Young boys and men are not attracted to this, although a woman might be:
With the recovery of the Traditional Latin Mass, I have seen many boys and young men willing to serve it and become interested in the priesthood. This attracts healthy young men to the seminary:
Press title for news story:
Vatican data shows ‘uninterrupted decline’ in vocations since Francis became pope in 2013
My comments:
Under Pope Francis, we have seen a reversal in the number of young men interested in pursuing a vocation to the priesthood.
Why is that? It is plain, simple and out in the open for everyone to see and know why. The liberal implementation of the spirit of Vatican II has been highly destructive of Church tradition, piety, liturgy, catechesis and a balanced view of the feminine and masculine aspects of the Church and her ministry.
I know of no dioceses or religious orders that embraced the most liberal implementation of Vatican II which are prospering with eager applicants for a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, none whatsoever. And those who are applying for a liberal, heterodox view of Catholicism give me a moment of pause.
What Pope Francis has recaptured by canceling the papacies of St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI is the malaise of the late 1960’s and 70’s where the sexual revolution of that time (tame compared to today’s off-the-rails revolution) killed vocations, inspired immature priests and nuns to experiment with sex and then leave to get married or have partnerships with same sex people. All of this eroded any sense of vocations and that the Church had anything to teach the world as Vatican II asked that we dialogue with the world and listen to contrary voices and apologize for the Catholic Church’s dogmatism and corruption that led to the Great Schism and Protestant Reformation.
Celibacy was thought to become optional, ordained priests could get married and women would soon be ordained.
Anything that smacked of the pre-Vatican II Church’s emphasis on truth, piety and fixed beliefs had to be challenged and anyone interested in the priesthood or religious life nostalgic for the 1950’s version of Catholicism was to be weeded out as rigid and pre-Vatican II, the ultimate sins of the post-Vatican II Church.
Pope Francis has recovered much of this 1960’s and 70’s ugliness and a Church of the ugly as symbolized by the raping of traditional church buildings and making them look more Presbyterian than most Presbyterian Churches.
But the ugliness was truly the war against the pre-Vatican II Church and thinking its style of being Church was a 2,000 year disaster.
Pope Francis, though, has recovered the feminine ethos of ministry but imposed on men. It is fine for women to be feminine but when men are feminine one sees that a man is going against his nature to be a man.
And of course, women want to be men and a femininity that embraces masculinity, especially in a liturgical setting, such as the priestesshood, is astoundingly ugly and off-putting as is an effeminate man in the ordained priesthood, especially in a liturgical setting.
This shows up in a touchy-feely form of ministry, where empathy is emotional and tear laden and liturgy makes a man into a woman in terms of ethos and gender bending ritual styles.
What healthy boy and man wants to be feminine?
That is why the older form of the liturgy and the Church as she was prior to Vatican II attracted so many men to the priesthood. Yes, some should have been screened out and the system of formation of strictness and discipline, if removed, showed that these men often had not internalized the discipline and were still children in an adult body and would do as they pleased when pre-Vatican II strictures were removed and a disciplined lifestyle built on asceticism was removed for a more personal self discovery which led into license to do what had been forbidden by discipline.
That could have been addressed and should have been addressed but we need not make men into women.
But what is clear, the post-Vatican II Church encouraged a freedom built upon internalized maturity but with no real consequences if a priest or nun completely failed in the public promises they made.
That doesn’t encourage anyone to consider a vocation.
52 comments:
Just about everywhere they allowed girls to be altar servers, the boys stopped participating. But let's not be too nostalgic for the pre-V2 era; that was when homo predators like McCarrick and Bernardine where being formed and rose to power.
The seminary system prior to Vatican II that took boys into a high school seminary and then later to college and major seminary in a monastic and highly disciplined setting would have worked if that discipline had been maintained after Vatican II but lifting discipline for immature men was a disaster.
I personally think it is good news that high school seminaries are no longer around and I have questions about college seminaries. Teenagers and young men need to be in a normal dating environment to mature in their sexuality. They need to know what their sexuality is too. I wonder if a McCarrick and others like him from a pre-Vatican II formation would have continued with the priesthood if they had to wait to go to the seminary. We’ll never know on this side of life.
monk - We have boys and girls as altar servers. The boys from our schools have not stopped participating.
Fr. ALLAN McDonald - I wonder if more of those attracted by the "masculine" - whatever that might mean - form of the liturgy have endured in their vocations as priests. Are the young men attracted by the "Traditional" Latin mass more likely to be priests after 5 years...10 years... 15 years?
I don't know if data on this has been collected or examined in any way. While we know of individuals in our own diocese, these are only anecdotal instances of what may or may not be a trend.
Father McDonald,
The old high school seminaries provided little return for the Church. Out of huge classes you might have had only a handful who went on to major seminary so it was a good thing they closed. I also agree young boys should have a normal high school dating and other experiences so they make a more informed decision about the priesthood. Some of the best priests I have known had high school girlfriends and a couple had even been engaged before choosing priesthood.
