Call the Midwife

 

St. Hubert, staggered.

One might expect a TV series based on a convent and its charitable work, like the BBC’s “Call the Midwife,” to be favourable to religion. But that is a naïve thought. The world is not like that. One ought not to be surprised that, instead, it undermines religion.

Most people, after all, fear religion, at least in the modern day. That probably includes the writers on such a programme, and the bulk of their audience. I imagine they would lose their audience if they got too preachy and all. Just as most people show such great hostility to evangelical missionaries at their door.

Why? Whether they are deluded or not, a fair-minded person must realize that they are knocking at your door out of love, concern for your welfare. So why the anger?

One obvious tactic, if one fears religion, is to pretend to be religious, but debase it from within. This is the safest way, as an author, to approach a series set in a convent. 

This is the tendency Jesus rails against in the New Testament. This is his main opposition, pharisaism. “Hypocrisy”: a New Testament Greek word. It means to wear a mask. It means to feign religion without being religious.

I have seen this in academic departments of religion. It is held there to be clever to mock the faith of the faithful, the traditional codes and creeds, and those who take the Bible seriously. Those who do are simply unenlightened, not deep thinkers. I have seen this too in the upper reaches of the United Church. We have seen it in high Catholic prelates like Theodore McCarrick. We seem to see it now in the Vatican. 

One tactic of the hypocrites is to object to religious “extremism.” You see this in the media all the time. Which is to say, it is fine to give religion lip service, to maybe attend a Sunday service now and then, as long as you don’t really believe it, and don’t actually apply it in daily life. As long, in short, as you don’t follow the moral codes. Just keep it on the level of a reassuring bedtime story. Hallmark religiousity. Happy happy joy joy religiousity. Hell is empty and everyone gets to heaven religiousity.

A similar, although superficially opposite, tactic, is to exaggerate or falsify the demands of religion to make being truly religious seem unreasonable. Atheists love to demand, for example, that Christians turn the other cheek as they beat them up. 

Jesus said “my burden is light.” In contrast to the Pharisees, who pile unreasonable demands on the faithful.

A common gambit currently is to declare oneself “spiritual, but not religious.” What exactly does this mean?

Religion means “binding”: “binding back.” It is a commitment to a path of life, with obligations, like marriage. This is why people fear religion: it makes demands. It requires obedience to a higher power than self and selfish drives.

“Spiritual” people want numinous experiences, sure; we all want numinous experiences. We are born with a need for God, a craving for meaning. If we do not get it from religion, we will get it from somewhere: scientism, environmentalism and the worship of “nature,” millenarian cults like Marxism promising heaven on earth, aestheticism, alcohol, drugs, worshipping sex or another person or our animal desires. “Spiritual”

 people are simply acknowledging that craving in themselves that we all have.

But they don’t want any effort or commitment. They want it to just happen. If Song of Songs describes the quest of the soul for God, they are into hookup culture, one-night stands; thrillseekers. 

It is not, in the end, an honourable or a good path. God and holy things are not to be treated as a mere object for our pleasure.

In “Call the Midwife,” the elderly and senile Sister Monica Joan, inspired by the legend of St. Hubert and his vision of Christ as a stag, steals convent funds to buy a train ticket to the Outer Hebrides, thinking God will reveal himself to her there.

And she does encounter a magnificent stag, as she wanders through a small forest of dolmens.

What are the implicit lessons here?

First, to take religion seriously, one must be senile; senility gives her the excuse for such “childish” thinking.

Second, religious experience is not found in the convent, but in nature, and in a pagan setting—the megaliths.

Third, spiritual experience comes not from observing one’s commitments day by day, but by breaking them, and committing sins.

It is like advocating that full sexual pleasure can only be achieved by committing adultery.

The series has the Mother Superior refuse to publicly advocate legalization of abortion because, “when the interests of my patients conflict with my faith, I must go with my faith.” Suggesting that religion stands opposed to mankind, and against true morality. Christopher Hitchens could not have said it better.

The visit to the Hebrides is made an occasion to paint Free Church Presbyterians as pitiless legalists. A boatman refuses to ferry a doctor and nurses to where a lighthouse keeper’s wife is giving birth, on the grounds that it is the Sabbath.

This is of course in direct contradiction to Jesus’s teaching in the Bible. 

Matthew 12:

“9 After departing from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10  and there was a man with a withered hand. So they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. 11  He said to them: “If you have one sheep and that sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath, is there a man among you who will not grab hold of it and lift it out? 12  How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do a fine thing on the Sabbath.” 13  Then he said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored sound like the other hand.”

The sabbath is for man, not man for the sabbath.

Any devout Presbyterian would know this. A prime example of falsifying, indeed, as often as not reversing, religious demands to make them seem unreasonable.

When a Catholic priest appears back in London, he is of course an unctuous hypocrite engaged in an affair with his housekeeper, whom he abandons once she becomes pregnant. No question, there are Catholic priests who are like this, but when you feature only one Catholic priest in ten years, and this is the one, it is fair to suspect an intended message about Catholicism.

A nurse trainee forwarded to the convent from a Catholic orphanage suggests that a Catholic woman might resort to abortion as a way to avoid birth control. Another example of reversing religious doctrine to make it seem unreasonable. Catholic nurse trainee Corrigan, admitting a secret child born out of wedlock, explains that “The Catholic church is good at hiding things. Mistakes.”

The real problem with Catholics is, of course, that like Free Church Presbyterians, they tend to take their religion too seriously. Especially that bit about having moral obligations.

Another nurse, beaten up on the streets, spirals into depression, and is taken off to an asylum. 

The implicit message is that the religious are emotionally fragile, naïve about the world, and when faced with its harsh realities, religion is of no use to help them. Modern science, and electroshock, must intervene.

When St. Hubert saw the stag, he also heard this message: "Hubert, unless you turn to the Lord and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down into Hell." 

They leave that part out. I wonder why.

And the Spirit of the Lord Moves over the Waters

 

Javier Milei’s speech to the WEF makes me suspect something uncanny is happening. Why is it that we abruptly have such powerful rhetoricians emerging on the right? Aside from Milei, Meloni in Italy is, as far as I can judge in translation, a powerful and witty speaker. Trump is masterful, able to entertain a crowd extempore for hours. Ramaswamy has also now emerged as a great communicator. Poilievre in Canada is brilliant. The UK’s Farage is delightful. One might add RFK Jr. to this list.

Some of course worry that this is the rise of personality cults, the opening for dictatorships. “Trump will be a dictator.” But there are critical differences between these folks and a Hitler or a Mussolini. 

First, the fascist dictators, and demagogues generally, played to anger, worked their audiences up emotionally in sprays of spittle. These new Demosthenes’s of the right are strikingly calm, cool under fire, speaking, for example, while munching an apple, and rely on humour.

Second, William Shirer observed that Hitler’s speech was always tailored to his audience. He read the crowd and told them whatever they wanted to hear. Famously, he told Chamberlain whatever he wanted to hear. Milei just did the opposite: he chose the most hostile crowd for his speech. Ramaswamy, Farage, Trump, Meloni, are famous for doing the same thing. Farage rose to fame by haranguing the European Parliament on how awful they were. Poilievre, Trump, or Ramaswamy are celebrated for how they handle hostile questioners.

Third, the whole point of fascism was to concentrate power in the government and the leader. The actual programme these modern rhetoricians are calling for is the exact opposite, cutting the size and powers of the government. This is what Trump actually did, and Milei is actually doing, when in government.

Fascism or totalitarianism is not coming from this corner.

One might protest that we have also seen good communicators on the left, and recently. Obama is given credit for great oratorical ability. Bill Clinton was always convincing; he could charm himself out of any scandal. Justin Trudeau is credited with being a good campaigner. 

But there is a difference. Obama was tied to the teleprompter: he was simply good at reading a speech and giving it cadence; the tones of an evangelical preacher, actually. This is acting ability, not rhetorical ability. Trudeau, or Clinton, are also primarily actors, able to give an impression of the desired emotion, rather than rhetoricians. Strikingly, Trump, Poilievre, Ramaswamy, are instead at their best in speaking off the cuff, handling hecklers or hostile journalists. They write their own best lines, and are not rehearsed.

If I may point it out, the skills and approaches of a Clinton or a Trudeau are closer to demagoguery. Clinton echoes to his audience or questioner what they want to hear; Trudeau commonly resorts to feigned anger, whipping up the crowd against his opponents.

This is a general truth of the modern right versus the modern left: the left lacks humour and spontaneity. “The left can’t meme.” “NPCs.” The right seems to have a corner on both.

With perhaps the current exception of RFK Jr., who is still theoretically on the left. Although moving right, as so many are recently. Like Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and so many others, he seems to be getting “red-pilled” in real time.

