As we were close to finishing, a brother helped me see that as good as I am forgiving people who wronged me, I am not so good at forgiving people who are in leadership roles, particularly in the Church. If a pastor or bishop or pope makes a statement, homily, or a policy that I sincerely believe can lead sheep astray, or at least into confusion, I hold a grudge. (I do pray for them.) In the case of pastors, I forgive them for anything that was directed to me, but I have a hard time letting go when I ruminate on the harm they may do to others.

Which begs the question; just how colossal is my ego?

1. Might not the Pope or bishops or pastors be playing a longer game while having access to more information and considerations than I? If I give latitude to the US president on Iran for those reasons, should I not do the same for men who have a more intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit than I?

2. Do not my fellow parishioners also have the capacity to discern and reflect on the same homilies and decrees with which I take umbrage? Is God calling me to be their, and His, protector of all truth?

The answer to all those questions is “maybe.”

Which brings me to my cautionary tale.

I may be late to the party, but there is a fellow named Steve Skojek who was recognized as the leading voice of the Traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church as leader of OnePeterFive. Two articles of his hit my inbox this morning, which is odd considering one was written eighteen months and the other ten months ago. Was God trying to tell me something, or was it the algorithm?

The more recent essay, Life as I Know it is Ending, begins with his revelation that after eight children and a quarter-century of marriage, his wife has filed for a legal separation. His lament is painful to read. I wanted to learn who he was and what had happened, so I read on. I learned that he and I had similar, um, foibles.

His words:

I overcomplicate everything. I’m always worrying…Always working myself into a frenzy. Always ruminating on and expecting the worst possible scenarios — they call it ‘catastrophizing’ in psychological terms…I learn quickly, I’m very smart, and I’m a hard worker…I never had a vision of where I was going to be in five years…Whenever someone did see what I was capable of and gave me a position, I was always the rockstar rookie…I acquired proficiency rapidly. I got tons of praise. But as the excitement of overcoming that initial challenge faded, I would plateau, and my interest would drop off a cliff. I couldn’t stay focused on work that didn’t feel meaningful…And yet: I had a highly analytical mind, I was an unusually talented writer, I had a lot of good ideas, I had pretty strong interpersonal skills, and I was actually very good at diplomatic tasks like client relations or getting team members on the same page…THIS — the writing, the analysis, the abstract thinking…This is the part of my brain, for whatever reason, that remains unaffected by all the chaos inside. In fact, my hypersensitivity and intuition and overactive pattern recognition and deep empathy and threat awareness and the rest of my eclectic assortment of attributes…help me see what’s really going on in the world. They help me see through (lies), and isolate truth from nonsense. They help me notice things before other people do. And when I write, it stops the chaos from being an endless buzz in my head and allows me to externalize and identify what I really think. Going forward, that may be the key to my survival.

Bingo! (Sort of.)

I have been correctly identified as a hypochondriac, an iconoclast, and a man who tilts at windmills. My wife will attest I have been overly concerned by a fear of letting people down, especially my family. In college, I got A’s in courses that interested me, and C or worse in those that did not. I am much better at expressing my thought and feelings by writing rather than in conversation. I believe curiosity and pattern recognition to be two of my greatest strengths.

His story had now drawn me in. Why, by the grace of God, did I avoid his fate? Why were my self-destructive foibles methodically grinded down, almost all into oblivion?

For that, we need to go to the other essay.

Spoiler alert: Five years earlier, he had left the Catholic Church and now lives as a nomadic, bohemian, non-believing writer, in great pain at the loss of his family.

How did he get there? Again, a lot of what he experienced and felt were mine as well.

His words:

God mattered more than anything…I needed, to feel that he had called me to do something great. That I was a leading soldier in his army. That I was meant to win souls for Christ…My entire sense of identity depended on that…This all culminated in the founding of 1P5, which was an uncanny instant success. My entire life had led to the moment where I could combine every skill I had acquired…But in the seven years I spent running 1P5… I was spending all day, every day, staring into the abyss that is the institutional Church. I could not unsee…its seemingly limitless corruption, hypocrisy, and self-contradiction, nor its contempt for those who were trying to live their faith most fully. And this started eating away at my confidence…I was in a position where it was my job to reassure people that despite how bad things looked, God was in control, that things would get better, and that faithfulness would be rewarded.

This is where our stories diverge. I had left Wall Street at the peak of my earning power and status. God had never stopped tugging at me, and I felt called to be a theology teacher and coach before I was too old or dead. When we moved to the shore as empty nesters, I wanted to devote whatever time I had left for God and His Church. I assumed with all my great talent, experience, and energy, he had BIG plans for me.

Wrong.

Schools didn’t want me, the local pastor and his staff didn’t want me, many of the laity didn’t want me, and the more I looked under the hood of the institutional Church, the more disgusted I was by what I found.

I can’t speak for Skojek. Still, the title of his apostolate suggests he may have become obsessed with what THEY should do, and lost sight of what HE should/could do.

And there but the grace of God go I.

By the grace of God, whenever I have become shaken by the reality of the fallen humanity that lead and populate the Church, He has spoken to me through my wife, my children, my mom, my friends, my Band of Brothers, the Hallow App, Exodus 90, The Chosen, one angel in Durham, Father Dave Pivonka, Father Mike Schmitz, Bishop Barron, Chris Stefanick, Monsignor Shea, and especially my own pastor and spiritual guide, Father Dave.

So, if in essays I express concern or disappointment by something out of the Vatican, or local chancery, rectory, or pulpit, it is not a call to condemnation or separation. It is just the recognition of my perceived reality which then necessitates a response in my life of prayer and evangelization. As I am fond of saying, “Well, that’s reality so how are we going to deal with it?” (Hint: more prayer and sacrifice.)

The key to it all is that I remember my place: God has planted me here, at this time, and entrusted me with my wife, my kids, and my little Shore Catholics Inc. My identity is my sonship to the King, and as steward to what he has entrusted ME.

By God’s amazing grace, may Steve Skojek, long-time leader of OnePeterFive, find his way home. For direction, I suggest 1 Peter 5, verses 6-7:

“So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”

We were having a chat in one of those early days, talking about our hopes and dreams for this new life entrusted to us, and my wife said, “I just want him to become a good husband and father.”

Sounds simple, right?

For me, I was still a hot mess, attending Mass only out of fidelity to her, and trying to build a career in an industry (Wall Street) for which I may not have been entirely suited. I thought about her aspiration, and it hit me: “Wait, my dad and her dad are great examples of admirable husbands and fathers. I’ll try to emulate them.”

It was a reach, but worthy of my effort.

Wise readers already know the song I’m using today. What you may not know is the catalyst was not the impending birthday, but rather this video: You Must Watch This!

I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Norman Whitfield and Barret Strong were hall-of-fame songwriters for Berry Gordy’s Motown label. Their song, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” was made a hit by The Temptations in 1972. It played on the car radio when my dad was driving us to Gimbels, where my brother and I would get new clothes from the “Slim Jim” and “Husky” departments, respectively.

It was the third of September
That day I’ll always remember, yes I will
‘Cause that was the day that my daddy died
I never got a chance to see him
Never heard nothin’ but bad things about him
Mama, I’m depending on you to tell me the truth
Mama just hung her head and said, “Son...”

A less than exemplary male model, Woody Allen, once said, “80% of success is just showing up.” The dad in that video showed up, and my dad and father-in-law showed up. They took their kids to parks, on vacations, were at graduations, were there all night and when we waked up, took us to school, gave us hugs and kisses and reassurance, prayed with us and took us to church, loved their wives who performed these same roles us mothers.

Seven years prior to the release of The Temptations’ song, a sociologist and future Democratic Senator released the Moynihan Report, which sounded the alarm about the growing dysfunctional pathology within the black community as manifested by 25% of black children being raised without a father present. The family breakdown led to a dramatic rise in welfare dependency.

“Papa was a rollin’ stone
Wherever he laid his hat was his home
And when he died,
All he left us was alone”

That report, rather than being used as a clarion call to action, was consigned to the dustbin of history when President LBJ, while initially supportive, threw it under the school bus when he realized how politically toxic it had become. Thus, its call for a renewal of marriage and virtue was instead replaced by a growing ‘daddy state” that offered payments and support for women and children if NO dad were present.

Men spread their seed and hit the road, leaving generations of father-deprived kids, most consigned to poverty and grave dysfunction.

Hey, Mama, is it true what they say
That Papa never worked a day in his life?
And Mama, there’s been talk all around town
Sayin’ that Papa had three outside children and another wife
And that ain’t right!
Heard some talk about Papa doin’ some storefront preachin’
Talked about savin’ souls and all the time leachin’
Dealin’ in drugs and stealin’ in the name of the Lord
Mama just hung her head and said, “Son...”

Men without purpose, without meaning, without accountability, without mentors, are a dangerous lot. The black male underclass devolved into Lord of the Flies on steroids. The percentage of incarcerated black men skyrocketed for the next twenty years.

Today, The Temptations’ “Papa” could be white. The black out-of-wedlock birth rate has tripled to about 75%, while the white rate has quintupled to 25%. Joblessness, welfare dependency, and drugs, are the marks of the growing white underclass.

The combination of generational welfare dependency and an abandonment of Christian faith and virtues have resulted in an untenable fiscal deficit as “entitlements’ consume more than half of federal government spending (including the scandalously destructive Department of Education.)

Speaking of preaching, Moynihan pointed less to slavery, per se, as an important root cause of the problem, but rather, the “peculiar institution” of American slavery:

“The feudal, Catholic society of Brazil had a legal and religious tradition which accorded the slave a place as a human being in the hierarchy of society — a luckless, miserable place, to be sure… the slave could legally marry…be baptized and become a member of the Catholic Church, his family could not be broken up for sale ... The Government encouraged manumission… the Brazilian slave knew he was a man, and that he differed in degree, not in kind, from his master.”

“In contrast, there was nothing in the tradition of English law or Protestant theology which could accommodate to the fact of human bondage — the slaves were therefore reduced to the status of chattels…whose existence as a human being was given no recognition by any religious or secular agency… offered absolutely no hope for the future. His children could be sold, his marriage was not recognized, his wife could be violated or sold ... The slave could not practice any religion without the permission of his master…”

…Folks say Papa would beg, borrow or steal to pay his bills
Hey, Mama, folks say Papa was never much on thinkin’
Spent most of his time chasin’ women and drinkin…

Mama, I’m depending on you to tell me the truth…

The truth is, that tragic history can’t be changed, but the future can be. Simply, we need more transitional characters like the man in the video; those who break the cycle of abandonment, and thus, poverty, dependency, and crime. How do we accomplish that?

Going back to Moynihan, he recognized the magnitude and depth of the problem (which has only expanded since) and pointed to the necessity of stable marriages and family:

“The policy of the United States is to bring the Negro American to full and equal sharing in the responsibilities and rewards of citizenship. To this end, the programs of the Federal government bearing on this objective shall be designed to have the effect, directly or indirectly, of enhancing the stability and resources of the Negro American family.”

Today, he would have no need to single out the black family, since the same problem applies to whites and Hispanics as well.

“Papa was a rollin’ stone
Wherever he laid his hat was his home…
All he left us was alone”

What we need is a marriage between the principles articulated here, and an all-hands-on-deck movement in the Catholic and Christian churches to boldly proclaim the truth of holy matrimony. Communio, The National Marriage Project, and Institute for Family Studies are already at work.

The young ladies victimized by second and third wave feminism need the truth delivered with love. We also desperately need intelligent and compassionate women in our classrooms. Women need men to be true men. Men need women to be true women.

The young men damaged by the intentional assault on “toxic masculinity” and “the patriarchy” need re-wiring and retraining to find their true purpose as men.

The virtues of western civilization need to be extolled and promoted, not denigrated in a racist fashion. The leftist ideology that has radicalized many women must be rejected.

There are reasons young people, led by young men, are flocking back to the Catholic Church, even on college campuses. (Hint: Newman Centers and FOCUS are in the trenches.) Even Harvard! There is a reason young people are galvanizing the faithful and fallen away in NYC and the Jersey shore! Most are college graduates and fit (or will fit) the profile of those who attend Mass. How do we reach those not on college campuses? That is where the Church is needed most.

Will the institutional Church respond to the moment? Will it regain its Petrine identity and lead society accordingly? Will it boldly lead the most forgotten and neglected communities? Will it stand as witness to the reason this movement is afoot?

Maybe. That should not stop you and me.

Remember: Papa may be a rolling stone, but Peter is the ROCK and Jesus is the Cornerstone. Let’s introduce HIS Church, and plan for marriage, to everyone!

Besides reminding me of my mischievous, sometimes reckless, youth of multiple commandment violations, it led me to reflect on what I am witnessing today. Augustine went on to become a Hall of Fame saint, theologian, and Doctor of the Church, yet even as that path was becoming inevitable, he begged God to “give me chastity and continency, but not just yet.” While he may have been living a life of “great famine,” it was attractive enough to make repentance/conversion difficult.

I am no expert on Augustine (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but I am gifted in collecting quotes and articles from people who are. I learned two important aspects of Augustine from Father Dwight Longenecker that will be instructive for this essay: “What Augustine teaches us is the practical joy of repentance. Repentance is simply the heartfelt realization that one is a sinner;” and “(healing through Jesus) takes place through repentance. When I say ‘I’m sorry’ I become most fully real because I am facing reality. When I say ‘Mea Culpa; it’s my fault’ I achieve freedom. When I cease to blame others and say ‘What’s wrong with the world? I am.’ I am taking responsibility — and when I take responsibility, I take charge. My will is engaged. I am suddenly mature and fully human.”

Humility is the starting place for repentance/metanoia/conversion. We need such humility at the institutional level. ALL our societal problems spring from a lack of humility, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality, to take responsibility, apologize, and change course. Until we do, we will remain immature and not fully human.

It all starts with the Church.

When the “Spirit of Vatican II” usurped the teachings and documents of Vatican II, there was hardly a rebuttal from American bishops. The same silence met the schism of Father Curran and US seminaries in response to Humanae Vitae, and Father Hesburgh and his co-conspirators with their Land o’ Lakes statement. The best we got was Archbishop Fulton Sheen imploring the laity to take the ball and run with it, and Pope Paul VI acknowledging “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church” with a sigh and a shrug.

In 1984, Pope John Paul II appointed Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) to clean up the seminaries and the Augean same-sex filth. Yet, everyone was shocked, shocked, shocked, by the revelations of homosexual abuse in 2002, which the usual suspects worked furiously to deny. In response, the bishops and pastors have laid heavy burdens on the laity while the former group exempted themselves from those rules. While I and most observers will agree that the seminaries have undergone a great conversion and are bearing better fruit, the rot in the hierarchy is such that since 2018 this can still happen, and this, and this , and this.

The betrayal from the top remains as the laity watches so many of its funds and goodwill be flushed into the vortex of diocesan bankruptcies. We are selling our seminaries to Islam to pay for the sins of our clergy. Does that please Jesus?

When will the Church, the Barque of Peter, repent? When will we get the sackcloth and ashes, or at least honesty and accountability from those who participated, perpetuated, or plastered-over the wreckage? Is it any wonder that a group who can’t confront the evil in their own ranks are so impotent in the face of open rebellion by ostensibly Catholic politicians, as well as among their own priests and bishops? Is it not instructive that the retribution is swiftly meted out only to those who dare challenge their lofty positions and betrayal of the faith?

