Chateau Lloyd

Margaret Thatcher once said that everyone is conservative about what he knows best.  There's some truth to it, but I think a more accurate take is that we tend to assume what we grew up as the "true" thing.  It doesn't matter if it was just introduced, as we grow older, that becomes the "old-fashioned" thing we know and love.

Vatican II went down before I was born, and I converted to Catholicism in part because I found the Mass more mystical, meaningful and rooted in history than Protestant practices.  However, the current movement within the Church to roll back the excesses of Vatican II has brought about renewed interest in older forms of worship.

One of the most visible ones is the treatment of the Eucharist.  Like everyone else of my era, I got used to receiving it on the hand, but there's a strong push to receive the Host on the tongue, either standing or kneeling.  

For me, this was a bit awkward because the hand-delivery method is what I know.  However, this past week I decided to try it the other way.

I will say this: it is much more efficient.  Indeed, I'm told that the Communion rail (where the faithful knelt along a barrier that ran the length of the altar) was far faster than the current system.  No long lines stretching to the back of the sanctuary, just a continuous replacement along the rail, with the priest moving back and forth.

For those unfamiliar with the practice, receiving the Host in the hand requires you to take it into one palm, draw it forth from the other hand, and then place it in your mouth.  Only then can you move (either to resume your seat or to receive the Precious Blood).

With the older method, one simply sticks one's tongue out and the Host is deftly deposited by the minister.  It goes much quicker.

I've yet to try a Traditional Latin Mass, but I'd like to when I have a more flexible schedule.

In the meantime, I've now inched a bit closer to the TradCath lifestyle.

It being an election year, the usual debate is going on within the Christian (and especially Catholic) community about which candidate is least odious and therefore deserving of the observant religious vote.

For a long time, these decisions were made during the primary election season and the general rule was that of Nixon - run to the extreme during the primary and the center during the general.

The Right to Life movement in particular has been something of a cheap date for my entire adulthood.  Roe v. Wade was established law, so it was easy for an aspiring GOP contender to swear their Pro-life allegiance and then do nothing because "their hands were tied."

When Roe fell, the battlefield opened up, and I think the Right-to-Lifers got a bit high on their own supply, figuring that the old bans would revert and their work was done.

They have been proven disastrously wrong in a string of campaigns that left them flat-footed and badly outspent.  Put simply: these people are terrible at electoral politics.

While the Jesuits have taken things a bit far, there is something to be said from studying one's opponents and learning from their tactics.

Incrementalism works.

Too many orthodox religious voters want moral absolutes, and short of that, see little point in engaging.  The opposite is true - spiritual warfare is an attritional conflict, not to be won by the passage of a law or even an amendment.   It must be attended to daily, both within and without.  Incremental victories can become strategic ones, and this requires both prudence and an understanding of the theological principles of subsidiarity properly applied.

Thus: people who suggest tanking the least worst candidate in favor of the worst in order to "teach the party a lesson" are effectively saying that more abortion now, more souls lost now can somehow be made up for less in some hypothetical future where their emboldened enemies don't manage to lock in their gains.

I disagree with that.  I think offering stout resistance in every way and on every front - both within and without one's party - is the only option.  And at the end of the day, half a win is better than no win at all, especially when there is zero guarantee that our increasingly secular society won't blame the loss on disloyal or alienating "religious nuts."

When people behold disastrous results from their counsel, "My hands are clean" is scant comfort to the others who are suffering.  We must remember that God will judge us by our fruit, not our intentions.

Like everything else, the sports world is in something of a strange place.  The elites in society have decided that a person's sex is now unknowable, hence the spectacle of men dominating Olympic women's boxing.

The Olympic authorities confess that they are at a loss to find a reliable "scientific" way to tell men and women apart.  This is nonsense, but that's the official lie.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote how honesty is in short supply, and this is a great example of it.

Another example also emerged this week as the NCAA finally released the report of its earlier investigation into the University of Michigan's football program.  For those not following the story closely, there are two scandals at the university, the first involving impermissible recruiting during the Covid period, the second involving on-field cheating via prohibited in-person scouting.

