Geee!

I seem to have passed tho 20,000 hits mark. 

Fascist Street Violence

I get a little frustrated when I hear liberals and leftists talk about how fascist the TEA Party movement is.  I haven't seen it call for the silencing of other view points, or rely on mass demonstrations and street actions to inhibit the legislative process--only the left does that.

And all you have to do is remember the street violence in 2000, 20004, and 2008, all of it on the part of leftists and anarchists, to see that they rely on that, when they can't get votes.  The violence comes from various segments of the left--from Gay Rights people to Unions.  This violence is meanto intimidate others into silence or acquiescence to an agenda that they actually reject.

It's still going on.  In Washington state, journalist and photographer Tony Overman was assaulted last year, with his face and camera being spray ainted to keep him from taking photos of leftist thugs committing crimes.

This week the Olympian, a news papaer in Washington State was vandalized.  Acid was thrown on the building an one of their trucks was spray painted with the phrase "Overman Snitch".  Mr. Overman's home was also vandalized, with an Anrachist Symbol painted on his garage door, his tires slashed, and the word snitch painted on his pick up truck.

The SA--the Nazi Storm Troopers--used to do stuff like this to silence opponents too.  Even the painting of their symbol on peoples homes and businesses.

But our leftist dominated press won't really report this--no more than they reported Illegal Immigrants attacking a police station carrying mexican and communist flags with pictures of Che Guevara on them.

We are the frog in the gradually heating pot--and soon it will boil.  Take a look around, and the American Fascists--from the left, as were the original fascists--will stand out, if you have the guts to see. 

Guest Blogger!

HI!  I'm Father Skippy McPhreak of the Sofia, Divine Mother of Wisdom Kathlyk Community!  I would like to thank, first off, Ignorant Redneck for allowing us Equal Time and Equal Access to his Blog to communicate our message to the conservative and traditional peoples who read his Blog.  He was resistant at first  (well for two years actually) but finally managed to reach an state of intellectual enlightenment that allowed him to see that you, the readers, could profit form seeing our point of view after a marathon dialog with Bettina and Belyntha Sleazanslink, out Outreach ministers to Traditional and Conservative Catholics.  (Thanks you two,and don't worry, the Means Commission of our Community has decided to reimburse you for the bottle of Glenlivet, two cases of Sam Adams, five pounds of Elk Jerky and the Deep Fried Gourmet Mushrooms from the Moondog Consortium.  And the VA (God Bless President For Life Obama!) is paying for the ambulance and the stomach pump.)  At any rate, he gave us the password and now you too, can experience not going to, but being Church.

We are a "Start up" Kathlyk Community, and our Mission Statement is simply "To spread the Gospel of Radical Inclusion and Total Acceptance of Love Inherent in the Redeemers message as shown by the the Redeemers Relationship with the Beloved Disciple and the Womyn with the Alabaster Jar."  We are so Firmly based in Scripture and Tradition, as restored by the Spirit of Vatican Two and the Historical-Critical Method of Scriptural Exegesis!   OMG! Without John Shelby Sprong--who I'm sure will be declared a saint--we would never be able to do this!  As a new Community our first public liturgical Action will be to celebrate a Newcharist (After All, All things were made new in the Spirit of Vatican Two--the old has been swept away!) on the Solemnity of the Pentecost.  This is seen as very very appropriate, as it was the Action of the Holy Spirit which convinced Episcoposa Negina Ricolosi, of the FreeKathlyk Womyn Presbyterial Society to ordain me, a biological male, to the priesthood on behalf of the faithful of the Upland Gay Men's Chorus and Drag Society.  Cardinal Bernadin would have been so proud, and I'm sure he was there is spirit!  I mean, the Lady on TV who is psychic told me so!

As a New Community, we do not have a permanent home, but were able to convince the management of the Frustic Rog Gentleman's Club to rent us the top floor on Sunday morning.  (Can you believe the triumphalist, paternalistic laws in Indiana that don't let people got to Bars on Sunday?  But if they serve food, it's all OK, as if showing solidarity with our Emerging World Brethren by not eating, and drinking no water in protest of the Global commercialization of water were a character flaw!)  (Thanks Bettina and Belyntha!  And I'm so happy you made so much in tips--don't worry about the Internet pics, there are so many they'll get lost in the volume!  Mine did!)  I especially want to thank those five wonderful and artistic ecdysiasts who volunteered to supplent the liturgical dancers from the Uplands Gay Men's Chorus and Drag Society--you will add so much to the aesthetic of our entry procession!  Not that the Gurrls of the Drag Society are Displeasing, but in recognition of the Special Aesthetic of our sisters who uphold the Special Bond between sisters!

