May 21 2020 – Ascension, the missionary mandate

Marching orders . . .

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Before he ascended . . .

The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Convert the world, he told them.

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May 21 2020 – Day’s reading from Acts

Hard-working missionary can’t win ’em all . . .

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Fascinating account of Paul in Corinth, meeting a Jewish couple from Italy, which they had been forced leave with other Jews by emperor’s order, joining the tentmakers, preaching up a storm to Jewish and Greek residents (“entered into discussions,” says the text), winning some, losing some, as in the case of Jews in a synagogue giving him a hard time, Paul saying in effect, “It’s your call,” and walking out.

Took to the house of a believing man, which lo and behold was next to another synagogue, whose “official” he convinced to come aboard the good ship Jesus. Etc. A good story today, as these Acts of the Apostles unfold.

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Justice Dept. says California’s pandemic plan should open churches sooner

Starkly put:

“Simply put, there is no pandemic exception to the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband in a three-page letter sent to California Gov. Gavin Newsom May 19.

DOJ to Calif. governor: Forget about it.

Seems to have revolutionary adaptability, this no-exception decision. Can it be the start of something?

End New York City’s lockdown now!

At almost the end of his ringing anything-but-endorsement of governor and mayor, David Marcus also calls for revolution, adding this:

Our politicians serve by our consent; we don’t run our businesses or live our lives by their consent. The suggestion to the contrary is an ­affront to Americanism.

I’ll say. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are full of what govt cannot do, isn’t it? That’s the definite of limited govt.

Minnesota bishops will reopen public Masses, defy state order

Movement on the shutdown front.

CNA Staff, May 20, 2020 / 05:05 pm MT (CNA).- The bishops of Minnesota have permitted parishes to resume public Masses, and to defy a statewide order prohibiting religious gatherings exceeding 10 people.

“An order that sweeps so broadly that it prohibits, for example, a gathering of 11 people in a Cathedral with a seating capacity of several thousand defies reason,” the bishops of Minnesota’s six dioceses said in a May 20 statement.

“Therefore, we have chosen to move forward in the absence of any specific timeline laid out by Governor Walz and his Administration. We cannot allow an indefinite suspension of the public celebration of the Mass,” the bishops added.

Bold and reasonable. Not timid.

Herd Immunity: What’s that?

It’s a good thing, for starters.

Herd immunity, or community immunity, is when a large part of the population of an area is immune to a specific disease. If enough people are resistant to the cause of a disease, such as a virus or bacteria, it has nowhere to go.

While not every single individual may be immune, the group as a whole has protection. This is because there are fewer high-risk people overall. The infection rates drop, and the disease peters out.

Herd immunity protects at-risk populations. These include babies and those whose immune systems are weak and can’t get resistance on their own.

Two ways to get it. One by exposure, getting infected and getting over it:

You can develop resistance naturally. When your body is exposed to a virus or bacteria, it makes antibodies to fight off the infection. When you recover, your body keeps these antibodies. Your body will defend against another infection. This is what stopped the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil. Two years after the outbreak began, 63% of the population had had exposure to the virus. Researchers think the community reached the right level for herd immunity.

Or by fooling your body with a shot:

Vaccines can also build resistance. They make your body think a virus or bacteria has infected it. You don’t get sick, but your immune system still makes protective antibodies. The next time your body meets that bacteria or virus, it’s ready to fight it off. This is what stopped polio in the United States.

Hair of the dog that bit you, except it didn’t, hence the helpful deception.

Way at the end of this helpful explanation is a distinctly cautionary note:

With no vaccine to protect against COVID-19 yet, a large number of people would need to catch the virus, get sick, and recover before we can have herd immunity.

Meanwhile . . . (to be continued)

NY Times Pulitzer winner 1619 Project had lots of mistakes . . .

But this one takes the cake:

Remarkably, the project errors include even its name, which is the subject of the Pulitzer-winning lead essay written by 1619 Project director Nikole Hannah-Jones:

In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va., one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates.

Thus, was the “1619 Project” name selected, and this is why the essay series was published in August 2019, the presumed 400th anniversary of the “beginning of American slavery.”
Correcting the Record
This assertion was invalidated as soon as it was released by Nell Irvin Painter, a professor emerita of American history at Princeton University. In an August essay for The Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper, Painter wrote:

People were not enslaved in Virginia in 1619, they were indentured. The 20 or so Africans were sold and bought as “servants” for a term of years, and they joined a population consisting largely of European indentured servants, mainly poor people from the British Isles whom the Virginia Company of London had transported and sold into servitude.

From the bowels of New York Times-ism, you can here if you listen closely, “So what?”