For Paris and all victims of Islamic aggression

And that would include Muslims.  I wonder what lessons we'll learn from this.  I'm sure we'll learn something.  How valuable or true it is will remain to be seen. Nonetheless, we can do as my youngest son suggested: pray that all the people in the world we don't know don't get hurt, and pray for the bad people too.  Not bad.  Out of the mouths of babes they say.

November films

I should be getting back to the blog more again.  I'll explain later.  But I thought I would come back with a quick romp through some movies we like to watch during that often overlooked month of November.  My first take on movies we watch for Halloween was quite a hit in the day.  But November is often overlooked as a month with 'required viewing' for movies and film.  Being film buffs, that obviously can't be the case with us.  So below are some movies that, at different times and in different years, we try to watch during this month.  Two are every year no questions asked (I'll leave the good readers to figure out which those are).  The others are nice when we get the chance. 

Last of the Mohicans. 

As brought to life with Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye, Last of the Mohicans hearkens to that colonial time that, by my feelings, still resonates with the fall.  I would probably watch this closer to October or late September, but given our penchant for watching spook movies and supernatural fare during that time, there just isn’t room. So it’s off to the month of November. The movie is based, fairly loosely, on the book of the same name.  But in many ways it simply takes the basic story arc and discards much of the nuance that Cooper brought to the novel.  Cooper’s novel was a celebration of American life on the frontier, a critique, as well as an attempt to understand the lives of the American Indians whose lands we were quickly overtaking.  In this film version, there is little subtlety.  Released in the shadow of Dances With Wolves, there isn’t much imagination needed to figure out who the bad guys are.  Or, at least, who the incompetent guys are.  Watching this, you’re almost shocked that the Europeans could in any way overtake the far superior Indian society.

Unlike the novel, where Hawkeye is a bridge between the two cultures, observing and critiquing both while also advocating their better parts, in this version, Hawkeye is Indian in all but genetics.  He has virtually no connection to the Christian Western culture, contempt for everything to do with it, and joins the other Indians and frontiersmen in their basic loathing and disregard for almost everything to do with their English and Western roots. 

Yet it was still in the 90s, and so the actual settlers were still considered innocent victims, and the sinister Magua, played brilliantly by Wes Studi, reminds us that not all Indians were capable of dying for the sins of humanity.   Something that, by today, most treatments have forgotten as the Native is elevated to almost godlike status, and the hapless frontiersmen to the role of the demonic.

The Hobbit (Rankin/Bass version)

For my money, still the best film adaptation of a Tolkien work. Rankin and Bass’s The Hobbit is required viewing for our family in November.  It was in November that the special originally aired.  I only paid scant attention to it then.  I had not heard of Tolkien at that point in my life.  Nor was I overly interested in fantasy or myth.  That would come later.  My interests were mostly in history, especially the history of WWII.  If anything, my imagination had just taken a turn thanks to that little film about some spaceships and aliens in a galaxy far, far away.  Still, I remember sitting in our family room (which was really just an old bedroom), with the TV on.  I was playing with some toys, and this came on.  Didn’t interest me then. 

By college, I had discovered Tolkien and read his works.  At first LoTRs more or less bored me, but I did find the Hobbit enjoyable.  And what’s more, I remembered the special when I first read the book, and was pleasantly surprised at how it established a basic understanding of the plot and the characters and the basic themes.  Sure, there was no Arkenstone nor was there Beorn.  But there was nothing added (hello, Peter Jackson).  If nothing, I was bothered by the short treatment Thorin received.  Otherwise, the acting talent, the background scenery, and the fealty to Tolkien’s ‘old world antiquity’ that the basic design has, still holds a place in my heart. 

I know many can’t stand it.  Even in its day, it had its detractors, especially when it comes to the conceptual design of some of the character classes (dwarves and wood elves especially).  Still, after Jackson’s introduction of beardless, beefcake dwarf heartthrobs with elven love affairs, all of that license seems rather tame today.  For us, it is a throwback to a time when fantasy was not yet mainstream or a billion dollar genre, when concepts of Toklien didn’t include endless CGI murals, but instead had a simple candle with an open codex to remind us of the pre-modern world that the author himself envisioned.

