--COVID-19 is real. It is a real pandemic, in line with past historic pandemics. It is not like the flu. It is highly contagious and is symptomatically worse, and it gets worse the heavier the viral load. If you survive contracting it, it is not like getting over the flu. You can have lifelong chronic ailments.

--Donald Trump lost the US election. It was a democratic election and there was no voter fraud. He lost in a historic landslide. The people rose up and threw him down. Trump got crushed.

--Pope Francis is the Pope. There is only one Pope, and it is Francis. He has not set his office aside because he signed his name using this title or that title. He has not nullified his office by any action or word.

--The Holy Mass has not been suppressed. It is said everyday in every parish.

--Masks work against the spread of COVID-19, and they work effectively. Social distancing works. Cancelling gatherings works. Economic problems arising thus stem not from the cancelling and shutting down, but stem entirely from the extreme flaws latent in the economic system.

--Vaccines against the virus are the will of God. Science is not opposed to faith.

--Conspiracism is totally anti-Gospel. Conspiracy-minded Christians bear false witness to the Gospel, and they drive people away from Christ. They will be answerable to God.

--Systemic racism is real. Racism is a mortal sin. We have still to reckon with racism.

--Archbishop Vigano is not a whistle-blower. From his 2018 "testimony" to the present, Vigano has been nothing but a fraud. When he heard of McCarrick being stripped of his red hat and being defrocked, his conscience did an overview of his performance as nuncio, and he became afraid.

The look of flowers that are looked at

Thomism 101: you have a mind precisely in order to know things outside of it.

As your mind feeds on things outside of it - namely, reality - the mind becomes more mind-like, though that is just a happy byproduct, and not the end purpose of this bee activity.

Miracle of sanity. Bilbo's doorstep in the evening: the understanding that the reality of the world is shaped to be understood by the mind. It is actually shaped for us to comprehend it, to engage it. Far from producing a narrow analytical view, this steeps us in wonder. One could argue that this is the first instance of perception: not first the seeing of the material of creation, but first that it was made for us to comprehend it. I believe this constitutes a child's first perceptions.

This knowing of reality is not remotely a consumption of information. It is not data registering on a blank screen. The first wakes to the world in childhood still have yet to come to full fruit; for those moments were not mere passive perceptions, but self-knowing as self going out to what is perceived.

Because reality is shaped to be understood by us - and indeed, named by us - this leads one to see that our minds are made, not as reality-comprehension mechanisms, but as the outflow of the dignity in which we are made: sharers in the works of the Author of creation who looked at what He made and saw that it was very good.

*

Thank God we are inadequate to ourselves. This is a major mark of the one who encounters Christ: that person exalts in his own inadequacy, in his own powerlessness, in his own weakness. St. Paul will back that up.

Who could have foreseen it - the great treasure lying beneath that fallow field?

*

If Christianity is about self-improvement, then to hell with it.

*

Meaning is not enough. You can talk to infinity about meaning; and it becomes meaningless. You think those heathens of old who made human sacrifice did so because they had no meaning in their lives? On the contrary, they set about at full tilt to insure that every inch of their lives was chock with meaning.

*

One of the greatest myths is that tired old sack about religion being something that people turn to in order to 'make sense out of their lives', or some variation of that phrase: a noble and useful, but ultimately very pat buttressing against inevitable chaos. Yawn. I don't believe it for a second. Not of those who say and think that's why they seek what they seek, nor of anyone. And if you think that's what Christianity is, then, well, to hell with it.

The thing that remains when all words fall silent. The thing that remains after sense and explanation is made of all things, or not. We have religion for one reason: we are religious creatures, and we were made in the image and likeness of God. The image remains, but the likeness was lost.

The restoration of the likeness, in Jesus, the only Son of God, revealed on the cross, from which all things are made new and saved from death, is Eucatastrophe in our lives.

*

What door did the birth-control pill and abortion and euthanasia and divorce et alia come through?

They came through the door of individualism.

Individualism.

Individualism as bred in western civilization.

Momentous

One moment you did not exist and then the next moment you did. And you had no say in the matter.

You could not add anything of like significance by your power to this prior truth, had you centuries, or the entire history of the world. Nothing you can do - had you all the energies and knowledge and technologies of the world throughout all time - can alter, take away from, or add to, in an even remotely similar significance, the truth that one moment you did not exist, and then the next moment you did.

But more, this one unalterable truth never gets old, had you the entire time of the world to attempt to wear it out. Evolution means nothing. Where is the power that brought all this into existence? Evolution? However many billions of years (years being our man-made measurement which in this matter is totally inconsequential)? LOL. And there will not be any annihilation of souls or of evil spirits as universalists like to speculate about.

