Icon - St. Paul the Apostle

B

For Future Reference

Just so you know for future reference: in withholding approval to the question of "same-sex marriage" you are not merely withholding your approval. You are positively avowing your disapproval of it. Get used to that idea. And this disapproval must be given honest expression.

Because the institution of marriage is fundamentally communal, whether you like it or not, you either approve or you disapprove.

Because you are part of a community whether you like it or not, the "redefinition" of marriage, which is fundamentally communal in that it is the foundation and continuation of society and in that it takes place in community, demands an answer.

To not say anything in answer is to say something about what you believe about marriage: that it is not fundamentally communal, but is subject to the isolation of individualistic relativism. That is what you say marriage is then. Therefore, by not answering, you are saying you approve of what certain people seek to do to it.

When someone explains how same-sex civil unions either won't have any bearing on the Catholic Church in society or that one need not fret about it because "it" doesn't aim to "redefine" marriage, then the "redefinition" of marriage has already gained access to their own lips.

For the institution of marriage is fundamentally communal, and to say that legislation regarding unions can exist without bearing upon marriage is to say that marriage is subject to isolation: one of the great unspoken factors in the destruction of marriage has been the isolating elements in technological society, which have caused people to forget, indeed, have positively eradicated from societal memory the vital fact that marriage is itself foundational to the community in which they live.

The negation of community from marriage has meant that man and wife are further pushed into a hateful sort of squaring off with each other in which both unjustly read the other to death, ending in divorce, rather than being the radioactive core that, as one flesh, looks outward on the world.

I positively disapprove of "same-sex marriage" and "same-sex civil unions", and declare them to be anathema: anathema on those who partake in them, anathema on those who preside over them, anathema on those who defend them, and anathema on society itself which it seeks to destroy.

You curse yourselves who would "redefine" marriage; and the curse of Sodom and Gomorrah you bring upon the nation.

Those who seek to "redefine" marriage legislate the destruction of society, the destruction of nations, the destruction of families, all the while erecting an utterly false facade of communitarian peace which is nothing but the Satanic herding of individuals through an unspoken mob mentality into a spiritual, psychological, economic slavery where the most fundamental privacy of individuals is violated and dictated to, and in which children are unjustly brought up without a mom and a dad, but are brought up with two moms or two dads, being unjustly deprived of having both a mother and a father; who are brought up in this unjust way solely to make good the "law" that was enacted to suit the perversions of the same-sex couple.

Isn't it strange, how in this world of ours, that has so much opportunity for isolation from others - especially in the sense of a false individualism where we pretend that what we do has no effect on our neighbours - how in this world of cars and personal computers and not having to know our neighbours next door, we see an unprecedented violation and intrusion on normal privacy?

Let's stop believing in this unconscious individualism business, because the result of believing in it is the loss of your unique individuality.

B

Tarkovsky Tuesday

See, Denethor

'The Stones of Seeing do not lie, and not even the Lord of Barad-dur can make them do so. He can, maybe, by his will choose what things shall be seen by weaker minds, or cause them to mistake the meaning of what they see.' --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, The Last Debate

You know how the tainted "ties" with the liberation theology people and the inherent marxism politics that goes with such people has most likely been the thing that was blocking the cause for the canonization of Romero moving forward? That even though these "ties" were not "ties", but were only the inevitable associations that came from doing his work in that particular world, being pure and clean of all that himself, explicitly condemning these things himself? Yes?

What if Cardinal Bergoglio had to wade in the same, liturgically and otherwise, and that he is well aware of the rupture, the ugliness, the degradation of the Mass, and that he is pure and clean of all that, and because of his experience with all of that he is the most qualified to hold a candle to it?

And the people at Rorate Caeli, all what they do is say, "Look, he was there at the puppet mass! He's tainted! That's why he didn't step out onto the balcony wearing the Papal stole! And untrustworthy sinners he shepherded are saying untrustworthy things about him! Let's "report" it! It's not playing the tool of the enemy! No!"

I have no problems with people using pseudonyms on the internet, but when people get into the calumnious sort of business, as in the above, they lose credibility and they start making me ask, "Well, who the hell is this person anyways who doesn't use his real name? These people who keep pumping out this untrustworthy crap calumniating the Pope while hiding behind a pseudonym?"

