Safe Haven

 Catholics can have conversations among themselves concerning the ingenuity of a living Magisterium that can answer higher order questions that the Bible text itself cannot answer, because the purposes of it and parts of it are legion. But as a matter of faith, the relevant questions are these: Did Jesus establish a visible Church united in governance, sacraments, and profession? Is your local Catholic parish a current outpost of that Church? What might I expect to find if the answer were "yes"? What would invalidate the claim, or at least serve as a significant rebuttal to the claim? You see, it doesn't actually matter if one paradigm of the story of God interacting with humanity has features that someone finds appealing or advantageous. The only real question is whether Jesus established that putative Church and the features that are helpful, advantageous, or however you might describe them. Christianity and religions related to it presuppose that God reveals things tha...

 I’m not fond of loud noises. I have CP, and it gives me a startle response for sounds at 85 decibels or even less. Guns, buzzers, even squeaky HVAC systems. I’ll even mute Caitlin Clark and the Fever, if the substitution sound is “wrong.” I definitely could have enjoyed a Nuggets game with Tom Darrow, but only with earplugs. Good on them and others for creating “quiet rooms” for autistic people with sensory issues. I don’t have that diagnosis, but there’s some overlap. If I ever meet up with the “Mafia” in Iowa, the lot of them will probably go shoot guns, and I will meet the Crosses in Cedar Rapids. Aaron The Rat definitely knows his way around a firearm. C’mon. He even looks like a guy who teaches gun safety courses. We’re definitely making him drive to Iowa. I can’t think of anyone better to sponsor him as he (hopefully) will be assimilated into the Borg—let the reader understand—than Bryan and Carol Cross. Bryan’s fine, obviously. He’s a dear friend. But do you remember how Mi...

 I’m liberal enough, with enough awareness that the American involvement in transatlantic slavery—even pre-USA—was uniquely bad enough that it still has an impact today. It’s not wrong to feel bad about it; it’s not wrong to wish it never happened.  I’m conservative enough to think that the outcome of your life—insofar as you have agency—is down to you and no one else. Saw a thing on the Twitter of someone asking for opinions on interracial couples. To be clear, the picture was of a conventionally attractive white man and Black woman. No one seems to care if Asians marry non-Asians. I don’t think there’s much fuss about what Hispanic people do, though I could be wrong, and bigotry is horrifying. It was illegal in the United States for a man and woman in a mixed-race couple to marry until 1967. A person born in 1967 isn’t even old yet. My Mom spent most of that year being 11. So it’s not odd to me, but it’s still novel. If that a—hole Ray hadn’t killed MLK, there’s a chance you...

 When he played that 2007 US Open final against Novak Djokovic, he’d just turned 26. (Born August 8, 1981) I took him for granted in these prime years. We’re so used to speaking of his elegance and shot-making, but that narrative was cemented by him in his 30s and 40s, when his anticipation and variety hid the downtick in the savagery of his athleticism. You have to go back that far to find Novak Djokovic out of sorts. Roger was behind the whole time, but he knew the younger Djokovic would crack. This title was during his run of 5 consecutive US Open championships. When he lost to his rival and good friend Rafa Nadal at Wimbledon in 2008, Federer was contending for his sixth title there, consecutive. Remember that he won again on the grass in 2012, and again in 2017 (!). Even so, he lost 3 times to Djokovic there, culminating at Wimbledon 2019, at age 38, when he needed just one more shot to win his 9th title at the All England Club. The GOAT argument cannot be settled, and it neve...

 The Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis is suing ICE because they are denying priests access to those requesting sacraments in detention. That’s Missouri, by the way. Not Laredo, Texas, or southernmost California. Before we go on, I would like to add that I believe in law. I don’t believe that deportation is, of itself, wrong. But if I wouldn’t deny sacraments to a condemned prisoner in his or her last moments, what sense does it make to treat an illegal alien worse than a murderer? People seriously would rather be “conservative” (or liberal) than Christian, it seems. This whole focus on immigration itself seems wildly disproportionate, and certain federal officials seem intent on dehumanizing anyone who doesn’t serve their ends. Unless the Mississippi River is beset by hundreds of barges full of illegal aliens who embarked off New Orleans, it’s not obvious why ICE operates a detention facility in rural Missouri anyway, but I digress. I remain much more sympathetic to anti-Islamic i...

 If anyone deserves to die, it’s this guy. A US Army officer, he started shooting, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others. And it’s terrorism. He probably became persuaded of the eventual conquest of the decadent “Great Satan.” Whatever. By the way, I don’t care if there happened to be a mosque in my neighborhood. We’re the land of the free, and the home of the brave, not the home of the paranoid. More than likely, someone first got here from the Middle East or Iran or even Africa to get away from the “Islamic” terrorists. If someone accepts our pluralistic society in general and dare I say liberal values—with apologies to Patrick Deneen and Bryan Cross—it’s not my concern. I’m more worried about progressives not accepting our way of life than Muslims, to be frank with you. You know, I am not really worried about dating myself, but I get curious about what people are saying. I started following this cute girl (woman) because she said she was a matchmaker. About 2 weeks later, I f...

 I went to a trivia night several years ago to benefit L’Arche. In St. Louis, MO, you can raise money for almost anything with a trivia night. It’s just really big in my hometown, for some reason. We’re just smart, and we like eating, drinking, and helping people. I think I just described every Catholic town on Earth. Anyway, I have become pretty aware that I arouse pity just by being out in the world. That’s life with all the visible or audible disabilities, I guess. I myself have no cognitive impairments whatsoever, and I’m happy with that. If I am honest, though, God has deserved more thanks for that than I have given so far. My intellect isn’t mine, any more than Kelsey Mitchell or Caitlin Clark or Roger Federer can take credit (entirely) for their athletic ability. Then again, a defect you carry from the beginning, the opposite of which you have never experienced, carries less sorrow than losing the ability to do something you did before. (I’m losing some of those things, and ...

