Safe Haven

 Right now, the Republican Party can only win an election when it actively prevents large numbers of eligible people from casting their votes in a free and fair election. They have arrived at a point where they must actively make it more difficult for most citizens to vote easily and quickly. If any election has high turnout, they lose. If any election has high numbers of racial minorities, they lose. If the Democrats are competitive with white men, the GOP loses. Why would I support anything or anyone whose path to power is non-democracy? It becomes irrelevant, all my vociferous and numerous disagreements with the Democratic Party, because at least they are committed to the basic outline of representative government. That's why I have not hesitated to use the word "fascist" in reference to the Republican Party under Donald Trump: they are no longer engaged in the task of persuading anything close to a majority of the rightness of their policies. It may well be that after...

 I wanted to say, "We've got everything from snake handlers, to people denying the Trinity, and everybody says, "the Bible clearly teaches". So you'll have to forgive me, if I'm not impressed with your naïve biblicism, brother." It might have been better if I said that. On the other hand still, upon reflection, I'm probably as much the reason why some people aren't where Jesus truly wants them to be. It's probably still worth asking yourself, "How do I know what I think I know? Do I have the courage to examine the basis for those beliefs?" Most especially those to do with Jesus. He is still asking, "Who do you say that I am?" And getting that answer right is a beginning--a great beginning--but only a beginning.

 The Dodgers made the World Series last night. My father loved the Dodgers. The last time they won the whole thing in 1988, my father was still here. The Dodgers are not my favorite team, but nevertheless, I am unable to be objective in any sense about the Dodgers. I have a recording of Vin Scully leading others in "the prayers" (let the reader understand) and I thought it would be nice to say them myself along with him, and whomever was in that group. As it went along, I had greater and greater difficulty controlling my emotions. The heart of the Christian story is resurrection, and our hope of resurrection with Christ in glory. In my mind, I actually had a brief conversation with Tommy Lasorda. I heard him only half jokingly say once that God was a Dodgers fan, and it's pretty difficult to get into heaven if you're not. And I heard myself say, "Well, they're not my favorite, but they are special to me. And Dad was still here when you won it the last time....

 I was hanging out in John 2 the other day. This title is what Mary said to Jesus, when she discovered they were out of wine. Jesus's response is kind of cryptic, but we can say humorously that no self-respecting son can say no to his mother, at least within the bounds of propriety. It's worth saying that Jesus was thinking of His mission as a whole, and how miracles would fit or not fit within it. Perhaps he even knew that doing this miracle would start the clock in a sense, for his opposition, which will lead to his death. As I meditated upon all this, it came to me in this way: "they have no joy". I could see in my mind many people I know who were on the ragged edge of life, especially in these days. Wine is a symbol of abundance and joy in the Scriptures. I needed therefore to ask for the joy of the Holy Spirit, and to ask God to make me a conduit for the joy of the Holy Spirit to others. It is even more important to say that the joy of the Holy Spirit has nothing...

I guess I'll tell you my gripes with Crisis magazine: the whole thing sounds like a Rod Dreher fever dream. You would think that armies of drag queens were kidnapping children to take them to the infamous Story Hour, in some kind of right-wing dystopian novel that is the reverse of The Handmaid's Tale. Come on, man. In other news, I would like to congratulate the Democrats, on seemingly finding some semblance of an economic message. You know, I'm old enough to remember when they actually were the party of the working class; it seemed like there for a while, they were the party of debt-ridden upper-class English majors, complaining because their slice of the pie lacks cherry sauce. [Wait, aren't they still those people?--ed.] Too soon. Anyway, I am what they used to call a "social conservative". And to be clear, I am not a social conservative for the sake of winning an election; I really believe and try to do the things that I say in this regard. Someone, howev...

 I was praying with the Scriptures yesterday, and I'm going to tell you something that hasn't even made it in my prayer journal yet. But I was hanging out with John, in the first chapter of his Gospel. I started from the top, figuring that God and I would talk about something majestic in the prologue. There's a lot in there; it stands to reason that you could spend some time meditating on anything in there. But no, the Holy Spirit didn't want to talk about the prologue. I kept reading, and then I came to this: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" John the Baptist sees Jesus here, and points Him out to his own disciples. It's often right to understand that "behold" in the Scriptures as something like we would say, "Look!" This stopped me in my tracks this time, because Jesus was saying, "Don't you understand? I am still for you." Christ walking around, Christ healing people, Christ teaching his dis...

