Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1272

Prayer Requests

A reader wrote yesterday (and I apologize for the delay in posting):

Would you mind praying for my father who has to go into emergency surgery today? He's been suffering for a long time with Multiple Sclerosis, and this is just one more large straw on the camels back. Please pray for a successful surgery and that there is nothing serious that has caused his current issue. Thank you.

Father, hear our prayer for a successful surgery and swift healing for this man through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for him and all who love him. Pray as well for his caregivers that they be skilled and compassionate.

Another reader writes:

An elderly woman named Blanche, who is part of a group of seniors I belong to that meet once a month for coffee, has been found to have bone cancer. She has been struggling with cancer for the last 20 years, first with breast cancer, then lymph nodes, then in her spine, and it has now spread to her bones. And she was asking what she did to deserve all this, since she has tried to be a good person....

Father, hear our prayer that this woman be healed and that she be grace to see that she is not being punished, but is sharing in the suffering of your beloved Son. Grant her healing, strength, comfort and peace. Grant grace and consolation to all who love her and skill and compassion to her garegivers. Mother Mary, St. Luke and St. Peregrine, pray for her. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Ticking Time Bomb Scenario

A group of sinister people heedless of their fellow human beings and focused entirely on their own cramped world of political gain and ideological in-fighting are working in concert and threaten the very safety of the nation. We know that their actions threaten to inflict grave harm on thousands of Americans and perhaps even death on some of them. It's urgent! It's a HUGE CRISIS! We have NO TIME TO LOSE! WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING DRASTIC NOW IN ORDER TO SAVE OURSELVES!!!!

And yet, because these people are well-heeled rich politicians in Congress and the Executive Branch, there is (strangely) no call to waterboard them, subject them to beatings, or freezing, or suffocating stress positions or any of the rest of the panoply of "enhanced legislation techniques" from our advocates of salvation through leviathan by any means necessary. Somehow, we miraculously intuit that this approach will not produce fruitful results. And we do all this, despite the fact that these people have the power to inflict far more damage on the weak, the US and the global economy than any of the people whom torture-defending conservatives labored to justify torturing for most of the previous decade.

I am not (I emphasize for the humor-impaired) advocating we waterboard Congress and the Prez in order to resolve the problem. (I favor forcing them into a brightly lit room with no air-conditioning, a bread and water diet, portapotties, and absolutely no visitors or pay, with an hourly deduction of one million dollars per politician from their 3669% personal wealth increase, given to the pay pool of American combat troops, till they get their theatre of the absurd act together).

No, I am merely pointing out that the emotional manipulation of the ticking time bomb scenario relies entirely on the Ox Gore Principle. When it's some swarthy stranger we want to torture, we think this fantasy is "realistic". When it's your tribal member, you suddenly remember that the panic you cultivate with Ticking Time Bomb fantasies is self-hypnosis aimed to excuse doing something gravely immoral, rash and stupid. In short, Ticking Time Bomb fantasies are a cover for immoral cowardice and folly.

Conversely, failure to subject our Inside the Beltway Bubble elites to serious punishment for their contempt for the common good, even when they bring the common good to the edge of catastrophe, is a fine illustration of our culture's demented ruthlessness to the weak and tender compassion for the powerful, rich, arrogant, isolated and irresponsible.

There's an old joke that you can't do a Nativity play in DC because its impossible to find three wise men and a virgin. I sometimes think that in our present political culture, if Our Lady were to appear atop the Washington Monument and recite the Magnificat, she would only get as far as "He has cast down the mighty in their arrogance and lifted up the lowly". At this point, a scream would go up from the lobbyists, pols on both sides of the aisle, corporate interests, and media servants of the duopoly: "Tea Party Fanatic! Socialist! Class envy! Class warfare!" and the TV feed would be cut.

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. - G.K. Chesterton

A reader sez

Lock congress in a brightly-lit room with no food, bathrooms, or any means of contacting the outside world until they figure out this debt crisis thing.

