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Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.

Aristotle

If you are a Roman Catholic who went to mass Sunday you heard the readings from Lectionary 122 for the 21st Sunday in ordinary time. and if you paid attention to your Missal you might be subject to an Irony overload.

Everywhere that mass took place the faithful heard the same reading from the Book of Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 where Joshua gives the people a choice to follow God or no declaring: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”.

And also everywhere that mass took place that reading from Joshua was followed by the same responsorial Psalm verses from Psalm 34 (Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21) with the refrain: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”.

But depending on where you went to mass and the choice of the Pastor the next reading might have been different. The Lectionary calls for the 2nd reading to be from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians 5:21-32 which goes like this:

Brothers and sisters:

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.  As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

    For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

        and be joined to his wife,

    and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

However an option is given to reduce this reading to Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32 adding the 1st part of verse 2 which looks like this (omitted verses in strikethrough, added verse in underline)

Brothers and sisters:

Live in love, as Christ loved us.

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.  As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

    For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

        and be joined to his wife,

    and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

So as you can see rather than both Husbands and wives being subordinate to one another and each having duties the duties of the wife are omitted while the duties of the Husband are retained. This is done to avoid the anger of feminists within the church which is very ironic given that once you have exercised your option on the 2nd reading all congregations are given the same final Gospel reading, the end of Jesus the bread of life discourses in the Gospel of John 6:60-69 begins:

Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

However Jesus rather than equivocating or ducking the issue or offering an alternate teaching challenges his disciples:

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them,

“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”


Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said,

“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

Jesus doesn’t back down one jot and because of this some of his disciples leave

As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

At this Jesus turns to the twelve. Rather than having second thoughts about his teaching he doubles down and gives the same option to the apostles who come back with the right answer


Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 

Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

So think about that for a second. The very week that Jesus in the Gospel stands up for his teaching even if it costs him many disciples the US Bishops precede that critical moment with the option for the local pastor to run for cover in case anyone might be offended by divinely inspired scripture. This is a shame because the church teaches us that courage is one of the four cardinal virtues.

The irony is palatable, but not as palatable as the cowardice

An American Father

Posted: August 22, 2021 by datechguy in culture, education
Tags: , ,

All Politics is local

Tip O’Neill

The last 10 months from the steal of the election to the dishonorable debacle in Afghanistan I’ve really been in despair concerning the state of my country that my sons will be inheriting.

And then I saw this:

a lot of people make a lot of money on the race racket. This man isn’t one of them and the best part of his speech at the local school board is that it made a difference:

The good news is this shows that the Race racket in general and Critical race theory can be beaten at the local level ie people stand up to fight and refused to be played. He understand that the most dangerous thing to a person’s success is an excuse to fail.

The bad news is that even after this speech Critical Race Theory was beaten by one vote.

As long as there are financial incentives for the race racket there will be people playing the race card but local action can trump it but only if people are willing to fight.

A quick commentary on the difference between having a good administrator and not

At Don Surber’s site in a piece titled Taliban may take down Biden he notes an interesting change in terms of the coverage of the Biden Administration:

There is no way to spin Biden’s desertion of 38 million people in Afghanistan, including 15,000 Americans. We left billions in weaponry and vehicles to terrorists.

But it is the images of helpless people trying to flee Afghanistan that sticks in the public’s mind. 640 people wall-to-wall in a C-17 shows just how awful this abandonment of Afghanistan is.

For once, the press is actually doing its job.

Emphasis mine

Noting that the press is doing it’s job is to me the key line to Surber’s piece which like all his pieces is worth reading. However the what said piece doesn’t address is the key question that is raised by it namely: Why is the press actually doing it’s job?

After all they had no problem covering for him during the steal of the election, during the border crisis, during the spike in inflation, skyrocketing gas and food prices, the move to make us more dependent on foreign energy and kowtowing to China and Russia. and from racial division. Why would Afghanistan suddenly be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

The answer comes from something at Instapundit that was sent to Glenn Reynolds from an acquaintance of his with as he puts it: “experience and connections”:

Biden’s statement that he has seen ‘no question of our credibility from our allies’ has said allies furious. Every NATO country has people trapped in Afghanistan and they tend to be trust fund babies or friends of trust fund babies. Every prime minister’s phone is blowing up with VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE asking how they’re going to get their kids or their kids’ friends out of Afghanistan and every ally is blowing up the phones of the White House and State Department and getting jack shit from them.

And they’re all blaming ‘America’ but they also know it’s on Biden.

actually it’s on whoever is actually running the show a 2nd friend of Glenn mentions the press:

Reporters are only calling BS re the airport because their own ox is being gored. I call BS on their belated, situational flailing at accountability. Now they’re indignant, how many lies later?

You see for the pols and the connected and the sons and daughters of the connected and the friends of the sons and daughters of the connected things like CRT or Inflation or gas prices or Urban Crime or Race issues in schools or mask mandates don’t affect then. They are not going to public schools, living in inner cities or needing to worry about their personal budget. They send their kids to private exclusive schools and don’t seem to have mask mandates applied to them.

This attitude includes the elite press who long ago abandoned this good advice:

The people we cover, we move in their world, but it is their world. You can’t live like them. You’ll never keep up.

The Paper 1994

Those elite press members and the younger reporters who have ambitions of being members of the elite press who are allowed entry to said world for the price of the right coverage. As for those problems of race, inflation, violence etc..all those are for lesser folk to wit:

“I — I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen”

Among gentlemen a blow could be wiped out only in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word.

C. S. Forester: Hornblower and the Hotspur 1962 p 301

To all of them it’s still 1805 and we’re the lower orders who are to take these blows without complaint.

Alas Afghanistan is a different matter:

You see hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in Afghanistan and not just on the military. There have been all kinds of programs going on there, many of them very high paying and carrying a lot of prestige and those positions have been filled by elites, family of elites and friends of families of elites who saw it as a stepping stone to higher positions back home and resume enhancers.

When the Biden administration decided to let things collapse without warning suddenly it wasn’t a problem that affected the common people back home, in fact most ordinary Americans, other than the families of troops there are likely not affected by it at all except for the increased threat of terrorist down the line,

However it DID effect all of those elites in all of those nations and all of those NGO’s that have been feeding off the American Taxpayer while in Afghanistan putting in their time and it of course affects all of those reporters who are stationed there and find themselves in danger of their lives (There’s a reason why western women reporters have suddenly discovered the joy of head coverings.)

It’s sort of like this scene from the Movie Casino where Sam Rothstein (Robert DiNero) meets with Pat Webb (LQ Jones) whose brother in law he has just fired :

As long as his own were being taken care of Webb (Jones) didn’t care what was going on in the Casino, but once his own ox was being gored things changed…

Pat Webb: Has that man even filed for his license yet?

Board Investigator: I don’t know. We’ll have to check the files.

Pat Webb: Well, without gettin’ your shorts in a knot, would you do that? And kinda check closely, ’cause we may have to kick a kike’s ass out of town.

From that moment in the movie the downfall of Rothstein and company began.

As long as the Biden administration’s moves only hurt the common voter and the elites were taken care of the elites didn’t care about what was done, but now their incompetence is affecting them and theirs it can’t be allow to stand.

That’s why the Media has suddenly started doing it job and is why the plan to replace Biden with Harris might be accelerated before January of 2023.

Unexpectedly of course.

Closing note: If it happens It won’t change who is in charge, it will just change the figurehead for those who stole the last election.