 John le Carre is becoming one of my favorite authors. His character George Smiley--memorably portrayed by Sir Alec Guinness in two celebrated miniseries for the BBC--is supposed to be a more realistic version of a British spy, in contrast to Ian Fleming's James Bond. Sir Oliver Lacon is an assistant to the Cabinet minister in charge of national intelligence. Lacon is the bureaucrat no one in the intelligence service likes, because his job is to keep an eye on especially domestic political implications of intelligence. He usually limits what the pros want to do, for some political consideration. He's amiable, but unprincipled, and ambitious. I think what le Carre loves to do is have his protagonists wrestle between their idealism, their patriotism, and pragmatism. Tonight, I fell asleep in Lacon's living room, so to speak. When I woke up, everyone was still in Sir Oliver's living room! I love these Cold War stories. My sympathy for the West is undimmed, despite my ambiv...

 The papal encyclical, "Fratelli tutti", or, "On the Fraternity and Social Friendship," was promulgated today, and may be accessed here . I'll read it completely, before offering any comments.

 It just came into my mind: "I hate adulterers." And then I caught myself, because I know that I don't actually hate adulterers; I hate adultery. I have a visceral reaction, partly because I recognize the little adulteries I have committed in my own heart. They won't make the national news, more than likely. If I'm exceedingly fortunate, no one will ever know the details of any of it, except for some clergy, sworn to secrecy until they are dead. I also recognize that I'm passionate about this, because adultery is one of the things which causes divorce. I am a childhood victim of divorce, and so I generally hate everything that causes people to divorce. If "childhood victim" sounds like too strong a word, I might dare suggest that you have not considered the gravity of divorce, and the chaos it causes. I could grant for the sake of argument that it might be sometimes necessary, but my version of "necessary" and the version of "necessary...

 I'll cut right to the chase: Joe Biden is going to win this thing pretty easily. It could be what they call in layman's terms a landslide. None of the political press is going to tell you that the president of the United States is going to get crushed in an election. That doesn't make headlines, except maybe after the fact. I said on Twitter in March, "It's not whether Biden is going to win, but by how much." Here's what I see: there are swing states everywhere, which would be fine, but for the fact that they're in the wrong places. That is, the president should not be fighting for so-called "red states". North Carolina is always decently close, but a Republican in decent position for re-election shouldn't have to worry about it. Texas is one of the most Republican states in the country. It's the "new" home base of the Republican political dynasty, the Bush family. No Republican president should have to fight for Texas. Geo...

 Here's what I believe about judicial appointments: I believe that the President of the United States has the authority and the duty to nominate whomever he or she chooses for these offices. (This goes for Cabinet appointments, and other offices, as well.) I do not understand "advise and consent" to mean that a sitting US Senator cannot oppose a presidential nomination to some office, but I personally believe that ignoring a nomination for long periods, that is, to refuse to bring a nomination to the floor for a vote, is a failure of constitutional duty. If I believe that a particular nominee is unsuitable in either temperament, policy preferences, or lacking a basic sense of justice, I should have the courage to vote "no". I think a reasonable time for debate between the Senators about political or policy matters that may be germane is appropriate, but not necessarily while the nominee is giving testimony. The one thing the American people do not need or want i...

 That being said, it's foolish to pursue a confirmation right now. Progressives are usually always alarmed by Republican judicial nominations. If these lame ducks and losers force her through at the behest of a president regarded justly as lawless and authoritarian in the span of 45 days, the country may not survive. I can understand the desire to try. Trump is overwhelmingly likely to lose. They know it. If you can get a Justice you like on the Supreme Court before the clock strikes midnight, as it were, it makes sense. Romney, Collins, and Murkowski signalling an unwillingness to go along with it confirms this. If Trump were powerful, they wouldn't. None of these three will pay a penalty for opposing Trump, though Collins will lose because she voted to confirm Kavanaugh.  It's the perfect nightmare for a Republican Senator: All the chaos of a Trumpian circus, added to a nomination fight, with no discernible electoral benefit. I hate it when that happens. Barrett in the ab...

I remember spending hours learning cursive in primary school. Here it is. I write slowly, and my hand gets tired pretty easily, but you'd be able to read it. Does anybody remember when Calpurnia was teaching Scout to write? That's how it was for me. Yeah, they should be teaching cursive in the schools. We had handwriting class in the first grade. I get compliments on my handwriting, actually, which is deeply ironic, as a disabled person who does his best not to write anything by hand. Once you learn, it's in there. You know, the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, had terrible handwriting. Maybe we should check the handwriting of serial killers. Although I don't know how kind it is to tell kids, "You can write better than that! Do you want to be a serial killer?" Speaking of Ted Kaczynski, there's a fascinating documentary about him on Netflix right now: "Unabomber: In His Own Words". I wasn't really paying much attention as a teenager, when they caug...

