prayer request

I received a request for prayers for Isaiah a 3-year-old child who has been having some extremely serious medical issues since July 11th focusing on a fever of unknown origin. Please pray for the doctors to have the wisdom to know how to care for him, and also                            keep his family in your prayers.

Thanks. 

Deacon Bill

From my pastor, on Catholic Schools

From Fr. Don, in the bulletin for St. Clare's Church in Portland, OR.  The Archdiocese is being attacked in the media for the information in this link. 

I want to re-emphasize what I wrote about last week: the recent media articles about Catholic schools. I was personally at the meeting with the archbishop that got all this media storm started and I don’t expect any changes here at St. Clare School. In spite of what the media is trying to imply, the bishop is NOT asking us to go to a “classical education” model, nor is he asking us to make changes in our gender policy: we have always treated a person in a girl’s body as a girl and a person in a boy’s body as a boy. That’s not new and I don’t think it’s radical. St. Clare School is an outstanding school that loves and supports every student and we will continue our long-standing tradition of nurturing the spiritual and educational development of the whole child.

How to win, politically

 This post was originally written about the Presidential race in the United States, but it could easily be adapted in many of its planks to fighting back against the pornocracy at any level of government.

These are the party planks I want to see in a primary from *any* primary race.  You can easily tailor them to the jurisdiction you are running in.

- Be pro-life to the point of supporting unwed mothers and heterosexual marriage for parents of children between conception and age 21.  

- Eliminate bigotry against the unwanted and disabled in the forms of euthanasia, abortion, and transgender mutilation

- Fund marital counseling services to reduce and eliminate divorce.  

- Bring us a *workable* plan to start rolling back the Imperialistic financial aid and armed forces from the United States that the pornocracy has been using to push homosexuality, abortion, and birth control on the third world.

- God's Children are Not for Sale; repurpose those troops to freeing illegal slaves here in the United States and around the world.  End sex and labor trafficking with strong borders to interrupt the $150 Billion worldwide slave trade.

- Clean up the entertainment industry.  Strongly prosecute any and all producers or directors who use their position for the sexual abuse of women and men.

- End the free trade system that encourages 3rd world slave conditions in factories; use technology to manufacture goods as close to consumers as possible even when slavery would be more efficient.

- Tax retailers that sell slave origin goods to pay for it, this includes entertainment properties that profit off of soft porn created by abusive directors and producers.

- Return the rights of life, free speech, and the pursuit of happiness to the American lower classes, regardless of color of skin

- Make it entirely illegal to discriminate based on color of skin for anybody.

The only third party I see that could accomplish this, is the American Solidarity Party.  But if just ONE Democrat, and just ONE Republican, stood up to run in their respective primaries with eliminating the Pornocrats from their party platforms, 2024 would become a much different race.

What is Love?

Aging hippies claim that the reason the sexual revolution happened was because love got replaced in American culture with righteousness.

I disagree.  Love is an essential part of righteousness, and does not exist in the sexual revolution.

Let us begin with "what is Love?" For the righteous man, there can be only one answer: love is willing what is BEST for other people.

Thus sexual orientation, when not oriented to procreation, can never be love, but rather, abuse. Including heterosexual birth control and divorce, of course.

Abuse is not love.

This is not a reason to hate, it is a reason to mourn- mourn the loss of reason, the loss of the ideal agape love, that wills what is best for the other.

And thus mourn the loss of righteousness itself, in favor of something far less.

Called to Defend Our Faith

 As we were cooking the Knights of Columbus Breakfast at St. Clare's in Portland on June 4th, our pancake flipper Scott Young brought up the Dodgers controversy for First Deadly Sin Month, and I was surprised to hear that many of the men there were unaware of the problem.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a few opinion pieces about this blatant anti-Catholic group being honored by Major League Baseball.  I must admit, I've been a bit cowardly myself about defending the faith on this topic, as I work for a corporation that is very vocal about First Deadly Sin Month- and rather anti-Catholic about it.

However, there comes a time when as Catholic Knights, we must draw a line in the sand, and this is sufficiently non-partisan, even if some elements on both sides want to make it partisan, that I think we need to stand together as brothers, to stand up and just say NO.

Here is the EWTN interview with the author of one of those opinion pieces published in the Wall Street Journal, that shows why I say it is not a partisan issue.

Should you choose to act, I urge you to sign Catholic Vote's petition at this link and join people such as Archbishop Sample in the boycott of the Dodgers.

Ted Seeber

It's been a long time, and it's going to be longer

 I think I'm almost done with my personal blog for a while.

I'm certainly almost done with pride month.

This is what I'm posting on any social media post that promotes the First Deadly Sin.

https://theridgewoodblog.net/the-meaning-of-pride/

And with that, I'm snoozing you for 30 days. See you in July when you have recovered from insanity.  

