Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Fr Robert Morey Must Really Love Joe Biden & Himself

Posted: October 30, 2019 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, Church doctrine, culture, politics, primaries
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“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.

If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you,  ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,  because they do not know the one who sent me.

If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin.

Whoever hates me also hates my Father.

John 15:18-23

There’s an old saying that you don’t hear much anymore “Your best friend should tell you.” It refers to when you might have bad breath or are in the process of doing something really destructive. Most people will say nothing and you might ignore your family, that’s when a best friend, a person who really loves you steps up and tells you what you need to know.

Fr. Robert Morey is acting like Joe Biden’s best friend.

The job of a priest is tough, it’s one of the toughest jobs in the world, you are really on 24/7, you forgo many of the pleasures of life, you have to serve those around you ,obey those above you, spend time constantly in prayer and while doing all those thing fight all the temptations and efforts of the other side attempting to draw you to sin that every human being has to deal with knowing that if you fall you can take a lot of folks, particularly those weak in the faith with you.

But boiled down to the most basic task a priest is a doctor for a human soul and like a medical doctor there are time he has to deliver a message that people don’t want to hear. As the Lord said to Ezekiel (Emphasis mine)

Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.

If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.

If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him.

When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Ezekiel 3:17-21

Thus if a priest fails to warn a member of the flock about to commit mortal sin or consistently commuting mortal sin publicly he is failing his flock.

And that brings us to Joe Biden and Fr. Morey

In holy scripture St. Paul explicitly states the price of receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy fashion (emphasis mine)

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.  “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. 

A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

St Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians Cor 11 23-29

(That last sentence btw is why non-Catholic can’t receive as they think the Eucharist is “symbolic” rather than the actual body & blood of Christ). So we are dealing with Mortal Sin, and not just mortal sin but PUBLIC mortal sin and Church law is rather explicit on the subject:

He told LifeSiteNews.com, “I don’t understand the continual debate that goes on about it. There’s not a question that a Catholic who publicly, and after admonition, supports pro-abortion legislation is not to receive Holy Communion and is not to be given Holy Communion.”


“The Church’s law is very clear,” said Archbishop Burke, who was appointed last year by Pope Benedict XVI as the head of the Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. “The person who persists publicly in grave sin is to be denied Holy Communion, and it [Canon Law] doesn’t say that the bishop shall decide this. It’s an absolute.”

via Fr. Z

So when Joe Biden presents himself for holy communion when proudly persisting in a state of mortal sin, what is the duty of a priest? Well Christ answered that in the final question that was put to him:

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

Fr. Morey by his actions obeyed both commandments.

Admonishing the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy and to do any less would be like a doctor refusing to tell a patient in his care that his actions put his life in danger. Thus he showed love of neighbor by not giving Joe Biden Holy Communion in a public state of mortal sin and thus not letting him bring condemnation on himself, at least for that moment.

Furthermore Fr. Morey showed love of God by remembering the Lord’s words to Ezekiel and saved himself by being the watchman and obeying the laws of the church when it would have been a whole lot easier to do otherwise. He is going to get a lot of grief and notoriety over this. The national press will go after him, some in his parish will go after him and there will be those in the church who do so as well. Yet he was more interested in the love of God than the love of man.

But DaTechGuy you ask how can he assume that Mr. Biden was in a state of mortal sin? Doesn’t he have to give him the benefit of the doubt? Now it’s true, many of us including me, struggle with sin, even mortal sin and sacramental confession is available for those who do. Shouldn’t a priest allow for that? Fr. Z has a great post on the subject using the example of a couple in a 2nd marriage who stay together for the kids and agree to live as brother and sister:

Now I will track back to what I asked about Communion at the top.
What is it that they want?


Communion with its holy effects? Or do they want to be seen receiving Communion?
Do they want the Eucharist or the “white thing” that symbolizes affirmation?


If they really get the Eucharist, with the full implications of receiving as Paul describes in 1 Cor 11:27 (“Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.”), and if they really get the Four Last Things, then … would they really want to put at risk their eternal salvation by sacrilegious reception?


If they have been working with a sound priest who helps them to understand what mortal sin is and what matrimony is according to the Church’s teachings – BECAUSE THAT’S HIS JOB! – would they really want to receive Communion in their irregular state?

Or course there may be times when they fail in their determination to live in continence and they have sexual relations. What then?
Simple.  They go to confession and start over with a firm purpose of amendment.
That’s what we all do when we sin in any way.  We go to confession with a firm purpose of amendment and start over with God’s help. 

In some Amoris scenario, they might have to live in a near occasion of sin, but for the sake of care of children, etc., they have to bear their Cross.
However, there is a rock solid principle that cannot be set aside:

No firm purpose of amendment, no Communion.
My solution, given the aforementioned conditions are met: occasional Holy Communion in private, outside of public Mass, away from observing eyes.