Devil and Daniel Webster

Based on the short story of the same name, and originally released under the title All That Money Can Buy, this film is most enjoyable when the late, great Walter Houston is chewing up scenery as none other than Old Scratch himself.  It’s really a retelling of sorts of the old Faustian Bargain.  James Craig is capable enough as Jabez Stone, a New England farmer who is down on his luck, and lashes out in a fit of rage that he would sell his soul for a break.  In comes Walter Houston with just the answer: Money and all it can buy.  Of course we know how that goes.  At first fortune shines on gentleman farmer Stone, but pretty soon the lures of Hell begin to corrupt him.  Eventually he finds his life falling apart and tries to get out of the bargain.  Old Scratch will have none of it, and it’s the almost godlike Daniel Webster, played wonderfully by the always solid Edward Arnold, who steps in and saves the day.   

In addition to being seeped in old colonial era frontier feel that I associate with fall, and the New England life that one naturally places at the foot of traditional Thanksgiving, the movie is noteworthy for being positive in its appraisal of America, while not hesitating to speak to its sins, albeit through the mouth of the Devil himself. 

Mayflower: Pilgrim’s Adventure

The myth of myths is one of the banes of history.  That is, the idea that people always believed what most probably never did, and therefore we must over emphasize things in ways that are probably as wrong as any myths people are supposed to have believed in the first place.  So we have the now maligned pilgrims, treated as if they were worshiped as gods when, as early as I remember, we merely celebrated their courage and forbearance, and the promise of what could have been with the aid they received from the local American Indians.  That was about it.  And that was as early as first grade, c. 1972.  Yet we must emphasize the scandal, the bad, the negative.  We must do that to offset that pesky myth, which from what I’ve found, has never really existed.  Just like I hear people say we have to stop the myth that Columbus went out to prove the world was flat! The only time I heard that was in Bugs Bunny reruns.  As long as I remember, we were taught that Columbus did not do that.  Same with the pilgrims.  And so this special dared, in its day, to try to show the complexities of relationships between the passengers on that fateful voyage, and expose some of the warts and all of what went on.  Compared to treatments that the poor pilgrims receive today, the movie is almost mythical in its own right.  And perhaps that is what defines a myth.  When a new generation rises up and no longer sees things through the same subjective prisms, the other ways must simply be because of myth.

Nonetheless, the movie itself is credible enough.  Anthony Hopkins does a good job as Captain Jones, and Richard Crenna and the rest of the cast and film manages to maintain a sense of respect without mock sentimentality or that tiresome sense of irony that marks so many modern historical flicks.

The Exorcist

Perhaps the most intense movie of terror ever made. I’m not sure why, but this is November viewing for me.  At the beginning of the movie, some Tricks-or-Treaters are shown running by under some fall foliage.  It must be Halloween at the start of the story.  Since no other holiday is mentioned, I imagine the events unfold over the next few weeks.  By the end, the coldness of the weather is emphasized, trees are bare, but no snow or snowfall.  So I imagine it is mostly through the month of November that the story happens. 

As a result, post-Halloween November is the perfect time for this. Not to mention that November is when the fall becomes the season of dead.  The vibrancy of fall is usually, by now, a thing of the past.   Bare trees, brown and dried leaves, withered shrubs and browning grass all mark the turn toward the deadness of winter.  It is, not unsurprisingly, this season when Satan attempts to explode into the world by seizing none other than strange Regan, daughter of non-religious, morally ambiguous actress.  The acting is first rate, the possession scenes still intense and shocking ever after all these decades. 

