Stephen Roney's Blog, page 70

Thanksgiving

 

A special grace: the choir at church today--a new and wonderful choir--sang my favourite prayer, one I pray every day, and sang it in Latin: the Salve Regina. No trite mock folk music by the St. Louis Jesuits dripping Hallmark sentiments here.

Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae;
vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. 

Shivers down my spine.






'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Report from Canada

 

Is he exaggerating? I'm not so sure...

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Footsteps

 

Responding in Toronto to a man who refuses to shake his hand, Trudeau looks like he has seen a ghost.

Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government seem to be committing suicide. 

The Atlantic provinces were a stronghold for them; now they are losing it by pushing forward with their carbon taxes. 

Muslim Canadians were supposed to be their client group, a reliable constituency; recently, Trudeau branded Muslim parents “hateful,” and refused to apologize when the largest Muslim body in Canada asked for one. 

A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister picked a senseless public fight with India. This might play well with Sikhs in Canada, or those of them who are anti-India; but surely risks losing support among the 66% of Indo-Canadians from India who are not Sikhs. 

Last week, or the week before, the House of Commons entertained a Nazi. At a minimum, Trudeau’s government did not vet him, despite the obvious questions raised by someone who fought against Russia in the Second World War—and this turns Trudeau’s favorite attack on any and all opponents, that they are “Nazi sympathizers,” against him. He probably dares never use it again. The necessary level of incompetence here seems so high, the alternate explanation seems more plausible: a death wish.

And a death wish is plausible. We all have one. When our conscience tells us we are doing harm, not good, or have worn out our welcome in this world, it begins to nag at us. Not necessarily that we go and commit suicide; but our system mysteriously shuts down, and we die of one thing or another. Unless, that is, we seek and find redemption. 

Serial killers almost always take greater and greater unnecessary risks until caught. As one famously marked in lipstick on his victim’s mirror: “For God’s sake stop me, before I kill again.” Similarly, regimes that no longer feel they are legitimate begin to act recklessly—as if to see how much they can get away with.

Like picking fights with the voters. How much will they take, the peasants! Let them cancel Disney Plus! Like trimming your toenails or reading a newspaper during parliamentary debate.

The legacy media as a whole also seems to have a death wish. Faced with growing competition due to technology, they have dropped all journalistic standards, anything that might give them a claim to being a superior source, and begun to report only what they feel like. Disney Corporation seems to have developed a death wish. Everything they invest in any longer seems to go directly against their financial interests. Bud Light did: directly insulting their customers, and not backing down. The LA Dodgers did, honouring an anti-Catholic hate group in front of their Hispanic Catholic local community. The LGBTQ et al movement, the trans movement has; “We’re coming for your children.” Probably no further comment necessary. Pope Francis seems to have such a death wish, becoming increasingly open and reckless; as well as a desire to kill off the Catholic Church.

It resembles those times and days when people believed, for one superstitious reason or another, that the end of the world was at hand. A large proportion of them would then just drop everything, any pretense of morality, let the cattle stray, and begin fornicating on the hilltops. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. 

And we already know where we’re going.

I think the conscience of the woke is waking up.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Men Are from Mars; Women Are from Alpha Centauri

 

Photo is for illustration purposes only. No actual fish were harmed in this graphic.

I recently wrote a review of a poetry book. I liked the book, and gave it a glowing review.

The editor called me up that same day. She could not run the review. She first apologized for asking me to review a book I obviously did not like. 

I explained it was a positive review; that I had loved the book.

A day later, she sent me what was essentially a new review she had written, and asked if I could put my name to it instead.

How could there be such insoluble miscommunication? Is she mad, or am I?

Perhaps we see here a difference between the male and female mind. On average, at least.

The book was nonsense verse, and I praised it in these terms, pointing out clever paradoxes. I gather she understood this as a criticism, and could not see that saying something was “fine nonsense” could be a compliment. Nor that the book was full of paradoxes, or was funny. To her, this too seemed to be a criticism. Although, to be fair, she did not seem able to articulate why she thought the review was critical.

She especially took exception to my conclusion that the collection “clears the sinuses and purges the care-filled heart.” “Purges,” she said. “That’s a bad word.” She wanted to change it to “tickles.”

She was not moved when I explained that “purge” was the English translation of the Greek “catharsis,” which Aristotle held was the purpose of art. And, to my mind, a quite accurate description of what humour does when it works. Seemed like praise to me.