The report for the former offenses is finally available and it is quite telling.  To many commentators, recruiting rules are an annoyance and violations regularly occur.  The NCAA digging into this is therefore a "nothingburger," unworthy of much attention.

However, the antics of now-former Michigan Head Coach Jim Harbaugh elevated it to one of national importance, in part because Harbaugh claimed the whole affair was the result of him buying a hungry kid a cheeseburger.

As the report makes clear, this was a bald-faced lie.  In the first place, Harbaugh bought two recruits (and their fathers) meals one two different occasions.  The only cheesburger consumed was the one Harbaugh himself ordered for breakfast.  Far more significant was the fact that this was during a national "dead period" for recruiting which was imposed to try to limit Covid exposure imposed in 2020.  Harbaugh violated this, brought recruits on campus, worked out with them, and in the end was rewarded with one of them joining his team.

Two other schools (Arizona State University and the Air Force Academy) also violated these rules, but what set Harbaugh apart was how he not only lied to investigators, his program as a whole did as much as possible to obstruct the investigation.  Indeed, Harbaugh (a self-identified Catholic) out did St. Peter by lying four times rather than three.

Moreover, they were stupid, easily disprovable lies.

The significance of this is the reaction to the University of Michigan and its fanbase: they are 100% behind Harbaugh, so much so that he has been invited to be an honorary team captain for their season opener in three weeks.

This is a truly remarkable development.  Not long ago, someone this publicly dishonest would be shunned by society.  

Instead, he is venerated and the reason is that in his final three years as Michigan's head coach, he defeated their hated rival Ohio State, and won three conference titles and a national championship.

These achievements are tainted by allegations of cheating, and the initial report into that is due shortly, but apparently cheating no longer matters.  Winning is what matters.

In fact, media reports indicate that while the university is willing to admit wrongdoing and accept various penalties, vacating the games is not among them.  They desperately want to cling to a tainted record which absolutely no one else will respect.

I am curious as to how the academic side of the university feels about this, especially their schools of medicine and law, which are widely respected.  Surely the faculty and alumni would not want to be associated with a school that believes cheating is okay so long as it works, but these are strange times.

Is any movie a better distillation than 1990s youth culture than Wesley Snipes' Blade?  It's got a bit of everything - the brash anti-hero, vampirism as a decadent (secular) lifestyle, and of course that sexy soft-core lesbian porn that was just starting to creep into the popular consciousness.

Indeed, in retrospect that was a clever marketing ploy by Hollywood, because while two men having sex is disgusting, two women having sex is merely absurd - and far more aesthetically pleasing.

In any event, I hadn't watched it in many years, which may strike people as surprising given my (fairly) recent authorship of The Vampires of Michigan.   To a certain extent, Blade was the Ur-text of that book insofar as it treated vampirism as a morally neutral biological phenomenon.  Obviously, the blood drinking was bad, but religious symbols and sacred objects were specifically mentioned as useless.

Garlic and silver were instead the primary threats to the vamps.

The storyline is unremarkable, and what sells the picture are the actors and the remarkably slick aesthetic.  Wesley Snipes is just so damn cool.  He oozes cool, personifies it - women want him, men want to BE him.  Modern movies simply cannot produce that level of charisma.

Put simply, it knew what it wanted to be and became that thing.  

That being said, there is a spiritual void at the heart of the picture which I had not noticed before - in part because it has been so long since I saw it.  When you are in your 20s, partying and lots of sex seems all that one could want in life.  Later on, other priorities emerge.

That was a large part of what inspired my take on vampires.  I very much enjoyed (and incorporated) fight scenes with cool weapons and people capable of dishing out (and taking) absurd amounts of damage, but the real heart of the matter to me was how one kept going after 100 years of orgies.  There had to be something more.

Anyhow, the film has held up remarkably well.

For the last few weeks Billy Joel's "Honesty" has been running through my mind.  The scope and quantity of lies in public discourse is simply overwhelming.

As the title of the post says - everyone is so untrue.

It is no accident that Man's from grace began with a lie.  Lying comes natural to evil people and often reaches the extent that they lie about everything, no matter how trivial or self-defeating.

We're to the point where once-respected organizations are now rejecting their own reportage in order to toe the Party line.  It's completely self-defeating, but so is evil.