This seems to me to be the working of the spirit: the spirit of prophecy. Just as in the Hebrew Bible, when governments or cities grew corrupt, a prophet would arise. God does not abandon his people. And we are still his people. He is not done with the US or the “West.”

The arts have grown moribund since the 1960s—since JFK or MLK or Diefenbaker spoke with the spirit of prophecy. Inspiration has abandoned us, as our societies have grown corrupt.

Now we see prophets arising. First in the desert; but now loudly in the public square. 

Interestingly, perhaps unexpectedly, they seem to be arising in the political realm sooner and stronger than in the arts. It upends Breitbart’s famous formula: “politics is downstream from culture.” But perhaps that was always wrong. Everything starts in God, then in religion and philosophy, and spreads next either to the culture or to politics, depending on the current circumstances. When government and politics become too intrusive, they strangle culture. That stranglehold must first be broken in the political arena in order to allow artistic voices to speak.

Milei's Historic Speech

 

This one is going to be remembered for a long time.

Midwives for Abortion

 

The BBC series “Call the Midwife” was the perfect premise for a life-affirming, faith-affirming show: about a convent running a midwife service in impoverished East London. And for the first few seasons, based on one midwife’s autobiography, it was.

Then it, improbably, swerved into fictional story lines about how homosexuality was innate and involuntary. Into tales of wifebeating; into the evils of slum landlords; into editorializing in favour of abortion, and against the moralistic sort of religion.

Odd that it should go about to trash its core appeal to its natural core audience.

The obvious reason is that, after the first half-dozen seasons, they began to run out of interesting complications in childbirth. The newer ailments were getting obscure, and sometimes trivial. “It is a very rare condition, and no, it will not harm the baby.”

A long-running show tends to run out of plot ideas. That’s where “jumping the shark” comes in, and that  lack of new ideas has infected Hollywood with their sequel mania. 

CTMW has a bit of an advantage, because they can bring in new characters. But they decided to bring in “ethnically diverse” characters. And ethnically diverse characters must not have any flaws or dark pasts or even interesting eccentricities. So they cannot inspire any good new plots. 

So what can you do? The temptation is to get political to keep interest up: find a news hook.

This is tiresome, and obvious; but wouldn’t be as bad if doing so these days always means a whiplash-inducing veer to the left. Particularly ill-suited to this show premise.

But then, they really haven’t had a choice. There’s the immigration issue. That’s in the news. Imagine if they were to feature an immigrant family that was not settling in, but resented the new country. The son was up for raping some girl, or staging a random knife attack. 

There’s the abortion issue; pretty natural for such a show. Of course, a religious order of midwives should be firmly opposed. Yet imagine if they had a sympathetic character point out with emotion that abortion kills babies?

Or that homosexuals can choose to stop having homosexual sex?

Imagine if they showed a wife abusing her husband, or blackmailing him with false charges?

The leftist cancel culture machine would wheel into action. Advertising would be pulled, they would be picketed, probably cancelled. The writers would be blacklisted, possibly thrown in prison, at a minimum lose their careers.

So the minute they raise a political controversy, they must show only the approved leftist narrative. And it’s a race to the farthest left possible, because what you said ten years ago, when the Overton window was different, can now be held against you. There are currently cries on the left and in the media to ban a local candidate from the next provincial election, because she objected to gay marriage in a book she wrote in 2008. A time when almost all of the developed world were also opposed to gay marriage, including, say, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. 

We have all been bullied in this way for years; creative types more than anyone. Which is why all we get from the arts and entertainment sector any more is predictable and perverse.

The good news is that the right has recently woken up to the strategy. They have started to do the same, and things are swinging back to sanity. Mass farmer protests in Germany. Bud Light, Disney, Harvard, Target; the boycott head count is growing.

The culture war has passed its Stalingrad moment.

Someone Else Is Noticing

 

What a disaster Trudeau has been in foreign relations.

The Obligatory Post about the Iowa Caucuses

 

Trump won the Iowa caucuses. It wasn’t close, and it all came out pretty much as the polls predicted. There was no race on the Democratic side. 

Pity the poor media, who have to make it sound exciting; for them, no news is bad news.

And now, already, both the Republican and the Democratic nomination races seem to be over. That leaves a big hole in the prospective news year. 

I am troubled by the bad blood evident among the Republicans: how everyone is sliming Nikki Haley, how Ron DeSantis is crying foul because the media called the race too soon. It’s dumb, now that the nomination is pretty much decided and nothing much is at stake. It starts to look like a circular firing squad. Nikki Haley is not a real threat to the MAGAnauts, she was a good governor; and DeSantis would never have won if the media had held off. Moreover, his platform and Trump’s are barely distinguishable.

I lament the lack of civility and decorum; it is one of the great problems with America today. It is profoundly unhealthy when politics becomes such a consuming passion.

And no, Trump is not to blame for this; populism is not to blame for this. Trump and populism are a reaction to this failure of civil discourse, not its cause.

Blowing Hot and Cold

 

The latest reports on “UAP,” which used to be called UFOs, seem to up the ante. There is a video circulating of a craft that is invisible to the eye, but emits a heat signature detectable in infrared. And it shifts from hot to cold—yet is still visible to infrared in its cold state. Which means it shifts not just from warmer than its surroundings to the ambient temperature, but from warmer to colder than its surroundings. Why? And there are reports of people entering an alien craft about forty feet square, and finding the interior “the size of a football field.”

Before this, it seemed to me—not following this closely—that all could be accounted for by someone somewhere figuring out time travel. And so the likeliest explanation was not aliens, but a visit from our own future.

But if these latest reports are legitimate, time travel does not seem sufficient to account for it all. That does not allow invisibility, or the distortion of space itself.

Neither does mass psychosis—we have video.

How about a government conspiracy? It makes sense: governments are currently in a low-intensity war with their own citizens everywhere. A good scare about a common enemy is a way to grab more power. Covid is no longer frightening enough; global warming may be losing its potency. The principalities of this world may need a new wolf.

Really large conspiracies, as this would have to be, are intrinsically unlikely, due to human frailty and incompetence. Yet, if we believe these UFO sightings are all real now, we must also believe there was a general conspiracy among governments to suppress UFO reports previously. If the first conspiracy was possible, so is the second. The simplest explanation is that there is only one conspiracy, and it is the second…

The fact that we have video is of no significance on the hypothesis of government conspiracy. Much can now be computer generated, and in the case of something alien, a fake becomes difficult to detect. What is it supposed to look like? What is it supposed to be able to do? If it can violate any of the laws of physics, how can a fake ever be discovered?

Indeed, the comment often heard is that these supposed craft “violate the laws of physics.” 

What does that actually tell us? 

Unless we somehow have the laws of physics all wrong, a thing that violates the laws of physics is not a physical object. 

So, it might all be a government invention.

The other possibility is that these are spiritual objects. “Violates the laws of physics”?  That defines a miracle. We know by deduction that God exists, God can necessarily produce miracles, can break the laws of physics. He may be sending us a message. 

The problem with this explanation is that, if so, it is hard to tell what that message is. Angels are heralds; they speak plainly, or they are not doing their job. Prophets speak plainly, “make the ways straight for the Lord. It is ungodly to be ambiguous.

Demons, on the other hand, love ambiguity. What demons love is to disorient, to sow doubt and confusion. Demons will also always want to mask their identity. 

And demons, too, reputedly can perform miracles. And, if I may say so, demons also typically work in tandem with and through governments, "the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world "

Could there be any practical reason for alien explorers to create a craft that shifts quickly from very hot to very cold? 

Environnmental Panic

 

https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1746222929359323247?s=20

Impressive--Vivek is as good as Poilievre here.

Vice Presidential Picks

 

Trump says he has already chosen his VP candidate. This implies that it is not anyone currently running against him for the Republican nomination; and it implies he must have a big enough name on the hook that it is not worth waiting for some other possibility. 

This increases the odds that it is Tucker Carlson. Whom Melania Trump has already said she wants on the ticket.

Rumours are swirling that RFK’s running mate will be Tulsi Gabbard.

At first glance, both seem improbable. Carlson has just launched his own network; Gabbard just signed a deal to host a show on X. Were they really going to want to drop that now for a political run?

But that, I now realize, was old thinking. Gabbard and Carlson are both on X, not on some network. The “fairness doctrine,” which would have required a network to take them off the air, does not apply. They can go right on doing their programs, and their regular broadcasts might even be the ideal campaign medium. One-to-one with the voters, bypassing the biased media. Just as Trump did well when campaigning with his Twitter account, Poilievre is scoring with his political videos in Canada. 

This may be the new world of politics. 

I feel both Trump-Carlson and Kennedy-Gabbard would be extremely strong tickets. If this comes to pass, and the Democrats still run Biden-Harris, I expect Biden to come third.

