Pope Francis, a love/hate relationship

As readers of this blog know, since the first Synod on the Family, I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Pope Francis.  I recently came across an interesting "Rigid" side blog post  listing all the "Rigid Catholic" concerns about this Pope and the way Jesuits in general operate within the Church.  It is most excellent, and contains things that you won't see in main stream media or even sometimes in Catholic media about the Pope:

• Mercy for fornicators
• Mercy for pederasts (molesters of pubescent children)
• Mercy for Jesuit schools that in search of money are abandoning Catholicism in favor of Islamic or Humanist studies
• The side insults against rigid Catholics
• Twisting history to exemplify heretics at the cost of real saints
• Dialogue with Masons
• Ignoring the massive martyrdom caused by Islam, while welcoming massive numbers of Moslem immigrants to Europe who have an antithetical view of western women resulting in rape and murder
• The 500th Anniversary of Fatima, and the fear surrounding this time.

My one saving thought, the thing that keeps me from total despair, comes from the Mercy of St. John Paul The Great:  Not all who are in the Church Militant or the Church Suffering are Catholic.  But all who are in the Church Militant and the Church Suffering, will be Catholic in the Church Triumphant.

Privilege = Opportunity

Any time you see a privilege that someone else has that you want- that is an opportunity to create a business to give that privilege to others.

Every "White Male Privilege" in the book  Four Days to Change, is in fact something that society once found necessary for survival.  It's something that white male culture *had* to have, and so built business structures to provide.

There is no reason why those structures cannot be built to provide exactly the same privileges to others.

All it takes is localism- taking an interest in your neighborhood, and building, rather than dividing.

Birth Control doesn't work

The problem is, almost every form of birth control, including sterilization, has flaws.  Condoms cause more sex to occur, overcoming the contraception.  Same is true of any other form of birth control.

The ancient rite of Asylum, and modern immigration problem in the United States

There has been talk of sanctuary churches as of late, and I got to thinking how these could be a positive rather than further division in our nation.

From Wikipedia, we have this ancient description of Sanctuary in English Common law:

Church sanctuaries were regulated by common law. An asylum seeker had to confess his sins, surrender his weapons, and permit supervision by church or abbey organization with jurisdiction. They then had forty days to decide whether to surrender to secular authorities and stand trial for their alleged crimes, or to confess their guilt, abjure the realm, and go into exile by the shortest route and never return without the king's permission. Those who did return faced execution under the law and/or excommunication from the Church.
If the suspect chose to confess their guilt and abjure, they did so in a public ceremony, usually at the church gates. They would surrender their possessions to the church, and any landed property to the crown. The coroner, a medieval official, would then choose a port city from which the fugitive should leave England (though the fugitive sometimes had this privilege). The fugitive would set out barefooted and bareheaded, carrying a wooden cross-staff as a symbol of protection under the church. Theoretically they would stay to the main highway, reach the port and take the first ship out of England. In practice, however, the fugitive could get a safe distance away, abandon the cross-staff and take off and start a new life. However, one can safely assume the friends and relatives of the victim knew of this ploy and would do everything in their power to make sure this did not happen; or indeed that the fugitive never reached their intended port of call, becoming a victim of vigilante justice under the pretense of a fugitive who wandered too far off the main highway while trying to "escape."
Knowing the grim options, some fugitives rejected both choices and opted for an escape from the asylum before the forty days were up. Others simply made no choice and did nothing. Since it was illegal for the victim's friends to break into an asylum, the church would deprive the fugitive of food and water until a decision was made.

 This, to me seems close to workable as a way for Churches, especially Catholic Churches, to fulfill their sacred duty of mercy to the immigrant, while staying on the right side of the law.

I thus propose that the Church make the following deal with the Department of Homeland Security:
1.  If any undocumented person comes into a Catholic Church, places his hand on the Altar, and requests Asylum, that person shall be granted the right to ask a member of that Parish for a place to stay for 180 days maximum.
2.  That person is safe from deportation for 180 days.
3.  The person will be reported to DHS, and a process will be started to vet the individual.  This process is to take no more than 180 days.
4.  The person themselves will devote themselves to prayer, confession, and discussion with the parish priest.  The purpose of these discussions is to decide between one of the following three options:
            a.    Documentation-  If no other impediment exists, becoming a permanent resident with the intention of naturalized citizenship.
            b.    Leave Asylum and turn oneself into authorities for the normal justice process.
            c.    Confess guilt, Receive absolution for eternal sins, and the church will help the person to sell all his worldly posessions and self-deport with the help of the international worldwide church.

Of course, in this 180 day process, any other concerns of family and friends must be taken into consideration.

Of course, this presupposes a modernization of the entire immigration process, to the point where such a decision can be made in 180 days.  The United States does NOT have a good track record on this.

Interesting Mathematics

Too bad it's by a climate change denier, because the mathematical proof of just how much effect man really has on global warming is fascinating.

Oregon Liberalism is more Conservative than Vatican Liberalism

I finally figured out why I have a visceral reaction to the German/Maltese/Argentinian formulation of Amoris Laetitia Chapter 8, and it has nothing to do with the Sacraments.

It has to do with the Culture of Rape, and precisely, the role Rape plays in some civil marriages.

"Continence is impossible" says Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio in his book on Amoris Laetitia.

Those of us in Oregon long ago made Marital Rape illegal.  And if you have his hypothetical example, a woman who desires to be chaste and a man who refuses to be chaste, that is the classical case of marital rape.

The church should not be condoning this sin.  Ever.

Not all can reach the ideal, but that does not mean we should stop teaching the ideal.

An excellent article on the central problem of Amoris Laetitia's formulation on Conscience

This Article in the Catholic Herald today asks an interesting question, one I have yet to see any Jesuit (after all, the Pope is taking this theology from Jesuit theology) explain in any reasonable fashion.

