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The Three Dangers of the Frank Pavone Case: Danger Two: the Sin of Pride

Posted: December 22, 2022 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, Church doctrine
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Lt. Barney Greenwald: I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Paynter, because that’s a very pretty point. You know, I left out one detail in the court martial. It wouldn’t have helped our case any. [to Maryk] Tell me, Steve, after the Yellowstain business, Queeg came to you guys for help and you turned him down, didn’t you?

Lt. Steve Maryk: [hesitant] Yes, we did.

Lt. Barney Greenwald: [to Paynter] You didn’t approve of his conduct as an officer – he wasn’t WORTHY of your loyalty! So you turned on him. You ragged him – you made up songs about him. If you’d given Queeg the loyalty he needed, do you suppose the whole issue would have come up in the typhoon? [to Maryk] You’re an honest man, Steve, I’m asking you. You think it would’ve been necessary for you to take over?

Lt. Steve Maryk: [hesitant] It probably wouldn’t have been necessary.

Lt. Barney Greenwald: There!

Ensign Willie Keith: [horror-stricken] If that’s true, then we *were* guilty.

Lt. Barney Greenwald: Ah, you’re learning, Willie! You’re learning that you don’t work with a captain because you like the way he parts his hair; you work with him because *he’s GOT* the job, or you’re no good! Well, the case is over. You’re all safe. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The Caine Mutuny 1954

Go here for Part 1: The Errors of the Church

Mortal sin is a horrible thing and of the mortal sins murder ranks high on the list and abortion is one of the worst types of murder there is.

  • It is the murder of an entirely innocent person.
  • It not only kills the child but all those who would be descended from that child
  • It’s a murder that is done with the consent of the mother and often with the complicity of the father & grandparents

That is what makes it something to be fought and opposed but in terms of a sin deadly to the soul there is one sin that sin is pride.

C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters #7

Pride is the sin of the devil, pride is the sin that created hell, pride is the sin where we put ourselves up above God. Pride is the sin that offends the first and greatest commandment. Remember what Christ himself said when asked about the subject:

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied,

“The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, ‘He is One and there is no other than he.’ And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that (he) answered with understanding, he said to him,

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Mark 12:28-34

Note that Jesus put the love of God before the love of neighbor. To fight abortion is a fine and worthy cause but to love God comes before it.

And that’s where the danger to Frank Pavone comes in.

One of the primary vows of a priest or religious is obedience. Obedience to valid authority above him or her. The rule doesn’t say “obedience if the person is smart”, “obedience if the person is holy” it’s obedience.

The church has been around for 2000 years, Over that time we’ve had Popes and Bishops that ran the entire gamut from Saintly, to, mediocre to bad as is normal in any institution. This is also true for Priests, in my lifetime I have been in parishes with good priests, saintly priests, prideful priests and bad priests but the mass was still the mass and the Eucharist still the Eucharist.

Moreover if we want examples of obedience to a seemingly bad decision we can turn not only to the great saints but great saints in living memory. Padre Pio for example had his authority to hear confession and say mass removed from him for years before they were restored. Or consider this exchange between the Lord and St. Faustina when Christ commanded her to request permission for a particular mortification and was refused:

I apologized for taking up Mother’s time and left the room. At that very moment I saw Jesus standing at the kitchen door, and I said to Him. “You commanded me to ask for these mortifications, but Mother Superior will not permit them. Jesus said:

I was here during your conversation with the Superior and know everything. I don’t demand mortification from you, but obedience. By obedience you give great glory to Me and gain merit for yourself.

The Diary of St. Faustina Notebook 1 #28

I will concede that obedience, particularly to a request we might find unjust and when it seemingly impedes a beneficial end is not easy but again it cuts to two critical things

  1. Trust in God
  2. Keeping the priorities in order

CS Lewis put it very well:

Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means you have almost won your man and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters #7

Again I don’t know the details or the history concerning the former Fr. Frank Pavone, the Vatican or the individual Bishops he has crossed swords with. I don’t know what is true and what is not and my personal dealings with Fr. Pavone have always been great. He always struck me a priest dedicated to the cause of life.

If he were to ask my advice on the matter, I’d say submit in humility and in prayer, while still working with Priests for life. There is no reason why Mr. Frank Pavone can not advance the cause of life as long as he has God behind him and if God wills that he once again be Father Pavone it will happen.

He has already made one statement in his exchange with the folks at Church Militant on these events which is likely the single most important public statement he could have made.

It’s fair to say that as a priest Fr. Frank Pavone has done a lot to advance life and save souls but In my opinion this statement by Mr. Frank Pavone may do more to save souls that might be in danger than anything else he could do as it directly addresses the third great danger which will be the subject of my final piece in this series.

I’ll continue to pray for him and all involved in the case I suggest you do as well.

The Three Dangers of the Frank Pavone Case: Danger One The Errors of the Church

Posted: December 21, 2022 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions
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Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying,

“The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice…”

Matthew 23:1-3

Before I begin this series of posts let’s stipulate the following right up front:

The fight against Abortion is just and right and the efforts of Priests for Life in general and the former Father Frank Pavone in particular to oppose abortion and promote life have been to my knowledge a fine and noble undertaking in the best traditions of the Catholic Church and a service to all humanity.

That being said let’s get to the issues at hand.

There is a lot we don’t know about about the Frank Pavone case and the Vatican can take a lot of credit for this. However there are priests who have some background because when he was still Fr. Frank Pavone they were aware of the history between himself and the Bishops over him. His willingness to defy edicts from Bishops would not tend to grab sympathy from people who like him have taken a vow of obedience to such authority nor might the final result be a surprise to them.

