Safe Haven

 Confirmation Sponsor Guy has an essay in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, entitled, "Thomistic Conception of Impairment and Disability". That'll be a fun one to read, when the time comes. When I commented on this exciting news, I separated out my thoughts from my feelings. I remember Professor Cross saying something in class, about the young people today. When they want to say "I think," they usually actually say, "I feel…" Actual thinking, however, is not done with the heart primarily, but the mind. A certain thing could be true, independent of what we feel about it. And if we are to avoid deconstructing everything according to an uncharitable assumption about the motivations of others, we should be bold to say, "I think…" The truth is that the nobility of saying "I think…" is the freedom to potentially later say, "I thought wrongly about that." There is a scene in a TV show that I have enjoyed, where a schoolt...

 My childhood was pretty rough and dramatic. I can just leave it there. If there was one person who is the opposite of rough and dramatic, it's Mister Rogers. You can find any clip that you want from the show; he consistently affirms and validates the feelings of the small children in his audience. Even when I was much older, I would check in sometimes, because I knew that I would feel valued. He didn't even know me, but honestly, he did. It's more than nostalgia, for so many of us. It is the memory of being loved, even from a distance. He was a mainline Protestant, back when that still meant something. And I didn't know as a kid that in fact he was a minister, but I should have guessed. There is something about godly people that you can't fake or fabricate. There are church people, and there are godly people. Church people are a roll of the dice; godly people live by a power that is not their own. When they leave, their lives of genuine kindness and empathy leave m...

 It's often said that if you invoke the Nazis, you lose any online argument. On the other hand, how close to a dangerous authoritarianism do you have to get, before those who are sanguine about it turn out to be the foolish ones? On the one hand, a close examination of the physical ballots involved in the election will eventually be necessary. I have no objections in theory to any group exhausting all legal challenges and remedies. On the other hand, the president is not a person who can be trusted. If he could find his own version of the Reichstag fire, he would do it in a second. That's why I don't buy the stuff from right-wing media, to the effect of, "just asking questions". You have tens of millions of people living in an alternate reality anyway, and a good number of them will not renounce violence, or in any manner accept the results. We ought to keep our processes and timelines firm. Challenge whatever you like, but it's all over by December 14. And if...