Frmjk, I don't know of the statistics, but yes, the post-Vatican II Church, which is all over the place, with younger clergy more orthodox than the laity they serve, often are disparaged and ridiculed by heterodox older parishioners and priests, our age and older.
I think, too, this orthodox and zealous young clergy are completely discouraged by the current pontificate and his maligning of their intentions and sacramental ministry especially his rejection of the previous two pontificates which inspired so many of these younger vocations.
As well, rectory life today, is all over the place and young priests find no real support in either community, common meals prepared for them and others in the rectory or common prayer, let alone common believe and a common sense of mission and direction for the Church.
All of this undermines the foundation of a life long active priesthood and the same would be true of marriages in this kind of state.
The plural of anecdotal is data.
Unless you are braindead and willfully refuse to look at the evidence, the progressive Catholic Church has failed miserably in regards to Church attendance and vocations. The one bright light has been the slowly TLM movement which the current regime is trying to crush because it highlights their failure. They are no better than Communist commissars and will likely share their fate in eternity. The young, unlike the geriatric juvenile delinquents, are attracted to the authentic, the timeless.
I disagree that older Catholics do not care for the traditional young priests since I am an elderly Catholic and I certainly appreciate them. For those elderly liberals who still bother to come to Mass, they just tend to be more vocal. Progressives by nature are loudmouthed and think it is all about them. Quelle surprise!
Right will prevail. Deus Vult!
Fr. ALLAN McDonald - If a recently ordained priest:
1. Thinks he can do what he wants, disregarding the policies already in place in his assigment...
2. Thinks that his interpretation and application of doctrine or canon law is the ONLY right interpretation and application...
3. Thinks that Pope Francis has "rejected" the previous two popes...
4. Thinks that his life as a diocesan cleric is going to be anything like the highly structured and communal life of the seminary...
5. Thinks that someone ought to be prepared for him...
Then, I would suggest, he did not enter the seminary with a healthy view of what diocesan priesthood is in practice, nor was he given the necessary opportunities to learn for himself what that practice looks like in real life.
5 above should read, " Thinks that someone ought to prepare meals for him"...
Fr K,
Priests who vote for the Party of Moloch should be drummed out of the priesthood - on the same moral plain as McCarrick
In regard to Pope Francis', as well as Pope Benedict XVI's, Pontificates:
The beginning of the overall Churchwide decline in the amount of major seminarians is traced to Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate.
Even the Pope Francis-hating LifeSiteNews has acknowledge that.
LifeSiteNews acknowledged that such "a trend has been marked since the start of Pope Francis’ pontificate, and even just prior to it."
"...and even just prior to it." Translation: Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate.
LifeSiteNews also acknowledged that during Pope Francis' reign, the amount of seminarians in Africa has continued to increase.
========================================================================================
Mark Gray, of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, analyzed the data in question:
-- As compared to 2013 A.D, the current statistics have shown that there are just 11 fewer diocesan priests.
-- The amount of permanent deacons has increased 13 percent.
-- On the negative side: The amount of religious sisters and brothers have declined 11 percent, as well as 9 percent respectively.
=============================================================================
Mark Gray also noted the manner in which COVID-19 has skewed various statistics in question:
He noted:
"The world changed and has not yet returned to the “normal” of 2019. Any impact, positive or negative, Pope Francis may have had will be overshadowed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic when our most current data represents 2020 and 2021."
"We know looking at Church data for these years we are going to see lower levels of Mass attendance and sacramental practice with the impact of lockdowns, restrictions, and hesitancy for people to gather in crowds in enclosed spaces during those two years."
"In sum, no one should be giving Pope Francis a 10-year report card based on the most current data available and when more comparable post-COVID-19 data are available, any “grades” given for changes in the number of sacraments celebrated should be considered within the context of what is happening demographically across the globe."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Pope Benedict's saying the Church of the future will be smaller and poorer was a realistic and sadly a very accurate assesment of the impact made on it by V 2. The destrucctive impact of Fascism in Germany, Communism in Russia, Italy, France and other anti Christian ideologies is evident. The US is funding in Ukraine a most destructive war. And an equally destructive one at home against the unborn. Perhaps the decline in the number of seminary applicants is the result of gay young man need not hide anymore. The young priest today will choose his vocation inspired by a more authentic faith than the current Collage of Cardinals exibit. The Chuirch will survive because Christ promised that He will be with us always.
Mark Thomas, now the Greatest Prevaricator:
LOL. Pope Francis was elected in 2013. You won't be able to deal with the following reality:
" the Church performed 2 million fewer baptisms in 2020 than in 2013. The number of marriages declined by 702,246, or nearly a third. Confirmations and first Communions also dropped by 12% and 13%, respectively, despite relatively stable levels of Mass attendance in the world’s 13 most Catholic countries.