But all of this is internal from as one might put it, “inside the club” outside the club this looks very different.

It looks like the Vatican which has over the last few years been very forgiving to those openly flaunting church teachings even to the point of advocating mortal sin while cracking down on the faithful.

As the Vatican letter states Fr. Pavone is a very public figure and creating this image, without explaining to the faithful the background behind it is not only foolish and short sighted, it plays into the hands of every group whose primary goal is to bring down the church, it increases the chance of schism and suggests a double standard for those who follow church teaching on subjects like abortion and those who do not. Given the recent history of the church under this pontiff I suspect very few daily mass Catholic will find such a double standard surprising

The folks at Church Militant put it best, even if all that is alleged by the Vatican is true and correct, and it’s very possible that it is, this was not the way to do things in a media age.

More importantly it illustrates the problem with putting off an issue that was illustrated during the gay pedophilia scandals.

Over and over the church rather than confronting the issue up front when it happened, they punted, transferred and tried to hide the issues. Stalling only made things worse until the scandals exploded much worse then it would have been it they had just been taken care of when they first came up.

If the then Father Pavone was disobeying his bishop back in his days in NY the church would have been better off cracking down at once, punting on the issue and stalling on the issue is one of the reasons why it’s a crisis for the church.

I know and concede that the Vatican by it’s very nature moves slowly and quietly and whenever possibly privately but this is just plain stupid and contrary to the spirit of Christ who when before Annas said:

The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his doctrine. Jesus answered him,

“I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me? Ask those who heard me what I said to them. They know what I said.”

When he had said this, one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?”

Jesus answered him,

“If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”

John 18:19-23

When you have truth on your side, the thing to do is be open. The church should understand that and act accordingly.

Of course there is the possibility that the folks at the top who made this decision DO understand it and are silent because of it. I hope and pray this is not the case. I honestly don’t know, and frankly I suspect most of the people who read this post don’t know either.

Under the Fedora: I’ll Bet, Channeling Ladd Ehlinger, Two Down 6 to Go, Some things Never Change, What this tells me

Posted: December 20, 2022 by datechguy in internet/free speech, elections, blogs, election 2020, News/opinion, under the fedora, Always look at the bright side of Trump, nhl, official oppression
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There seems to be a lot of weird things going on with the NFL in terms of rulings and results. Many odd endings, many surprise finishes and results. It makes games rather interesting.

A lot of people have commented on these things but nobody is talking about the elephant in the room which is the proliferation of gambling on sports.

Can anyone tell me why we should not assume that the hundreds of millions being bet on the NFL is not affecting how the game is played, coached or refed?

Old friend Ladd Ehlinger (Filmladd) now has a Youtube Channel, you can find it and his material here:

I suggest subscribing, I’d do it myself but as you all know I’ve been permanently suspended from youtube for daring to suggest that election 2020 was not completely honest.

For the record you can find most of my material than managed to migrate on my Rumble channel here.

The first two episodes of season 3 of The Chosen are now both available so those of us who did not go to the theatre are caught up.

They have already managed to pay for two complete episodes of season 4 and are less than $32,000 away from making it three out of 8 as of this writing.

It will be interesting to see how much more of season four is paid for as the next four episodes are broadcast along with a 2nd movie premiere that is apparently planned for episodes 7 & 8. They’re 15 million to go to finish funding that season. I’d not be surprised if have it all funded before Easter (April 9th) but I suspect that before this season has been broadcast they will be at least 5 episodes completely paid for.

While this has been the slowest Christmas I’ve ever seen at work we had a tiny burst of orders this week.

It seems a lot of people believe that if you order something with two day delivery seven days before Christmas you’ll still manage to get it on time. Of course if EVERYONE decides to try to order 2nd day at the same time then there isn’t enough capacity to get everything in time delivered.

This happens every single Christmas as if nobody every learns. That’s one thing I’ll give Amazon, they started warning people “This will arrive after Christmas” last week.

Of course if you celebrate all seven days of Christmas that’s not a problem.

Finally the Jan 6th committee kangaroo court has decided recommended charges against Donald Trump in their last days and the media is practically orgasmic.

It’s a testament to how effective Donald Trump was as president that the left/media has spent the last six years going through so much effort to demonize him even to the point (as the twitter files expose) of the FBI actively working to help fix the election.

My thought is it would have been a lot easier for the deep state to not worry about it and ride out a re-election. By now they’d be almost done with him and able to resume business and graft as usual. In fact I suspect if they had made a deal or two with him early he wouldn’t have gotten in their way all that much.

If it was worth that much effort to keep him from the office the rot that is going on must be a lot worse and a lot deeper than we even now currently think. It also explains why the left was so panicked about Musk taking over Twitter.

Yet for some reason Trump scared them so much that they have come out into the open to be seen, giving us the choice to deal wit it or let it be. That more than anything else has been the greatest legacy of his administration that it has given us the people the choice of keeping our republic or freely letting it go.

May we choose wisely.

I Have No Idea What Musk is Doing…

Posted: December 19, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

…but his latest polls is an excellent reminder that it’s a bad idea to have to rely on a rich man to protect the right to open speech.

I suspect that the left had no problem propping up a bloated twitter indefinitely when it’s purpose was to keep conservatives censored, but now that this is no longer the case regular economics are going to take over.

Of course it’s also possible that this is a toy that his done playing with or he doesn’t want to deal with the grief that is coming his way from daring to allow speech to be free again (quick fyi Elon, doesn’t matter what you do now they’ll never forgive you for it).

Personally If he’s not going to fix Twitter it would be rather funny to sell it to the truth platform of Trump for $1. The left’s imploding over it would be a lot of fun

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