When the Pope gives Protestant-leaning homilies, it adds to the confusion. Secular leaders are emboldened to arrest those who pray.

Bishop Mutsaert’s letter gets to the heart of the matter, asking the Pope to look at the Synodal Church, the spawn of the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’, and answer if it is bearing good fruit, or bad fruit, a test that Jesus promised would reveal truth about the tree.

Augustine’s magnum opus, his Confessions, taught the Church the destructive heaviness of the burden of sin. Jesus is the only answer, and His way requires a repentance that is rooted in humility. The people of God, including young priests and religious sisters, are answering the call.

Beyond our Church (against which the gates of hell will not prevail, no matter how hard we may try), let’s look at public schools. They have an abuse problem that is bigger than the Catholic Church by orders of magnitude. This is not new news. While the Church has done well fixing its problem at the parish level, public schools remain unchastened and unrepentant. Sixty years of no school prayer will do that.

Do they at least have great results to assuage the critics? If you consider a massive increase in spending and staffing relative to enrollment while results decline precipitously, then yes!

Since the creation of the Department of Education in the 1970s, costs have risen, results have dropped, abuse has skyrocketed, and the mental health of children has plummeted. Yet the Godless left still demands it be fully and more generously funded while the people of God want the beast destroyed.

Which side is more likely to be tethered to what is good, true, and beautiful?

Is Big Pharma in need of repentance? Twenty years ago, my cardiologist wanted me on a statin and said it should be in the drinking water. I declined. Today, I have no evidence of heart disease and my cholesterol numbers are about the same. Anecdotal is not evidence, but this is: no reduction in heart disease (and here) with use of statins. Meanwhile, those companies made hundreds of billions of dollars and introduced an array of debilitating side effects.

Sound familiar? The festering sore of the Covid “vaccination” hoax may be with us for generations, as will the generational wealth created by the owners of the hoax.

My point is, when the Church abdicated its role as caretakers of eternal truth, it released a plethora of Pandoran plagues upon the earth. The teachings and warnings proclaimed in Humanae Vitae have been ignored. We live with the repercussions of destroyed marriages and families, and a degraded respect for women, as predicted. Cardinal Bernardin et al provided the air cover for abortion, and the proliferation of that abomination has further destroyed marriage, family, and women, while numbing what’s left of souls to the point of defending the murder of children. Hesburgh led the campus revolution against truth and we live with the wreckage of “woke” academia.

The lack of contrition by the Church for the priestly scandal and coverup, and the duplicitous and ruinous “spirit of Vatican II” has not only damaged the faithful, but it has also damaged most aspects of our society. The Church was meant to be a bulwark against modernism, Satan’s relentless program that elevates human ability over God. In its damaged state, the Church has relinquished its role as the barque of Peter that can navigate all storms. This, the smoke of Satan in the Vatican has made a long march through it and the secular institutions as well. We now must contend with the celebration of murder (and here), and the passionate support for a mother who kills her children. We also must contend with those who vilify those who defend the reality of women. (They are more than “neighbors with a uterus.”)

It remains the official position of the Great Awakening that the Holy Spirit is at work, and the fruits of His labors, aligned with the remnant’s growing cooperation, will revive the moral, and thus constitutional character, of our nation. They do not bear the sins of their fathers, and free of that place of famine, they can do what the Church has done so often before: begin again.

Who knows? We may look back and enshrine Pizza to Pews’ foray into God’s Basement as the Barque of Peter’s crossing of the Delaware moment.

During one such opening, my lovely bride turned to me and said, “can you imagine living in a place that’s a vacation destination?”

I smiled and paused before responding, thinking of how to break it to her that as of two years ago, we now lived in one of the most popular beach towns in New Jersey, a destination for weddings, day-trippers, and New York swells who desire big vacation homes and an escape from real life.

“You mean like living here?” I asked lovingly.

She paused as she considered my remark.

“Oh yeah,” she said with a smile.

To her, this had just become her new “home,” well-situated as a place to be shared with family and friends.

As we finish our longest (earliest possible Memorial Day bookended by latest possible Labor Day) and busiest summer, the vibe shift is palpable.

Evening walks at our Jersey Shore enclave are accompanied by the cicada serenade; dusk is noticeably earlier; the hidden, quarter-inch, harmless-looking nymphs are now one-inch spotted lantern flies which ravage vegetation and crunch underfoot as you navigate the boardwalk; high-school sports have started and the great college migration is underway; weekends are still busy, but midweek treks “downtown” are quieter as latte and mocha tea demand returned to campus and Manhattan.

One of my more faithful readers asked about a “Van Morrison, Bob Seeger, or Eagles song.”

Best I can do today is Don Henley and a song that was released around the time of our 1984 wedding. “Boys of Summer” captured that time of moving on, but more perfectly captures what I feel today, albeit in a very different way.

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
I’m driving by your house
Though I know you’re not home
I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair combed back
And those sunglasses on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

It’s a bit of a reach, but the wistfulness I feel can be better understood if you substitute “grandkids” of summer (we have twelve, last time I checked) for “boys.”

We are in the early days of what we are calling our “mini moon.” She has been catching up with friends with walks around town or on the golf course and getting a little spa pampering. I have been catching up on “stuff,” getting to the gym, and meeting with friends over breakfast or coffee/iced tea. Each return home is treated as if we had not seen each other in decades. We are practically skipping as we take our walks on the beach with our toes in the water.

Truth be told, my gal does not have brown skin. However, her tanned and freckled Irish skin still shines in the sun. More important, our love is still strong.

…Now I don’t understand what happened to our love
But, baby, when I get you back
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of
I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
I see you walking real slow and you’re
Smiling at everyone
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

(NOT US)

Lest our sons, daughter, son-in-law, or daughters-in-law think our joy is a function of your absence, let me explain.

When we left the altar and practically skipped down the aisle a few weeks after this song was first released, we were beginning a new life as two people becoming one flesh with no money, but an unexplainable confidence that this was going to be great. Somehow, the union of a remarkably cute, intelligent, elegant, faithful, refined, funny lady from the Joisey suburbs with the most captivating smile, to this stocky (burly? husky?), high-energy, quick-thinking, quick-witted wiseguy from Yonkers, was going to work out just fine!

And it did. More than fine.

This summer has been a blessing and joy beyond measure. Each of our children and their families have made treks to spend quality time in our home. Watching my lady do crafts, read books, play card games, and bake cupcakes with her adoring progeny moves me profoundly. I marvel at her peaceful smile as she walks the newer additions in their strollers, feeds and changes them, and holds them so close, cheek to cheek in a manner that only a woman can fully understand.

As for me, I cherish the chances I got to play tennis, play catch and running bases, wrestle, play dinosaurs, act silly, watch dinosaur videos, and get piled on by laughing and screeching little ones.

We both enjoy the peace and quiet as we clean up and prepare for the next snack or meal, as our kids and theirs walk to the beach, the ice cream shop, playground, or main street shops. There are usually multiple monitors on the counter so we can keep watch for the sleeping infants.

Out on the road today
I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said
“Don’t look back, you can never look back”
I thought I knew what love was
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever
I should just let them go,

The days of life before marriage are gone forever and I am grateful for whatever crazy people and experiences I encountered that formed and led me to my new life as husband, father, and now, grandfather.

For all the excitement and love we felt on that sunny November day nearly 42 years ago, it turns out I didn’t know what love was. That understanding arrived when that same patient and trusting lady asked me to hold our son, the fruit of our love. Less than a year later, the same Lord in whom she and my parents placed all their trust, called me to Himself. She and He later invited me to hold three more, each made in His image and likeness.

What I know now is the joy of having grown children who are patiently and lovingly (way better than I) building Christ-centered marriages and families. I am grateful they share their families so generously with us. I am grateful that we now enjoy games of golf, conversation and laughter after their kids go to sleep, and sharing memories while making new ones. Also special is attending an early Sunday Mass with my bride so we can be back to keep watch while the infants sleep and the rest of the clan walk to church together.

We also make a nice Sunday breakfast while they are gone, so there is that.

But I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got that top pulled down
And that radio on, baby
Now I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

This week we resumed the season of friendships, many of whom are in the same stage of life as we are. Those relationships are treasured as well, as we share the scars, heartaches, and joys of having made that same leap of faith so many years ago.

I am quite lucky, dare I say, blessed? I do not have to look back and contemplate love lost. I still live it, and I get to see it living in the next generations. Many of them are back to school and we talk via Facetime. Some will be here for Labor Day. As the summer and the visits wane, we will be back where we started; a boy and a girl who still enjoy walking hand in hand, now with our toes in the water, who are grateful for having found each other. We have the added gratitude of enjoying a love that is strong, even after the kids, and grandkids, of summer have gone.

For those who have taken up the challenge of marriage, I will leave you with the words of a Joisey legend: “Hold on to what (you) got!”

My advice to you young fellows is: go out and win the heart of a young lady, no matter how out of reach she may seem. Build a life, a Christ-centered life. You will fully appreciate the value of that decision after the summers of your youth are gone forever.

Pressure.

Out of courtesy, I pause as people are passing so I don’t accidentally fire a projectile from the mower or weed whacker. It is also an opportunity to chat with walkers and drivers with whom I willingly engage to create as many breaks as possible. Last Friday, I decided to listen to a podcast as I worked, and I was convicted by the conversation between Winston Marshall and Dr. Arthur Brooks. (I continue to recommend adding both to your repertoire.) It also brought together a bunch of disparate thoughts that were floating in my head.

The first was the focus of an article written by Jeff Minick for the Epoch Times in late July. Minick’s commentary was on Brooks’ address at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. The official title for his speech (and new book) was “The Meaning of Your Life: Recovering Our Humanity in the Age of Emptiness.” Minick quotes Brooks’ thesis: “Let me define happiness. Happiness itself is a combination of enjoying your life, taking satisfaction in your accomplishments, but most importantly, knowing the meaning of your existence, the ‘why’ of your life.”

Brooks told the audience that he asks his students two questions, and if they can’t answer, they get an F for that test. (As a reminder, Brooks teaches a course on Happiness at Harvard Business School.) The questions are “Why are you alive?” and “For what would you give your life?”

If you can’t answer one or both, “you’ll be unhappy,” according to Brooks and his research.

According to Brooks, it is this lack of a search for meaning that is causing the epidemic of unhappiness among the young.

This got me thinking about two other articles that had found their way to me. One was a 2023 study published by the British Psychological Society. You can read the results, or look at the visual representations, or you can go to the money statement: “According to the present findings, Democrats (more than Republicans) tightly centre their belief-system around a set of positions at the extremes of these particular items, implying that people who deviate from these positions are likely to be considered as outgroup members…It is possible that holding extreme (and thus unnegotiable) attitudes on important social-political issues has become increasingly identity defining for Democrats...The pattern does not imply that Republicans are more tolerant than Democrats, nor that Republicans could deal better with attitudinal uncertainty. It does imply, however, that –at this particular moment in time– Democrats and Republicans are constructing and managing their partisan identities differently in relation to the topics reflected in these questionnaire items. Research suggests that social category membership (e.g., being White, Christian) is more important for the construction of Republican identity than it is for Democrat identity (Mason & Wronski, 2018).”

In short, groupthink among Democrats is markedly more present than among Republicans, and their identity is more correlated to politics than religion. Neither finding should surprise anyone, particularly faithful readers of these essays.

Around the same time, this tweet came across the transom, reminding me of psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, I had read a decade ago. Haidt explains there are six criteria for moral evaluation that is common to all cultures: care vs. harm; fairness vs. cheating; liberty vs. oppression; loyalty vs. betrayal; authority vs. subversion; sanctity vs. degradation. Haidt’s research revealed the outlier to the universality of these principles was the WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. Haidt’s findings found the WEIRD used only the first two, care and fairness, for evaluating issues, while conservatives, which includes the majority of faithfully practicing Christians, used all the criteria.

Thus, the left has little understanding of the right, while the right has a more complete understanding of the left. Again, this is not news to Great Awakeners.

So, what does this have to do with my lawn and the podcast?

The podcast was recorded after that same speech in London. Brooks went deeper into the role of the smartphone and its contribution to the loss of happiness. He said of those average Americans who checked their phones 205 times a day: “But the problem is that you’re anesthetizing yourself from an unpleasant process in your brain that’s nonetheless incredibly necessary. It’s called the default mode network. That’s the set of structures in your brain that illuminate when you’re undistracted, and it’s not always pleasant. Because it’s flights of fancy, it’s an examination of the meaning of your life, it’s mind-wandering. People don’t always like it. On the contrary, the problem with boredom is it’s boring. But it’s incredibly necessary. If you want to understand the meaning of your life, you must use those parts of your brain, and the only way you will do it is being undistracted.”

“I mean, I talk to my students and they say, I’m bored with my life, but they’re never bored in the moment. That’s the irony of all of this, is to be bored moment to moment and interested overall. That’s the way we’re designed to be. That means you have meaning.”

Here I was interrupting my usual one hour of boredom and ruminating as I mowed, to listen to a podcast warning against that very thing!

I did hit pause to consider some of the thoughts presented, and it occurred to me that in recent visits by two different, intelligent, proud leftists, they were very quick to use voice-activated AI to get answers to questions that came up in conversation. I tend to file things away and go back to research them later, if they are questions of enough gravity. I really don’t care about the answer to something of trivial importance that comes up in conversation. They both fit the criteria of WEIRD, and both are non-religious. Their beliefs and arguments on most any subject can be predicted with near precision.

Knowledge is useless if you don’t develop wisdom, and that is hard to do with a truncated worldview. AI will only make this gulf wider.

This weekend I took my wife away to celebrate her birthday in peace after a summer of almost-daily hosting, mothering, and grand mothering. Her sacrificial love expressed as Martha had left little time for contemplation as Mary. Monday morning, we took a three mile walk through hill and dale on the bucolic grounds of our hotel. We walked hand-in-hand as we listened to Father Dave Pivonka and then Jeff Cavins offer a homily and reflection respectively on the rich young man who asked what he needed to do to gain eternal life. For him, he got an A+ when Jesus said to follow the commandments, but an F when Jesus asked him to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow Him.

The rich man went away sad. As Brooks had predicted, not knowing the meaning of your life, or for what you were willing to die (to self) will lead to unhappiness.

We then spent thirty minutes contemplating and discussing what “things” were holding us back from that same goal. What was stopping us from being all in? I will not reveal our discussion, or if we had answers, but I will say I spent a good portion of our time by the pool ruminating on such things.

We arrived home late afternoon on Monday. We were greeted by our daughter-in-law, her three glorious children, and her friend and her two delightful kids, who are enjoying their own Jersey Shore getaway until tomorrow.

Dr. Brooks said, “The best teachers are ones who are teaching you something where you understand the words, but not the importance until after the lectures.”

In response to our weekend of boredom and rumination, and our morning of contemplating the Word of God, my bride was better able to be the cheerful giver her progeny and guests love and admire. They know in their hearts and souls she does and would give her life for them.

Me? I was able to write this in two hours! (Please don’t say, “yeah, we could tell.”)

Come by Thursday and you will find me mowing and whacking without earbuds. My Friday essay should be a doozy!

No regrets. I loved the music.

A year later, I bought The Beatles Alpha to Omega album, a bootleg with sixty Beatles tunes. The penultimate song, on side eight, was “Let it Be,” which followed “The Long and Winding Road.” I played that side, which also included “Something,” on my melancholy days.