Our liturgy is designed to be meaningful and to engage the full participation of everyone present.  We will have an entry procession to the timeless tune "Burning Down the House", selected by our Liturgical Commission for it's clear statement of our communities implicit mission to radically restructure and re-image the Church, a classic song by the inimitable Talking Heads.  We will process in led by Liturgical Dancers from the Drag Society (you go, Gurrls!) doing a a special dance with choreography designed to evoke the tongues of fire.  (And a shout out to Indigo Organic Landscape Services for the loan of their propane weed burners!) and thurifers (Again thanks to the ecdyiasists from the Frustic Rog!) wielding special, blown glass thuribles from Artistic Glass and Novelties.  Here I need to thank those incredible hydroponic gardeners from 420 Farms for their special incense which they donated! (Bettina and Belythna, you two are a Special Blessing!  And the public health nurse (God Bless president for Life Obama!) has assured us that the infections are treatable.)

We have developed a special Penitential Rite for this liturgy, in which the outmoded, medieval and power over refrain of "Kyrie Elieson" has been replaced by the much more apropos "We have Evolved".  After all, "mercy" implies wrong doing, when really, it's a case of  wrong thinking and exclusionary, normative judgments, which we can all evolve away from.

The liturgy of the word should be a special treat, because the Community Commission for Scripture and Truth has decided to depart from the imposed, authoritarian Lectionary and use instead, for the First Reading, paragraphs 1-5 of Chapter 1, " The Commodity", of the Second Book of Marx, Das Capital, thus avoiding the patriarchal, war mongering and inhumanly legalistic anti-love texts of the that musty old book! 

Our responsorial will be  "Eve of Destruction", a classic and inspired tune written by PF Sloan and performed by Barry McGuire.  Yet as an inclusive body we wish to show respect for Tradition, so it has been re-set to Taize Chant modes by our guest vocal group,  Sister Sappho Sublime to accompaniment by the quartet Blatherskite--Tribal Drum, Accordion. Didgeridoo and Theremin--in the style of Palestrina. 

The second reading will be all of Chapter 6 of Dreaming the Dark--"Building Community: Processes for Groups", from the inspired and infallible books of the prophetess Starhawk, a much surer guide for the relevant, modern community than the sexist, xenophobic ranting of a disturbed Semitic misfit!

Our song for the Gospel procession will be "Takin' it to the Streets" and instead of the tired and encrusted old musty pablum of a discredited and corrupted patriarchal, homophobic, triumphalist book. we shall read the ENTIRE 2008 Democratic party platform document.  It's so much more relevant and Christian.

The Homily will be delivered by Danielle Diesel-Deva, entitled " Receiving Spirit--the Essential Femininity of Receptivity as a Path of Empowerment in Opposition to Patriarchal Phobias of Differently Anything Persons through Ero-Bonding of Whole communities."

For the offertory we shall offer up bread made from 100% organic, gluten free, vegan certified halal and Kosher compliant rice flour, and since so many of us are the walking wounded of spiritual abuse at the hands of authoritarian posers, we will use kombuchu and mushroom tea for the cup.  (Thanks Moondog, for your generous gift of those lovely purple/blue mushrooms!)

We invite everyone to join in the recitation of the prayer of the Great Thanksgiving for our Enlightened Existence, which has been composed especially for this occasion from such diverse sources as the Tao Te King, Winnie the Poo, Mein Kampf, Penthouse Letters and The Bulletin of  Atomic Scientists.  It ought to please everyone!  And especially we hope you will join in reciting the words of Consecration:  "We're going to eat this stuff, we don't know why, but we're doing it, so there!  And there's 'Shrooms in the tea so Drink Deep!"

After our Liturgical Action we certainly hope that you will join us for a community bread breaking of wild-crafted sorrel salad, whole grain porridge, organic fruit puree and Sister Merry Dissipation's Tofu/Seitan/Purple Mushroom stir fry.