This momentous fact of your coming into existence does not stale, for it is intrinsically linked to your being right now, and to the uncaused existence of God. We exist in order to know God. How would we know God if we did not exist? Like G.K. Chesterton said, "If there were no God then there would be no Atheists". That's not him being glib; rather that's him nesting a profound thought in a seemingly glib remark. Atheists prove the existence of God by being atheist: they carry with them as much as the believer in God, the notion of the existence of God, which is why they say they are Atheist. If there truly were no God then the very formulation of there being no God would not be known as anything. It would just be, and it would not be atheist.

But as it is, nothing can just be without being first caused by God. Nothing can be that does not first have being. Atheism is the most inconsistent, unreasoning thing, especially when it dismantles reason with faith. Which is what Atheists do all the time. They have faith that God does not exist and then they proceed to use reason against itself.

We participate in being - we do not create it, or give it. We have no power, nor do we have the capacity to wield power, for then we do not know what we are doing; and we know this by the initial truth that we exist, that we have being, the time before which, we did not exist; the time before which, we did not have being.

Anything that you would like to gainsay over the above has its basis in your already existing, of which you had no say in the matter.

This is the reason why being, as such, which is convertible with the term goodness, receives contempt, or is ignored through a chain of distractions. Distraction is a deception. You have being. The ground of your being is God.

This is why I regard all the talk about artificial intelligence taking over as self-indulgence. You really think there will be some point at which computers will be taking us over?  LOL. God laughs at the illusions.

People who talk about saving the planet. Bill Gates. Money. LOL. All of it is nothing but the green wood going dead.

Time-stamped

God gave us ten commandments

But the transgender police give us over 70 and counting.

Narcissism is the narcotic that gets injected through the tender skins of children via the gender-bending social engineers of whom the words of Jesus apply:

It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

One is born a boy or a girl. And that you are born one or the other is a beautiful unfathomable mystery. God knows you by name.

Christianity says one is born already a kind of masterpiece.

This age of narcissism says one is born indeterminably of no value other than as a number, as something to be consumed.

God gives one an identity that is forever.

This age gives one an identity that is already wasted.

That's all the transgender-queer pantheon is about - the destruction of identity, at the heart of which is narcissism. But behind that yet is the spiritual - and that is something so hateful that if one were to catch a glimpse of it even for a second, one's life would become totally blighted.

The reason is because that something is a demon of hate. It has nothing to do with sex and sexuality. Behind it all is a demon of such hate that a person with the wildest imagination could not begin to conceive how hateful.

That is the reason why if you were to have a glimpse of this demon for one second you would be incapable of getting out of bed in the morning, and would likely die in your bed, as everything you know and live for would have been totally blighted.

The world applauds the fake compassion that ushers in this destructive hate into the lives of children.

The one who suffers most

So much work goes into sinning. It is a horrible labour because it is fed and fueled with the division of one's soul. One might entertain the notion of freedom from the commandments in order to commit sin, like it would be a reprieve; or one imagines freedom is just a general state of doing what you want; but one is a dupe to think that one will be free in sin.

Sin demands all-consuming toil; it demands your soul be divided; and divided ever more insanely without rhyme or reason. The toil is not necessarily a toil that one can ascertain as such, in the sense of seeing yourself positively labouring at something. Often it is a toil of quiet negation that robs the soul of its freedom. When the whip and prod of this slavery are at their quietest, they are at their worst, they are at their highest command. The most lethargic and laid-back assumptions soaking in a hottub and cloud of marijuana smoke, answering every impulse to repent with, "The Dude abides", or some such, has in it a horrible fortitude toiling at sin.

More work goes into regressing than into progressing. The work here is the division of the soul, whereas in the most strenuous work of progress in holiness, in union with Christ, the soul is yet somehow still at rest, for it is whole. How many sins are committed by Christians because they allow the general sadness and boredom and noise of the world, in the ordinary minutes, to make them forget the victory that Christ has won in them? How many sin because they forget to smile?

The very word "comfort" implies its unattainability, or rather its absurdity; thus to live in it extravagantly or persistently (that is to say, always choosing comfort over and above anything else) implies a life of deep alienation, of a position of very deep discomfort with life, because one has to service the comfort that one wishes to have or sustain. Go to any mall. Look at the faces. Comfort is one of the coldest words in the English language. Borrowing money at compounding interest is just such a great metaphor for the labour of sin, until you realize that it is, or can be, a literal carrier of it. It is no metaphor at all.

Thomas Merton wrote:

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.” 

We're familiar with the terminology about slavery to sin. Yet don't we tend to think about that slavery as something static? Today the term "slavery" is so ubiquitous with the political and ideological that it has lost its keen verb sense, such as when we say "to slave away", as well as simply its original legal sense. Still less do we think about the underlying assumption that mediated the legality of slave-trading: that the slave was to do work for someone. You wanted a slave that could work. No one wanted to own a person because they just wanted to own a person.

