If I’d been wrong, I could apologize and beg the bluechecks for forgiveness. But I was right, so they can’t forgive me. Instead they ostracize me – while stealing everything I wrote.
Yesterday a longtime Team Reality member pointed me to an anti-lockdown piece in “The Dispatch,” a conservative newsletter that is supposedly one of Substack’s most popular (though I’d never heard anyone mention it before).
“You have been vindicated without ever mentioning your name,” he wrote.
I didn’t know what he meant.
Then I read the piece, which is called Our Failed COVID Response.
It explains that “even those who earnestly supported and complied with COVID measures have begun to wonder how much of it made sense – ” a blinding glimpse of the obvious. Then it laments the “values and principles we tossed aside, seemingly without scruple, in early 2020.”
For readers wondering how “we tossed aside” those values, the piece focuses on three drivers: the apparently successful lockdown in Wuhan, Italy’s panicked shutdown, and the report from Neil Ferguson and Imperial College on March 16 predicting millions of deaths and hospital collapse without an immediate and total lockdown.
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It was at this point in my reading I realized what my Team Reality friend had meant.
And my blood pressure started to go up. . . .
Read the rest of the man’s freeby part . . . Great man, once a NYTimes reporter, etc. Dropped everything to do what newsies the nation over did not do. . . .
Likely we will have more to say about this matter in the days to come, but for now I will just observe that we are paying the price of having a president and a White House that are utterly incompetent.
The essence of what it means to be a practicing Catholic hangs in the balance. This crisis has gnawed at the Church since January 22, 1973, when William Brennan, a Catholic associate justice of the Supreme Court and the chief architect of Roe v. Wade, sided with the court’s majority in legalizing abortion on demand and doing so with complete ecclesial impunity.
Since that day, with very few exceptions, Catholic politicians who support, advocate, and facilitate the killing of the unborn have stepped into the Communion line and received the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
You don’t have to be Catholic to see it. Is there any organization that can claim its identity while remaining flaccid in what’s happened and to remain what it was?
It’s just a rule, a doctrine, the greater society says, and the institution replies with re-statements of its neutered position. Keeping its head down, saying in effect, So what? We don’t care! We don’t take ourselves seriously either.
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.”
In a similar vein, she also said, without reference to any nearby context: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time … there is such great significance to the passage of time.”
First in line to succeed president and continue a great tradition.
“Pope Benedict did not “allow” the “old Mass,” and he granted no privilege to celebrate it. In a word, he did not take a disciplinary measure that a successor can retract. What was new and surprising about [his] Summorum Pontificum was that it declares that the celebration of the old Mass does not need any permission. It had never been forbidden because it never could be forbidden.
One could conclude that here we find a fixed, insuperable limit to the authority of a pope. Tradition stands above the pope. The old Mass, rooted deep in the first Christian millennium, is as a matter of principle beyond the pope’s authority to prohibit.”
It’s in the category of what no man can tear asunder.
O my most humble Jesus, who for love of me humbled yourself and become obedient unto the death of the Cross, how dare I appear before you and call myself your follower when I see myself so proud that I cannot bear a single slight without resenting it!
How, indeed, can I be proud, when by my sins I have so often deserved to be cast into the abyss of hell! O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, help me and make me like you. You, for love of me, bore so many insults and injuries. I, for love of you, will bear slights and humiliations patiently. But you see, O Jesus, how proud I am in my thoughts, how disdainful in my words, how ambitious in my deeds.
Grant me true humility of heart and a clear knowledge of my own nothingness. May I, for love of you…
The Nativity School of Worcester has caught the attention of Bishop Robert McManus. The school is privately run and not part of the diocesan system. It’s students, predominantly African American and Latino, attend tuition-free.
Bishop McManus said the flags could confuse people about the Church’s teaching on civil authority and same-sex civil marriage.“Symbols can mean different things to different people,” Bishop McManus said. “As Bishop of this diocese, I must teach that it is imperative that a Catholic School use imagery and symbols which are reflective of that school’s values and principles so as to be clear with young people who are being spiritually and morally formed for the future.”
That’s getting at the heart of the matter.
“Our role in a school is not to convert those who are not Catholic, nor is it our role to deny our Catholic identity,” he added.
“While the Catholic Church joins with our nation in teaching that all lives are equal before God and all lives demand our respect regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. [But] the flag with the emblem Black Lives Matter has at times been co-opted by some factions which also instill broad-brush distrust of police and those entrusted with enforcing our laws.”
“We do not teach that in our schools,” he said.
No, happily.
“And while we teach that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God, gay pride flags are often used to stand in contrast to consistent Catholic teaching that sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman,” the bishop continued.
These Jesuits not so sure about that? Apparently.
“Is the school committing itself to ideologies which are contrary to Catholic teaching? If so, is it still a Catholic school?” he asked.
The school’s president, Tom McKenney, said the flags “remind our young men, their families and [school] staff that all [the students,
apparently?] are welcome here and that they are valued and safe in this place.”
What has the school done to make them think otherwise?
“It [?] says to them that they, in fact, do matter and deserve to be respected as our Christian values teach us.”
They’ve been accepted in the school, free of charge, and he’s concerned about them being held in disrespect? That’s hard to buy.
“That is the purpose of flying these flags,” he added.
Democrats Called Out for Creating the Energy Crisis
From the story: As Democrats — who have been waging a war on the oil and gas industry — continue to blame Putin, Americans and some in the media aren’t buying it. In fact, the anti-fracking records of congressional climate activists are being scrutinized. Ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats have backed themselves into a corner (Townhall). Matt Whitlock: Oh man — these Democrats are walking into a buzzsaw of their own making. Just a year ago they were screaming at energy execs to reduce oil production – today they’re going to theatrically accuse them of price gouging (Twitter). Spencer Brown: Oil and gas CEOs aren’t the ones who killed pipeline projects, revoked drilling leases, or promised to “get rid of fossil fuels” (Twitter). Fox News reports: Republicans have been beating the drum that Biden’s policies — including canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and freezing new oil and gas leases on federal lands – started driving up the gas prices prior to the war on Ukraine (Fox News).
Blithe Spirit 