According to the Vatican, however, the number of seminarians worldwide has been decreasing since 2013. The 2021 report shows the number of seminarians across the globe decreased by 1.8% since 2020. The sharpest declines were in North America and Europe, where the number of seminarians decreased by 5.8% on both continents."
If I had been contemplating the priesthood in 2013, the appearance of a dour, Peronist on the balcony of St. Peter's would have certainly caused me pause.
Mark Thomas, your sick obsessession with Pope Francis has destroyed your intregity. Quit your lying and please apologize to Father McDonald for lying about his statement.
Mark Thomas,
As a leftwinger, leftwinger, leftwinger, the following is just another example of how unhinged your Leftwing buddies (Dems) have become. You just can't make this stuff up:
The director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at a California college said she was “harassed and bullied” out of her job because she wanted to consider the perspectives of people from all races equally.
Dr. Tabia Lee, who is black, told The New York Post that faculty at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, labeled her a “white supremacist” after she pushed to “create safe spaces for everyone.” Lee said that during her review for tenure, she was denied and will be out of a job on June 15. "
LOL. Maybe you or Father K could take that job over!
TJM:
There is a good, thoughtful article on all this in the latest issue of The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/equity-language-guides-sierra-club-banned-words/673085/
“Although the guides refer to language “evolving,” these changes are a revolution from above. They haven’t emerged organically from the shifting linguistic habits of large numbers of people. They are handed down in communiqués written by obscure “experts” who purport to speak for vaguely defined “communities,” remaining unanswerable to a public that’s being morally coerced. . . .
“The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor. The first rolls off your tongue without interruption, leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion. The second is rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad. Imprecise language is less likely to offend. Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths. . .
“The rationale for equity-language guides is hard to fault. They seek a world without oppression and injustice. Because achieving this goal is beyond anyone’s power, they turn to what can be controlled and try to purge language until it leaves no one out and can’t harm those who already suffer. Avoiding slurs, calling attention to inadvertent insults, and speaking to people with dignity are essential things in any decent society. . . .
“The universal mission of equity language is a quest for salvation, not political reform or personal courtesy--a Protestant quest and, despite the guides’ aversion to any reference to U.S. citizenship, an American one, for we do nothing by half measures. The guides follow the grammar of Puritan preaching to the last clause. Once you have embarked on this expedition, you can’t stop at Oriental or thug, because that would leave far too much evil at large. So you take off in hot pursuit of gentrification and legal resident, food stamps and gun control, until the last sin is hunted down and made right—which can never happen in a fallen world. . . .
“The project of the guides is utopian, but they’re a symptom of deep pessimism. They belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real. What I’ve described is not just a problem of the progressive left. The far right has a different vocabulary, but it, too, relies on authoritarian shibboleths to enforce orthodoxy.”
Mark,
These language guides have often been put together by graduates of American universities over the past approximately 30 to 40 years. The following is a summary of what they’ve often been taught:
“The central proposition of their thinking seems to be that there is no ‘reality’ in the world other than one constructed by words. Categories have been constructed according to the power interests of groups (especially, straight, white, western males) advantaged by such constructions and the main intellectual labour confronting people in our era is to deconstruct these false categories and show them not to be based on objective reality or knowledge but on ideology generated by a group wishing to maintain a power advantage ……
The corollary of this belief is that these ideologies and/or discourses (ways of talking about things) are taken to be the ‘truth’ by those generating them AND most times by those who have been and still are being exploited….”
(The claim that there is no reality other than the ‘reality’ created by words is a dangerous and unhelpful overstatement…..most of us in our bones that there is a reality out there that that has not been ‘constructed’ by rhetorical sleight of hand and are rightly annoyed when that possibility is denied….)
For several decades in the West millions of students have been taught:
Power elites (especially, wealthy, straight, white males) have for centuries used the slipperiness of language to foist their construction of ‘truth’ on to women and racial and sexual minorities.
There are no absolute ‘truths’; there is no fixed ‘human nature’ and what we think of reality is always and only a manufactured reality. There are in fact as many realities out there as there are ideologies which construct them.
(Most importantly, for about the past 40 years, the above has been taught to millions of young people not just in humanities courses at universities but also at teachers colleges - the above is a summary of THE dominant ideology of our times.)
The 3 great “Truths” of postmodern, woke Theory:
All cultures are equally deserving of respect but the culture of functioning Western democracies is destructive and bad; all truth is relative but postmodern, woke Theory tells it like it really is; all values are subjective but sexism, racism and homophobia are REALLY (ie objectively) evil….
The only explanation for millions of young people in the West
believing the nonsense of BLM ideology and the insanity of modern gender theory - and in the USA voting Democrat, and having a positive regard for socialism - and believing language does not so much describe reality but construct reality etc is what they were taught K to 12 by teachers who embrace the great “Truths” of postmodern, woke Theory.
