Evangelized through Novels – “If creators of Christian culture hope to produce work that will bear good fruit, we must draw our life from the true source — our living Saviour. He is real. He is present.”From one Catholic novelist to another (Catholic Register)
Premarital Cohabitation – “Fifty to 65% of Americans believe that living together before marriage will improve their odds of relationship success. Younger Americans are especially likely to believe in the beneficial effects of cohabitation.” What’s the Plan? Cohabitation, Engagement, and Divorce (Institute for Family Studies)
Was Anyone Surprised? – “The Pope’s words express, among other things, a profound lack of engagement with the people and the ideas he’s criticizing. He’s settled on a definition, an image, dare we say a caricature – and he’s going with it.” You indietrist, you (Charlotte Was Both)
Exchange of Hearts – “What is at ‘the heart of things’ for Catholics? In the words of Pope Francis, ‘we are in the middle of a love story . . . if we do not understand this, we have understood nothing of what the Church is.’” A Return to the Kerygma: The Path to Renewal (What We Need Now)
Derision of Christianity – “One of the hallmarks of the modern age has been the death of the sacred. Nietzsche’s Madman understood that this was one of the central consequences of the death of God.” Transgression Is Passé (First Things)
Future of America – “President Joe Biden ginned up racial tensions at the graduation ceremony for Howard University on Saturday, claiming that America’s greatest threat comes in the form of ‘white supremacy.'” Biden Says ‘White Supremacy’ Most Dangerous Threat To U.S. In Commencement Speech At Historically Black College (Daily Wire)
A Dangerous Attitude – “Did American leaders really imagine they could stop tanks with trendy words? Are armies ever out of date?” Do Russians Worship War? (Commentary)
Objectivity Has Crumbled – “As the debate around care for gender dysphoric youth intensifies, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, self-appointed arbiter of norms in gender medicine, has come under increasing scrutiny.” “Less boobs? No boobs?”: Subjectivity, Not Science, Drives Youth Gender Medicine (Fairer Disputations)
Liberal Governance – “Hailed as the enshrinement of a new consensus, the national recognition of same-sex marriage can also be understood as an event that accelerated polarization . . . ” How Gay Marriage Changed America (First Things)
Rural Dwellers – “Is the Catholic Land Movement a legitimate approach to rediscovering God’s gracious gifts, or is it just another lifestyle choice option for the post-modern-minded?” Should Catholics Return to the Land? (Crisis)
Newly Inscribed Martyrs – “Still, this was the first time the martyrology was revised with the explicit approval of a non-Catholic cleric, in this case Coptic Pope Tawadros II . . . ” Unpacking how history changed yesterday with recognition of Coptic martyrs (Crux)
Multiculturism – “The fact is, the idea of a monarch who engages with other faiths is not as novel as it may seem, and has precedence within the Christian tradition.” In Defense of the Philosopher King (First Things)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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@multiculturalism: In Defense of the Philosopher King
Yes and no…
Yes to monarchy as providing space for a philosopher king above the leveling deceits of modernism. But less-than-yes to—”the central tenet of perennialism is that different religions are particular expressions of one universal truth.”
Expressions? This is the stuff of natural religion seeking God and, yes, stirred by the inborn and universal natural law. But Christianity is uniquely the response to self-disclosure by the Triune One and “the way, the truth and the life.” And while the new philosopher king is faulted by some for using—in the interests of cross-cultural “harmony” (more than multicultural indifference)—what appears to be a pagan symbol (the Green Man), what is to be said of a pope, head of the apostolic succession and who likewise sported a pagan/Wiccan stang at the Synod on Youth in 2018?
Pope Francis did well when he recently and clearly defended human distinctions and sexual differences above blended gender-theory vomit, but—and with the king—could do equally well to distinguish between natural law and revelation. Like the Green Man, is the donated relic of the true cross simply another expression of natural religious harmony?
For King Charles to blur these “expressions” is not only in harmony with things Islamic…it is Islamic.
Re: Biden on white supremacy. This needs retelling in the face of widespread current denialism about this dark part of American history. Today’s perpetrators of white supremacy are waging a campaign the exact opposite of post World War II Germany’s confrontation and eradication of its Nazi past. They have instead demonized ideas and movements that are trying to address white supremacy today. They have maligned Critical Race Theory as reverse racism, equated Wokeness as Marxist and of political correctness, caricatured Black Lives Matter as unpatriotic, banned books about this and prohibit its teaching in public schools. All this is worsened by white supremacists and its sympathizers in making Catholics think that anti-racism activism is not pro-life. All this is following the playbook of the Daughters of the Confederacy after the Civil War in whitewashing the South’s racist complicity by rewriting history books, erecting monuments to and having military bases named after traitors to the nation. White supremacy is treasonous!
