Thought for the day.

If you say you believe in free speech but are routinely demanding "consequences" for speech you disagree with...you really don't believe in free speech.

America, at age 237.

"I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death my right to ruin you for having offended me with it."

The notion that we are one people--fellow citizens--is shriveling by the day.

God help us.

Mmm, yeah, Peter...

Life intrudes, as it often does. The play, then the Advent run-up to Christmas.

My kids shone brightly in the theatre, and I was especially proud of Madeleine. She had the lead role, which doesn't have much in the way of laughs. I had more (built-in) laugh lines, and Rachel had a scene which she could chew like a plug of Hawken. And did, to the delight of the crowd. Dale's lines were also deliberately funny.

Maddie had to carry the play, as there was only one scene that didn't feature her framing commentary. She did so brilliantly. If I know you, I'd be happy to show off the DVD once we get it.

As to the rest, well, it's the usual mix of busy, busier and infuriating. The last features my *#@$ driver's side car door. Which now won't open properly, and is damaging the front quarter panel, slowly bending it in, every time I open it.

I. Don't. Even.

But everyone's pretty much healthy, we're getting prepped for Christmas (ham this year, a first) and things are slowly slowing down again.

I've decided I'm going to finish the Maradiaga analysis and then walk away from pope stuff for a while. I printed up a copy of EG, read a bit, and then tossed it into the recycler. I'm not particularly interested in reading it further at this point, and we don't need more unattended clutter in the burrow.

Frankly (no pun intended), I don't get this pope, and I'm no longer interested in trying to get him. He's going to recede to the background of my spiritual life, he and his intentions the subject of the regular family rosary, remembered as part of the liturgy on holy days of obligation, and...that's it. Like it was in the old days, before instant information made it possible for someone to be omnipresent.

Honestly, I'm not one for being hectored and scolded into action, much less into joy. Seems rather counter-intuitive to me, actually. The whole "Beatings will continue until morale improves" school of thought. In fact, one of the things I've always appreciated about Catholicism is that it's not a monochrome, in-your-face, feel-the-brotherhood-in-the-spirit, no-really-FEEL-IT kind of religion. Yes, it has that component--but it's an option among many. Or at least it was. In the new dispensation, the breakroom poster reads Joyful Newness! and woe unto thee, oh sourpuss, who happens to have a case of the Mondays.

Hey, if you're inspired by this papacy, don't let me stomp your buzz. Please. Good on you, and I hope you make the most of it. If it inspires you to grow in the Lord Jesus, drawing others to Christ and offering the works of mercy--that's fantastic! Do so, and be a saint. And I mean that sincerely, despite my (well-deserved) reputation for sarcasm.

For my part, I've grown tired of trying to explain my non-fan-ness. And it seems that many of those who are more laudatory have pretty well washed their hands of the other side, too, lumping us together with cranks and apostates. Eh, so be it. There are worse things than mutual incomprehension.

It's going to be an interesting ride, one I fear filled with interesting compromises, interesting disciplinary decisions (moral of the story? Orders being investigated had better (1) be rich like the LCs, and (2) not celebrate the EF) and potentially interesting decisions regarding the sacramental life of the Church.

I'll just be over here for a while, sitting quietly. I'll pop up on other boards and in other conversations, but apart from that and barring a major development, I'm done commenting on the Francis Effect.

So, what's going on with you guys?

Hope you and yours had a Happy Thanksgiving.

We did. Heather roasted another perfect turkey, and we added (cooked) bacon to the stuffing, which really worked out well. Plenty of leftovers, too, along with the turkey soup I enjoy making.

Still--yes--still working on the fisk. I should have part II up around Sunday.

What's that?

Ah, yes. The exhortation.

I've printed it, and probably will get around to reading it in detail eventually.

No, the economic parts don't offend me. Frankly, Catholic social teaching has always had problems with liberal (read "capitalism") economics. Even in places where you might least expect to find it, such as condemnations of the horror that is communism (e.g., paragraph 15). I flinch at some of the emphases in EG, and would appreciate a return to that version of CST which acknowledged limits to the healing powers of Caesar in the economic realm. But I think you're fooling yourself if you do not see something morally amiss in modern Western economics. The system that vomits up Miley Cyrus for your consideration, sponsors increasingly...interesting...forms of transgression for family time (e.g., the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade), and is pressuring formerly-solid youth organizations to bend to the zeitgeist is not our friend. If you watch American politics at all, you'll see the business wing of the GOP increasingly agitating for the excising of social conservatives.

Despite them getting their way and successfully nominating and running two of the least culture-warry candidates possible in the last two cycles. Running them right into buzzsaws, in fact.

Nevertheless, count on them to succeed--that's just the way it's going.

So, yes, their discomfort over this document is good. Salutary, even. Their rage-sweat is a perfume, in fact.

But.

But. But. But.

I'm really not interested in reading it in detail right now. My problem is that our genuinely pastoral pontiff has etched his blind-spot disdain into the magisterium. Paragraph 94. So, yeah, he made his perturbation with rosary counters Officially Catholic.

Yep, I'm intransigently faithful to a Catholic style from the past, all right. I have this irrational attachment to the idea that the Church that existed before 1962 has something to offer the world--something more than cherry-picking from the occasional doctor or saint. I have this weird notion that Pius XII and those who preceded him might also have a little something to say about evangelization. I suspect that Vatican II wasn't a consummate vade mecum for how to deal with the world henceforth and in perpetuity. Especially after fifty years of that world's brutish decay from the optimistic New Frontier 1960s.

Yet, good luck trying to find anything that suggests that in the document, whose earliest encyclical cite dates to 1964, and whose sole pre-V2 papal citation can be found in footnote 174. Which is good, since I'm a big Pius XI fan. But there should be more.

