Nobody Is Saying It, But ...

The current Israeli attack on Irian is showing spectacular penetration by agents of Mossad. They have been able to precisely target important military figures for assassination, for example. They are firing drones from places inside Iran.

Nobody is saying it, but it should be obvious that these “Mossad agents” are not Israeli Jews.

They have to be Iranians—and they are not doing this out of love for Israel. Israel has made a deal with the Iranian opposition. Their intent and end game is not going to be simply to get Iran to stop building nuclear weapons. The deal will involve an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime. And no doubt the Iranian opposition has, with the help of Mossad, prepared the necessary next steps.

This is always the great weakness of an authoritarian regime. That Ayatollah fella is going down.

The name of the Israeli operation, "Rising Lion" actually already said so. The lion is the symbol of the Iranian monarchy. 

Carney the Dime Store Pychiatrist

 

Canadian PM Mark Carney has decided, it seems, that the way to handle Donald Trump is to praise him lavishly in public.

This is presumably based on the sophomoric assumption that Trump is a narcissist. Narcissists are notoriously susceptible to flattery.

Trump is not. Both Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott tried this in the VP stakes. Not only did they not get picked— but a few brief weeks for Ramaswamy, neither even made it into the administration.

Trump is just as immune from flattery as he is from insult. Showing, if it were not already obvious, that he is not a narcissist.

The last thing a narcissist would do is surround himself with subordinates who might steal the limelight. Instead, Trump picked a strong cabinet including charismatic people with their own followings: RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rudio, Christie Noem, Tom Homan, Kash Patel. He is happy to give VP Vance prominence and camera time, for example in the public negotiations with Zelensky.

Narcissists are never creative thinkers; they fear the spontaneity that creativity requires. It means a loss of control. Trump is creative in government, full of new policy ideas, and able to speak for hours entertainingly without notes.

Narcissists also lack stamina. As soon as something seems hard, and they get a whiff of failure, they will quit. Trump is just the reverse of that, seemingly not even slowed down by political attacks, personal insults, legal attacks, deplatforming, attempted assassination, and electoral defeat.

Trump is the anti-narcissist. He seems to have absolutely no ego.

And Carney is showing himself to be painfully stupid.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Things that seem epochal seem to be happening all at once, as I type, as though we are witnessing the hand of Providence. I may be speaking too soon, but rumours are growing of an economic collapse and a change in power in China. And to a more “pro-Western” regime.

What seems especially uncanny, and implausible, are reports of a sudden demographic collapse, of empty villages in the countryside, and of strangely empty streets in major cities. How can millions of people just disappear suddenly?

Possibly much work and purchasing has gone online, as it has, after all, in North America. Possibly an economic collapse means people do not have money to go out and spend, or work to get to. Possibly the government is harassing those who venture out, fearing any concentration of people might become an anti-government demonstration or a riot.

But counter to this last hypothesis, reports are that the extensive Chinese network of security cameras has been cut off. Surely not what they want to do if they fear unrest. A power shortage?

Whatever the case, it seems that something big is happening in China. And any thing big happening in China is big for the whole world.

Meantime, there is the apocalypse in Iran. Israel is suddenly, in lightning strikes,  wiping out much of Iran’s military capabilities and creating chaos in the regime. Rumours are that many top leaders have flown out to Russia or Pakistan. 

If true, this is what happens when a regime is about to collapse. The Iranian regime has for many years not had any popular support. The military was vital to hold the people down through fear. Now the military is in disarray, and shown to be weak. Iranians  may seize the opportunity to rise up. Iranian friends in Canada are cheering on the Israeli attacks. There is an organized opposition abroad; as there was when the Shah fell. Then, they successfully flew in to take charge and restore order. It may happen again now. Losing a war or some reckless military adventure is a common trigger for autocratic governments to fall. 

That’s two of the three strongest anti-Western regimes.

And then there is the third leg of the triple alliance, Russia.

Russia and Putin have also just gotten a big shock, with the Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. It was actually eerily similar to the Israeli attack on Iran, happening almost simultaneously, as though the same mastermind was behind both. If not God, perhaps the USA? 

It took out a significant part of Russia’s strategic abilities; and it brought the war to the common people back in Moscow. Not good for popular support, I imagine. 

Online commentators also say Russia, having now lost a million casualties, is finding it hard to replace lost manpower. They may be losing this war of attrition.

At first glance, this looks improbable. Surely Ukraine has a greater manpower problem, with a much smaller population. They’ve been fighting just as long. And a greater materiel problem: their economy is smaller, and their factories have been under attack far longer.

But the argument goes that, in order to gain ground, the Russians have been using human wave attacks, in a war which heavily favours the defense. The Ukrainians, by staying mostly on the defensive, have been able to take advantage of this. Perhaps the optics were bad, but it was the smart move. Let the other side run straight into the machine guns. 

As for materiel, Ukraine still has all of the EU, and beyond, to draw on.

Rumours online are that all this recent attack puts Putin on shaky ground; a palace coup seems possible. As with Iran, a failed military adventure is the most common trigger for the fall of an autocratic regime. 

Of course, this has all been said before, the imminent fall of Putin has been widely predicted, ever since the initial Russian invasion, supposed to take three days, was repulsed. He has shown great resilience. But even a cat has only nine lives. This recent mass drone attack, and the detonation under the Crimean bridge, does look like a possible tipping point. Like the Tet offensive was for the US in Vietnam—the frustration and sense of failure is that much greater once having started to feel victory was at last within view. It must be psychologically devastating.

With Israel’s attack on Iran, Putin has probably lost his main source of drones with which to respond to Ukraine. There are suddenly leaks that Russia and China no longer see one another as allies—consistent with the rumours that China is about to turn pro-Western. It makes sense; China has unresolved historical grievances and border disputes with Russia, and not with the USA or the West. 

So Putin too might soon and suddenly fall.

If any one of these three regimes goes, the other two are more vulnerable. We’re talking dominoes. And China, the biggest and most important of the three, seems to be a pretty sure thing.

What will the world look like if all three dominoes are down?

Hugely enhanced prestige for the US and the West. 

Surely lesser regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, who have been anti-Western, will also fall or convert. Partly for lost financial backing; partly for lost prestige; partly from spreading revolutionary fervour. 

More importantly, the anti-Western elites within the West will be relatively discredited: the multicult groups running Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and the EU broadly. Already in process, their fall may be turbocharged. The superiority of the Western way will have been emphatically illustrated.

Hugely enhanced prestige for Donald Trump. FWIW. Cue AI to carve a niche on Mount Rushmore. Maybe with an assist from Musk’s Boring Company.

This may be bad for peace in the Middle East. Hostility towards and fear of Iran has tended to drive Gulf States into cooperation with Israel and the US; this incentive will now be gone. 

However, a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, will have lost their funding. The current forever wars will cease. Certainly, this should end the conflict in Gaza. Without this hot conflict between Israel and fellow Arabs, the other Arab states may feel better able to sign on to the Abraham Accords.

I see a day peace will come to the Middle East. It once seemed impossible for peace to come to Ireland, too. Then it did. 

With Putin gone, Russian matters are unpredictable. But on balance, it would seem that, with the relative loss of strategic capabilities, a more bellicose leadership would have nowhere to go from here—just carrying on just the same. So if you see a problem, why reinforce failure? The obvious possible change is to try for peace. Even to end Russia’s dreams of standing apart from and against the West. That gives you a chance to declare a kind of victory. After all, culturally, Russia is Europe. Division is artificial. Pure self-interest suggests integration. It is only a childish national pride that makes Russia want to fight and seek empire.

