and more re-writes. Even if, by some miracle, a writer does get it correct the first time through, the phrasing may be so original that the readers simply don't "get" it, they don't see how the writer possibly made the leap from A to W. So, a bunch of supporting documents, examples, footnotes, have to be added to help the reader make the connection the first time through.

Most of the negative drum-beating about Amoris Laetitia is nonsense fomented by people who simply don't like Pope Francis. They are determined to find fault where there is no fault. It is ridiculous.

Have some faith in the Pope, have some faith in the Church. This dust-up is regrettable, but not at all new. It is not the end of the world, not even close. This, too, shall pass. 

The Voting Conundrum

Voting is like homeopathy. The idea is, my vote is critically important, even though we both know that it will be swamped by the votes of the city, county and state in which I live. Nobody wins an election by one vote at the national level. No one does so at the state level, and it is pretty darned rare even at the county or city level.

But, let's ignore facts and pretend my vote really, really matters.

Then this happens:

Texas Republican Elector Says He Won't Cast Ballot For Trump

So, you are from Texas and you voted for an elector, but the elector won't do what you want.

I live in Texas, I didn't vote at all, but I got an elector who will do precisely what I want.

Wow - it's almost like our votes don't matter.

How crazy is that?

And it's not like this is new. Think of the politician who promises to vote "the will of the people." It is childishly easy to keep the promise. Hundreds of thousands of people will vote for him, all of them holding diverse opinions on any particular issue. The politician need only vote for whatever he personally wants, and he has thereby voted "the will of the people."

If his personal opinion happens to match the majority of voters, he is following the mandate of the people. If his personal opinion happens to be opposed by the majority, and championed only by some small minority, then he is defending the needs of the minority against oppression.

See how that works?

No politician can be a liar on this score. As I wrote elsewhere,

So, when I vote, I don't vote in order THAT someone may win. Rather, I vote in order to express the idea that this person is someone I know well enough and I trust well enough to act correctly while they are in office (whether they get that office or not). My vote is a statement about how much I trust another person, a statement that asserts the office-seeker's values are close enough to my own that I have good reason to believe he will serve others well while in office.

It is only in THAT sense that my vote is a moral act. My vote is a short-hand letter of reference. I don't look at the office-seeker and say "Well, he's not as bad as the others, and someone has to do the job, so I suppose he will have to do." Rather, I look at the office seeker on his own, without reference to the other office-seekers. Based on the assessment I make of this seeker alone, I determine if I know him well enough and trust him well enough to endow him with the power of the office.

This is the important part: If none of the office seekers are trustworthy enough, then none of them get my vote.

If voting is a moral act, then my vote is my personal moral statement.That is all it is - it can be no more.

Making Sense of Catholic Marriage

Recently, "traditionalist" Catholics have been complaining about Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia.  Specifically, they demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of exactly how sin and the confessional work.

The bishops of Buenos Aires have issued a teaching on how to deal with chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis has lauded their summary, saying "There is no other interpretation." Let's look at what the Argentine bishops said.

“When the concrete circumstances of a couple make it feasible, especially when both are Christians with a journey of faith, one may propose that they commit to living in continence.” Amoris Laetitia “does not ignore the difficulties of this option (cf. note 329) and leaves open the possibility of receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation when one fails in this intention” (cf. note 364). 

This is nothing new. Living "as brother and sister", that is, living as a married couple but without engaging in sex certainly does not bar either member of the couple from the sacraments. It never has. Sex outside of marriage is a sin, but if two people are living in the same space, but are not having sex outside of marriage, that is, if they are "living in continence", they are fine. They can receive the Eucharist.

Even if they occasionally fail, that is no new thing. How many of us go to confession, confess a sin, fully intend to never repeat it again, then find ourselves in the confessional the next month, confessing EXACTLY the same sin again? What matters at the moment of confession and absolution is intent at the moment of confession and absolution. As long as we have proper intent, we are absolved of our sin and able to receive the Eucharist. Even if we fail a few hours later, for the few hours that our resolve held, we can receive. The situation the Argentine bishops described above is EXACTLY the same as the situation any sin puts us in.

But the bishops did not stop there. They added this in the next paragraph:

“In other more complex circumstances, and when it is not possible to obtain a declaration of nullity,” the document continues, “the aforementioned option may not, in fact, be viable. Nonetheless, it is equally possible to undertake a journey of discernment.” And “if one arrives at the recognition that, in a concrete case, there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability (cf. 301-302), particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (cf. notes 336 and 351). These in turn disposes the person to continue maturing and growing with the strength of grace. 