Including myself.  Pride is evil.  Time for Fidelity and Humility instead.

Daring to imagine the Salvation of Heretics

Two recent articles. Imagineing a Heretic Cardinal and Imagining a Heretic President, dare to take a canon law view of excommunication- and why a Catholic cannot, should never, teach against the church on matters of faith and morals, particularily sins against the fourth, fifth, and sixth commandments.

But as much as American heterodox Catholics like to break the fourth, fifth, and sixth commandment, often in ruin and distruction not just for themselves but for their families out to the 7th generation; this is NOT the unforgiveable sin you are looking for. The whole intent of excommunication is as a teaching tool- to inspire conversion back to the true faith.

Even heretics deserve salvation; all are called to be Catholic in deed in Heaven, the only question is, are you willing to give up your favorite sins to answer the call?

The final word on the mistakes made during the Pandemic

 With Apologies to Heather Heyring.

Do you dare to share? Here's a list of pandemic related conspiracy theories that turned out to be predictions that were true. Did you cancel somebody from your family over one or more of them? Perhaps it is time to apologize and create a new bridge. Rest of post is from Heather Heying, with a couple of links to her content.

Consider these ideas, and who knows what could happen.

Early in the pandemic we thought that masks were broadly effective. We were wrong. First, we spoke about the importance of masks, and as new evidence came in, our position changed. We spoke about that, too.

We also thought that short, early, and strong lockdowns had a chance of stopping the spread of SARS-CoV2. We were wrong about that. I don’t think lockdowns could have worked, in part because I don’t think sufficient worldwide compliance was possible to stop the spread. And as much as I am disappointed to have landed here: I no longer trust my government to borrow any of my freedoms.

Even when physical distancing made sense to slow the spread of disease, social distancing never did. Social distancing tore families apart. People died alone. Children and teenagers lost their way; some of them lost their lives. We became inhumane to one another.

Wearing masks outside was never a good idea (we understood this even when we still thought that being masked indoors in public spaces was protective).

Keeping people inside was a huge error. Closing parks and beaches, forests and playgrounds, was a mistake. Everyone should have been getting outside as much as possible, moving their bodies with enthusiasm and abandon, breathing in the air, letting the sun shine down upon their bare skin.

Vitamin D deficiency was a risk factor for Covid, and getting your D—best if you can do so by letting the sun be on your skin, so that you can make it yourself, but acceptable to get it through supplements—was a very good prophylactic measure, not just against Covid, but against other common illnesses, too.

Having dark skin is a risk factor for Covid, because dark-skinned people are not as efficient at making vitamin D as are light-skinned people. We were of the opinion that talking about this was the opposite of racist.

Speaking of not racist: We also thought that talking about the likely lab origins of SARS-CoV2 was the opposite of racist, as the alternative was blaming the weird habits of exotic Chinese people who buy food at—gasp—outdoor markets. Perhaps my favorite moment in this nuttiness was when Peter Daszak, President of the ironically-named EcoHealth Alliance, blamed the pandemic on the supposed predilection of Chinese people for frozen ferret badger steaks (covered in DarkHorse livestream #67).

Obesity is a comorbidity for Covid, a fact that an intact public health system would have publicized. Instead, the press claimed that mentioning this fact was “fat-shaming,” and mostly succeeded in shutting down the discussion.

There was a lot that you could do to keep yourself healthy as this novel coronavirus scoured the Earth. Eat high quality fat and protein. Restrict your consumption of sugar. Drink the nectar of the gods (honey stirred into hot water, before adding the freshly squeezed juice of a lemon). Enjoy onions in abundance. Use a neti pot for nasal irrigation. Supplement with D and C and Zinc and Magnesium if your levels are low, especially during the Winter.

Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV2 is important. This is partly because if it did emerge from gain-of-function research in a lab, we need to have a conversation about why that research continues. But it is also important because the artificial selection that the virus would have gone through in the lab could be used to understand how it would behave in the wild. Many argued that where the virus came from was unimportant, but that argument demonstrates a failure to understand evolution. That’s okay. Most people don’t understand evolution. But the people who don’t understand evolution should not be shutting down the voices of people who do, especially when a quickly evolving pathogen is destroying lives and societies.

Mass vaccinating a population during a pandemic was likely to drive the evolution of new variants, as Geert Vanden Bossche repeatedly and urgently argued.

Organizations including but not limited to the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) were doing honest medicine, honorable medicine, and a public service. We watched as they were repeatedly slandered and slammed.

Covid is an unusual and nasty disease, and not to be taken lightly. We wondered whether those who had facilitated its creation and unleashed it on the world would ever be held to account.