It’s a nice reminder of good old fashioned good vs. evil, and so  well known that nothing else needs to be said.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Between the Great Pumpkin and the Easter Beagle is this Peanuts holiday special.  Introducing the Television audience to the annoyingly buff tomboy character of Peppermint Patty, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was the last of the Peanut’s Holiday Specials with close to a heart for the traditional holidays.  Where A Charlie Brown Christmas oozed with Christian meaning an nostalgia, and The Great Pumpkin was covered with all the trappings of a childhood Halloween celebration and atmosphere anyone in the Midwest would have remembered, the Thanksgiving special only touches on such things.  Largely a mixed up series of gags and strange Snoopy skits, it only barely taps in feelings  of the Thanksgiving holidays of old.  The pilgrims are reduced to a costume and a brief Thanksgiving prayer.  Something about being thankful more than wanting the commercial fixings, and friendship.  It showed that whatever Schultz had to tell the world with his fabled Christmas special seemed to be running low on steam, and increasingly all that was left were excuses for coming up with specials for the bucks of it.

Still, it’s not as convoluted as the Easter Beagle, and with its faux colonial style musical score, has enough holiday feel to make it worth the watch.

The Blue Max

What?  Never heard of it!  I get that a lot with this movie.  It’s a bit of a lost gem.  For some reason, I always associate fall with WWI, as I do with most history.  As I’ve written elsewhere, history and fall seem to go hand in hand.  Plus, Charlie Brown’s dog snoopy imagines wandering about the WWI countryside in the Great Pumpkin, so I imagine it’s partly that as well.  In any event, WWI and the fall are associated, and this is one of the better movies to invoke that feeling.  WWI movies are hard to come by, and many that are WWI are so saturated with purpose and message that there isn’t much atmosphere apart from the obvious polemics.  But this, while it does point to issues of war and class, is more about the fictional story of a man obsessed with proving himself, only to end up over his head.  The late George Peppard does well enough as a German, though as always James Mason is there to give umph to the cast, and noteworthy German actor Karl Michael Vogler helps to add a little ‘this is really supposed to be Germany’ feel to the film.  Nothing special, not a bad film at all – and pretty racy in its day.   

Historians can, of course, pick apart the details, as they can with any film.  But for November and fall and a bit of the now forgotten War to end all Wars, not a bad way to spend a couple hours. 

Thank you Veterans

Marine in the snow

Just saying.  It's hard to believe we are in a state of perpetual war.  And even more hard to believe that we are losing and nobody seems to care.  Which more or less besmirches the legacy of not only those veterans serving now, but all those who have gone before.  Truly we are not worthy of their sacrifice.  Nonetheless, unworthily though I can say it, thank you for the sacrifices.  May this generation that no longer seems to know the traditions of the Faith given us by God wake up before it is too late and make such a remembrance as will be worthy of more than scorn from future generations.

For liberals raping children is almost always bad

Almost that is.  If you happen to be a celebrated and beloved liberal director in Hollywood, on the other hand, what's drugging and raping a 13 year old girl after all?  Heck, even the victim can end up saying the culprit may just be a nice guy who's had a rough go of it because of this quest for 'justice.'  For Halloween, I tried to think of something scary to post.  Then I realize the scariest thing out there is another example of the Leftist juggernaut, with its ability to persuade a country founded on God and Liberty that there are no morals, there are only whatever tools exist to crush and exploit anyone and everyone on its march toward oppression and tyranny based on slaughter and slavery and anti-religious bigotry.  That's as scary as I can do.  If anyone else has anything better, I really don't want to hear it. 

Governor Jerry Brown legislates morality

If you're around my age, you'll remember a very popular, and oft repeated, mantra of the Left: You can't legislate morality!  Remember that?  It was right up there with 'You can't impose your values on others!'  And of course that oldie but goodie, 'You must open your mind and accept different viewpoints'.  Remember those?  Those were as loved and celebrated by the Left as guns and racism are by the Right.

And yet, once again proving that Animal Farm is perhaps the most prophetic book to be written in the last 2000 years, we have a proud member of the modern Left, holding office, and declaring certain expressions unacceptable and passing laws eradicating those expressions based upon a set of morals and values he has ever intention of imposing on the population.  Once again we see representatives of liberalism doing what they once insisted was the antithesis of liberal values.