 This is the full text of a NY Magazine piece entitled “National Review Has Elevated Anti-Anti-Trumpism To An Art Form”: Four years ago, National Review famously published an issue headlined “Against Trump,” declaring, “If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives?” NR stopped asking the question once the hypothetical became a reality. Its emphasis has turned to anti-anti-Trumpism. Most of the magazine’s writers are too embarrassed to defend Trump’s behavior outright. Instead, they focus on the foibles of his opponents, making the case for Trump indirectly. Kyle Smith’s cover story on Joe Biden is a classic of the anti-anti-Trump genre. The main theme of the story is a fairly rote recitation of the reasons conservative Republicans disapprove of the Democratic nominee. Obviously, people committed to shrinking the welfare state, shrinking regulations, and so on would...

  Read the whole thing . Pay special attention to paragraph 34. I am happy to continue arguing with Biden and Harris about abortion and related issues after the election. Until then, I oppose fascism and its enablers. Efforts to de-legitimize the election result itself --both rhetorically and otherwise--demand a swift response from all people of goodwill. Other reports of forced hysterectomies add to the list of degradations by this administration. If we are still a representative democracy in 2021, we will be blessed and fortunate.

 Let me say it this way: It is comparatively "easier" to lament hardship, death, and moral evil in the hearing of a sovereign God, than it is to believe He is benevolent, but not sovereign. Do you realize that passages of Scripture and the witness of history are troubling precisely because  God is confessed as Almighty? What's the point of crying out in anguish to a God who can't do anything? What is "faith", in a Friend who is kind, but feckless? In all this, we must understand that an account of evil, and its relationship to freedom is crucial. I might do a lot of wailing and crying, because the sovereign God allows truly heinous, unimaginable things. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I might even dare to say--Heaven forbid!--that I think God is doing a terrible job. I won't ever say He's not there, or that He's been somehow surprised. Job never got the true answer to his questions. If you read that book of Job, you'll see that. Job is ne...

 If you've been a Christian, and you've gone to the same church for any length of time, you'll probably meet some missionaries. Mission work is a big deal, and rightly so. We love that "Go, therefore,…" at the end of Matthew's Gospel. Again, this is rightly so. But don't forget what Jesus says right before that: "All power in heaven, and on earth has been given to me." It is interesting that he does not say, "to you". What this means plainly is that anyone who shares the good news of Jesus does so in the power of Jesus. St. Paul gets pretty worked up about immorality in Corinth, and he says, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" Leaving aside the immorality for a moment, this is one of those, "Do you realize what this is saying?!?" moments of the Bible. We ourselves are temples. The adoration of Almighty God is taking place within us! There is a mystery here, but this is why Jesus told u...

 I know the blog has been a little fallow lately, but I haven't been in the frame of mind to say anything that I felt like sharing. I'm happy for the money--such as it is--that the ads on the blog slowly and surely accumulate, and which will one day be paid, but I never wanted to treat this blog like work or a chore that I was doing. And trust me, if I published every time I was in a mood, I'm pretty sure I would redefine "pariah". Anyway, you hear all the time that processed foods are bad. It's absolutely true that there are many milligrams of sodium in anything we call "processed". Presumably, large amounts of sodium is added as a preservative, in order to increase the shelf life of certain foods. There are large portions of the so-called "clean food" movement that represent nothing more than a transmuted desire for ritual purity, long since abandoned in religious practice. That said, if you pressed me, I would probably eat less sodium if...

 I'm going to refer my Catholic readers first of all to CCC, 2406 as the ethical basis for this idea. I did some digging to find out just what the capital gains tax rates were. To say that what I found surprised me is a bit of an understatement. Here's your summary moral judgment: the rates are too low, and the thresholds are too high. I am not certain that a Christian society would entertain any sort of economic instrument whereupon people could make money for doing nothing, but let us suppose that we can tolerate the stock market as it is, for the sake of argument. Capital gains are profits or dividends, if you like, from stocks and similar products. In the United States right now, capital gains are taxed at three rates: zero, 15%, and 20%. I will leave the policy wonks to handle single versus married, in these calculations. But my idea is to have four tax brackets for capital gains: zero, 15%, 35%, and 70%. The zero bracket ought to go from zero-$30,000. (If we want to give...

 I spend a lot of time with St. John and his Gospel in general, but I read a line yesterday that got me thinking. "The law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." John is not denigrating the law or Moses; rather, he is recognizing the superiority of Jesus and what he brings. The law, the prophets, and the sacrifices testified that something was still wrong. God is the lawgiver, but unless He gives the power for us to truly fulfill what He desires, we'll be simply chasing our tails, ever-desiring to be better, and to be happy, with no way to get there. Without grace, all of this is just a hopeless, do-it-yourself, exhausting morality play. This is why St. Paul says, "we who are Jews by birth, and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is not justified by works of the law…" but by faith in Christ. He is not trying to create an opposition between Jews and everyone else, but exactly the opposite: it is now the time in the story when all people ...