Epstein Didn't Kill Himself. James Bond Did.

 

In 2008, state prosecutor Alexander Acosta cut an illegally generous plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein, later overturned, granting Epstein immunity from federal prosecution. Rather like Ray Epps. Asked why later, Acosta explained he was told by the relevant authorities, presumably meaning the CIA or FBI, that Epstein was an “intelligence asset.”

And that explains everything. It’s not complicated.

Of course Epstein was an intelligence asset. He was running a honey trap operation. He would tempt important individuals into having sex with minors. The girls had to be underage, to make the act sufficiently scandalous. This would open the marks—possibly willing marks, like those who undergo an initiation to join a secret society, a Hellfire Club-- to blackmail, and they were then under the agency’s control. 

The agency might also further their political or business career as well—now that they were initiated, and could be relied upon to toe the official line.

The unspecified agency is not out to prevent espionage by some foreign power. Of course not; to assume so is naïve. What’s in that for them? The agency is out to control the government of their own country or countries, apparently the US; although the UK also seems to be getting a lot of attention.

Only some conspiracy among the powerful, after all can explain how Epstein managed to “hang himself” with violence in his cell. With all the security cameras turned off, and the guards “asleep.” Caught and caged, he was no longer an asset: now he was a security risk. He might talk.

This explains why there is such resistance to Trump within the deep state; and specifically, one must notice, within the intelligence services. He was presumably never honey-trapped, for all his faults, and so he is, for them, a loose cannon.

This explains the strangeness of the last Democratic presidential race, how Bernie Sanders abruptly folded his tent and fell in line behind Biden—as, at almost the same time, did Buttigieg and Bloomberg. The word had come down; and the puppet masters had something on them.

Of course, it also makes sense to subvert the press.

How else explain the mysterious and sudden transformation of Matt Drudge from right-wing Trump supporter to just another mouthpiece for the left--killing most of his business. They must have something on him.

This explains the transformation, too, of Anne Coulter. She seemed to fall silent, and when she writes now, it is in defense of Ray Epps.

This might even explain why big companies like Google or Facebook have gone along so readily with government calls for censorship, even though it damaged their business. We know Bill Gates was involved with Epstein. Chief executives may have been compromised. This explains especially the case of Jack Dorsey, who actually seemed to welcome Musk’s acquisition of the platform. He seemed to endorse Musk’s goals, but was incapable himself of achieving them. Presumably because the invisible hands had something on him.

This perhaps even explains why democratic governments elsewhere—the UK, Canada, the EU—are doggedly pursuing unpopular policies. They are clearly answering to some master other than the people. A master who holds more power over them than the mere threat of losing office.

I wonder if Ted McCarrick’s operation within the Catholic Church, alternately bribing senior figures with large amounts of cash and holding sex parties, was only run on the same principles, or if it was an arm of the intelligence conspiracy. Might they want to control the Church, with its influence, for the same reason they would want to control the press? Where did McCarrick raise all the money that he was famous for being able to spread about? One suspects it was US taxpayers’ money, expropriated for some intelligence agency without oversight.

For that matter, where did Epstein’s money come from? He rose from nowhere.

Once you see it, it’s not subtle; it’s barely even hidden. The honey-trap is the time-honoured technique for turning foreign spies. It is an intelligence agency’s standard MO. 

Everybody knows J. Edgar Hoover kept files on important figures for possible blackmail. Why not his successors?

I suspect Stanley Kubrick was aware of it all, and was warning us with Eyes Wide Shut. He held off for many years, his wife tells us, on making this film, not feeling he was ready for it. Perhaps he waited until knew he was likely to die soon. So he had less to lose.

Or perhaps they got to him.

Keep your eyes open. Wide.

Has Pope Francis Excommunicated Himself?

 

Traditionalist commentators are claiming that Pope Francis actually automatically excommunicated himself back in 1999—by accepting life membership in the Rotary Club.

That got my attention. The Rotary Club? Isn’t that about as pedestrian and suburban-respectable an organization as you can imagine? My own father and grandfather were lifetime members. Heck, my parish priest was a member.

And yet, it seems that, although “automatic excommunication” is over the top, it is true that Catholics are not supposed to belong to the Rotary Cub. In 1950, the Vatican and Pope Pius XII declared that no Catholic priest was permitted to join or attend meetings. Lay Catholics were not explicitly prohibited, but reminded to observe the canon law that tells them to “guard against associations which are secret, condemned, seditious, suspect, or which try to escape legitimate church vigilance." Implying that Rotary arguably fell into one of these categories. 

According to Time magazine the Vatican made clear that the concern applied only to Rotary, not to other similar voluntary associations. “In answer to newsmen's questions, the Vatican last week indicated that the ban did not apply specifically to such other groups as Kiwanis, Lions, and Elks.”

This ban must have been announced at just about the time my father joined Rotary. And he must have known about it. I have the article from Time magazine, and both my father and grandfather subscribed to Time. The matter must have been under general discussion within Rotary.  Montreal’s Archbishop Paul-Emile Léger, Time reports, publicly forbade any priests from participation in any form.

My grandfather might well have been unconcerned. He was a Protestant, and had been a Freemason. The family story is that he left the Freemasons at marriage in deference to his Catholic wife. 

Yet he kept his Mason’s apron; I saw it in his belongings after his death. And Masons showed up at his funeral, identifying him as a “brother in the craft.” Would they do so if he had not been active, and not paying his dues, for over thirty years? One wonders.

Is Rotary somehow related to the Masons? They deny it. So why did the Vatican oppose Rotary?

The Time article includes their explanation. “Sometimes [in Rotary] there is undue devotion to monopolistic capitalism, and monopoly is condemnable, on both Christian and social grounds, as an offence against charity. The fact that non-members of Rotary Clubs are sometimes excluded from the benefits which Providence meant for all men . . . amounts to a condemnable monopoly."

Rotary allows only one member of each trade or profession to join each local chapter. The idea behind the club is then that other members will patronize their fellow Rotarians for all their needs. This founding concept is enshrined in the name, “Rotary”: benefits passed around the circle, greasing the gears of trade. 

This is arguably a cartel operating against the public interest: “monopolistic capitalism.” A similar collusion among those in the same business would be restraint of trade.  

Although not mentioned in the papal prohibition, I had always thought there was something else wrong with Rotary; something that ties them more directly to the Freemasons. It is their code of ethics, the “four way test,” supposed to guide each Rotarian’s words:

“1. Is it the truth?

2. Is it fair to all concerned?

3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

This might sound good, but it actually suppresses truth. It is a disguised vow of secrecy, the core issue with Freemasonry as well.

Proper ethics should begin and end with item 1. Truth itself is a transcendent value, divine; the Truth shall set you free. The truth is always of the greatest benefit to all concerned. The need for three more tests beyond this implies it is not.

Truth should apparently be concealed if it is not going to win friends and “benefit all concerned,” presumably in their own estimation.

The story given within the club on the origin of the Four-Way Test is that, by adopting it, an early Rotarian turned a failing business around. 

This makes clear that “benefit” here is material, not spiritual, benefit.

This vow of silence could support any sort of sin or criminality. If much muted here, such vows of secrecy have been used in other organizations for nefarious purposes, often for discrimination. The Freemasons, who used to prohibit black membership. The Orange Order; their contributions to anti-Catholic violence in Ireland are well known. Into the Sixties, nobody had ever been elected mayor of Toronto without being a member. More obviously, perhaps, the Ku Klux Klan, the Cosa Nostra, the Mafia.

Given all this, and the fact that the 1951 condemnation of Rotary has never been rescinded, how is it that we now have clergy and even popes active in the club?

It might be that Rotary has shown itself less sinister over the years. Or it might be symptomatic of a decline in the clergy—which many would argue has been evident since about 1960. Taylor Marshall makes the case that the Church has been heavily infiltrated since then by secret organizations: the Freemasons, the KGB, the so-called “Velvet mafia,” homosexual and pedophile rings, and the “St. Galen mafia.”

It is attractive to narcissists to do something like this. They enjoy feeling they are putting something over on others. It makes them feel superior.

Cry for Me, Argentina

 

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the dicastery for the faith, is currently a subject of controversy for a book he wrote in 1998, now suppressed, recently discovered: Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality. It is being condemned by traditional Catholics as pornographic. 

The matter is complicated, because romantic or erotic love has always been used as a metaphor for divine love. You see this in Song of Solomon, in the Bible: 

“I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.”

“I” in this case being the soul seeking union with God. God seeks an intimate relationship with each of us, a relationship comparable to that between a man and woman in love. But note how obviously this is a metaphoric, not a literal, statement: breasts=towers; “Like one.”

Saint John of the Cross uses similar imagery in “The Dark Night of the Soul”: 

“O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.”