One happy consequence of the end of the regimes in Iran and China could be a revival of Christianity. The CCP has discredited atheism in China; the Ayatollahs have discredited Islamism in Iran. Rumours are of a large number of Christian conversions as it is; although such conversions are more or less illegal in both states. With the lid off, this may grow; this may blow. And the vitality of Christianity in these influential nations, in turn, may also hasten revival in the older Christian lands; a revival that already seems to be starting. When the Iron Curtain fell, Pope John Paul II and Polish Christianity brought a new enthusiasm to Catholicism.

And Christianity is the backbone and foundation of Western culture. Is a Renaissance about to begin?

Amazing Grace

 

A sentence catches my eye from Margaret Visser’s book The Geometry of Love. She is speaking of the unicursal labyrinths that grace Medieval churches; the kind that have no wrong turns, and only require patience to walk through. “The road symbolizes a human life with all its difficulties and failures, and the common feeling of being lost; the message is that mental agility is not the most important gift for the spiritual life.”

I believe being lost is indeed a common feeling. It is the true essence of what psychiatrists call “depression.” Not sorrow, not anxiety, but a sense of not knowing which way to turn, how to proceed. This is the worst of all feelings.

And I think this is an important message: “mental agility is not the most important gift for the spiritual life.” That is, for life itself. 

I long ago noticed, in my studies of legends and fairy tales, that this message is conveyed not only by unicursal labyrinths. Whenever a tale does involve a maze or labyrinth of the kind with wrong turns and dead ends, the hero does not escape by their own cleverness. Theseus escapes the Minoan labyrinth not through his own quick wit, as Oedipus escapes the Sphinx, but rather anticlimactically because Ariadne gives him a cheat sheet: the thread, and advice to always take the left (or was it right?) turn. In the Grimm tale, Hansel cleverly lays a path of white stones when his parents seem to abandon him and his sister in the forest. But his parents discover the trick, and try again, after preventing him from collecting stones a second time. So, still ingenious, he resorts to dropping breadcrumbs. And this does not work—the birds eat the breadcrumbs, and he and Gretel are truly lost. Having worked it all out brilliantly, it is still of no use. In the end, it is Gretel, not Hansel, who saves the day. 

And so forth, for every example I can find.

There is a consistent message being whispered in our ear. Ultimately, for our direction and our salvation, we must not rely on our own cleverness. We cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It must be faith, and love.

It must be so: some people are much smarter than others. Yet God made us all, and made us as we are. A good God would not give advantage to the most intelligent, and condemn others simply for stupidity.

As Aquinas said, all his subtle philosophy was, in the end, a sideshow. If we rely on our own intelligence, we are doomed.

The answers are written in our heart.

Trump's Game in Iran

 

The US is at pains to stress that Israel’s current strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is entirely Israel’s doing, and America is not involved.

I do not believe that for a moment. Methinks they doth protest too much.

Trump has been saying for years that Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Last winter he said that if the Gaza hostages were not released promptly, all hell would break loose.

Trump is a skilled negotiator. He has set this up as “good cop, bad cop,” to force Iran to the table with minimum risk or destruction. I think he intentionally spread the rumour a couple of months ago that he and Netanyahu were having a spat, simply in order to give this plausibility. The media bought it.

Now Iran may be led to appeal to US for protection from Israel. And Trump can name his terms. He has given them an escape ramp. In the meantime, other actors throughout the Muslim world have less cause or claim to attack US interests, minimizing risks. And protecting the US’s Arab and Muslim allies. All the risks are on Israel, but Israel was already entirely at risk and has nothing exposed and nothing to lose.

And Trump preserves his domestic reputation as a man of peace, the basis for much of his popular support.

It is even possible Trump is playing a similar game with Ukraine—faking his hostility to Zelensky, which really did look like something staged for the cameras, a bit from his old reality show. Thereby letting the Europeans take the lead, while feeding Ukraine the intelligence needed for them to pull off spectacular strikes recently within Russia. With official US sanction, their hands were tied, over fears of sparking a nuclear exchange and world war. But Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet and strategic submarines were very much in the US interest. Trump may still be feeding technology to Ukraine through European intermediaries. 

Again, this would let him pose as an honest broker to Putin, someone Putin could turn to without losing face to make a peace. And it lets him, again, stay the pacifist for his domestic audience. The Europeans would surely be delighted to go along, because it makes them look independent and tough and consequential. Good for their ego.

Meantime, Trump’s tariffs on China seem to have caused some sort of tipping point, and the Chinese leadership is collapsing.

Imagine if Trump’s negotiating skills actually manage to achieve, in short order, the collapse of the Iranian, Chinese, and Russian governments, all without American blood being spilled.

It would earn him a spot on Mount Rushmore.

Next question: was Trump’s spat with Elon Musk also faked, to protect Musk’s business interests from attacks, while also giving congresspeople, especially Democratic congresspeople, cover to support the DOGE cuts without looking subservient to Trump?

This doesn’t require imagining Trump is playing 4-D chess. It’s more like the good old American game of poker. Plus acting talent.

The End Is Not Near

 

Many evangelical Protestants are awaiting the End Times. They keep seeing signs of it in the news. Many Catholics are into this too, referring to the prophecies of St. Malachi, and proclaiming this the last pope.

Bad idea.

From the Bible:

“you do not know when your Lord is coming … the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” – Matthew

“you do not know when that time will come… the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." -- Mark 

“that day will sneak up on you like a trap. For it will come on those who are unsuspecting all over the earth.“ -- Luke

“the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”—Paul

Aren’t these passages telling us it is foolishness to look for signs? We will not be given signs. It will happen when we least suspect it. The need is to always act as though the next second may be our last. At any moment, we might die and come face to face with our maker.

Which is obviously true.

Jesus actually said “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (Matthew) “Truly I tell you that there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1). “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27). That was 2000 years ago.

So we are always in the End Times. We enter the End Times at physical death, death to the world; because we do not die then, we enter eternity. We must always be ready for that hour, because we might die at any time. The end of the world at large is largely irrelevant.

The belief that the Second Coming is imminent and about to begin a reign of peace and justice on earth, “millennialism,” has been with us for more than the past two thousand years; it was also the essence of the traditional Jewish belief in the coming of the Messiah. It had a great recent resurgence in the US the 19th century. Specific dates were proposed: 1844 was a big one. New denominations were formed on this belief. But it keeps not happening. Encyclopedia Britannica writes “For all the costly failures, … the appeal of millennialism remains, and generation after generation of devotees have sought the chimerical kingdom.” 

It is worth noting that the belief in the imminent dawning of a New Age has sometimes brought more than mere disappointment. It led to the destruction of the ancient state of Judea and the diaspora of the Jews, after the failed Bar Kochba revolt. In China, it led to twenty million deaths in the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century.

Marxism and Fascism are examples of secular, non-religious millennial movements. They have been responsible for the holocaust of many millions.

The Catholic Church properly considers all millennial movements manifestations of the Antichrist. This has been so since Saint Augustine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

“The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.”

Jesus himself came to disprove millenarianism—that is, the Jewish expectation of a messiah who would rule the world.

I think it is true that we are living through a time of epochal change, due to the effects of the new technology. Just as there was a great general change at the Renaissance, arguably due to the invention of printing. Or as a result of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. But the sky is not falling.

The Case for Segregation by Sex in Schools

 

I once worked for a Canadian college contracted to open a branch in Qatar. The one thing they insisted on, before signing the contract, was that men and women would be taught in the same integrated classes. This was a violation of local norms and customs, but was reluctantly agreed to. 