I have had a melancholy week, and I am spending time in prayer wrestling with how to “Let it Be.”

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Why the sads?

First, we have been blessed to have our daughter and her son with us since mid-May, but they left yesterday (Thursday). She was doing her clinicals towards her nursing master’s at a local hospital, so we (meaning my wife) were the built-in baby-sitters. Our son-in-law was here about half the time.

Accordingly, their visit has been augmented by a revolving door of our three sons’ families whose eleven kids were thrilled to spend time with their “Cajun” cousin. And let’s not forget our daughter’s friends and cousins and their families who also wanted bonding time.

Due to the extended time spent with this grandchild (he was here for a quarter of his now one-year life), my bride experienced a bonding called “grandma brain.” As much as we look forward to getting back to normal, I am whisking her away this weekend to allow her to ease back into her routine.

And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

It was a joy having them here, but our daughter belongs with her husband and our grandson with his dad. That is the natural order of things, as designed by God and reiterated this week by Jesus.

My darkness arrived with the latest in a thirty-year series of calls from a young man who was dealt a bad hand with his birth-family life, and who, despite our best efforts, made just about all the poor choices that clinched repeating the same cycle: not finishing high school, dabbling in drugs and getting arrested, having children out-of-wedlock. I hear from him periodically and it is always a fire drill where he needs money TODAY or his car will be repossessed, or he can’t get his kids Christmas presents. (He has lived for a decade with the baby-mama of two of the three kids he supports under his roof.)

As per the court order he sent me, it was an imminent eviction for non-payment of rent. As per our previous agreements, I said sorry, it was time he figured out life himself. I left it that way and walked downstairs. There was our grandson basking in the love and comfort of grandma and our home.

I went upstairs, cried, and sent the money. I pledged it was the last time with my usual litany of suggestions for a better path. He grew up in a community with destructive leftist values. Our daughter did not.

And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

What drew me deeper into the dark were stories from the news. They illustrated the horror that can result from rejecting God and His natural order.

In the first, a mother and two biological men presenting as trans women, abused, tortured, and killed the mom’s handicapped son. While mainstream media identified the two as “women” they are in fact men who appeared to be grooming the young boy to join their dark, grotesque, Godless charade.

Reading the words of Dr. Fauci, we have officially arrived at the “women and children last ” phase of societal collapse. Science and feelings first!!

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

The failed state of Massachusetts is a bastion for the stereotypical educated, unchurched, female leftist. They have left a vacuum that now accommodates a variety of evils, led by a baptized Catholic female governor.

- Catholic couples cannot be foster parents if they don’t affirm LGBTQ identity.

- The state will place kids with registered sex offenders.

- They will place kids with same sex and trans couples, among other co-parent constructs.

- The state created a commission to help place Muslims in government and shape policy.

- Is backyard animal sacrifice around the corner?

The most heinous, of course, is this week’s signing of a bill allowing the killing of a child up to the moment of birth, joining ten other leftist jurisdictions like New Jersey (also signed into law by an ostensibly Catholic governor). The Satanic Temple is pleased.

What has happened to these women? How can they joyfully cheer this evil? Why the single-issue zeal? What have they done to their own minds and biology to blunt the powerful miracle of maternal fetal bonding? How could one sacrifice her child and then name him after the murderous doctor? How do leaders of this state reconcile the denial of a baby as human while demanding we recognize men as women? How did the WNBA and the Daughters of the American Revolution forget who they are?

No free pass for the men involved. In Nefarious, the demon delights in the “logic” behind abortion. Watch it and weep.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be

Not to be outdone, AOC, a baptized Catholic and aging leftist Boson University graduate, gleefully announced, rather demonstrated, that she was freezing her eggs so she can “design” a child later in life, after she has finished destroying whatever is left of our nation. She has no man in her life. What a great example for young women!

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

I’m guessing you can sense my anger. You can see why I’m struggling to understand how I can love and forgive these people. They are killing, delaying, and foregoing children, and making policies that hurt men and women and put children at distinct disadvantages. My children and other people of hope are not! My progeny must live in this world the Godless left is hell-bent on destroying.

Et tu, Coca-Cola?

Yes, I can and will pray and fast and continue to give alms. Where are my bishops and popes rushing to move beyond condemnation, and excommunicate the “Catholic” politicians in the interest of saving souls from damnation? Jesus showed us the way in this Wednesday’s Gospel. They are not in communion with the Church, and they desperately need the light of Truth. We the faithful need shocking clarity to see through the demonic haze of scandal.

St. John Chrysostom himself warned of the grave responsibility of Church leaders: “I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.” (Homily III on the Acts of the Apostles)

Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

God will often answer in a whisper, but Father Mike Schmitz does not. It is he who has lifted me with a timely reminder about who will be victorious, despite how things may appear.

Unlike the gods of pre-Christian pagans and non-Christian modernity, God does not desire grotesque sacrifices that never satisfy. Instead, He sacrificed Himself for us.

All He desires is we love Him and love one another as people of hope.

“God is at work, hidden, faithful, and unstoppable!”

“Ever ancient. Ever new.” (Seek 27)

“Well, it’s gonna have to learn how to,” was my unchastened response.

A few years prior I had invented “right on red” while driving a buddy to our barely-dawn summer job. At the same intersection each morning, I would pontificate about the stupidity of waiting for a light to turn green when there were no cars within the nearly-a-mile sightline. He suggested, “then why don’t you make a right on red?”

A legend was born.

It became more complex when a carload would chant “right on red, right on red,” returning home after midnight from a night out. My judgement would sometimes render me the GOAT, or a chicken.

But it was always my call. (Then it became codified in law.)

In February of 2006, I attended a risk management meeting with my apprentice Jedi. We were anticipating basking in the glory of our successes, while the usual profit-kings (who relied on leveraged carry-trades) would be lamenting the now inverted yield curve. We were stunned to hear them report consistent profitability and I asked for some insights as to how, since they were limited to buying only AAA, that is, “no risk” assets, which were offering smaller returns than the cost of carry, that is, the cost of financing the position. (Meaning, you should be losing money by owning them.)

They described AAA securities they were allowed to buy which were offering yields more consistent with riskier assets.

That made no sense. “There are no free lunches on Wall Street.” Common sense, and the markets, were signaling these were not AAA, no-risk assets.

Further probing led to an education on what I believe became known as “sub-prime mortgage” assets.

We left the meeting scratching our heads and my brilliant protégé said, “You know boss. This business would be a lot easier if we didn’t have a conscience.”

I took it as an observation not a suggestion.

Do you remember 2007-2009? Those same “risk-takers” worked with lawmakers to rig the game even more in their favor. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” indeed!

Around the same time, we would periodically be in Washington DC to visit son(s) in college. Walking through Georgetown, we encountered newly installed “Don’t Walk” devices that beeped and did a countdown to signify when it was safe to cross and when it was not. The first time we encountered one of these single-lane intersections left me befuddled. The crowd stood patiently on the sidewalk as my wife and I looked both ways and crossed. The look on the faces of those we were approaching was fascinating. Horror? Disdain? Confusion?

I mistakenly assumed these new devices were to assist the blind or hearing impaired, not regular folks with functioning brains and senses.

A few years later, New Jersey passed a law that pedestrians in crosswalks had the right-of-way, and cars were required to stop. Previously, one would merely be required to “yield” to pedestrians, which had replaced basic common sense and courtesy as the governing principle.

Nothing changed for our kids. When we taught them how to navigate walking to town etc., our instructions were to not step off a sidewalk, including those with STOP signs, until it was all clear or they had full confirmation that any approaching car was in fact stopping for them.

“Assume people are idiots” was my line.

Other parents reacted differently. It wasn’t long before I was pulling up to a corner as teens and tweens approached with heads down and wired ear buds signaling their immersion in iPod music. I watched as they stepped off the curb and into the street paying no attention to my imminent arrival at the same spot they were heading. As they passed the hood of my 2,000 pound, gas-powered weapon of steel, I beeped hard.

They jumped and scrambled, regrouped, glared, and mouthed epithets. I made exaggerated motions pointing to my ears and eyes and the horizon, suggesting they best pay attention. I was recently in Jersey City and these now 30-year-olds were waiting for the device to tell them when it was safe to traverse the deserted streets, as my wife and I looked both ways and crossed.

When I was teaching theology at an all-boys high school, I would begin each year with very few rules. I would give a general description of the mission of the class and the idea of comporting oneself with an eye to the common good. (I may not have been that eloquent.) It was amazing how quickly rules needed to be imposed to correct the abuses of freedom that transpired. One example involved homework. It started out as optional for all, but would ultimately become optional for very few. Like the other rules, what was the catalyst for some losing their freedom?

It was their inability to exercise their own freedom properly.

This became an excellent illustration of the moral law, and how a government inexorably takes away individual freedom.

In Catholic moral teaching, freedom is rightly understood as doing what we ought, not what we want. We have the freedom to choose correctly, and there are consequences (sin) when we fail to do so.

The same applies for society. The difference is the sins of a few get applied to all.

For example, we live in an idyllic seaside community with a one-and-a-half-mile boardwalk. During the busy season bikes were not allowed after 8AM due to the crowd of walkers and joggers. On a beautiful day, the boards are bustling by 7:00AM and most bikers would choose to ride on the still-quiet parallel ocean road. One day two summers ago a friend abruptly rose from our Saturday morning men’s faith group and hustled away. We learned his eighty-year-old mom had been struck by a spandex-clad biker on the boardwalk at 7:55AM. She suffered a broken arm and more, but is now fully recovered, thank God.

By next season the town had a new ordinance prohibiting bikes on the boardwalk any time of day or night, in season.

A few years back, we had a group of our sixty-and-over friends visiting and we went to a distillery in a nearby town. One of the dozen was held at the door for not having a license attesting to her being of legal drinking age. The young man said everyone had to show an ID. I dusted off my “appeal to reason” playbook and asked a series of questions about the nature and purpose of the rule. It was in fact to avoid serving under-age drinkers. Yet, he held the line because those were his orders. Some of my group apologized to him for my queries, admonishing me to “Leave him alone. He’s just following his orders.”

That was in fact the mindset I was encouraging him to set aside, and not relinquish his own ability to reason.

Meanwhile, another friend found another blonde outside, borrowed her ID, gave it to our friend, and the fellow happily waved her through. He followed the letter of the law.

Currently, New Jersey geriatrics have lost some of their freedom to leisurely meander on their pedal-assist bikes because of too many who use e-Bikes as motorcycles on quiet streets and sidewalks. Will local police use reason when they encounter me as I meander or will they “just follow orders?”

Covid proved that in the zeal to pursue perceived safety (which was a lie), too many of my left-leaning neighbors were willing to have my freedom crushed and children taken away for non-compliance to government dictates.

It does not take many transgressors to provide lawmakers the opening they seek.

Palantir and Flock are building surveillance systems for “our safety” as crime sits at an over fifty-year low. The remaining crime is densely concentrated in certain neighborhoods and among particular people, yet the surveillance is everywhere. We see a DSA ascendant promising to relieve our struggling youth of any responsibility for their actions or choices. It is a generation that has been conditioned to trade freedom for safety.

Meanwhile, many who will make that trade, and those who wanted me incarcerated during Covid while they were waiting to be told when it was safe to cross the road, are unable (or unwilling) to say what the “W” in WNBA stands for.

Those who have ears, let them hear. (Mt 11:15- Hat tip: Father Dave)

For a few years, we (mostly I) enjoyed early morning yoga in the open-air second level of the pavilion. Stretching out these aging muscles while gazing at the sun rise over the waves as dolphins peacefully traversed alongside paddleboarders was a sublime experience. Our instructor was a lovely woman who gently moved us through the hour while interspersing scripture and reflections with her music. Her Christian spirituality gave me permission to participate.

Or so I thought.

Even though I’m healthy again, I have not returned. It is not a dogmatic teaching of the Church that yoga is a no-no, so prudential judgment is required. However, the spiritual framework of yoga is not neutral; it is rooted in Hindu metaphysics and even when doing them in a Christian setting, the intrinsic meaning of these gestures remains intact. Most sources and spiritual guides I have consulted agree it is better for me not to participate. (I plan to see if she’d be willing to rebrand as Pietra Fitness.)

I do miss starting my day with a good stretch while taking in the ocean breeze, but I can do those on my own. I also miss her music. Good, easy, classic rock like Van Morrison and CSNY were in the rotation. There was one song I found to be haunting and captivating, and I needed Shazam to identify it. (Try doing that while in a tree pose.) It was “The Truth About the World,” by Andrea Marie. Take a few minutes to sit with it quietly.

Have you grown tired
Of feeling alone?
Numb to the earth
And numb to the soul

Empathy is not my thing (compassion is), but when I do put myself in the shoes of my brothers and sisters on the left and I feel their pain. In great numbers they turned away from Christ and instead chose the path of the Enlightenment, centered on the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy which gave science and the “well-educated” primacy.

Many of these “best and brightest” have foregone and/or traumatized children for the cause of climate change. They did the same for the cause of masking and isolating children during Covid, and then more so in the name of an experimental “vaccine.” They have heeded the “experts” Siren call to surgically and chemically alter their children’s anatomy.

How do they feel when the “experts” now admit that those catastrophic climate projections were and are not realistic? When Fauci’s diary corroborates what the censored and vilified already knew, that masks, social distancing, closing schools etc. were destructive and unnecessary? What pain they must feel viewing excess death data for youth showing awful spikes in the early 2020s from suicide, overdoses, and murder, not Covid. How does one come to grips with the painful testimony of detransitioners?

Eyes wide open
Unafraid to be alive
You’re living and you’re breathing
Feels like the very first time

It has been instructive to see left wing stalwarts like Bill Maher, and Stephen A Smith suddenly see what has been obvious to those with eyes already wide open. Will Sophie Cunninham break through the trans ideology barrier Riley Gaines first hammered? Will Jake Tapper et al come clean on their Covid complicity as they did on having covered up for Joe Biden’s mental decline?

Or will they stay afraid to break ranks? Why the fear of truth? The truth was never the threat. Their power was. Could it be our media is merely a tool for the “experts” in the intelligence agencies?

You will make your way
Through the valleys of your soul
Coming home to the truth
The truth about the world

Steven Rummelsburg defined truth this way: “truth is not consensus, but the convergence of the mind and reality.” We have done great damage to our progeny under the guise of “the science is settled,” and “affirming gender dysphoria will bring happiness,” and “we need to close schools or grandmas will die,” and “the shots are safe and effective.” We have done great damage to our republic under the guise of arresting, cancelling, and censoring purveyors of “debunked” opinions, and peddling well-constructed narratives (Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, Hunter Biden laptop, and Oxferd Comma operations) to undermine our nation’s choice for president.

It has been the opinion of our betters in academia, science, tech, media, and permanent government bureaucracy that “You can’t handle the truth.” It’s why Bill Maher’s audience audibly gasps when they hear the DSA platform for which they openly vote and cheer. It is why they covered up President Biden’s mental and ethical shortcomings, until it was signaled “safe” after his political demise.

Everyone is hurting
Everyone is searching
Everyone is looking
For the truth about love
For the truth about God
For the truth about the world

In Matthew 11:25-27, Jesus prays to the Father and says: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike…and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.”

The portion of the educated class that has rejected God, embraced the enemies of Jesus, and elevated science and technocrats is hurting and searching, but they will continue to wander in the desert until they take on childlike humility and invite the Way, the Truth, and the Life into their own.

