Now that we’re in a new year it’s a great time to pick up a new devotion to help your soul and the soul of those in purgatory along, the Indulgence Calendar.
Christmas is of course a time of joy to celebrate the birth of the world redeemer, however December 26th the 2nd day of Christmas is a stark reminder that while the souls of uncounted millions will be delivered thanks to the events of the 25th, it is not without cost.
Because this is the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian Martyr.
Now for those immersed in propaganda of Hamas it might be a surprise that until Muslims started blowing themselves up in their quest to kill Jews a martyr was understood as someone who gave up their live for the cause of the faith without harming anyone else.
Before St. Maximilian Kolbe was killed by the Nazis, before St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, before Sts. Thomas Moore and St. John Fisher were beheaded, before the first Christian was thrown to the lions and even before the Apostle James the greater was killed by Herod, there was St. Stephen.
St. Stephen was one of the first seven deacons of the Church singled out for mention in the list of the seven in scripture as: ”a man filled with faith and the holy Spirit “ I suspect, although scripture does not say some ancient authorities suggest that he might have been one of the 72 who were sent out to the various towns to prepare the way for Christ. This would explain his ability to confound the members of the Synagogue of Freedman in his arguments which led to their accusations of blasphemy before the San Hendren.
At his trial he re-iterated the history of Israel from Abraham to Solomon before closing with the words that set them off and led to his death:
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it.”
When they heard this, they were infuriated, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, filled with the holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.
Unlike the execution of Jesus which was sanctioned by Rome, Stephen’s stoning was done by a mob in a fit of passion, ironically much like the mobs currently running amok in western cities over Gaza
But note how as they are stoning him what his final words are:
As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them“; and when he said this, he fell asleep.
emphasis mine
And by those two acts, the first dedicating himself to God and interceding for those who murdered him, he gave the example that the great Christian Saints have followed for two thousand years. The example of loving God and loving neighbor, even your enemies.
All of us are not called to martyrdom as Stephen was, but all of us are called to follow his example of the love of God and of neighbor, even our enemies.
It is a good thing that St. Mary’s Catholic College for Women in Indiana has reversed their decision to admit men who identify as women to their college after huge pressure from alumni and their Bishop who noted that both Pope Benedict XVI:
No doubt Saint Mary’s College desires to promote love, inclusion, and acceptance within the community. But it does not do so authentically when it separates love from truth. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity… Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word ‘love’ is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite” (#3).
And Pope Francis
Pope Francis also teaches about the intimate connection between truth and love in his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith). He writes: “Love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life” (#27).
note that you can’t separate “love” and “Truth”.
Despite this reversal I recommend asking for the resignation of both the President of the college and the current board of trusties and if they don’t resign, their dismissal.
Why, well despite the Bishops charitable description of their initial decision’s motives let’s look at the initial announcement of their now reversed policy.
Conboy said in the email that the Board “fully supports” the new policy.
“This confidence from our Board underscores their commitment that as an employer, Saint Mary’s must stand firm in its position as an inclusive community leader, and that as educators, we should continue to create an environment where all women belong and thrive,” Conboy wrote.
By definition the president of a Catholic college and such a college’s board should be both defenders of the faith and examples of how the faith should be practiced and imparted to young people who are to be educated at their school.
Yet not only did the president of said college celebrate this change but noted that the board “fully supported” it. No sign of dissenters, no sign of objections, no members of the board threatening to resign or making a public declaration that this is contrary to the faith. None of those things moved them.
As this last month unfolded, we lost people’s trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity. For this, we are deeply sorry.
Forgive me for saying this but I submit and suggest this is a lie, I think the truth is more like what this member of the Alumni said about the reversal:
“When this admissions decision became public hundreds of alumni banded together to stand for the Church and her teachings,” said Clare Ath, who graduated from the college in 2018. “While I would hope the reversal is because administrators realized we must teach the truth with love, my guess is the reversal is because alumni banded together, pulled their donations, notified their diocese and media, and said we will not let Our Lady’s college be corrupted by secular gender ideology.”
Put simply they’re not sorry they did it, they’re sorry that they received pushback and faced the loss of donation and support.
This suggests that if some time in the future a less vigilant Bishop is in place they will try something like this again. My thought is “why take a chance?” There are no shortage of faithful Catholics who actually believe what the Church teaches who are qualified for both the board and the presidency.
So I humbly suggest for the good of the future of the college that the president and the board resign en masse to make room for people who will be dedicated to keeping this particular Catholic college Catholic.
Closing thought: This post gave me AnnaMariaCollegeVisitflashbacks. I suspect his decision to not go there is a contributing factor for him remaining a devout #catholic into his 30’s.
I talked about Stacy McCain being most influential on me and he mentioned something in a post yesterday that really hit the lesson he taught me:
I was talking to a nice Republican lady who, remarking on what I’d said about liberal bias in the media, asked, “What makes you different?” That is to say, why am I not part of the liberal hivemind? On the spot, the best answer I could come up with was, “Well, I was a reporter before I got into politics.” I didn’t get into journalism because I wanted to change the world. I got into journalism because I needed a job. I started out on the bottom rung of the newspaper business, as a staff writer for a local weekly, and worked my way up, spending five years as a sports editor before landing a gig as an assistant special projects editor at the daily Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune. It wasn’t until I’d been in the business about seven years that I became interested in politics, during the first term of the Clinton presidency, when I had my own road-to-Damascus epiphany and abandoned the Democratic Party, of which I had hitherto been a staunch supporter.