"Woke" is an artificial construct, also known as a boogeyman, invented by those who want to excuse or gloss over the excesses of capitalism, the oppression of non-white races by the white race, and the unwillingness of those who desire to cling to a position of power in the face of the ever-increasing presence of minorities in our country.
Fr K,
And your party calls abortion “healthcare.” Please explain that Orwellian turn of a phrase. After all you own it
Fr K,
Leftists used to be proud to be called “Woke”.
Fr K, are you among those “woke” people who largely ignore the often terrible oppression of women in non Western nations and largely ignore the VERY REAL and appalling treatment of racial, religious and sexual minorities in non Western societies?
But are SO VERY sensitive to oppression, especially racism and oppression of LGBT people, in the USA that you can often sense this oppression when it is not even there?
Mark,
The Atlantic. Do you ever read non-leftwing journals? Why not address what I posted? Is this Black woman a White Supremacist? Do you agree that she is and should have lost her position for wanting to treat everyone equally? If not, what consequences should that indoctrination center masquerading as a college face? Do you believe Blacks in San Francisco receive $5 million in reparations?
Mark,
The Atlantic. Do you ever read non-leftwing journals? Why not address what I posted? Is this Black woman a White Supremacist? Do you agree that she is and should have lost her position for wanting to treat everyone equally? If not, what consequences should that indoctrination center masquerading as a college face? Do you believe Blacks in San Francisco receive $5 million in reparations?
Fr K,
Tell us about the construct of abortion as “healthcare?” Also please explain how Blacks in San Francisco merit receiving $5 million in reparations when California was a free state. Please explain. You could use your explanation in your sermon next Sunday
Fr K,
Tell us about the construct of abortion as “healthcare?” Also please explain how Blacks in San Francisco merit receiving $5 million in reparations when California was a free state. Please explain. You could use your explanation in your sermon next Sunday
Mark,
The Atlantic. Do you ever read non-leftwing journals? Why not address what I posted? Is this Black woman a White Supremacist? Do you agree that she is and should have lost her position for wanting to treat everyone equally? If not, what consequences should that indoctrination center masquerading as a college face? Do you believe Blacks in San Francisco receive $5 million in reparations?
Fr K,
All the big achievements in feminism and gay rights and important civil rights legislation (re racial oppression and racial discrimination etc) occurred in the second half of last century BEFORE the arrival in recent times of the modern “Social Justice Movement” or “wokeism”.
The madness of the modern “Social Justice Movement” or “Wokeism” of the past decade includes a denial of the reality re how MUCH better it was to be a member of a racial minority or sexual minority in the USA in the year 2000 compared to, say, 1900 or 1950; a denial of the real progress (that occurred in the West) that was made before they even became activists and while ignoring all the non Western nations where this progress has often never been made, where the most appalling oppression of racial and sexual minorities still occurs …..while they obsess about language and so-called racist and homophobic discourses they claim still cause black, brown and LGBT people to be oppressed to this day…
Fr K, can I, for example, ask you how you define racism?
Would you agree racism is best defined as it was defined in the past as : prejudice on the grounds of race….?
Or are you one of the virtuous elite of our era who has become so “awakened” to social injustice in the USA that for you racism is best defined as a racialized SYSTEM that permeates all interactions in American society yet is largely invisible except to those who experience it or to people like yourself who are “awakened” to it ?
Fr K, are you among those who believe that racism is embedded in American culture and that we cannot escape it? What about the belief that white people are inherently racist; and that racism in America is “prejudice plus power”and thus only white people in the USA can be racist. And that racism in America is present everywhere and always and persistently works against people of colour and for the benefit of white people…..
Very strange that for over a 100 years till the present, millions of people (many people of color) have strongly desired to migrate to such a terribly racist, oppressive nation. And strange, too, how MANY Jews and Asian people have flourished economically in the USA - to say nothing of dozens of other facts and realities, like the fact that Indian-American people have above average incomes in the USA.
And, sorry, to repeat, what astounds me re modern woke leftists is how VERY little they are concerned by the VERY WORST sorts of oppression of women and racial and sexual minorities in many non Western nations …..while insanely obsessing about alleged systemic oppression and racism in the west, and micro aggressions etc and bizarrely obsessing about the present relationship of power, language and knowledge in the USA and so on…
I think a good definition of a woke, white American is to be SO aware and sensitive towards “social injustice and oppression” and “racism and homophobia in America” etc that they can see and detect racism and homophobia etc when it is not even there.
Woke is a capitalist tool, a very anti-life movement. The failed SVB bank had a very woke Board; so does Disney and manyi other large corporations, even the US Goverment and the Pentagon. Fr K your knowledge of current cultur fads is about as good as your grasp on Theology.