Again, obviously metaphor: night is personified; the unnamed lover represents love itself. 

And there is the entire Medieval tradition of “romance.” Even if commonly misconstrued, the love of the knight for his maiden is always a metaphor for divine love. The unfortunate result of this has been that, in the West, erotic love has been falsely given some of the numinousness of divine love in the popular imagination, resulting in an unfortunate and unhealthy preoccupation with finding a perfect mate and deriving some profound satisfaction from the sex act.

In Hinduism, the same point is made in the beautiful Krishna-Radha cycle: the soul is attracted to God as young girls are attracted to a handsome boy.

So Fernandez’s book might only have been more of this. Literal-minded critics were perhaps merely misunderstanding this longstanding metaphor. I had to read it for myself.

But it is not so. Granted, Fernandez and his supporters draw on this tradition, as if they are doing the same thing. But it is Fernandez who is being literal-minded. When he speaks of “love,” he means physical orgasm. He seems unaware of any other sort of love, beyond physical pleasure.

He gets specific and clinical, for example, discussing the female sex organs and how they are stimulated. And he speaks of orgasm as a sacrament: 

“If God can be present at that level of our existence, he can also be present when two human beings love each other and reach orgasm; and that orgasm, experienced in the presence of God, can also be a sublime act of worship to God. … God loves man’s happiness, therefore, it is also an act of worship to God to experience a moment of happiness.”

Nor need those two human beings be married or of opposite sexes, for this to be true: “the person [experiencing grace] can do things that are objectively sinful, without being guilty, and without losing the grace of God or the experience of his love.”

It has to be alarming that someone with such views is not only a Catholic priest, but a Bishop, a Cardinal, and actually in charge of the Holy Office, vetting the faith of the Church. It illuminates the current drive by the Vatican to approve the blessing of divorced and same sex couples.

The Vatican is no longer Catholic; or religious in any sense.

The Voice of One Calling in the Wilderness

 

In a real sense, lying is the worst sin. It is a sin not just against man, but against God. It is direct defiance of God; for God is Truth: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Consistently lying to another under our control—gaslighting—causes the worst tortures known to man, the tortures we call depression and schizophrenia.

 I cannot stomach politicians like Erin O’Toole, who lie without evident shame. Or Richard Nixon, or Bill and Hilary Clinton, or Justin Trudeau. Not much better are those who are deliberately ambiguous, so they can play games with the truth: Pope Francis falls into this category.

I cannot stomach men who claim to be women, or women who claim to be men, or those who claim to be non-binary. It is at base a moral issue.

Give me those clean, straight lines. The clarity of a Ratzinger, a Trump, an Orwell, a Michelangelo.

Make the ways straight for the Lord.

The New Canada

 

(2) Rebel News Canada on X: "BREAKING: Rebel News reporter David Menzies (@TheMenzoid) was brutally arrested by police after he tried to ask Chrystia Freeland questions. Visit Rebel News for more on this story: https://t.co/mwCsdctCkJ https://t.co/PCV4y0AbFO" / X (twitter.com)

Looks more like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia every day.

How Do You Respond to Something Like This?

 

The Democrats assume the average American voter is a gullible idiot. What if they are right?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743635357160145330

Hell Alley

 

There are suggestions in the Bible that few people make it to heaven.

“Narrow is the path that leads to life, and few find it.”

Many read the book of Revelations to say that only 144,000 all told make it to heaven.

The visionaries of Fatima saw multitudes falling into hell.

This is troubling.

I wonder, however, if this is literal. It sounds to me like the Buddha’s description of upaya in the Lotus Sutra: whatever is necessary to lure the children out of the burning building. It is perhaps not so much an accurate description of the population of Hell or the consequences of sin, as a strategic or rhetorical device to illustrate the right path.

The point may more accurately be, we cannot get to heaven by going along with the crowd; by doing what everyone else does.

This is necessarily true, because going along with the crowd, or with others around us, or the social consensus, avoids making moral decisions; so we cannot be earning merit even if the deed is objectively good. It is the easy way, and, if by chance also the moral way, as Jesus says, “you already have your reward.”

But the situation is worse than that. Any crowd or social environment will tend toward the evil. As the Bible says, the Devil is the prince of this world. Those guilty of sin will have a vested interest in promoting that sin, encouraging others to that sin, avoiding personal responsibility for it. Those who go along will go along, making the sin conventional. As happened in Sodom and Gomorrah; or the world before the flood; or among the Canaanites or Carthaginians, who practiced child sacrifice; or the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany; or slavery in so many countries; or abortion today. The worse the sin, the stronger the social pressure to condone it. So as not to cause a fuss.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

So going along with the crowd, a failure to take moral responsibility, is doubly culpable. It is doing objective evil, and refusing to take responsibility for it. Taken together, that looks like  turning away from God himself, the sin against the Holy Spirit.

But does this interpretation give us any greater hope? Surely, by definition, if going along with the crowd leads to hell, most people must therefore be destined for hell.

Not necessarily. It is actually possible that “the crowd” or “the social consensus” is not the majority. It could be only the largest single group, the one that speaks with one voice, even if most people approach issues individually—since, after all, those who think for themselves do not operate as a crowd.

It is the NPCs; joined in Hell, of course, by those who think for themselves but have chosen evil.

What proportion is that of the general population? Your guess is probably as good as mine.

There are suggestions in the Bible that few people make it to heaven.

“Narrow is the path that leads to life, and few find it.”

Many read the book of Revelations to say that only 144,000 all told make it to heaven.

The visionaries of Fatima saw multitudes falling into hell.

This is troubling.

I wonder, however, if this is literal. It sounds to me like the Buddha’s description of upaya in the Lotus Sutra: whatever is necessary to lure the children out of the burning building. It is perhaps not so much an accurate description of the population of Hell or the consequences of sin, as a strategic or rhetorical device to illustrate the right path.

The point may more accurately be, we cannot get to heaven by going along with the crowd; by doing what everyone else does. 

This is necessarily true, because going along with the crowd, or with others around us, or the social consensus, avoids making moral decisions; so we cannot be earning merit even if the deed is objectively good. It is the easy way, and, if by chance also the moral way, as Jesus says, “you already have your reward.”

But the situation is worse than that. Any crowd or social environment will tend toward the evil. As the Bible says, the Devil is the prince of this world. Those guilty of sin will have a vested interest in promoting that sin, encouraging others to that sin, avoiding personal responsibility for it. Those who go along will go along, making the sin conventional. As happened in Sodom and Gomorrah; or the world before the flood; or among the Canaanites or Carthaginians, who practiced child sacrifice; or the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany; or slavery in so many countries; or abortion today. The worse the sin, the stronger the social pressure to condone it. So as not to cause a fuss.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

So going along with the crowd, a failure to take moral responsibility, is doubly culpable. It is doing objective evil, and refusing to take responsibility for it. Taken together, that looks like  turning away from God himself, the sin against the Holy Spirit.

But does this interpretation give us any greater hope? Surely, by definition, if going along with the crowd leads to hell, most people must therefore be destined for hell.

Not necessarily. It is actually possible, if not probable, that “the crowd” or “the social consensus” is not the majority. It could be only the largest single group, the one that speaks with one voice, even if most people approach issues individually—since, after all, those who think for themselves do not operate as a crowd.

It is the NPCs; joined in Hell, of course, by those who think for themselves but have chosen evil.

What proportion is that of the general population? Your guess is probably as good as mine.

Why Are Pigs Sprouting Wings?

 

There is apocalypse in the air. Governments are doing unaccountable things, as though they know something we don’t. Snow falls in Mecca; lightning strikes the Vatican; maybe such things happen in normal times, but people are now in the mood to notice. And then there are the growing claims about UFOs. Tucker Carlson says he knows things about UFOs so dark he will not even tell his wife, and “there is a spiritual aspect to it.”

Which last comment gets me thinking: here’s one explanation for what is going on.

Christopher Hitchens, seeking to debunk Christianity, argued the improbability that God would let mankind subsist on Earth for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, right up until 1 AD, before revealing himself. What about all those previous generations? And why then did he do it in such a backwater, in Palestine?

Hitchens is exactly wrong. The early years of the Roman Empire were probably the first time in history that God could have sent a message to mankind, and expect it to reach from Britain in the West, to China in the East, and down to Ethiopia. The Roman Empire had, for the first time, secured those trade routes. And Christianity did quickly extend this far.

No doubt God was sending local revelations all along—which is why so many of the world’s myths seem to contain elements of the Gospel story, with avatars, virgin births, and the like. But until 1 AD, they inevitably stayed local. 

