Don’t Poke the Bear. Catholic Edition

Posted: November 26, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions
Tags: , ,

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.

Winston Churchill

Two days ago I was taking a quick peek at Youtube in between the work/sleep cycle that the seven to fourteen days that black friday entails when I saw this video from Christine Niles who I recognized from Church Militant:

This was the first I had heard of Michael Voris resignation from Church Militant. I watched his statement when I did it reminded me of something a particular priest once mentioned in passing. That it was during Mass when he prayers the Eucharistic Prayers that he finds himself most attacked by the devil and that brings me to one of the most basic facts about the war for souls, something that my pastor and spiritual advisor has said move and over.

Don’t poke the bear.

One of the real dangers in deciding to take part in the war for souls is that the closer to the front lines you get the more you’re under the fire from the enemy. To a regular person the battle for your soul might be almost invisible. To the faithful and to those who struggle against sin it is more apparent but how much more for a religious?

A novice might be a target and struggle but the nuns are a bigger one and the target an individual nun is nothing compared to a Prioress whose call can bring down others.

A seminarian might struggle but a bigger target is a priest tending his flock or the Bishop who is over dozens of priests or a Cardinal and the biggest target is always the Pope and those who surround him because if you can bring down the top so many may be crushed beneath them by the fall.

It is the same in law ministry or apostolates the higher you go, the more prominent you are in the fight the more vulnerable you are to a fall, and the thing to remember is that it’s a battle of attrition.

And while there is nothing more exhilarating then watching the devil run when you meet him face to face the real victory doesn’t come from that transitory moment, it comes from the persistence in prayer and the trust in Christ that keeps him at bay.

Niles noted that Voris stopped leading the group in prayer as he once regularly did and that one of the first signs of trouble for a soul is when it walks from prayer. For the lay person prayer is an indispensable part of the life of faith how much more so for one on the front lines confronting the works of the enemy daily? That’s when the foothold is established and C. S. Lewis noted the results of such a situation:

If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold. ‘They hate every idea that suggests Him, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a pass-book.

Screwtape 13

The first duty of a person is to secure their own soul. Until that is done it’s almost impossible to help secure others as Christ put it:

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.

Matt: 7:3-5

Based on Voris video and this post that followed:

I suspect he put off with dealing with an issue or tried to do it handle it himself rather than turning to Christ in prayer and the sacraments.

How will it end? I don’t know, there are plenty of people, particularly those who don’t want scrutiny that will enjoy his fall hoping it takes the apostolate with him. For me I’ll be praying for the lot and keeping this as a object lesson to remember the wise words of my pastor.

Don’t poke the bear.

Some Jewish Hostages that We Were Told Did not Exist Released

Posted: November 25, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east, Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

4th Doctor: You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil pt 4 1977

Got home from work yesterday and saw this:

I’m happy for the families although my gut still thinks a deal might be dangerous but aside from that I’m confused about one thing.

We’ve had reports that Imams in the US and elsewhere have told their congregations that “claims” that Hamas took Jewish hostages on October 7th were false.

We’ve also been assured by college students and others all over the country that any such claim of Israeli women and children being taken hostage was simply propaganda. In fact many such people stated this as the reason why they were pulling down posters of the kidnapped jews.

If we are to believe these people then this hostage deal must not have taken place and our belief that these people have been returned to Israel must at best be a shared delusion or at worse a grand Zionist conspiracy running so deep that even Egypt and parts of Hamas, for reasons that are unclear, are taking part in it.

It will be interesting to see how those folks reconcile these facts with their previous claims.

Cue Tom Baker

Analyzing the Pope’s Dubia on Transgender Individuals

Posted: November 24, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in catholic, Church doctrine
Tags: , , , ,

Pope Francis is an interesting cat. Well, OK, he’s not a cat, he’s the Pope. Like most important figures, he gets misinterpreted a lot, and similar to Trump, anytime someone says “The Pope declared (insert heretical statement here) to be true!”, normally accompanied by worries about the impending apocalypse, my first reaction is always “Did you read the source documents?”

So, dear readers, let’s analyze the controversy around the Pope’s statements concerning transgender individuals. The Pope recently dined with some transgender women, which sparked a ton of news articles and controversy. If you only read headlines, you missed a lot of finer points:

  • One of the attendees, Claudia Salas, is a tailor and house cleaner, was the godparent to three of her nieces and nephews in her home country, Argentina. She did sex work to put the children through school.
  • Claudia, like many others, was impoverished and significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Father Andrea Conocchia, the pastor of the Blessed Immaculate Virgin parish in Torvaianica helped the transgender community with food and other assistance. Parish resources were stretched at the time because many people were cut off from income, so Conocchia asked for help from the cardinal who runs the pope’s charities. As well as sending money, the cardinal arranged for them to have COVID vaccinations in the Vatican and to meet the pope.