But this is a bad idea. The best studies we have show consistently that both boys and girls, men and women, do best when classes are segregated by sex. We used to know this—expensive private schools were once always segregates by sex, since we knew this gave their students an advantage.

Any teacher is surely aware, as I am, that boys and girls think differently, have different interests, and learn in different ways. If you have both sexes on the same class, at best, each of them is getting only 50% of the learning time. More often, one sex’s interests are sacrificed entirely to those of the other. Currently, it is boys who are suffering—the more so because most teachers are women. And the zeitgeist demands that girls be favoured over boys. We are losing generations of men as a result.

Leaving alone that, in a mixed sex classroom, attention wanders from the lesson to the opposite sex. After a certain age, it is an extreme distraction. And it is in the best interest of everyone that the young not be tempted or encouraged to engage in such activities earlier than necessary, and before they have full command of their passions and are in a position to raise children. The integrated classroom seems perfectly designed to set young people up for disaster.

So why did we start such a mad practice? Economics. In small rural communities: even students in different grades would need to share a classroom. But that is rarely the case now, in our urban culture. It certainly was not the case in Qatar.

There, and more generally, it is the influence of the civil rights movement in the US. Classes and schools were once, in the US South, segregated by race. And this was determined by the Supreme Court to be discriminatory: there was no such thing as “Separate but equal.” 

So the same logic was applied to the sexes, with disastrous results. 

The initial premise was false. There is such a thing as separate but equal: an example is the public and Catholic separate schools in Ontario. No Catholics feel discriminated against for having their own schools. Nol Anglophones in Quebec feel discriminated against for having their own schools. The problem in the US was disparate treatment, not segregation: the black schools were not as well funded.

The proof is that we are now at the point that US blacks themselves are demanding segregation wherever possible. As are “First Nations” in Canada. Black parents want their own schools; black students want their own lunch rooms, their own graduation ceremonies.

In the case of race, this seems relatively harmless, one way or the other. But in the case of sex, it seems obviously preferable.

Being Nice Is Uncharitable

 

Bishop Barron makes a vital point. Being "nice" is moral cowardice.

Is the Bible History?

 

Nebuchadnezzar, Blake

I have argued that science cannot be used to test the Bible; the Bible is intrinsically more reliable than science.

Does this mean that the story of Noah’s flood is history?

No.

Much of the Bible is history; but it is a compendium. History in itself is of no special value, except inasmuch as it reveals the divine will or serves as warning or illustration. The Bible features many literary genres: proverbs, psalms, poems, lists, codes of law, descriptive passages, philosophical essays, analogies and allegories, even humour. It is a modern prejudice, dating only from about the beginning of the Twentieth Century, that the Bible must be read “literally.” This is part of the scientistic heresy. Jesus obviously did not share this prejudice. He spoke in parables.

A correspondent sent me a video claiming archeological and textual “proof” that the Book of Daniel was history, written in the 6th century BC, and accurately predicting world events up to the 2nd century BC. And this prophecy was then advanced as proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible. Praise God!

But anyone familiar with literary genres should recognize immediately that the Book of Daniel is a hero legend. It shows all the features of that genre; like a modern superhero comic. It was not considered history by the ancient rabbis who compiled the Talmud.

A hero legend will include much accurate historical detail; like a modern urban legend, it is supposed to be almost but not quite believable. This is not meant to deceive, but to make it more vivid and compelling. So the Paul Bunyan legend cites specific geographical features: his footprints made the Great Lakes, and so forth. It is no surprise that many things spoken of in the book fit the archeological record. The one thing that will not be historical is the superhuman deeds of the hero—that is, Daniel and his prophecies. They are meant to convey a spiritual message. Nebuchadnezzar is a parable of pride.

The idea that prophets predict the future is a misunderstanding; they are really always speaking of the potentials of the present. “If you do this, this is likely to happen.” We are not meant to know the future, although God does; it subverts our free will, which is the whole point of our being here. And trying to do so implies a lack of trust in God.

The arbitrary focus on history is part of the essential error of scientism: materialism. Scientism assumes that only the physical is real. This is obvious nonsense: love is real, as are the other emotions, yet they are not experienced through the five senses. Ideas and concepts are real, but cannot be seen, touched, or bitten into. The past and the future are real too, but only the present is visible. Indeed, we never know whether the mental images we form from the information of our senses correspond to anything real outside themselves. See Bishop Berkeley.

The Bible is talking about the whole of human experience, not just the stuff visible on the ground.

The story of the flood may have been inspired in part by an actual flood; but the waters are the waters of change that wash all things away. The ark is the ark of memory, in which fertile impressions of each experience endure. In wicked times, the righteous man turns from the world outside, and keeps to God’s council alone.

On Science and the Bible

 

Copernicus

A friend sends me a video of Frank Turek debating the story of Noah and the great flood. Can the Bible really be true when it talks of a universal flood?

I have trouble with the basic idea that the Bible must be shown to conform with current science to show that the Biblical account is true. If this is how you think, that science is the ultimate test of truth, then scientism is your religion, not Christianity. Science actually by its nature cannot establish truth, and does not claim to. Its conclusions are always provisional; a plausible explanation of what is observed, until refuted. Scientific “truth” has changed a lot just since I was in high school.

If science seems to contradict the Biblical account, the more reasonable assumption is that science is missing something.

The way to test the Bible is by deduction from first principles, not induction. 

Point 1: the existence of God is a logical necessity. This can be proven a dozen ways.

Point 2: God by his nature can do any thing he likes. He is God.

Point 3: God’s nature is necessarily essentially and infinitely good. A perfect being must be perfectly good.

Point 4: A good God would want to reveal himself to us fully; and his plan for us.

Point 5: One must expect him to appear in human form. This is the best way for us to comprehend him. As William Blake rightly observes, the highest thing a human can imagine is a perfected human. A perfect circle or equilateral triangle or cloud does not approach this.

Point 6: Jesus’s resurrection, although inductive evidence, is our warrant that Jesus is the specific form in which he came to us.

Point 7: Jesus certifies the Church and the Bible. He cites scripture as authoritative, and commissions the apostles. God would not leave us without continuing guidance.

Therefore, the Bible is a more reliable authority than science, which may change tomorrow.

Unforced Busing

 

One day last week, my city made all transit free in honour of “Clean air day.” The buses were packed.

Which made me think. The city is spending an enormous amount putting in new bicycle lanes, in hopes of decreasing our carbon footprints. Cyclists I know are not impressed. They say it is suicidal to ride a bike on them. I hear being a bicycle-based delivery person in a large city is one of the most dangerous jobs on record.

Add to that the fact that our city is under ice and snow for four to five months of the year, making cycling difficult.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper, simpler, and quicker to just make public transit free, to get people to leave the car at home? Pay for it out of general taxation, like the streetlights, or medicare, or the roads themselves? After all, transportation is almost a basic human need.

Perhaps not completely free; then people might use the buses for unnecessary trips. But keep fares quite low, perhaps $1 per ride; and free for seniors and students.

Two birds would thereby meet their maker: you would be cutting down on carbon, and you would be helping out the very poor. And, for that matter, giving a boost to local business.

Why not?

Just a Marker So I can Later Say I Told You So

 

It is becoming more obvious that the Chinese regime is collapsing. Having turned first to the iron fist, the CCP has predictably failed. Reportedly, systems are breaking down in China: internet blackouts, security cameras gone dead; explosions, fires, probably caused by sabotage; deflation, mass unemployment, business defaults, deserted shopping areas. The mandate of heaven is passing. 