I know that many of I.R.'s readers are veterans, and the Gurrls of the Drag Society have asked me to extend a special invite to all of you because they are very interested in your experiences, and ....things.  And the Vocalists of  Sister Sappho Sublime are anxious to meet women who haven't aborted their children, to figure out what's wrong with them.  it should be great fun, but do remember that Bettina and Belythna have only been on Cipro and Keflex for a few days--barriers are bad between persons, but good between body parts..

Oh--the Allopathic exploiters of peoples fears say I.R. should be OK by tomorrow, just a little hoarse from the tube for the pump.

Spoken Bluntly, and Not Without Anger

You may recall that I wrote a rant on the 4th of May called "Sometimes I Would Really like to Spanks Some American Bishops--Hard".  The subject of this rant was the attitude of the Church in the United States towards it's own members who are working class and working poor.  You may also remember that I sent copies of it to Archbishop Kurtz of Louisville, and Auxiliary Bishop Coyne of Indianapolis.  (I sent it to the auxiliary because of Archbishop Buechleins health problems.)

Time has passed, and now I'm going to speak of this again.

Archbishop Kurtz read my cover letter, and my rant, and sent me a response.  In his response he thanked me for my concern for human dignity, told me he would speak with the renew people "about the way some of the suggestions for action were worded in the leaders manual."  He also took me--gently I must say-- to task for the tone of my rant.  As he is my Shepherd, I felt I should give due considerations to his words.  I have, and now I'm going to say my words.

My rant was tactless.  Deliberately tactless, because when I have spoken tactfully, I have been ignored or shunted aside as irrelevant.  In the words of the late Fr. Earnest Waechter, OFM Conv, "Sometimes you have to say shit, when you have a mouthful of it."   I am disturbed that plain speaking, in keeping with the practices of my social class were characterized as lacking in Charity.  In fact, I reject this on the basis of  language and logic.  Charity is the English word we use for, and is derived from, the Latin word Caritas, which is the word used as the equivalent of Agape.  The definition of Agape is "The disinterested desire for the greatest good of another."  No where in this definition is there a mention of tact.

Charity in English also includes what can be called "Alms Deeds".  The word "alms" is a derivation and linguistic corruption of the Greek word elenmoysyne, which means "mercy".  Charity as a concrete action is succinctly defined by the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.    Two of the Spiritual Works of Mercy are to instruct the ignorant, and to admonish sinners.  I felt, and feel, that the Bishops are not really aware of how the working class and working poor perceive their position in the Church, or how they can feel marginalized by Parish Programs and activities.  Nor do I think they have thought this through vis a vis our doctrinal insistence on a Preferential Option for the Poor.

This option isn't new, it's explicit in the Scriptures.  In James, chapter 2, verses 1-4, James describes the sin of partiality, where the wealthy and richly attired are give preferential treatment to the impecunious in worn, common clothing.  Unfortunately, Archbishop Kurtz didn't mention my remarks on the exclusion of the less well off from parish life, religious education and retreats by the expense of them.  This sort of exclusion is in many ways what James was talking about.  And the Archbishop didn't mention this at all.


While Archbishop Kurtz didn't directly address my concerns about some of the activities of the USCCB-notably the Campaign for Human Development and the First Fridays for food security, he did write about solidarity as a Christian duty.  I cannot object to this, as it is, and is explained and enumerated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers 1939-1942.  I must again wonder though about the First Fridays for Food Security and actual solidarity.  I would be easier with it if it included more than an admonition to eat cheap on Friday--which is a good thing, related to abstinence--and tied it to the traditional Devotion to the Sacred Heart.  (BTW--Did you know that June is a month for the Sacred Heart, as May is for the Blessed Virgin?)  I would be even more impressed if it was also tied to something concrete--solid, if you will.  Like perhaps donating the money saved to the poor box, or volunteering at a soup kitchen.  Perhaps even simply eating there as well, as a matter of course?   Sitting around the dinner table congratulating yourself on your "solidarity" with the poor might not be solidarity at all.  As to doing something that occludes a popular devotion to Christ, we should perhaps bear in mind his words "The poor you will always have with you,but you will not always have me" (Matt. 26:11), voiced in response to a complaint abut devotion to him, instead of alms to the poor.  Now, more than ever, we need to be Christocentric, devoted to the Lord, lest our concern for the poor and indigent devolve into mere politics.