This paragraph does not say that all couples who have gotten civil marriage without benefit of annulment have the right to the Eucharist. What AL points out is something that already applies to other sins: "there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability." 

Case 1

Again, this is not a new concept. We don't become new people overnight - it takes time to change habits. Priests are required to recognize this reality in the confessional. Lay Catholics are required to recognize this in real life. 

For instance, getting drunk is a mortal sin, but if the sinner is addicted to alcohol, then that diminishes the sinner's culpability. What is purely sinful for me, who has no addiction to alcohol, no habit of imbibing when life gets me down, might not be as sinful for you, who has developed this habit. Your habit has enslaved you to commit this sin in a way that my life has not enslaved me. It will be easier for me to avoid this sin in the future than it will be for you. You have less culpability, less responsibility, because you have lost ingrained habits of control in this regard. Any sin can become a habit in this way, any habitual sin reduces culpability. This is true of every sin, even the sin of sex outside of marriage.

Combine this with the fact above concerning intent, and we have the possibility of a civilly remarried couple who intend to live from this point forward as brother and sister. They receive Eucharist after confession, perhaps even receiving Eucharist outside of Mass, and then fail in their intentions just hours or days later. Perhaps this is something they struggle with over the course of months or years, with the time elapsed between sinful episodes slowly expanding, sometimes contracting, as they constantly work on this area with the help of Confession and Eucharist.

Remember, civil re-marriage is not a canonical crime, it does not incur the penalty of excommunication. As the Diocese of Madison points out:

Are those who divorce and civilly remarry excommunicated?
No. Excommunication is a specific canonical penalty imposed as a consequence for certain very serious canonical crimes. Neither seeking a divorce nor attempting remarriage are currently punishable by excommunication, nor are they even classified as canonical crimes. This is not necessarily to say that divorce and civil remarriage are not immoral or sinful, or that they have no effect on one's relationship with the Church. In general, divorce introduces disorder into the family and society, bringing grave harm to the deserted spouse and to children traumatized by the separation of their parents (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2386). Therefore, depending on the circumstances, divorce can be gravely immoral. And attempting remarriage while already validly married in always seriously sinful.

In the case of the couple above, with whom the priest is assiduously working, no law of the Church is broken, no reality is ignored. Pope Francis points out that there is nothing wrong with working with a couple in this way.

Before we go further, we should recall Pope Benedict famously stated that the use of condoms in extramarital sex might constitute a first step towards morality. Now that Pope Benedict has cleared the way for such discussions, Pope Francis and the Argentine bishops use "the Benedictine condom principle" to point towards a similar application within marriage itself - the protection of the children.

Remember two things: (1) One of the three goods of marriage (procreation, union of the spouses and remedy for concupiscence) is the conception and raising of children (both are part of procreation), (2) According to Pope Benedict, the use of condoms is evil in itself, but may indicate a willingness to consider the good of another. If that is the case, Benedict considers the use of condoms a first step towards morality.

So, Francis just takes Benedict's condom principle and applies it to marriage (Pope Benedict himself said the condom principle applied even in heterosexual acts). According to the "Benedictine" principle, the sexually active couple who view their own sexual union as necessary to their life together, may see their life together as pre-eminently important for the children (a good). That is, they recognize the children from one or both first marriages need to have both a mother and a father present in the house. The couple want the children to have both mother and father. The couple has taken civil (natural) vows of fidelity to each other, but recognize that they themselves have a tendency to stray. So, they have sex in order to reduce/remove their tendency to stray (quiet concupiscence), in order to maintain their union and in order to help make sure the little ones have a home. They are showing concern for innocent little ones.

Again, according to Pope Benedict, this concern for fidelity to each other for the sake of the children would constitute the first step towards morality to the priest who tries to guide them towards the good of preparing themselves for sacramental marriage. Their willingness to work to stay together, even though it involves sex that is not licit, is undertaken for the good of others, innocent children. According to "the Benedictine condom principle", this willingness to recognize personal weaknesses and the needs of the children has to be taken into consideration by the priest as he works with them to move towards a situation that does not do violation to the sacrament of marriage.

So, anyone who defended Pope Benedict's remarks on condoms (Ignatius Press, I'm looking at you), should likewise be defending Pope Francis' and the bishops of Buenos Aires on Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis is merely following in Pope Benedict's footsteps. 