"Enhanced legislation." I like it.

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

A prospective date of mine, a good, devout Christian young lady, is being led into very bad habits by some neighbors she met. She values their friendship, so it makes approaching the situation that much more tangled from a human perspective. Thus, I'd like to call in the God squad to preserve her from further influence by these neighbors and to undo any harm that has already been done. I'm thinking a St. Michael level assault, because you can never underestimate the power of peer pressure.

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -
by the Divine Power of God -
cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Father, hear our prayer and bring this woman to you and a saving knowledge of your love and obedience to your Spirit through Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, intercede for her. Amen.

Our Son, the Beloved Cow...

has become a major advocate of the superior sanity of Imperial Nortonism as an alternative to our present political system. They even have their own poster:

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I'm not much of a joiner but he's got my vote.

A letter to my freaked out younger self

In which a calmer bebearded me proffers some counsel to a considerably younger behatted me about the goodness of the marriage he is about to embark upon. If you are young, behatted, or most especially thinking about marriage, recently married, or even mustaschioed instead of bearded (though Patrick Madrid does not count since he is old and mustaschioed and married with a lot of grandkids), then this may scratch where you itch.

Busy through most of next week

Will try to check in, but I'm crushed with work.

Lovely to see

Another grateful convert enters the Church from Evangelicalism.

Scandals in Ireland and Miami

The Thirsty Gargoyle writes from Across the Pond:

Just thinking, regarding Cloyne -- because it really doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon, especially with the Vatican having recalled the Nuncio -- it might be useful for you to link to my latest post.

I returned to the topic in a question and answer format, going through what's in the report, what the Taoiseach said was in the Report, what certainly isn't in the Report, and how odd it is that the Taoiseach was so critical of Rome and so uncritical of Irish priests, and the probable safety of the Confessional Seal.

Have a look when you get a chance.

It's long, but every answer is short and clear, I think.

He knows better than I what's going on, so check him out for all your Irish Great Enema News.

Speaking of the Great Enema, Gawker has a new piece out about the mess in Florida. It's a curious piece for a number of reasons, but I think the central point it makes--that the Church was poisoned for quite some time by a corrupt gay cabal has enough solidity to it to warrant an investigation from Rome and get rid of any of that cabal who have not already been made gone. The tricky thing about the piece is parsing the sundry agendas at work in it.

Of course, there are the agendas of the accused who are not eager to be exposed and very eager to call things like this a "witchhunt" when the rest of us might be inclined to call it "good citizenship".

There are also the agendas of the various tribalists eager to function according to this paradigm:



So, for instance, I find it funny that the person who sent me the link to this story wrote, "Sort of big news. Wonder if you will devote even a post to it." This, being translated, means "Ah ha! You see! The crooked gay bastards! I bet you won't even talk about this, you foul persecutor of Corapi and Voris!" Indeed, many people wept bitter tears about the injustice of "the process" when Fr. Corapi was accused and who spent (and are still spending) quintillions of electrons rending their garments in anguish over a "media trial" of the good father. Many of these same people are delighted at the thought of a media trial for these, their ideological enemies.

Me: I think the same thing due both Corapi and these people: suspension and an investigation. If the charges are true, they should be laicized and, if any crimes have been committed, they should be punished. It's only complicated if we want it to be (and we typically want it to be when its somebody from our Tribe at stake.)

In addition to this dynamic, there is the curiously tormented agenda of the Gawker reporter, who obviously wants to maintain his cred with his post-Christian hipster readership and assure them that he confesses the post-Christian hipster creed that homosexuality is not merely tolerable, but absolutely perfectly fine and even meritorious and that only Neanderthal Catholics could have an issue with it. So he starts the article with a lot of "get a load of these maroons and their ridiculous hangups" mugging for the camera to make clear that he is slumming with the squares and watching the silly apes fling poo at each other.