I cannot assert that my experience as a Catholic is universal, but it is mine, and the only one I have.  I cannot assert that I am a sociologist, or a theologian, because I am not.  But I can share my observations, and say with confidence that this is what I have seen.  And I have seen, since 1975 when I joined the Church, a preference for the wealthy, among the laity and the clergy.  I have seen that students in Catholic Schools who receive tuition assistance are treated differently by faculty and other students, who always seem to know.  I saw that when I was in Catholic School, and my children have spoken about it when happening when they were in Catholic School, to the point that some of the poor kids experienced something akin to social ostracism.  I have seen it in those who end up on parish councils, whether elected or appointed.  I have seen it in those who are asked to help in various ways, or who serve as lectors and EEMs.  Partiality is part of the experience of the Church for the lower working class, and the working poor.  It's also true that the Church in Latin America is losing members, to either atheistic political movements, or to evangelical and charismatic ecclesial bodies.   It's not lost on me that the members gravitating to these ecclesial bodies are devout, and poor.  The Church is often identified with the propertied and wealthy class.  In the US too, we are shedding members.  And here too, I have seen deeply religious people from the less affluent segments of our society leave for evangelical or charismatic bodies.  One can argue that this is because they are, in their hearts either not Catholic or ignorant of the faith.  To this I reply--many of us can't afford to take religious education classes, or to purchase sound materials to study on our own.  Couple this with attitudes among the faithful and the clergy that range from neglect and a sort of benign ignoring to condescension and you can see why they leave.  I must here take pain to say I do not think they are right to leave, but that I understand why.  Especially sense some of these people are members of my own family.

If one couples this with the neglect of rural areas and Catholics in many areas, and considers that according to the GAO, rural Americans earn less and are more likely to be below the official poverty line, per capita, than urban and suburban Americans and a disturbing picture emerges.  When one considers the fact that in the areas of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis that I am familiar with, it is rural and poor parishes that are left without priests, or closed, the picture looks even more disturbing.   Finally when I consider the number of inner city parishes, even here in the Louisville Metro that have closed I see a pattern of abandoning the poor to the depredations of error, inadequate access to the sacraments and an infliction of partiality.  After all, when you close the old urban parishes in favor of suburban parishes, not only so you send a message that you are no longer interested in evangelizing the impecunious,  but that you are indifferent to inflicting hardship on those in the area who are Catholic.  If you're broke, elderly and on a fixed income, or do not drive, trying to make it to mass becomes a true burden, especially in inclement weather.   That my friends, is the show of solidarity I have experienced from the Church.

I mentioned the Spiritual Works of mercy above.  Two of them in fact, Instructing the Ignorant, and Admonishing the Sinner.  I have been trying to do the former, and this is the latter.  This tendency towards partiality is a sin, and one that is as potentially destructive of the Hope of Salvation for many as the sexual abuse scandal with it's attendant secrecy and enabling.  Our priests, bishops and lay leaders need to address this, because it is costing many their access to the Sanctifying Grace of the Sacraments, their trust in the Church, and their belief in their own dignity.

So what does this mean to those of use who sit in the pew, whose job seems to be to pay pray and obey?  Well,we can do those three things in earnest.  We can put money in the poor box.  We can obey our lord and deal with those who are less well off than us, and protect their dignity in simple, direct ways.  First Fridays for Food Security?  Why not invite someone you know, or know of, who has problems affording decent food to dinner on First Fridays, and invite them as well to your household devotion to the Sacred Heart.  Can't afford to feed someone because you're barely doing it for you and yours?  Then use the First Friday Devotion to pray for them.  Neglected populations,or people who through economic reason have great difficulty in attending mass--whether from the local public transit being inadequate or needing to save the gas for work?  Give 'em a ride on Sunday.  To quote one of those left wing bumper stickers that hold an unfortunate amount of truth--If the people will lead, maybe the leaders will follow.  Heck, where I grew up , we had a group of men called "The Silent Men"; they were great drinkers of beer.  They centered on one tavern, and when they ordered a beer they paid for two.  The Barman, who was the only one who knew who they were, put the second price into a jar.  When people in the township were doing without, word got to the barman, and bags of groceries, or coats or shoes for the kids, ended up on their front porch, anonymously, from the Silent Men.  Those Protestant--and they were Protestants, and lapsed ones at that!--men were better Catholics than me, for sure!  So perhaps you could do something like that.