You want to use a pseudonym, great. But when you use a pseudonym and calumniate the Pope while claiming the mantle of tradition, you do not gain the ear of this reader; you only make me say, "Why do you use a pseudonym and not your real name?"

In other words, I do not trust you.

Romero cause moving forward

"A Vatican official responsible for the sainthood cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador announced Sunday that the cause has been "unblocked" by Pope Francis, suggesting that beatification of the assassinated prelate could come swiftly."

Go here for article by John Allen

Thanks to The Deacon's Bench

Don't go rancid

So a priest comes before the pearly gates and St. Peter puts his face right up to the priest and is all like, "Hm! Incense and beeswax and wood oil and a certain ineffable starchiness of clean linens! Very good! Now GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE!"

And the priest is all like, "But St. Peter, why?"

And St. Peter is all like, "Because you don't smell like your sheep! Without that, everything else is rancid!"

So anyways - that was cheap shot wasn't it - these words came to my head quite clearly today before mass:

The cross is the key to the infinite storeroom of riches at the heart of Christ's mercy. It is very simple. There is no other key.

Our shepherd is a lamb.

Those who worship the Lamb by stripping themselves of their idols before Him will have the victory of making it through the Great Ordeal.

I love those words from Pope Francis about how Christ does not have a home because he makes His home in us and so we are to "go out of ourselves" in the same manner for that is the true security and preservation of the tradition of the faith, and otherwise we keep the ointment in the jar and it goes rancid.

Material Success, by William Kurelek

5B and 2H

 

5B and 2H

More Mate

All that put me in mind of this Eat the Weeds video on the holly, which is the family that Mate comes from.

Deane teaches you can use some of the specimens to make mate:

5B and 2H

Women

I like this post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker at Standing on my Head:

Somehow or other a combox critic has assumed that because I have asserted that men and women are different that I do not believe in equality for women. This is because in the past the superiority of men has been assumed and women have been downtrodden.

What troubles me is that the person making this statement gives the appearance of being intelligent and somewhat educated. He continues the assumption that because I am a Catholic and believe that hierarchy and patriarchy are an implicit and immutable part of Catholicism that I must therefore be an oppressor of women.

I should put the record straight and say quite clearly that I do not believe women are equal to men. That would be a great injustice to women as it is clear that women are far superior to men. How can I count the ways in which women are superior? First of all, they are better than men at communication. They not only know how to talk, but they know how to read body language, interpret silent signals and they do so with expert finesse and empathy. Women are naturally more compassionate and caring than men and are more in touch with their feelings. Women generally look and smell much nicer than men. Women care much more for children and family and will more often than men have the right priorities when it comes to the most important people in life. In my experience women are distrustful of technology and decide that it is only a tool and not a toy and therefore pay more attention to real concerns. I usually find that women are more mature than men and are quicker to step up and take responsibility and get a job done–especially if it is a job that does not necessarily have anything to do with making money or being the top dog.

Not only are women superior to men, but it is a total fallacy to pretend that other societies in an earlier time have thought otherwise. The Catholics have always held women in high esteem and treated a woman–the Blessed Virgin Mary–as the greatest and best of all created beings. The noble knights of the Middle Ages, like the poet Dante, have treated women as the paragons of beauty, virtue, goodness and eternal light. Women were the great prize to be sought, the reward for which one would lay down his life, the beauty one would die for and the romance one would kneel to supplicate. Women were thought to be the high and beautiful beings who might just tame the beastly man with patience, virtue, love and goodness.

The idea that a woman is inferior to a man is not an ancient idea, but a modern one. It is only when the man’s interests of making money became the most important sign of his significance and worth that the women started to feel inferior. It should be the man who is understood to be inferior because he has to do inferior things like go out to work in a brutal and filthy place like a coal mine or a slaughterhouse or even worse–the stock exchange. It was the man who was only able to do the brutish work of beasts by sweating to earn a living, going out to war or hunting innocent animals to feed his family. Somehow or other modern man turned the world upside down and began to imagine that it was the man who was most important and not the woman–who up til that time rose above it all by being the queen and mother reigning supreme in the center and powerhouse of civilization which we call the home.

