The left is good at this sort of thing.

It’s BAD FOR YOU.

It’s time to admit that this noble experiment has failed. The promise of joyful and meaningful connection has given way instead to a bizarre amalgam of baby pictures, vacation photos, political diatribes, cat videos, memes, wry observations, banal holiday greetings, and probably a lot of other stuff I’m forgetting because it’s so forgettable.

Much of social media has proved to be a divisive force, not a unifying one. It’s astonishingly addictive, but we all know it’s unhealthy. A review of academic research in Harvard Business Review last year was headlined: “The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel.”

Nacissistic to boot, he says.

In a series of excerpts from Pope Francis exhortation on holiness is nothing about Pelagianism (belief in do-it-yourself salvation) or Gnosticism (clinging to parts of revelation said to be known to only a few).

In that respect, the series, an Opus Dei product, is a blessing, lest we miss the good parts, distracted by Francis’ untoward and unfair characterizations of traditionalist and other Catholics who disagree with him.

I especially like this which the series includes:

14. To be holy does not require being a bishop, a priest or a religious. We are frequently tempted to think that holiness is only for those who can withdraw from ordinary affairs to spend much time in prayer. That is not the case. We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.

Actually, however, I do think the faithful are beyond thinking holiness is exclusive to contemplative religious or others of religious vocation. In fact, in churches I have been attending in the last 65 years, I can’t recall any preacher ever talking that way.

What or whom Francis has in mind escapes me, especially in an age of clerical and other church scandals of all kinds, including in the Vatican, where frankly he seems to have given up the reform agenda with which he began his tenure.

Meanwhile, we can profit from his exhortation keeping in mind the old nostrum, God writes straight with crooked lines. Applying it to ourselves while we’re at it.

via Apostolic Exhortation “Gaudete et exsultate” – Opus Dei

Above all, be reasonable:

“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you,
it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”

Give me that old Lama wisdom.

via Dalai Lama Quote – Liberty Quotes Blog

Refreshing.

White privilege has become the target of many initiatives in higher education. The goal, advocates say, is to fight racism and promote justice. Yet the practice often doesn’t seem constructive.

In my college career, I’ve spoken to many peers and professors who insist adamantly that any conversation about race in America should begin and end with the accusation of white privilege.

The aim seems to be to establish guilt, not build understanding.

Yes. And by the way, might we argue that affirmative action is a vehicle of black privilege?

via The Cudgel of ‘White Privilege’ – WSJ

The pope’s detractor gets a comeuppance.

British knight suspended by Order of Malta for writing highly critical book about Pope Francis

Trouble is, the book, Dictator Pope, is quite carefully written, drawing heavily on published accounts of undisputed happenings. Not so easily fobbed off as a mere hit job. Oh my. Not at all.

Andrew Klavan On The Culture:

This column has, on occasion, been disparaging toward American journalism, but only because it is now populated by the biggest bunch of knuckleheads ever to be assembled outside of Knucklehead City on the planet Knucklehead.

Remember the sitcom news anchor Ted Baxter with the big voice and the slick haircut and minuscule IQ?

Well, if you added the emotional stability of a three-year-old having a temper tantrum, you would have your typical American journalist and commentator, not just on cable but at the networks and newspapers too.

I could lasso a gorilla, give him a lobotomy, and teach him to do the job better than these clowns in fifteen minutes.

But perhaps I overstate my case. Or … do I?

Let’s take a look at three stories and how they were reported just within the last few days.

Read on . . . 

You break-a da rules, out you go, you execrable pro-lifer. 

In the grand scheme of things, columnist Kevin Williamson being fired by The Atlanticisn’t exactly earth shattering. But it does signal yet another marker in a critical war on free speech.

First, the brief backstory. Last week, Williamson left National Review to take a job at The Atlantic. His departure was amicable, and he was merely taking another opportunity. A few days later, however, he was fired for old and long-since deleted tweets and a podcast years ago. Nonetheless, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg blamed the firing on Williamson’s “carefully considered views” on abortion — specifically, that abortion is murder and, therefore, doctors and perhaps even mothers who kill unborn babies should face punishment up to and including capital punishment.

Williamson’s views, born of his own experience of having not been aborted but given up for adoption, are not the subject here; the intolerant mob of leftists is. But, ironically, if Williamson had championed stabbing a partially born infant in the neck, dismembering it and maybe selling a few organs — as rabidly pro-abortion leftists do in not so many words — he’d still have a job.

Instead, he was fired because one of the sacraments of the leftist religion is abortion, and that religion’s first commandment is “Thou shalt not ever criticize a woman for making that choice.” Thus Williamson’s views were not only far beyond the pale but evidence that we really are living in the dystopian “Handmaid’s Tale.”

via Nate Jackson: The Thought Police Take Out Another Conservative — The Patriot Post

If I hadn’t seen the headline, as above, the lede sentence would have set me up for a take-down of CNN, unless I also realized she works for CNN:

If Jonestown had had a television network, it might have aired something like this.

Instead, she pities the poor journos, forced to do as the boss says.

Another view is that she “parroted the CNN company line by condemning Sinclair Broadcast Group as nothing more than state-owned propaganda.”

Cupp talked this up on CNN, basically blaming Sinclair for giving conservatives favorable (fair? not?) treatment and covering more conservative issues. But make it CNN doing this for liberal issues, and you have a match.

Later: While we’re on the subject, take note, please that deciding what’s news and what isn’t is key to the bias debate. If every story is accurate, it’s still a story the editors (writers too in most cases) picked. There’s the rub, my friends.

#1, the Dubia group (questioners of Pope Francis’ Amoris letter permitting communion for divorced and remarried):

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, April 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke will speak about the nature of marriage at a conference in Philadelphia on April 21.

The dubia cardinal will be joined by Father Gerald Murray of The World Over fame and Father Dennis Gill, rector of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The conference will take place in that cathedral and will include a Marian procession and crowning, Eucharistic Adoration, and a recitation of the rosary.

Called Matrimony: Rediscovering Its Truth, the conference is being organized by The St. John Neumann Chapter and Catholics United for the Faith.

via Cardinal Burke to speak on marriage, offer Mass at Philadelphia cathedral on April 21 | News | LifeSite

And #2, the (majority) pro-Amoris bishops, convened by Cardinal Cupich of Chicago:

Boston College, the University of Notre Dame and Santa Clara University hosted day-long seminars last week on the theme of “A New Momentum for Moral Formation and Pastoral Practice” in light of Amoris Laetitia.  The conferences, that followed a two-day conference on the same theme last October at Boston College, were conducted in concert with the Dicastery on Family, Life and the Laity.  Boston College professor Fr James Keenan SJ  and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago were the principal organisers.

Each session featured theologians and bishops presenting on different topics related to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, with a team of theologians presenting at all three venues, although each session had different bishops among the presenters. Bishops Robert McElroy and Steven Biegler gave talks at Santa Clara, Cardinals Cupich and Joseph Tobin delivered presentations at Notre Dame; Archbishop Wilton Gregory spoke at the Boston College event, and Archbishop Bernard Hebda read a paper prepared by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who cancelled his appearance at the last minute due to the flu.

Heavy hitters, to be sure. #1 is outnumbered. “We few, we happy few,” they tell themselves?

Via Cardinal organises US campus dialogues on Amoris Laetitia

No contest, numerically speaking. Otherwise? One thinks not.