It is this young and educated of the unchurched class who give the DSA its electoral power, not the working class for whom they allege to be champions. The same provide the permission structure for Islam to expand and ally with the DSA. It is they who are leading us into an AI and transhuman future.

It is they we must reach with the truth about God and their place in the world.

Everyone is hurting
Everyone is searching
Everyone is looking
For the truth about love
For the truth about God
For the truth about the world

How do we reach these broken and lost souls? How do we help? How do we move from ridicule and anger to empathy, and then to compassion?

Admittedly, it would be easy to think nobody cares as I and others keep shouting at clouds. My own Church hierarchy refuses to confront the same-sex attraction problem at the root of its abuse crisis. It seems to prefer the UN Charter over Paul’s epistles.

Our President would rather defend Operation Warp Speed and his reflecting pool than admit mistakes.

Some of the stances of those on the educated left are quite baffling: it is fair for men to play in the WNBA; some agree but do not want them to coach; an entire league for women that can’t figure out what the W stands for; fans of that league who cheer when Cunnigham is persecuted; politicians who define women as “birthing bodies;” vilified the boys from Covington and Duke lacrosse; still believe the Charlottesville lie; have yet to renounce Fauci and his policies; believe raising alarms about Replacement Migration is a racist lie, as is pointing out the truth about crime; and dozens of other examples mentioned in this essay and in the public domain.

We need to be zealous witnesses to the Truth in word and deed. We are in an existential battle for the souls of individuals we love and a nation we treasure. Complacent business as usual is not an option.

Stephen A. Smith witnessed the principled stand on Covid vaccinations by then-Christian Kyrie Irving. Others saw Novak “before being an athlete, I am an Orthodox Christian” Djokavic. Sophie Cunningham has been a Christian witness for biological truth and common sense.

Bill Maher was moved by the thoughtful and joyful witness of Catholic VP, JD Vance, proving that giving witness to the truth works.

Need to get pumped up? Watch this, pray, and get in the game!

The truth is I am my Father′s child

I make Him proud and I make Him smile

I was made in the image of a perfect King

He looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing

The truth is I am truly loved

By a God who′s good when I’m not good enough

I don′t belong to the lies, I belong to You

And that’s the truth (Full Lyrics)

Tell the world!

“Who is going to save the Church? Not our bishops, our priests and religious. It is up to the laity. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious.”

The laity have answered the call, forming apostolates which have been instrumental in the “Catholic Revival” we are experiencing in different pockets of the nation. A few of the gems include FOCUS, the Augustine Institute, Chris Stefanick and Real Life Catholic, the Hallow App, Exodus 90, Walking with Purpose, the Becket Fund, Ascension Press, Legatus, Lumen, Catholic Vote/Zeale, The Catholic Initiative, and of course, Shore Catholics. (To my knowledge, all except the last one operate with the full blessing of their bishop.) These join such historical stalwarts as the Knights of Columbus and St. Vincent DePaul Society.

More Church-adjacent are Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, and the Campaign for Human Development. These are laity-infused and under the direct auspices of the local ordinary (bishop). They are considered official expressions of the Church’s commitment to the Corporal Works of Mercy.

My thesis today is “Fulton Sheen was correct.” I have found the closer a charity is officially aligned with the bishops and the institutional Church, the more likely it is to have lost its sense of mission.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier agrees. He has sent a letter to the Florida Bishop’s Conference that their schools will lose eligibility for the state voucher program unless they allow for religious/conscience objections to vaccines.

What a world.

It is up to Uthmeier, a practicing Catholic, to teach the bishops about binding teaching on the respect for conscience. “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.” (CCC 1790). In addition, with the vaccines having limited degrees of separation from aborted fetuses, Catholic teaching supports anyone concerned about cooperating with evil. The problem is a recent pope and some bishops, including Cardinal Tobin in Newark, were of the opinion a Catholic COULD get the shots in good conscience, and they imposed their prudential judgment on the faithful employed by diocesan schools and organizations. Tobin also forbade his priests and deacons from supporting anyone’s petition for a religious exemption in the private sector.

The Florida bishops would do well to repent their position.

Our bishops often retain the good people at the Becket Fund to defend them in court against secular infringements on their religious liberty. Becket has won thirteen cases at the Supreme Court. I have great respect for Becket and am friendly with its president. However, I sometimes disagree with their position, in particular their stance in the Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission. In this case, the Wisconsin board refused a labor-law exemption to CCB for the simple reason that nothing in their literature, mission, or work suggested it was Catholic, and thus eligible. I agreed with the labor board. A unanimous Supreme Court agreed with Becket, and the great Justice, and fellow Catholic, Clarence Thomas, “authored a concurring opinion emphasizing that the organizational structure of Catholic Charities should be viewed as integrated with the Diocese for First Amendment purposes, not as separate legal corporations.”

That is sadly true.

I prefer the “starve the beast” approach. If an institution that professes to be Catholic, acts in a manner that keeps a bushel basket over the light of Jesus, then starve it, let it die. It does great damage to the Catholic mission as a lukewarm or secular entity. The Church, the Barque of Peter, is not an NGO. It is the vessel ordained by Christ for the salvation of souls.

I have provided two examples, one in which the institutional Church defended the religious freedom of entities that hide their Catholic identity, and another where bishops persecuted Catholics of good conscience for their fidelity to Christ’s Church.

Neither one is acceptable.

In the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, which was a fruit of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI wrote, “An indication of this manifold and pressing need is the unmistakable work being done today by the Holy Spirit in making the laity ever more conscious of their own responsibility and encouraging them to serve Christ and the Church in all circumstances.”

How one expresses this responsibility is another area of prudential judgment. What are my particular gifts of time, talent and treasure, and how can I best use them to serve Christ and the Church? I do not support groups who profess to be Catholic, yet do not find a place for Christ and the Gospel in their work. There is no Catholic litmus test for participation. On the contrary, “we serve them because we’re Catholic, not because they’re Catholic.” All are welcome. But people must know WHY we serve. People must know, in Whose name we serve.

It is better that I volunteer for a secular or non-Catholic soup kitchen than it is to volunteer at an ostensibly Catholic one that denies the presence or influence of Jesus. The former allows me to grow in holiness by loving my neighbor. The latter puts me in the awkward place of being complicit in the denial of Jesus’s role. Locally, I could consider resuming support for Covenant House since they no longer have any Catholic identity or affiliation. The trick will be to see if that means supporting programs or methods which conflict with Catholic teaching.

Chapter one paragraph four of the Decree states, “Since Christ, sent by the Father, is the source and origin of the whole apostolate of the Church, the success of the lay apostolate depends upon the laity’s living union with Christ, in keeping with the Lord’s words, ‘He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.’” (John 15:5)

There are examples of those abiding in Him. Mary’s Meals and World Villages. The former is laity-founded and led by a Catholic, but it is not a Catholic apostolate. They are serving meals to over two million kids a day because “we are Catholic,” and they undertake prayer and fasting to allow the volunteers and supporters to grow in holiness, in communion with our Lord.

The latter was founded by Father Aloysious Schwartz and is run by the Sisters of Mary. These beautiful, habited sisters house, feed, educate, and nurture the souls of 20,000 children annually. The take the most broken, trafficked, abused, and impoverished, and give them the skills to break the cycle of poverty in 95% of the cases. They also bring everyone into an intimate relationship with Jesus and His Church.

Extraordinary!

Unlike Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), neither of these groups take USAid or any government money. They invite people like you and me to join them in their mission of providing both corporal and spiritual needs to the most vulnerable.

Just as lukewarm diocesan schools are closing as classical Catholic schools are opening, it would be my hope and prayer that we close the long-embattled Catholic Charities and CRS and instead direct the faithful to support groups like Mary’s Meals, World Villages, Chesterton Schools (or any Newman approved school), Sophia Institute for Teachers, et al, so the dream of the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity can be realized in full.

At a minimum, we should stop taking money from any governmental organization, which corrupts today as assuredly it corrupted Judas two thousand years ago.

Meanwhile, let’s do all we can to support our priests and pastors in their vocation. They are doing the vital work of celebrating the Mass, providing spiritual direction and reconciliation, anointing the sick, and conferring all the sacraments for our benefit. They are preparing couples for marriage, working with the Knights of Columbus and St. Vincent DePaul society for the common good, with religious ed and youth ministry for the future of our Church and families. They are budgeting for maintenance, responsible for schools, and managing personnel.

All while caring for their priesthood.

Pray for priests and pray for vocations. The laity can and will step up and we NEED our shepherds to be ready for battle!

“Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

There were two songs in that night’s rotation that are appropriate today: “You Better Run,” by Pat Benetar and “In the Air Tonight,” by Phil Collins. They were played early and often. Looking back, just as video did kill radio (and music?) Twitter (X) killed progressive control of media and narratives, and thanks to Dr. Fauci, we may never look at experts the same way again.

Whatcha tryin’ to do to my heart
Whatcha tryin’ to do to my heart
You go around, tellin’ lies, an’ now you wanna compromise
Whatcha tryin’ to do to my heart

You better run, you better hide, you better leave from my side, yeah

Six years ago, the nation (the world?) was transfixed by the ubiquitous Doctor Anthony Fauci. As a hypochondriac and “voracious gatherer of information,” I was among those tuned in. It did not take long for me to figure out something wasn’t right about him and his sidekicks. I was consuming content from a variety of sources and my method was simple: eliminate a source when he or she told an obvious lie. Fauci lost me with the masks and six-feet distancing. I stuck with the “it’s a aerosol virus” crowd who advocated respect for the Four Ds: Dimension, Duration, Density, and Draft, lots of nasal spray (or H2O2 nebulizing), and vitamin D and C.

I couldn’t help but notice that the doctors and healthcare professionals who made sense (later organized under The Great Barrington Resolution) were being canceled, ignored, mocked, and de-platformed by both the mainstream media and pre-Elon social media. Emails reveal Dr. Fauci was involved. Why would they need to be suppressed?

Whatcha tryin’ to do to my soul
Whatcha tryin’ to do to my soul
Well everything I had is yours, and now I’m closin’ all the doors
Whatcha tryin’ to do to my soul

You better run, you better hide, you better leave from my side, yeah

By May of 2020 when “public health experts” encouraged people to break protocol and join George Floyd protests, I had long left their reservation. What shocked me was the number of people who instead doubled down in their compliance as businesses were shuttered and loved ones were dying alone.

Fauci had a gift for manipulating people’s fears, and those most susceptible lived in a carefully curated bubble of media and social media.

It got even more personal in 2021 when Fauci and his minions forced the experimental mRNA therapy on the populace via mandates. By then, we knew the virus was only of particular risk to the elderly and those with severe pre-existing conditions. Nonetheless, getting the shot was a condition for our sons (who had mortgages, wives, and families to consider) to remain employed. Our daughter, a nurse and healthcare hero in NYC also faced compliance or termination, besides the social ostracization she was already enduring as a vax conscientious objector. Since she was not yet married, she instead became a travel nurse and lived with my sister while working in freedom in Charleston, SC, where she also dated the man who became her husband and father of their child.

Dr. Fauci may have sold his soul, but he was not going to have hers!

I said go away and leave me alone, I can’t stand you no more

Fauci was a baptized Catholic who declared he didn’t need it: “I think my own personal ethics on life are I think enough to keep me going on the right path.”

Fact Check: Dr. Fauci’s agencies experimented brutally on dogs; grafted human baby scalps to rats; have been pilloried for his AIDS response; experimented on kids, often without consent; he supported the globalization of abortion; he funded gain of function research; lied about the safety and efficacy of the Covid “vax”; he has proven to be a serial liar (and here); and a raging narcissist.

Which brings us to Wednesday, and Phil Collins.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment, all my life, oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Oh Lord

Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off the grin
I know where you’ve been
It’s all been a pack of lies

That same daughter whose life was turned upside down by Fauci et al (and turned right-side up by her faith, my sister, and “a boy”) came into our kitchen with something playing on her phone.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The Fauci Senate hearing is about to start.”

“Don’t waste your time. He’ll plead the fifth or say, ‘I don’t recall.’ No upside legally or politically for him to say a word.”

“How do you know he doesn’t want to clear his conscience? He has a pardon anyway.”

“The release of the diary was the tell. He’s not playing ball.”

Doctor Fauci missed an incredible opportunity afforded to few; a chance to make things right. Having lobbied for and accepted an 11^th hour pardon from the Biden Autopen (covering everything from the funding of the Wuhan lab in 2014 to the last day of the Biden presidency), he was in a unique position to help Americans learn the truth and be a catalyst for transparency and change.

Instead, this sad 85-year-old man chose silence, and contempt for the American people.

Why? I don’t know.

But I know the reason why you keep your silence up
No, you don’t fool me
The hurt doesn’t show, but the pain still grows
It’s no stranger to you or me

Taking a page from C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, perhaps he allowed his earthly rewards to supersede his redemption. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, oh Lord

Like me, Dr. Fauci is a baptized Catholic. Like me, he went to the College of the Holy Cross. Unlike me, he has rejected the faith and had a building named after him at our Jesuit alma mater.

There’s the rub. His entire identity is caught up in being a heroic figure, the totem for science itself. He has forgotten his TRUE identity as son of the King.

While his arrogance and recalcitrance in the Senate may please his fanboys (and here) and besties in the media (and here,) it has made him toxic among the people and has contributed to the precipitous decline in trust in “experts.” There is a case to be made that scientism has/had become the religion for progressives, and Fauci positioned himself as its greatest priest and prophet. (To attack him was ‘to attack science.”)

The upside to the whole diary and “plead the fifth” fiasco may be that the atheistic scientism which had been ascendant (remember catastrophic climate change?) may continue its loss of relevance. A “religion” that has no meaning, no purpose, has no lasting appeal. Dependable leftist Tim Robbins agreed and has left the cult.

Will the media go down with the ship?

Fauci’s spiritual decline mirrored our own. Look where it got him and look where it has taken us. He is currently looking at stops in the fourth and eighth Rings of Hell, before taking permanent residence in the ninth. It need not end that way.

The good news is our God, the real God, is a God of mercy (and justice): He waits for Dr. Fauci, and each of us, to repent and come home to Him. Fauci missed his chance on Wednesday, but I pledge to pray he does not wait much longer.

Jesus has granted us the ultimate pardon. I encourage us all to accept and not plead the Fifth.

I still get the daily newsletter, but clicking links gets me to the paywall.

In its recent recap of the World Cup (WC) takeaways, it continued its generational dream of making the USA love “the beautiful game.”

“I noticed a change: The kids were all playing soccer. No, seriously; for weeks they weren’t playing soccer, and then suddenly, every single day, they were. We’ve been changed!”

Sadly, the Times and its similarly visually and culturally impaired members of the media, have not changed. The second point of its WC recap read thusly:

Connection: the collective anti-trauma. The scenes of fans from all over the world celebrating together — even against the backdrop of border policies and corruption and mess — felt to me like the opposite of what the world experienced during COVID; the opposite of forced separation. It was a chosen togetherness. To quote The Athletic’s Adam Crafton: “When so much of the online algorithm force-feeds division, the World Cup has presented a new, uplifting form of viral content; unifying, cross-cultural, a reminder, should it be required, that most people actually like one another.” A big one for the monoculture lovers (me)!

Welcome to the real world!