See how the Left is becoming the very thing it once decried as symbolic of evil and intolerance?  Again, read Animal Farm.  Reread Animal Farm.  Report.

Oh, and if you argue 'yeah, Dave, but he allows Confederate building names!", just hold that thought.  The thing about progressive movements is that they are the slow creep.  Just like if we went back 30 years and I told you someday a presidential candidate would embrace the thought that a Christian should either abandon her livelihood or go to prison over endorsing homosexual marriage, you'd probably think I was daft.  See how it works?  Trust us, we'll never go that far!  If you believe that now, you, my friend, would have to be the one who is daft.

A defense of Christopher Columbus

From Tommy de Seno for Fox News.  I know.  But why do we assume he must be some partisan hack, while those who pull all sorts of figures out of the air and quote sources without reference or background are automatically correct?  Because post-modernity, that's why.  We're far less interested in truth than we are being awesome and advancing agendas.  Truth be told, I have no problem condemning Columbus for some of his actions against the native population.  Just as I have no problem condemning Thomas More for his actions against Protestants.  Nor do I just use 'oh well, different time' as a blanket excuse.  Nor do I pardon the natives who slaughtered Columbus's men because, well, different culture.  But I don't simply condemn them.  Nor do I accept whatever latest 'proof' happens to scratch my vindictive itch.  Right now, based on what we know versues listening to people 500 years with axes to grind, Columbus was like so many of us: a product of his time, a flawed human being, and someone who did amazing things all at the same time.  More proof than the same ones trying to convince me that a million were killed during the Inquisition or that we're approaching a hundred million dead in Iraq is going to be required.

A counter-cultural look at Christopher Columbus

Here is an interesting quote.   Like the wonderfully subversive 1491: New Revelations About the Americas Before Columbus, that seriously challenged the PC/MC narrative of life before the evil Europeans, it might we be worth the read and a worthy inoculation against the idiocy, evil, racism and hate of the post-modern Left.

Some thoughts on the awesome season of Autumn

I've always loved the Fall.  For reasons I'm not going to repeat.  But here are some posts over the years in which I try, in my amateur way, to explain just what it is about Fall that I love so much.  Here, here, here and here.  Some of those may tend more to be rants about our lives at the time, but they include snippets about how important this season has always been.  Enjoy. 

Growing tired of Democracy

I know, we're technically a republic.  Not a democracy.  And a good thing, too.  For it seems we're growing tired of the once lauded Checks and Balances that were supposed to keep us from spiraling into a police state or dictatorship.  So once again, Barack Obama is moving to make the Executive Order less about naming national Apple Dumpling Day, and more about circumventing Americans with inconvenient ideas about the way the Left should truly be obeyed.  Of course if a Republican becomes president, I don't see them rolling back the clock.  I fear they'll at least keep the pace the same, and worst, begin adding to it even more - much to the celebration of conservatives maybe?  I don't know.  But the trend, for any thinking person who doesn't get their education from Wikipedia, should be alarming. 

When Liberal Democrats say controversial things

Is about as often as when pigs fly.  Think of it.  Can you count three times in the last ten years that the media went 24/7 coverage about a 'controversial' statement made by liberal democrats?  I can't.  Why not?  Well obviously.  Duh.  It's propaganda, not news.  Still, think about it.  So Hillary Clinton supports jailing traditional Christians who haven't been saved by the Blood of the Left, or quitting their jobs and giving up their livelihoods.  Pretty controversial position for a potential president of these here United States of America, at least in my opinion.  And yet nobody has reported it as such.

But then, when President Obama said mass killings are routine, I could see that being controversial, too.  I could see, if I were a journalist, going out and finding the family member of a shooting victim who would say the death of their loved one wasn't routine.  And yet, not only was it not controversial, it has been lauded and celebrated by the same media who have deliberately misrepresented Ben Carson's statements and used them to continue a near week long campaign against the black man who dared to be popular among racists Republicans.  

