Deplorable and Deplorabler

Poor Fr. Fox.
For saying that a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for either the lesser of two evils or abstain from voting, he is ripped by a crazy woman, (who makes her choice quite clear.)

evShe uses a tactic I am seeing more and more, not just from crazy commenters, and careless on-the-fly bloggers and conversationalists at parties, but from actual "journalists," and that is to repeat over and over the accusation that ones target has said something "amounting" to something deplorable, but steadfastly refusing to supply actual quotes, even out of context.
The tactic is used by both sides, of course, the Trumpite right winger against Fr Fox, the liberal Twitter over-lord against a Breitbart gadfly.
Too much reading of Jane Austen, and her free indirect speech!
All I need to do is vaguely describe what I want people to think you said, and damn you for my words, I needn't actually quote you and be honest about it.

You'd think Catholics especially would balk at such dishonesty deception, lies, this method having been used against the Church for.... well, forever.
(Soon to be saint,) Fulton Sheen, anyone?

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

The devil's having a grand old time this election.

Decision Fatigue, and Catholish Charities

Some people wear grey t-shirts every day, trying in vain to protect themselves against "decision fatigue."
I haven't taken it upon myself to tell the world what's trending, with what topics it should concern itself, so  burden is somewhat lighter than that of such movers and shakers, but it seems to me that the shade of the fabric I pull over my head in the morning is not just a relatively easy choice to make, it's an actively pleasant one, even if the pleasure is very small - it is virtually impossible that ten minutes, or ten hours, or ten years from now I'll be kicking myself and moaning, "Periwinkle? WHY, why, why, why.....?"
Other choices are neither easy nor pleasant, so when the day starts, it's nice to get something like t-shirt color under my belt, so to speak - decision-making successfully navigated!
My current decision fatigue comes from the apparent elasticity of the word "Catholic," with an upper case "C."
I used to think that persons and institutions calling themselves "Catholic" were, you know... actually Catholic in thought and practice. Naif!
Alas, there is no guarantee that the word means anything of the sort nowadays. My time, my efforts, my charitable dollars, (few though they may be,) - how can I know they do not support practices I abhor?
I must research for myself.
Several times recently Himself has bemoaned finding himself aligned with people with whom he is not used to agreeing, because those who more usually share stances seem to have gone off the deep end, more intent on pushing the agenda of a bizarre ideology than in improving the world and the lives of those in it in commonsensical ways.
And I know how he feels, but I'm also aware that it is virtually, perhaps literally impossible to live in the world without compromising ones principles at least to the degree required to some times collaborate with those with whom one disagrees, perhaps even on fundamental issues.
Aren't we glad when Der Schränker in "M" organizes other criminals to guard the children?
Shouldn't Melanie take Belle Watling's money in the noble cause of fighting for the Glorious Confederacy?
Don't the good Daniel Craig and the evil Harrison Ford justifiably band together against a common enemy in Cowboys and Aliens?
Sorry about the tangent. Anyway, I came to terms some time ago with the fact that if you need mosquito nets to save lives and the only NGO with mosquito nets to sell in that part of the world also provides abortions, you may end up temporarily engaging in commerce with someone who provides abortions.
You are not yourself doing or endorsing evil, and you hold your nose when you materially, remotely, mediatedly cooperate with it.
But when you complacently enter into a long term relationship with the devil?
Now sometimes the people who make you aware of what's going on may not be people with whom you'd necessarily wish to associate, either, but I think you must be grateful to them for opening your eyes.
The Lepanto Institute, for instance, are provocateurs, and I'm told not above stretching a point to connect the dots as they demonstrate the webs of cooperation that allow certain kinds of evil to flourish unchecked by, indeed, supported by good people.
And they may be a bit to quick to try to establish guilt by association.
But they are right too often to ignore, and I think they're going to be a go-to for me in days ahead.

Right now, I don't need them to spill the goods, I can be disappointed all on my 'onesome.
A family member asked me to join in helping a medical charity.
The "Catholic" board chairman, when I asked point blank where they stood on the use of embryonic stem cells for research or therapy because "I can not support that," said absolutely not, no way, never, that's important to me too.
Come to find out, I don't know whether the chair is lazy, deceitful, or ignorant, but the groups they bankroll actively lobby for money for the development of new embryonic stem cell lines, and laws protecting such development, and actually pursue such research themselves.

Gonna go live in a cave...

Thinking About Evil, Dabbling in Heresy ; Is Evil a Verb Rather Than a Noun?

I had a philosophy teacher once, a religious sister, who gave me high marks, suggested I might want to "go into" philosophy or theology, and said that I was an original thinker.
(How the undergraduate mind preens under such a gaze....)
I was horrified when I was older to read something I had written in that class, on which she had given me thoughtful, constructive and mostly admiring feedback, and see that what I had written was heretical, outright, no-question-about-it heresy.
And she had no problem with it !!!!!!!!