It has been well-documented how visitors from around the world fell in love with a USA they did not know existed, that is, the USA I know and love. (Gazing at you, Bass Pro Shop and Buc-ees.) As some of the fans noted, the media had led them to see the USA as a violent and divisive place. Outlets like the Times wasted a lot of effort trying to make the WC a failure they could pin on President Trump.

Like the Freedom/America 250 celebration in a remarkably cleaned up and less crime-infested Washington DC, the WC was a Trumpian success, and thus a win for the USA, to the chagrin of those who no longer love our nation, warts and all.

A similar blindness, albeit spiritual, was found in another Times newsletter I read, called Believing. Keeping Nun Girl Summer alive, author Lauren Jackson highlighted the Norbertine Canonesses:

Good morning. In California, there are nuns who feel your pain. They wake up in the middle of the night, every night, to pray for others who are also awake — including new mothers, bargaining with newborns. They sit vigil with those who may be suffering in the dark.

It’s empathy in the extreme. And lately, empathy has become politicized. Prominent conservatives have called it toxic and a threat to Christian values. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Elon Musk told Joe Rogan. Some progressives, in turn, have said empathy breeds complacency — too much feeling, not enough action.

These Roman Catholic nuns…have gone viral for embracing empathy instead. New mothers online have been moved that someone, somewhere, would get up each night to share their struggles.

Like her colleagues at The Athletic, Ms. Jackson can’t help but signal her progressive bona-fides, and in doing so reveal, to those who have ears, her own biases and ignorance. (That is not a pejorative. She merely lacks knowledge that would be helpful.)

I wrote a note to Ms. Jackson thanking her for her spotlight on these beautiful women. I also tried to ameliorate her confusion by writing, “What the nuns are exhibiting is compassion, to suffer with, not empathy. Empathy does not require action nor personal sacrifice. Compassion does.”

Short and sweet. Had she read one of the articles to which she had linked, she would understand that empathy was a poor word to describe the nuns, unless of course she had an ideological agenda to keep that empathy narrative alive. (Did every journalist major in hyperpolitics?)

We have had our daughter’s family here for a while now, and I jokingly call their son “Sophie,” thanks to his habit of pointing with a straight arm at EVERYTHING he has an interest in exploring/grabbing/eating.

The real Sophie Cunningham of the WNBA (the “W” stands for Women’s) is the latest enemy of the progressive hive. Her sin? Stating males should not be allowed to play on girls’ teams or in any girls’ leagues. According to the media, like the false flags of a dystopian USA and unfeeling conservatives, this common-sense stance shared by 80% of Americans (disclaimer: it was a NYTimes poll) means she hates or wishes ill upon those with gender dysphoria.

Release the cancelers!!

The very stable people at Meidas News did the work and the internet-fueled hive took it from there. What did sleuth JD Wolfe discover to discredit and destroy Cunningham? She holds views shared by at least half of the country, views that were nearly universal during the Clinton years. Of course, Wolfe uses all the right buzzy-words and phrases, although he forgot to mention empathy.

Her teammate, Caitlin Clark, who has the temerity of being both white and heterosexual, was accused by a “journalist” at USA TODAY of creating the conditions for the lynching of “Black” and “queer” players because of her “flopping.”

Against this backdrop, President Trump hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner. Of course, he, the most journalist-available president in memory, was universally scorned by the attendees and their colleagues. Oddly, the same people who celebrated Bruce Jenner as Woman of the Year, the Sports Illustrated trans cover model, and “gorgeous” fashion models, got their unisex panties in a twist when Trump “mistook” Kaitlan Collins for Dylan Mulvaney.

You would almost think they don’t really believe the garbage they expect us to digest.

The Economist was once a must-read amongst the international finance set. It no longer has that cache. It has the same bland appeal as other Godless, globalist-adjacent periodicals. Want an example of what has happened? Watch (or read) the interview between its current editor and Elon Musk.

The early part of the interview about AI and the future is chilling, and Musk reveals a disturbingly laissez-faire attitude about how humanity will fare. (20% chance humans go extinct.) It goes off the rails when Beddoes casually uses the term, “far-right,” and gives Rupert Lowe as an example. Musk replies, “it’s just normal people, and here are the principles, and tell me which of these sound terrible? That we should have secure borders, that we should have safe cities, that should have sensible spending. Which of those three are far right fringe? I would like to just admonish you and the media. For the absurd characterization of the far right, which is false and misleading and nonsense.”

As they debate this point, she refers to his 240 million followers on X, which she calls “the cesspit of social media.” She refers to that number, and thus his influence, on multiple occasions. She raises the bar saying, “some say you are a racist,” and then asks, “are you anti-Muslim?”

“If people coming to a country with antithetical views, I am against that… I’m against rape and murder. I’m against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve come to accept in the West. I think it’s a crying shame that the sort of traditional media like you don’t recognize this.”

Beddoes is not happy.

“But do you see why this makes people think that this man who has all this power, he’s the world’s richest man, he thinks he has a right to influence our politics? It makes people, it’s why, you know, we started this conversation saying superlatives. It’s why people loathe you.”

Elon turns the 240 million against her to assert his popularity and points out that legacy media enjoys trust among only 15% of the people.

She acknowledges the mistakes journalists have made, but she says, “I also think that the kind of polarized environment, particularly on social media, fostered by the kinds of things you are pushing on X, actually… makes it worse.”

This is Elon Musk’s unforgiveable sin among the globalist/communist/socialist/Islamist elite: his purchase of Twitter and commitment to free speech has destroyed their ability to control the narrative about Trump, the USA, USAid, NGO and election fraud, Covid, immigration, trans ideology, western civilization, empathy, Islam, Christianity, violence, Buc-ees, soccer, and the WNBA.

Paradoxically, this is the only part of Elon’s portfolio that doesn’t cause me consternation.

Their conversation ended amicably.

Elon Musk: Thank you, you’re welcome. I’m not boring.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re definitely not boring.

May God bless and keep us all, and may Elon become boring and the media trustworthy.

“I’m sitting with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz (bassist and drummer for TH). They’re cool. I told them you were a huge fan.”

“Tell them ‘David Byrne was a genius, but they drove the TH sound.’”

My recollection is they agreed.

I thought of “Burning Down the House” as I perused the news this week.

Watch out you might get what you’re after.
Cool babes strange but not a stranger.
I’m an ordinary guy.
Burning down the house.

I have been singing this tune to my left-leaning friends for decades. I’m an ordinary guy and thus skeptical of the moral and ethical standing of any party that makes the killing of babies, the chemical and surgical mutilation of confused children, violent crime by immigrants here illegally, and the trafficking of women and children as acceptable collateral damage to attract and import voters.

The Party of FDR and Kennedy (and sadly, slavery, Jim Crow, and the KKK) is the proverbial dog that has caught the car. It does not know what to do. It is being consumed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They have a coalition which includes all enemies of America, Christianity, and Western Civilization, such as Antifa and Islam. They are reaping what results from decades of sowing seeds that disavow, minimize, and attack Christianity. (See: school prayer, abortion, religious liberty, transgender agenda, etc.)

Hold tight wait till the party’s over.
Hold tight we’re in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way.
Burning down the house.

The likes of Tulsi Gabbard and RFJ Jr., prominent mainstream Dems who ran for president under their banner as recently as 2020, abandoned the party and were key members of the Trump cabinet. They saw the storm coming and took the early shuttle.

Abraham Lincoln, the first president to carry the Republican Party banner, which was founded to fight slavery, warned of the risks of a “house divided” in 1858. As Lincoln and the Bible attest, a house divided cannot stand. The less eloquent corollary states: a house divided but still connected will burn to the ground even if the arsonists do their work on only one side.

Here’s your ticket pack your bag: time for jumpin’ overboard.
The transportation is here…
Fightin’ fire with fire

Bill Maher is the latest to have the scales fall from his eyes. He has made a career of satirizing, skewering, and misrepresenting people on the right. (He is an intellectually honest atheist who admits abortion is the killing of a baby, but he is okay with that.) Yet even he is recoiling in horror at the blob that has devoured his party. He told JD Vance, “my vote is in play.”

Man overboard!

Many on the left live in the world of “permission structures.” Gabbard and Kennedy may have created enough for old-school, rust belt Democrats to get Trump elected, and it is perhaps the likes of Maher who will get others to wake up and transform their party or abandon it. Trump, previously a Clinton Democrat, has created the Maher-like permission structure that allows for calling out your opponent aggressively, “hoist with one’s own petard,” or forcing them to play by their own rules. (Rule Four of Clinton/Obama’s Socialist guru, Saul Alinsky.)

All wet hey you might need a raincoat.
Shakedown dreams walking in broad daylight…
Burning down the house.

Daylight, sunlight, is the best disinfectant for the shakedowns and grifts that have drowned many of our countrymen.

Thanks to Trump’s permission, you have rising political stars like Brandon Gill, and media mavens like Matt Walsh, who hoist and force and allow us all to see that our alleged royalty have no clothes. Gill has witnesses squirming to defend “birthing persons,” “white supremacy,” “Coca Cola is necessary for survival,” etc. He lets their own words and platforms do his work.

Similarly, Matt Walsh has produced two documentaries which went to great lengths to allow thought leaders of leftist ideology to make their case. In one, “What is a Woman?” none of the intellects could define the very thing (woman) of which they are alleged experts. In the other, “Am I a Racist?” a once-leading light of DEI said, “The entire system has to burn.”

Gonna burst into flame.

The next level of permission structure may have been set by Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, or Nick Shirley. Each touched the third rail of exposing and criticizing the problems associated with assimilating Muslims into westernized, Christian (or post-Christian) cultures.

The fellow at Inspiring Philosophy has gone viral for his videos which take on Islam, and like Walsh and Gill, he uses their own words to make his case. Tragically, he and his family are now under threat. There are many others who are asking the same questions and challenging the same assumptions.

Cardinal Sarah has permission from God, and he is equally candid about the “apocalyptic beasts” gathering under the Big Tent.

My house is out of the ordinary.
That’s right don’t want to hurt nobody…
Burning down the house.

Fifty years ago, my house would have been considered ordinary. Now, as a house that puts its Catholic faith and belief in the importance of family in positions of primacy, it is in fact, extraordinary, that is, out of the ordinary. This is the shift that has created the conditions fueling the wildfire that threatens to consume us all. The coalition on the left has lost confidence in marriage, are not interested in children, and have abandoned religion. (The right has also seen declines, but not nearly as precipitous.) In that context, two things about their coalition makes sense:

1. They need to import voters since they’re not making and raising them. Atheists, nihilists, antisemites,anarchists, Socialists, and Muslims have answered the call.

2. The “native” family-deprived Dems naturally have less invested in the future and thus pursue “what’s in it for me?” policies. (Islam and Socialism can work with that mentality. They care deeply about the future.)

No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin’ yet.
Everything’s stuck together.
I don’t know what you expect staring into the TV set.
Fighting fire with fire.

Christopher Nolan, arguably the greatest director of this generation, is in the news with what is alleged to be his woke take on Homer’s “Odyssey.” I will find out for myself and perhaps report back. Meanwhile, there are two lessons from his Batman series which are instructive:

The first is from The Dark Knight Rises. Mr. Daggert, who recruited Bane and his henchmen to help him take over the Trump Organization, I mean Wayne Enterprises, is angry. He confronts Bane and demands accountability. “I’m in charge,” he asserts. Bane places a hand on his shoulder and asks, “Do you feel in charge?” In that second, Daggert realizes the entire structure on which he based his life was useless. He sheepishly calls on the only power he knows, “the small fortune,” he paid to achieve his ends. Bane asks, “And this gives you…power over me?” Schumer, I mean Daggert, did not survive that scene.

The second is from the Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne (Batman) is trying to understand his enemy, The Joker. His butler, Alfred, points out that this is a problem Batman helped create by squeezing the basic criminals so hard (See: Doge, SLPC, Act Blue. USAid etc.) they got desperate, and turned to the Joker. Bruce tries to use logic to “figure out what he’s after.” Alfred respectfully opines, “perhaps this is a man you don’t fully understand either…some men can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with...some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Last Sunday we heard about the evil sower of weeds who corrupted a wheat field. Here is how Jesus explained the parable:

The Son of Man will send his angels,
and they will collect out of his kingdom
all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.
They will throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun
in the kingdom of their Father…

To my Catholic brothers and sisters who cling to a party that has abandoned them; please do not let our house be burned down by those who delight in such things.

…Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

1. Be good stewards for what you have been entrusted.

2. Marriage and family are the necessary and fundamental building blocks of society.

3. Christian (Catholic) faith has been and needs to be the tie that binds us. (Even if, like Dawkins, you don’t believe, but embrace cultural Christianity.)

4. Our constitutional republic requires a moral and religious people to thrive and survive.

5. Forces are galvanizing under the Democratic Party “Big Tent” which see each of these propositions as enemies to be defeated.

As my musings circle these targets, my approach is generally: “Well, that’s reality so let’s just deal with it.” (Live not by lies.) One of those targets has been the proliferation of “nones” and how these unchurched individuals are anxious, depressed, and desperately seeking happiness in all the wrong places. (Data suggests it is the distaff side that is the most lost.) My hope and prayer has been to provide a roadmap home with data and vignettes that are inviting and enticing.

The new reality with which I want to deal, is a phenomenon Cosmopolitan Magazine has dubbed, “Nun Girl Summer.” This week, Nones are out and Nuns are in!

NOTE: I will be using the term “nuns” throughout, even though some are religious sisters. The former are cloistered and the latter minister in the world.

The catalyst for this movement is a podcast called Dominican Sisters Open Mic. The podcast’s description says, “Each Wednesday, you’ll get to listen in on conversations between the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, with occasional guests from outside the community. We’ll be talking ‘all things Dominican,’ and if you know anything about Dominicans, you know just how wide that leaves the door open.”

Do they know how to sell or what!! Who doesn’t want to know what wild and whacky things these crazy gals have been up to each week?

“According to data from Spotify, the Dominican Sisters Open Mic had more than a 3,500% increase from February to today. Millennials and Gen Z make up 84% of the podcast’s audience on the platform, but Gen X and Boomers are even tapping in too. There was a 30- and 45-times increase in each demographic tapping into the show, respectively. So basically, literally everyone and their mom is obsessed with these nuns.”

The author of the article, Christen Johnson, is all in, attracted to their infectious joy and authentic laughter. She finishes with this: “Between all the idiotic, unqualified men with microphones and platforms who do nothing but waste their breath and our time, these nuns are exactly what the people need. And they should be the only ones allowed to have a podcast. Well, them and Keke Palmer. Consider this my petition to get those women to link up for a diva convention on the Dominican Sisters Open Mic pod!”

I looked up Keke Palmer and she seems to be a bit confused and in need of the Dominican Sisters.

Johnson writes with a Jane Goodall/Dian Fossey vibe, encountering the nuns as one would chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild; with fascination, respect, but completely detached from understanding what makes them tick. She cheers the Sisters on as viral influencers on par with, well, Keke Palmer.

Our pals in the UK are also aware of Nun Girl Summer and offered a perspective in The Spectator. Margaret Mitchell observed, “they’re filled with the kind of blissed-out giggly joy you really only see in nuns and people on edibles. I then heard stories about young women moving into convents, and of silent monastic retreats getting booked up months in advance. Bibles are said to be flying off the shelves, with record sales in both the US and UK last year.”