Now it’s certainly possible, though highly improbable, that Joe Biden had just before mass, confessed his sins before the mass and the expressed a firm purpose to amend his life and stop publicly advancing mortal sin as a virtue. Furthermore given the poor job of catechists that the church has done since the 60’s it’s even possible, or in my mind even probable that one or more Bishop(s) has told old Joe (and Pelosi & Cuomo etc/al) over the years that what’s he’s doing is OK and the Biden and others like him really believes they can push and promote mortal sin and still receive communion with no danger to his soul

But Fr. Morey’s job is to shepherd the souls in his care and by presenting himself for communion old Joe by definition became one of those souls Fr. Morey didn’t look for an improbable out for himself. Instead for the sake of his own soul and the sake of all the souls in his care, including at that time Joe Biden caring more about his soul than about any blowback he might get he did his job.

In other words: love wins!

Fifty years ago: The Kinks release Arthur (or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

Posted: October 27, 2019 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, politics
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By John Ruberry

Fifty Octobers ago a brilliant musical work was released that Rolling Stone called, “By all odds the best British album of 1969,” adding, “It shows that Pete Townshend still has worlds to conquer, and that the Beatles have a lot of catching up to do.”

The Who issued Tommy that spring and the Beatles’ last recorded album, Abbey Road, was released in September.

What was that “best British album?” Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) by the Kinks, written and produced by Ray Davies.

To celebrate, the Kinks, who broke up in 1996, but the surviving original members appear to have re-formed, last week released a twelve disc vinyl collector’s edition filled with remixes, demos, mono versions, new songs, and a never-released Dave Davies solo album.

There’s shorter version also available too. On Friday I downloaded the 1 hour 22 minute edition on Apple Music, with mono versions (why?), some alternative cuts, and one new song, “The Future,” credited to Arthur and the Emigrants (with Ray Davies).

Arthur is a great as I remembered. But the album was released at a troubled time for the Kinks. Fed up with the band’s lack of success, bassist Peter Quaife left. In 1965 the Kinks were banned by performing in the United States by the American Federation of Musicians. The ban, which to this date was never explained, was lifted in 1969, but much had changed by the end of the 1960s. The Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles had expanded their fan base–it was always large for the Beatles–and they also expanded the breadth of their music.

Meanwhile, the Kinks were in a way marooned in England. Like children forbidden by their parents from playing outside after a blizzard and the usual resultant bitter cold temperatures, Ray Davies and the Kinks were locked inside and forced to rely on what they could find at home musically to entertain themselves. Much of their mid-1960s output owed much to British Musical Hall, the tunes of their parents. Music Hall in Britain is what Vaudeville was to America, only it spawned a distinct musical style that centered on spirited singing and catchy melodies that begged for sing-alongs. Famous, or used-to-be famous Music Hall songs include “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag,” and “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am.” That last one was a 1960s hit for Herman’s Hermits. That band scored another hit with “Dandy,” a Kinks song.

The Kinks first American hit was “You Really Got Me” in 1964, that tune and similar early Kinks aural assaults inspired two genres, punk rock and heavy metal. In 1967, the Music Hall-inspired “Mr. Pleasant” was the last Kinks single to break the Billboard Hot 100 until “Victoria,” the opening track of Arthur.

The Kinks clearly were back as hard rockers with “Victoria,” but there are still are Music Hall influences on Arthur. This is a concept album meant to be the soundtrack to a television play that never aired. Even in success they failed. When introducing a song on their last album, the (mostly) live To The Bone, Ray laments, “It kind of summarizes everything we’re about, the Kinks. Because everyone is expecting us to do wonderful things and we mess it all up, usually.”

The Arthur narrative centers on an elderly English suburbanite who symbolizes the disappointment that in 1969, Britain was not a classless society, as was hoped for after World War II ended.

From the album’s liner notes (courtesy of the Kinda Kinks site):

Arthur? Oh, of course–England and knights and round tables, Excalibur, Camelot, “So all day long the noise of battle roll’d among the mountains by the winter sea.” Sorry, no. This is Arthur Morgan, who lives in a London suburb in a house called Shangri-La, with a garden and a car and a wife called Rose and a son called Derek who’s married to Liz, and they have these two very nice kids, Terry and Marilyn. Derek and Liz and Terry and Marilyn are emigrating to Australia. Arthur did have another son, called Eddie. He was named for Arthur’s brother, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. Arthur’s Eddie was killed, too–in Korea. His son, Ronnie, is a student and he thinks the world’s got to change one hell of a lot before it’s going to be good enough for him. Derek thinks it’s changed a bloody sight too much–he can’t stand England any more, all these bloody bureaucrats everywhere, bloody hell, he’s getting out. Ronnie and Derek don’t exactly get on.

Families split along political lines? You mean like now? Brexit versus EU? Donald Trump versus Elizabeth Warren?

Derek and family’s move to Australia mirrors the Davies’ sister Rosie and her husband, Arthur, relocation to Down Under a few years earlier, which inspired the 1966 Kinks’ song, “Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home.” That tune, as with many Kinks songs, is also a story. While watching Ken Burns’ Country Music series on PBS, one of the commentators mentioned that many of the greatest country songs involve stories, sometimes dramas. Which deep down is why I love the work of the Kinks. Their music is compelling. The tales they tell even more so.