No; it was a bad word.

She also objected to the word “boggles,” in the phrase “Orgasmic pussyfeathers! The mind boggles at the possibilities.”

I suspect she was really reacting to the phrase “orgasmic pussyfeathers.” But realized mid-objection that this was a quotation from the book itself. Perhaps this is why she directed her ire at “boggles.” 

“Do you realize what that word means?”

For what it’s worth, Merriam-Webster gives: “to start with fright or amazement : be overwhelmed.” So it means something is amazing. “Boggles the mind” is a pretty common phrase.

Although this is a generalization, and based here on the slightest of present evidence, I posit that this illustrates: 

1.Women generally have less sense of or appreciation for humour than men; perhaps specifically for irony and double meanings. There’s a reason why “Dad jokes” are a thing, and not “Mom jokes.” Women laugh indulgently at a man’s jokes because they find him attractive. Women rarely laugh heartily.

2. Women favour the “nice” and “pretty” over the beautiful, and are frightened by the sublime.

More evidence: over the past few centuries at least, women have had more free time than men to indulge in the arts. Many women have even risen to popular prominence in the arts in their lifetimes. Yet few, in comparison to male artists, remain high in critical estimation a century or more later. 

It is perhaps because women usually lack the sense of the sublime, and the ironic distance, that the best art requires.

One thinks of exceptions. But even a Joni Mitchell lacks the deeper sublimity found in Cohen, Dylan, or Young. Even a Saint Theresa of Avila lacks the deeper sublimity of a Saint John of the Cross. A Margaret Atwood or a J.K. Rowling lacks the deeper shadows of an Orwell or a Salinger.

Joseph Conrad has Marlowe observe in Heart of Darkness:

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.”

Interesting. But never mind; just a thought. Shall we go out and watch the sunset?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Saskatchewan Schools Question

 

I was startled when friend Xerxes framed the current debate over SOGI (sexual orientation and gender ideology) in the schools as a matter of children’s “trans” rights over parents’ rights. After all, the parents marching are concerned about the introduction of gender ideology in the schools, and discussion of sexuality in general. This has nothing obviously to do with being either a boy or a girl, straight or gay.

Nevertheless, that is how it was framed by a court, in trying to put a stay on Saskatchewan’s policy that parents must be informed and consent if a child “changes their pronouns.” A recent CBC “At Issue” panel took this as a given. They spoke only of whether it was in the political interests of the federal Conservatives, or conservative parties at the provincial level, to oppose children’s human rights. And of course their argument was that it wasn’t. After all, voters, including “ethnic voters,” were concerned with pocketbook issues, not such distractions. 

Never take political advice from your adversaries. There couldn’t be a more important or more powerful issue for conservatives, in my opinion. Decent people care more for their children’s future than for their own welfare. This is the hill on which a parent is ready to fight, and, if necessary, die. In fact, it is the appeal on which young men do usually go to war: to protect the hearth, the women and children back home.

But let’s extend that logic. Let’s say it is a child’s human right to decide they are a boy and not a girl, without their parents having anything to say about it. If a child has a right to decide such things it must follow that society has no right to require them to attend school in the first place. This is slavery: they are being forced to work, told what to do at every moment, and given no pay. How is that not a violation of their human rights?

Child labour laws must also be abolished as unconstitutional. A child must have the right to earn a living.

In school, if parents have no right to input on the curriculum, certainly society has no right. The children must decide what they want to learn about, or indeed to do, today. Schools and teachers must demonstrate that any discussion of sexual orientation or gender is prompted by the children themselves. 

But this must also be true for reading, writing, or arithmetic. It must also be a child’s human right to decide for himself or herself, without coercion, whether 2 plus 2 equals 4; whether gravity ought to apply to them; or whether their spelling of a word is the best one.

They also have the inherent right to choose their teachers, and dismiss them if dissatisfied. 

If the left is not prepared to be consistent here, we must suspect an ulterior motive.

Could it be to advance the notion that even small children have the right to consent to sex in any form? Certainly looks like it.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

How the West Was Won

 

Cornell West, who has been running for the nomination of the Green Party, has just announced he will run instead as a pure independent.

On its face this makes no sense. It is hard to get on the ballot in all the states as an independent; the Green Party already has an infrastructure and volunteers on the ground.