So I just wanted to say upfront that I am wary when I have thoughts on certain matters.

But a question occurs to me, would it be correct to say that Evil is "not a noun"? that is, not a thing, for God Who is all good and hates nothing He has created, and therefore never created an evil thing,

Therefore, Evil cannot be a created, (or even, perhaps, imagined,) thing,  a noun - it must be a verb, must be action.

Evil must be the doing, not the thing itself.

So the devil, a created being, was not created as an evil thing, but instead chose to engage in evil actions, to feel prideful, to disobey, and to try to provoke such actions in other beings.

Likewise, we, human beings, are never evil, (though it sometimes seems so,) we are good, but we continually are given choices, and too often choose to act in ways that are evil.
Evil is always then, an action that is a Fail, (and sometimes, quite literally, a failure to act - act in a way that would be Good, that would further God's hopes for us.)

Judas, Stalin, that bully at school - no one is created to be bad, they are all created Good by God Who is Himself all Goodness, and they choose to walk down another path.

Does any of that make sense? is it anything even approaching correct?

"Leave Me the Hell Out of Your Out of Your Hellish Abomination"

I've been imagining conversation the Blessed Mother might be having lately.
It may be a touch irreverent, though not, i believe, as irreverent of invoking Mary in support of the killing of the preborn.
I can't believe she wouldn't have something to say about  this.
I know there are "seers' out there who profess to be delivering messages from the Virgin, have any of them weighed in?

when God chose Mary to become the mother of His Son, He did so not by force or compulsion but by invitation and request. Mary was free in deciding whether or not to conceive a child. Many women and girls do not enjoy such freedom.

"Leave me the Hell Out of Your Out of Your Hellish Abominations"

"Personally Opposed, but"... The Rise of Open Source Catholicism

Catching up on a television series in which the villains are the "Neolutionists," those into "creating themselves," promoting "individual evolutionary choice."
And if that sounds familiar to those who follow the culture wars in Catholicism, it should. Yes, wacky ideas pursued by religious sisters end up being the stuff cartoonish sci-fi villains' creeds are made of.
Take warning, nuns on buses. And please, no tails!

But that's not my point. When a police detective complains to a leader of these Neolutionists about creepy/criminal/crazy doings by his followers, he takes no responsibilities for these outliers, but notes that they are welcomed by the movement.
"Neolution is open source."

And all I could think was, isn't that a perfect description of how some people seem to think the Faith works?
After all, it is undeniable that "All are welcome" so it as just a hop skip and a jump to "All are welcome to make up their own beliefs and call it Catholicism."
And the Patron Saint of Open Source Catholicism? At least in America, a good case could be made for Mario Cuomo, a good man who may have been responsible for a great deal more evil than most, (damage done to our immortal souls being exponentially worse than to mortal bodies.)
He has certainly provided cover, a sort of intellectual resepectability, for the pro-choice Catholic in government ever since 1984..

Not that such thinking is limited to this side of the Atlantic (though our Catholish colleges are delighted to offer a platform to those from the other)- there is a little fracas right now because a "prominent" "Catholic" "theologian" is shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that there is gambling at Rick's some bloggers consider the rationalization she offers for the pro-abortion stance amounts to supporting abortion.
Why, one might as well have called Thomas Jefferson anti-freedom! I remember a statement he released about it... 

 

I have been called pro-slavery in some recent blogs, and I find that deeply offensive.
I am the father of several persons born slaves, and I am personally pro-freedom. I do not believe that there is any justification for the followers of [some of the things] Christ [might have said, with which I can agree] ever to endorse slave ownership as a good or commendable act.
However, there are serious issues that must be addressed with regard to how far the Church should use the law to defend positions which may not be defensible from the perspective of those who do not share the Christian faith. I have argued robustly against importation of new slaves, and I have written in detail about the serious abuses and violations which currently take place in the south with regard to slaves. Many ‘pro-salvery’ arguments put forward by states'-righters are morally repugnant and alienate those with a genuine concern for the sanctity and dignity of human life. It should be the aim of every Christian to work towards a world in which neither slavery nor abortion is necessary, while avoiding a dangerous utopianism which denies the complex and often tragic realities of human life.

UK Pro-Aborts Sure Do Seem To Have Something Against Americans

Well, I understand, we are loud.
Or loud adjacent, I personally am just plain loud.
I did not know we Ugly Americans were suspected of funding the UK pro-life movement just the way we did the IRA.

One little miss seems to be actively scared of us anti-Aborts, as if she feared being asked to provide her bona fides when she "went undercover" by reciting the "Hail Mary" from memory.