As the song says:

I can always find someone who says they sympathize if I wear my heart out on my sleeve, but I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies.  All I want is someone to believe.

Apparently, pretty lies are in great demand these days.

There is a strain of thought - popularized by Hollywood and contemporary culture - that lies indicate intelligence, and clever lies are the sign of a superior kind of person.  This has obvious appeal to prideful people lost in their vanity, and is of a piece with the elevation of cowardice to a virtue as well.

None of this is new, Chesterton and Belloc wrote about it more than a century ago, and Waugh's writings also address the issue.  A key plot point in his Sword of Honour trilogy is how an otherwise admirable British officer convinces himself that the smart thing to do is abandon his men on Crete and save himself, only to realize that while lip-service is paid to such cleverness, in practice society finds it despicable.  

The scandal is so great that punishment is out of the question, and he is hustled off to the Pacific theater, where he finds redemption through conventional acts of bravery and courage.

Of course modern society also rejects the notion of redemption or forgiveness.  There are only the Yard Sign Calvinists and everyone else.    As I noted a couple of weeks ago, one of the most consequential shifts in American culture was when progressive Christians decided that their mission was to condemn rather than convert.

If one isn't trying to draw people to eternal truth, duping them with lies seems a reasonable thing to do, especially if you merely want to keep them in line.

It's a self-limiting tactic, but siding with evil has always been a sucker's bet.  That's because the biggest lie of all is that one can somehow escape divine judgement.

When I was a child, I had a regular cycle of ear infections, and two of the dark memories that haunt me from that time are getting an injection in the butt and the taste of yellow Triaminic.

I've the worst one I had in many years and decided to go into the clinic to speed my recovery.  Before I left, I got word that come coworkers had tested positive for Covid, and I have to confess I thought it rather quaint.  It never occurs to me to test for that.  It's over.  Covid is just another cold and - as we now know - was not much more than that to begin with.  

The response was grossly disproportionate to the threat.

As it happens, I did test positive, but it was something of a footnote because like many others, I have no symptoms.  My problem is an ear infection, which I'm in the process of shaking off.

That in turn reminded me of Stephen King's On Writing, a book I read some years ago after a friend recommended it to me.  This was back when I was just beginning my authorial career, and I'm sure he meant well, but his advice - ignore the biography and focus on the writing tips - was exactly wrong.

I despise Stephen King.  I dislike what he writes and how he writes it.  His politics are abhorrent and he seems like a very bitter, angry old man, which is strange given the immense fame and fortune he has achieved in life.  He's pretty much the prime exhibit that secular materialist goals only get you so far.  True happiness and love come from God, and the closer one draws to Him, the greater the joy and peace one will find.

That is why King's autobiography was of interest.  It was no shock to me that he had an unhappy childhood with frequent ear infections and painful treatments (in his case, the doctor just pierced the eardrum with a hot needle).  His family was poor, and he was surrounded by decrepit spooky stuff that he later incorporated into his works.

To me, that is the value of literary biographies/autobiographies - to see where the inspiration came from and how they came to write what they did.  Once you've visited Fort Monroe, you can understand  why so much of Edgar Allen Poe's work centered on oppressive masses of damp, dark masonry.  He wrote what he knew, which was the interior casemates of the fortress where he served part of his time in the U.S. Army.

I don't get sick very often, and once again I'm reminded that part of why we get sick must be to make us appreciate being healthy.  I'm certain that I will do that, and hopefully it will be soon.

For the past couple of days I've been unable to get into the site.  This may or may not have been related to the catastrophic computer failures that devastated the travel sector, but it's a reminder that the technology that now seems so vital to us is actually both fragile and still quote new.

I'm in the middle of middle age, yet I can remember burning through paper checks to pay bills not that long ago.  I now keep my ledger on a spreadsheet rather than on paper, but I can go back to it fairly easily.

An entire generation of people have no idea what I am talking about.

For a long time, modern technology increased both society's convenience and resilience.  Telephone and radio allowed for instantaneous long-distance communication, greatly enhancing responses to disasters or public safety emergencies.  Our medical system engaged and destroyed diseases like smallpox and brought polio to the brink of extinction.  