Mark,
The Atlantic. Do you ever read non-leftwing journals? Why not address what I posted? Is this Black woman a White Supremacist? Do you agree that she is and should have lost her position for wanting to treat everyone equally? If not, what consequences should that indoctrination center masquerading as a college face? Do you believe Blacks in San Francisco receive $5 million in reparations?
Fr K,
Abortion as "healthcare" is a despicable and evil euphemism for killing the innocent unborn, yet you vote for the Party of Moloch, so your silly lectures on "woke" ring hollow with the sentient and the moral. I really don't know how you live with yourself. The race card was cancelled when Obama was elected president who is living the life of Reilly off of "public service." A stark contrast to Harry S. Truman who integregated the military but when he left the White House, packed his own car and drove back to Independence Missouri to live in his wife's family home. Meanwhile, Obama lives in violation of the Global Warming Religion by living in two seaside mansions, one in Martha's Vineyard and the other in Hawaii. Why is he not building homes for Habitat for the Humanity like Jimmy Carter or in the south side of Chicago trying to salvage the lives of his "people." You really are contumacious in ignoring reality and the evil in plain sight.
Mark,
You strike me as a decent fellow, but you must be really disappointed in the direction of modern academia which appeals to the worst in us. You did not address my comment about a black woman being accused of being a White Supremecist because she wanted to fulfill Martin Luther King Jr's dream of treating all equally regardless of race.
We had another sickening example this past week involving the Law School at Stanford which now is the enemy of free speech as demonstrated by a leftwing loon dean who claims to be for free speech while abridging the free speech rights of a Federal judge who was invited to speak but she does not like.
And what about the crazies in San Francisco who want to award Blacks who were never slaves and who live in the state of California, which was always a free state, $5 million dollars as "reparations." What an evil, divisive and cynical ploy. Why don't you address those things?
I remember when the ACLU was truly a defender of our constitutional freedoms but today has elected to pursue instead the wish lists of the latest leftist grievances du jour.
Academia has become the problem not the solution. They will not be happy with how this all ends.
Fr K,
And your party calls abortion “healthcare.” Please explain that Orwellian turn of a phrase. After all you own it
Fr K,
You wrote re people who "gloss over the excesses of capitalism."
I have read hundreds of times re your views of the evil of racism in your own country but I don't recall you once acknowledging the worst sorts of racist oppression and THE very worst types of oppression of gay people that occurs in many non western nations.
Do you gloss over this because of the extreme fear you have of being labelled racist for acknowledging the TRULY terrible oppression of women and the racism AND THE cruellest most barbaric treatment of homosexual people that non western people of colour are capable of.
Your dislike and your opposition to oppression and racism and homophobia etc seems irrationally selective to me.
TJM,
Present day financial reparations, for past slavery, anywhere in the USA is insane.
For approximately 3,000 years of human history, Europeans enslaved Europeans, Africans enslaved Africans and Asians enslaved Asians - for most of human history, people were not enslaved on the basis of their race; but most times people were enslaved because they were vulnerable……(see books and YouTube documentaries by the great black academic, Thomas Sowell.)
Imagine today African people from sub Saharan Africa and white Europeans from what used to be Yugoslavia etc forming activist groups and demanding financial compensation and financial reparations from the government authorities in Turkey or Saudi Arabia etc because their ancestors were enslaved by Ottoman Turks and Arab peoples for many centuries.
Imagine today people from coastal regions of Italy, Spain and Ireland (who had ancestors enslaved c. 1500-1800 by Muslim sailors and slavers from North Africa) demanding financial reparations from the modern day governments of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia?
What reply would they get?
TJM,
Perhaps Britain deserves financial compensation for the millions of pounds spent in the 19th century in the struggle to end slavery and for the MANY young British sailors who died while serving in the British Navy during that same struggle. A lot of people, not just the South in the USA, but many people in the Arab world, Africa and Brazil etc in the 19th century did NOT want slavery to end.
TJM:
The Atlantic article addressed precisely that type of situation directly. Why should the fact that the criticism of “equity language” is being made by an author who may well be center left matter? It just proves that such excesses are too much even for those occupying that position on the political spectrum. Surely you should have been gratified to read the article. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Or did some other aspect of the piece bother you? The author’s endorsing the goal of combatting oppression and injustice? His suggestion at the end that there are also language and thought police on the right? Something else?
TJM,
Perhaps what has been said of The New York Times can be said of The Atlantic and many other left of centre newspapers and journals...
" The New York Times' long-standing motto 'All the News That's Fit to Print' should be changed to reflect today's reality:
"Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology" "
Thomas Sowell.
TJM,
Re modern academia:
Have you read anything about the Sokal Hoax or the Grievance Studies Hoax?
They show how in many academic areas a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed...and put the social grievances of Wokeism ahead of objective truth.
