Thoughts & Ruminations

Words from Pius XI that ring true today...

It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.

This, Venerable Brethren, is the doctrine of the Church, which alone in the social as in all other fields can offer real light and assure salvation in the face of Communistic ideology. But this doctrine must be consistently reduced to practice in every-day life, according to the admonition of St. James the Apostle: “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” The most urgent need of the present day is therefore the energetic and timely application of remedies which will effectively ward off the catastrophe that daily grows more threatening. We cherish the firm hope that the fanaticism with which the sons of darkness work day and night at their materialistic and atheistic propaganda will at least serve the holy purpose of stimulating the sons of light to a like and even greater zeal for the honor of the Divine Majesty. …

Even in Catholic countries there are still too many who are Catholics hardly more than in name. There are too many who fulfill more or less faithfully the more essential obligations of the religion they boast of professing, but have no desire of knowing it better, of deepening their inward conviction, and still less of bringing into conformity with the external gloss the inner splendor of a right and unsullied conscience, that recognizes and performs all its duties under the eye of God.

We know how much Our Divine Savior detested this empty pharisaic show, He Who wished that all should adore the Father “in spirit and in truth.” The Catholic who does not live really and sincerely according to the Faith he professes will not long be master of himself in these days when the winds of strife and persecution blow so fiercely, but will be swept away defenseless in this new deluge which threatens the world. And thus, while he is preparing his own ruin, he is exposing to ridicule the very name of Christian.

Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris

Wow… How’s this for those who have ‘reinvented’ the faith in their own image and preference…

The Meatcard and Star Trek Sporks...

First, there’s the Meatcard… What can I say - it’s made of meat and lasers…

Then, there are Nerd Merit Badges… As an Eagle Scout, I’m not offended, I am a little bemused though.

Next, two from Etsy. The Math Clock uses finite math to tell time… Pleasant. The very useful Owl Wrap is for your earbuds.

Of course, you’ll also want to pick up your Star Trek Limited Edition Titanium Spork… I’ve got mine right here - just in case.

My Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 2009

Hey gang. As usual, comments are always welcome.

By the way, I don’t post as many sermons as I used to primarily because I don’t write the full-text of as many as I used to. I’ve found that unless I’m trying to get some theological or spiritual matter explained in a particular way, an outline is sufficient… At any rate, more to come.

My psychology professor in college was trying to explain to us why some young people will do bad things in order to get attention from others - even if that attention is negative: screaming, punishing and so forth.

He went on and on with lingo and theories, but I didn’t get it until he did an experiment. He asked a young man to wait outside the room for a second. He told everyone in the classroom to ignore anything the young man said. Just sit and stare, look at the cell phone, read a book, anything at all - just ignore him. Then he went outside and told the young man to tell a story from his own life that he thought was interesting. The young man came in and began to tell the story of a camping trip with friends. Everyone in the class dutifully ignored him - except the professor.

The professor called the story stupid. Insulted the young man’s vocabulary, his clothing, his physical features. He just beat the poor guy up emotionally for about 5 minutes until he told everyone to freeze. He said - “look” - the young man was standing right in front of the professor’s desk. Even though he was being brutally insulted, he preferred talking to the professor to being ignored… Suddenly, we all understood.

We’ve all felt that moment when things “become real” for us… It could be a positive thing when we understand some principle of math or science. It could be joyful when we finally get the hang of roller skates or playing an instrumental. It could be a tragic thing when someone dies or suddenly becomes very ill.

In many ways, this is what our Lord is communicating to his disciples in our Gospel today. He wants them to understand that what is happening is above and beyond anything they have a way of understanding… He’s not a ghost, he’s not just the fulfillment of an expectation, nor is he just the next in a line of miracle workers or prophets…

The Lord could say the same thing to us… Even though we know the truth and have more access to it than ever before… We could all use the reminder that God and Faith and Salvation are not just one thing among many - to be set as equal to wealth or the economy or my place in society. Jesus’ resurrection is not something we commemorate blindly as a matter of history…

Our world has deceived itself into believing that Jesus and Heaven and Eternity are irrelevant and can be replaced by power and arrogance and self-worship… We get a taste of just how foolish that is when things “become real” for us.

Just as Lent was a time of penance and preparation, Easter is a time of celebration and realization that our faith - the sacraments, the moral teaching of the Church, the social teaching of the Church, and the absolute authority of the Church - are realer than anything else we’ll encounter in this world… Jesus is not a ghost and the Church is not a social club.

He proved Himself to the apostles by eating and St. John says that we prove ourselves to Him by keeping his word. “The Way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments.”

Easter is the perfect time to fortify ourselves in the truth of the faith and in obedience to that faith so that as more and more “things become real” in our lives, we will find in that faith strength and comfort and peace and joy.

"I regard political correctness as worse than a lie..."

I can’t begin to describe how much I agree with this worthwhile rant! I hate the invisible and stupid rules that so many Christians and pro-lifers try to obey in order to avoid the recently meaningless label of bigot or racist. Until 20 years ago, those words meant something. They described someone who rejected the equal dignity of all before God… Now, they describe only someone of different ideology who must be defamed and destroyed for the good of the cult party new world order.

The following are highlighted quotations via this amazing article from John C Wright.

…I regard political correctness as worse than a lie.