It was the modern world who began to denigrate, oppress and abuse women by expecting them to put on overalls and work in factories. It was the modern world who began to treat women badly by telling them they had to lower themselves to be equal to men. It was the modern world who abused women and insulted them and treated them as men’s sex slaves by telling them to use birth control chemicals to turn off their natural instincts to conceive and bear new life. It was the modern world which abused and tortured women by expecting them to go to the abortionist to have the children they had conceived ripped out of their bodies for the convenience, economy and continued irresponsible sexual pleasure of the men in their lives.

Are women equal to men? I would not expect them to stoop so low.

Life is full of paradoxes. Life is continually paradoxical.

For all the truth they speak, and help they may give, the men of the manosphere are not exemplar alpha men. They are, in the end, exemplars of the final and greatest tethering to feminism that man ever devised.

When you base your alpha quest on a reaction towards the abuse you suffered at the hands of simpering selfish women, and conversely base your reaction towards them on your quest to be the alpha man, you have, in effect, made yourself the biggest tool, wholly spawned from feminism.

Pope Francis and Mate

One of the little things I love about Pope Francis - in addition to continuing his patronage with his cobbler in Argentina and continuing with his same black shoes - is that he has made me remember mate tea.

I used to drink mate quite a bit. Then I stopped. I don't know why I stopped. I really like mate.

I think he looks cool in this photo from when before he was Pope:

I mean, how many people could make drinking from a mate gourd in the street look cool?

Anyways, I was thinking about Zed swag, and I realized that Fr. Zed could make a killing selling mate gourds with something printed on them for this new pontificate.

And so I got to thinking...

I knowIknowIknow!

I know Enbrethiliel would order one.

I know Terry would order one.

I would order like a dozen.

"Z-swag mate gourds: bringing the Liturgical Puppet Masters and EF Lovers together in a shared ritual."

FYI: Fr. Zed could walk you to several cobblers - in Italy no less!

Pope Francis

So far, into the pontificate of Francis, the one person who has best exemplified what it is to be Pope is Pope Francis.

The person who has learning to do is you and me and Fr. Zed and New Catholic and everyone else. The Pope is not learning to be Pope. He is the Pope.

He has not stumbled; he is not like a baby learning to walk. Everything he has done so far has been quite timely and amazingly effective with a certain ineffable instantaneousness; a certain quickening that is very confirming.

Just like Pope Benedict's Regensburg Address was very timely and was just what needed to be said and it was the rest of the world that was off center and off kilter and insane.

It is other people who have lost their heads and who are ignorant and who are sleepy. The Pope does not need to wake up and realize he is Pope (ala, WDTPRS?). It is us who are asleep. The evidence for that is in - in freaking spades.

It is other people (at least as far as their online manifestations) - not the Pope - who are so arrogant that they think they have the Pope figured out as they pack things beyond their comprehension into hopelessly ridiculous one-dimensional isolated categories and liturgy-as-politics, who only two months ago were peeing themselves in shock over Pope Benedict's abdication, and up to which point the name Bergoglio had never crossed their minds.

And suddenly overnight they knew everything about him, because a certain blog wished to inform everyone about how they had been "reporting" on him for years, which is to say, posting third-hand hash from a region whose church situation they clearly have not a clue about.

By the way, I've never encountered anti-semitism from a TLMer. (A TLMer? Well, that would be me once and a while. It will be nice when we can do away with these ridiculous categories.)

I have encountered it from secularists though.

And once an anti-semitic comment from a very left-liberal Mass-tinkering priest.

Tarkovsky Tuesday

There's this part in Tarkovsky's Mirror that is in none of the videos posted here (see updates). I couldn't find this particular part on youtube. I've seen Mirror several times, and one time when I watched it this part came up, sort of at the end of a somewhat lengthy tracking sequence; I wasn't expecting it, since the way the film is put together you cannot really remember the sequencing of everything, but the image wasn't "new" to me, since I had watched the film a number of times before.

Yet, unexpectedly, without any sort of forewarning or feelings or build up of any kind, upon seeing this image I suddenly choked and burst into tears.

I didn't know why, and I still do not know why. It was an image of the eternal.





Stupid Mosfilm blocking. Just go to youtube if you want to watch any of it.

UPDATE: Oh wait, vimeo has the entire film you can watch:


Зеркало. Тарковский. from Media Club Beta on Vimeo.


UPDATE 2: Oh, never mind, it has no sub-titles.

UPDATE 3: Anyways, the image I was writing about is at the end of the tracking sequence at 1:37:41 to 1:38:30, looking out the window.