Mitchell understands the attraction as a rejection of the hook-up and consumerist culture but worries, “your late teens and twenties are supposedly a time to see the world, live hedonistically and have ‘hot girl summers.’ Is the convent really such an ideal place to spend our formative years?” Although she was called to marriage, Mitchell “watched as a group of nuns slowly climbed Rome’s Scala Sancta on their knees, praying. I found that I envied their gray anonymity and self-effacing devotion, even though I had been called to a different vocation.”

Over at the Catholic Herald, we getter a deeper glimpse into the hearts and minds of these joyful women: “Perhaps this is why so many young people, including many with little or no religious background, find themselves fascinated by nuns. They recognize that these women possess an inexplicable interior freedom that seems increasingly elusive elsewhere. The sisters are not anxious about keeping up appearances, they are not endlessly reinventing themselves and they certainly aren’t performing for the algorithm. Instead, they radiate the quiet confidence that comes from knowing Who they belong to.”

Finally, we get this wisdom from Sister Michaela in the National Catholic Register: “’I think an important part of finding joy is taking time to rest and to be playful and to return to the simple joys of childhood… It’s taking time to do the simple things.’

The backbone of any truly joyful life, all the sisters agree, is a devoted prayer life.

‘Ultimately, the source is a relationship with God, and that’s going to look a little bit different for everybody,’ Sister John Dominic said. ‘It’s calling upon the Trinity — God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit — that drives us and that fills our souls.’”

You know you have something real when the far left Huffington Post not only covers you but amplifies your voice and advises all young ladies to be “profoundly present,” log off, be disciplined, and build authentic, non-transactional, lasting relationships.

Since HuffPo has a premier seat in the Big Tent, maybe they can have a chat with baptized Catholic, Governor Hochul of New York, and ask her to stop persecuting the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. We could have asked the same of the Obama administration and California AG and candidate for Governor, Xavier Becerra, another baptized Catholic, who have been after the Little Sisters of the Poor for a decade. Under “Catholic” President Biden, some members of his DOJ fantasized about targeting “habit-wearing nuns.”

That distinction is important. The nuns of the podcast, those enduring persecution, and other growing orders such as Sisters of Life, Sisters of Mary, and many others, are “traditional,” in that they have an attractive confidence in the Church that has been preserved and passed on for centuries, and they live and dress accordingly. The Big Tent people do not see the dying orders of religious sisters who shed their habits as a threat. These daughters of the 1960s and Vatican II once numbered almost 200,000 in the USA and are now under 30,000. The Boomer nuns of New Ways Ministries cast their lot with Governor Hochul against the Dominican Sisters.

The Big Tent has thrust the DSA upon America, adopting the French Revolution reign of terror motto as its credo, “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). On Friday, the Catholic Church celebrated (that’s right, celebrated) the 232^nd anniversary of the martyrdom of the Sixteen Carmelite Sisters. These habited nuns processed to their deaths while joyfully singing hymns of praise to God. Each asked the prioress for “permission to die, Mother,” kissed the statue of Mother Mary, resumed singing and walked the steps to her death.

They had prayed in secret for two years in preparation for their sacrifice. “They were preparing for a wedding, not an execution.”

Robespierre, like all radicals and revolutionaries of the left, had a particular disdain for the Catholic Church. He ordered the execution of the priests and nuns who stubbornly refused to abandon Christ and His Church for the state of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Like Nero and so many before him, this was his fatal mistake.

The joyful and faithful witness (martyr is Greek for witness) of those nuns turned the hearts and minds of the blood-thirsty crowds, and eleven days later, on July 28^th, Robespierre was felled by the same guillotine blade, albeit without the joyful and faithful countenance of the sisters, marking the end of the Reign of Terror.

Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, the Carmelite Sisters had their own Nun Girl Summer, freeing the fickle and faithless people of France from the reign of terror with their prayerful, faithful, and joyful witness to the Truth.

May our own Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist and their sisters with equally prayerful, faithful, joyful, and holy habits free our struggling sisters (and brothers) from the Big Tent spell, in this, their Nun Girl Summer.

I did not grow up a beach guy. Two reasons: in Yonkers, pools were nearby, but beaches were far; I had/have a Casper-like complexion, and a body with more rolls than Pepperidge Farm. While peeling sunburned skin was fascinating, the idea of revealing myself to the sun’s rays and fellow beachgoers was not something for which I was clamoring. Perhaps as a result, I have an ambivalent relationship with the beach to this day. I do love the restorative nature of the sand and water and I take many walks hand-in-hand with my lady as we “put our toes in the water.” Putting the rest of my body in is another story, since in my mind, that is the realm of sharks, riptides, and a variety of other dangers.

The canon of music inspired by beaches and boardwalks is voluminous, with the Beach Boys and Bruce Sprigsteen carrying the torch for each coast. Considering my conflicted relationship with the sea, it is no wonder my mind was drawn to one of the songs from the Who’s Quadrophenia album as I walked by the ocean this morning. That album was released as I began high school, and it spoke to my brooding teenage mood. The sea and sand are important settings for Jimmy, the album’s protagonist, who was searching for the inner peace of coming to know who he was and his purpose in life.

The girl I used to love

Lives in this yellow house.

Yesterday she passed me by.

She doesn't want to know me now.

Can you see the real me preacher?

Can you see the real me doctor?

Can you see the real me mother?

Can you see the real me?

The album begins with Jimmy lamenting that no one sees “The Real Me,” neither his mother, his shrink, his preacher, nor the object of his unrequited love. The rest of the double-album takes us on a journey of setbacks, conflicts, and self-discovery.

This is everyone’s story: our often-circuitous journey to discover the reason for which we were created, and our hearts are restless until we find that home.

I was reminded of that time and place when greeted by a rising sun that was eerily attempting to shine through a haze brought on by wildfires in Canada. As is my habit, I linked my observation to a song, which happened to be from Quadrophenia:

When I see a face coming through the haze, I remember (it) from those crazy days

The last time we got socked by Canada’s mismanagement we were at a nephew’s wedding in Nantucket. (We had a grand time.) Like California, Canada would rather blame the unsolvable “climate change” than do the hard work of water and forest management, and fire-fighting preparedness. For a country that has legalized murder to solve suffering, you’d think they could come up with an equally draconian plan to deal with fires.

You’re watching movies trying to find the feelers

You only see what we show you.

We’re the slaves of the phony leaders.

Breathe the air we have blown you.

Canada is fast becoming a failed state, and the shocking thing is how quickly the people seem to have accepted their fate. Were Canada a state in the USA, its GDP per capita would be competing with Mississippi as last in the nation.

Every year is the same

And I feel it again.

No chance to win- I’m a loser.

Speaking of Canada, they don’t seem to be sending their best to the Jersey Shore. This week on the boardwalk of Point Pleasant, a woman, who’s partner has a history of wishing evil and death on President Trump and his family, was triggered by some young teens wearing patriotic clothing and MAGA sweatpants. The female half of this alleged-adult couple physically assaulted the young gals for the audacity of wearing such threads on July 4^th weekend. She is now under arrest and facing deportation.

Like Jimmy, they seem to be struggling to find their identity. (Hint: You are in Someone’s image and likeness.) They are cosplaying various versions of themselves, and it looks like they have not yet figured it out. They are in their thirties, childless, financially insecure, and absorbed in TikTok and social media culture. The alleged assailant filmed herself attacking the girls.

You’ve been screwed again

If you let them do it to you,

You’ve got yourself to blame.

It’s you who feel the pain.

It’s you who feels ashamed.

There is no word if Canada will give her a medal or assist in her death when she returns.

When a man is running from a boss

Who holds a gun that fires cost,

And people die from being old,

And left alone…

And when your soul tells you to hide

Your very right to life denied…

And when a man is trying to change

But only causes further pain

You realize that all along

Something in us going wrong...

Another sign of summer at the shore are the hordes of teens who will arrive to “takeover” boardwalks and towns. It is also known as “wilding.” Like wildfires, assisted suicide and emotionally stunted adults, these events are indicators of a society in decline. The catastrophic rise of kids raised in father-and-faith-deprived homes is the cancer of our generation. Adding fuel is the suicidal empathy that excuses and abets anti-social behavior.

In this same song, Daltrey sings of the missing ingredient that fuels Jimmy’s despair, and is the source of the unruly kids’ unrest.

No one can love without the grace of some far off and distant face.

Now whose face can that be?

Later, Jimmy is on the verge of giving up. Are we?

I‘m finished with the fashions

And acting like I’m tough

I’m bored with hate and passion

I’ve had enough of trying to love

If he were a modern Canadian, help would be on the way! “In 2027, Canadians 18 years and older with mental illness, such as depression or
personality disorders (Jimmy is a ‘bleedin’ quadrophenic!) could potentially access doctor-assisted death in Canada.” In the USA we have chemically and surgically castrated thousands of confused teens. The “Death with Dignity” movement is on the rise.

Peter Townshend wrote these songs over fifty years ago. There is indeed nothing new under the sun. In his day, the mods and the rockers competed for the attention of the ladies. Today it is the rappers, the manosphere, and the looksmaxxers. Boys trying to become men without roles models in their homes or communities is fraught with false idols and anti-social behavior.

Here by the sea and sand, nothing ever goes as planned

My dad couldn’t stand on two feet, as he lectured about morality…

She has to know me, I’m dressed better than anyone…

How come the girls come on oh so cool

Yet when you meet ‘em, every one’s a fool?

So how did it end for Jimmy? How does it end for today’s wilders and stunted Canadians, and the influencers and everyday people who come to God’s basement desperate to be noticed?

Peter Townshend summed it up in the album’s final song, Love, Reign O’er Me.

Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain…

Love reign o'er me
Love reign o'er me, rain on me, rain on me…

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain

Love reign o'er me, rain over me, over me, over me, oh
Love reign o'er me, whoa, on me

Love

The answer is the same as it was fifty years ago, which is the same as it was two thousand years ago: “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:13-14)

Leave the dry and dusty road behind, come to the shore and be restored.

Let love rain and reign!

I’ll circle back and try to land this plane in about 1400 words.

This weekend, “her ladyship” and I travelled to South Bend for the wedding of her/our nephew. Travelling from O’Hare, we spent a night in St. John, Indiana, where we prayed at the historic church (now chapel) of St. John the Evangelist and walked the Shrine of Christ’s Passion. (Voted “Best in Region.”) As opposed to other visits on our “Pray and Play” pilgrimages, I came away more inspired than deflated.

The original log cabin church survives as a small chapel with perpetual adoration, adjacent to the penultimate church building. It was a peaceful respite from a sudden storm which soaked me to the bones as I navigated a maze of temporary fencing erected to manage the expected crowds for their annual St. John Festival. When the skies cleared, we journeyed down the block to the Shrine, where we walked the Stations of the Cross with an audio narrative and meditative musical accompaniment. Overlooking the acres through which the Via Dolorosa de Indiana winds is the spectacular new parish church where 1200 can worship.

Unlike other mid-19^th century churches we have explored in the old rustbelt, St. John is adapting and overcoming the demographic shift. The original European pioneers would form their ethnic communities around their church, the first project to which they would dedicate their time, talent, and treasure. We have seen Russian, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch and other ethnically-centered churches that now sit empty in hollowed out communities that have lost their north stars of faith, family, and identity. But not St. John. They build new churches, carve shrines out of the pastures, and are worthy of their patron.

Friday night we were invited to the rehearsal and dinner at Notre Dame. It was my first look at the magnificent Basilica of the Sacred Heart (as well as the Grotto), and at dinner I enjoyed a birds-eye view of the campus, football field, and Touchdown Jesus.

The father of the groom spoke to us, and he perfectly captured what I was already contemplating: the importance of tradition; the purposeful decision to preserve and pass on what is essential. He spoke of our nephew’s maternal great-grandfather, an immigrant from Ireland who enrolled in Brooklyn’s “Subway Alumni.” His passion for the Fighting Irish has passed down through the generations, and my brother-in-law, an ND alum himself, observed how excited Grandpa must be to see his progeny graduate from ND, and a year later, celebrate his imminent Nuptial Mass overlooking the storied gridiron.

Taking it to another level, my brother-in-law expressed gratitude for the commitment to faith and family he had received, and into which he married, and of which his son now was boldly willing to take on as a Catholic husband, to a young lady whose family had preserved and passed on the same traditions and commitments.

Watching the sun set over the campus, the illuminated Touchdown Jesus drew my attention. It adorns the massive Father Hesburgh Library. It and a few adjacent now-administrative buildings stand as cautionary tales. These 1960s/70s Soviet-style concrete edifices (think Obama Library) are ugly, in stark contrast to the gorgeous and meticulous campus. Pope Paul VI articulated the spirit of that age when he said, “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church.” Hesburgh himself was blowing his cigar smoke into his basilica, having led the initiative that yielded the “Land O’ Lakes Statement,” which created a schism between the Church and its worldly-obsessed educating class who caved in a “moral struggle with the temptation to pride and prestige at the expense of Catholic identity.” The smoke, and fire, spread everywhere until 1990 when Pope JP II continued cleaning up the Augean Seminaries and also issued Ex corde Ecclesiae, which began the Catholic revival as marked by Ave Maria, Franciscan, Benedictine, and just maybe, Notre Dame.

NOTE: The campus of ND built prior to and since that awful era are magnificent.

However, the smoke lingers there, and the fire still rages elsewhere. (See: Jesuit universities.) The administration often appears frustrated by its holy handcuffs. (I have been told ND’s charter demands 80% of the students must be Catholic, and it must be majority male in a world of higher ed that is 60/40 female. The numbers support this “unspoken” rule.) They have infamously given honors to pro-abortion, and no-friend-to-Christians, Barack Obama, and this administrator did contortions to try and wokefy and diversify without admitting the constraints.

At the nuptial Mass, I was again moved by the Christ-centered magnificence of a Catholic wedding and inspired by the young couple (twenty-two and twenty-three, I believe,) their three-years-a-priest friend and rector who presided, and their friends from the ND choir who graced us with songs that elevated our worship and contemplation of God. On the wall in the narthex, we were asked to pray for the dozens of young men who are in formation to become Holy Cross fathers. (In contrast, the Jesuits are closing three of their five novitiates.)

It is the Catholic youth and Christ-centered priests who have taken up the fight against the sclerotic boomer clerics, administrators, and general malaise that has infected our Church. The intrepid crusaders have rejected the nihilistic, narcissistic, childless ethos as articulated by Seth Rogen when he said, “all the time is ‘me’ time.” They are looking to build lives of purpose that will not end with a Keith Hernandez-like public mourning that his line, his lineage, is “burnt.”

Outside the ND gates, the “ghetto” (as described by an alum) has been replaced by upscale gentrified neighborhoods. The problem is farther away. South Bend is struggling like many communities, riddled with poverty, broken homes, and drugs. The sucking vortex created by our replacing faith with materialism, which takes the form of material-based Marxism/socialism or a rapacious capitalism, has turned the attention of many away from eternity and towards accumulating, surviving, or ravenous envy.

What I saw on Saturday (and Sunday) was the Holy Spirit at work building an army that is willing to undertake the dangerous work of missionaries for the Gospel, to play like champions, and the gates of hell will not prevail.