Of course controversial is one of those media labels that are pretty subjective anyway.  After all, remember when the majority of Americans overwhelmingly opposed gay marriage, yet standing against gay marriage was always reported as 'Controversial'?  

Again, does anyone still believe the media?  About anything?  Anyone?  Anyone at all?  Bueller? 

The Synod of the Family

Is happening.  It's barely been mentioned.  After the press coverage of the Beatles Invasion visit of Pope Francis, why the major event of the Catholic year is all but being ignored, is beyond me.  The press should be running out and telling us that gay marriage is soon to be consecrated and abortion will soon be an officially sanctioned practice.  And yet, silence.

It isn't as if there aren't hints that some changes could be in the future.  But right now, it's been pretty quiet.  Both by detractors and supporters of Pope Francis and his leadership.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Hell and the Year of Mercy

An equally interesting article on our modern notions of Salvation and Damnation, of Mercy and Judgement.  As a rule, a large number of Catholics today implicitly - if not explicitly - seem to accept a sort of vague universalism, a 'we'll all go to Heaven since Hell is bogus' mentality.  This is a nice reminder that even though it would be nice if God and love and awesome and just special nice stuff, the reality of reality might be a tad different. 

The culture wars then and now

I couldn't have said it better myself. Except to say that who controls the institutions of communication plays a big role.  So when the majority of Americans opposed gay marriage, gays and gay marriage advocates were popularly and officially portrayed as the courageous crusaders of truth and justice.  Now that the majority of Americans support gay marriage, those who oppose it are portrayed as the bigots and hate mongers who will get what they have coming.  So the role of propaganda can't be downplayed.  Otherwise, excellent article.

How does the Left deal with the slaughter of babies?

Humor.  The Planned Parenthood video debacle continues to plague the Left.  It's done a great job brushing the story aside.  Using the old media trick of enforced silence spell, it's mostly as if it never happened.  When forced to confront the issue, some have argued that the videos are wrong, because, well, yeah.  CNN did point out that the baby parts were not - repeat, NOT! - sold for profit.  They were used for operating expenses!  Or there's nothing illegal in what Planned Parenthood is doing.  Or the videos were edited! So Liars!  

But even then, a society with soul and morals might still get a little squeamish about hacking up dead babies that were killed by a doctor to keep the electric bill paid.  Or killing them at all for that matter. So now the Left turns to its other arm of defense: the Entertainment Industry.  It will, of course, mock those concerned about murdered and hacked up babies.  It will try to mock the very issue itself.

I don't know if it will work.  Personally, I think the silent treatment was working better.  Perhaps focus on the evils of Christopher Columbus, or find some police brutality video (against African Americans gets you bonus points).  We can always keep focusing on the Civil Rights Movement.  Maybe find some GOP candidate who says something unprecedented in its awfulness.  That seems to be the better move.  But bringing it back into the light and hoping people can just have a good laugh over the whole slaughtered babies, especially because it reinforces our ability to have abortions for more noble things (like more active sex lives), might be hoping against the tide of goodness that might still flicker in the hearts of the dying West.

Remember, once something is funny, it ceases to be a big deal

Celebrate Columbus Day!

Yes, in fighting the tide of anti-Western radicalism egged on by PC Multi-Cultural education, I take a moment to celebrate Christopher Columbus.  Does that mean I celebrate everything the man did?  No.  Just like I don't celebrate what every soldier ever did when I celebrate, or remember, Veterans Day.  Or that I don't celebrate everything America did when I celebrate Independence Day.  Or  I don't celebrate everything done by Native Americans when I celebrate my American Indian heritage.  Or I don't celebrate everything done by the Catholic Church when I celebrate the Church.  OR I don't affirm and celebrate the sins of Martin Luther King, Jr. (if he had any) when I celebrate him.