 On the one hand, I served and learned alongside women as a Presbyterian in seminary (PCA). I'm highly in favor of them getting any advanced degree a man could get. I personally don't really mind them going to more "liberal" denominations to hold pastoral offices, because the taxonomy from the Anglican bishop J.B. Lightfoot within the essay "On The Christian Ministry" highlights both Protestantism's fatal flaw, and illustrates why female clergy really can only occur in a Protestant context. Many Anglicans are angered at being called "Protestant," but they'll finally get over it when they re-join the one true Church. Lightfoot said that the conception of the pastoral office is either "sacerdotal" (from the Latin for "priest") or "functional." Very low church Protestants and independent communities that emerged in the aftermath of the Reformation tend--if this is a spectrum--toward the functional end, while commu...

 She’s Christa Pike’s victim. You can’t say anything about anything without the madding crowd demanding “balance” on every question. Colleen was a person who didn’t deserve to die. She was loved by people, and first by God. She was murdered by Christa Pike more than 30 years ago. Whatever we decide to do with Pike, she did that. Colleen isn’t coming back here. But if I’m right about God, why would we want her to, on the one hand? On the other, we know from experience that human connection and love is a great solace in this vale of tears. There isn’t enough solace here in human terms, if you’re asking me. But you don’t get life from death. Christ defeated death. He didn’t make it sunshine and rainbows. Ordinarily, death begets more death. More sorrow. More loss. Look me in the face and tell me that you want the government who can’t fix our streets and bridges to be meting out death. Don’t answer me from feelings; we know what those often say. If someone killed one of my brothers or ...

 The Dobbs decision was great. It’s a great day for America, and eventually the world. And it never happens if Secretary Clinton wins the presidency. I come by it honest. If I tell you we’d be better off if Donald J. Trump never becomes our president, I absolutely mean it. But the blood would still cry out from the ground. Ask me why I don’t cheer unequivocally for Democrats, and that’s why. Troubling thing about elected Democrats and far Left activists today: Their moral rigidity would be welcome, but for the fact that they’re wrong about everything of consequence. It’s great we don’t say “faggot” and other slurs in polite society; the bait-and-switch about what families are, and what we ought to do in law and culture remains. When I talk about false sentimentality around gay activism, I mean that deep down, we know—or we ought to—that it’s not cost-free to anyone. It’s not a cutesy Will & Grace episode. And it all leads to the rivers of blood pouring out of the abortuaries. P...

 (Note: The balance of this piece was published as a Facebook status first.) People are free to like what they like, and not like stuff they don’t. And this includes Taylor Swift. Me personally? I love her music. But I have to object personally to the idea that her target audience is women and girls. I’m neither one of those things. And even if it were true, the men I associate with genuinely like and admire women and girls. We should be as offended by the idea that women are odd, or so different than men that never the twain shall meet, as we are that all men are violent monsters. Anyway, I remember hearing Taylor at 16 on the radio giving an interview. Her first song “Tim McGraw” had just come out. The interviewer asked her who she wanted to write songs with. She said Craig Wiseman. That dude has some serious credits to his name, including helping Phil Vassar write his self-titled debut in 2000. And I can remember thinking, “This kid is gonna be huge.” Right now, she’s the bigges...

 Christa Pike was the victim of a botched execution in Tennessee. It’s all the proof we need that we shouldn’t do this anymore. While we’re on the subject, her life is textbook “mitigating factors.” We shouldn’t have even gotten to this point in this case. And she was sentenced 31 years ago. Don’t read the comments. We’re coarsened by our thirst for blood. And don’t argue “limited government” with me; the Supreme Court lifted a stay that the state had granted. The federal government imposed itself to help the state of Tennessee kill Pike, and couldn’t even do it right. Your tax dollars at work. The supreme expression of government power over the individual is in killing. If you want more of it, you might be a lot of things, but you’re not a conservative in the Anglo-American sense. A lot of American Catholics are sold on the “Frank The Hippie Pope” narrative, because it obscures the fact that the popes have been moving toward abolition of capital punishment for 60 years. If you spe...

 I've seen the clip a few times. Tyler, son of the legendary coach, played on an AAU team in high school. They asked Coach if she'd coach those boys for one game. Probably not anything of great consequence, and sports in the end is not.  She calls a timeout and says, "Somebody on this team needs to rebound, if we want to win this game!" Summitt never did anything halfway. And that's why she has 1098 wins and 8 NCAA titles. We still miss you down here, Coach.

 Not in the sense of Protestant. In the sense that Jesus is my personal friend. Actually, friendship better captures what’s happening in the Scriptures than anything else. A lot of people are giving up the label. Lots of reasons for this. Sex. People want to be liberal about sex. Maybe they are sinners themselves, and the guilt of believing something else while living differently is too much. Maybe they’re just sentimental and really liked “Will & Grace.” The reality of the lives depicted there is sadder than a sitcom. The true nature of Sola Scriptura and Reformed claims about the Fall work together to make every argument an argument not about what the Bible says, but what it means. There remains a chasm between faith and reason, and under this regime, conscience and history and experience means nothing. We always thought “Where is that in the Bible?” would lead in one direction; it doesn’t. And it’s not really a question, it’s a direct challenge to any purported authority. Pe...