So this is my response to Archbishop Kurtz's response, to my rant.  I haven't responded to Auxiliary Bishop Coyne, simply because he has apparently ignored my letter.  I guess that more or less demonstrates my point--contemporary American Catholicism will bend over backwards on issues of social justice, yet ignore those it treats unjustly, and in contravention of  James 2:1-4.  I assure you, that in my experience, if I had been a major contributor I would have received a response, perhaps even an invitation to dinner to discuss this matter.

To wrap this up, I will leave you with a couple of quotes, and a disclaimer:

Until you have suffered from the Church, you have not suffered with Christ--I don't know who said this.
We have had enough of exhortations to be silent, let 10,000 voices be heard!--St. Catharine of Sienna.

And the disclaimer:  One of the three reasons I love my parish, along with a high liturgical standard and always receiving sound teaching in the homilies is that it is the only parish in which I have not experienced or seen condescension or marginalization of person on the basis of wealth.  I love my parish, and it would be worth moving across the state just to be able to attend it, although that wasn't my sole, or even main, reason for doing so.  I must also acknowledge Archbishops Kurtz's point, and strive to be more tactful in my writing, even when I feel it to be a miscarriage of courtesy.

Addendum:  I solicit your comments, agree or disagree on this post,  I also ask your opinion--should a copy of this be sent to the Bishops in question?

A Reflection on Paganism

So long as poor humanity made the most of it's relationship to the inferior creation--animals, plants,wind, sun; so long as the courage of strength of a man was considered to depend upon his power of of appropriating to himself the nature of a buffalo, a bear or a shark, by eating them of taking their name; so long as rain makers, wizards and chiefs derived their power from strange alliances with the elements or animals, man's ambition was to become more material rather than more pure minded and spiritual.----Henri Joly--The Psychology of the Saints.

The quote above sums up the "Pagan" or "Neo-Pagan" world view in a practical sense.  Yet this material aspiration occurs in a culture that is Christian at it's core, leading to a sort of cognitive dissonance in the Pagan community.  It isn't possible to return to the conceptual framework of ancient and pre-classical European Paganism;  one cannot undo a millennium or two of thought and spirituality.  Christianity rears it's head at every turn, especially in the concepts of the individual and the relationship between a person and the cosmos, and between people.  This inescapable fact leads to the saying one hears from time to time in the Neo-Pagan milieu:  "We are all Recovering Christians".  This fact is also reflected in the political stands of the movement as well.  Classical and pre-Classical European Paganism was not centered on the individual--it was centered on the Family, the "Gens", the Clan and the Tribe.  Even in Roman paganism, with it's divination of the state, the Family remained central to the culture.  Individuals were expected to subsume their own goals and desires to the interests of the family.  In the non-romanized areas of Europe, the clan and tribe were also determinative. In contemporary pagan societies, the individuals role is also sharply limited and defined, (looking at Shinto, Hindu and Animist cultures one finds always that the corporate supersedes the individual.  The only exception is Voudoun, which is a distorted system, having suffered violence at the hands of the slave trade.) The modern Pagan movement places a high emphasis on the individual, and emphasis that is in the end derived from Christian conceptualizations of the earth of the individual and the relationship of the individual with the Savior.  This tension between a belief system resurrected from the sparse surviving records and archaeology of a dead culture is one of the reasons that modern pagan groups tend to the ephemeral, with a group surviing more than a few years being the exception.

Still, the Modern Pagan strives for a sense of unity with and participation in nature.  This is expressed through individual experience, filtered through the lens of group ritual, and is considered to be a spiritual quest.  In the end, despite all discussion of "The Goddess" or the "The God" or of gods and goddesses it always returns to material existence.  The eight pagan holidays, the solstices and equinox, and the "Days of power" are oriented not to the world of spirit, but to the concrete world.  In each instance I can recall observing, the "spirituality" of Paganism as practiced binds one to creatures.  Even such spiritual quests as the search for ones power animal or the Castenadan search for allies root one in a created item.