I attended the wedding with the fresh memory of a powerful dream. In it, I was gathered with friends at our home (though neither were familiar) and my dad was hosting us in his usual gracious and jovial manner. At the appointed time, the guys got up to leave and each said thank you and goodbye. I was the last to rise, and after a pause, my dad and I entered into the most heartfelt and sincere hug. (Neither of us are huggers by nature.) It lasted at least a minute with any sense of relaxing met, like a python, with a tighter grip. Neither of us had the desire to let it end. We each whispered, “I love you.”

Finally, it was me who said, “I have to go.” I woke up in my hotel bed and cried. I wanted to go back to that embrace.

I am still not sure what it meant, if anything. When we arrived home today (Monday) I looked at the two bible verses. For July 14^th, it read, “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14: 13-14) My dad was a humble, just, and giving man who treated guests, prisoners, and attendants at gas stations and in locker rooms, with the same respect he would a CEO.

He was also a man of steadfast faith and commitment to his beloved wife and family. His message to me on his birthday, via the calendar, was “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25)

Thank you for that reminder, Pop. Pray for me. I promise to pray for you.

This weekend has renewed my desire to finish the race, to play like a champion. I have the added incentive of desperately desiring to get back to that hug.

I had graduated from college in May of 1981 without any real plan or purpose having cut ties with the girl of my dreams months earlier, and I was content with seeing where life as an assistant tennis pro would take me. Thanks to my dad taking one for team in the fall of 1981, Labor Day 1982 saw me reconciled with the love of my life, working an entry level job at Merrill Lynch, sharing an apartment with my buddy, and navigating life as a Wall Street adult and Yonkers knucklehead.

Yonkers, the “City of Gracious Living” and home to 210,000 remarkably kooky-but-lovable people, had a city-wide softball league with about twelve divisions based on ability. Like the Champions League, you moved up or down based on performance. There was also the Laker League, which was invitation only to the best teams. At a meeting at the Homefield Bowling Alley, our team, the Libyan Hit Squad (just Hit Squad on our shirts), was invited to play in this “prestigious” league.

By the year-end dinner at the Polish Community Center, they were regretting their decision. While we were middle-of-the-pack year one (top-tier year two), our ramshackle approach and revolving door lineup was causing consternation. The dinner got us put on double- secret probation as one of our team members, perhaps over-served, apparently was obsessed with the large girth of the emotional recipient of a memorial award that capped the evening. Our night ended hours later in a car driving up a sidewalk in the Upper Eastside of Manhattan (a double-parked car blocked immediate access to the road) with the radio blaring “Rock the Casbah” by the Clash.

I was reminded of those reckless times when President Trump was musing about his likely violent death thanks to Iran putting a price on his head, as Libyan leadership had done to Reagan. It is unreal to think that this phase of the clash of civilizations began forty-seven years ago and still dominates the news today. Like an endless World Cup game, one wonders if a decisive victory is even possible. (Can we call for a VAR going back to 1979?)

Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shaken to the top
The sheik, he drove his Cadillac
He went a-cruising down the ville
The muezzin was a-standing
On the radiator grille

The sharif don’t like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah…

Samuel Huntington wrote the Clash of Civilizations in the 1990s and has proven to be more prescient than Francis Fukayama and his declaration of liberal democracy’s triumph and the End of History and the Last Man. The Clash (not the band) had begun in the early 7^th century and has not enjoyed many periods of peace since.

The rise of the Ayatollah in 1979 marked a defeat of the westernized and liberalized Persian people and the ascendancy of Islam and its sharia law. I am old enough to remember that Iran, like Cuba, was once a thriving modern state. That is the tension of which Joe Strummer sings. The king wants the decadent music (boogie, raga) silenced, while some of the “elite” (sheik) want it both ways with the call to prayer (muezzin) coexisting with his Cadillac’s blaring radio.

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out the electric camel drum
The local guitar picker got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the sharif had cleared the square
They began to wail

The sharif don’t like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah…

Strummer and his mates sang of a peaceful musical resistance to the prophet’s command that the degeneration of the faithful must stop.

The Muslim population has grown ten-fold in the US since 1979, and thirty-fold in Western Europe. The population of Christians in Iran has declined thanks to restrictions and persecutions.

Looks like the prophet won.

We may be degenerate, but we support religious freedom and welcome all faiths. In fact, dependable members of the American left traveled to Iran to extol the virtues of the most-recently deceased Ayatollah and remind Iranians that they hate America also. Their message was well-received.

Now over at the temple
Oh they really pack them in
The in crowd say it’s cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
And the temple band took five
The crowd caught a whiff
Of that crazy Casbah jive

The sharif don’t like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah…

Senator Warren staffers and other members of the in-crowd need not travel to Iran to flex their anti-American bona-fides. They can stop by a local mosque in Dearborn, Michigan (more), or they can visit Minnesota to find common cause. Maybe the alleged sharia law enclaves in Texas or Little Rock would welcome them. If you’re an early riser, Brooklyn may be right for you.

I admire the dedication to eradicating decadent culture. The Bedouins even have Sin City (Las Vegas) in their sights. They are teaching the children of NJ.

Not surprisingly, as Catholic and other Christian churches have been closing, the number of mosques have been skyrocketing. The Pope seems okay with that. Islam is confident in its mission. Christianity and Western Civilization? Well, it depends on which prelates, politicians, and priests you follow.

Buffalo is instructive. Where Christianity and the liberal welfare state decay from neglect, Muslims claim, refurbish, and thrive. That is attractive to the neglected. Confidence is attractive (and threatening.)

The king called out his jet fighters
He said you’d better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the Casbah way
As soon as the sharif was chauffeured out of there
The jet pilots tuned to the cockpit radio blare
As soon as the sharif was out of their hair
The jet pilots wailed

The sharif don’t like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah…

In Strummer’s dream, the jet fighters of late-western civilization would defy the orders of the hard-lined fundamentalist, a chauffeur-driven elitist who insisted on women in hijabs.

Boy, were they wrong.

The alleged counter-cultural and rebellious crowd have made peace with the religion of peace. In the bluest, most left, most “hip” enclaves in the nation, this “unholy alliance” has borne election day fruit, with leadership of NYC the crown jewel. (bye-bye, Little Italy.) It is a fascinating coalition by any metric, since the tenets of Islam and sharia law would be widely described as far right. Their view on women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, parental rights, primacy of religion etc., would make Pat Buchanan blush.

The sharif don’t like it (he thinks it’s not kosher)
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
The sharif don’t like it (fundamentally he can’t take it)
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
The sharif don’t like it (you know he really hates it)
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah

This weekend we watched Independence Day. The film juxtaposed broken, divided, misguided earthlings fumbling to formulate a response to the arrival of single-minded aliens. As many fled in fear, and others rushed to save the day, some revelers joyfully raced to rooftops to greet their new best friends. It did not end well.

The film’s president, a former military jet fighter, tried to find common ground with the interlopers, a way to coexist. He asked an alien what they wanted us to do, and it answered, “die.” Then, following the directions Strummer stuck to his guitar, he chose to Ignore Alien Orders and said, “Nuke ‘em.”

Like the Pope, I don’t believe it has to be that way. The history of Christian and Islam compatibility has not been good, but God can change that. While Islam does not recognize Jesus Christ as God, it does venerate Him and His message of peace and mercy. If Jesus is put at the center of dialogue, He can only yield good fruit. The secular post-liberal order is no match for a robust Christianity, nor a robust Islam.

As Bishop Barron has warned, “When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the environing culture…When this kerygma, this paschal mystery, is not at the heart of the project, Christian evangelization effectively disappears, devolving into a summons to bland religiosity or generic spirituality.”

Catholics can learn from Islam’s determination. Our Church is not an NGO; it is the vessel for salvation. Every Catholic person and entity needs to bear witness to that with word and deed.

Final thought: the history of any ideology surviving western consumerism and materialism has not been good. (See: Western Christianity.) Perhaps Islam will find winning on our home turf to be as daunting as trying to beat Mexico at Estadio Azteca.

Oops…VAR please.

A violent storm did not impact our Friday evening barbeque and carnival-like celebration with about 1200 of our closest friends at a local venue, but it did chase us out thirty minutes before the scheduled fireworks. We heard them take place after 10pm which was fine with the exhausted adults and the sleeping seven-and-unders.

As is the norm on summer Saturday mornings, I schlepped to the beach pulling a red wagon carrying two chairs, my notes, water, and my “This Chair Is For You” sign. About twenty-five guys aged 22-85 spent the next seventy-five minutes talking about the Sunday readings. Disposition came up in the context of identifying the main stumbling block in growing in your relationship with God. The greater ability to discern truth is only going to happen if you sincerely want it to, and you are willing make the effort required, that is, have the right disposition.

After the meeting adjourned, I retrieved our umbrella and chairs from our locker and set them up for our family who would be trekking to the beach soon. I walked home with my wagon and a smile on my face, greeting those heading to the beach with a hearty “good morning,” or “enjoy your day at the beach.” I was full of joy and gratitude. The party we attended Friday, the gathering of brothers in faith, the beautifully maintained, serviced, guarded, family-friendly beach, were all available to me thanks to years, decades, and generations of others choosing to be good stewards of these treasures for my benefit. I felt so blessed to be entrusted with the same for the next generations.

Left alone last night with a ten-month-old grandchild while his parents went out with friends, my bride and I toasted our survival as we sipped wine and watched the homilies from Father Dave, Bishop Barron, and Father Mike Schmitz. As usual, we were enriched by each. It is Father Mike’s homily that I encourage you to watch as it was a catalyst for my continued reflection on the importance of stewardship and disposition.

Father Mike said, “It takes conviction, it takes responsibility, it takes courage” to be a good Catholic and/or a good American. These are the necessary dispositions if we are to be good stewards of what we have been entrusted. These qualities are also needed to pursue justice, which is to give someone what he or she (or it) is due. He asks us to consider, “What has the USA given us?” He then points out, as I and others have noted, “Some are seemingly incapable of the virtue of patriotism.”

For all his faults, it would be hard to credibly accuse President Trump of lacking patriotism. In his speech at Mount Rushmore, he declared Americans “did not bow before a king or a government” but “kneeled only before Almighty God.” That is the correct disposition. As Catholics, we are followers of Christ first and American citizens second. The good news is they are compatible.

Father Mike brought up Ben Franklin’s eloquent support for daily prayer as a necessary prerequisite to the work of building a new nation. “God governs in the affairs of men…houses built without God labor in vain, like the confounded builders of Babel.” Trump highlighted a litany of American triumphs and characteristics, warned against complacency, and the need to be good stewards of God’s role in our inheritance. “And by the grace of God, the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history…For generations, it was understood that the core of patriotic duty of every American was to pass this culture on to our children, and to preserve the nation for centuries and centuries to come.”

Father Mike invoked Lincoln’s warning that our enemy is complacency, a loss of conviction in who we are. “If (danger) ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freeman, we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Trump highlighted this theme as well. “But in recent years, there’s been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional character, to beat the American spirit out of us, alienate us from our history, and to make it impossible to even answer the question, what does it mean to be an American?”

Trump amplified Father Mike’s theme of the need for conviction, responsibility, and courage. “On this anniversary, we must remember, we have to remember, we can never forget that American liberty has not endured for 250 years merely because of words on paper. Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it.”

More important, he again invoked the Christian principles on which we were founded and on which we depend for a functioning government. “Americans are strong and always ready to stand firm for a good cause. We treasure justice, fairness, family, honesty, and human dignity. Unlike societies based on class, clan, or tribe, we see every citizen as an individual equal under the law and equal under the eyes of the Lord.”

Zeroing in on the rise of the godless left and the Democratic Socialist of America wing of the Democrats, as well as its “big tent” of anti-American and anti-Jesus allies, Trump warned: “Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny, and the pursuit of evil. The godless communist morality states that anything is justified to bring about inhuman visions and to really propose what’s good. They don’t want good. They don’t love God, and they don’t want God…They have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition, or your God-given rights.”

Are we an imperfect people? Yes. Does the President know this? Yes. “What our critics will never understand is that America is not the sum of its mistakes. Our mistakes make us human.” Back to Father Mike. “We are called, maybe even commanded, to be patriotic.” It is a function of the cardinal virtue of justice; under the debt we owe to the founders of the United States. “Yes, we owe a debt to people who were not perfect…”

Father Mike calls us to love our imperfect nation and its imperfect people. Loving means wanting, willing, the good of the other, wanting them to be better, for their own good. That love must start with truth. As Warren Wiersbe said, “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”

We can deal with the flaws of our founders and move towards a more perfect union. Schmitz invoked Justice Clarence Thomas who railed against the abomination of Plessy vs Ferguson which forced Thomas to grow up a second-class citizen in the segregated Democratic South. He said its sixty-year rule was a function not of ignorance, but of cowardice by his judicial predecessors who feared personal political and social backlash more then they desired universal truth and justice and the recognition of human dignity.

The fundamental conviction to which we must all adhere is that God has primacy, our rights come from Him, and government exists to protect these rights. Our responsibility is to live, work, worship, pray, teach, and vote accordingly. Finally, we must have the courage to stand up to defend and preserve what we have received, so “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Father Mike, President Trump, and I agree with Abraham Lincoln who also said, “it is still work worth doing.”

Some of my classmates were wearing platform shoes as Saturday Night Fever implored us to be dancing. Another classmate, a friend from Yonkers, was on his way to an Olympic silver medal and world records that summer. Meanwhile, I was with my best buddy working maintenance at a country club and pining for a young lady from the Bronx. Operation Sail was coming to NYC to celebrate our nation’s 200^th birthday and I saw the opportunity of a lifetime. She said yes, and after multiple failed attempts, I figured this was going to be the magical night she took me out of the “friend-zone.”

The city was electric with street fairs and crowds repping every ethnic group celebrating our flawed, but fabulous nation. We made our way to the West Side to watch the ships, and with the chaos of the streets, I reached for her hand to lead her safely through the throngs. She recoiled and said, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want to lose you in the crowds.”

“I’m fine,” said this daughter of a NYPD sergeant.

As the radio played in the car on our ride home, she said, “He used to live in the Bronx and Yonkers, you know.”

“Who?” I asked curtly.

“Steven Tyler,” she said. “That’s not his real name. His dad taught music at my high school.”

Funny. As I heard Tyler, the lead singer for Aerosmith, scream out “Dream on,” I was thinking more in terms of it being the slogan for my still dormant love life.

“Dream On,” originally recorded in 1973, was re-released in 1976 and became the band’s breakthrough hit. It is hard to believe my memory of that song, that summer, are fifty years old, and we now mark 250 years since declaring ourselves a new nation this weekend.

Every time when I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got the dues in life to pay

I sit here fifty years later, gloriously blessed to be forty-two years into a sublime marriage to an enchanting young lady who did not recoil at my awkward attempt to hold her hand. In retrospect, God had a plan for me. It took a lot of trials, tribulations, mistakes, and dues paid, but trusting Him has transformed my life. When I look at my wrinkling face in the mirror, my eyes are drawn to a line of scripture I have taped there to boost me in my lower moments: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps 139:14)

I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know everybody sin’s
You got to lose to know how to win

When our nation looks in the mirror, there are those who see a flawed nation, but built on bedrock principles which allow us to keep grinding and honing towards a more perfect union. We ARE fearfully and wonderfully made! Others see a nation that is irredeemable, bound by its “original sin” and in need of destruction.

God knows ours sins, but calls us by name.

Satan knows our name, but calls us by our sin.

