Safe Haven

 There’s a pretty woman who gives sex advice for a company called “Yoxly.” I’ve seen the reels on Facebook. I have no need for sex advice, but you know, good-looking women are good for marketing. I’ve noticed one weird thing: the worst-case scenario in all these reels is pregnancy. The worst thing next to that is unprotected sex. Or, as normal people call it, “sex.” I know objectively that not everyone is Catholic. I also know that a Catholic life is a difficult life, at least with willpower alone. I also know that the purveyors of the zeitgeist are absolute freaks. Seriously, what is wrong with you people?

 I admittedly aim a lot of my fire at these wishy-washy liberal evangelicals, because they seem to assert that all Trump opposition has to be basically progressive. Maybe rightism was forced down their throats. Or maybe they’re just dumb. I’m never going to say abortion is acceptable. I’m never going to support euthanasia. I’m never going to say that a family is whatever you want it to be. Let me be blunter about it: I don’t think homosexuality is good, or even neutral. People are going to do what they do, and I don’t believe in government power to force people to do things. But I also think the “pro-gay” consensus is fraudulent. It’s a witches brew of stupidity and sentimentality. At best. While we’re at it, the reason to support one man-one woman marriage is that children result from those people having sex. I suppose that’s kind of obvious, but you can’t take anything for granted, given the influence of gender ideology. Young people are so steeped in it that they can’t even prac...

 I was snarkily thinking it was cute to see who liberal Democrats think is a unifying figure who could win the presidency. But then I thought, “Well, the Right isn’t having a normal one, either” and that we don’t really talk across that divide. We talk about each other, but not to each other. I’m glad Stephen Colbert’s show is ending. I like him, or at least I think I would, but he hasn’t been funny for years. And he’s one of those people who reinforces arrogant left-wing attitudes and perspectives. He’s the Pauline Kael of the century; he doesn’t have any friends who voted for Trump, and he won’t know anyone who voted for the next guy. I could have said “person,” but I don’t think we’ll see a female GOP nominee for some time. It seems like Rubio is in a good position to unite the Right, but he’s the child of immigrants. Will the nativist wing allow him to be kinda liberal on immigration? On the other hand, a lot of Trumpism is pretending to care about things—enough to enrage the L...

 I’m in a wheelchair with spastic hands, arms, and legs, so I wouldn’t touch a Host or a chalice unless I was compelled to do so. Along with the Magisterium, I place no special burden upon people to do it my way. I will say that if the Host ever did touch my hand, I would lick my hand, to make sure nothing of Jesus ended up on the ground or some other unworthy place. I don’t abide “traditionalist” nonsense that only clerics should touch the sacred species because only their hands are consecrated. By baptism, all the faithful are consecrated and made worthy by Jesus to be there. He could destroy us all, but he wants us there. The priest is consecrated in a unique and permanent way to make the Eucharistic Sacrifice, but the whole liturgy is sacrifice and communion. If extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion remain bothersome, it is because not enough people avoid Communion for reason of grave sin/mortal sin. But that’s a much bigger problem than the “traditionalist” desire to presu...

 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.