"In Front" - Civilisational gridlock explained

Years and years ago, I developed a theory of traffic dynamics based on a single assumption that nearly everyone shares in our society: we must all be "In Front".

It doesn't matter if that means you are simply the first person at the stop light, as long as you are in front of everyone else at the stop light. It also doesn't matter if, once you have become In Front of your immediate opponent you are now Behind the next person in the queue. This should merely spur your efforts to be In Front of those guys. Those guys don't deserve to be In Front any more than all the other people you just passed.

Apply the theory of In Front to all of modern life and you have found the source of most of our misery.



~

Quake-a-versary coming up

I just came across this photo. To my right is Fr. Basil, to my left are a couple of friends. It was taken by some of the news people who were there that morning. It must have been about an hour after the quake.

It was still pretty early in the morning, judging from the position of the shadows, after the Poor Clares had come stumbling out of the rubble and dust cloud, the first time I'd ever seen any of them. One of their older members of the community, still in her fluffy slippers, had to be carried over the piles of rubble.

When we saw them come out the thought came into my mind, "This is it. It's over." We spent a total of about five hours in the piazza, mainly waiting for the firemen to clear enough of the main street so we could walk out. Eventually they brought in a small bulldozer and escorted us out in groups of ten or twenty.



~

How the world ended

Minoan art; all happy and nature-y and dolphins! But then the sea turned out not to be our friend.

Here’s a thought experiment: what do you think would happen if China suddenly found that no one in the West were in a position any longer to buy their export goods? Just not enough money, too much debt. What if the lending institutions, credit card companies and international global financial institutions that hold national and individual debts, were one day to find themselves insolvent and demand immediate repayment? What if they just disappeared? Swallowed, perhaps, by a titanic tsunami hitting the Eastern Seaboard? (We’ve all seen that movie.)

Next, what if enormous numbers of fighting-age single men from a culture accustomed to violence, with sharply divergent assumptions about morality and social responsibility, with no jobs, no money and no family ties, were suddenly imported into countries already suffering chronic economic, social and moral instability after a century of devastating wars? What if this all happened right at the moment when these countries had severely cut back their military budgets? What if at that very moment, global “food security” were suddenly severely tested by ongoing environmental challenges? Drought, in a word.

Would this create some kind of vast instability? Could there be some kind of collapse? There have been a lot of people throwing around terms like “civilisational collapse” and “world war three” lately. But what does it take to actually bring down such an entity? Has it happened in the past?

What if I were to tell you that most of this had already happened in another remote time in history? And that the result was the near-annihilation of a hugely successful, cosmopolitan, multi-national civilization, in many ways like our own?

The opening paragraphs of a ridiculously long piece I finally finished last night for the Remnant. Mike said he's going to put it in the print edition, and then in a couple of months online.




Earlier in November it was ancient history documentary week at Hilaryhouse after a friend of mine with a degree in classics came to stay for a couple of days and, to my great relief, didn't want to talk about Francis or the Church. We had a bang-up time going over the sudden horrifying collapse of the Minoan civilization after the Theran Explosion and all its many far reaching after effects. In brief, a whole island in the Aegean - that just happened to be the major port trading centre of the Minoan empire, like the Hong Kong of the ancient Aegean, more or less just turned instantly to dust and ash and launched into the atmosphere, followed by what they think was one of the biggest tsunamis in human history - killed 80 per cent of their population in half an hour and destroyed nearly all their cities and infrastructure and reduced them from the greatest sea-traders in the ancient world to beggars in the space of a day.



Being a life-long sci fi fan, I've been fascinated with the idea of The Big Collapse. What would we do if suddenly there were no longer available the social framework to support us that we're used to? I was astonished and fascinated to discover that precisely this has already happened, though a very long time ago.


[This guy is kind of annoying, and not-funny, but he does summarize the whole thing pretty well.}

A big part of the Late Bronze Age Collapse, according to the Egyptian and some of the Hittite and Ugaritic records was this group who have been labelled "the Sea People" who came out of nowhere one day like a horde of proto-Vikings and started pillaging the crap out of everybody. It is all tied up with the rise of the New Kingdom in Egypt, the Theran explosion causing 150 years or so of recurring drought in the Nile breadbasket, and the cessation of 100 years of war between the Egyptians and the Hittites - suddenly there was a massive group of young, unattached, unemployed single men who got laid off from the two armies after the wars ended who had nothing to do and decided to go into business for themselves as raiders.

