A lot in this first paragraph:

As governments around the world begin instituting Covid-19 ‘passports’ which will dictate the level of participation one is afforded within society – regardless of naturally acquired immunity or actual risk to the public from the unvaccinated (considering that the majority of transmission occurs in the home), people have begun to push back against authoritarian tactics to control privileges and push vaccines.

Read all about it. And weep.

The other Biden and his . . . “genius-level corruption, an ethical nightmare for the White House, and a masterpiece of congressional and media dereliction of duty.”

Very artful.

Fr. Mankowski listening at table — the seeds of his Arrupe-Drinan investigation:

In 1991 I was living at Faber House . . . in Cambridge . . . while doing doctoral studies at Harvard. On February 5 of that year, Father William Guindon, S.J., Provincial of New England Province from 1968 to 1974, was a dinner guest at Faber House and reminisced for the assembled company about the recently dead Father Arrupe.

One of his anecdotes went like this:

Well, I was over in Beirut at the time and Arrupe summoned me to Rome. That’s when I was still Provincial. He said, “I want you to tell Fr. Drinan to withdraw from the election”—this was his first run for office—“it is in violation of canon law!”

I told him, “No no no, you don’t want to do that; you don’t understand American politics; you’ll cause more trouble than it’s worth. That’s not the way to do it; just pray that he loses.”

Then Arrupe said, “All right. But this is the last time! Never again for him or anyone else!” So Bob had the permission of all three ordinaries. [The general and two relevant bishops]

Then when I got back to province I found [Fr.] John McLaughlin in my office asking for permission to run for the Senate in Rhode Island. I said, “Can’t give you permission, John.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “For one thing Fr. Arrupe has forbidden it. For another I think you’ve got a wheel loose.”

McLaughlin ran anyhow, as a Republican, doing passably well while losing to an entrenched Democrat and then hiring on as a speechwriter for President Nixon. Yet later he left the Jesuits and carved out a 34-year career hosting his own show, “The McLaughlin Group,” on PBS. His career at the White House coincided with Drinan’s in Congress.

Picking up on Mankowski, explaining his position:

Guindon’s language recorded here is very close to verbatim. Immediately after the dinner I made notes transcribing his account and sent a copy to Father Joseph Becker, S.J., then director of the Jesuit Center for Religious Studies at Xavier University. He wrote back saying that he placed my transcript in his archives; if they still exist, it may well be on file.

By his own account, Guindon deceived Arrupe about his motives and interest in Drinan’s candidacy, not only concealing his own efforts to launch Drinan but, in his urging Arrupe to pray that Drinan would lose, falsely pretending to be opposed to his election.

By presenting himself as an exasperated but cautious administrator who was unsympathetic to Drinan, instead of the partisan that he was in fact, Guindon led Arrupe to think that they had a common interest in the outcome of the affair. By this ruse, Guindon won from Arrupe, if not a green light for Drinan, at least an agreement not to oppose publicly his (first) candidacy.

In his account of using Arrupe’s general prohibition to refuse permission to then-Father John McLaughlin, S.J.—on canonical and religious grounds the obviously correct decision—Guindon shows both that he understood Arrupe’s mind perfectly well and that he exploited the General’s leniency for his own ends: using Arrupe’s grudging one-time concession in order to advance the career of a like-minded Jesuit, and his ban in order to undercut an uncongenial one.

Mankowski, Paul; Weigel, George. Jesuit at Large: Essays and Reviews by Paul Mankowski, S.J. (pp. 154-155). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

more to come on the Drinan-Arrupe business . . .

Treat him or her like an angry bear.

When fighting the mask-enforcer ain’t worth the effort. Masked man checked with passenger next to him, who said no problem if nose not covered.

So I placed it beneath my nose. But about 20 minutes into the flight, the woman across the aisle from me said, “Please wear your mask.”

What to do? I realized that she held all the cards. If I refused, she would almost certainly call the flight attendant, who, whatever her own view of enforcement, would feel compelled to enforce. They had said twice over the PA system that failure to comply could result in a prison sentence. So I kept my mask on and took it off whenever I drank, and I drank in little sips, and whenever I ate peanuts, which I did a few at a time. And I put my mask beneath my nose the two times that the woman across went to the bathroom.

I didn’t focus on my anger at her, which was only momentary. I just decided to see her as an angry bear. So I didn’t waste time thinking about revenge, thinking about nasty things to say, etc. That would have taken energy and taken away from the good feelings I was having about the trip.

Of course, there was a government component at the root of this. The airline would probably not have enforced the rule and certainly wouldn’t have able to threaten a prison sentence if President Biden had not required masks.

Which maybe is one of the reasons students chant “F–k Joe Biden.”