But as the story progresses, he can't help but find himself appalled at the behavior of the, yes, gay cabal as it commits sundry despicable acts. The result is a deeply conflicted and schizophrenic piece of reportage as the guy comes to mug and remains, if not to pray, at least to sympathize with those who do and loathe, in spite of himself, the gays who prey.

Finally there is the agenda of the sundry people who are after the cabal. There's the old saying that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. There's also the reality that just because they are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid too. There are three dynamics in the article with respect to the accusers that raise questions for me and make me hesitate before simply declaring "This is the TRVTH! Destroy every person this article accuses!":

1. Why is this story in Gawker? It is not, after all, the normal way of approaching Rome, nor is this particular journal one's immediate go to source for reliable, dispassionate analysis of the Catholic Church. Why and how, precisely, did the accusers make the decision to go *here* in their quest for justice and not, say, a more mainstream journal or even, you know, Rome. The piece itself makes clear that the documentation and testimony amassed by the accusers was intended for Rome. So what happened? Did some canonist somewhere say, "This is largely gossip and hearsay and won't bear up under canonical examination" or what? I have no idea how these processes work, so I'm puzzled as to why this material didn't go to Rome and instead went to this venue?

2. Speaking of facts, how many of the allegations in the piece are, in fact, fact and not hearsay or highly prejudiced testimony from people with an ax to grind? I don't have time to do a careful parsing of the piece to get a sense of that, but certainly a goodly chunk seemed to be rather sketchily sourced. If readers want to try pinning down what is actually provable (like the rental records of the priest and his Special Friend, knock yourself out.

3. I ask this because I have interacted with at least one of the people cited in the article and, well, he has always struck me as highly prejudiced and with a heavy ax to grind. And not just me. I know others from the area who attest that he tended to see conspiracies against him when in fact, he was just annoying and not an easy person to like.

None of this is to say I think the article dismissable. It certainly smells bad and many of the claims made in it seem to be sourced. However, a lot of it also seems to me to be pseudoknowledge of the "everybody knows that insiders say X about this guy" variety, coupled with at least some testimony from a source that I, at any rate, am not inclined to regard as impartial or super reliable. Still, I think there's enough here to warrant a serious investigation from Rome. I also note that a goodly chunk of this seems to be dealing with people who are now largely out of the picture (thank God) and with things from 20 and 30 years ago. Of course, the question remains, "How many of these people are still in place?"

Bottom line: let the investigation happen, the chips fall where they may, and let the Great Enema continue till all this perversion and "filth" as Benedict called it is washed away. In the end, we owe whistleblowers like this a debt--and we owe the accused the courtesy of finding out if they are being accused with good reason.

Scandals is Ireland and Miami

The Thirsty Gargoyle writes from Across the Pond:

Just thinking, regarding Cloyne -- because it really doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon, especially with the Vatican having recalled the Nuncio -- it might be useful for you to link to my latest post.

I returned to the topic in a question and answer format, going through what's in the report, what the Taoiseach said was in the Report, what certainly isn't in the Report, and how odd it is that the Taoiseach was so critical of Rome and so uncritical of Irish priests, and the probable safety of the Confessional Seal.

Have a look when you get a chance.

It's long, but every answer is short and clear, I think.

He knows better than I what's going on, so check him out for all your Irish Great Enema News.

Speaking of the Great Enema, Gawker has a new piece out about the mess in Florida. It's a curious piece for a number of reasons, but I think the central point it makes--that the Church was poisoned for quite some time by a corrupt gay cabal has enough solidity to it to warrant an investigation from Rome and get rid of any of that cabal who have not already been made gone. The tricky thing about the piece is parsing the sundry agendas at work in it.

Of course, there are the agendas of the accused who are not eager to be exposed and very eager to call things like this a "witchhunt" when the rest of us might be inclined to call it "good citizenship".