In the end, Neo-Pagan "spirituality" is a spirituality of matter; it is merely idolatry.  It becomes thepost modern idolatry of the self and urge, wrapped in religious rhetoric, always tossed upon the pulsations of the fashion of the moment.  The modern pagan ends up, not so much liberated and enlightened but mired in material concerns and subjugated to drives and ambition.  Rather than being freed from convention and conformity, he ends by binding himself to ephemeral trends of what is cool, or fashionably, all the while claiming to be be united with an eternal cosmos.  By this mechanism he ends bound, but not to anything meaningful, or even objectively real.  By elevating the Cosmos to the Role of Creator, and seeking to become a participant in cosmic events, he alienates himself from both the reality of the material universe and it's Eternal Creator.  (Even the discipline of Astrology, which is nearly universal in the neo-pagan community, isn't in touch with the sidereal motions--the astrological signs are actually several months off of the position of the Sun in the Zodiac, as observed!)

The pagan not only seeks to participate in the cosmos--as if his existence isn't in itself of necessity a participation--but to sacralize and  render it divine. Then, by means of ritual and a superficial, almost recreational in many cases, introspection to consider all things to be holy, and reflected in himself as a microcosm of the universe.  In the words of Crowley's "Gnostic Mass", he considers himself to be a sacred being:  "There is no part of me that is not of the Gods!".  The logical result of this is that the pagan must consider himself to be in need of no reform or improvement--salvation is seen as a mechanism of social control.  Instead, effort is expended in an attempt to accumulate power to oneself.  in some parts of the amorphous cloud that is Modern Paganism, this takes the form of an indefinable "magick" (sic) power or occult ability.  In others, it is conceived of as a social or political power within a group, with the goal of then directing it outward into the larger society.  (It must be said here that pagans make a great deal over "power with" versus "power over" and have great claims of deciding by consensus.  However, in every group I have observed, there is always a leader who defines the consensus, even in the face of firm contradiction--hence the fissiparous nature of pagan groups.)

In the end, the pagan finds himself bound.  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" or "An it harm none, do as ye will" slowly morph from radical declarations of freedom into a situation where ones scope of action becomes so narrowed as to be compelled.  By identifying oneself with a cosmos that is by definition sacred and divine, and rigorously finding divine origins for desire, trend and will one becomes in the end, not a radically free being, but a slave to drive, urge, trend and ego.  One becomes, not a sacred being, put a profane slave.

This is seen in the mores of the Pagan Community, despite the protestations to the contrary.  I have seen this with my own eyes, and it follows logically from some of the basic premises of modern paganism--"As Above, So Below".  It ends in a circular system of self justification: if i want to do X, and all the cosmos is summed upbin me as a microcosm of the cosmos, then X exists in the macrocosm.  If the Cosmos is eternal, sacred, and divine, then X is sacred, there for X is a good thing to do. Aleister Crowley, one of the source authors for the Modern Pagan movement, even developed a "method for destroying evil" in which the practitioner was advised to wallow in acts of repugnant nature, or that were reviled by society until one found them to be no longer repugnant.  He developed into a "sexual pervert of monstrous proportions." 

In the end, the pagan is bound to appetite, matter and self, a slave to these things and to the ephemeral concerns of fashion and the day.  This stands in stark contrast to the Christian--especially the Christian who has access to valid sacraments--to whom the promise was made that "...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" (Jn 8:32).  Rather than be bound to matter and drive, and chained to time, in an endless and pointless circle, participating in cycles with no real beginning or ending point, the Christian is part of a creation that is reconciled to the Creator and moves toward Him.  We are no longer bound to time or place, but have become a "a pilgrim people" free to move toward our destination, which is Christ Jesus.

Good Grief!

I have been a fan of Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery fiction since high school, when I read Lord of the the Rings.  I remember when we were the weird kids.  Now it's popular as heck, and in fact is main stream.  Kids who make a point of being weird have to read something else.

Yet, I have been surprised.  A friend of mine told me about something not too long ago that makes me wonder.  There is now "live action" elf porn, and sorcerer porn.  It's called "The World of Whorecraft", and is based, I guess, on the animation and art work of the game by the same name. 

I am thinking that frustrated nerds, plus the power of the internet, and the power of the visual medium used in RPGs has finally entered into the most lucrative part of the internet--smut.