The city states, kingdoms and empires had been weakened by the economic effects of drought and had reduced their military budgets and were left more or less helpless. Chaos followed and as the cities burned behind them, people literally just grabbed the kids and a few goats and tools, and ran for it to the hills where they stayed. What followed was 300 years of the Greek Dark Ages where no one knew about writing or history or music or art. And no one ever went back to those cities again, which were later just buried and forgotten. They had to start all over again.

What I thought was most fascinating was what happened to the Minoans toward the end. They had had their civilization completely decimated. Literally; only about one in ten survived. What was left was a pathetic vestige, and within about 80 years of the tsunami they had been brought very low, losing their whole culture, essentially forgetting who they were and what they were about. The evidence shows that they ultimately started doing child sacrifice and possibly cannibalism - something almost unheard of in the ancient Aegean societies. It was just as they reached this lowest-low that the Sea Peoples showed up - possibly a group of proto-Greeks whose fleet had been sheltered from the wave and ended up being the only sea power left - and put the Minoan survivors mercifully to the sword.

Anyway... You can guess that this article comparing all this to our time has taken much of my attention lately. I finished it and sent it last night after Vespers over a couple of glasses of wine. 3700-odd words and not a single one of them was either "pope" or "Francis".

I'm hoping to make it a trend.

There's a fantastic story about the Valnerina and Norcia and St. Benedict and 700 Syrian hermit monks that needs a wider audience.



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Church of Babel

These nuns live not very far from here and have a business manufacturing and selling herbal remedies that are very popular. "Produtti monastici" is a Thing in Italy, and the Orte nuns sell their products all over the country, including in the shop at our monastery.

I am thinking of going there to make a little weekend retreat soon, and was pleased to find this video to know what sort of liturgy to expect.

But it's a rather depressing video, in many ways. First, there seem to be almost no Italians in the group, that appears to be made up almost entirely of Asian straniere. There is nothing wrong with the solemnity with which they recite the Creed, but... but...

I don't know the liturgy in Italian. Frankly, because no parish in Canada ever uses the Nicene Creed at Mass, I don't really know it in English either. I only know it in Latin. And this is kind of the whole point.

The abandonment of the universal language of the Church has splintered the entire Church into national enclaves. No one belongs any more to the universal Church. We belong to the British Church or the German Church or the Italian Church, and very little crossover is possible.

Now that we have the German bishops and others clamouring for the local national conferences to decide matters of doctrine according to local fashion, the final manifestation of this appears to be ready to launch, and the notion of a Universal Church united by belief will finally be dead. Divide, confuse, scatter, then pick us off one by one.



~

Ride to ruin, and the world's ending!

I just keep coming back to this, for some reason.



~

Thanks for all the help.

...I'm about half way to my hoped-for goal of covering the gas and electric bills.

Total Pageviews
1,000,863 yesterday, up to
1,003,368 today!

Holy hannah! Welcome zillions of Pewsitters!!!

A sincere, no-joke thank you to all who have helped so far.

Things have been a little weird lately, haven't they?

I hope to continue covering the weirdness in an unrestrained fashion over the next month or so, but it would be a lot easier if the Italian national gas and electricity monopolies didn't cut me off.

I quit my day job in May and... well... it's been getting weirder and weirder out there, y'know?

Let's just say that those writers with more... forthright dispositions are finding it difficult to get freelance gigs in what we must now call the "mainstream Catholic media," if you know what I mean.

I do hope to continue reporting/mocking events as we proceed into what will likely be one of the most interesting periods of Catholic history.

But to do so, I could really still use a little help from kind readers.


HJMW



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"There was a blackmail come from who knows where, through SWIFT, exercised on Benedict XVI."

This is starting to not be funny anymore.



Ratzinger non poté “né vendere né comprare”
Ratzinger he could "neither sell nor buy"
Maurizio Blondet

Roughly translated by Google:

"Few know what SWIFT (the acronym stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is: in theory, is a global "clearing house", uniting 10,500 banks in 215 countries. In fact, is the most occult and sole center of American-globalist financial power, a bastion of blackmail on which the hegemony of the dollar, the most powerful means of political and economic espionage (to the detriment especially for us Europeans) and the means by which the most feared global finance breaks the legs of states that do not obey. …

...