Now the party is turning in desperation to the tactic they most feared: the Gorbachev turn. Rumour has it that the leadership is to be handed to Wang and Hu, two relatively reformist figures. Trying to open up and restructure (glasnost, perestroika) without knocking down the whole house did not work for the Soviet Union. In China, it previously dead-ended in Tienanmen. That’s why they’ve been resisting it.

It might have still worked in 2012. I doubt it can work now; Xi’s hardline methods have burned through the residual popular legitimacy this needs. I expect the whole thing to blow within a year.

Putin too is suddenly in grave difficulty, thanks to the recent Ukrainian drone strikes. If he goes, China is more likely to go. If China goes, he is more likely to go. Not that these regimes are dependant on each other, or ideologically aligned; but a revolutionary spirit is contagious across borders. 

Indeed, we already live in revolutionary times, and most established regimes look unsteady. Trump is staging a peaceful revolution in the US, as Milei is in Argentina, and Meloni in Italy. The regimes in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK all face hurricane-force populist headwinds. Klaus Shwab has stepped down. No telling who’s next.

The Essential Truth of the Residential Schools

 

Greg Piasetzki writes today in the National Post: “in 1946, decades after the first residential schools were built, the Globe and Mail reported that, ‘Of the 128,000 Indians in this country, only 16,000 last year received formal schooling. Of this number, few stayed more than a year and only 71 … reached Grade 9.’”

This simple fact explodes the myth of the residential schools. Attendance was not compulsory--even though school attendance was compulsory for non-native children. Had mistreatment occurred, or “cultural genocide” been on the table, parents could simply withdraw their children. The government, and the churches, were offering a service: education in useful trades, plus, in the case of the residential schools, free room and board.

Eventually, the truth will come out. But we will never be able to recover all the historic churches burned down, the statues pulled down, the heritage lost.

Sowell and Intelligence

 

Thomas Sowell argues against the idea that intelligence can vary by race, pointing out that different populations have risen over history, while others have fallen back. China was more culturally advanced than Europe from the Dark Ages to about 1500. Then Europe sped ahead. Southern Europe, Greece and Rome, was more advanced that Northern Europe until the Renaissance; but by the Enlightenment the South had slipped into relative backwardness. 

The fortunes of nations change, and intellectual leadership seems available to any group at random.

The first point to make about this argument is that it acknowledges, contrary to current “anti-racist” ideology, that cultures can indeed be superior or inferior: Chinese culture was more advanced than European until 1500, and so forth. This makes nonsense of the claim that the “Western” education of Canadian First Nations children, for example, was “cultural genocide.”  Or the insistence that an English curriculum must feature an equal number of African or aboriginal authors, or it is racist.

The second point is that the principle of human equality is not an assertion that all people are equal in intelligence. That claim is obviously false. It is that all people are equal in human dignity, in moral worth. They are equal in the eyes of God, and all made in the divine image. This understanding has been perverted as we have lost our religious principles. We forget that liberal democracy is built on Christianity.

Individuals differ in innate intelligence, according to casual observation and IQ testing. It is therefore reasonable to assume—and demonstrable with IQ testing--that families and bloodlines also differ in innate intelligence. They share, after all, much of their genetics. Then, as it is reasonable to assume that intelligence, if innate, can run in families, it is reasonable to assume that intelligence runs in nationalities or “races,” as they too share some of their genetics.

We can observe that different ethnic groups vary in their athletic abilities. Black Africans dominate running sports at the Olympics; black Americans dominate basketball, boxing, and football. Canadian and American native people have always been prominent in sports: Tom Longboat, Jim Thorpe. As this is visibly true, it stands to reason that genetic groups can also vary in their intellectual abilities. 

And we see this in different breeds of domestic animals: they can and have been bred for intelligence, in order to perform given tasks. A border collie is usually much smarter than an afghan hound. Intelligence is therefore innate, and can be bred.

One does not, by the way, need to believe in the theory of evolution to know that this is so. Breeding for specific traits can be observed in the wild, even though the actual emergence of new species cannot.

It is only politics that makes us resist the premise that different races or ethnicities differ in average intelligence. Noting, of course, that this is a question of averages, and individuals must be evaluated as individuals: not by the colour of heir skin, but the content of their character.

It seems reasonable to assume that, just as domestic animals are bred for desired characteristics, any culture will spontaneously breed for whatever characteristics it most values. Those who possess that particular characteristic will have more wealth and more opportunity for survival, be seen as more desirable marriage partners, and therefore will have a greater opportunity to marry and have more children. So a culture that values, admires, and rewards learning and intelligence will grow over time more intelligent. A culture that values music will become more musical. A culture that values beauty will grow more beautiful. And a culture that requires athletic skill and fast reflexes for survival and prosperity will favour and develop in this direction, rather than intellectually.

And indeed, differences in average IQ among racial groups are measurable by IQ test.

The common argument, of course, is that these tests are culturally biased. This is an obvious possibility. But if so, how explain why East Asians do better on European-designed IQ tests than Europeans do?

This difference in average intelligence does not yet explain how cultures can rise and fall, how the baton of intellectual progress can pass from one group to another, as Sowell notes. One explanation is that intelligence is not the only factor that leads to cultural success. Some groups can no doubt be held down by oppression or discrimination. Some environmental factor may give you the free time to think and to innovate: discovering a vein of silver in your territory; being the sole source of purple dye; striking oil. The challenges of the environment can also change, as they do for evolution in the animal world. Some outside threat may make different talents more valuable. Or some technological innovation: the development of agriculture, say, or writing. 

These, over time, will change the breeding pattern.

A challenging environment, causing difficulty in survival, marriage, and childrearing, will accentuate the particular virtues and values of a group. Conversely, an environment of too much ease and opportunity, where everyone can easily survive and raise children, should cause a regression to the mean. This too can explain why groups can rise and fall on the civilizational totem pole.

This all raises an obvious concern: couldn’t a government decide to control breeding to produce a superior race—the Nazi concept?

But even given all this, even if that were desirable, and not a violation of the basic human right to reproduce, that is a mad idea. To see the effects of better breeding takes multiple generations; governments, and government policies, never last that long. 

One quick way to produce the effect is through immigration. Immigrant societies have tended to benefit from this, at least in the days that immigration was difficult and challenging—so that the best and the brightest in their own societies naturally self-selected. The US, Singapore, Canada, Australia. One could, theoretically, screen immigrants by IQ test.

The other way to do it, and the way it has been most commonly done, is to change the cultural values. Which is to say, a new religion. Northern Europe was raised to the level of Southern Europe as it Christianized. China, I believe, benefitted from the strength of Confucianism. Religion is the setting and discernment of values: it is worship, “worth-ship.” 

On Christianity's Decline

 

Happy Mormons in harness

Friend Xerxes laments the collapse of Christian congregations in North America.

Like him, I lament the decline of various well-established Christian denominations, the loss of community, of social cohesion, and, not least, the loss of many beautiful and historic churches. A vital part of our heritage is being lost, and nothing is being done.

On the other hand, it is worth remembering that this is a local phenomenon. Christianity is growing worldwide.

The problem also varies by denomination. The United Church, Xerxes’s church and the largest protestant denomination in Canada, is cratering, true; as are the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. And apparently in the US the Baptists are beginning to decline, despite America’s strong religious culture. These are, broadly, the “mainline” Protestant denominations. 

However, the Catholic Church is holding its own in the US, while growing worldwide. Xerxes cites a decline in church attendance in Britain. But there is another story: in Britain, Catholicism has now overtaken Anglicanism in membership. Rather historic. Albeit probably fueled in large part by immigration.

 I hear reports that Eastern Orthodoxy, although small in America, seems to be holding its own, or better. 