I wonder who is actually watching this stuff--and some has to be, because they couldn't afford the special effects and make up without a sizable paying audience--and how insidious the whole sexualiztion of literature and entertainment has become, that a genre that caters to "young adults"--which we used to cal teens--has it's own smut niche.

Also, for the first time, I wonder about something else:  If people are all into elf porn, etc, does that demonstrate that Fantasy, etc, actually is bad for the reader?

On the other hand, I imagine that the performers are delighted that they get to wear costumes!

If something similar happens to the Pre-Raphaelites, my whole entertainment and esthetic world shall come tumbling down.

June 6, 1944

67 years ago today, the Allies--who were known as the United Nations--invaded North West Europe via Normandy.  A couple of things always stand out to me.  One of them is this--a National Guard division, the 29th, was one of the units that assaulted Omaha Beech.  The 29th is still around, known as the Blue and Gray Division, because when the National Guard was created in the late 1800s, part of the divisions state units had fought for the Union, and part for the South. 

The other thing is the performance of the Airborne units.  My spiritual ancestors started the battle, not only surrounded-like airborne troops are supposed to--and lightly armed, but scattered everywhere.  The Army Air Corps hadn't trained it's transport pilots in navigation, formation flying, parachute dropping or combat conditions well enough.  Even though scattered across the landscape, the troops either moved out, under their own leadership to their objectives, or moved to the sounds of battle.  They achieved their mission.

Entertainingly, part of their mission was to spread fear and confusion behind the lines.  Since the drops themselves were failures--with no real coherence--the Germans were able to figure out nothing about the allied battle plan.  In other words, in the slang of the times, the JAAFU** became a SAFU* and worked to our advantage.

If I had been confronted with becoming a paratrooper with those old T-5 parachutes, BTW, I probably wouldn't have made it past my first jump!


**Joint Army AirForce F**k Up
*Self Adjusting F**k Up

(The performance of the Paratroopers at Sicily and Normandy, where everything went wrong from jump street, is what convinced me i wanted to be a paratrooper in the first place.)

I don't Like Being Confused!

I'm confused, and I don't know what to think. 

The National Labor Relations Board--which is supposed to provide unbiased judgments and arbitration between Labor and Industry/Employers--has been a little hard on Catholic Colleges lately.  It's a given that under the current administration, the NLRB is partisan, exercising it's power on behalf of the unions, not an unbiased reading of the law, but I'm a little troubled. 

In January, the NLRB ruled against Manhattan College, saying it didn't have standing as a Church activity--and cited the College's own literature against it.  Manhattan College managed to do itself harm by proclaiming its lack of adherence to the Church's rules about what it takes to be a Catholic College.  Now for the second time, the NLRB has ruled against a Catholic College--St Xavier University in Chicago--saying it is not a Church run institution.

I am not familiar enough with the situation at St. Xavier to give an opinion. 

But the Supreme Court ruled in 1979 (NLRB vs The Catholic Bishop of Chicago et al) that the NLRB doesn't have jurisdiction over Church schools, and it seems to me that they are trying to assert that by attacking the Catholic identity of the schools.  (This goes hand-in-hand with Obama's ongoing attempts to drive a wedge into the Church exploiting the existing fault lines over social teaching, morality and structure.  There is a historical precedent for this--see the post below on 27 Feb 33!)  However, you can tell from the date of the citation above that this problem predates the Obama Administration. 

The NLRB uses a test called 'substantial religious character' to determine whether or not a school or institution is actually a church operated entity.  But the Federal Courts have twice instructed the NLRB,in 2002 and 2008, that this test is illegal and must be stopped.  It hasn't complied,  Like so many Federal Bureaucracies, it seems to feel it is above or outside the law, or perhaps the source of the law.

This seems like an attack by a government agency on Catholic Education, and there have been many of those, dating to the 19th century, and at times they have required the intervention of the Supreme Court to protect the rights of Catholics to educate their children and to operate Catholic Schools and Colleges.

The problem is, I'm not sure that many Catholic universities are Church run, either.  Consider Notre Dame.  This insitution, long an icon of Catholic University education, can persuasively argued to be non-catholic.  From it's decision to honor, in contravention of Ex Corde Ecclesiae , a pro abortion politician, to it's appointment and acceptance of a woman who has long supported the pro-abortion Emily's List, to it's elevation to department head of a professor who sponsored and championed The Vagina Monologues--despite the statements of the local ordinary that it should not be performed on campus, it makes it easy for anyone to challenge it's religious identity.  It wouldn't be hard to say that the religious character of the school isn't substantial, it's window dressing for tax, labor law and funding purposes.  At this point, I would be hard put to say the NLRB would be wrong to say that it's not run by the Church--it simply does as it pleases.