And Palestine was not a backwater. Jerusalem is actually, literally, the centre of the populated world, now as it was then—the one spot from which it is easiest to get everywhere else. This is why Middle Eastern airlines have been so successful: their headquarters and stopover point is most efficiently located for everywhere else.

And this is true not only by air. Palestine is a land bridge, a funnel, that joins three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and their trade routes. It is at the crossroads of the three great ancient civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece-Rome.

And this is true by sea as well: it is roughly the meeting point of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, the necessary point of portage to go by sea from Europe to East Asia and vice versa. All lines of communication and travel met here. This was God’s megaphone.

Now… if either God or perhaps some alien civilization wants to send all of mankind a further message, we have just now reached a similar, but greater, inflection point. Now, with the internet, with smart phones, is the first time in history he/they could appear to all of us, all at once, without filter by government or earthly authority with their own self-interests. 

We might now be getting the preparatory attention-getting signs; like the herald’s trumpet or the town crier’s bell. Or like John the Baptist in the New Testament. And the panic of Herod at the birth of a more legitimate ruler, or the mind-frame of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, may explain the current actions of governments. 

I don’t jump immediately to the idea that these are the End Times. Perhaps; perhaps the beginning of the thousand-year just reign predicted in Revelations. Yet, more simply, revelation is ongoing, as it is throughout the Bible: there are repeated calls from God to return to faith and fealty, reminders that he is there, new and renewed covenants. In more recent years, we have seen apparitions of Mary calling us back to faith. She has even appeared on Egyptian TV. Now may be the time for an emphatic reminder, a visit from the boss himself, perhaps a renewed covenant. 

Or, alternatively, now may be the opportunity for some more advanced civilization to make itself known and tell us what it feels we need to know.

I think, in the end, aliens are less likely. That hypothesis requires too many assumptions.

Counting Cats

 

Dancing the bhangra in catface

I wonder if, from the broad view of history. Justin Trudeau’s premiership will look like the Canadian Liberal Party’s dead cat bounce.

I think that the Liberal Party was actually destroyed by Jean Chretien.

Before Chretien, the Grits did not have principles in an ideological sense, but it was the party of the Canadian ruling class, a gentlemen’s club, and it ran on noblesse oblige. As the Natural Governing Party, its mandate was at least plausibly and in the public mind to do what it thought was best for Canada as a whole, in a more or less pragmatic way, with good will toward all. This made sense in a country that, like Canada, was naturally rent by internal divisions.

Chretien broke that mold with his bareknuckle politics within the party. Internally, the party became a dictatorship. Now it was all about power and loyalty to the leader. There was no more room for gentlemen.

Which sacrificed the long-term future of the party to Chretien’s interests. Being a Liberal was all about whether you liked the current leader. The party from then on, and given the structures Chretien created, would stand and fall on the charisma of the current leader. There was no principled reason to be a Liberal.

So they struggled and swapped leaders in and out, the opposite of the longstanding Liberal tradition: Martin, Graham, Dion, Ignatieff, Rae. There was nothing there until they turned, in what seemed desperation, to Justin Trudeau. Surely there was hereditary charisma there?

It worked better than it should have. Pretty decent dead cat bounce. But after his first election, the best JT could do were bare pluralities, while actually behind in the popular vote. Now the body politic’s reflex twitching, partly due to force of Liberal habit, seems to have subsided. Partly due, in turn, to the fact that Trudeau has not been governing in the old Liberal pragmatic way, but has been partisan and divisive. Fully and finally obliterating the Liberal centrist brand. And he has been more dictatorial than Chretien.

Now, as generally with dictators, there is a problem with the succession. The Liberal Party previously always had a leader of the loyal opposition inside the party, a John Turner, a Paul Martin, a Paul Martin Sr., because there was room for it. There was always a reason to be a Liberal above and beyond loyalty to the current leader, and an accommodation for that, with some degree of mutual deference, within the party. This is important to a party’s survival, because, if the current leader is no longer popular, the new leader must not be too closely identified with him, but suggest renewal.

When Chretien left, even with a plausible successor available, the party spiralled into third party status because it lacked any underlying raison d’etre. Preserving a strong centrist party is always challenging, against the natural dichotomy of left and right. The process was not yet as far along at that point. Pulling it out of the death spiral with Trudeau seemed a very close shave then. 

It seems unlikely that the Libs will again come up with someone plausible out of the ether before the party mechanism dissolves, being held together only by a chance at patronage and power, and the country moves on. 

Shaken, Not Stirred

 

Stuff is happening. The videos of the January 6 events are coming out. Jeffrey Epstein’s client list is presumably coming out. X has broken the censorship. The polls are turning, and half the world is going into elections. You see a growing list of prominent people coming out as on the right, or moving from apostasy to faith. To cite one example, Dr. John Campbell, who seemed at the beginning of the pandemic such an establishment figure, has evolved into a radical, no longer trusting government. Or look at Elon Musk, previously the great champion of the left who was going to give us all electric cars.

I personally have found myself being contacted recently by old acquaintances who had previously informally written me off as a Catholic of intolerably “right-wing” opinions. And they’re acting like old friends.

I’ve been predicting it for ages; people are always slower on the uptake than I expect. But this year feels like the year. The wokery have lost the moral high ground, and have lost touch with reality to a point that is impossible not to mock. They are no longer cool. Soon no one will admit to ever having been on the left.

Someone has put together time-stamped video of the January 6 events, to show the overview. Of course, what they show is still selective, crafted to discredit the official “narrative.” But it seems clear that Trump had nothing to do with what went on at the Capitol, that it was organized and controlled by a few individuals, most obviously Ray Epps; that Epps and others orchestrating affairs were pretty obviously federal agents; that the police were undermanned and underequipped, either from incompetence or in order to create an incident. And the demonstrators, most not intending to do anything but demonstrate, but lacking their own leadership, look as though they just foolishly and impulsively fell into a trap. 

I suspect it was an insurrection, but an insurrection comparable to the Reichstag fire: an inside job, an insurrection by some party in the deep state exploited if not created to seize more power. 

As they have been doing since.

And the same, fairly obviously, could be said of the supposed “occupation” by the truckers in Canada. I cannot believe it was all organized by the government, but it was provoked, mischaracterized, and exploited to seize additional powers by those already in power. I mean, seriously: a slickly-produced Confederate flag at a Canadian truckers' rally? What significance would it have to a bunch of Canadian truckers? Southern pride? Yay slavery?

Or, indeed, the same looks suspiciously possible now of the Covid lockdowns; or even of Covid itself. No conspiracy theory seems too fanciful any longer. There are bad actors in government, and they want more power.

RFK Jr. suggests the real insurrection happened with the Kennedy assassination. The current upheavals are because they feel their power threatened by the common people. They fear Trump, because he is not their guy, not beholden to them and not susceptible to blackmail. They never expected him to win that election in 2016. Now they realize preserving the machinery of democracy is too dangerous. The people are no longer as easily led, and no longer to be trusted.

Scott Adams argues that, once you create an espionage organization within government, as the US did during WWII, and expanded for the Cold War, their seizure of power is inevitable. It is only a matter of time.

The default assumption is that it has already happened. Now we are seeing it, and it may be falling apart.

Madness and Civilization

 

A recent article somewhere listed famous people who were depressive or bipolar (‘manic depressive”). 

They could have saved time and energy by simply noting “all famous writers and artists, all famous war leaders, and all famous philosophers.” No mystery, no news: Aristotle pointed this out over two thousand years ago. Problemats XXX:  “Why is it that all those men who have become extraordinary in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are obviously melancholic?”

I fear, however, that moderns grab the stick at the wrong end. The assumption seems to be that they did great stuff despite being mentally ill. “High functioning depressives.” Which is absurd, when the highest functioning of us all turn out to be depressives.

“Considered by many to be the greatest English writer in history, Charles Dickens, like many great writers, battled depression for his entire life. It was said that he went through long periods of insomnia whenever he started a new novel.

“To deal with his sleeplessness, Dickens would wander aimlessly around London, once covering 30 miles (48 km) in a single night. On the bright side, it’s been reported that his spirits would lift bit by bit as he made more and more progress on his stories.”

The real story is that Dickens would be driven to write a new novel by the chronic anxiety that caused his insomnia. The act of writing soothed the anxiety and depression.

I am reminded too of Socrates’s comment: “By all means marry. If you marry well, you will have a happy life. If you marry poorly, you will become a philosopher.”

An intolerable home situation, being abused, causes what we call depression.

Depression is principally a sense of loss of purpose and meaning to one’s life. This is the permanently damaging effect of abuse. It can be expressed as sadness or as anxiety, but these are just symptoms: the problem is a lack of meaning and direction. “What is the point of me?”