"'When a bank or territory is excluded from the system, as it did in the case of the Vatican in the days before the resignation of Benedict XVI in February 2013, all transactions are blocked. Without waiting for the election of Pope Bergoglio, the Swift system has been unlocked the announcement of the resignation of Benedict XVI.

"'There was a blackmail come from who knows where, through SWIFT, exercised on Benedict XVI. The underlying reasons for this story have not been clarified, but it is clear that SWIFT has intervened directly in the management of affairs of the Church.'

"This explains and justifies the unprecedented resignation of Ratzinger, that many of us have been able to exchange for an act of cowardice; the Church was treated as a state 'terrorist', but worse — because note that the dozen banks falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria 'are not excluded from SWIFT' and continue to be able to make international transactions — and the Vatican finances could no longer pay the nunciature, to convey transport missions — in fact, the same ATM of Vatican City had been blocked.

The Church of Benedict could not 'neither sell nor buy'; its own economic life was counted in hours."

~

Guys? Hey guys!

All my friends on FB watching the pope's visit to the US,

this is you:

(Just try to watch that thing without doing the same thing with your eyes, I dare you.)

I felt like snapping my fingers in front of their faces... hello... can you hear me?!

Guys, it's OK. It's OK. If he was bad last week in Rome, he's exactly the same bad today in the US. It's OK.

Go watch cat videos.



~

Italian political fun-fact

Italian political fun-fact: two years ago, under a government that had been forcibly imposed on Italy by the European Union, Italy slashed its defence budget by 40%. Right now, the government admits that this country is able to field no more than 4000 troops.

As a friend of mine in Rome said, the keep is undefended and the gates are open. The Italians probably figured that if they needed military help, they could call their good buddies the Americans. The only difficulty, of course, is that the Obama regime isn't interested in stopping the Islamic invasion they helped to trigger.

This year, the numbers in the final budget are lower than the preliminary budget, indicating the depth of cuts made in the five months between the publication of the two documents as the Italian government seeks to free up funds.

Meanwhile, in other news...

Catholics considering taking seriously the ... ummm... suggestion from Pope Francis to take a Syrian "refugee" into their homes and parishes might want to think about it some more...

In Fiuggi, one hour south of Rome, a Muslim “migrant” youth gang-raped and tried to kill the head of the facility. They tore up and destroyed the migrant “Welcome” facility and beat up other care workers — the people who had cared for them over the past six months.

and...(Google-translated) "migrant reception centres" are starting to turn into "powder kegs" of violence:

No injuries, but the fear was so great. For the time being against the protagonists of the episode of violence they have not been taken. What happened, however, it shows that the reception facilities are powder kegs ready to explode at any moment.

~

Mood: apocalyptic

The Real, in the flesh:

Europe, meanwhile...

Get ready for the ride of your life, boys and girls...



~

So be good, for goodness sake!

Every day I feel more and more like that guy in the apocalypse movie. You know, the kind of movie where everyone is always standing around in groups arguing about stupid stuff while a giant flaming asteroid hurtles out of a clear blue sky muttering to itself, "Gonna kill everything and everyone ... Yessiree-bob, gonna do the thing..."

There's always one guy who walks away from that group of yelling people because he's seen something weird out of the corner of his eye. The camera follows him while he stares upward, crowd of stupid arguers in the background.

Cut to the giant flaming rock, now yelling, "Gonna take em out! Gonna flame all yer microbes! Gonna Peel All Yer Countries! GONNA EAT ALL YER COOKIES!!!

"UHHH... guys?..."

"Guys?!!"

"HEY GUYS!!!"

...

I feel like that guy.





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Not anymore!

~

The fix is in

Everything's fine. Nothing to see here. Move along...

 Gagliarducci reports:

Some well-informed people say that the 2015 Synod will be completely different from any other. First of all, a midterm report will not be released. 

Avoiding the release of a midterm report would mean eliminating any possibility of discussion. The plan is for the Synod to carry out discussions mostly in “small groups” (circuli minores) without a general discussion. In the end, the reports of the small groups would be put in the Pope’s hands, and the Pope would then give a final address. No final report or post-synodal apostolic exhortation is foreseen at the moment, at least according to recent rumors.