And the Pentecostal and non-denominational evangelical churches are growing; including Assemblies of God, no small splinter group. I understand a lot of those who show up as “nones” in the stats are actually attending non-denominational churches. They may have no commitment to any specific denomination, yet be fervently Christian. The number of actual declared atheists or agnostics is actually only 4% and 5% in the US, respectively. And in the recent polls, that number is not growing.

So things are really not all that bad; I even smell a religious revival.

Xerxes suggests that the decline in numbers may be due to denominations splitting. Christian unity seems like a good thing, but I see no obvious reason why these two factors would be related. And Protestant denominations have been splintering for 500 years; this is not some recent phenomenon.

I think the most obvious reason for the mainstream decline is complacency. In prolonged peacetime and prosperity, people forget God. The last great burst of religiosity was just after the Second World War, and under the nuclear threat of the Cold War. There are no atheists in foxholes.

This would explain why the fervour is great in the Third World, yet in decline in the industrialized West.

The next cause, I suspect, for religious disaffiliation is that there are just a lot more things to do with our leisure time than there were before the Internet. Back in the day, going to church was the dress-up highlight of the family week; followed by a special meal and a Sunday drive. Toronto newspapers used to cover the sermons, in advance and in review. In smaller communities, tent revivals were the event of the year. Note there is now a decline not only in church attendance, but a comparable one in voluntary associations of all kinds: the Masons, the Oddfellows, the Legion, the Rotary Club, bridge clubs, the community band or choir. All compete now with streaming services, vast selections of free media, and video games.

The next cause, I think, and the one something can actually be done about, is that the mainline denominations have complacently focused on retaining instead of seeking members. Those not busy growing are busy dying.

A religion is, literally, a “binding.” It requires commitment. Denominations that are succeeding are denominations that make demands. Denominations that are declining are denominations that cater to whatever they think those in the pews might want.

There is no reason to belong to such a denomination. You want direction in life: you do not want to be polled and simply echoed. You might as well join a book club, or go to the gym. At least then you might be bettering yourself. 

Consider the Mormons—the fastest growing Christian denomination, if you count them as Christian. No alcohol, no coffee or tea, no premarital sex, tithing, a two-year commitment of servitude, and so forth. And they are getting the lion’s share of the converts.

You might object that non-denominational evangelical churches are, by contrast, especially loosey-goosey. No commitment to any particular theology, after all. 

But they too promise and demand a complete change in your life. The commitment is not to a particular set of dogmas or rules, but they demand a total commitment to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. You must repent in tears, you must give up your old sinful habits: promiscuity, drugs, alcohol. It amounts to the same thing.

When Methodism, now the United Church, made similar demands, it was similarly popular.

Within Catholicism, the growing branches on the vine are two: those that stress “traditionalism,” with fasting, rituals and prayers, daily novenas, sexual abstinence; and the charismatic movement, which mimics pentecostal forms of worship. 

In other words, in all cases, the congregations that grow are those that give new members a mission, a meaning, and a yoke to hoist on their shoulders. 

Growing congregations do not seek to conform to or appeal to or work with the world; they seek to depart from the world, or change the world individual by individual.

This is what people want, if they want religion at all. And whether or not most people want religion, all people need religion, and it is the duty of the religious to see that it is at least on offer.

A denomination must not be just a social club; and people have less need for social clubs than they once did.

The Death Wish

 

Memento Mori

I still recall vividly a discussion I had one evening in first year university with a guy from Alberta, blonde, bearded, with granny glasses. I said that everyone had both a life wish and a death wish. He scoffed—preposterous. Nobody wants to die. And I was shocked, because I thought it was obviously true.

If my claim sounds Freudian, I did not get it from Freud. At the time, I knew little of Freud.

I meant simply that everyone secretly wants to die. There is an instinct that makes us fear death—easily explained by evolution. But there is another instinct that comes from somewhere else. 

I say the evidence is everywhere.

Everyone craves a beach vacation, a cottage on the beach, with the vast ocean before them. Why? Because they can feel apart from the world, only steps from eternity. There is a deep calm to being near the ocean.

It is the same calm one feels when walking through a cemetery.

Why do others crave a vacation or a cabin in the mountains? So they can look down on the world from above, be above all that, away from it all. Life looks small and insignificant and far away.

Why do people, for that matter, want to read novels, or watch movies? To escape, at least for a few hours, from their lives and from themselves. To forget they are there and just watch life go by, as God does. As saints in heaven would.

And why do young men actually seek risk, and danger? Why do they often eagerly sign up for war? 

The secret thrill is that they might die.

Each of us has an intuition that there is a somewhere else, a more perfect world. Each of us has an intimation that daily life is not our home. We yearn. We feel a nostalgia without knowing what for.

This, not incidentally, is behind many modern diagnoses of depression. The good doctors will always assume a desire to kill oneself or die to self is pathological, a “mental illness.” They will consider a general disappointment with the world a "mental illness."

This because they want to deny the existence of the spiritual. They act as materialist inquisitors against the heresy of idealism.

But the heart knows what it knows. Those who lack a secret death wish lack a soul.

Broken China

 

Where did everybody go?

The world is changing.

Now something seems to be happening in China. There are now enough rumours to convince me that Xi is on his way out.

I thought the Xi style of government was a desperation move by the CCP in the first place. My Chinese friends had asserted long ago that the CCP no longer had any philosophical or ideological capital with the people. The general public was simply ready to ride along so long as everyone was getting richer. Why rock the boat?

But by 2012, it was probably clear to Chinese leadership that economic turmoil was coming. China was facing demographic collapse. Even without it, they were reaching the limit of what economic progress could be achieved by cheap labour: the supply of such labour was running out. It was also only too likely that much of China’s progress and economic strength was always a matter of faked figures and Ponzi schemes. Any system that relies on central planning and not market forces will breed faked production figures and official corruption. There is immediate incentive to do it, and no effective checks against it.

So, fearing what happened in the Soviet Union, the CCP took the opposite course: cracking down instead of opening up. Going back to Maoist tactics. Appealing to fear and ideology. That was Xi’s mandate. He was the guy prepared to try it.

It was bound to fail; now it has. Because it cannot solve the economic problem or the demographic problem, things have gotten worse for the population, and there are growing protests. At some point, the regime must fear the army revolting and refusing orders. 

This to me explains Xi’s sabre rattling. Otherwise, it is crazy to systematically alienate all your neighbours as Xi has. And, if you believe you are a rising power, it makes more sense to lie low and look unthreatening while your power grows. The only explanation for China’s growing bellicosity that makes sense is that Xi was eager to keep the people focussed on a foreign enemy to deflect anger from the central government. And, at the same time, to keep the military on the borders, instead of near Beijing, to reduce the risk of a coup.

But the upshot is that China is increasingly isolated internationally. And this has led  the rest of the world, especially Trump’s America, to play rougher on trade, intensifying the regime’s economic problems.

So now it seems the faction led by former leader Hu Jintao has regained ascendency, and are demanding a return to the prior policy of opening up. 

This too is risky; risker now than in 2012, when the Politburo decided it was too risky. We may see a sudden collapse like that of the USSR. 

But at this point, China is running out of options.

On Praying by Rote Like a Trained Seal. Not.

 

My Protestant pals, including friend Xerxes, generally scorn traditional prayers. They argue that people only say them by rote. They hold that real prayer must be self-composed, to express the emotion of the moment. Like talking to a friend.

For many years, I accepted this basic premise. I was educated for nine years, after all, in Protestant departments of Religion.

But what was the upshot of this belief? That I stopped praying. 

