Safe Haven

 It’s the film Argo, about the rescue of the hostages taken by the Iranian cult regime. Several CIA agents did great work, and it’s awfully hard not to swell with pride at hearing from President Carter in the ending credits.    I never went along with the legend that the Iranians were terrified of Reagan, so they released the diplomats. They weren’t afraid of Reagan when they sent the PLO terrorists to Beirut to kill Dr. Malcolm Kerr in 1984. Obviously, if you’re gonna lose, you want to have a post-presidency like that one. Also, how do we know he wasn’t just unlucky in the macroeconomic sense? George H.W. Bush got similarly unlucky in the fall of 1992. And the Right was divided by a nativist populist that year. I seriously hate it when that happens. I hate it even more when a dumber, cruder version of the guy wins two non-consecutive terms. I digress.

 A 7-year-old was kidnapped, strangled, and murdered in Texas. As soon as the man dies, the little girl will still be dead. There is a team of people who have to practice putting him and others to death. Their bodies and souls won’t care how deserving the man is. I know a lot of “conservative” Catholics who love to say, “The Church is right about everything” when it’s homosexuality or contraception, but this one, they grab a tray at the cafeteria.

 Jesus speaks of a narrow gate or way, and few find it. It leads to life. The wide gate or way leads to destruction, and many find it. This is a hard saying. I have to conclude that Hell is real, and that more end up separated from God, than united to him. I’m not the final interpreter here—thank you, Jesus, for the Magisterium—but that’s a plain reading of this text, and a few others. Jesus in the Gospels is the lens to interpret literally everything else in the Bible, because He is the Word, the beloved Son of the Father, Lord of the Sabbath, and everything else. How empty or full either Heaven or Hell are—other than saying an empty Hell wouldn’t need to exist, for one—is wasting time. You can drive yourself crazy with fear, and activities designed to mitigate or manage the fear, to little effect. We can have moral certainty of being in a state of grace by examining our conscience, and going to Confession if necessary. Beyond that, we have to trust in the mercy of God. If God wer...

 Alito went on for 40 extra pages about how to constitutionally pass muster with the Court. But Warnock and the rest of the Democrats would rather scream “racist, racist!” than do their bloody jobs. But that’s a far Left that’s grown accustomed to achieving their ends through the Courts, since they have given up persuading fellow citizens, either to win the presidency, or pass legislation. “Sad!” you might say.

 Progressives (unreasonably liberal Democrats) are having a freak-out over the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, where the Court (6-3) ruled that a map creating a second “majority-minority” district was racially discriminatory. A key finding was that the motive was primarily racial justice (or someone’s idea of racial justice). The government can only specifically use race as a factor if the congressional district: 1. Addresses a specific, measurable harm; and  2. is not otherwise discriminatory in intent. Failing that, “strict scrutiny” under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment is triggered, and there are only a couple scenarios where government action could be justified, neither of which were present here. I want to add in a couple things I know/believe that can shed further light on the majority opinion: 1. Most analysts do not believe Black majorities are required to elect Black candidates. I learned in college that a critical mass of about 30 p...

 I know the words to the Canadian national anthem. I grew up watching hockey. You’re not a true hockey fan, if you don’t know Canada’s anthem. It’s short and to the point, anyway. The Buffalo Sabres of the NHL have both anthems sung, regardless of whether they are playing a Canadian team. (It’s customary to sing both, if the visiting team is from the other country.) Their home ice is less than 10 minutes from Canada, so a good number of their fans are Canadian. They are our neighbors and friends to the north. Since most NHL teams are in the United States, I think we should honor Canada like this.

 We have been fighting against factions and spiritual elitism from the very beginning. The thing about public revelation is that it’s public. Jesus wants everyone to know. Heaven is so important to complete our being that the Great Commission makes sense. Water baptism in the Triune Name, and obedience to the teachings of Jesus. Simplifying spiritual practices so that His Apostles could literally reach around the world. A priest serves the teaching mission of the Bishop. A priest without his bishop is a sheep without a shepherd. Fr. Chad Ripperger wants to tell you that the obvious stuff isn’t enough; he wants to make you think that you need special knowledge—his special knowledge—in order to be a saint. At best, he is dangerously misguided; at worst, he is a wolf. The only thing you really need to know about exorcisms is that they exist. Anything more is dangerous. The true child of the Church obeys. The priest obeys the bishop; the bishop obeys the Successor of Peter. And so on. ...

 You could remind me that the paragraphs in the universal Catechism have different levels of assent they require of us, and consequently, the formulations are only as true as the teachings they rely on. And that’s true. But I am not a PhD, for one, and practically, levels of assent don’t help most people. When I read the Catechism, it is my intention to believe what the Church teaches, to understand what the words mean as best I can, and if I can’t understand, to seek those with more faith and/or knowledge than I have. Frankly, though I have great zeal for our faith, I have never been able to consent to the label “traditionalist.” It seems to be a habit of mind that supposes that the Church in her spiritual dimension can err, and that the men set apart by God to govern and teach us are not owed submission or deference in any respect. Moreover, there is a conceit that a purer time in the past existed, and that if we draw from this alone, we will be unstained by the world. Yet all th...

Let’s get right to the point: Is it acceptable to ask God to end our suffering, even though God shows us the true nature of everything through it? Good question. I say yes. Physical pain is a reminder of death in a groaning creation. It is—rather inconveniently—the result of original sin. God uses everything for our good, including suffering and death. But He doesn’t grant a goodness in itself to either of those things. We’re not dualists. We don’t want the proclamation of God’s goodness and wisdom to confuse us. We must endure suffering, but there need not be a necessity in itself for suffering. And if you think about it some, it makes sense. He couldn’t promise to wipe away every tear from our eyes, if sorrow had some inherent value. Death, thirst, every other privation, is not necessary, strictly speaking. God’s will gives it purpose, and thus, direction. Therefore, I am a spiritual being whose hopes and desires ought to reach to the highest Heaven, but I am also a creature trapped ...

 To state the obvious, Muslims are not Christians, because among other things, Christians worship Jesus Christ as God. Moreover, we say they have distorted the Hebrew Scriptures. Theologically, it’s so deterministic in a philosophical sense that John Calvin would cry. Somewhat alarmingly, The Atlantic reported in an essay that perhaps 20 percent of worldwide Muslims would be willing to engage in violence to advance their religion. To be completely fair to that point, one out of five is not a good number. On the other hand, I have met plenty of ordinary Muslims here in America. I wouldn’t get scared in Dearborn at a mosque, or at a fencing club near Savannah. I just wouldn’t. I don’t know what the demons are up to ordinarily, and it would be incredibly self-serving to imagine that of course the Muslims are infested with demons, whilst I and my co-religionists are beloved of God. But let’s cut the mess: the Catholic Church teaches that Muslims, Christians, and Jews all worship the sa...

 I can't remember exactly when I picked up a book by St. Teresa of Avila, but I was too young in faith to understand it. It was The Interior Castle, and I definitely thought she was nuts. The spiritual life goes forward, and then things become clearer. I had another book by a British nun named Ruth. I guess one feels more freedom to speak plainly in the same spiritual family. Sr. Ruth definitely didn't agree all the time with St. Teresa. What follows is some speculation based in my reading and direct experience. I think physical suffering is to separate the soul from the world. I use "the world" in the negative sense that St. John the Evangelist does when he refers to "the world, the flesh, and the devil." That is, everything opposed to God. Everything in normal human experience teaches us that pain is bad. It's in fact a really good indicator that something is wrong. Pain and problems unresolved lead to death. It's normal. We are destined to die, in...