Jane the Actuary -

“If the math doesn’t fit, you must . . . “: a few more words on Kavanaugh/Ford

September 24, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

Over the weekend, we had a new report, that the last person at the party recounted by Christine Blasey Ford has been identified as Leland Keyser. This means that the attendees at the party would have been Ford, Keyser, Kavanaugh, Judge, and the previously-identified Patrick Smyth. Separately, the original letter sent by Ford to Senator Feinstein’s office has now been released. (Legal Insurrection has the link to a tweet by NBC News.) This letter makes clear what had been unclear for… Read more

What’s the purpose of Christianity? On (skeptically) reading Spong

September 22, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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It’s a quiet weekend so I pulled out a book I had picked up at the library, Unbelievable, Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today, by John Shelby Spong. Yes, that Spong, who is still writing at the age of 87, though in the introduction he says it’s his last book because of a stroke. I started to read the book, then concluded that hate-reading isn’t a particularly good use of my time, so… Read more

Do you understand the Synod on Youth?

September 22, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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It’s the fifteenth Ordinary General Synod of Bishops since these began post-Vatican II, and it has as its topic Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment, but, readers, I’ll be honest, I’ve tried to read the Instrumentum Laboris, the document which serves as an agenda/guiding document for the synod and I just didn’t really get it. Today a friend shared a critique of the synod which reinforced my confusion and concerns. This synod is the successor synod to the Synod of the Family… Read more

MeToo-ism and the Kavanaugh accusation

September 21, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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So the Kavanaugh assault accusation story got a bit stranger today, as his accuser has now said that she’s unwilling to fly to D.C., and must be granted sufficient time to drive there from California instead. Separately, CNN reported that a friend described her as having long been unwilling to fly due to a fear of enclosed spaces, which, that friend said, Ford explained in a conversation “late last month,” was due to having been attacked, something which also caused… Read more

Motor voter and the perils of DMV incompetence

September 21, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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In the Tribune today, “Illinois priest nearing citizenship now faces deportation. Because he mistakenly voted.” (Mini-rant: I’m getting really tired of these multi-sentence headlines.) The Rev. David Boase, an Episcopalian priest who came to Illinois from England 14 years ago, is headed towards being deported as a consequence of having admitted, in the process of applying for citizenship, that, back in 2006, he had voted. Boase, who migrated 14 years ago to Illinois to serve Episcopal churches, told USCIS he was… Read more

The Kavanaugh sexual assault allegation: when we can’t know the truth

September 16, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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The accuser of Brett Kavanaugh now has a name: Christine Blasey Ford. And the details, such as they are, are now in a Washington Post article: While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand… Read more

Bad news from China – and the Vatican

September 14, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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From the Wall Street Journal: “China and Vatican to Sign Landmark Deal Over Bishops.” This wasn’t paywalled when I read it earlier today; it is now, but the first paragraph is the new news part of it, and the rest mostly context: China and the Vatican are set to sign a landmark agreement later this month ending a long struggle between Beijing’s Communist rulers and the pope over who chooses the leaders of Catholicism in the world’s most populous country,… Read more

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” and the Catholic Cover-up Crisis

September 13, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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Before I get to the most recent of the Catholic Cover-up Crisis news (because, again, this is what’s the greater concern), here’s a bit of a step back. Longtime readers will know that I became Catholic in grad school, after having grown up in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a branch of Lutheranism which, in contrast to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is, or was, in the incarnation I experienced it, pretty fundamentalist — creationist, ultra-traditionalist in terms… Read more

Some Cover-up Crisis links

September 11, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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Because it’s not really a “sex abuse crisis” – it’s the cover-up which matters much more. But I’ve been collecting links which I’ve been intending to put into a coherent piece, but I’m more or less giving up on that in favor of just sharing with readers what’s come across my facebook and twitter feed. First, a preface: I am not an expert on the Vigano accusations. His opponents are taking the strategy of discrediting bits and pieces, or of… Read more

What the Pope and Trump (may) have in common

September 10, 2018 By Jane the Actuary

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It strikes me that defenses of Catholicism such as When I recount the reasons I became Catholic, I find nowhere among them “the bishops are excellent Christians.” I also find all the same reasons still hold.— Michael Pakaluk (@mpakaluk) September 10, 2018 which came across my twitter feed, increasingly have as a theme, the core idea that this isn’t the first time bishops and possibly even the Pope have been shown to have feet of clay, both respect to the… Read more