"...wanting to tame the Holy Spirit...

 ...this is called becoming fools and slow of heart." --Pope Francis


"At the heart of a world imbued with a rationalistic skepticism, a new experience of the Holy Spirit suddenly burst forth. And, since then, that experience has assumed a breadth of a worldwide Renewal movement. What the New Testament tells us about the charisms - which were seen as visible signs of the coming of the Spirit - is not just ancient history, over and done with, for it is once again becoming extremely topical." --Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus



“The period following the Second Vatican Council scarcely seemed to live up to the hopes of Pope John XXIII, who looked for a ‘new Pentecost’. But his prayer did not go unheard. In the heart of a world desiccated by rationalistic skepticism a new experience of the Holy Spirit has come about, amounting to a worldwide renewal movement. What the New Testament describes, with reference to the charisms, as visible signs of the coming of the Spirit is no longer merely ancient, past history – this history is becoming reality today.” --Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus



"...apostolic movements appear in ever new forms in history necessarily so, because they are the Holy Spirit's answer to the ever changing situations in which the Church lives...the Holy Spirit is quite plainly at work in the Church and is lavishing new gifts on her in our time.” --Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Emeritus



“Only when the person is struck and opened up by Christ in his inmost depth can the other also be inwardly touched, can there be reconciliation in the Holy Spirit, can true community grow.” --Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Emeritus



“Pentecost is not only the origin of the Church and thus in a special way her feast; Pentecost is also a feast of creation. The world does not exist by itself; it is brought into being by the creative Spirit of God, by the creative Word of God...The pasture where the sources of life flow is the Word of God as we find it in Scripture, in the faith of the Church. The pasture is God himself, whom we learn to recognize in the communion of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. Dear Friends, the movements were born precisely of the thirst for true life; they are Movements of life in every sense.” --Pope Benedict XVI now Pope Emeritus



“After the Council, the Holy Spirit endowed us with the "movements". They sometimes appear to be rather strange to the parish priest or Bishop but are places of faith where young people and adults try out a model of life in faith as an opportunity for life today. I therefore ask you to approach movements very lovingly. Here and there, they must be corrected or integrated into the overall context of the parish or Diocese. Yet, we must respect the specific character of their charism and rejoice in the birth of communitarian forms of faith in which the Word of God becomes life.” --Pope Benedict XVI now Pope Emeritus



“The Ecclesial Movements and New Communities are one of the most important innovations inspired by the Holy Spirit in the Church for the implementation of the Second Vatican Council...Paul VI and John Paul II were able to welcome and discern, to encourage and promote the unexpected explosion of the new lay realities which in various and surprising forms have restored vitality, faith and hope to the whole Church...To meet the needs of the Movements and New Communities very lovingly, impels us to know their situation well, without superficial impressions or belittling judgments. It also helps us to understand that the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities are not an additional problem or risk that comes to top our already difficult task. No! They are a gift of the Lord, a valuable resource for enriching the entire Christian Community with their charisms. Consequently, trusting acceptance that makes room for them and appreciates their contributions to the life of the local Churches must not be absent...The authenticity of new charisms is guaranteed by their readiness to submit to the discernment of the Ecclesiastical Authority. Already numerous Ecclesial Movements and New Communities have been recognized by the Holy See and therefore should certainly be considered a gift of God for the whole Church.” --Pope Benedict XVI now Pope Emeritus



“...the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities which blossomed after the Second Vatican Council, constitute a unique gift of the Lord and a precious resource for the life of the Church. They should be accepted with trust and valued for the various contributions they place at the service of the common benefit in an ordered and fruitful way...one of the positive elements and aspects of the Community of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is precisely their emphasis on the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit and their merit lies in having recalled their topicality in the Church...The Movements and New Communities are like an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in contemporary society...I sincerely hope that dialogue between Pastors and Ecclesial Movements intensifies at all levels...your Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships...carries out a specific mission in the heart of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal...to safeguard the Catholic identity of Charismatic Communities.” --Pope Benedict XVI now Pope Emeritus



“Especially characteristic of your pastoral involvement is and remains your commitment to the "movements": the charismatic movement, Communion and Liberation and the Neocatecumenal Way...you immediately sensed the life that burst forth from them--the power of the Holy Spirit that gives new paths and in unpredictable ways keeps the Church young. You recognized the pentecostal character of these movements...they brought new and unforeseen elements that could not always be integrated easily into the existing organizational structures...they...are gifts to be grateful for. It is no longer possible to think of the life of the Church of our time without including these gifts of God within it.” --Pope Benedict XVI now Pope Emeritus in a letter to Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes

Quote from Fr. Zed about Calumny and Detraction

Bold mine:

"Note the obligation to make restitution.  If you publicly detract from a person’s reputation, you must make equally public corrections and/or apologies."

