So here is a whimsical argument, perfect (though six days early) for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas: This is where Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim is badly needed. Augustine was pondering this stuff in the 5th century. Except his aliens lived on remote islands. Medieval piety baptized and even canonized dog-headed men. If you were rational and an animal, that was good enough for them. Sometimes you hear skeptics say that the Church is terrified of what will happen to its provincial... Read more
…it is important to grasp that the Christians in the MAGA Cult do not see this The Government Accountability Office said the Trump administration broke the law when it withheld US security aid to Ukraine last year that had been appropriated by Congress, a decision that’s at the heart of the House’s impeachment case against President Donald Trump. The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, said in a decision issued Thursday that the White House budget office violated the Impoundment Control Act, a... Read more
That’s simply a statistical fact. FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that the agency has made about 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests since October, and the majority were tied to white supremacy. ”I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence, but it does include other things as well,” Wray said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, referring to cases in fiscal 2019,... Read more
…from the mid-1960s: I sense a certain impatience with some of the interviewer’s questions. But mostly it’s interesting. I am struck by the way Tolkien pronounces “myth” with a long I. Just some fun for a Saturday. Read more
Scruples can be debilitating. Some people imagine “religion causes scruples” but I don’t buy it. You can meet people with scruples anywhere. It’s something more like OCD, an obsession with small things and a debilitating sense of fear that failure to maintain some petty system of order will result in calamity. Diseased religion can certainly exacerbate that. But (as a healed scrupe) I can also attest that healthy spirituality can likewise be an immense source of healing. I owe an... Read more
Here’s some of a conversation that happened in my comboxes recently, illustrating what I believe to be one of the core failings of Libertarianism: its essential narcissism. Reader 1: Why not vote Libertarian? They don’t have a clear position on abortion, but won’t fund PP, and also oppose the death penalty. Reader 2: Libertarians tend to be amoral, which is better than immoral, and favor the powerful which can lead to dehumanizing the vulnerable. Reader 1: I understand your concerns,... Read more
This is a fine little series on the Rad Trad weirdness that is a major (not the only) contributor to Cult of Francis Hatred that now dominates the demographic which, a few short years ago, use to boast its complete fidelity to the Magisterium and which now is the single greatest internal enemy of the Church in the present hour. Other factors–political, cultural, economic, social, racial, and class also contribute to rise of this nutty Right Wing Cult of Hatred... Read more
D.W. Lafferty continues to guide us into the core of the Cult of Francis-Hatred. If you want to understand the Right Wing Freak Show’s struggle toward schism, start here: In my last post I looked at Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s concept of the Revolution as outlined in Revolution and Counter-Revolution, which is a defining text of the Tradition, Family and Property movement. In this post I will examine the complementary concept of the Counter-Revolution and provide examples of some of its implications.... Read more
The always-thoughtful guys at WPI have a nice series taking a look at one of the major transmission vectors of infection for the Francis Rage Virus. Here is a taste of part one: You may have heard of an ultra-conservative Catholic group called Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which has been involved in various efforts to oppose the initiatives of the Francis papacy. As Christopher White from Crux recently reported, Alexander Tschugguel, the man who stole the famous “Pachamama” statues from the Roman Church of Santa... Read more
The story of the amazing ship that was “not only in four different hemispheres, two different days, two different months, two different seasons and two different years but in two different centuries-all at the same time” seems like a suitable yarn for a Saturday morning. Enjoy! Read more
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