One man asks me about good places to start finding out about the pro-life movement, as he's brought a woman with him and she's just starting to get involved. I'm convinced my cover has been blown and it's a test. I mumble something about Planned Parenthood selling babies, hoping my disgust is read as incomprehensible sadness about the "babies being killed." Luckily, I still pass.

Seriously.

The people talking to her provoke her disgust, but the thought of babies being dismembered for profit doesn't?

This was the bit of her clever thinking that had me picking my jaw up off the floor:

The next country, [to legalize abortion] he proclaims, was, of course, Nazi Germany—neglecting to add that this was part of a eugenics programme targeted at whoever the Nazis saw as genetically inferior.

Catch that?
The speaker dishonestly failed to note that Nazis killed unborn babies for bad reasons.
We're better, because we don't limit our killing to the disabled or different  -- we campaign for killing perfectly healthy people of our own class, color, religion, and ethnicity!

"But we're good, we're not like that.... we're good people!"

(Had no idea Cecil Taylor's brillinat play had been filmed... will have to find it.)

"Taught That Sin Does Not Matter"

I do not have the strength to have been a parent.

Looks as if I should - I'm stubborn, confident, smart, very sure of what I actually know and very interested in looking into what I don't, flexible...
I love babies, I love children, I even love, (though it's hard sometimes,) teen-agers going through their sullen phase. I love teaching. I love learning from them. I love the negotiations between generations.

I love the spats. Yes, really.

I love large, no, make that enormous families, I come from one and would happily have continued the family business, (which for generations seemed to have been producing children.)

But the good Lord knew what he was doing.
I read articles like this open letter, and I literally tremble.

Sin was introduced into all our children’s lives, and one by one we watched as they began to weaken and fall. The teenagers in our community were suffering the broken hearts, bodies and souls that sexual experimentation brings with it....
As our children’s hearts broke, they had to turn to ways to dull the pain. Alcohol and drug abuse followed shortly behind. Then, of course, mental and emotional problems. Eating disorders were rampant in our daughters’ Catholic girls’ high school. Abortions were common. Suicides not unheard of. 

The family to which I am closest, have seen the most over the years as they grew up, have lived with and cared for for solid stretches, never were in this deep a whole, nowhere near - and yet, I don't know if I could have handled even those 5.
They're young adults now, only 1 doesn't go to Mass with anything like regularity, 1 thinks too highly of drinking as a recreation, 1 lived with spouse-to-be before marrying, (presumably not to have a partner with whom to say their pater noster...)
But all in all, a really good family.
They had great parents, (their worst transgression, as far as I knew? letting a son keep a "Grand Theft Auto" in the house. Can't think of much else I would have done differently.)
I just would not have had the strength.

But Susan Fox? more than strong, she's mighty. But never mind that she "saved" her family.

Read her take on today's problems, and their long, winding, hardy and tenacious root.
We should remember, the devil does, after all, have gardening experience...

Holy Hour For Life

I will not go so far as to say the person targetted here is corrupt, nor call for her resignation, for many actions are taken by those who are stupid or uninformed or illogical or ill-thought-out rather than evil.
But I do suspect that the the California Attorney General targetted David Daleiden because she supports Planned Parenthood, and that support and therefore that action are evil.
So, at the time of the rally at the AG's office in Sacramento, today from 11:00 AM to 12:00 AM I will fast, keep silence, and pray in reparation for the sin of the murder of the unborn.

The Face of Evil In Europe

No.


No.

No.

Horribly, yes, (at least if Those Interwebs are to be believed, and Abraham Lincoln tells me they are.)

Doctors should be given power to kill patients who wish to die from euthanasia by harvesting their organs for transplants while they are still alive, a team of medical researchers in Holland have proposed.
Instead of dying by lethal injection, people requesting euthanasia could be legitimately killed as their organs are stripped from them on the operating table during transplant surgery, they have suggested.
This would allow surgeons to remove healthy and undamaged organs which could then be used to save the lives of other patients, they said in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a publication owned by the British Medical Journal.
Such procedures would allow doctors to take a beating heart from a euthanasia patient, for instance, instead of having to wait until the person has died before the organ is harvested.

Really, why let severe depression, or mental illness, or tinnitus go to waste?

The Merciful Murderers

What does it say about me, what does it say about the world, when a headline about some atrocity draws my attention
and I am relieved to see that the Islamists responsible for the killing being reported merely shot their victims, instead of employing a more grisly, more barabric method?

Serial Rapist Awarded Laetare Prize? Dont Make Me Laugh, That's About As Likely As the Capa di Tutti Capi of Some Murder For Hire Outfit Being Invited To Speak at a Catholic University!