Case 2

But we can take it even further. There is a fact about marriage tribunals which all priests and bishops (should) already know: the declaration of a marriage tribunal is a disciplinary, not a doctrinal, statement. Again, we quote from the Diocese of Madison:

Are tribunal judgments infallible?
The marriage nullity process serves precisely to allow for and encourage the discovery of truth regarding the juridic status of the marriage under review. In other words, the process is designed to arrive at the truth as to whether a valid and indissoluble matrimonial bond arose between the two parties at the moment of consent. Even though the judicial decisions of an ecclesiastical tribunal are certainly trustworthy, they are not infallible. (emphasis added) In theory, the judges could err in two ways: 1) they could incorrectly declare a valid marriage to be invalid, or 2) they could incorrectly declare an invalid marriage to be valid. Neither error is a good thing, but the former is much worse, since the judges would essentially be doing what the Lord prohibited, separating what God has joined. For this reason, the Church's law is designed to ensure that any doubts about the validity of a marriage are resolved in favor of the marriage bond, means that marriages are presumed valid until proven otherwise.

Marriage tribunals can be wrong. As I have pointed out before, those who are not sinning have a right to the sacraments. If those innocent of mortal sin are denied access to the sacraments, the priests who deny them access have sinned against them. What do we do if the marriage tribunal has erroneously closed off access to the sacraments of Marriage and the Eucharist?

Remember, marriage tribunals do not just draw their power from canon law, but also from the power of the local bishop. That is, marriage cases can, at least in theory, be decided directly by the local bishop without the use of a marriage tribunal. Now, this almost never happens, but in theory, it could. This possibility of circumventing current procedures lies within AL as well - the possibility that it is time for the Church to find a better disciplinary method than a marriage tribunal for assessing the sacramental bond of marriage.

Time to Change Discipline?
Changing the disciplinary method for a sacrament has precedent. For the first thousand years of the Church, a man learned how to be a priest by following a real priest around. That was originally the function of an altar server - he was the priest's apprentice. Unfortunately, the process was only as good as the priests in the process. Every priest trained his own replacement via an apprenticeship. Since half of any group is sub-average, this apprenticeship process guaranteed half of all new priests would receive sub-average training. That wasn't good.

Although the apprenticeship method stank to high heaven and no one really liked it, for over a thousand years, no one knew how to fix it. The priest formation process stayed broken until technological change, specifically, the invention of the printing press and the resulting hundred-fold drop in book prices, allowed the Council of Trent to develop an alternate solution: the seminary. With the new seminary training system, the old apprenticeship was abolished. After Trent, all priests had to attend a seminary, a training school, where only the best priests of the diocese were allowed to serve as instructors. Now everyone got the best instruction that the diocese had to offer. Some dioceses were better than others, but that was the best anyone could do. That solution has held for the last 500 years.

The marriage tribunal is similarly an invention of the Church, meant to handle marriage questions in a more systematic and professional way. But nobody really likes the system. By reminding bishops that they have a certain amount of latitude in dealing with marriage questions, Pope Francis may be opening the door to start a discussion about how to move forward from the current marriage tribunal system to something more efficacious and certain.

I have no idea what that would look like, and AL gives only the barest hint that something like this is open for discussion. But, we should consider the possibility that it is time the Church came up with a "seminary-like" solution for marriage questions. It may well be time to abolish marriage tribunals and implement a new process that is better than the tribunal solution we currently have, better at administering and clarifying the ancient understanding of the sacrament of marriage. If that is where Pope Francis would like to go, he has the support of most of the Church.


Addendum:
If Pope Francis' point seems convoluted and in serious need of explanation, that may be because his point builds so directly off of Pope Benedict's deeply confusing remarks. Note, the comment below is about Benedict's condom remarks:

“I have never seen a communiqué from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that explains the words of the pope after the fact,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert at Il Foglio, an Italian daily newspaper. “I think it’s unique. And it demonstrates how many complaints and serious criticism the Vatican has received.”

Why Cardinal Burke Plays the Jackass

"It is asked whether, following the affirmations of Amoris Laetitia (300-305), it has now become possible to grant absolution in the sacrament of penance and thus to admit to holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives together with a different person more uxorio without fulfilling the conditions provided for by Familiaris Consortio, 84, and subsequently reaffirmed by Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 34, and Sacramentum Caritatis, 29. Can the expression “in certain cases” found in Note 351 (305) of the exhortation Amoris Laetitia be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live more uxorio?"

YES OR NO Steve Kellmeyer

That is the question that was recently posed to me by someone who tired of how I have characterized Cardinal Burke's malice.