Nonsensical hoax articles, with deliberately broken scholarship, which parody the language of Woke scholar/activists and regurgitate their Woke dogmas can be accepted for publication in academic journals.
For example, presenting quantum gravity as a social, western, linguistic construct; a research paper claiming rape culture can be observed in dog exercise parks; and a chapter from Hitler's Mein Kampf can be accepted if the word Jews is replaced with "white males" or heterosexual white males and the early Nazi movement in this chapter of Mein Kampf is replaced with "intersectional feminism" - plus another 20 equally nonsensical papers, research and articles.
Father great post. Don’t forget Vatican II was the Revolution.
Mark no one hates Jorge we just despise the abomination that he is and the wrecking ball he’s released onto the church to try and finish it off, but he will not prevail.
How much longer Our Lord will let this abuse to his bride continue is known only to him.
Not long I pray.
TJM:
An update on the Stanford Law School story you may have missed, an apology letter from the University President and the Law School Dean:
https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/letter-from-Stanford.pdf
March 11, 2023
Dear Judge Duncan,
We write to apologize for the disruption of your recent speech at Stanford Law School. As has already been communicated to our community, what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech, and we are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus.
We are very clear with our students that, given our commitment to free expression, if there are speakers they disagree with, they are welcome to exercise their right to protest but not to disrupt the proceedings. Our disruption policy states that students are not allowed to “prevent the effective carrying out” of a “public event” whether by heckling or other forms of interruption.
In addition, staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.
We are taking steps to ensure that something like this does not happen again. Freedom of speech is a bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society, and we can and must do better to ensure that it continues even in polarized times.
With our sincerest apologies again,
And for another perspective on the incident, see:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/trump-judge-kyle-duncan-stanford-law-scotus-audition.html
Paul - While, "All the big achievements in feminism and gay rights and important civil rights legislation ... BEFORE the arrival in recent times of the modern “Social Justice Movement” or “wokeism” I would suggest the same element was the driving force behind them. That is, a desire for righteousness. LBJ wasn't called "woke" only because the term had not been coined, not because the need for greater justice wasn't present and recognized.
No one is denying that real progress has been made and I don't think anyone is ignoring that we lead, many other countries in these areas. Some, maybe including you, seem to deny that further progress is needed.
I am perfectly happy with the definition of racism you prpose. I am also perfectly happy to recognize that racism exists at the individual AND the systemic levels. When marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge, named for a former Confederate brigadier general and Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK, in Selma were brutaly attacked by state troopers, that was systemic racism. When George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and attempted to maintain segregated education, that was systemic racism. When Japanese Americans were herded into concentration camps during WW2, that was systemic racism. The contributions of non-whites to the building up of the US were simply left out of texts used to educate tens of millions of American school children. That was systemic racism.
Examples are not found only in the past. Membership in white nationlist organizations has grown in the last decade and, sadly, come out of the shadows in that time frame, finding adherents. During the Great Recession, the explosion of subprime lenders took place in communities of color. The impacts of systemic racist Red Lining for home loans is still being felt today.
I would agree that racism is embedded in fallen HUMAN nature and that it can, like any other sin, be overcome by God's grace. It cannot be overcome by denying that it exists and is pervasive.
By pointing out the oppression that people in this country suffer, I am not glossing over oppression that people of various groups suffer in other countries. If I were to point out that the Bull River bridge near me is in desperate need of repairs (it's not, as far as I now, I'm just using this one as an example) and is dangerous, would you accuse me of glossing over the dangerous bridges in other parts of Chatham County, or Georgia, or Wyoming, or Tanzania? Certainly you would not. That's a silly argument.
Now, shall we discuss the excesses of capitalism, or do you think that Saint pope John Paul II was wrong when he argued, "adequate legislative measures to block shameful forms of exploitation, especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers, of immigrants and of those on the margins of society” or “Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person's desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an "idolatry" of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities” or “Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces”?
TJM:
Another perspective on the incident at Stanford Law School was provided by one of my students who commented at the lack of professionalism displayed by the students at Stanford and who then expressed appreciation for the cultivation of professionalism at my own Law School. This student did not realize at the time that we were cultivating his professional formation in this way, but he realizes and appreciates it now.
Whether we or Stanford are the exception that proves the rule I leave for another day. I suspect it is the latter, however. So, please be cautious before you allow yourself to be manipulated by the right-wing “outrage machine” (or the left-wing one for that matter).
To describe and condemn nations like the USA, the UK and Australia etc (at the beginning of the 21st century) as oppressive, racist and homophobic, by world standards and historical standards, is not just simply wrong but almost delusional.
Capitalist, free market nations and societies have not been and will never be perfect, but what is the alternative?
Socialism? The public or government ownership and control of the means of production? For over a 100 years, socialist nations, socialist regimes have an appalling record re NOT bringing about equality, prosperity, freedom.