Be that as it may, the pique is more personal. Despite reaching out to a traditionalist critic in genuine charity a few weeks back, he now offers this slappy broadside. Please, just stop it, Holy Father. It is unbiblical. It is unworthy. It is unnecessary. It is worse than an insult--it is a blunder. I'm sure I'd get something out of it, but I'm not going to pick it up for a while as a result. I know I'm not the only one.

The cache groweth.

So, Dear Reader, if civilisation starts swirling down the tubes, swing by my place to help save your humble booklegger's collection.

According to the stat markers at LibraryThing, we literally have over one ton of books. Whew.

There are many fascinating things about the Obamacare rollout.

Besides the schadenfreude buffet line, which Chris Johnson is doing a yeoman's job of chronicling here, here, and here.

The invaluable Ace of Spades points out the media's dereliction of duty, as they fraudulently claim they're just as surprised as we are.

If only we had some kind of institution whose primary mission it was to scrutinize the claims of politicians, contact experts, and report the major facts about major new legislation to the public.

But alas, it seems we don't.

They've chosen to be the President's Digital Praetorians, and they sense--correctly--that their prostituted credibility is swirling down the crapper along with this legislative debacle. Good.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of whores.

The most astonishing story you will read this week.

Allow me to goad you into reading it with this sentence:

"Today, Davis is not only a musician, he is a person who befriends KKK members and, as a result, collects the robes and hoods of Klansmen who choose to leave the organization because of their friendship with him."

Read it here.

Yes, I'm working on part two of the Maradiaga fisk, but whew--it's daunting. 

The early harvest.

I hear stories about Pope Francis inspiring people in Italy to return to Mass, and people in South America to return to confession. And I fervently hope the stories are as advertised, that such is lasting and bears good fruit for the future.

Because, for my part, the most visible fruit of this pontificate has been the occasion to watch intelligent people--my friends--who genuinely love the Church and want what is best for her hurl anathemas, come to blows and engage in a rhetorical civil war.

Good times, as they say.

Good times.

The pastoral disconnect.

The New York Times has an interesting article about "conservative" Catholics feeling swatted aside during this papacy.

It's worth reading not only because it features my friend and newly-minted media speed-dial guy, Steve Skojec, but also because it's a solid article.

First of all, a bit of a chuckle--Veep Steve holds that office in his wife Jamie's real estate agency, which consists of...the two of them. So, subtract the spats-and-monocle look you may be attaching to his visage. Not so by the way, Jamie knows real estate like nobody's business, and helped us navigate a problem we were having a while back. So, if you're in NoVa and need to sell or buy real estate, go her way.

Anyhoo.

I think the article is well done, showing a range of reactions, and fairly so. It misses part of the problem, though--the Pope's steady jabs at what would normally be described as "conservative" spirituality.

That's a crucial point, and one that needs to be remembered. Especially in light of the by-now tedious "older brother" accusation. Which, of course, has turned up in soundbite reactions to this article with the same frequency as yellow snow near a Malamute on Lasix.

The "older brother" retort would fit better if the parable had featured the father repeatedly needling and deriding his older son before welcoming the prodigal back. If certain Catholics have felt like redheaded stepchildren, it's because the Pope has, at times, been a bit slappy, and exclusively toward gingers. For a man with undeniable pastoral gifts, it's equally clear he has his blind spots, and I hope he grows in that respect. Right now, I'm in the position of loving the pontiff, but not really liking him. I am hoping and praying that changes.

While I work on Part II of the fisk, here's something to ponder.

John Zmirak takes Cardinal Maradiaga to the cleaners, albeit not for modernism:

So democracies like ours are “neoliberal dictatorships,” which the Church will help reform through the “globalization of mercy and solidarity,” that is, by helping governments to seize wealth from some people, skim its own share off the top, and distribute that wealth to others. Those “others” will doubtless be grateful, as Hugo Chavez’s supporters were in Venezuela; indeed, they will form powerful voting blocs dependent on state redistribution of wealth, as directed by humble clergymen.

This shows no awareness of decades of research about the true causes of poverty: the lack of clear property rights, political corruption, crony capitalism, populist politics, and centralized bureaucracy. Such problems cannot be solved by foreigners, but by local action to build up a culture of enterprise and institutions that protect small business owners. But it’s much more convenient, comfortable, and conducive to grabbing power to blame everything on the Yanquis. 

The good cardinal has already shown in the past his proclivity for shifting blame. In May 2002, the cardinal explained who was really to blame for the sex abuse scandal: Jews in the media.

Tiny coteries of evil investors cause starvation in the developing world, while cabals of Jewish journalists try to smear the innocent bishops. Is it all clear now? Based on Manichean, conspiratorial analyses such as these, we humble, loving “Samaritans” must reject the pharisaical Church of the past, and march forward to use the guns and prisons of the state to enforce “mercy” and “solidarity” among the classes and the nations.

Read it all.

The "White Hurricane" of 1913.

The deadliest storm ever to strike the Great Lakes began a century ago today. Here's my post from last year about it.

Here is the list of all the ships wrecked in the storm.

The shipwreck location map (click to enlarge). Some locations are approximate, 

as four ships have still not been found. The most recent find was this summer, the 
tragic Henry B. Smith in Lake Superior.

The overturned hull of the Charles S. Price, the  504 foot long steamer and

"mystery ship" that floated down the St. Clair River before a diver was able 

to go underwater to identify her.

A storm headline.

While I haven't read it yet, a new book on the disaster that was published last month, in time for the centenary. 

Finally, Psalm 107 (Douay 106). May God grant rest to the souls of the dead, and guard all who go down to the sea in ships.