Too often, I did not feel I had anything in particular to say. And then, in those desperate situations, when I really did feel the need for God’s help, I was often too agitated in mind to form a coherent prayer.

Was I to petition God daily for some favour? This has never made sense to me. It sounds too much like a spoiled child, convinced that they are special, always saying “gimme, gimme, gimme.”

Surely God is in command, and he will give us what is best. And this must also go then for others. “Pray for the church?” Isn’t that presumptuous? God is already looking after the church. It all sounds like “my will be done, Lord, not thine.”

Of course, there are prayers of gratitude. Spontaneous prayers of gratitude suit me fine. But sometimes you are not feeling grateful, and it would just be lying to God. Spontaneous questioning of Go9d, arguing with God, also seems fine to me.

A couple of evenings ago, I read a sentence by Pope Benedict XVI, written when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, which magically crystallized my misgivings about spontaneous prayer. Benedict is good at that. He wrote, without any special reference to prayer, “The mark of the Antichrist is the fact that he speaks in his own name.”

That has the ring of truth.

Especially to me, because it is just what I always tell my composition students—teaching writing is my specialty. My first word of advice is always that the self must disappear. It must not come from you, must not be about you, and must not be in your name. It comes from some divine beyond, it is about the story, and it is for the reader.

When you compose your own prayer, it seems to me, it is the same principle. You are making it about you: your thoughts, your feelings, your particular situation, your skill with language and your understanding of theology. Perhaps also about God, but firstly about you. Praying alone, you are saying “Over here! Look at me, God.” Praying aloud in public, you are saying “listen to me, everyone.” 

You are the antichrist.

Compare reciting a rote prayer. The self, your particular concerns, disappear. The prayer is saying itself. Perhaps the finest example of this is the “Jesus Prayer”: “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You can say it under your breath ceaselessly; no matter the tumult about you. That is the intent. And the Bible tells us to do as much. See  1 Thessalonians 5:17.

And when you pray the “Our Father,” you are speaking the words of Jesus, of God himself. Do you really claim you can do better than he can at composing a prayer? Especially when he expressly told us, “this is the way to pray.”

When you say the “Hail Mary,” similarly, you are speaking the words of the Angel Gabriel, and of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. Do you want to claim you can do better than the Bible, the Word of God?

Even in the case of traditional prayers not from the Bible, you are benefitting from something written by a great mind, preserved for its truth and beauty by fellow souls throughout the ages. The “Salve Regina” dates from the 11th century, the “Glory Be” from the 2nd century, the Nicene Creed from the 4th century; and the Apostles’ Creed is earlier. You are reciting it in communion with all the faithful souls in heaven.

The Third Great Awakening?

 

I think it’s time to declare it: a religious revival is underway. An American Pope could help.

Joe Rogan is the latest big celebrity to cross over. And his influence is great. He joins Jordan Peterson and Stewart Brand in publicly converting from atheism to Christianity. Other recent public converts: Candace Owens, Shia LaBoef, Denzel Washington, Gwen Stefani, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Add to this a number of prominent and intellectually able YouTube personalities making the case for religion generally and Christianity in particular: the Daily Wire crew, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh. Bishop Barron, William Lane Craig, Trent Horn, Matt Fradd, John Lennox. There is a public debate going on; there has been since the rise of the New Atheists. And in that public debate, the atheists are losing.

I note too the growing success of Christian media: “The Chosen,” Angel Studios. Hollywood is withering, pop music is withering, Disney is withering, at the box offices and on the balance sheets, and a Christian counterculture is rising.

9/11 might have been the first move in this current cycle. It inspired the New Atheists, on the premise that religion leads to violence. This then provoked in response the rise of a new Christian apologetics, publicizing and popularizing all the arguments for God. Aided mightily by the existence of the Internet. Meantime, mass immigration and greater familiarity led to a popular perception that the problem was with Islam/Islamism specifically. Islam would not be satisfied with secular humanism; their beef was not with Christianity alone. Both would have to be replaced by Islam. It was thus not possible to be neutral between Christianity and Islam and pretend to be above the fray. Either you believed in Christianity, human equality, and human rights, or you went with Islam and sharia law. There was no secular third option.

Earth Angels

 

Somewhere during the 19th century, something strange happened that nobody else seems to have noticed. 

Before this time, angels in art were almost always shown as male. After this time, angels are always female. This can be confirmed by a quick Google image search for “18th century angels,” then “19th century angels.”

This seems to me to show a tectonic shift in our cosmology, in our sense of the sacred and the good. It corresponds to a shift from a spiritual religion to materialism. Women represent the physical world, the world of being born and dying. “Earth” is always a mother goddess, in every culture, “Gaea” or “Mother Earth.” “Nature” is always portrayed as a woman: “Mother Nature,” “Artemis,” “Demeter.” In the East, “Maya,” the mother illusion of diverse things, and “Mae Toranee,” Mother Earth.

This reflects and expresses the turn to Scientism during the 19th century, to putting our faith in “reeking tube and iron shard.” The turn to materialism is as well a turning away from moral values, represented by the “sky father,” the eternal order of the celestial spheres, the father within the family.

With it comes the worship of “nature,” “ecology,” “the environment.” Our eyes are directed downward.

With it also comes an elevation of women to leadership within civil society. Hence “first-wave feminism” and all that has followed.

Although “first-wave” feminism would hardly have predicted it, with it inevitably comes a breakdown in “conventional morality,” the many gentlemen’s agreements on which society peacefully functions. Nature knows no moral law; it is red in tooth and claw. Science takes no account of values or morality. Angels are just nice, and carry no swords nor trumpets. Like indulgent mothers.

Women and REvolution

 

Women's march, St. Petersburg, 1917

Here’s another example of our ignorance of history, like the one about continuing aboriginal ownership of Canada.

An Iranian feminist friend boasted to me proudly of the recent “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in her homeland that this was the first time ever that a revolution has been led by women. See the feminist progress?

This is pretty much the reverse of the truth. 

The Russian revolution was kicked off, most historians would agree, by a mob of women marching to the palace for International Women’s Day, with the cry “Bread and Peace.” At that point, members of the Palace Guard defected to the crowd.

Similarly, in October 1789, a mob of Parisian women marched on Versailles demanding bread—you will recall the comment attributed to Marie Antionette, “let them eat cake.” This event “is often seen as a turning point in the French Revolution, marking the moment when popular action decisively shifted power from the monarchy to the people.” By the time they reached the palace, the National Guard had reluctantly joined the women.

In the EDSA revolution that overthrew Marcos in the Philippines, nuns formed human barricades to stop the tanks. That seemed to be when government resistance broke.

Women usually play the crucial role in any revolution. When they rise up, in a body, the end of that regime is near. For several reasons.

First, women are temperamentally opposed to revolution; they are in favour of stability, docility, and continuity. Freedom means less to them. They only want bread; to live their lives in peace. For women to rise up, the situation must be dire. It means the regime’s natural constituency, its last support, has evaporated.

Second, men are programmed by nature to care for woman. A palace guard might obey orders to fire on a mob of men; but to fire on a mob of women is, to most men, unthinkable. Therefore, when a large mass of women rise up, the government has no defense against them. Men’s allegiance to women intrudes as a higher authority than their allegiance to any job or government or self-interest. If the women want a new government, the men must obey.

Revolutionaries generally understand this. This is why the Southern Christian Leadership Conference chose Rosa Parks to refuse to yield her seat on that bus. This is why Nurse Edith Cavill was so important to British propaganda in the First World War. This is why the group organizing the Freedom Convoy in Canada coalesced behind Tamara Leich as their public face. This is why the early suffragettes tried to get themselves arrested for defying the law and voting; why Emily Darbison deliberately got herself trampled at the Epsom Derby in 1913. 