Art, or philosophy, is an effort to create meaning. One is reaching for the transcendental values, the things that bestow meaning. The artist is reaching for beauty; the philosopher is reaching for truth. And the lawgiver or military leader is reaching for justice, the moral good. With desperation, in such a case, and so with the greatest concentration and energy.

This is salvation for the mentally ill: to stop being "mentally ill" and become an artist, or a teacher, or a shaman.

But don’t many artists end up losing the battle, and committing suicide? Don’t many philosophers?

They do; because art or philosophy is the path, and only the initial path, and not the goal. The quest for meaning begins to yield solid results once it generates and confirms a religious conviction.

Artists who become religious do not commit suicide. Instead, the depression eases and recedes. Religion happens when art or religion achieve their goal.

Thucydides, Shut Your Trap

 

It is fashionable these days to warn of Thucydides’ trap: that when a hegemonic power is threatened by a rising power, war usually ensues. This is especially supposed to predict an inevitable clash between the US and China.

One can be more specific: the existing hegemon will try to knock out the rising power. The US will declare war on China. For it makes no sense for the rising power to initiate hostilities: their situation is improving and their hegemony inevitable so long as nothing rocks the boat. This was the case for Thucydides’ own example, the Peloponnesian War: started by Sparta, he maintained, to check the rising power of Athens.

But the model does not fit the facts; it is actually hard to find modern examples. The current Gaza affair was started by Hamas, far from the regional hegemon. Russia did not attack Ukraine because Ukraine was on the verge of supplanting it as the regional power.

Conversely, Britain and the US did not go to war as world hegemony passed from the one to the other. It was all managed on fairly good terms.

Hegemonic powers do not generally fight hard to save their hegemony. Instead, hegemonies decline from within, experiencing a growing lack of commitment, not wanting the burden of being responsible for everything. Witness the British Empire. Witness the Soviet Union. They greet the end with a sense of relief. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Who fought hardest to preserve their overseas dominions? Portugal. The poorest and weakest of European powers.

In the real world of history, war seems most likely when a relatively minor, second-tier power is facing possible collapse, as a means of perhaps restoring its viability.

This makes sense: if your power is in obvious decline, and soon to go altogether, you want to use it before you lose it.

Hamas fits this model. The Palestinian cause was in obvious jeopardy due to the Abrahamic accords. The intifada had lost the backing of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states—all the obvious allies. Peace between Israel and the Arabs was spreading, leaving the Palestinians stranded. So their desperate attack.

Witness Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s population is shrinking. The economy has been held together by oil, but fracking and the move away from carbon-based fuels made the future look dim. 

Iraq invaded Kuwait because Saddam was in dire economic trouble. He owed Kuwait money, and he  tried to seize the Kuwaiti oil fields.

Graham Allison cites World War I as an example of Thucydides’ trap: the UK wanted to knock back rising Germany. Yet this does not fit the facts: the war was started by Austria-Hungary, the weakest of the major participants, and the UK was late and reluctant in. Austria-Hungary was on the verge of collapse; it had the least to lose on a roll of the dice.

I believe Hitler started the Second World War because the Nazi economic programme was a Ponzi scheme. In fact, Hitler said so, to his associates, as he invaded Poland. If he couldn’t grab the assets, land, and industry of Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then the Soviet Union, the whole thing would come down like a house of cards. As in the end it did.

Argentina invaded the Falklands when the regime risked imminent collapse. On the same principle, bankrupt Venezuela is now rattling sabres towards Guyana.

Militant Islamism has become a major factor recently not because Islam has become more dominant or intellectually vital in Muslim lands—but because growing exposure to Western ideas has threatened it.

The optimistic lesson from this is that whoever disturbs the peace is likely to lose the war. The bad news is, the next war is likely to come from some relatively unexpected quarter, not the adversary everyone has their eyes on. 

Reading the Entrails by Gaslight

 

Many commentators on the right are optimistic about 2024. They do not give reasons; just an instinct that the tide has turned. I have that same feeling.

Perhaps it is telling that friend Xerxes, commentator on the left, has the opposite feeling, and is warning against facing the new year with optimism.

His first argument is that it is pure chance, and the fact that the last three years have been awful in just about everyone’s opinion makes it no more likely the next year will be good. His second argument is that, if we think things are terrible, we need to change our attitude. He uses that old saw, about a couple who asked their real estate agent if their new neighbours were friendly.

            “What were they like at the last place you lived?” asks the real estate agent.
            Whatever the answer, the agent can safely say, “Then they’ll be the same here.”

His argument that experiencing a bad year makes it no more likely that the next year will be good is necessarily based on the assumption that there is no God. Given that the universe is just, it is fair to hope that good will come to balance present evil. This is the theological virtue of hope, and lacking it, assuming fate is merely random, is the deadly vice of acedia.

His next argument, that you are yourself the deciding factor, and responsible for your own good or bad luck, is similarly anti-christian. It is plausible only for Eastern religions who believe in reincarnation. As to the specific example, your new neighbours inevitably being no better nor worse than your old neighbours, that is easily disproven by crime statistics. There are good and bad neighbourhoods. Or ask the Jews who escaped the Nazis whether their new neighbours in Canada were just as bad as their old ones in Germany. Ask the Jews of Israel about their neighbours in Gaza. Ask, indeed, the many of us who came to North America to escape oppression and have a better life whether their new life is no better than their old. And if better, is it really because they changed their sullen attitude?

The Bible could not more clearly oppose this idea, that those who are suffering are responsible for their own suffering, and those who are materially fortunate are morally deserving. Read the Book of Job. Read the story of Dives and Lazarus. Read the Beatitudes. Read about that just man they crucified.

The left is hearing footsteps. They have long been in power, actually since the early 20th century in North America, and they are coming to realize there is widespread unrest. And they are trying to gaslight us.

Two Trains in the Night

 

Maybe more accurate with a donkey

My predictions for 2024 have been intentionally optimistic. Now 2024 has actually begun with a major earthquake, in Japan. Not a good sign.

It is hard to see how the 2024 US election turns out well. The Democrats have demonstrated that they will do anything to prevent Trump from being president—Tucker Carlson expects them to resort if necessary to assassination.

That would be a trauma greater than the Kennedy assassination.

If Trump does not become president as a result of the election, his supporters will have every reason to assume—indeed, they will know—the system was rigged against them. What will they do?

When democracy is denied, the option left is violence.

Conversely, the Democrats are determined that Trump must not become president. If he becomes president as a result of the election, what will they do? Lose all their determination and go home?

It looks like two trains coming at top speed down the same track, towards each other. It looks like revolution or civil war.

Yet history suggests that God has a special relationship with the US. I recall a friend on Facebook putting out a map showing that “most peaceful countries” correspond closely with “least religious countries.” He thought this discredited religion as a cause of violence. What it showed was that people turn to God when in need, and ignore him otherwise. Countries, as they become peaceful and prosperous, tend to turn away from religion. As do people.

The US has largely bucked that trend. As Europe or Japan have moved to apostasy, levels of religiosity in the US have remained relatively high. In the current crisis in the Catholic Church, Francis finds his traditionalist enemies in America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. With their intellectual centre in America.

Despite promulgating the postmodern madness, the US is not where it began. Traced back, it was a European import in the early and mid-20th century. The heart of America, as I think Cohen saw, remains strong. “he brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet.”

If civil war now seems inevitable, God has plunged the US into civil war before for a necessary cause. If the left is foolhardy or desperate enough to push it to this point, I believe at least the forces of democracy will win.

And perhaps be a beacon to the rest of the world, as America became in 1776.

Pandemonium in the Magic Kingdom

 

Why did Disney commit suicide by going woke instead of tending to its core business of entertainment? It is an abiding mystery. Why did the BBC series “Call the Midwife” go woke? For that matter, why did Anheuser-Busch seem to deliberately alienate its core customer base, with its Dylan Mulvaney sponsorship?

The conventional and natural answer is that these corporate bodies were taken over by some educated elite which had lost touch with the general public; who were trapped in an information silo, and had no idea everyone did not agree with them.

No doubt that is a partial explanation; thanks to media and internet censorship. But it does not seem to be enough to account for it. After all, their core business was still to entertain, or sell beer; there should have been no reason to get involved in politics. As soon as you do, after all you are sure to alienate somebody. Even without opposing voices, the causes they champion are in defiance of reason or common sense. And in principle, even with censorship, the internet should have been making it easier for creatives to poll or solicit the views of the general public: improved communication. Now ordinary people can run their own podcasts or blogs. Censorship of the internet is a rearguard action. 

The Disney and Bud Light crew must at a minimum have been trying to avoid listening to the public, even though it was their job to do so. They had their fingers in their ears. Why?

Guilt. One wants to block out opposing views when one anticipates criticism, and knows it is deserved. Ultimately, guilt over jettisoning “conventional morality,” and most especially, over endorsing abortion. And so, fearing condemnation, the creative elites have been avoiding listening.