Oh, Gerald. You need to check in with the nearest leftist hive and get some fresh talking points. What you state below is grossly, obviously, painfully erroneous.
You decry the “widespread current denialism about this dark part of American history.”
Really? “Denialism”? You’ve got to be kidding.
The left has been obsessed with turning every looped garage door pull or illegibly scrawled graffito into a KKK rallying cry for decades.
In fact there’s a whole quasi-historical program that’s been rolled out on the schools called the ‘1619 Project’ that positions slavery as the seminal institution in American society. And it’s been trumpeted everywhere from the NBA to the armed forces to your local junior high school for years now.
You say that today’s white supremacists have “maligned Critical Race Theory as reverse racism…”
Actually, CRT *is* racism, straight-up. It teaches school children to view others, not as individuals, but as representatives of pre-judged groups.
You say that white supremacists have also “caricatured Black Lives Matter as unpatriotic.”
I’m sorry, but BLM is itself a caricature. Last year a New York Post headline revealed, “BLM spent at least $12M on luxury properties in LA, Toronto: tax filing.”
Multiple BLM executives and functionaries have faced legal actions for their highly questionable financial dealings.
You further state, “All this is worsened by white supremacists and its [sic] sympathizers in making Catholics think that anti-racism activism is not pro-life.”
The fact that most of the abortion clinics in America are actually situated in urban centers where minority populations tend to be located is definitely an indication of the racism of the left.
But leftist BLM *never*protests this fact, for the simple reason that they are toiling on the Democratic Party’s leftist plantation.
Pro-life activists like Alveeda King, on the other hand, do protest the monstrous leftist holocaust of abortion and its horrendous toll on minorities.
You further state that the Daughters of the Confederacy whitewash the South’s “racist complicity by rewriting history books, erecting monuments and having military bases named after traitors to the nation.”
Please, Gerald. In what capacity does the moribund United Daughters of the Confederacy organization have the power to rewrite history books? You have to be joking.
And, speaking of history, why have you not mentioned the simple fact that the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats to oppose the post-Civil War efforts of Republicans to rehabilitate the South and to assist ex-slaves.
You also forgot to mention that the Klan’s first Grand Wizard was the former Confederate general and influential Democratic politician, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
And that the Klan itself played a key role during the 1868 Democratic national convention in picking the Democratic nominee for the presidency.
As I’m sure you know, Gerald, it was actually the Democratic Party that erected those Confederate monuments and lobbied for those traitors’ names to be appended onto those military bases.
And your party’s racism continues, with your party’s pudding-headed president’s ugly race-baiting comments to the Howard University graduates.
I mean, come on, Gerald. It’s been 150 years, for heaven’s sake. Hasn’t your party been exploiting minorities long enough?
The truth is, America is one of the most open-hearted, accepting societies on earth. You see non-whites from around the world lining up by the tens of thousands each day for the chance to enter illegally across the southern border. Why would they do that if America didn’t offer them unparalleled opportunities?
In addition, you have race hoaxers like Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, attorney Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, or activist Satchuel Cole, who pretend to be minorities when in reality they are merely pasty, run-of-the-mill white people.
Why would they do that if minority status didn’t offer them certain social and professional perks that whiteness does not?
No, Gerald. Your racist trope is tired and hackneyed. Not to mention completely unconvincing.
We’re very tired of it. Go back to your Democratic minders and tell them they’re going to have to do better.
Excellent post, brineyman.
Biden stated that white supremacy is the biggest problem facing America today.
What more proof is necessary to prove that the man is an idiot?
Is that disrespectful? Yes it is. Is it true? Yes it is.
So you believe such things that it is a matter of “white supremacy” for Catholics to oppose the killing of black children which BLM actively supports as a part of their published charter? And you believe it is a matter of “white supremacy” to hold to the Catholic notion that man is an ontologically free creature of God and not predetermined in a manner where the white race can not help but oppress other races because of their biological nature as proponents of “Critical Race Theory” insist?
And please come back and name the specific books you accuse others of seeking to ban in what places specifically in what publicly funded locations with what audience of what age groups. Name them.