In this way the adapters hope to convince the Pope to employ vague language so they can eventually exploit his words.

A little while ago, a friend of mine said that she felt confident that the "good" bishops attending the Synod would win the day in October. After asking her what evidence she has seen to give her that idea, and receiving only vague assurances about the working of the Holy Ghost, I responded that it wouldn't matter whether they did or not, since they had no power. It seems they are to have even less than none now.

The same people are in charge, and they were very unhappy with the outcome their machinations produced last year. Accustomed to operating out of the limelight, I guess. They didn't expect the uproar or the vast public exposure - and censure - their tactics would generate. Well, looks like they've solved that problem. I wouldn't be surprised to see the press conferences cancelled as well. While these things can be controlled, it is just too easy to slip up when there is a big crowd of journalists in the room with you. All they would need would be one member of the staff of the Vatican Press Office to offer a guest pass to the wrong sort of fellow, and all manner of difficulties would be unleashed.

Last year, I urged the bishops who were concerned with the direction things were taking to hold a separate press conference, since the official ones were so tightly controlled. That advice was ignored. I believe there has been a battle going on since October 2014 inside the rib cage of every bishop who retains a shred of the Holy Catholic Faith, between their desire to be good company men and go along and play nice, and their holy desire to defend Christ's Church and His flock.

We will see which side wins; whether they are men or the men-without-chests I have always believed them.

Either way, they clearly have no power to alter the outcome of the Synod. Whether the men coming to Rome in a month discover their long-lost vertebrae, the Synod has obviously been fixed from at least the time of the February 2014 Consistory.



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Eaglefeather Chaput is on the job!

Ok, so I've been kind of not really posting much about this stuff here, but this one is just too damn good not to share.

It looks like that ol' World Meeting of Families is turning out to be the most entertaining fiasco of the year (until... well... October). We've got a stellar line-up of fake Catholics, pro-abort politicians and sodomite activists for y'all, and the "pro-life conservative" archbishop of Philly is on the job!

Following concerns from Catholic lay organisations, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, well known in the US and abroad for his strong conservative and pro-life stands on abortion and family issues, has issued a statement saying that he is shocked that the World Meeting of Families organisers could have so drastically misstepped...

... Oh wait... no...my bad. He's issued a statement telling the whistleblowers to shut up and mind their own damn business...


Woot! Bring me more popcorn!

Does anyone know if there are any plans to picket the Philadelphia thing? Now THAT would be hilarious! "Pro-life" Chaput, who everyone in the US thinks is the great hope of the Church, having a bunch of little old ladies show up with cute baby signs and Rosaries... And then get Eaglefeather Chaput to lead the "Catholics" at the meeting to a counter protest, shouting "Get your Rosaries off my ovaries" ... WHILE. THE. POPE'S. THERE.

Oh man! there just isn't enough popcorn in the whole world!

Church Militant and the Lepanto Institute ... two genuinely pro-life and Catholic lay organisations fighting for... well, for the Catholic Faith... have been asking some awkward questions you see...And your modern churchman, he don't like it much when someone points out that the emperor's naked...

This is the response from Christine Niles, spokesman for Church Militant...

Open letter to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput:

Your Excellency,
Instead of attacking the Lepanto Institute and Church Militant for doing nothing more than reporting the facts, you should be explaining why there are four members on the leadership team of the World Meeting of Families who support abortion and/or gay "marriage."

Please also explain why you then issued the demonstrably false statement that "No one on our leadership team supports abortion or Planned Parenthood." [Oh! Oh! I know! Pick me! Pick me!]

Please also address why Tom Wolf, pro-abort, pro-gay governor of Pennsylvania, was graced with the honor of being named Honorary Co-Chair of the World Meeting of Families — a man who just named a former Planned Parenthood executive to be his chief of staff, and who is the nation's first governor to be a former PP clinic escort, and whom Cecile Richards publicly supported in a video during his re-election campaign.

All of these facts were made known to you privately before they were published, in order to give you the chance to address the scandal and possibly make corrections. You chose to ignore everything, and our good friends at the Lepanto Institute have proof.