One story from Arthur, a Music Hall romp, is “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina.”

She’s bought a hat like Princess Marina’s
To wear at all her social affairs
She wears it when she’s cleaning the windows
She wears it when she’s scrubbing the stairs
But you will never see her at Ascot
She can’t afford the time or the fare
But she’s bought a hat like Princess Marina’s
So she don’t care.

He’s bought a hat like Anthony Eden’s
Because it makes him feel like a Lord
But he can’t afford a Rolls or a Bentley
He has to buy a secondhand Ford
He tries to feed his wife and his family
And buy them clothes and shoes they can wear
But he’s bought a hat like Anthony Eden’s
So he don’t care.

The saddest song I know of, from anyone, is another story from Arthur, “Some Mother’s Son.”

Two soldiers fighting in a trench
One soldier glances up to see the sun
And dreams of games he played when he was young
And then his friend calls out his name
It stops his dream and as he turns his head
A second later he is dead.

Some mother’s son lies in a field
Back home they put his picture in a frame
But all dead soldiers look the same
While all the parents stand and wait
To meet their children coming home from school
Some mother’s son is lying dead.

The music on Arthur rises to the occasion too. Unlike many late 1960s efforts, the horns compliment, not dominate, the songs. And the Kinks, led by lead guitarist Dave Davies, are at the top of their instrumental game here.

Arthur was not a hit but it enjoyed modest sales, unlike its pastoral predecessor The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which wasn’t able to crack Billboard’s Hot 200 Albums chart. The stage was set for the Kinks’ return to well-deserved prominence one year later with Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. That album of course contained “Lola,” their biggest American hit since 1965’s “Tired of Waiting for You.”

The Kinks were back.

But then it was time to “mess it all up” again. There wasn’t a Part Two of the Lola album. The next year the Kinks released a country rock collection, Muswell Hillbillies which began another decline in popularity. Only this time their time in the wilderness would last much longer.

Oh, one more item. After 50 years, the play Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire will finally be performed. That will happen later this year on BBC Radio.

God Save The Kinks!

John Ruberry blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Sodom and Gomorrah 1962 Where’s the Sodomy?

Posted: October 26, 2019 by datechguy in culture, entertainment, oddities
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Today I watched the 1962 Movie Sodom & Gomorrah staring Stewart Granger, Pier Angeli and Stanley Baker and noticed something that was rather amazing to me.

The movie is pretty good, a great battle scene a few excellent subplots and as you might guess a big finish. As as you might guess there are some liberties taken, the famous exchange between Abraham and God becomes an exchange between the imprisoned Lot and the two angels. Instead of only Lot and his daughters hundreds of Hebrews escape with him. This type of thing is not much of a surprise but there is one big thing missing.

There is plenty of licentiousness, torture, fornication and even a hint of lesbianism, but not a hint of the one thing that Sodom is known for: Sodomy.

Now in fairness this movie was made in 1962 and I would not expect a biblical epic of the time to do a whole lot with the subject, but just as the lesbianism was implied in the form of the queen and her “favorites” you might have thought at a movie about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would at least give the slightest him of what was going on in there.

And of course the movie ended with Lot’s wife (a 2nd wife who was once of Sodom) turned to salt for looking back and no hint that the next event in the bible was his two daughters getting him dead drunk and sleeping with him because there was in their mind no prospect of any other men around. Of course with hundreds of men escaping that whole rationale is out the window.

Now in an age when the Bible was itself still well known perhaps it wasn’t considered necessary to bother with this stuff, it was only a movie and people understood that liberties might be taken.

But if it was me, if I was going to make a movie like there would be at least some hint as to the sin that destroyed Sodom

Given the history of the next 60 years I think such a warning might have been worthwhile.

How many Polar Bears is the Right Number?

Posted: October 22, 2019 by datechguy in culture
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Saw this at Don Surber’s site:

“Guardian picture editor Fiona Shields explains why we are going to be using fewer polar bears and more people to illustrate our coverage of the climate emergency.”

That is because there are too many polar bears. An estimated 25,000 to 40,000 polar bears live in the Arctic — up from just 5,000 a half-century ago.

The Guardian was too dishonest to admit it.

But the Canadian Press reported last year, “There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.

This begs a question that I keep wondering that nobody sees to want to ask.

How many Polar Bears are the right amount?

Throughout history species have risen and fallen and I don’t understand why so called “environmentalists” seem to believe that they can decide which species can live and die, and in what quantities? What is the baseline of when you have the “right” amount of polar bears, or spotted owls or any other creature and why is a baseline based on say 1900 any more correct than one based on 1980, or 1880 or 1637, or 91BC?

How is any such decision on what to do with a species not playing god?

And more interestingly if man is not made in the image of God and just another creature, why is it any less the natural course of nature for mankind to serve it’s own purpose than any other creature? Furthermore why is whatever effect Man has on the natural world around him the “wrong” effect even if it doesn’t work out for a different animal. Is this not natural selection at work?

These are questions that nobody asks because the answers don’t serve the purposes of those advancing these agendas and because in the religion of liberalism, it is the liberal elite who are in fact god.

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