We have a good news story about Catholic charities helping all people, not just Christians, that got buried by the mainstream media. And yes, that means helping sinners, not dissimilar from so many stories of Jesus reaching out to the poor and destitute, dining in their homes and calling them to a better way of life.

The Pope’s recent “rulings” on transgender individuals comes in his response to a dubia, in this case from Most Reverend José Negri, Bishop of Santo Amaro, Brazil, who asked the following questions:

  • Can a transsexual be baptized?
  • Can a transgender person be a godparent?
  • Can a transgender person be a witness at a wedding?
  • Can two homo-affective people be parents for a child for baptism?
  • Can a cohabitating homo-affective person be a godparent?
  • Can a homo-affective cohabitating person be a witness at a wedding?

Straightforward questions. Homo-affective is the term used, which I’ll interpret as homosexual going forward.

The response is all of three pages long, and you should read the whole thing here. You can get the original Italian version here.

To the first question, the Pope starts by defining transsexual as someone who has undergone hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. In the age of people identifying as demisexual and unicorn lattes, I think this is a good thing to do, so that we’re all talking about the same thing. The Pope says yes, you can be baptized, provided you have enough preparation. The preparation for Baptism involves (for adults) learning about the Church’s rules, going to Confession and then being Baptized, and it typically takes a year to do.

The Pope spends a large part of his response focused on the fact that if the person to be baptized does not repent of grave sin, the Baptism won’t confer sanctifying grace. The Church still considers transgender surgery a pretty big sin, and nothing in the Dubia states a transgender individual is not their birth sex. If a transgender person is baptized, they’d be unable to marry in the church or have sexual relations with another person. Essentially, they’d be called to chastity in the single life, similar to the call to chastity for individuals affected by homosexual attraction.

The point of baptism is to bring someone into the Church, and the Church is open to all, including sinners. I’m not surprised by this one bit. The Pope hasn’t said anything controversial here. The call to the transgender person, especially after surgery, would be pretty difficult, but that’s a cross that person would bear as part of their way of entering Heaven.

The response on godparents is much shorter: a transgender person can be a godparent if it won’t cause scandal or “disorientation in the educational sphere,” which I interpret to mean the child wouldn’t be confused as to whether transgender life choices are acceptable. As for wedding witnesses, lots of people can be witnesses, so its not a huge surprise to allow transgender individuals.

The Pope basically said that transgender people can enter the Church through proper preparation, can participate as godparents if not scandalous, and can witness at weddings. They can’t get married in the church, be ordained, and would likely be called to a chaste single life. That’s pretty hard, and many of them, like Claudia, come from a pretty rough background. We should be praying for their conversion.

All of us sin, in both public and private ways, but no sin is truly private. I don’t envy transgender individuals, just like I don’t envy those that struggle with pornography, alcohol, or same-sex attraction. It would be a huge challenge to go from being a transgender sex worker to becoming an upstanding baptized Catholic that must live out a single, chaste life. But the Church has done similar miracles before. Saint Augustine lead a scandalous life, yet he repented and became Doctor of the Church. Saint Mary of Egypt was a prostitute for 17 years before turning her life around. My hope is that this sanctification will hold true for transgender people as well.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Roman Catholic Church, or any other government agency.

Two Interesting Tweets That Speak Volumes

Posted: November 24, 2023 by datechguy in culture, middle east
Tags: ,

Back in the days before Mr. Musk bought twitter wordpress I could tweet and/or retweet something and it would show up on the blog.

But since that avenue is no longer valid here are two tweets that are worth your time.

The first one comes from those favorites of the left. There is nothing the left loves more than Jews who will take the side against Israel. If you are decide to carry that kind of banner odds are you will never be short of funds.

But I do have a bit of advice, if you’re going to actually pretend to believe in the Torah don’t choose verses that you’re afraid to read in public, to wit:

Now if it was me, I would have picked a different verse, but this lady was too obvious, not only does she highlight the verses she wants to ignore making sure that everyone will see this video but by choosing these verses she not only confirms Israel’s historic claim to the holy land predating all others but makes sure that all will see that as a mandate from God.

That one is pretty good but the 2nd one is even better.

Now I’ve argued that when it comes to Transgender people, you can’t assume that because people have a mental illness concerning other things. I speak from the experience of both working with and carpooling to work with such people.

But as this tweet demonstrates, you can’t assume that said mental illness and delusion WON’T cross over to other things:

As a devout straight white Catholic male who has lived in Massachusetts all his live and has worked in Marlborough MA let me tell you that in 2023 I have a better chance of being beheaded here than this person does.

The frightening thing to me isn’t the obvious idiocy on display, but the fact that seeing this over 136 thousand people actually bought it.

Cue John Cleese:

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