The point of that digression is that I cut my teeth as a reporter covering local stories that had nothing to do with politics, and thereby developed the belief that the three most important things in journalism are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy
Having a Computer Science degree back from 1985 the idea of the importance of facts was already imbedded. The biggest lesson I learned from being credentialed press and sharing rooms with them as they wrote and talked is that this is not the norm for journalists. It was all about producing spin and a particular result. That (along with a natural degree of sloth) is why you never see my videos edited. Like the images from the Ghost of Christmas Past they are what they are.
That reputation for accuracy and the reputation as “The hardest working blogger at CPAC” are still a source of pride to me.
The biggest thing to come from the blog and the Radio show that came from it has been my association with WQPH 89.3 FM Catholic Radio which began around 2012 when I was approached by Mary Ann Harold the head of the station. I had at first thought it would be a full time job but instead it’s was more of a Special project for the blog that continues to this day.
In 2017 My Catholic Radio Show “Your Prayer Intentions” now in its 6th year, premiered on WQPH every Saturday at noon. 2017 also saw the publication of my book “Hail Mary the perfect Protestant (and Catholic) Prayer adapted from a blog post which you can still buy at Amazon or from me directly if you want it autographed. The most significant thing from WQPH came in 2014 a few months after the Harvard Satanic Mass scandal & the MIT procession on a trip to Alabama, but if that story is ever posted it will be after I’m gone.
What I thought would be the biggest moment of my blogging career was when I was called on twice during the 2016 presidential campaign by Donald Trump during press conferences. The first in Derry NH which I had to cover after the contract job
The second when I covered his rally in Worcester before going to work at what was then a temp warehouse job on the 10:30 to 7 am shift. He recognized me and gave me the complement that remains on the top of the blog to this day.
Covering Trump fairly didn’t endear me to the GOP in MA and neither did my endorsement of Trump when he won the primaries or my famous post defending Trump after the Billy Bush bit came out which called out the left for trying to use our own morality against us while repeating these words which turned out to be a prophetic after the 2020 steal:
…I know that there will be times that Donald Trump will disappointment me just as I expected Mitt Romney to disappoint me on social issues and John McCain to disappoint me on immigration and George W Bush who disappointed me on spending and the bank bailouts.
But while Trump will occasionally disappoint me (when he does I’ll call him on it) I am convinced he will neither persecute me nor strip me of my rights for holding my Conservative Catholic beliefs and acting on them.
I am very sorry to say I can not make that same statement about Hillary Clinton, and I’m even sorrier to see the day when I would say this about a presidential candidate.
In other words, he make sure that I was OUTSIDE the activist/msm/news/blogger bubble for at least a few hours. This not only decreased my tension level immensely but it provided me the chance to speak to actual Marylanders and Virginians who were not there specifically to serve me as a CPAC convention goer and thus more free to be themselves and give their own opinions in conversation.
No blogging moment will beat that EVAH!
Despite the two highs of 2016 & 2018 the blog’s decline in traffic seemed to start in 2014 after my Jeffrey Epstein post to the point where contract work was necessary.
In 2016 the decline in traffic and rank (this blog was once in the top 100,000 in the world) meant I took a 3rd shift temp job. The job became permanent in 2017 and any lingering dreams of the blog becoming more than a part time job at best were gone and my ability to go to cover any event had to be sub servant to the steady income to pay bills that came from attendance at work.
Problems at GoDaddy led me to finally leave them by 2019. After election 2020 like many others I found myself suspected from Twitter multiple times while the election was in dispute over false charges that led to a pattern of suspension, appeal, apology and reinstatement then suspension again until the courts ruled against Trump. This was shortly followed by my banning by Youtube erasing more than a decade of work. Meanwhile the new owner of my hosting company became invisible I was not only forced back to my old wordpress blog, but had lost my domain, more than 75% of my daily traffic, all of my ad and guest post revenue and a decline in DaTipJar revenue and subscribers to the point where the blog has become an expense rather than an asset.
The fall was slow, then gradual then like the fall of communism all at once. Right now after paying my writers I barely bring in enough to pay the annual fees to wordpress let alone the costs of covering Pintastic NE or any other event that I can manage on days off or using vacation time.
So here we are 15 years later like Sam Rothstein in Casino back where we started at our original site.
I’m drawing about a 1/3 of the traffic that I did back in the Scott Brown days but not worrying about trying to regain lost glory. Still giving our opinion and occasionally covering something from the Catholic Men’s Conference to Pintastic NE and writing about the news of the day and my online baseball leagues.
Barring a sudden change in fortune allowing the blog covering its costs as it once did I figure I can afford to hang around one more year for the election before the blog becomes too much of an expense to carry.
So you can expect me and my magnificent seven writers to be here for the election and to at least finish year 16. After that, who know but for all those who have stopped by over the last 15 years and especially to those who have contributed over the years and those few remaining stalwarts who still do, let me say this.
Thanks so much, it’s been an incredible 15 year ride. We’ve done and learned a lot together. I’ve seen a lot of the country and those who run it. I’ve seen many incredible things and I’ve met many incredible people along the way including quite a few of you dear readers. None of it would have been remotely possible without you. Me and mine are better for having been on this ride. I hope that you feel the same.
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