Women have always had immense power and privilege, at least among developed nations.

History Should Not Be a Mystery

 

In 1984, George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” 

As so often, he was prophetic. There has been a systematic movement, in our schools and in the media, to suppress history. Things disappear down the memory hole. This allows those currently in power to control the future.

A clear and present example is the public opposition by some First Nations officials to Alberta’s talk of an independence referendum. They claim that Alberta cannot separate because they are sovereign over the land. Such things are purely their decision. If Danielle Smith doesn’t like it, she should just move off their land.

Grand Chief Greg Desjarlais of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations stated that treaties, which encompass most of central Alberta, cannot be dismissed by separatist ambitions, declaring, “Our nations do not and will never consent to the separation of our treaty territories. These lands were never ceded, nor surrendered.” Chief Sheldon Sunshine of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation and Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro of Mikisew Cree Nation accused Premier Danielle Smith of breaching Treaties No. 6, 7, and 8, asserting that Alberta lacks authority to interfere with these agreements. They demanded she cease separatist rhetoric, stating, “The province has no authority to supersede or interfere with our Treaties, even indirectly by passing the buck to a ‘citizen’ referendum.” Chief Troy Knowlton of Piikani Nation emphasized that separation requires First Nations' consent, saying, “Alberta lacks the authority to interfere with or negate those Treaties. Proceeding down a path toward separation cannot be undertaken without the consent of Alberta’s First Nations.” Chief Roy Whitney of Tsuut’ina Nation warned, “The province has no authority to try and separate.”

This is false. In the plain language of the treaties, the Indians (the legal term) surrendered all sovereignty and property rights to the Crown, its heirs and assigns, in perpetuity. Should Alberta separate, the treaties are simply transferred to the government of Alberta as the king’s assign, just as earlier treaties with Britain were transferred to Canada when Canada separated.

According to the treaties, Indians/First Nations have no more say regarding the future of Alberta than any other citizens. As, of course, human equality and equal rights demands. Unfortunately, it is useful to the powers that be to perpetuate the myth that the First Nations, and aboriginal people generally, have some important residual right to control the land. This means those in power can pay off a small group to block the will of the people and leave them to do as they wish. In this case, of course, they do not want to lose control of Alberta’s mineral resources.

Other than their leaders being paid off, there is really no plausible reason for First Nations to object to Alberta separation. It does not affect them any more than any other citizen.

Those in power would not be able to get away with this if history was properly taught in high school. But when it comes to aboriginal matters, the real history has been systematically, almost hysterically suppressed. One must not bring up the fact, for example, that no mass graves of missing Indian students have actually been found on the grounds of the old residential schools—a claim that was outlandish on its face. It has come to the point at which one NDP Member of Parliament introduced a bill making any claim that the residential schools were not genocidal punishable by a prison term.

Examples of the memory hols and its consequences could readily be multiplied. We need to teach and study history.

Why the Ban on the Latin Mass?

 

Paul VI

Why did Pope Francis, or for that matter, Pope Paul before him, ban the Latin mass? 

With its many liturgies, in many nations, the mass is offered in any language you can think of, ancient and modern. Except in Latin, the traditional and official language of the church. How can that make sense?

Francis himself suggested that the Latin mass represented defiance of his authority; it was schismatic. But this is tautological: if he allowed the Latin mass, it would not be. He bans it because he bans it.

It is no challenge to the work of Vatican II: Vatican II never mandated mass in the vernacular. It expected Latin to remain the language of the mass. It was bishops’ conferences who took this step. It forms no part of the magisterium, no part of church doctrine.

Someone has said Francis’s ban came from the Italian bishops. They were alarmed that new priests all wanted to learn and serve the Latin mass. They foresaw, or saw, a shortage of priests for the standard “Novus Ordo.”

This sounds plausible. From the beginning, the “new mass” was not popular with the faithful in the pews. Popes John Paul II and Benedict opened it up again, and the problem recurred: faithful and lower clergy were abandoning the Novus Ordo and flocking to the Latin mass.

If the purpose of the church is to evangelize, if its mission is pastoral, if it listens to the works of the Holy Spirit, this should actually argue for encouraging the use of the Latin mass.

But Vatican II and the hierarchy introduced the Novus Ordo precisely for pastoral reasons: to make mass more popular, more accessible to the people. To admit the Latin Mass is still more popular is to admit failure.

Regardless of the motives of those who attend, in their own minds, the growth and spread of the Latin mass makes them look like fools. Fools and sellouts, shepherds following the sheep.

The hierarchy under Francis, or perhaps just Francis, have let their own interests supersede the interests of the church, of Jesus, and of suffering humanity.

I say this even though I am not, personally, drawn to the Latin Mass.

Loyalist Day

 

Loyalist Day used to be an important annual celebration here in Saint John, New Brunswick. The city traces its founding to the summer of 1783 when 17 ships arrived from New York and Boston harbour, unloading the losers in the American Revolution. They found themselves on a small rocky peninsula, an island at high tide. There was nothing here but rocks and trees, and the winters were severe. That first winter, most built tents insulated by spruce boughs. Someone had to stay awake at all hours to keep the fire going. There was an average of one death each day among them.

Only two years later, they had a royal charter for the first official city in British North America. Saint John, as we know it, had begun.

But in recent years, the city has refused to fund any special activities to commemorate Loyalist Day, the day the first ships landed. The memorial plaque and stone marking where the Loyalists came ashore, was pulled up and abandoned in a quarry on the west side.

When local historians complained, they were told by city council, “We don’t care about those English people.” And someone remarked “I wonder what the native people thought, when they came to steal their land?”

I find this callous, racist, and willfully ignorant. The whole reason Canada exists apart from the United States, is loyalty to the crown and the British connection. If we reject that, if we reject the Loyalists, we reject Canada. And there is no good response to Trump’s proposal for assimilation.

The people who waded ashore that summer were not, of course, English. They were American. Even then, America was something of a melting pot. Among them were 500 freed blacks who had made it to the British lines, for Britain refused to recognize slavery. Although not among the group that landed at Saint John, a significant number were native people, notably the Iroquois of upstate New York. There were Dutch from New York, which had been New Amsterdam. There were many Germans, including discharged Hessian soldiers. There were Jews among the group that landed in Saint John; and of course Scots, Welsh, and Irish. Don’t ever tall a Scot or an Irishman he is English.

But ethnicity should not matter. People are people. Suffering people deserve our sympathy regardless of their skin colour or language or race, and brave people deserve our admiration regardless of where they were born.

Especially when we are their inheritors. This is a question of filial piety: honour thy father and thy mother. We owe them a lot. They laid out the streets, established our forms of government, our first social institutions, many of our sports and pastimes, our cuisine, our arts, our folkways; although of course other groups have contributed since. And the city and nation they bequeathed us is, most certainly, one of the finest we could hope for in this fallen world. Travel a bit and you will see. People want to move here from most other places.

As for the local native populations, the matter is complex. Groups and individuals fought on both sides during the American Revolution; as they had in the French and Indian Wars. They were not passive victims, but participants, in these conflicts. Some lost, just as some Europeans lost. 

Broadly speaking, however, European settlers did not steal their land, at least in Canada. Everything was done by treaty, in principle by mutual agreement and with compensation. And the end result: Canada is still 89% unsettled Crown Land—over which, by treaty, today’s native people are free to roam, hunt, and forage as they always did. Only eleven percent of their prior lands have been given over to settlement—and of course, native people have been as free as any other citizens to take up these lands too. They own that eleven percent still in the same sense all other Canadians do.

