Outside The Asylum

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...

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.

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.

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 pr...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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