Safe Haven

Let me start by saying that I generally like celebrities. You'll notice this if you've read this blog for any length of time. I love pop music, TV, movies, sports. In a certain way, I'm the stereotype guy, and I like that about myself. You probably don't know as much about William Jennings Bryan, or military aircraft, or any number of other things, as I do. I like that also. Anyway, I've seen "The View" from time to time. It seems like it's the usual "midday mommy" programming, and that's fine, as far as it goes. You may have noticed that they like to talk politics on there. It's been a while since I watched, but you'll notice this. For the longest time, they only had what you might call stridently liberal views represented. This is TV, after all, and artists in the general sense...well, you know. If I'm honest, Whoopi Goldberg has never bothered me. I like Whoopi. She was on Star Trek: The Next Generation--my favorite show ...

During Lent, the acclamation is, "Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory!" I confess that it takes me a couple of weeks to get it right in my head. I want to say "mercy" every time. Then again, it's the same thing, if you think about it. The fundamental awareness or consciousness of a disciple of Christ is that of being drawn into Him, and into the Father's love. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws Him" and, "After I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself." "In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins." "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation..." "There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus." We could go on. He is Savior and Redeemer in every moment, not only in the high moments. He never stops being willing to die for our sins. This is a great mystery. The truth is that we are Peter, in every denial we are reminded. B...

I'm in my late '30s now. The lot of you have no right to complain about singleness, relative to me. Or that's how it feels most days. Men get like caged animals at times. I don't want to get graphic on you, but there's a part of this longing that's downright primal. Our female counterparts have this, too. It's just more acceptable for men to talk about sexual desire, for a whole slew of reasons. Anyway, it would be no big deal, really, but for the fact that the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, calls us to live holy lives of total purity and chastity. If not for grace, I would frankly laugh hysterically at this entire idea. I don't speak from high in the saddle on some high horse on this one, you deserve to know. Just trust me on this. On the other hand, if I have tasted of the mercy of God in any way, there must be some great glory in celibacy. There is some mystery in chaste life, its difficulty but attainability, that promises total freedom. Every time ...

I'm supposed to be sad, but I'm not. Nor do I exult in my supposed "freedom." I have an interesting take, I hope, one that doesn't get a lot of hearing out, especially not for us men: Suffering and joy can co-exist. Of course we know this. We might know it even better if we're struck by a car, let's say, and spend most of 2017's warm months in a hospital trying to recover. I digress. The point is this, my brothers: it's OK to say that your heart longs and aches for something you don't understand. It's OK to say that you've cried about it. It's more than OK to say--if you want to--that you've dreamed about the day, that you've seen your beloved's face, even if you don't know who she is. It's acceptable to say that you are in some sense incomplete, even knowing that the deepest desire is for union with God. The great mystery, the great truth, is that Contentment is not a great blanket that covers the loneliness and...

I suppose we could get moralistic about it again--and it's not wrong for someone to do it--but I need to be real about another aspect: the pornification of our culture only has been successful because we are in fact sexual beings. Not as some uncomfortable concession that slips out into view when the 12 kids burst forth from the matriarch's long skirt, mind you. Every titan of lechery you could name knows that he's trading in something the vast majority of us desire. And that desire itself is good. It's twisted all over the place, and we could write monstrous tomes about the damage this disordered desire does. If our culture made an icon, well, it would look like the '50 Shades' movie poster. But the first step in desiring the good instead, and the highest goods, is to acknowledge that this counter-appeal has an appeal. There's nothing prudish about most of the people I know, but "Hollywood" aren't aliens from the planet Zaltan; they are us. ...

I think that caring about how policies affect various people, especially people of color, is an important consideration. Even to say "people of color" enrages some people on the Right, as if you've already conceded to some leftist identity politics. All that I will concede and do say is that when  we attain equality before the law, it will be because we have joined our neighbors in overcoming the unique challenges of being non-white in this society. We can't listen to anyone's experience, empathize, and fulfill an obligation in solidarity, if we have decided we don't have to, because they are on--or even sound like they are on--"the Left." If that even sounds like a concession to everything you hate, you might be part of the problem. And to follow up on my last post, and some questions I received privately, you're darn right I take these unjust deportations personally. If I decline to tell you why, just know that this is not an abstract discu...

You need to know that I'm writing angry. My question is, "Why aren't you?" Here's the latest outrage  from the Trump administration. Seems like it may work out, thanks to Congressman Ryan of Ohio. We have but one brief paragraph in the Catechism about immigration. But that part about a "natural right" is key. People have a natural right to seek livelihood and security in another country. That says to me that any juridical actions taken by the US to impose obligations on the immigrant are after they've been a guest here. You don't simply get to say, "Your obligations to the country of arrival are, "Don't come here." Therefore, the conclusion is this: It's an immoral violation of natural rights for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport anyone whose only crime is being an undocumented immigrant. Let's be real here: Most conservative Catholics have made their peace with this. If Tony Esolen or whomever can...