But there is another layer to this. Creativity works by inspiration. Inspiration is not something you can turn on and off. It comes from God, or if not from God, from some ambient spirit. In other words, a demon. If you are concealing guilt, and refusing to repent, you have cut off that conduit to God. You may her nothing, and be obliged to recycle old material just substituting some simple gimmick. Or you may instead begin to hear from ambient spirits; and rejoice in no longer being barren of ideas. But they do not have your or humanity’s interests at heart. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport.”

Guilt and doubt has turned off the taps for the creative class; so art in general has been moribund for decades. The Disney creatives are unable any longer to come up with compelling stories; the comedy writers can no longer come up with punch lines; the ad copywriters can no longer come up with interesting angles. Instead, coming into this void, the signals they are picking up are malicious, vices, seeking ultimately to destroy their careers, their employers, and the culture.

Creative types are not adept at questioning or testing the spirits. You do not argue with inspiration. And so they are easily possessed.

All hell is breaking loose.

The Horror of Back Alley Abortions

 

A TV series I have enjoyed binge-watching, BBC’s Call the Midwife, has decided to go for relevance and wade deliberately into politically charged issues. It is a perhaps muted model of the general problem with films and TV in recent years.

They had already threaded in intersex, and homosexuality. Even though neither fits plausibly into the likely work encounters of a midwife. They had already introduced black and South Asian characters, who then of course were shown to experience discrimination; and a black midwife has shown up as a new lead. And she is, of course, an entirely admirable character, with no dark edges about her. No crustiness, no struggle with alcohol, no illicit loves.

Then they brought up the issue of abortion.

The series is set in 1960s Britain. Abortion was still illegal. The series shows young women getting “back alley” abortions and suffering dire consequences—due to unsanitary conditions and inexpert practitioners.

Worse, the abortionist is portrayed as a decent sort who thought she was helping women. And repented as soon as she was convinced women were being harmed by her incompetence.

No mention is made of the health of the child. The child does not matter. Good people do not care about killing children. Chillingly, in a show about midwives. No mention is made of the alternatives of simply not having sex outside of marriage, or putting the child up for adoption. These are apparently literally unthinkable.

The clumsily intended moral is that abortions must be legal. Because, apparently, women “must” have abortions, and the only concern is that the abortions be performed in the best possible circumstances.

A sane view would be the opposite: if illegal abortions are dangerous, abortion is dangerous. This alone is reason to ban it, since it is always a voluntary procedure. And this even before we consider the key question, the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.

Mummers

 

St. Stephen's Day Traditions

 

Have Yourself a Merry...

 

Predictions for 2024

 

My predictions are always wrong—like everyone else’s. We humans have a lousy track record on predicting the future. Something to remember when you hear alarms raised about global warming. And things have gotten especially unpredictable recently. Aliens? The pope not Catholic? Turning the frogs gay?

So I might as well go ahead and be optimistic—without being unrealistic. After all, God’s in his heaven.

I predict that, in 2024, Trump will win back the US presidency. The Economist gives him a one in three chance. I think it is better than that. He looks to have a lock on the Republican nomination, and the polls show him ahead of Biden in the general. The Democrats seem all in on Biden, and Biden may be impeached for his corruption and possibly treasonous activities, may be too obviously senile by election day, or may, at his age, suddenly die of natural causes. He is also historically unpopular. 

Perhaps they think they can fix the election, but can they? If so, why are they trying to get Trump off the ballot? That’s too blatant, and looks like desperation. I think they are overreaching.

It seems to me the NDP must officially pull the plug in Canada on their coalition with the Liberals before 2025. Otherwise, they will be too closely associated with the Liberals to mount a plausible campaign  when the election comes—and it must come no later than 2025. To make this dissociation real in the public mind, they must also start voting aggressively against the Liberals on confidence votes. So there is a decent chance the Conservatives can craft a confidence motion to bring down the government; especially considering all the incipient scandals under investigation. So I predict a Canadian election in 2024, and a win by Pierre Poilievre.

I predict the Liberals will not switch leaders to forestall this. The have no plausible star in the wings, history suggests it would not help them, and Trudeau does not want to go.

And Poilievre is just too good as a politician; he is not going to lose.

Pope Francis has ratcheted up his “reforms” in the church recently; as if something has been triggered. It might be that he felt constrained so long as Benedict was alive—had he gone this far, Benedict was an obvious rallying point for opposition. But it might also be because Francis hears the beating wings of the angel of death. There are rumours that he intends to fix the election of the next pope; this too suggests he expects to die soon, but his haste to get things done suggests also he has no confidence in his ability to do that. Historically, conclaves have tended to elect candidates contrasting with the previous pontiff, as if to keep things on a steady course. And the worldwide church seems now on the verge of schism in response to Francis’s innovations. The next conclave has a strong motive, then, to try a different tack. God, too, must not be discounted; he will protect his church. So I predict Francis will either die or resign in 2024, and a new pope will be named who is traditionalist.

I am not the only one to notice that wokery is past its high water mark, and is becoming an object of ridicule. When they begin to laugh at you… Bud Light is deservedly toast; Disney is in desperate traits; and when such big fish can be taken out, the little fish too must take heed, and tremble. Now Harvard is losing its reputation and its endowment. I expect this trend to rapidly accelerate, as a bandwagon effect kicks in.

Might as well predict the fall of Xi, Putin, and the Iranian regime as well. All are hanging by a thread, and might collapse at any time. So why not this year? The fall of any of the three makes the fall of the other two more likely, and the fall of any one is likely. Xi is facing economic disaster; Putin is facing military disaster; the Iranian regime is wildly unpopular. So let’s call it as a set.

If Iran falls, to a more liberal regime, that in turn will have profound repercussions throughout the Middle East, where Iran is funding Islamist movements. Like Hamas. Or the Houthis in Yemen.

If either the CPC or the mullah in Iran fall to a liberal regime, we should also see mass conversions to Christianity in those two countries. Which will in turn have world-wide effects. China, for example, could become the centre of the Christian world.

I hear predictions that inflation, and interest rates, should ease by summer. Why not believe them? There may or my not be a terrible recession; so let’s believe there won’t be. It is just possible that the productivity gains being brought on by AI, and computerization generally, will be enough to cancel out all the reckless spending and government financial mismanagement.

Speaking of AI, new technologies are always overhyped in the beginning. As Arthur C. Clarke observed, any really new technology is always indistinguishable in the popular mind from magic. So I’m wagering that all the concerns about AI making us all obsolete, and being a threat to mankind, are hysterical. Instead, it will be a boon to productivity—especially for computer coding.

I see signs of a genuine religious revival in the US at least. God may not have given up on them yet. Back in 1992, Leonard Cohen saw two possible futures, good and bad. The dark option is what we have been getting lately: 

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

But Cohen saw another option. Having explored the dark side, and discovering where it leads, we may pull back and choose instead the vision seen in “Democracy is coming to the USA.” Of, specifically, the principles in the Sermon on the Mount. If it comes, Cohen sees it as coming to the USA first. And coming first to the “holy places where the races meet”: to the Christian churches.

The New Atheism is dead, and there seems to be an earthquake in the sciences, forcing God back into the picture as necessary hypothesis. Theism is becoming fashionable again, at least in the highest intellectual circles. Every week we hear of some new convert.

Financial considerations still argue strongly for mass immigration, even if unpopular—and there are other arguments for it as well. But multiculturalism is rapidly becoming unfashionable. Affirmative action, “equity,” is rapidly becoming unfashionable. We may be back to valuing and respecting “Western civilization.” And expecting immigrants to assimilate, as most immigrants want to do in the first place. There is a reason why they come to Canada, or America, and it is usually not because they loved things back where they came from so much. Trapping them in multiculturalism is trapping them in exile and alienation.

The influence of Elon Musk’s new Twitter has not yet been fully felt, but the emergence of a widely-used platform that is not enforcing a political agenda makes it untenable for other platforms and media to enforce such an agenda. So that house of cards should now come tumbling down. Once people can choose, they will choose open discussion, simply out of natural human curiosity. I expect the immanent demise of the “legacy media,” the TV networks, the newspapers, and the practice of big tech “gatekeeping.”

The war in Gaza will end with Hamas wiped out, and will trigger no wider war.

People are losing confidence in the experts; the experts discredited themselves on Covid. And so the public is losing confidence in all the predictions of global warming and all the draconian measures governments are imposing in its name. Chicken Little will soon be called out. Climate change is losing its marketability. If global warming is real, the only solution is improved technology, and the best way to achieve improved technology is for governments to get out of the way. Political parties will soon no longer be able to jerk this chain.

And so 2024 may be the year of the great turning. The world could look very different in twelve months.

And then there’s aliens.