But ignoring the scandal and slandering the apostolates that are exposing it will not accomplish any purpose but to cause you to lose credibility — as has already happened with many Catholics who once believed you were a staunch defender of orthodoxy, but whose talk has turned out to be just that — talk.

Do not lecture us about "pro-life unity" or "charity" when you are more than willing to work with (and honor!) businessmen and leaders who support the slaughter of pre-born infants by the millions, and who push gay "marriage," all the while giving these businessmen and leaders publicity and good press so they can continue promoting their anti-Catholic, anti-family agenda.

This is the height of hypocrisy, and your attempt to smear faithful apostolates for doing no more than reporting the truth is pathetic. You once had my respect. No longer.

Looking forward to the scorching Vortex when Pope Francis embraces the pro-aborts...

...Oh wait...



~

Is this what you want?

When asked if they’ve been arranging dates on the apps they’ve been swiping at, all say not one date, but two or three: “You can’t be stuck in one lane … There’s always something better.” “If you had a reservation somewhere and then a table at Per Se opened up, you’d want to go there,” Alex offers.

“Guys view everything as a competition,” he elaborates with his deep, reassuring voice. “Who’s slept with the best, hottest girls?” With these dating apps, he says, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

I was a teenager in the 80s. This was before "apps" or even the internet. It was before one carried a phone around in one's pocket. But it was certainly after it was considered normal to "have sex" with anyone for any reason or no reason. And in my neck of the woods, it was already a decade after everyone stopped even considering marriage to be a real thing anymore. It was already history... ancient and long dead and forgotten history.

But I can't imagine, really, how all this must seem to young women and girls today. I remember feminists in the 70s talking about how men look at women as pieces of meat. But I think those ladies of the early days would not be able to comprehend what their "free sex" revolution hath wrought.

Seriously, is this all you want in life? Really?

Dan and Marty, also Alex’s roommates in a shiny high-rise apartment building near Wall Street, can vouch for that. In fact, they can remember whom Alex has slept with in the past week more readily than he can.

“Brittany, Morgan, Amber,” Marty says, counting on his fingers. “Oh, and the Russian—Ukrainian?”

“Ukrainian,” Alex confirms. “She works at—” He says the name of a high-end art auction house. Asked what these women are like, he shrugs. “I could offer a résumé, but that’s about it … Works at J. Crew; senior at Parsons; junior at Pace; works in finance … ”

“We don’t know what the girls are like,” Marty says.

“And they don’t know us,” says Alex.

...

“I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy,” in order to win them over, “but then they start wanting me to care more … and I just don’t.”

~

What kind of post-apocalypse survivor are you?

Why do I like apocalypse movies...

and books...

and tv shows...

aaaand comics...

anyway...

Why? Because of the challenge. They all ask the same question, What would you do (or how would you do) in a world without all the protections and comforts supplied by this civilization? How would you remake your life out of this context, on your own or with a small group of other survivors? I think the popularity of the genre is a hint that a lot of people are not entirely comfortable with our comforts. Do we feel, somewhere in the back of our minds that we're being set up? That life really just ought not to be so comfortable and easy, (materially speaking, that is... spiritually/emotionally it's really a lot harder than it used to be, but that's another day's rant).

Do we all have a sneaking suspicion, perhaps, that all is not so very secure as our grandparents thought it was going to be? Is there a growing civilisation-wide distrust of this way of life? Is there maybe just a disquiet that we relatively tiny group (1st worlders, white anglo westerners... whatever) are living this way like the aristos of France eating cake all day in our silk frock coats while millions of everyone else are teetering between starvation and uprising? That our coffee-house iPad lifestyle is all about to pop like a soap bubble and the smart people are the ones with the basements full of dried food packs and boxes of batteries?

And in a larger, less personal and material sense, which aspects of (fallen) human nature would come to the fore? Assuming we survived "the Event," would we be the victims or the joiners? Would we be the ones to set up a little distributist hobbit society and try to raise goats and hoard books? Or would we be the ones joining the leather-gang and roaming around the withered landscape stealing gasoline and ammunition? Are we, deep in our souls, the good guys or the bad guys? We are pretty smug about what kind of people we are until there is a serious crisis.

(Why do I like Cracked.com videos of nerdy people talking about pop culture? Another question entirely. Mind your own beeswax.)