Half my life
Is books, written pages
Live and learn from fools and
From sages
You know it’s true, oh
All these feelings come back to you

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2 Tim 4:3-4)

What has rendered us deaf to the truth? It continues to be our official position that as we have sawed off the branch on which we sit and torn down the fences without understanding their purpose. We have become like the people of Babel, unable to understand truth or each other. What was that branch, that fence? The Christian principles, the laws of our Creator, the Divine Providence, which calls us fallen people to pursue lives of virtue, which is a necessary condition of self-government.

Those on the wrong side of the “God Gap” have itching ears and now make league with those who reject the sanctity of life or existence of the sexes, and atheistic and anti-Christian cultures. They prefer to do the easy work of tearing things down, like the statues of St. Junipero Serra, rather than undertake the sacrificial building of faith and community like he accomplished.

Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Today is a day to sing for our blessings, the years we have been given, and the laughter and tears we have enjoyed and endured.

Despite what one may think, by many metrics we are MUCH better off today than in 1976. Murders down five-fold, we no longer live in a decade with thousands of terrorist bombings, nor waiting on lines for gas, and race relations were just then beginning a 40-year improvement (until the Obama years.) Thanks to the Boomers, we are older, more ethnically diverse and more educated.

Dream on…
Dream until your dreams come true…

The American Dream is still alive and available, but seeing and embracing it requires metanoia, repentance, a conversion of the mind and heart. There are two stumbling blocks that must be addressed: the first is the perception gap, that is, the difference between what is true versus what is perceived to be true. For instance, “even when large majorities of Americans say the nation is in a bad way, equally large majorities say they’re personally doing OK.” (Tellingly, The un-churched left is more pessimistic about our future and the state of “others,” and less likely to be proud of America than the church-going right.) The second is the necessary revival of faith, family, and neighbors as the focus of our time, talents, and treasures. GK Chesterton said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

TURN OFF SOCIAL MEDIA and BROADCAST NEWS!!! They are designed to feed you anger! Don’t cancel friends and family. Love, forgive, invite.

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away…

Pope Leo wrote about the choice in front of us: we can be a diverse people who pursue disparate goals and share no common culture and build a doomed Tower of Babel that demands an impossible uniformity, or we can embrace our “melting pot” diversity and work in communion to build that shining city upon a hill. The latter requires a binding principle, embodied in our Constitution and its Godly aspirations. As George Weigel wrote, “…the truths explicitly claimed or implied by the Declaration of Independence are summed up in this master truth: only a virtuous people can live freedom so that individuals flourish in a society of solidarity. Only a virtuous people can live freedom such that liberty, decayed into license, does not corrupt the institutions of freedom so that those institutions collapse into tyranny.”

We are an imperfect people, but we never stop dreaming, never stop trying. It is much easier to tear down, but we are the people who build. We are the nation that put people on the moon, worked with a Pope to end Communism, brought the internet and cell phones to the world (oops,) has developed re-usable rockets, and whose economic engine has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty while Europe is still wrestling with the concept of air conditioning. (Invented in the USA.)

(Fittingly, Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the US, used “Dream On” as the soundtrack for its “Made in America” campaign.)

Take it from my friend, and mentor to local writers, who highlighted the positive correlation between love of country (and friendships) and one’s happiness. Sticking with the World Cup theme, learn from the international World Cup visitors who are enthralled with America’s culture.

Let’s not turn our dream into a nightmare. Fly the flag! (America’s, not these.)

God bless you, God bless America, and God bless Buc-ees!

It’s not easy being me.

What inspired Norm’s visit was me contemplating Jesus’ admonition. He is not saying we shouldn’t love mom and dad (heck, it’s the fourth commandment). He is saying we should love Him more. Like the order of the commandments, Jesus is establishing and asserting a hierarchy of values, that is, let’s not let the good have equivalency or primacy compared to the ultimate good.

Norm made the inverse point in a less than biblical fashion. The Norm Corollary is “let’s not let the objectionable or distasteful have equivalency or primacy compared to the abhorrent or evil.”

In an episode of Comedians Driving in Cars with Jerry Seinfeld, Norm asked Jerry if he thought the revelations about Bill Cosby would hurt his legacy. Jerry said yes. Norm then recounted Patton Oswalt’s concurrence based on Bill’s history of family-friendly content. Norm quoted that guy saying, “I think the worst part was the hypocrisy.” Jerry had no problem with that and Norm added, “And I disagreed.” Jerry was curious. Norm continued, “I thought [the worst part] was the raping.” Jerry buckled in laughter.

On another show, Norm talked about a friend who said, “His biggest fear is that ISIS…will explode [a dirty bomb] over a city in the United States and kill tens of millions of people. Because then, the blowback against innocent Muslims would be absolutely terrible.” The hosts said, “Yes, that’s true.” They missed the joke.

It takes a comedian to make the obvious point that rape should shock the conscience more than hypocrisy, and the brutal murder of millions is a far greater affront to humanity than the potential for stereotyping or discrimination. It does not mean that the lesser transgressions are not objectionable, just that the egregious affronts to human dignity demand a unanimous rebuttable.

Sadly, we no longer live in the world of objective truth. The rejection of the Christian-ordered norms leaves everything in the “my truth, your truth” category, putting the Norm Corollary on full display.

For instance, the UK has been rocked for the last year by riots and protests in response to a growing number of revelations such as the estimated 250,000 victims of Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, the murder of Henry Nowak by an Sikh Indian man, the attempted beheading by a Sudanese man in Belfast, and scores of other examples. Compounding the problem has been the government/police reaction of arresting victims, abetting the criminals, establishing two-tiered policing policies skewed against white Brits, and arresting an astounding 12,000 citizens for social media posts bringing attention to these atrocities and the perpetrators.

The reaction of Parliament? Crickets, except a demand that Nigel Farage “condemn the violence” of anti-immigrant protestors as Farage spoke of the heinous murder of Nowak and the police complicity. The leadership of the UK demonstrates the Norm Corollary: expressing fear of blowback rather than taking action on the fundamental problem.

Cue Norm: “I thought the worst part was the raping, and beheadings, and genital mutilation, and honor killings, not the people getting angry about it.”

In the USA, the Democratic Party has rallied behind its Nazi-sympathizing, communist, woman abusing Senate candidate. It is doing the same with its litany of USA, western civilization and Christian hating, anti-police, anti-ICE, anti-jail, antisemite, pro-Islam and pro-socialism candidates in New York. Political strategists James Carville and Rahm Emmanuel have expressed anger and concern at the direction the Godless party they helped create has taken. Yet, their vocal concerns are not based on moral or ethical positions, it is purely a function of electability and strategy. Other Democrat leaders are making peace with the rabid crowd entering their “big tent.”

As Patton might say, “the worst thing about these candidates is the damage they may do to our brand and those consequences in swing districts.”

Cue Norm: “I thought the worst part was their hate of America, western civilization, capitalism, Christians, and Jews.” (It is the Islam inspired anti-Zionism/antisemitism that seems to be driving the bus. The college-educated white progressives are the useful idiots pushing the bus.)

Our Church is dealing with a challenge to its authority. I’m not talking about the schismatic James Martin crowd, the Vatican is fine with them. I’m talking about the SSPX who have the temerity to suggest they have unambiguous devotion to the eternal teachings of the Church and desire communion and fidelity to the Holy See. The SSPX expects to ordain needed bishops on July 1st in opposition to directives from the Pope, but they are seeking his blessing. Schism and excommunication seem inevitable.

One is left to wonder why the Church allows the atheist Chinese government to approve, and in fact, appoint bishops, but not the faithful of the SSPX? If the Church moves mountains to make peace with China, Islam, schismatic German bishops, LGTBQ, and is willing to subjugate natural law to facilitate these relationships, what is the problem with finding common ground with a Catholic order that practices the faith that had served the Church for 1,930 years?

Oswalt: “There is nothing worse than challenging the Pope on doctrine.”

Norm: “Really? I think the worst thing is playing footsie with every ideology that rejects or diminishes Christ?”

I pray the Pope and SSPX can work this out. I pray we remain as one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I pray our Church does not continue the path that has led to King Charles’ abdication.

We are culturally in a bad place. The director of HHS in the Biden administration, a candidate for Governor in California, saw trafficked kids as pieces on an assembly line that had to keep moving. His greater concern was accountability for the money they were spending to place these kids in strip clubs and homes of migrant men.

Oswalt: “There’s nothing worse than not spending the money allocated to your agency.”

Norm: “I though the worst part was the trafficking and abuse of kids.”

What has happened? How did we get to a place where “queers”, Jews, and feminists are in league with Muslims, and college-educated white Americans supports socialism, communism, and the destruction of western civilization?

Let’s go back to Jesus. If we don’t get the order of operations correct (love Him above all else) the disorder cascades down and chaos ensues. (See: Babel.) The Norm Corollary is derivative of that same principle. In a disordered world, there is no objective truth on which to base universal norms. Chaos ensues as subjective beliefs vie for attention and power.

In the Communist Manifesto, Engles wrote, “In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” These disparate groups organizing under the Democrats’ “big tent” have a common enemy: Christianity and its progeny, Western Civilization. They have installed “Trump” as the synecdoche, the totem around which to rally the useful idiots. (Harsh, but true.) Did you really think the same forces consolidating in every western nation on the same issues at the same time was a coincidence?

Western society has been hollowed out by a secular atheism, and in this void, we have put “Jesus vs Mohammed” back on the Bingo card.

…every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before… all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at this moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” —C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

The Norm Corollary is a glimpse of a world gone mad, a world having taken its eye off the prize, the Ultimate Good.

Jesus’s admonition is a wakeup call. It is also a call to action.

My Tuesday essay, Interesting Times, could have been 10,000 words. The examples of our illogical, irrational, and disordered culture are legion.

While writing the essay, a song kept popping in my head, one I had not thought about for forty years. Natalie Merchant and her band 10,000 Maniacs were faves of mine about the time I got married in 1984. I found her voice to be enchanting on songs like “Peace Train,” “Like the Weather,” and “These Are Days.” It was the latter which I kept hearing in my head. (Merchant’s voice, not mine, thank God.)

As I did a little research, I learned she is a complicated figure with one marriage, one daughter, and one divorce. She is a sincere environmentalist and has been a strong supporter of Doctors without Borders, Planned Parenthood, early childhood education, domestic violence prevention, and she performed a Concert for Kamala. Natalie was baptized Catholic but only identifies as believing in God.

As it turns out, she had a fling with Michael Stipe of REM. He credits her with turning on his political activism. He professes no faith, has had both male and female partners, and no progeny. What I want to talk about today (like most other days) is what happens when we lose our religion.

Let’s honor Merchant and Stipe by mashing their songs together. “These Are Days” will be italicized and “Losing My Religion” in bold.

These are the days
These are days you’ll remember.
Never before and never since…
… you’ll know it’s true that you are blessed and lucky.
… touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

In the past week, I have had two separate conversations with intelligent, curious, dedicated Catholic men. I respect each of them. We had wide-ranging conversations with areas of agreement and disagreement. Regarding AI, they were both in the positive camp while I am decidedly negative. That’s not to say they didn’t each make compelling cases. I believe the fundamental flaw of their view is framing it in the context of previous industrial and technical revolutions. We did all agree that AI is coming fast like nothing before. We will certainly remember these days; the question is, will we feel blessed and lucky? What type of future will grow and bloom?

Oh life, it’s bigger
It’s bigger than you…

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it…

A survey by Dr. Barna and the Cultural Research Center was released and it points to the reason I am deeply concerned about the rush into the Age of AI.

Only 57% of Americans believe humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Just half of Americans agree God is all powerful. Alarmingly, only 27% believe human life is sacred, while a similar amount say human life has no intrinsic value. It should be of no surprise that 52% thus say abortion is morally acceptable. Heck, 35% believe animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits.

Do you trust Godless people who have a negative view of humans to properly implement or navigate AI? Will they value human flourishing or rather, value productivity, financial gain, and efficiency? Assisted suicide is the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.

These are days you’ll remember.
… with desire to be part of the miracles you see…

it’s true that you are blessed and lucky.

MIRACLE ALERT: it is the official position of the Great Awakening that the nascent religious revival we are experiencing will ultimately save this country.

Save us from what?

What hell hath the rise of the Godless left wrought?

It has resurrected the communist/socialist movement under the banner of Democratic Socialists of America. These anti-American, anti-Jesus radicals have coopted the Democratic party. The NYC mayor was the canary in the coal-mine. They join sitting representatives who support violent anarchists, give overt and tacit approval of political violence, support a “communist” Nazi-tattooed candidate who abused women, and an alleged Christian who hates Christianity and has beliefs antithetical to Christian teaching. Dedication to the killing of babies, and surgical mutilation of children, remain litmus tests for membership in the party.

Would we be blessed and lucky to have these Godless characters at the helm as AI metastasizes?

Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I’m choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt, lost and blinded fool, fool

Sadly, a lot of the Christian shepherds have become blind guides leading their flocks to destruction. The Mainline Protestant death spiral continues as the Presbyterian Church of America, having already capitulated to feminism, BLM, and the LGBTQ crowd, is now playing footsie with polyamory. How much moral help can they provide when they can’t understand “male and female He created them” and “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 KJV). Will they stand against robotic surrogacy, designer babies, and AI relationships?

The Pope has a bigger problem. A senior Vatican prelate, with the approval of Pope Francis, admitted he worked to undermine the foundational principle of natural law and its essential nature as the foundation for the Church’s eternal teaching on marriage, family, and moral absolutes. (Pro-tip: Never go full mainline Protestant.)

As half the USA prepares to celebrate 250 years, it is important to remember that natural law was also an imperative for our founding, as well as for sustaining our Republic (if we can keep it.)

Consider this, the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come…

I thought that I heard you laughing…

But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try
That was just a dream…

Christians are meant to understand how precious we are to God, and He has plans for our flourishing. What we often fail to consider is that the Devil also has plans for our lives.

Similarly, Michael Stipe had plans for his song to be understood as a lament for unrequited love. The director of the music video had other ideas. He presented an allegory, with elements like Caravaggio’s painting of St. Thomas, and Saint Sebastian and the fallen angel serving to contrast human cynicism with divine grace, reinforcing the song’s theme of “losing one’s religion” as a loss of faith or composure in the face of emotional or spiritual crisis. The video’s townspeople are spiritually blind and treat the divine messenger as a disposable freak, failing to see the miraculous; the imago dei.

They chose a nightmare and the Devil laughed.

These are days.
These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break.
These days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face…
See the signs and know their meaning.
It’s true, you’ll know how it was meant to be.
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking to you, to you.

It is up to each of us to read the signs of the times as the data reveals that many of us are spiritually blind and deaf.

What can we do? Thursday’s Gospel reflection by Jeff Cavins is instructive. Are you building your house on rock or sand? The storm is coming for everyone, and it will reveal what was previously invisible. Do we know Jesus or just know of him? On June 12^th , were we preoccupied with the Knicks, the SpaceX IPO, or the consecration of our nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?

Those of us who profess a Catholic faith must honestly assess our own foundations so we can be the bulwark against the storm for our families and communities.

And do not vote with the Godless who are looking to build the tower of Babel. In the words of Pope Leo: “We must, then, avoid the ‘Babel syndrome,’ namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise… Christians [must] discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God.”

The signs are speaking to us: it is up to us to know the Way (and the Truth and the Life) and be the salt and light for others.