Dr. Bryan Cross, on something that's been bothering me a long time: "Something I wrote in July of 2016 about the rise of the charge of 'virtue-signalling:' What I see in the acceptance of the use of "virtue signaling" as a criticism is something quite dangerous, something that, without an explicit and principled difference provided, just is public judgment and negative deconstruction of the motives of others from the point of view of cynicism. ... [W]ithout additional contravening evidence the [apparently] righteous statements and actions of our neighbors should be taken at face value as sincere, on the principle of charity. But if additional evidence indicates that these righteous statements and actions are only for show, then that evidence (or the discord between that evidence and their 'righteous' words and actions) should be the means of criticizing these statements and actions. That evidence shows the hypocrisy, and makes the public criticism j...

Jason Stellman is that one ex-Reformed guy who started the Drunk Ex-Pastors podcast with his friend Christian Kingery. He apparently had various side-gigs going on, but in true Stellman fashion, decided to write another book called, "Misfit Faith." (I'm too lazy to find and type out the subtitle.) There's a podcast of that same name, too. I must have listened to the first 15 of DXP before poverty struck, to be quite frank about it. So it went on, it changed here or there, and meanwhile, I'm receiving communications privately asking me about Stellman, have I talked to him, et cetera, because the show is making them uncomfortable. Well, OK, that's nice. But I'm literally just a guy who spent one weekend 5 years ago with him, and we've both been "corrupted" by Bryan Cross. Fair enough. Here's absolutely what I do know: I liked him right away. His leftism should have scared me away, but it didn't. We had a big political discussion that ...

This Federer kid has a bright future in tennis. But seriously, here we are again. The 19-time Grand Slam champion has a chance to win another here at the Australian Open. It certainly appears as though he's simply outlasted his rivals, except Rafael Nadal. He deserves to be considered along with Roger as the greatest male tennis player ever. Federer is back in peak form, or so it appears. At 36. Still. Novak Djokovic could scare him, for a time. Nadal always could. But the truly astonishing thing is, I don't think there is anyone left. One of these very young guys has to knock him off the mountain. He could lose here; his next foe, Tomas Berdych, is quite capable. Grigor Dimitrov has the game to beat Federer. Marin Cilic could, too. Bottom line, though: Federer is the favorite. There is a great beauty in Federer's game, after all this time. Even when he's playing poorly, he can cut loose the kind of artful shot that you tell people about, like guys do in bars when t...

7 Rounds, 7 Reactions. These are the reactions of Roger Federer's opponents in a major championship: Round 1: "Holy buckets! I get to play Federer! I'll be telling this story until I'm dead." Round 2: "Holy buckets, it's Roger Federer! Maybe if he plays horribly, I can make history. It's happened!" Round 3: "No matter what, the money's getting good. And if I win, someone's making a movie." Round 4: "Weather the early storm. If I'm not down 2 sets, I have a shot." Round 5: "If I beat him here, maybe I can win the whole thing." Round 6: "I'm not scared. But he's still Roger Federer." Round 7: "Championship Final. Sod it, he's got enough of these already." Djokovic: "They will never love me like they do him. Oh, well. It's my time now." Nadal: "I own him, but it never seems that way." Murray: "He's still here? I'm getting ...

Frankly, I liked what he had to say.  A few of the phrases are indicative of what many on the Right derisively call "identity politics," but they didn't bother me. The president's comment was appalling and indefensible, but we're so used to it now, I probably just wasted my life saying it. I seem like a liberal to many people, because I'm not willing to set aside my revulsion to defeat the Baby-Killers. I think that civility and respect should be a hallmark of politics always. And it may be galling that Barack Obama gets credit for that supposed civility in the face of his heinous policies. But when did Republicans decide that winning took the place of that civility? Is it my fault that I don't agree with that decision? Absolutely, I'd rather lose with honor than win without it. Me just saying that is inspiring many of you to start sentences with, "But..." I don't want to hear it. If you don't agree, or don't understand, there...

In one of the more memorable events during the lengthy career of Starfleet Admiral/Captain James T. Kirk, the USS Enterprise was under the command of Captain Spock, as a training vessel for Starfleet Academy cadets, in the year 2285. In the course of overseeing those exercises, the crew discovers that someone is attempting to interfere with communications between the Enterprise and space station Regula One, in the Mutara sector. The director of the secret project on Regula One had contacted Admiral Kirk about an unusual order regarding control of the project, allegedly issued by him. Unable to establish communication, and after determining that the communication breakdown was the work of a malevolent third party, Starfleet Command orders the Enterprise to investigate, and places Kirk in command. Upon further investigation, it is determined that an old foe, Khan Noonien Singh, had stolen the overseeing vessel, the USS Reliant, marooning her crew on Ceti Alpha V, the place where Kirk had...