Back in the day, in 1783, the presence of the European settlers was generally welcomed. It granted the native people security in possession and use of their lands—before this, before treaties and redcoats, warfare was more or less constant. If you encountered a member of a different tribe in the forest, you feared violence. You feared violence at home in your sleep. The presence of Europeans, especially in a place like Saint John, at the mouth of a long river, offered opportunities for trade that made native groups located near a European settlement rich. It gave them military advantages over distant rivals: not just through alliance with the Europeans, but by trading for iron knives and hatchets, guns, horses. And perhaps most importantly, having Europeans nearby protected native people from the ever-present danger of famine: crops, crop storage, and ships arriving with cargo from overseas were far more reliable food sources than the rivers or forest.

Not such a bad deal.

I have not a drop of English blood, so far as I know. I do not believe any of my ancestors were UE Loyalists, But happy Loyalist Day.

Francis and Mark Carney as Abusive Fathers

 

Two unaccountable and unpredicted things have happened recently. I think they are connected.

First, everyone thought the successor to Pope Francis would be a progressive “Francis 2.0.” After all, Francis had appointed 80% of the voting cardinals. Yet Leo XIV is so far signalling traditionalism. How did that happen? 

Second, having just won an election, Mark Carney’s cabinet and caucus seems rife with dissent. This shouldn’t happen right after an election win. Liberal MPs live in fear of their leader: he gets to veto their nominations if they alienate him. And Carney just saved the party’s bacon. Until he stepped in, they were headed for a historic defeat. Why the dissatisfaction?

In the case of Rome, I think we all missed the dynamic in thinking the divide in the hierarchy was between “progressives” and “traditionalists.”

The first sign was a report that, as they gathered for Francis’s funeral, the cardinals demanded the opening of a repository of traditional vestments kept under lock and key by Francis. Were they all secretly traditionalist?

Then reports of an elevated mood in the Vatican—shocking at the death of a pope. Now someone is quoted as saying, for the years of Francis’s pontificate, they were all living in fear. “It is like we are escaping an abusive father.”

And that, I think, is the key. Not left or right, progressive or traditionalist, but abusive.

Francis gave no moral direction. He seemed annoyed by those who followed the traditions of the church; yet offered no clear alternative either. This left everything up to the will of Francis. 

Take, for the most obvious example, the Latin mass. Francis suppressed it, on the grounds that wanting the Latin mass was an expression of opposition to his authority. That was a tautology: if he did not suppress the Latin mass, wanting it would not be an expression of opposition to his authority.

I(t was all about the exercise of power. Francis was a narcissist. Narcissists worship their own will.

When a parent, or a superior, acts in this way, one lives in constant fear. You can never know whether you are doing right or wrong, you can never relax or feel good about yourself; you never know when the hammer will fall. Francis’s position on any given matter was unpredictable: he blew hot and cold; it seemed to depend on how he was feeling that day. He had arbitrary favourites, and punished others arbitrarily.

This is the essence of abuse. The sense of disorientation this causes is the font and source of virtually all spiritual distress, which we commonly and improperly call “mental illness.”

Francis was driving everyone mad.

And Carney seems to be in the same mold. What is his true stand on any issue? He campaigned on imposing tariffs on the US, and standing up to Trump. Now he has quietly suspended the tariffs. He endorsed the carbon tax, then set it to zero. 

In personnel matters, word leaked out that Chrystia Freeland was being dropped from cabinet; then she wasn’t. I suspect this was not a false rumour; Carney changed his mind. A more public example is Nate Erskine-Smith. In Carney’s first, stripped-down cabinet, he kept Erskine-Smith. Only a month later, in his greatly expanded cabinet, he dropped Erskine-Smith. This seems inconsistent, arbitrary. This is clearly the way Erskine-Smith experienced it; he got blindsided. Carney kept Stephen Guilbault in Cabinet, and promoted Anita Anand, seeming to signal a turn to the left; then publicly adopted much of the Conservative platform. This seems like a mismatch; he seems to have blindsided them too. It is as though Carney is just enjoying imposing his will. Another narcissist. L’etat, c’est toi.

A dysfunctional caucus, a dysfunctional church, or a dysfunctional family, is the result. “Mental illness” is the result.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

 

It is the usual state of the world that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum; that, as Jack Kerouac put it, the cream sinks to the bottom.

This must be in the divine plan. If we did good only to achieve worldly success, there would be no merit in doing good. It would be mere self-interest. 

We must do our best knowing that, given the ways of the world, we are as or more likely to be punished for it than rewarded. We do good, or create beauty, or seek truth, because it is right, not for reward.

We have hopes for the next life. But this requires the virtue of faith. We trust in God.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

This makes the “happy happy joy joy” sort of Christianity profoundly sinister. This life is the vale of soul-making, of testing and trial. If you are having a very good time here, something is gravely wrong. You have given in to the world’s temptations. “Blessed are those who mourn.” “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

Why the Arts Suck These Days

 

The arts in general have been moribund since the mid-seventies. If you ever wondered why, the answer is simple. They declined as “political correctness” rose, now metastasized as “cancel culture” and “wokeness.”

The imagination must be free. It cannot judge or play politics. It must seek truth. But since the mid-seventies or so, everyone has had to walk on eggshells, think carefully before saying anything. Truth is dangerous.

It becomes too dangerous to say anything new. You cannot predict who might take offense at what; and end your career, take away your livelihood. The safe thing is to do only what has been done before. And so the arts become bland and monotonous. Mere mindless entertainment, at best. One song sounds like another. One film looks like another. One novel reads like another.

But even this is not enough, either. The Overton window is a moving; one must then add something to virtue signal, to be truly safe—throw in a trans character, make the hero black, and so on. And make sure they are entirely admirable, without human flaws. Condemn the groups you are currently supposed to condemn: the Jews, Southern whites, the religious, men. Making the product even more shallow and predictable.

And unethical; just as good art must insist on truth, it must also insist on morality. Yet these current productions are obviously small-minded and cynical. You feel dirty watching, or reading, or listening.

 Artists must do this, editors must do this, producers must do this, gallery owners and art critics must do this. Or have no career.

Any good art must be suppressed immediately as dangerous.

Suppressed not only by the galleries, the publishers, the theatres; also on the Internet, where independent producers might otherwise shine through.

Humour is perhaps the most obvious example. Any good joke requires a surprise, a reversal of expectations. That becomes too dangerous in the atmosphere of political correctness. It is safest not to try to be funny.

And everyone can see the result. Whatever happened to Mad magazine, Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon, Monty Python?

That was the Sixties, and the early Seventies, when almost all the arts were blossoming.

 Blossoming because there was an atmosphere of anything being permitted. This was, notably, just as the old pornography codes had been lifted, on movies and TV; and the Supreme Court had struck down much other censorship. Moreover, the speech codes of the McCarthy era had just been discredited.

Result: a great flowering of the arts.

You can trace similar periods throughout history.

We need another burst of freedom. We are overdue. And I feel it is about to happen. People are chafing at the absurdities of wokeism. Major figures are bucking it, and seem to be starting to break through rather than being ruined.

Such eras of repression are mostly sustained by general cowardice. As Solzhenitsyn once said of the old Soviet Union, if any one person had resolved to get up one morning and only speak the truth, the whole structure would have collapsed. An exaggeration, but it is generally true that evil by itself is powerless: what is needed for it to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

If it falls, when it falls, it will collapse quickly, and there will be a great flowering of the arts. I hope soon; I hope I live to see it.