If discernment and uninformed personal conscience can be applied, as Chapter 8 implies, to divorced and remarried persons, can it also be applied to fornicators?  To those civilly married to a person of the same sex? Can it be applied to abortion?  How about Euthanasia?

And moving beyond these, can we say, discern a right to pedophilia, to sex trafficking?  To usury?  To abusing the poor?

If  you think that this is a slippery slope argument, that's because it is.  But moral relativism often opens us up to slippery slope arguments- and in the long run, slippery slope history.

Why Separation of Church and State is anti-Catholic

Because it's part of freemasonry- and is only in our constitution because the majority of our leaders at the time the First Amendment was passed, were freemasons.

Four Days to Change, a running blog on Diversity

I've started reading Michael Welp Ph.D.'s semi-fictionalized novel, Four Days to Change, currently free in Kindle Format.  It's about his experiences running "Diversity Training" seminars for white, male, heterosexual executives; and it's told as a tale of four such executives meeting at a fishing resort to discuss diversity.

As many of you are probably well aware- I'm an old school ethical hacker, and from that standpoint I largely see racism, diversity, and identity politics as irrelevant, irrational criteria.  It is said early on in the book that where a meritocracy exists, can be the worst for diversity, because everybody is required to assimilate into the majority culture.  But I see meritocracy as the only chance somebody like me has- I may not be black, but I spent my entire grade school and high school years shunned for my autistic behavior.  Kill the meritocracy, you kill me.

The majority culture is the majority culture ONLY because it has produced material benefits; 120 years ago assimilation was considered such a good thing that Fr. Michael J McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus to help widows and orphans, but also to help immigrants assimilate.  And the only way the majority culture has been able to provide those benefits is when meritocracy reigns supreme.

But the problem with meritocracy is this- because humans, particularly neurotypicals, are Neurotypical, they are NOT deep or narrow thinkers.  They can't imagine a man like Neil deGrasse Tyson being a giant in Physics rather than a giant in the NBA (note, to somebody like me, at 5'6", he's definitely a giant, both intellectually and physically).  Merely because he's black.  This is why I say that racism is irrelevant, irrational criteria, because it leads you to make assumptions that are false.

The book, being on Male Privilege, listed 14 privileges I supposedly have as a white male, NONE of which I actually identify with:

1. Listing my full name in the phone book or on the web and not receive harassing or obscene phone calls or e-mails:  The author needs to look at my spam box, where I receive between 25-75 such communications a day on average.
2. I'm heterosexual, so supposedly my wife has to worry about birth control:  We've been trying to have a second child for 13 years and are borderline infertile due to other people abusing birth control.  I hate the entire subject of birth control and wish it would disappear from our culture.
3. I am judged less for the attractiveness of my appearance:  Nope, I've lost jobs over it repeatedly
4. I can walk the streets without being harassed for my gender:  Not since 1995 or so.  Especially NOT as an obese man wearing dark glasses- "Creepy" is the normal term.
5. I am not expected to be overly attentive or wait on people:  or at least, not expected as long as I'm fine being ignored in any social situation.  If I want to be social, this is my in, to be attentive and wait on people.
6. I can expect mechanics, hardware store owners, and electronics shop owners not to be condescending to me:  Ridiculous, they up-sell to everybody and will lie to you to get more money.  Especially never trust a man in a uniform or a suit, they're ALWAYS lying unless they are law enforcement and even then they're sometimes lying.
7. I am rarely if ever judged on the cleanliness or neatness of my house:  Just ask my wife about my out of control hoarding behavior.  I feel extremely judged on this, and have resistance to letting a friend help with house repairs who actually needs the work because of it.
8. I don't worry about the threat of rape or sexual violence due to my gender:  Not since an incident in high school that I won't repeat here.  I've been constantly on my guard for the last 30 years because of it.
9. I can make mistakes and fail miserably without it being attributed to my gender:  Not by any female boss I've ever had.
10. I am generally part of the gender majority:  Over my extremely varied career, even in the tech industry where men outnumber women 5:1, I have to say I'm batting about 50/50 on that, and in one case, I couldn't even be part of the orientation majority.
11. I can easily find mentors of my gender and race:  I've never been able to find mentors at all, and the one time a Fortune 500 company gave me access to that it was a complete disaster.
12. My ability to function effectively during a crisis is not questioned because of my gender (See #9)
13. I do not experience being patronized because of my gender (See #9, I actually had the female lesbian head of a company, who KNEW I was a father, tell me that she felt no loyalty to me as an employee.  Needless to say I burnt that bridge as soon as I could, and haven't even talked with that person since).
14. I enjoy company-sponsored events in the outdoors- hunting, golf, fishing, etc that are stereotypical male activities:  Uh, no.  Rarely the occasional BBQ, but I end up the cook, not attending as a guest, see #5.

Thus to me "White Male Privilege" is an insult to me.  But now that I look at it, I'm the cause of my inability to access the good ole boy's club.  I don't act like them, and I never have- because I judge people on what they DO, not what they LOOK LIKE.  The only thing Martin Luther King ever said that I agree with is that we need to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

This will be updated as I go, I'm only 51% of the way through the book.

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Well, I finished the book.  More standard diversity insults- White Men are clueless, women and LGBT are the only ones who ever get raped or need to worry about rape, white men are the only ones who ever need to assimilate or conform to anybody else, etc. Nothing earth shattering, nothing to shake my belief that those who play the identity politics game are shallow, neurotypical individuals who judge books by their covers.

Heard on the Radio this morning

Apparently Caffeine-infused beer and Marijuana-infused Coffee are real products.  I think somebody has no idea what these drugs are used for.