See how easy it is.  What Christopher Columbus is damned for is the color of his skin, when you get right down to it.  We know that Native Americans enslaved each other.  So did Africans.  Most thinking, educated people know that Muslims had a robust slave trade based on arguments not too dissimilar to the 'Africans are animals' arguments we hear from Europeans.  We know Native Americans fought brutal wars of conquest, genocidal extermination, and could out-Machiavelli the best European princes.

Did Columbus personally kill people?  Did he personally enslaved Natives?  Yep.  It wasn't uncommon in those rough and tumble days (unlike our sophisticated and morally superior age we live in).  Of course that doesn't make it right (see Native American atrocities above).  But the true 'hate' of Columbus that people embrace and advocate is for no other reason than the color of his skin.  He was a white European.  Over the centuries, the Native population would be displaced and even killed by others who were white Europeans.  Therefore, guilty - him and his entire being.

It's racism, of course.  Just like those who defend illegal immigration.  When a case is brought up of Americans being attacked, or even murdered, how often have I seen the response 'Oh yeah!  Well look what your ancestors did!'  Again, racism through and through.  The same racism that heaps the sins of an entire civilization over subsequent centuries on the shoulders of a single explorer.

So while I lament the actions taken by Columbus personally, and wish he had been a better person, I still celebrate him.  Because I still celebrate aspects of the dying West, and therefore celebrate the events that unfolded to bring a Christian founded society to one that was in no way saintly or even close to Christian in its moral standards, I don't need a scapegoat to apologize for the valueless West. For all the flaws of the West, they were flaws because of deviations from its moral grounding.  The flaws of the Native population, like so many other civilizations, were flaws grounded on the adherence to its moral groundings.

And since I don't want to be a racist, even if it's the hip and awesome racism of post-modern hipsters who can't help but be awesome because awesome, I'm not going to condemn a man because over the centuries others who looked like him and shared his skin color did other wrong, even heinous, things.

So here's to you Christopher!  It won't be long before the juggernaut of endless censorship reaches you, as it will no doubt reach others.  But while it lasts, while freedoms and liberties are still around, I'll part way from my moral superiors, and remember the boldness and courage it took for you to do something amazing, especially from the vantage point of an era where so many moral crusaders at best risk the terrors of Carpal Tunnel syndrome, and little more.

The Friendly Atheist says the craziest things

So after over a decade of the radical anti-religious New Atheists spouting rhetoric against religion that would make a party in the 1930s Reichstag look Kosher by comparison, atheists are dealing with the ugly notion that evidence suggests the killer of nine people at Umpqua College purposefully targeted Christians.  Of course for most atheists, like most liberals and secularists, Christianity is the prime enemy.  So most contempt, disgust, hatred, spite, demagoguery and lies are aimed at Christians and Christianity.  And of course we know that such rhetoric is always behind things like racist hate crimes, and anti-gay hate crimes, and anti-Muslim hate crimes.  

But as Western Liberalism tends to do, once again we have a case where the zealousness of its righteous crusaders turns on itself and seems to expose the movement's hypocrisy and agendas.  So Lauren Nelson, penning for the always ironically titled Friendly Atheist, steps in to say 'not so fast, it may not have anything to do with it after all!'  

That, of course, is a favorite tactic of the leftist propaganda machine.  If a person kills blacks or gays or another minority group adopted by the Left, then hatred is the only motive.  The only focus.  If someone breaks from that, or a member of the approved minority community commits the crime, or a victim is from a non-accepted group, then it's all about anything but the hatred.  Once again, reminding us that we are dealing with a movement that hates us; one that likely doesn't care for the various groups it claims to support, but one that certainly hates certain groups - like Christians.  

Still, it is fun reading. Most normal, sensible people wouldn't buy it.  How college educated post-moderns with access to the Internet will accept it remains to be seen. 

P.S.  If you're unfamiliar with the good Ms. Nelson, here is a post explaining why she is not just pro-choice, but happily and proudly pro-abortion.  She is, in her words, not just pro-choice, but pro-abortion And Proud Of It! 

Where have I been?

