Outside The Asylum

 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 a...

 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.

 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 div...