St. Paul talks about "the wages of sin". Slavery is to toil away, as your fate, for someone's other benefit. "Slavery of sin" does not just imply that one is in chains; it implies a grueling, soul-sapping toil - every second that goes by. Where slaving for someone as in the slave-trade (which is by no means dead today) was a fate, and you toiled until you died, the toil of the slavery of sin is exponential in demanding your dissipation and division.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
    it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
    they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
    the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
He makes grass grow for the cattle,
    and plants for people to cultivate—
    bringing forth food from the earth:
wine that gladdens human hearts,
    oil to make their faces shine,
    and bread that sustains their hearts.
The trees of the Lord are well watered,
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
There the birds make their nests;
    the stork has its home in the junipers.
The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
    the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.
 

He made the moon to mark the seasons,
    and the sun knows when to go down.

You bring darkness, it becomes night,
    and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

The lions roar for their prey
    and seek their food from God.

The sun rises, and they steal away;
    they return and lie down in their dens.

Then people go out to their work,
    to their labor until evening.

--Psalm 104, 10-23

Blog Post

One of the things it seems one never gets around to squaring with - to facing and pinning down and rejecting - is this notion that at some point in the future one will attain in this world to some kind of perfect timeless satisfaction and peace and prosperity (often so modestly envisioned). Whatever it may be called subjectively from person to person, the notion can objectively be stated in the negative: that at some point in this earthly life one will no longer face upheaval.

The modern world - our western culture - is geared towards the propagation of this lie of false security, of false life. It can be summed in this phrase: a life that is absent of transformation. This is ultimately why physically healthy people kill themselves. There may be other reasons involved, but the ultimate ticket that decides a suicide is the continued absence of transformation - which is a persistent absence that our modern culture forces upon us and drums into our minds, incessantly.

Faced with this ongoing blockage by our culture that tells us in varied ways that we are complete and self-sufficient purely observing individuals, we don't find the freedom of hating our sins, of hating being atrophied by them in the stale dust of decades of our old self. When you live, you see that life is its own intrinsic deepening. The mystery of life deepens. That is not just a personal view; that is what happens; that is life: its mystery deepens. When the opposite happens we know on some fundamental level that something is off, something is wrong. What is wrong is one's self - in conjunction with being told damn lies all of one's life.

We sense this, but lacking understanding, we are prone to say that it is the quashing of individuality. We fail to see the paradox. We lack individuality to the extent that we are robbed of transformation. When we are not being transformed, we are not ourselves. The more loudly one proclaims one's individuality, in myriad forms, the more nightmarish becomes one's state of lost identity.

This is why people who are diagnosed with terminal cancer can live in the present and be living realists, while some people who have nothing of that sort and whose lives are quite cushioned can hardly get out of bed in the morning.

There is only one true transformation: Jesus Christ in the Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

You cannot get yourself to die, and this is why people have anxiety. You can get yourself to die with Jesus. It is He in His mercy that allows you to die in Him. It is the only way you can get yourself to die.

This has nothing to do with "eastern nihilism". It has everything to do with the absolute truth that Jesus is Life. Life to the full and brimming over: the living water.

Which transforms.

And often when He transforms us, we have made ourselves too large (and loud) to see the transformation.

Ugh! Those Disgusting People!

People across the internet - which is to say, across the world - are showing their disgust and outrage over pills smuggled from China that contain the powdered flesh of aborted babies. Those disgusting people, they say in the comment boxes, and those disgusting people who consume them - so stupid - believing such things will cure them or keep them young! Outraged! Horrified! Disgusted!

But fetal cells to grow our vaccines and make anti-wrinkle creams and cosmetics and fetal cells for Senomyx to develop better-tasting food, and embryonic stem cells for endless research and fetal tissue transplants to treat things like Parkinson's - who are you to deny anyone that? Now just you shut up about that! For that is the true fountain of youth that will cure us and keep us young! Not like those barbarians!

We've made our plank to the dimensions of infinity.

Because we are so smart, decent and don't want to do no harm to no one.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God; resist the devil, and he will flee…"

"The unwanted piece of the UFO puzzle" best sums the investigative work of Joe Jordan. He is President and co-founder of CE-4 (Close Encounters of the Fourth kind), the investigative and counselling arm of Alien Resistance.

An addendum on his site says: He is also MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) State Section Director and Field Investigator for Brevard County, Florida, home of Kennedy Space Center. Joe works for Sea Ray Boats in Product Development & Engineering in Merritt Island, Florida.

His line of investigation has the peculiarity of not just being solidly anti-fringe (in the sense of discrediting the notion of flying beings from outer space who have super intelligence) but of also being solidly anti-speculative about those same "space men".

That is to say, he, and the others he works with, are quite willing to believe in peoples' testimonies about being abducted by aliens. They differ though, in what the nature is of the abductors, and where they come from, and what their intentions are.

What is his specific area of enquiry? He has investigated over 300 cases of abduction/encounters; terrifying and paralyzing abductions/encounters. What sets him apart from other investigators (unbelieving scientific speculative types on one hand, and conspiracy theory fringe believers on the other) is that the subjects in his 300 plus cases were able to stop their abductions/encounters, as they were happening, by calling on the name of Jesus.

You can read an article on him here.