When I replied:

Why would my answer, one way or the other, make a difference to anyone?

The answer came back just as I thought it would:

Because to answer yes is to profess heresy and approve of blasphemous communions, which is a sacrilege.

Yes. Just so. Which is why I replied:

Exactly. You claim to be Catholic, so you can answer this question as well, and as authoritatively, as I.

IF someone has DEFINITELY committed an act of adultery without repenting, then no, they can't receive Eucharist. 

BUT....

The individual declaration of whether or not a marriage is valid is a judicial, i.e., disciplinary declaration. It is not doctrinal. That means it is not an infallible declaration. Marriage tribunals can be, and probably are, frequently in error in their judgements about a marriage's validity.

Anyone who is NOT in a state of mortal sin has a RIGHT to the Eucharist. Given that marriage tribunals can be wrong (in either direction), we cannot have absolute certainty that any particular marriage situation actually IS adulterous. If a priest denies Eucharist to someone who actually has a RIGHT to Eucharist, because they actually aren't in an adulterous situation (even though someone else thinks they are), then the priest has sinned against them. 

Thus, while the theoretical answer is clear, the practical answer in any particular situation, is anything BUT clear.

This is why the four bishops' question is STUPID.

The four bishops know full well both parts of this answer, and they know the Pope knows both parts of this answer, but the bishops have phrased it so as to only stress the theoretical answer, when knowledge is certain. In practice, we never actually have that certainty. The Pope's commentary to date has stressed the practical problem - how do we handle this situation with the couple sitting in chairs in front of us, when we don't actually know what state their situation is in and we CANNOT, even in principle, actually ever really know? 

But the cardinals' question is not about the practical, it is about the theoretical. The question, as posed, is a crap question. The bishops are trying to make the faithful THINK the Pope cannot be trusted (else why ask the question at all?). 

In short, the bishops asked the Pope that question for the same reason YOU asked ME the question:

• you wanted a "gotcha!" moment, 
• you wanted to make me look stupid, 
• you wanted other people to doubt that I knew the TRUE Catholic Faith,
• you didn't want an answer, you wanted a damned fight,
• you wanted a fight in which YOU looked good, so your opposite looked bad.

Now, posed to me who has no authority, the question is just your attempt at annoying me, since I have no authority to undermine. But posed to the Pope, that question comes straight from the pit of hell. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why some priests are talking about the need to strip Cardinal Burke of his "cardinal" title. They argue Burke is no longer worthy of it. This would be an extreme move, and - in traditionalist circles - it would make a martyr of a man who is not worthy of that title either. I'm not sure it would be a smart thing to do. But it surely would be a JUST thing to do.

Cardinal Burke's Double Standard

How many people remember the time Pope Benedict said it was alright for a man to use a condom?

The Pope says in the first part of the answer that "[the use of] a condom can be... a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility."

Of course you don't remember that!
After all, Pope Benedict legitimized the use of the TLM! We aren't going to attack anything Benedict says before or after that, because if we did, it might make Benedict look loony tunes, and it might cast doubt on whether he was right to legitimize the TLM!

Take example A: Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Where was the famous Cardinal Burke in questioning Pope Benedict?

Oh, that's right .... he was SILENT AS THE FREAKING GRAVE.

Why?

Well, because Benedict legitimized the TLM
AND
Pope Benedict gave Cardinal Burke cushy perqs that made Burke look Really Important (TM).
So, Pope Benedict's insanity was considered FINE by all the Right People (TM).

But, if Burke was silent in regards to Benedict, why is he forcing a public question on Pope Francis?
Why is a "traditionalist" bishop recommending that bishops can invent brand new procedures for dealing with popes? As Ross Douthat notes, that is exactly what Cardinal Burke proposes

Meanwhile one of those four dubia authors, the combative traditionalist, Cardinal Raymond Burke, gave an interview suggesting that papal silence might require a “formal act of correction” from the cardinals — something without obvious precedent in Catholic history.

A "traditionalist" that wants new procedures put in place to circumscribe papal authority - Martin Luther, call your office! And tell them you are Burke's buddy! Because you are. Now.

Again, why is Cardinal Burke doing this?
Well, Burke attacks Pope Francis because Francis took Burke's perqs away.

Cardinal Burke is no Padre Pio, Padre Pio being a man who quietly accepted subordination for ten years, because he understood the value of obedience. Instead, Burke is acting like a whining brat, and the traditionalists (mostly Trump voters) are eating it up! Because "whiny brat" = TLM devotee = Trump voter.

Like calls to like across the deep.