.... oh.
Wait.
Randall Smith has a beautifully reasoned, utterly nonbelligerent piece in the Catholic World Report about the way Catholish institutions hold oh, kinda, but not really.... truths.

   

"And please, this argumentum ad Hitleram?* you've already lost with such an absurd comparison! What are 58 million babies compared to over 50 women?"

Is drugging and raping women kinda sinful? No, it's genuinely, unarguably sinful.
Right?
Might there be extenuating circumstances that would mitigate the sinfulness?
No.
What about other sins?
Is being personally opposed but doing everything in your power to allow others to dismember poison or burn a baby in the womb kinda sinful?
Is helping ensure payments to allow others to dismember poison or burn a baby in the womb kinda sinful?
Is working to pass laws establishing the "right" of others to dismember poison or burn a baby in the womb kinda sinful?
Is requesting or insisting someone dismember or burn or poison your baby in the womb kinda sinful?
Is actively compassing the dismemberment or scalding or poisoning of a baby in the womb kinda sinful?

One receives the impression the answer from a Georgetown or a Notre Dame would be Oh, yeah, dismembering or burning or poisoning a baby in the womb is kinda sinful, but not.... not really.

Remarkably similar to the way so many "Catholics" might ponder the phenomenon of the Real Presence, if you think about it.
Christ's Most Precious Body and Blood.
Oh, yeah, kinda, but not... not REALLY.
---------------
*The principle being, as far as I can ascertain, that if someone or something is "not as bad as Hitler", well.... it's pretty good. Or at least, good enough to be above criticism.

Call it Genocide!

I keep reading, (from both sides of the question, and in fact, both political parties, and finally both ends of the spectrum of governmental philosophy,) about the legal ramifications that would result from the Obama administration's and Sec. of State Kerry's making a declaration that the ongoing slaughter by ISIS/Daesh/ISIL of Christians, Yazidis, Muslims from other branches, and other religious and ethnic minorities is "genocide."
The White House press secretary said that,

"that word involves a very specific legal determination."  

And a few days later,

"The decision to apply this term to this situation is an important one.  It has significant consequences, and it matters for a whole variety of reasons, both legal and moral.  But it doesn’t change our response.  And the fact is that this administration has been aggressive, even though that term has not been applied, in trying to protect religious minorities who are victims or potential victims of violence.....
there is an independent determination that needs to be made based on a very specific legal definition that our lawyers are considering right now.  And while that legal consideration and while that legal definition is important, and I certainly wouldn’t downplay the significance of the use of that term, we have been quite aggressive in both speaking out against but also taking tangible steps to try to protect religious minorities who are the victims of persecution."

That seems smarmy in the extreme, to me, we're doing everything we would do already anyway, so it's just semantics. Then why not?
The moral obligation is obvious, and not accepting them by refusing to use the term seems heinous to me, but what of these supposed legal obligation?
Are their obligations enshrined in US law?
Because the U.N.'s "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" to which we are signatories places a very light burden indeed.
Read them, they are startilingly lacking in rigor. Penalties in keeping with a country's constitution, and extradition, that's pretty much it.
And Obama and Kerry surely don't share the right-wing hesitancy to place ourselves under the direction of the UN's rules.
You know, 'cause the UN is a bunch of commie third world-types trying to establish a one-world government. You know, under The Beast.

And what is this "very specific legal definition" with which the White House is trying to align? And where?
Not, again, in the UN's convention.

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The reluctance to call the bloodbaths and extermination in Syria "genocide," smells to me very like the diplomatic diffidence regarding Turkey's massacres of Armenians - oh, no, we mustn't pin an offensive label on anyone off of whom we might later wish to make money.

It smells like it, and it stinks.

"Make Hell Great Again!"

You know he's winning, don't you?
No, not Trump. And not Cruz, and not Clinton, and not Sanders, and not Rubio, and not....
Well, no one who is running for anything.
Who's winning?
That's right.

And he's mighty happy about it.

You know why he's winning? you know why he's happy?
Not because me, or my candidate is for or against socialism, or immigration reform, or universal health insurance, or free trade, or protectionism, or nationalism, or free higher education for all, or lower taxes, or higher taxes....

He's winning because every time he gets a candidate or a protester to say something hateful, he has a really good chance of getting one of us to hate the speaker.
Not whatever the speaker said, but the speaker. Another human being. Made in the image and likeness of God.

Oh, sure, the father of lies is pleased enough when he gets us to despair, or to question how there can be a good God who allows evil, because hope and faith are important, so when we lose hope, or lose faith he's got a foot in the door -- but they're small potatoes compared to the real prize.

When he gets us to hate? to lose love, to abandon charity, to stop desiring the good of others, even others we don't like, maybe especially those we don't like - that's the whole shebang.

He has all the delegates he needs.