Safe Haven

 Guns get juxtaposed with abortion. “If right-wingers really cared about…” “If they were REALLY pro-life, they would…” Go ahead. Make the argument.  First off, you don’t really want to compare the scale of this. 60 or 70 million unborn children killed. If I gave you every suicide and counted it like a school shooting, the scale would still be massively in the right-winger’s favor. Abortion is the worst genocide in human history. It should pre-empt every regular program on TV, like a daily 9/11, but worse, but it won’t. Too many “well-meaning” people would have to face their guilt and their complicity. Too many women would have to face the self-infantilization that makes them murderers. We have to sit with that last word: murderers. It’s “extreme” to say that, you say? Murder is the unjustified taking of an innocent human life. What is it, if it’s not that? What is it? We’re rightly all relieved that the Fort Hood shooter won’t be immortalized on video in death. It’s monstrous,...

 Which isn’t to say that I never did. And I’m reasonably happy if the Chiefs and Travis Kelce win. That makes Empress Taylor happy, so who am I to argue with her? But it started with the conspiracy to move the Rams from St. Louis back to Los Angeles. That hurt. And it’s clear that the NFL has known about traumatic brain injuries due to football for a lot longer than they let on. I just can’t really enjoy it without my conscience bothering me. So I just don’t. I understand football better than most fans. I just don’t see value in watching anymore.

 You know, the Zac Brown Band song. I love that song. I like songs like it. Maybe I’ve been sad a lot in life; I don’t know. I understand that I’m sappier than a forest of maple trees. I knew Aaron The Rat would know it. For all you know, he wrote the bloody song himself. It’s just one of those songs. Fairly sure I know every word. Though the second word in the first line is “trade,” not “take.” It sounds like “take.” Though that would mean he would have said “take” twice in that first line. So OK. Zac Brown is the kind of guy who’s been listening to James Taylor all his life, and became a musician. (In fact, they sang “Colder Weather” with James Taylor on an awards show.) Ordinarily, dance-pop doesn’t break your heart, unless it’s a-ha. I digress. Here’s the first line of “Colder Weather”: “She’d trade Colorado if he’d take her with him.” — It’d better be a good song, because it’s not “Baby One More Time.” This ain’t “Rhythm Of The Night” by DeBarge. As soon as he starts, you are ...

 Precisely one day after the pope reaffirmed CCC, 2267 on the death penalty--especially in light of the justified furor of the US president and the Department of Defense (not blessing the name change) announced they're going to livestream the execution of the Ft. Hood shooter--the pope announced that he's got a concerning nodule on one lung, and that doctors advised him to let them remove it. I never actually saw The Butterfly Effect, but it was a film about how a small action can have a totally unexpected impact on others and things. Far be it for me to guess at the workings of Providence, but it seems like this struggle for Pope Leo has provided many Catholics and separated Christians another opportunity to love and pray for him. As a side-note, when I say that I don't care what other Christians say about ethics or doctrine, I don't mean it strictly; I only mean that we're the Church founded by Jesus Christ; Peter is going to lead, even if other scattered disciple...

 Chris Coghlan is a British Member of Parliament for Dorking and Horley. The Liberal Democratic Party. There was apparently an assisted dying bill there. I assume that all the Catholic faithful were warned not to support it, and especially not elected officials. He did it anyway. Not that euthanasia has been a mystery for any of us for a couple hundred years. The Catechism is the most publicly available document ever, perhaps. I know Coughlan has WiFi, if he doesn’t want to read it in book form. Let’s cut the crap: these Catholic-flavored pagans the world over just want the Church to mind her own business. They like Christmas and Easter Mass. They might even enjoy talking about how Catholic they are. They can go on about all the parish events they’ve gone to, or how many years they went to Catholic school. But as soon as the powerful money people come around, these major issues become “wedge issues” and “divisive” and these folks need to “listen” to “other voices.” This particular ...

 The other aspect of all this discussion that gets missed is if I say, “I agree with the Church; the popes are clear in saying something that I should pay attention to, and in fact, that I understand,” I am not saying that I have a fondness for particular defendants, or a particular antipathy toward anyone who prosecuted them, etc. In fact, that’s how principles help us: passions can deceive; faith guided by reason cannot. I don’t know about you, but I always hated when someone said with abortion, “I’m pro-life, but…” We’ve all known that everything after the “but” would be unreasonable. You can’t decide moral issues on vibes. I’m not saying abortion is equivalent to capital punishment, because it isn’t. I am saying that if I understand capital punishment to be inadmissible, if that’s the ethics of the Church in light of human dignity, I don’t have to go case-by-case. We’re just not gonna do this, we’re not supporting it, and my emotions either way don’t matter. I know even a lot o...

 I never want to forget that he was my favorite player. Tom Brady eventually inspired joy, awe, and respect, and few dare even to doubt his place in the GOAT discussion. But before Brady, there was Favre. He was literally the people's quarterback. Even the fact that he's the all-time leader in interceptions thrown didn't seem to bother us. I think I liked him more. By the way, I feel the same about Favre as I do President George W. Bush: Don't bother me with criticisms, because I don't care. I'm not his priest or the pope. Mrs. Favre hasn't abandoned him, so I figure I don't have to dig deeply into his life. I usually don't get down about being disabled and a wheelchair user anyway, but Brett made me forget it all, anyway. And if it was effective propaganda, it worked. I felt a part of every success he had. With apologies to Peyton Manning, Brett Favre should have been the NFL MVP in 2009. If memory serves, he threw 33 touchdowns and 7 interceptions,...

 In the end, the guilty man is certain to die. It’s not my role to advocate to save his life. The Catholic Church now stands against capital punishment. I have no problem assimilating that reasoning and its conclusion into my thinking. I was a dedicated abolitionist 5 years before I submitted to the Bishop of Rome, to that faith, and to the philosophical tradition that undergirds it. None of the popes in my lifetime have opposed it for frivolous or personal reasons. Even were I unbound by anything in that ordinary magisterium, I should still prefer the pope’s opinion to my own. I have family members who disagree, but their place in Heaven is far from assured, for one. For another, “I love you” and “Your commitment to reason is in question” are not mutually exclusive. And we stand to be changed for the worse by this outcome, and especially if we watch it. And I believe God will hold anyone who celebrates it to account. Even in the days before the Christian teaching stood against it,...

 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...