~

What to do with the January 2th holiday

I think I've mentioned that my favourite genre of film is Apocalypse. The Bomb, zombies (supernatural and viral), robots, AI super-computers, vampires, pandemic viruses, asteroids, comets, volcanoes, the sudden totally unexplained failure of all plant life (which is as close to an explanation as we got from The Most Depressing Book/Movie Ever Made Road), political dystopias, talking apes, pod-people aliens, tripod aliens, Triffids, long-forgotten buried dormant dragons, total economic collapse due to Evil Capitalists (too numerous to link), sudden ice ages triggered by industrial emissions reducing the salinity of the Gulf Stream (science!!), sudden unexplained plant-sentience (not making that one up, "They're mean, they're green and they're mad as hell..."), titanic reversals of the earth's polarity, titanic reversals of the earth's magma layer, overpopulation, underpopulation, and rampant Terry Gilliam... I love em all.

I direct your time-wasting morbid procrastinating attention to The Apocalypse Index at TV Tropes website...

possibly the only site on the net even more addictive than Facebook.



~

Why not sin?

How if they have called him, unbelieving, and he has come?


I was just doing a thing on a new EU "ethics" document and seeing some more coverage of the Ferguson thing in which a mob attacked a group of school children who had come to a Mall to sing Christmas carols,

and it made me think...

There's a lot of stuff that the western world's remaining shreds of ambient Judeo-Christianity will reliably tell you not to do. Don't randomly kill people as you're walking down the street. Don't cheat little old ladies out of their pensions. Don't trip blind people.

But things are coming to such a pass that even stuff like this, that we more or less depend on everyone knowing to maintain a civilisation that is worthy of the name, kind of has to be spelled out. Yes, including the not-muderously-attacking-random-strangers thing. (Remember last year the news reports of the "knock-out game"?)

For a long time, the Fashionably Stupid People, frequently younger people, have liked to say, "Well, there's more than one kind of morality," and "You can't impose your moral values on me," and "Morality is a malleable concept," and other related irrational and self-refuting rubbish. And we know this was, let's face it, mostly puerile attempts to justify having (their preferred variety of) sex outside of natural marriage, or approving of abortion or divorce as a "right" or whatnot.

Well, we are seeing now, aren't we, all over the place, but especially in Middle Eastern countries that there really is such a thing as a "different morality" from the one we have all taken for granted all our lives. For various reasons, Islamic "morality" doesn't include a concept of a universal moral law. They don't believe that all persons, by virtue of being human, have the same rights. And they don't believe that it is always, inherently, wrong to steal from or attack or lie or kill or rape or enslave other people. There is no such thing in Islamic "morality" as "inherent" right or wrong. This has to do with the monster they worship being above its own laws. The demon "Allah" can change its mind about right and wrong, (thus giving the lie to the insane notion that it is the same as the God of Abraham) therefore there is no universal objective moral law in Islam. In Islam, we have finally seen what moral relativism really turns into: the triumph of the will over all. Might makes right.

We've had a pretty hard time accepting that this is really what we're seeing, because the Judeo-Christian ethic has been so ubiquitous that we have simply assumed that this is how all humans work. The notion that other people, large groups of people, really could have radically different ideas about right and wrong from those we have based our culture on seemed so outlandish that we have wasted precious years, more than a decade now, arguing about how it's not really Islam that says these things, even though the people doing the acts tell us every day, all day that it does.

But I've realised where this denial has come from. If the perpetual adolescents were to admit that it is Islam itself that sanctions and even mandates these acts, they would have to admit that there is such a thing as an immutable, universal moral law from which these acts are a systematic deviation, and that is behind our judgement that the acts in question are wrong, are evil and must be stopped. It would, in short, yank the entire argument out from under their precious Sexual Revolution, and force them to admit its close relationship with the same moral relativism - the same triumph of will - that is currently murdering, raping and enslaving its way across the Islamic world, right now.

They would no longer be the good guys struggling for "rights". They would just be a bunch of kids addicted to a pornographic anti-culture and trying to use the force of law to make everyone else addicted to it too.



~

Never a dull moment

Packed 15 boxes last night. Got all the paperbacks and most of the hardcovers, all the art supplies, nearly all the linen closet, all the CDs and DVDs. Ran out of juice around 11:30. I don't know why putting things in boxes is so exhausting.