Yet at some point, it all turned sour.  Our communications are now extremely vulnerable to the extent that a backhoe digging near St. Louis a few years back crippled American computer networks.  This latest incident is a reminder that the profit motive can result in tremendous advances but also dangerous weaknesses.

The same is true of medicine.  Where bright minds once battled disease, our doctors now seek to unmake humanity itself, telling troubled children that they can and should be mutilated and chemically castrated in order to make them feel better.  The Covid pandemic demonstrated that modern medicine  is more about asserting authority than healing.

The key takeaway is to look at other networks for support.  Friends, family, community, parish - these are far more resilient and much less prone to corruption and exploitation.

I came across an intriguing column over at Crisis Magazine discussing whether Protestants are progressives.  I think the answer is "yes," but that it requires some qualification, which is that American Protestantism is different from the European form.

European Protestantism was built around state churches that were formalized as result of the Wars of Religion.  The formula Cuius Regio Eius Religio ("whose realm, his religion") placed the form of worship in the hands of secular rulers, and if the ruler was Protestant, a state church was the result.

What this did was shackle Protestants to the existing order.  It was all well and good to use critical study on the Bible and deconstruct its meaning, but Nineteenth Century German theologians were still tethered to the existing political order.  It was only once that order was destroyed by World War I that more radical interpretations could be given a wide hearing.

Because of the dislocation of the world wars, European Protestantism didn't swing progressive, it simply died.  Yes, the remnants of state churches have embraced female clergy and now sexual liberation, but they're doing so to catch up with society, not lead it.  The Marxist heresy was a much stronger influence that latter-day Lutheranism.  Indeed, I'd say every European country has more practicing Marxists than state church adherents.

American Protestantism, on the other hand, cut its ties from the old regimes long ago.  Only the Anglicans retained any real connection with the mother church.  The other churches gradually lost that connection as the congregations assimilated into American culture.  This happened for three reasons.  

The first was pure logistics - it was hard to keep sending pastors across the ocean to minister to people whose knowledge of the old country rapidly faded.  In time, new seminaries were established in America, but different conditions and social realities pushed them away from the home office.

Add to this the ethnic mixing that immediately took place.  While inter-denominational marriage in Europe between a Swedish Lutheran and a German as possible, it was much more likely in the U.S.  Many of the communities set up shop and (to give a local example) Michigan's Upper Peninsula had Finns, Swedes and Norwegians all lumped together, each with their own church.  In time, intermarriage made remaining in a given liturgy less relevant.

This brings us to the nature of Protestantism to fragment and veer into new and exciting heresies.  As noted above, in Europe, the requirement of obedience to the Crown kept Protestant theology in check.  With that restraint removed, anyone could set up their own independent church, and many did.  Those that wished to cling to legitimacy found it impossible to retain the old ethnic connections, so they created theological unions, albeit on ethnic lines. 

Thus the three main Lutheran denominations in the U.S. still have an ethnic form, but it's entirely overshadowed by theology.  The Missouri Synod is ethnically German, and theologically conservative.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (affectionately known as "Auntie ELCA"), was formed out of the Scandi churches and is very liberal.  The Wisconsin Synod is also German and theologically conservative, but also extremely insular (it refuses to provide military chaplains due its distrust of government and Christian pacifism).

The same process affected other state-affiliated churches of the Reformed or Anglican nature.  For example, the Methodists split from the Anglicans and have been splitting ever since.

I think this is why American Protestants fell so quickly and so thoroughly into the purely political sphere.  It is also why they stopped caring about saving souls and instead busied themselves with perfecting man - and punishing the ones regarded as defective or "deplorable."

This is how we get Yard Sign Calvinists.

The Catholic Church also has its liberal/progressive wing, but it is dying off because the mainstream remains orthodox and there is an increasing focus on this orthodoxy (Pope Francis notwithstanding).

As the article states, there is a movement to try to anchor Protestantism and I agree that the effort is likely doomed to fail.  Once one tries to find immutable, eternal Christian principles to hold onto , Catholicism becomes the natural choice.

Americans are used to abundance.  When we want something, the assumption is that so long as we have enough money, we can get it.