Immunity acquired from having had the disease is at least as good as the immunity acquired from getting a vaccine. We found it suspect that the idea of “natural immunity”—which, after all, our immune systems have been working on for hundreds of millions of years—was now considered a conspiracy theory. Where’s the conspiracy—between B cells and T cells? Or was the problem that we were talking about any way forward that didn’t include pharma’s solution?

“These newly developed vaccines are safe” was a tell. There was no way for anyone to know that they were safe—not enough time had passed to know. Even if they had turned out to be safe—and we all wish that they had—nobody could possibly have known that less than a year after they were developed. We thought that being blatantly lied to by public health authorities was sufficient reason to even more carefully consider all of their pronouncements going forward.

When it still seemed that the vaccines might turn out to be safe and effective for a lot of people, we nevertheless understood it to be a bad idea to give them to children, or to pregnant or breast-feeding women. Children are at the lowest risk from Covid, and at the highest risk from the vaccines. Functioning societies do not put children at risk to protect the old.

Vaccine mandates were a very bad idea. People being fired or kept out of school for not accepting an experimental treatment was anti-democratic. We applauded the courage of the Canadians who stood up to tyranny and said no, including the truckers who early in the pandemic had been celebrated as heroes but were now being called every epithet under the sun. The truckers’ convoy was a joyous coming together, and we wished that we could have been there. We could not, as we were not vaccinated, and crossing the border between the United States and Canada was not allowed if you were dirty and unvaccinated. Similarly terrible policies persist to this day.

The governments of many Western countries, including especially the mostly English speaking worlds of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, instituted policies that were damnably anti-democratic, anti-scientific, and authoritarian. We thought with some grim satisfaction: now we know. Now we know what they are willing to do.

Universities and Hollywood became some of the most eager institutions to enforce vaccine mandates, thus revealing how very anti-intellectual and conformist they have become. Where we should expect creativity, analysis, and a diversity of opinions, instead we have lockstep. It is ironic that these are the very domains that triumphantly embrace pseudo-diversity, in the form of Diversity Equity and Inclusion offices and officers. People are waving metaphorical flags that literally mean the opposite of what they stand for.

Shutting down schools was bad for children, and for society. After the initial confusion in the Spring of 2020, there was no excuse. Putting masks on children was diabolical. Masking children would impair their language and their social development, and make them fearful, just like their parents.

People were manipulated with fear, and then promised relief from their fear if only they would comply. Many complied. But the virus did not go away. People got sick anyway. Their compliance did not achieve the goal they were told it would achieve. Many got injured from the treatment. Many others did not, but quietly decided, nevertheless, not to get any more of the miracle treatment.

We thought that the people who changed their minds should say so publicly. We still do.

In A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, which was published in September 2021 but fully drafted before the pandemic, we wrote the following:

Combine a tendency to engage only proximate questions, with a bias toward reductionism, and you end up with medicine that has blinders on. The view is narrow. Even the great victories of Western medicine—surgery, antibiotics, and vaccines— have been over-extrapolated, applied in many cases where they shouldn’t be. When all you have is a knife, a pill, and a shot, the whole world looks as though it would benefit from being cut and medicated.

On the subject of race

 On facebook, a friend asked if racism was ever correct.  My answer, is nuanced.

Perhaps at one time long ago (racism is a *culturally evolved* behavior, after all, protection of the clan/tribe from invaders) but I would argue that increases in travel technology and war technology defeated all positive reasons for this behavior more than 800 years ago.

Evolutionarily, skin color has no bearing on intelligence, honesty, trustworthiness, persistence, or any other human behavior.

It's merely an indication that you have a large percentage of ancestors who spend time in an area of the world that got a certain average amount of sunlight a year. Nothing more than that.

And since your recent ancestors (within the last 6 generations) could have been from anywhere it isn't even a good predictor of ethnic culture anymore.

On the Document for the Continental Stage: Synod 2020-2024

 The Synod has released the Document for the Continental Stage.

It's extremely problematic in one significant way- censorship of cisgenedered heteronormative lifelong relationships.

It starts with paragraph 11 of the introduction, which looks like it came straight out of a secular HR department, using language that pretends to be inclusive, but which we find later on is radically EXCLUSIVE, with a dismissal of the concerns in Catechism of the Catholic Church 2300-2400 inclusive.

The one small concession we have to my way of thinking is in paragraphs 17-19, but even here conservative cisgendered lay Catholics and priests faithful to the 2000 year old teaching are called "rigid" thinkers who are unwelcoming of change.

Paragraph 28, in particular, abuses the word of God to pretend that "enlarging the tent" means "welcoming diversity"- but we already know from the secular world that diversity is only for the minority, majorities are not included in the diversity. It's an exclusive inclusivity.