I could give a dozen examples, but why for a lot of the 20th century was life MUCH better for the average person in West Germany than East Germany or South Korea than North Korea?
Also, most liberal activists from the 1950s to the 1980s in the West wanted to IMPROVE society; they wanted more equality and fair treatment and equal opportunities for women and racial and sexual minorities - unlike modern BLM et al activists who are not seeking “righteousness” but who want to radically CHANGE society with, for example, the overthrow of capitalism and the “oppressive” traditional nuclear family.
Paul - I am not calling for the abolition of capitalism. Like Saint John Paul II I am calling for a capitalism that serves everyone in a more just form.
In Centesiumus Annus, JP2 wrote:
"In the light of the above, the many proposals put forward by experts in Catholic social teaching and by the highest Magisterium of the Church take on special significance: proposals for joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labour, etc."
Jonathan Culbreath comments on this section:
"Accordingly, in the same section, he lists a number of possible solutions that accord with the Church’s teaching on this subject. Economists and policy wonks will recognize some of these types of solution as those sometimes proposed by none other than socialists, especially so-called market socialists"
Joint ownership...workers sharing in management and profits, shareholding by workers...
Pointing out that racism still exists in the USA is not a "condemnation" of our country. It is a recognition that we have not become the city on a hill that we can, by God's grave, become. (Note that MOST, if not all, politicians misquote the City on a Hill concept, claiming falsely that we ARE that city. Winthrop said that we could BECOME that city on a IF "We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body." (Sermon by John Winthrop delivered as he and his comrades were about to board the Arabelle in March 1630 to head to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.)
BLM activists and their supporters do condemn the USA and many American police as being terribly racist.
And millions of average Americans are too fearful of being labelled "racist bigots" to condemn BLM for its lies, exaggerations and the harm they have caused to black Americans and poor people in poor communities of all races.
There is no evidence to support the charge that over the past approximately 20 years biased police in any state were systematically killing Black Americans in fatal shootings.
The facts and statistics that show that in recent years that there was NO epidemic of police shooting unarmed black men and women are endless BUT the gross exaggerations and outright lies of BLM spread around the world.
In 2019, even the Washington Post's database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed black victims and 25 unarmed white victims.
Yet because of the outright lies and gross exaggerations of BLM millions of people in America and around the world were led to believe that at least hundreds maybe thousands of black Americans were being killed annually by police.
There are about 7,300 black homicide victims a year. Fatal police shootings comprise only 0.2 per cent of that total.
It is true that African Americans males between the ages of 10 and 34 die from homicide at 13 times the rate of white Americans but the VAST majority of the time they are killed by other young black men.
Black respondents in Gallop polls who wanted more police in their community are more than twice as high as the percentage of white respondents who said the same.
Police in America make around 10 million arrests a day and the number of deadly weapons attacks on police officers now average at 27 per day. Law enforcement in America has never been out of control with civilian shooting deaths....
The consequences of BLM's lies were increased suffering by law abiding residents of high crime areas...
When police backed off from proactive policing under accusations of racism, in a number of cities, violence increased and more people (including more black people) died.
Even black writers and academics like Coleman Hughes, Glenn Loury, Thomas Chatterton Williams and John McWhorter have stated that the existence of racial bias in deadly shootings does not survive scrutiny once factors other than race are taken into account -they especially cite the serious research of Roland Fryer and Sendhil Mullainathan, among others..
How many people have died and how many billions of dollars lost as a result of lies, gross exaggerations and false narratives about the situation of racism and police in America?
Fr K,
Do you dispute the following:
What socialists and leftists claimed in the 19th century were their goals - public education, free or subsidised health care, a government role in the economy, votes for women, progressive income tax and more - have all been achieved, mostly peacefully and mostly successfully, by acts of reform in western capitalist nations; while socialists’ attempts to achieve their goals in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere by fiat and command resulted in moral and practical catastrophes - including at times the death and suffering of millions.
Do you dispute the above?
Do these historical facts teach us anything?
Of course, Pope John Paul II condemned “pure capitalism” - but almost no one of political importance in the capitalist west has actually continued to believe in “pure capitalism” since 1929 and since the writings of John Maynard Keynes.
I actually have an encyclical of JP2 in front of me now - he wrote that the Marxist or socialist/leftist system of converting the means of production into state property is NOT what he and the Church mean by “socialising” property - he notes that state ownership merely substitutes a politician for a capitalist, and the lot of the worker is not improved (history has shown the lot of most workers in socialist regimes is to be a lot poorer and have a LOT less freedom).
By the way, in this encyclical JP2 cautioned that : strikes were often “a kind of ultimatum”, that can at times be abused, especially for political purposes.
Paul - Why are you coming at me with your gripes about BLM?