Here’s my guess: West is officially leaving because he was being pushed. He wouldn’t be able to get the Green nomination.

RFK Jr. is expected to announce he is leaving the Democratic party within days. Rumours have him running for the Libertarians; but the Greens would be a better fit. Kennedy has spent his career as an environmental lawyer.

There may have been talks. Even if the Greens are prepared to stick with West, it is going to be hard to get their volunteers and donors to back West against a prominent environmental crusader like RFK.

I bet RFK now announces a Green Party run.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Historic Firsts?

 

So much is going on currently, it is hard to focus on just one thing. 

Here’s one thing: I find it troublesome to keep hearing that the election of Greg Fergus as Canada’s House Speaker is “historic” because his skin is dark. The notion is itself racist. It is not more “historic” than his being the first speaker elected whose last name is Fergus.

Here’s another thing: It is equally offensive to hear it is “historic” that Wab Kinew was elected the “first First Nations provincial premier in the country.” “First Nations” people grew up alongside the rest of us, with the same cultural influences, and largely even with the same genetics. They are Canadians. The only difference is a social construct inadvertently created by the Indian Act. To make such a big deal of his supposed alienness, to declare it “historic,” is racist. 

And Kinew is not even the first indigenous leader of Manitoba. Have we forgotten Louis Riel?

What is historic, on the other hand, is the Speaker of the House of Commons having resigned, and the Speaker of the US House of Representatives being voted out of office. The first has no immediate repercussions, but will stand now as a precedent. The second might have serious short-term consequences. Who now could command a majority and get elected new speaker?

Here’s an idea: the speaker legally does not have to be a member of the House. Why can’t the Republicans unite over electing Donald Trump, thereby giving their near-inevitable 2024 nominee a public platform? It also makes sense for the country: Trump is the ultimate dealmaker, given his business background, and the job is all about making deals. It would also be beneficial, if he is again elected president, for him to have had this additional experience and made these congressional contacts—experience and contacts he was lacking in his first term. 

And one additional consideration: the speaker is second in line if anything happens to the president, after the vice-president. It makes sense to have someone there who could step in if needed, since Biden is so frail and so compromised. And there is a strong sense that Kamala Harris is not up to the job.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

After the Depp-Heard Case,... More Evidence of the Terrible Harm Done by "Believe all Women."

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Nun of the Above

 

Friend Maximus sends in a piece from the CBC, an interview with a nun picked by the Vatican to attend the upcoming synod in Rome.

The most telling thing she says is this: “We humans tend to create these dualisms all the time, don't we? Good, bad, black, white, Catholic, non-Catholic. We always create dualisms and we did it with sexuality and gender. Male, female.”

Notice the very first “dualism” she cites as human-made and troublesome is good and bad: good and evil. 

There could be no flag of a brighter crimson. She rejects good and evil. She rejects the very concept of sin. She rejects the narrative of the Bible from its first verses, in which God separates the light from the darkness, and order from chaos. The battle against sin is the entire mission of the Church, the reason for human existence, and the reason Christ incarnated and died for us. Making binary choices was the reason Adam and Eve were created. This woman who intends to legislate for believers rejects it all.

Binaries are beautiful. Duality is beautiful. Without binaries, there is no balance, and so no art. Without binaries, male and female, self and other, there can be no love. And without binaries there can be no reason, no sense nor meaning to the world. This is Aristotle’s Law of non-contradiction: a thing is either so or not so.

Rejecting the binaries is Satanic. This Catholic nun is a Satanist. As is anyone who seeks ambiguity and lack of clarity. Jesus by contrast, is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, b which we see things clearly, and see our path clearly.

She also, of course, rejects science, in rejecting the male-female binary, visible in every cell. 

Of course, her reasoning is also contradictory on many levels. For example, if dualism i bad, then she is wrong to object to it, since that creates an exclusionary, non-inclusive duality between dualism and non-dualism, with dualism bad and non-dualism good. For another example, if there is no male-female binary, how can it be a problem that there are not enough female voices in the church?

Why on earth or in hell would anyone want to throw out Christianity, the Bible, science, art, love, and reason itself? Because—I can see no other reason—these are impediments to raw self-will, and the will to power. Any law or restriction protects the weak against the strong.

She wants to be God.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Getting Scarier in Canada

 

.. and more brilliant messaging from Pierre Poilievre.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.