Paragraphs 34-48 show a remarkable LACK of listening to ordinary people, while highlighting only those "diverse" examples that fit the agenda of excluding cisgendered heteronormative families. One should point out here that the ideal of being in a cisgendered heteronormative family is a luxury requiring a level of sacrifice not often seen in the world of modernism; people unwilling to make that sacrifice see those who are as being somewhat bigoted and prudish. But that is no reason to exclude them from your discussion on diversity.

Paragraphs 50-52 refer to the failed experiment of ecumenicism, by which the light of Christ was hidden under the bushel of secular humanism. On some continents that experiment is still going on, despite its obvious failure elsewhere; but usually under pressure from external culture wars that force different types of Christians to band together for survival.

Paragraphs 54-56 are outright heretical- the heresy of syncretism.

Paragraphs 60-65 are what I'd call the American Feminist Paragraphs- they read like the Seneca Falls Manifesto. They confuse clericalism with power (clerics are servants, not leaders) and the word "Mother"- the peak of true feminine identity and power, whether spiritual or biological- is nowhere to be found.

Paragraphs 66-70 are on vocation- but the vocation to raising a family does not even get mentioned. A church that isn't crying is dying; didn't we learn anything from the Shaker Protestant error?

A documentary I need to watch

 Dead Name is a new documentary staring parents of trans children.  I think I need to watch this.

It's time to end this pro-choice nonsense- but also end the myth that life is just pro-birth.

 It is time for Democrats to join Republicans and say that BIRTH MATTERS. Pro-choicers have claimed for years that they care about babies after birth- now is the time to prove it. Let's see this bill guaranteeing medical care to the most helpless members of the human species pass with no opposition.

Providing medical care to infants who are born alive and trying to survive after an attempted abortion should be something that we can all agree on. Tragically however, Oregon does not afford this basic protection of human life, thanks to pro-death malthusian eugenicists, and so Congress must act on its responsibility to enforce the guarantees of equal protection of ALL races and abilities under law.

Let's put bigotry, racism, and ableism behind us and speak out strongly for the least of these. If we can't even do that, how can we possibly claim to be a moral nation?

Please vote “Yes” on the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act when it comes before the House. The bill would make sure that health care providers give the same needed care to these children as any born at the same age. The need for this legislation is real. The CDC reported that over 140 children died after surviving an abortion attempt from 2003 to 2014 and, with difficulty in reliable reporting of such events, even admitted this was likely an underestimate. And the cause? Quite often these third term abortions are urged by ableist and racist doctors who look at the potential cost of treating disabilities or the color of the mother's skin, in recommending the abortion in the first place!

The House Judiciary Committee in years past has heard testimony about the brutal ways in which such children can be left to die in bags or closets. Women and their children deserve better. Please vote “Yes,” and work toward meaningful solutions for mothers in need that affirm life and offer hope.

The five reasons given for a 3rd trimester abortion (and why each of them is wrong)

1. Health of the mother (including mental health):  Past the 21st week with modern healthcare, the only use of pregnancy is to save two weeks in the hospital for the child for every week the pregnancy continues.  If the mother's life is in danger, an emergency c-section is safer for both her and the child than either abortion or inducement.
2. Health of the child- so you kill the child rather than treat it?  How does that help?  This one is just ableist bigotry from people who fear the disabled.
3. Wealth of the parents- this is the biggest fallacy of all.  Children are an investment that pays off in ways you'll never expect. They are ALWAYS worth bringing into the world.
4. Race of the parents- how despicable is it that some medical professionals would rather abort a child of the wrong color or ethnicity than allow it to be born?  This needs to be eliminated from the medical profession.
5. Biological sex of the child (including intersex children, but quite often female children in authoritarian societies or male children in egalitarian ones)- same as race- sexism is ridiculously outdated.  And in many cases is a form of ablism in and of itself.
   
   

Did Vatican II ban communion in the hand?

 In 1978, I was one of the first classes of First Communion to receive "Eucharist in the Hand" in the Catholic Church in Oregon.

But 9 years earlier, did Pope Paul VI ban the practice?

Was this actually a missing encyclical from Vatican II, widely ignored in the United States?  The encyclical linked to above, shows the synodal votes on the subject just after the close of the council:

Three questions were asked of the bishops, and the replies received by 12 March 1969 were as follows:

1. Do you think that attention should be paid to the desire that, over and above the traditional manner, the rite of receiving holy communion on the hand should be admitted?

Yes: 597

No: 1,233

Yes, but with reservations: 315

Invalid votes: 20

2. Is it your wish that this new rite be first tried in small communities, with the consent of the bishop?

Yes: 751

No: 1,215

Invalid votes, 70

3. Do you think that the faithful will receive this new rite gladly, after a proper catechetical preparation?

Yes: 835

No: 1,185

Invalid votes: 128

From the returns it is clear that the vast majority of bishops believe that the present discipline should not be changed, and that if it were, the change would be offensive to the sentiments and the spiritual culture of these bishops and of many of the faithful.