Busy, that's where.  Which accounts for the sparsity of my posts.  So much continues to happen: birthdays, soccer season, new jobs, old jobs, school at home and just the general life issues.  Plus, I must admit, we've been in a bit of a funk looking for our lives and where we fit in our post-Protestant days.  I know, we've been Catholic for almost 10 years.  You'd think we'd be settled in.  But we aren't.  Whatever glorious stories of Protestant Clergy Converts coming into the Church and finding a whole blessed ministry and new life in their new tradition you might have heard, it's not been our lives.

I think at this point it might be our bishop, who for some reason has made it clear 'I don't serve their kind.'  I have met with several over the years, including individuals high up in the diocese, only to hit a dead end when it was all over.  The last individual had me ready to sign up.  I would be in charge of multiple parish Religious Education departments.  It would be tough, and I would be traveling from place to place.   Wow!  Like pastoring a church?  I was so excited.  He loved what I had to bring through my experience, even though it's been years.  He was meeting with the bishop that very week, and was going to bring my name up.  After all, he said, they were having trouble finding people to fill such spots for all the parishes. It would be perfect.

And then...silence.  For weeks I waited.  I reached out, and heard nothing.  Just as I have so many times in the past.  And finally he responded: sorry, having' heard anything.  If I do, I'll let you know.  I'll keep you in my prayers.  Bless.'  And that was it,  Once again, we hit a wall and I fear it is our bishop, who isn't going anywhere soon.  But not just him.  As I wrote earlier, another diocese was hiring a person who would be in charge of Evangelical Ecumenical relations.  They needed someone with a religious degree (MDiv preferred), who knows the Bible and has experience with Church history.  I was denied the next day.   They hired a fellow with a degree in communications and web development.  He was a life long Catholic.  He knew some Protestant friends in college.

So that has left us swinging in the breeze.  Tomorrow, my wife and I meet with a priest to lay it out: we lost our lives when we became Catholic.  The lives my wife and I, and our boys, had together as Protestants.  We all took part in the ministry.  My boys and my wife and I were all together.  We all shared in the calling.  And then we became Catholic.  And while we're thankful we have jobs, and even some extra money, they are jobs.  Pushing paper.  Waiting for the departments to move or shut down and scramble for the next thing.

We're trying to homeschool, but it is nigh on impossible when both parents have full-time jobs away from home.  Our youngest is barely holding on.  And when all is said and done, our big ministry contribution is being able to make it to church on Sundays.  So where to go now?  That is going to be the question.  Not an ultimatum.  But definitely it will set the stage for where we might go.  At this point, we so desire to bring our family back together as it used to be, we've flirted with going into business!  Which isn't a solution, since neither my wife nor I have the skills needed for that.  But that's the point we've come to.  So we'll see.

There is much to talk about that has happened, as imprisoned state workers and murdered college students give us a portent of things to come for Christians in the coming years under the post-Christian secular leftist tyranny.  But for now, tomorrow is on our minds.  Please pray for us.

Anderson Cooper reminds us of the power of liberalism

The power of liberalism is to assume liberalism and truth are one and the same.  To not embrace a liberal mindset is to, by default, be either stupid, evil, or both.  And of course wrong.  So Anderson Cooper, based completely on a single, liberal and secularized understanding of, well, everything, takes apart Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's opposition to gay marriage and the imprisonment of Kim Davis over her Christian beliefs running afoul of of the non-Christian based laws that Cooper advocates.

As I tell my boys, the difference between conservatives and liberals is simple.  Conservatives believe they are right and everyone else is wrong.  Liberals know they are right and everyone else is either stupid or evil.

Watch and enjoy.  Again, someday it will be illegal to be Christian unless your Christaintiy, like everything else, is brought down to kneel before the gospel of liberalism.  This is only a a warning shot.

No fault annulments

So Pope Francis has streamlined the whole annulment process.  Now I'm no expert in that department.  Few Catholic I know are.  Long and short, the annulment process in the Church is supposed to flush out those rare instances where a marriage was never valid in the first place.  The reasons differed, but generally they should have been grave - it was never consummated, or one of the parties was coerced, or important information was withheld, or similar extreme cases.  