As for policing, focusing only on shooting deaths glosses over many issues related to race and policing. From the website of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: "Racially biased policing takes many different forms, from elevated police presences in the neighborhoods of marginalized communities, to disproportionate street and vehicle stops and searches, to use of force, to outright expressions of racism within some police departments." Do you dispute this assertion?
And I am a bit uncertain about your statement, "What socialists and leftists claimed in the 19th century were their goals - public education, free or subsidised health care, a government role in the economy, votes for women, progressive income tax and more...". Are you suggesting, inasmuch as you note these these were espoused by socialists and leftists, that these are bad things?
I don't know that "pure" capitalism or "pure" socialism has existed or exists anywhere. I don't find "pure capitalism" in Centesimus Annus. I do find "unbridled capitalism" in section 8. Are you equating the two? (Are you looking at CA?)
He does speak of those marginalized and who struggle for a bare miniumum in those places where capitalism flourishes in conditions of ruthlessness (#33), of the human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people (#33), of the necessity of the State to defend the basic rights of workers in the "new capitalism" (#40).
I have no doubt that strikes can be used as a kind of ultimatum. So can the union busting tactics used by business owners.
Regarding "elevated police presence in the neighbourhoods of marginalised communities".
Much of modern policing is driven by crime data and community demands for help (not driven by racial bias)...when African American communities are policed more heavily, that is because where people are disportionaly hurt by violent street crime.
Community requests also determine police deployment, and the most urgent requests often come from law abiding residents of high-crime neighbourhoods.
Fr K, why do you think the percentage of Black respondents in Gallop polls who want more police in their community has been twice as high as white respondents?
A reduced police presence in minority neighbourhoods results in more black people being assaulted, robbed, even murdered. Repeated studies show that when police officers back off of proactive policing under accusations of racism, violence shoots up.
Do you dispute this?
What is not important are what you call my gripes about the lies of BLM.
What is important is how in recent times modern anti-racism has become almost a religion that is allowed to proceed without addressing logic and facts.
Also, what I and many others can see is that what motivates many woke white anti racists is not genuine concern for for racial minorities but a desire to virtue signal they are good enlightened people, not caring that the disingenuous form of anti racism they embrace and it’s dishonest narratives can actually harm black people.
Paul - I asked several questions of you in my 3:37 post. I'll be happy to respond to your question once you have answered mine.
Fr K,
I think you know what I am suggesting above - in the 20th century, more just, fairer societies, with better outcomes for working class people, better treatment of women and minorities came about in western capitalist countries by sensible gradual reform; while attempts to achieve social justice by leftists through revolutionary change have not only failed but at times have caused the suffering and death of millions.
“No one is denying that real progress has not been made” - Fr K, you make this claim above.
That claim is SO untrue.
Today I listened to a 60 minutes YouTube podcast by 2 black intellectuals, Coleman Hughes and John McWhorter, where they spend almost 15 minutes discussing just what could be the basis and or motivation of SO MANY white woke people pretending that there has NOT been enormous progress made since 1950s - just WHY do they want to maintain the pretence that things are the same or similar for a black man in 2022 as they were in 1952.
Foucault, the most cited scholar in the humanities and social sciences in American universities, and laid the intellectual foundations for the modern woke “Social Justice Movement” claimed it was pretty much an illusion that real progress had occurred in the West re treatment of racial and sexual minorities. Of course, for any sane, intelligent and intelligent black man, like Hughes and McWhorter, know just from hours listening to grandparents recalling their youth that real progress HAS been made.
Of course, the overall reality in western countries (though NOT in most non western nations) by about 1990 rapid progress had been made towards racial, gender and LGBT equality on a legal and political level. With Jim Crow laws dismantled, Empire fallen, male homosexuality legalised, and discrimination on the grounds of race and sex criminalised, many in western societies were newly aware and ashamed of a long history of marginalised groups and wanted to continue righting these wrongs…..many people tried to tackle racist and homophobic attitudes and discourses (ways of talking about things)……and thus the reality and truth was that, especially by the beginning of this century, sexism, racism and homophobia continued to decline in western nations…..and among almost all white people in the West, racist words and actions were completely unacceptable….
Many, especially, white woke anti racists deny all this progress AND instead come up with increasingly complicated theoretical arguments to detect, especially, racism with deeper and deeper and more disingenuous and cynical readings of texts and situations, and to especially catastrophise in a way that helps no one …..and worse are happy to indoctrinate young white people to feel guilty and to see themselves as oppressors and young black people to see themselves as inevitably victims and thus often feel resentment….
Fr K,
At 3.47 you agreed with the claim that elevated police presence in the neighbourhoods of marginalised communities is because of “racially biased policing”.
You asked me if I disputed that claim.
I did dispute that claim and explained why at 6.59.
Much of modern policing is driven by crime data and community demands for help (ie not driven by racial bias)….. often community requests determine police deployment…..etc.
I did answer that question.
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