One of the reasons why it's not terribly hard to feel joy during a recovery like mine is that you get to spend some time with yourself. You get to imagine what it would be like if you weren't here. There is a great joy in knowing and seeing that you have something utterly unique to bring to the world. There is a goodness in the soul that is Jason Kettinger. I might make all manner of mistakes and sins in the next hour, say, but those aren't the essence of me.  I don't understand death, really, but because I've had a brush with it, I know that death won't change what makes us, well, us. I didn't have any cause to doubt the Church's teaching about our eternal souls, but I have less reason now. I'm not even sure I can explain how I know. I think I understand why most sinners should be able to say that what makes them sinners isn't intrinsically part of who they are, at least who they are supposed to be. It's simply that my worst day as a moral...

I have never believed that it's good to change your mind about big things quickly, or without reason. Even in my Reformed days, I did not leave a church (parish) on a whim, or for a trivial reason. Some people out there seem to think that I suddenly and arbitrarily decided to hate my Reformed heritage, and that I hate and misrepresent it to this day. That's false. The story of becoming Catholic is the story of remaining where I was, knowing what I knew, until the triune God made a way for me to do what he called me to do: seek full communion with the Catholic Church. If you cannot even imagine that the only true God might be calling all people into the Catholic Church, then don't dialogue with real Catholics, because that's what Catholics are supposed to believe. At a minimum, this means that the faith professed by Catholics is the true faith, and that anything distinct from this is in that respect, false. There are gentler, and more open, inviting ways to live this or...

I am a Medicaid customer. I say "customer," for reasons that will become clear. In some sense, I am not what I regarded as the target group for Medicaid: desperately poor people with no health insurance of any kind, and thus, no regular access to health care services. I am participating in Medicaid because Medicare does not pay for personal care assistance, and those costs can get prohibitive for persons with disabilities. That is, choosing between eating and personal care kind of prohibitive. I have been successful in recent days in expanding my income beyond my Social Security Disability Income (Yay for me!) But did you know that we pay for Medicare out of Social Security? Part of every Social Security check has a withholding for Medicare. Medicare is not free. Anything in the way of rhetoric suggesting that Medicare is simply spending by the federal government is false. It amounts to a premium, like any other insurance. Medicaid works in a similar way. There is somethi...

The second chapter in this section is called, "The Virtue of Divine Faith." As we have already seen, the starting point of sacred theology is the fact of God's revelation of himself. If there is to be a relationship between God and man, then man needs a power by which he assents to what has been revealed. At the supernatural level, Feingold says, this power of assent is called divine faith. We are reminded that in Catholic theology, grace builds upon nature, so that the supernatural definition of faith is not wholly unlike that for human faith. Feingold defines faith in general as a “firm assent of the mind to things unseen." He points out that a thing can be seen in two ways: by the senses, and by the mind. First principles are self-evident, says Feingold. These are immediately grasped by the mind as true. Things which can be empirically observed are “seen” by the senses. Thirdly, truths can be seen by the mind that are deduced from a sound process of reaso...

It's been insisted to me many times that I in particular, and those of us at Called To Communion, denigrate Sacred Scripture, or must make it seem opaque, in order to make a case for the Catholic Church and her Magisterium. This is false. The Church herself makes no such case , and as her loyal son, I have no interest in discouraging the reading of the Bible  by anyone. How far back do you want to go? As many people have said before, critiquing Sola Scriptura is critiquing a methodology, not the source of the method. We Catholics understand that Sola Scriptura as a method and a rallying cry is an attempt (even unwittingly) to read the Scriptures against the Church, instead of within the Church. It is beyond my purpose to explain exactly how clear (or not) the Scriptures are, not to mention beyond my ability. I want to reiterate and agree with what Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch have written , echoing also the contribution  of my friend Fred Noltie. I have yet to successfully ...

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the enrollment numbers of the most well-known historically black colleges and universities, because I was trying to explain to a friend what an HBCU was. Not that I really know. Truthfully, it was distressing. If there is any truth to the idea that any society is only as good as its elites, we all are in trouble. In a more general sense, we are imperiled by the fact that the American elite believes the wrong things about humanity and our purpose. More specific to this point, if the black experience is marred by a power imbalance with the wider white monoculture, then a contest between the elites--or at least a dialogue--needs to occur. If this black elite is too small, then it can't get enough power to make a difference in black life more generally. I honestly thought these centers of black expertise were bigger than they are. Please remind me not to take any notions of "reverse racism" seriously for the rest of my life. On the other...

But I mentioned to Johnny Irish the other week that I didn't think I'd actually heard Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys all the way through. Well, we know what's going to happen. I listened to it at least 4 times yesterday. [Bet I know which song is your favorite. Besides "God Only Knows". That doesn't count.--ed.] Alright, what's my favorite song? ["Caroline, No".--ed.] Dangit, right! [You're so utterly predictable.--ed.] Can't argue with that. Maybe George Capps is right: You can't be a huge pop star and not be a ruin. I don't know how much responsibility we can take for the whole thing, but I'm sure we have some. This Cranberries album I have on is amazing. I hope everyone in the band is happy, healthy, and going to Mass regularly. I am pretty sure I could listen to this woman sing for a year straight, and not tire of it. It's actually too bad I was 13 when this was big. It's hard to appreciate anything when you are ...