In practice, unfortunately, the process seems to have become a long, cumbersome dodge around the modern no-fault divorce world in which we live.  People married for years who had kids and grandkids were told their marriages were null.  Just what constitutes an invalid marriage if you can be married for years with kids and grandkids?  Isn't that just divorce with a different name?

At least it was such a long, burdensome process that nobody looked forward to it, many chose to dodge it, and at least there was this idea that having gotten a divorce, you weren't where the Church wanted you to be. 

But now Pope Francis has, in the name of mercy, made the process easier.  Naturally, for a significant portion of the Catholic apologetics world, there is no problem.  There never is.  Pope Francis is never wrong.  All is right with the world. In this corner is Jimmy Akin, who does a great job giving some background on what annulments are at least supposed to be, and a very direct take on how Pope Francis will work it out.

There are others, however, who aren't too thrilled with Pope Francis on a variety of topics.  In this corner is Michael Dougherty.  I don't know if he's been critical of Pope Francis in other areas, but he certainly sees a major problem with this.  The biggest problem seems to be that Pope Francis might be making it so impossible for people in the modern world to have an idea of what a real Catholic marriage is, a huge swath of their marriages might well be null anyway.  Sort of no-fault annulments.  You just say you're a victim of modern dumb, and it was never a marriage anyway.  Try again.  Kids and other considerations?  I don't know. 

So there you have it.  Two takes.  Once again either Pope Francis is really awesome and any mix ups or misunderstandings are the result of vast anti-Pope conspiracies or the result of dumb people who are dumb.  Or he is a child of the modern age, with heavy sympathies to the point of views progressive ideals and morals.  Time will tell. 

The face of homosexual tolerance

Yep, expect more of it. We've already learned that, in the name of Gay Tolerance (or Welcoming and Affirming), small business owners will be crushed with heavy fines meant to destroy their livelihoods unless they conform.  Now it's to the prisons, much to the delight of gay onlookers.  I say the last part because in the news clips of her standing her ground against the plaintiffs (that is, the two homosexuals wanting to get "married"),  one of the gentlemen  proudly proclaimed that she should be "taken away in handcuffs!"  Again, in the name of tolerance and diversity.

I know.  She is a government employee.  It's part of the job for better or worse.  Maybe it could have been handled differently.  Maybe the governor could have stepped in and found a compromise.  I also know that Ms. Davis is a flawed human being with failings in her own past.  Or so the media told me in the effort to discredit her.  After all, the leftist definition of hypocrisy is anyone taking a non-liberal stand that has failed.  Better to have no morals and avoid the charge of hypocrisy.

Which shows why those who once proclaimed a brotherhood of man persons where all will live in harmony and tolerance and diversity and respect for differing opinions can now use the power of the government to smash any who fail to grovel before the might of their dogmatic moral proclamations.
No doubt there will be Christians who will line up and spew contempt on Ms. Davis, saying she's doing it all wrong, she is a bad witness, she isn't handling this in the proper, Christian way.  But please.  Can someone tell me if there is anyone left so stupid as to think there is any hope in compromising with this new secular modernity juggernaut?  Does anyone now think, when viewing the above picture, that the post-Christian Left is the slightest bit interested in "live and let live"?  Or compromising if Christians will just meet them halfway? Tell me there is no example of such irredeemable idiocy still left in the world.

BTW, FWIW, I think this is not looking as good as many in the media would like.  I've heard several media outlets pulling their collars and suggesting that maybe there could have been some compromise.  I didn't really hear that with the bakers.  Why?  My guess - and my guess only - is that there is still hope that common sense and values are not dead in America.  And seeing a picture of a couple of bakers with things and stuff and things doesn't really resonate.  But seeing a woman thrown in jail, in a mugshot, all because of her Christian beliefs, may just rouse that sleeping giant.  They could be wrong.  But just in case, I think this is an image the press would rather avoid.