There are also the agendas of the various tribalists eager to function according to this paradigm:



So, for instance, I find it funny that the person who sent me the link to this story wrote, "Sort of big news. Wonder if you will devote even a post to it." This, being translated, means "Ah ha! You see! The crooked gay bastards! I bet you won't even talk about this, you foul persecutor of Corapi and Voris!" Indeed, many people wept bitter tears about the injustice of "the process" when Fr. Corapi was accused and who spent (and are still spending) quintillions of electrons rending their garments in anguish over a "media trial" of the good father. Many of these same people are delighted at the thought of a media trial for these, their ideological enemies.

Me: I think the same thing due both Corapi and these people: suspension and an investigation. If the charges are true, they should be laicized and, if any crimes have been committed, they should be punished. It's only complicated if we want it to be (and we typically want it to be when its somebody from our Tribe at stake.)

In addition to this dynamic, there is the curiously tormented agenda of the Gawker reporter, who obviously wants to maintain his cred with his post-Christian hipster readership and assure them that he confesses the post-Christian hipster creed that homosexuality is not merely tolerable, but absolutely perfectly fine and even meritorious and that only Neanderthal Catholics could have an issue with it. So he starts the article with a lot of "get a load of these maroons and their ridiculous hangups" mugging for the camera to make clear that he is slumming with the squares and watching the silly apes fling poo at each other.

But as the story progresses, he can't help but find himself appalled at the behavior of the, yes, gay cabal as it commits sundry despicable acts. The result is a deeply conflicted and schizophrenic piece of reportage as the guy comes to mug and remains, if not to pray, at least to sympathize with those who do and loathe, in spite of himself, the gays who prey.

Finally there is the agenda of the sundry people who are after the cabal. There's the old saying that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. There's also the reality that just because they are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid too. There are three dynamics in the article with respect to the accusers that raise questions for me and make me hesitate before simply declaring "This is the TRVTH! Destroy every person this article accuses!":

1. Why is this story in Gawker? It is not, after all, the normal way of approaching Rome, nor is this particular journal one's immediate go to source for reliable, dispassionate analysis of the Catholic Church. Why and how, precisely, did the accusers make the decision to go *here* in their quest for justice and not, say, a more mainstream journal or even, you know, Rome. The piece itself makes clear that the documentation and testimony amassed by the accusers was intended for Rome. So what happened? Did some canonist somewhere say, "This is largely gossip and hearsay and won't bear up under canonical examination" or what? I have no idea how these processes work, so I'm puzzled as to why this material didn't go to Rome and instead went to this venue?

2. Speaking of facts, how many of the allegations in the piece are, in fact, fact and not hearsay or highly prejudiced testimony from people with an ax to grind? I don't have time to do a careful parsing of the piece to get a sense of that, but certainly a goodly chunk seemed to be rather sketchily sourced. If readers want to try pinning down what is actually provable (like the rental records of the priest and his Special Friend, knock yourself out.

3. I ask this because I have interacted with at least one of the people cited in the article and, well, he has always struck me as highly prejudiced and with a heavy ax to grind. And not just me. I know others from the area who attest that he tended to see conspiracies against him when in fact, he was just annoying and not an easy person to like.

None of this is to say I think the article dismissable. It certainly smells bad and many of the claims made in it seem to be sourced. However, a lot of it also seems to me to be pseudoknowledge of the "everybody knows that insiders say X about this guy" variety, coupled with at least some testimony from a source that I, at any rate, am not inclined to regard as impartial or super reliable. Still, I think there's enough here to warrant a serious investigation from Rome. I also note that a goodly chunk of this seems to be dealing with people who are now largely out of the picture (thank God) and with things from 20 and 30 years ago. Of course, the question remains, "How many of these people are still in place?"

Bottom line: let the investigation happen, the chips fall where they may, and let the Great Enema continue till all this perversion and "filth" as Benedict called it is washed away. In the end, we owe whistleblowers like this a debt--and we owe the accused the courtesy of finding out if they are being accused with good reason.