Gerald: Thanks for reminding us what an ideologue sounds like.
#2 Premarital Cohabitation – What’s the plan?
The statistics show that premarital cohabitation does not improve chances for long-term marital success. Why is this not better known?
It is not better known because people prefer to live in a fantasy world in which premarital cohabitation is prudent beta testing of a possible future marriage. Upsetting the readers with the facts does not lead to more monetized mouse clicks.
@ Objectivity Has Crumbled
Feminist par excellence Abigail begins her tirade against the transexing of the world as No boobs Less boobs madness. As a kid in Brooklyn [an ancient era] boob meant a dope. Later around HS graduation it meant, for men and boys female breasts. Later even women were bragging or lamenting over the ‘abundance’ or lack of their boobs. Why the word boob to begin with?
“This particular definition is generally thought to have derived from the Spanish word bobo which roughly means dunce. This Spanish word, in turn, comes from the Latin balbus meaning stammering” (Today I Found Out Karl Smallwood). The relation of dunce to a woman’s breast, a beautiful, very necessary feature of women and the nurturing of life is a derogation. A miserable slur.
Abigail Favale’s tirade focuses on the now becoming well known incompetence, lack of beneficial [to the transex person] scientific evidence that credentialed physicians are foisting on our world. Favale also addresses male castration at incredibly young age at which the mind isn’t quite ready for. At any age it’s an immoral abomination Antichrist in nature. It is a most heinous disordering of God’s order of nature. Satanic inspiration planted in jaded minds. Government, here in America, much of the EU is backing it as a fundamental human right. That it’s being propagated in classrooms, libraries, cultural events indicates an evil agenda that the Church must condemn roundly and consistently without the slightest accommodation. Here I’m critical of Pope Francis for correctly condemning transex while similarly appointing a faux Catholic priest Fr James Martin SJ as Church spokesman. A fraud who promotes transex.
@ Rural Dwellers
While the ideal combatant stands his ground, there are occasions when ‘strategic retreat’ becomes a life or death decision. Our battleground urban America where most parishes and priests are is quick becoming unlivable. Here in W NYS small towns are better situated although even there the encroachment of government, schools [the teachers union] libraries are becoming purveyors of atheistic ideals, sexual immorality.
Parishioners have purposely chosen to leave more lucrative teaching, engineering careers to purchase farms, raise cattle – and primarily for reason of raising their children in a faith friendly atmosphere teaching them at home. They are by all appearances more devoted to practice of the faith. There definitely is a valid argument [irrespective of though not discounting legitimate concern for land exploitation by globalist Bill Gates] to be made for a return to the land.
About “strategic defeat,” in the context of a land war von Clausewitz notes its place, but also cites two “drawbacks” to be considered:
The first is loss of territory, but this can be conceded so long as “it cannot be the object of defense to protect the country from losses; the object must be a favorable peace.” (Russia did well by conceding to Napoleon 600 miles of land west of Moscow; then came the Russian winter.) And, second, is the psychological cost: normally the population cannot really “tell the difference between a planned retreat and a backward stumble [….]” (On War, Bk 6, ch 25).
So, yes, by all means reconvene and gain strength in a new setting. Raise cattle and rediscover the sunset. But then also badger and replace your legislators and school boards. The complete meaning of the Benedict Option.
Things in territories lost to Sodom and Gommorah ought not be left undone. Something remotely like this scriptural double-message: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin [???], and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, AND [!] not to leave the other undone” (Mtt 23:23-24).
You gave an excellent example of being proactive by your letter. It’s one thing to abandon the world out of self focused reasons, another to live a more contemplative life with a family and several young children [keep in mind the contemplative religious communities who don’t participate in politics]. A life of holiness is neither cowardly nor self focused. Neither are all situations similar nor are the persons. The best route of remaining within the local school community and to pressure school boards may not be feasible for a family that breaks off and takes to farming, self schooling. The Benedict Option [which is not a Church doctrine] also includes families, persons that intend to remain in the urban communities who are better situated to pressure politicians and school boards. Ideals may be quite doable when one is free from those responsibilities.
It would be a self righteous criticism to impute fault on those other families who turn to farming, remaining detached from proactive complaints as if they were abandoning moral responsibility. “Scribes and Pharisees?”.
As long as the state backed by a majority of citizens promotes and supports transex other forms of moral disorder Christian families will be on the defensive. We require a corrective moral revolution, certainly a change of administration.