The strange thing about this abundance is that over time, we actually approach things as if they were scarce.  Even though various things may be plentiful, we act as though we have to get them right away because they may go away.

This is fueled by our credit-based economy, which further feeds the need for instant gratification.

Thus, instead of looking at something we want and saying "that looks neat, when I have the money I will get one," we jump to "I need it sooo bad and I need it now," as if it's the last one on earth.  This is the "scarcity mentality."

Sadly, the pandemic has only increased this tendency because we actually did run out of stuff.  If you didn't have enough toiler paper, you had a problem.

Opposing this is the "abundance mentality," which could be regarded as a complacency regarding the availability of things, but I think it also ties in to focusing on all the things you have rather than the things you want.

The best illustration of this is the difference between hoarding and collecting.  True collectors buy things with great discernment.  There's almost a reluctance to buy something lest it taint the integrity of the rest. 

You know you've met one of these people when you suggest something that seems to fit and they stare at you with disgust.  "You think I would want one of those?!" 

Hoarders are by definition far less discerning.  Heck, some even stockpile their own poop.  They always want more and can't let anything go.  They suffer from a scarcity mentality.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of that mentality is keeping broken or semi-functional things (often multiples of them) out of fear that they might be needed.  That is to say, they could become scarce.

I'm increasingly trying to embrace an abundance mentality, and in particular focusing on the intangibles, like love, grace, and comfort.  Instead of looking at books I want, I will take a moment to look at books that I have.  

This is particularly useful for me when I find myself in awkward financial circumstances because a bunch of bills or unexpected expenses pile up.  Before lamenting the postponement of future purchases, I find it useful to step back and look around at the things I already have, and how blessed I am to have them.

Some call this "the attitude of gratitude," and I think its an essential feature of well-formed Christians, especially American ones.  We have received unprecedented prosperity, though at the moment that seems to be imperil.  Instead of asking why we must make do with less, why not be glad at all that we have?

Indeed, I think much of our current turmoil is because we've come to take God for granted, and assume that we're entitled to peace and prosperity just because. 

A cursory glance at history shows this to be false, but Americans are often terrible at that subject as well.

American culture borrows heavily from the Puritan tradition, and it's so deeply embedded that even American Catholics have unconsciously absorbed a lot of its assumptions.

This wasn't always the case.  Catholics were once considered outside the American mainstream and targeted for persecution by the Protestant majority.  The "Blaine Amendments" which barred public funding of religious schools were an attempt to cripple Catholic education.  At that time public schools included religious instruction, and it was of course Protestant in nature.

When Catholics began to leave their cultural ghetto in the 1960s, their children quickly assimilated the American Protestant culture and its version of history.

In this telling, the Revolutionary War was about escaping from the sinister power of Rome and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.  The truth was radically different.

The Pilgrims, for example, were fleeing Anglican persecution, not Catholicism.  The Puritans took an ultra-scriptural approach to their theology to the extent that they banned Christmas because it was not explicitly written about in the Bible.

By the 18th Century, the British government was no longer hunting down Catholic priests and burning them, but Catholic subjects were confined to an inferior legal status.  Catholic Emancipation did not take place until 1829, and while the legal restrictions were removed, their remained (and still remains) a strongly anti-Catholic element in British society.

The Revolutionary War of course predated the Constitution, but many of the guarantees in the later document reflect wartime goals - the principles the Patriots were fighting for.

Thus, the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests to hold public office was a repudiation of current British law.

Aleteia has a timely piece on George Washington's friendly stance towards Catholics, and how - despite being a nominal member of the Church of England - he fully supported Catholic aspirations and even donated to the construction of a new Catholic church.

It was therefore an easy case to make for Catholics to actively support the American Revolution, which promised greater liberties for them than virtually any other group.

This episode not only offers additional reasons to admire the genuine greatness of our first president, but is a useful lesson in political pragmatism.  Instead of debating which candidate is more morally acceptable, it may be wiser to ask which one is more likely to leave you free to live out your faith in peace.

It's worth noting that the chief of staff for the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War was Gen. Vincente Rojo, a practicing Catholic whose armies busied themselves in destroying churches and slaughtering clergy.  Whatever his personal belief, he was actively fighting against the Church.