Anyway, was tuckered out, so slept in and have spent the morning perusing the daily disasters, and it seems like the Synod has had quite a... well... an invigorating effect on many.

~

Here is Alessandro Gnocchi (in translation from Rorate Caeli), under the headline "Over half of the bishops (in the Synod) have already switched religion..."

We find ourselves confronting a Synod in which the majority of Cardinals and Bishops threw at least three Sacraments overboard: Matrimony, Confession, and the Eucharist. Church history teaches us that schisms have been consumed by much less. The dramatic point is in the fact that there are Bishops and Cardinals who are in substance schismatics in playing out their roles, with no sense of contradiction, in response to the pressure exerted by Bergoglio towards “the new”.

Lots of thoughts on this, of course, but something to keep in mind is that we knew what was going to happen at the Synod. I don't know if we anticipated that it would be quite so ... up front, let's say, but we certainly knew the general parameters. We had known, for instance, that for the most part only those bishops who were known to be in general agreement or who were likely to remain timid, were going to be invited. We also knew well ahead of time that the Synod's organisers were going to be getting up to some shenanigans, because, well, they basically told us. So while we know that the Synod itself was very illustrative of the problems we are facing in the post-Asteroid Church, we must remember that it is representative of a certain trend in the Church and is not the whole story. It is of course a very large trend, one might say the dominant trend, but it must be remembered that there are bishops out there, who were decidedly not invited, who feel quite differently about it.

~

As to that, we have something today which might be even more shocking than the goings-on in the Synod. Is my journalistic spidey sense failing me, or does this look to you like Notpope Benedict (who totally isn't still also the pope no more, not no-how, not no-way becausetherecanbeonlyoneandhetotallyresignedlegitimatelytotallyandcompletelyfreelybecausehesaidso...sothere)

publicly correcting Pope Francis...

"The risen Lord instructed his apostles, and through them his disciples in all ages, to take his word to the ends of the earth and to make disciples of all people," retired Pope Benedict wrote. "'But does that still apply?' many inside and outside the church ask themselves today. 'Is mission still something for today? Would it not be more appropriate to meet in dialogue among religions and serve together the cause of world peace?' The counter-question is: 'Can dialogue substitute for mission?'

"In fact, many today think religions should respect each other and, in their dialogue, become a common force for peace. According to this way of thinking, it is usually taken for granted that different religions are variants of one and the same reality," the retired pope wrote. "The question of truth, that which originally motivated Christians more than any other, is here put inside parentheses. It is assumed that the authentic truth about God is in the last analysis unreachable and that at best one can represent the ineffable with a variety of symbols. This renunciation of truth seems realistic and useful for peace among religions in the world.

"It is nevertheless lethal to faith. In fact, faith loses its binding character and its seriousness, everything is reduced to interchangeable symbols, capable of referring only distantly to the inaccessible mystery of the divine," he wrote.

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Just some stuff to think about when deciding whether it is still worth observing the Church's old fashioned, rigid, unforgiving and judgmental rules about the Friday abstinence...

Anyway, I'm going to go out into the wonderful breezy sunshiny day, and walk on the beach-o before collecting today's batch of 20-odd boxes from the supermarket, and continuing to dismantle my life.

Here's hoping I make it out in time. I can feel the clarion call of the mountains, like the faint ring of hunting horns at the start of boar season. Enough of this warm, festering, louche and languid coastal existence...I'm ready to fight the elements for my dinner. Chop some wood. Maybe shovel the walk, like a real Canadian.



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What was it like to be in the war?

A journalist friend in Canada has just asked me what it was like to be up close and personal during ... recent events...

I respond:

Have you ever been swimming in the sea on a rough weather day?

It's sort of fun, but the waves just keep coming and coming, and some of them really pick you up bodily and toss you around, and sometimes you land in the same spot and it's still fun, but other times, which are totally random, it drops you in a spot where the water's over your head and then you realise it's not fun any more and you might be in a bit of trouble, but you're in the sea to have fun so you start struggling through the waves back to the fun spot because it's supposed to still be fun, but really, it's the sea we're talking about, which isn't actually a theme park ride but the frickin' SEA and it doesn't care at all if you're having fun or if you're fish-food.

It was kind of like that.

Only with more pizza.



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