A Thing of Beauty

 

I think we are lucky to have Pierre Poilievre. He is a master of rhetoric. And, in politics, rhetoric is the whole game. In a good sense.

The Cherry Tree Carol

 

A special favourite of mine. I wrote and directed a Christmas play once based on it.

Christian Nationalism

 

The image of Jesus Pantocrator--Jesus as rightful king of the world. One of the oldest images of Jesus in existence.

 Many on the left are raising the alarm about “Christian nationalism.” It has apparently now supplanted “white supremacy” as the greatest threat to our freedoms. 

What is Christian nationalism?

Literally, it is the belief that the US, or Canada, is and ought to be a Christian nation.

Horrors?

This is, in the first place, a simple statement of historic and demographic fact.  North American culture is deeply Christian. Anyone before, say, 1960, would see the statement as self-evident. To pretend otherwise is politically motivated historical revisionism.

It is, in the second place, a belief necessarily shared by all Christians that the US and Canada ought to be Christian nations. Any Christian believes Christian values should govern the state. Any Christian believes Jesus Christ is Lord, the rightful ruler of mankind. Non-Christians might or might not agree, but any non-Christian who finds this view problematic is intolerant of Christianity.

In the third place, Great Britain, for example, is constitutionally a Christian nation. While the UK no doubt has its flaws, it is hard to see Britain as a cautionary tale of the tragic consequences of Christian nationalism.

What exactly is the terrifying program of contemporary North American Christian nationalism? According to Wikipedia, “Christian nationalism supports the presence of Christian symbols in the public square, and state patronage for the practice and display of religion, such as Christmas as a national holiday, school prayer, the exhibition of nativity scenes during Christmastide, and the Christian cross on Good Friday.”

Whom does such things harm? Isn’t this all part of our shared culture, even if we are not ourselves Christian? Shouldn’t we celebrate our shared culture? Aren’t we even doing most of that now? 

Striking out or refusing to acknowledge any parts of our culture that are explicitly Christian is not religiously neutral: it is discriminating against Christianity in favour of atheism.

Some will raise the issue of the “separation of church and state.” Yet this phrase and this principle is not in the constitutions of either the US or Canada. It might have been; the framers rejected the idea. It comes from a private letter by Thomas Jefferson. We might think it is a good idea, but we have no right to smuggle it into the national mandate without passing a constitutional amendment. 

I actually agree with Jefferson’s concept; but it does not mean keeping religion out of politics. The separation of church and state work in the same way as the separation of powers within the government, and is important for the same reason. Church and state should be organizationally independent so that they can serve as a check and balance on one another. Churchmen must be free to call out immorality in government, like the Old Testament prophets; at the same time, churches must not exercise government power, because an act imposed by law cannot have moral value.

This does not mean that government should ignore the admonitions of the churches, or the teachings of Christianity, any more than that the executive should ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court.

Given how reasonable the Christian nationalist position is, why is the left so alarmed by it? Why do they see it as an existential threat?

The answer is obvious, and begins with the letter “a.”

They will probably instead raise homosexual rights. No doubt if government listened to Christian principles, gay marriage would go back in the box. But this is not the real reason: it affects few people, and it does not affect them deeply. No: gay marriage was always a feint for not questioning the big “a.”

The fear is that abortion be restricted. “Christian nationalism” is the euphemism. The problem is that by now, too many Americans and Canadians are personally implicated in the crime of abortion to acknowledge that it is a crime.

The term “Christian nationalism” as a euphemism for opposition to abortion is also a lie: abortion is not wrong only because it violates Christian teaching. It also violates Muslim teaching, Jewish teaching, Sikh teaching, Hindu teaching, and Buddhist teaching. It violates liberal teaching, it violates the principles in the Declaration of Independence, and it violates the Golden Rule. 

But Christianity is the obvious scapegoat for morality in general, because it has such a good record of standing up for it.

Which is why we need more Christianity in public life.

Too Many Christmases

 

We couldn't leave Christmas without the great punk Christmas anthem. But I had to delay it so as not to kill the mood of the day itself.

Yet this, or something like it, is too often the reality of Christmas for many.

Many are spending this Christmas in tents, or in abusive families. There is a small tent city within view of the doors of the cathedral here in Saint John, in the shadow of its spire.

The First and Last Noel

 

“No Hell, no Hell, there is no Hell.”

My father, as a child, heard the refrain of the familiar Christmas carol this way. He took it as the essential Christian message.

Many do. After all, Jesus died for our sins, right?

A priest argues that the greatest danger to the faithful is not atheists, but universalists within the church; and he argues that universalism is the source and essence of what is going wrong in the church today.

Universalism is the idea that no one is in Hell. It is indeed a popular thought among the Catholic clergy. Bishop Barron has expressed this opinion, as at least a possibility: “we can hope.” The original translation of the Novus Ordo mass in English used to intone every Sunday that Jesus died “for all” –a deliberate change from the previous Latin “for many,” as if to promote the universalism heresy.

And it is a heresy; declared so in the times of Origen, who first propounded it.

It makes sense that this might well be behind the current push to “pastorally” downplay objections to divorce, pedophilia, same-sex unions, and the like. After all, why make such a fuss about sin, if nothing is really at stake, if we all end up in the same place? Then judgement only becomes unkindness, an extra burden on the shoulders of the “faithful.” Religion should be all about joy and forgiveness.

Happy, happy, joy joy. Who cares, after all, about beheaded children and the like?

Even if there is no Hell, this is not kind or charitable. All morality boils down to “love God and love your neighbour.” Turning a blind eye to sin is condoning predation on the vulnerable. The strong can look after themselves; the sufferings of the weak will multiply.

But if God exists, he must be good; for goodness is an aspect of perfection. And we know, through multiple rational proofs, that God exists. If God is good, he must be on the side of justice, for that is what goodness means. He must have created the world in such a way as to ensure ultimate justice.

Yes, there is also mercy. But mercy requires repentance and penance; it cannot be accepting and condoning the wrong. Otherwise, the wrong is itself eternal; there is wrong in Heaven.

Therefore, there must be a Hell. There must be some permanent punishment for those who do not repent and will not willingly make full recompense for their sins.

Preaching that we all get to Heaven anyway is ushering souls into Hell, and denying them the hope of mercy.

This Nativity Story

 

Friend Xerxes, for his Christmas column, sought to parse the nativity narrative as a short story. As a pedant, I feel he did not get it right; but the exercise, I think, is interesting.

He had the Christ child as protagonist. But this does not work. The protagonist must be the main character in the story. He must be someone who has a problem, or an unfulfilled desire. The plot is then the working out of that problem or desire.

Jesus does not qualify, as he appears in the story only towards the end. And, even if he is conceptually the main focus, as Logos, he cannot be said to have a problem. Nor, as an infant, can he be aware of many.

Who has a problem? Mary and Joseph have problems; but these are several, and apart from the main theme of the piece.

The protagonist in the story is mankind. Or rather, that portion of mankind who hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Those with whom the Most High is well pleased”; represented in the story by the shepherds and the wise men. Their hope is for a messiah, who, when he comes, will establish universal justice.

Who then is the antagonist? Who is attempting to prevent justice from beginning its reign?

Most obviously, King Herod; who kills every male child under two years old in hopes of preventing the messiah. Less obviously, Augustus Caesar, whose census and tax, his desire for control, has forced Joseph and Mary into a perilous situation—perilous for the child in her womb.

The problem is not Herod alone, but two separate governments. In other words, the antagonist of righteous men is government in general. Government is, literally, in the nativity story, the antichrist.

Not that we can do away with governments. Governments serve a necessary purpose: in the words of the Code of Hammurabi, “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.” In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” There is perhaps a representation of honest government, too, in the three kings. Perhaps—but they are not identified as kings in the gospel.

However, if the purpose of government is “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak,” there is in this an immediate problem: government is stronger than anyone. What is to prevent it from oppressing the weak? Who polices the police?

Hence Locke’s and Jefferson’s concern for government overreach; it is already there at the heart of the gospel. But democracy is itself a flawed mechanism; although a check on the powerful, it also gives power to a majority to oppress a minority. You kind of need divine intervention.

We are seeing unprecedented examples of government overreach right now. We need the Messiah this Christmas more than ever. We must scan the heavens for a star, or some choir of angels

Oddly, we are suddenly hearing many reports of UFOs.

More Canadian Church Burnings

 

In Alberta.

More Problems with Claudine Gay

 

Will she bring Harvard down with her?

Here's the Leading Candidate to Replace Harvard

 

As where the best and the brightest go to learn. And around which the university system might be rebuilt.

Canadian Cream

 

Courtesy of the Poilievre family. Some Irish/Venezuelan/Canadian cultural fusion.

St. Stephen's Day