The problem is, what about a school that's trying to reclaim it's Catholic Identity?  Take De Paul, in Chicago.  The university has denied tenure to several applicants, for lacking a thorough grounding in the Philosophy and History required to effectively conduct catholic education.  Good for them.  Yet the Faculty and Student Body is protesting, saying that it's racist not to give these people tenure, or discriminatory to the GLBT community, etc.  Is this a reflection of the Catholic identity of the institution?  Well, yes, it is.  According to Ex Corde Ecclesiae, student life and faculty matter.  The NLRB could effectively argue that the Church Run Identity of the School has been discarded by the Faculty and Students.

I don't know if these schools are Catholic, or Catholic in Name Only.  And this makes them, and all our institutions, vulnerable to government interference or take over.  To put it bluntly, our appetite, as Catholics, for dissing Catholicism and nurturing dissent may well s cost us the work of 250 years.  Work by those who labored under bigotry and discrimination, and at times violence.  And because of this, bigotry and discrimination and yes, violence, will cripple us for generations.

This would be so much easier, if we could tell at a glance if a school was Catholic.

Excuse me...

....but could all of you progressive Catholics who think "orthopraxy" begins and ends with "solidarity", "justice", "peace" and "activism" please go somewhere and POUND SAND?

Poll Results!

So, in the poll concerning the Suppression of the Abby of Santa Croce in Gersalemme, Five percent though it was simply about time.  Seventy two percent thought that His Holiness needs to do about one hundred more.  And, Twenty-Two percent felt it was a shot across the bows of Modernists in religious life.

I noticed not very many people, even among their rich buddies, like Madonna, are standing up for them.

The Evening of 27 February, 1933

About 9:00 PM, on 27 Feb 33, a rather deranged young man named Marinus van der Lubbe broke into the Reichstag building in Berlin, and set it on fire.   Van der Lubbe was not the stablest person in Europe.  Of Dutch nationality, he had been a communist, until is penchant for spontaneous 'direct action', undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the Party made him unwelcome.  In 1931 he had joined an even more radical group, of anarcho-syndicalists who were more into  'propaganda by the deed'.

The official police who interogated him--he was actually taken by the guards in the Reichstag Building, in the act of setting fires--were of the opinion that he was a nut job, who had acted alone.

The new Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, used this a pretext to a massive crackdown on the left in Germany.  The left, at that point, commanded more votes than the Nazi's, but split between several parties.  Hitler and his buds hit them all. 

They used existing laws, emplaceed to deal with crisis and economic problems by prior administrations.  They used their influence with the police and cabinet to change the directions of law enforcement, and to block prosecuttion of those who were supporting them, and crushed those who spoke against them, All on the basis of this pretext--the act of a lone madman. Part of what made it easy was a pattern, several years old, of identifying the left as a threat to the government and nation.

Fast forward--we at this point in our history have unprecedented laws restricting our liberties, to deal with threats to the government and nation.  We have an administration that rose to power through demagoguery  and chicanery.  This same administration has blocked or lessened the prosecution of groups that provide support that have run afoul of the law. (ACORN, The New Black Panthers, Planned Parenthood, etc.).

In studying history, I'm finding many things that echo the rise of the Nazis in the rise of the Statist Obamacists.  I am not accusing Obama, or his followers, of being Nazis--I am drawing parallels in the political situation that are disquieting.

It's especially disquieting that the Department of Homeland Security--a scary thing in and of itself--has identified Pro-lifers, Gun Owners, People who go to gun shows, Returning Veterans, Tax Protestors and the TEA Party movement as potential terrorists and insurgents.   Yes, they withdrew that document after it became public, but the important thing is, the people who wrote the document still work there!!!

All it will take is one nut job, to do one crazy thing, and I feel the current regime would use the opportunity to attack our liberties, conservatives, Catholics and Republicans with the full force of the Government's coercive powers.

Perhaps I should write some more about the parallels between the current Administration, and the last days of the Weimar Republic.