A lie is a straightforward attempt to deceive a victim. It almost honest by contrast. Political Correctness is a corrupt attempt to poison thought and speech, and to impose upon the nobility and courtesy of its victims to get them to deceive themselves. A frequent side effect of PC jargon is that it renders rational conversation difficult, indirect, or even impossible.

Every thinker since Confucius and Socrates emphasized that calling things by their right names is the basis not only of logic, but of morality. Attempts to substitute euphemism or misleading expressions for the right names of things are not only deceptive, but illogical. It is both a moral and an intellectual error.

If you successfully substitute the word ‘Inuit’ for ‘Eskimo’ on the grounds that ‘Eskimo’ is an insult, you will have successfully convinced the next generation of anyone who hears or reads that word that everyone for the last hundred years or more who used the word ‘Eskimo’ deliberately meant and fully intended an insult, or was foolish or negligent enough to utter an insult by accident. That conviction will be false, a lie, and you (in a small way, one more straw on the camel’s back) will have helped to perpetrate it. 

In the last 50 years, this deception has been successful, wildly successful. The purpose was to erect a wall to sever us from our fathers and grandfathers, so that, rootless, we would be weak and stupid. This has been done. 

Example: There are people alive these days, perhaps even the majority, who when reading the Declaration of Independence or the Book of Genesis think God created males and endowed them with equal rights, but not females. They think when the Jefferson wrote “All Men are Created Equal” that that Jefferson and the Founding Fathers were only objecting to inequalities among Kings, Princes, Barons, Knights, and Farmers, but that the Founders were somehow fine and dandy with rank inequalities between Queens, Princesses, Baronesses, Dames and Farmwives. If King George had been a Queen, no rebellion would have obtained, because all men are created equal obviously means not all women are created equal. So much for the ability of modern victims of PC nonspeak to read and understand the words of the past.

In language as in economics, whatever you subsidize, you multiply. Since we have spent years erecting utterly false and nonsensical verbal signs that point away from reality rather than toward it, in the name of ceasing to offend the sensitive, instead of a polite society, we achieved the opposite. The rudest society imaginable is one where everyone is hyper-sensitive, thin-skinned, and willing to see insults where none are intended, and, most of all, a society were everyone demands, as a matter of right, as a matter of entitlement, that no one cross or offend his ultra-fine nerves, which have been sandpapered to the most exquisite pitch of sensitivity. The professional crybabies have been given a trump card that wins every hand and always collects the kitty. So, we get more crybabies. Dignity, adieu: rudeness, hail! Hail, horrors!

And when reasonable demands are exhausted, unreasonable demands emerge. Suffragettes reasonably demanded a vote. Feminists demand the rape laws be gender-neutral, even if women never have and never can perform the act technically called rape on a man. And here is where political correctness emerges. Since reality, by definition, cannot be changed on human whim, human language, which can be changed, is changed instead. A philosophy that excuses and buttresses dishonesty (“Language always changes!” — “There is no truth!”) is a necessary component. A philosophy that preaches virtue and self-restraint, such a Stoicism, or one that preaches of a higher Truth, such as Christianity, must be expunged.

I am not saying a due care not to offend is not polite: but I am saying the whole culture around me has been infected with hyper-sensitive whiners, and has gone mad, and I wish no part of it. Political correctness in an innate and organic part of the death-cult of moral relativism, cultural self-loathing, socialist yearning for slave-chains, the devotion to destruction, deconstruction, and unreason. 

It is not that I do not think people can be offended by plain speaking. It is just that I think the truly offended, those who have a right to be offended, have been drowned out by counterfeit claims. In much the same way, I do think there are real racists. Most of them are on the Left, and they hate Jews. It is just that I think the real racists have been lost in the blizzard of false accusations leveled by the Left against the innocent. They accuse everyone of racism. Their patron saint should be Titus Oates. (n.b.: on the news just now, CNN called the governor of Texas a racist, on the ground that he is a federalists, who used the term States Rights, in a speech he gave to a mostly white audience. Such is what passes for news in the Brave New World of Big Brother. He may be watching Us, but I am not watching CNN).

The deadly chasm between American schools and the real world

via Pertinacious Papist (a most worthy site to follow)

Charles J. Sykes’ list of “Rules kids won’t learn in school”:

1. Life is not fair. Get used to it.
2. The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
3. Sorry, you won’t make $60,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be vice-president either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a GAP label on it.
4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait ‘till you get a boss.
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.
6. It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible.
7. Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
9. Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
10. Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
12. Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
13. You are not immortal. If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
14. Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life’s depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.

This list in its original form was the work of Charles J. Sykes, author of the 1996 bookDumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add, and the 2007 book 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education. The list is not the work of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut, or Minnesota State Representative Brooks Coleman of Duluth. To see Sykes’ list in its original form, see “Some Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School” (Snopes, August 19, 2008).

An upgrade to my audio setup...?

So here’s what I’m planning to purchase in the next three to six months…

1. Heil PR-40, $325
2. Shockmount, $95
3. Boom, $109
4. Pop Filter, $20
5. PreSonus Tubepre PreAmp, $130 or the dbx 286a PreProcessor, $200 (ht: Frank)
6. M-Audio Fast Track Pro 4x4 Mobile USB Audio/MIDI Interface, $165

Grand Total ~ $850 - $950