And what and how much you so clearly saw in the palantir provides you with no excuse.

Yep.

Fresh Air from our New Pope

"The layperson is a layperson and has to live as a layperson with the power of baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself, to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life. And like all of us, the layperson is called to carry his daily cross — the cross of the layperson, not of the priest." --Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in an interview, now Pope Francis

That quote is from this article at National Catholic Register which is about the stagnation of self-referential spiritual worldiness and ecclesiastical narcissism.

Just Because

Found at Domine, da mihi hanc aquam!

I mean, how could one not post it?

5B and 2H

Biff

Tom Wilson (a.k.a. Biff from the Back to the Future films) has a kindle book out called The Masked Man. I just finished reading the preview part at amazon: here. I wanted to keep reading.

Strider! Hermeneutic of Rupture! LOL!

Then Aragorn entered first and the others followed. And there at the door were two guards in the livery of the Citadel; one tall, but the other scarce the height of a boy; and when he saw them he cried aloud in surprise and joy.

'Strider! How splendid! Do you know, I guessed it was you in the black ships. But they were all shouting corsairs and wouldn't listen to me. How did you do it?'

Aragorn laughed, and took the hobbit by the hand. 'Well met indeed!' He said. 'But there is not time yet for travellers' tales.'

But Imrahil said to Eomer: 'Is it thus that we speak to our kings? Yet maybe he will wear his crown in some other name!'

And Aragorn, hearing him, turned and said: 'Verily, for in the high tongue of old I am Elessar, the Elfstone, and the Renewer:' and he lifted from his breast the green stone that lay there. 'But Strider shall be the name of my house, if that be ever established. In the high tongue it will not sound so ill, and Telcontar I will be and all the heirs of my body.'

--The Return of the King: Book V: Chapter 8 - The Houses of Healing


The fake humble Aragorn referring to himself in mere ranger fashion...sheesh, when is he going to refer to himself as Elassar, the Elfstone, and stop it with this damn banalized simplified ranger Strider Telcontar business. Some king that Tolkien envisioned! Bah!

St. Albert the Great on Evangelical Poverty

Found at These Stone Walls.

Liars - The Crucifix and The Totem Pole

Why do people lie?

People lie ultimately because they seek to protect the falsehoods they believe about themselves.

The world of lying is like totem pole. This would include half truths, concealment to retain personal comfort and casual white lies; everything that would preclude a double mind. It is like a totem pole. There is someone you put beneath you, and there is someone above you, which is the reason you put someone beneath you, as you seek to climb to be at the top. But you will not get to be at the top. For at the top resides the Father of Lies, Satan. He will not concede it to you.

The truth is the crucifix, and the Son of God is crucified on it; goodness and innocence itself revealed through the torture of our sins, and thus the truth of our sins is also revealed. The revelation of truth. The good thief was crucified beside the Son of God and he spoke the truth that was revealed and he went to paradise right after he died.

Two

Pagan: Life is short, even if you live to be a hundred and twenty. It goes by like a vapour, like a bird flitting past your window, and the memory of you on this earth goes likewise. Therefore, do not be a fool and miss out on every pleasure that presents itself; you must seize every opportunity of the world, for the god of glamour punishes those who do not gorge from his hand.


Christian: Life is short, even if you live to be a hundred and twenty. It goes by like a vapour, like a bird flitting past your window, and the memory of you on this--quick! the Master is coming!

New World Order

I'm just in the middle of watching this new Still Report:






Update: Hmmm...I don't agree about there not being such a thing as a benevolent dictator. I'm not against monarchy at all.

The Government is Bought

Not too long ago whenever some discussion having to do with the economy came up I would be all, "There needs to be a gold standard!" Like I knew what I was saying.

It's funny because I have no idea where I picked it up from. It's just one of those mantras. When I watched Bill Still's documentary for the first time, I was all, "How can that be?! Where does the value for the money come from??!!! But the value!!! I. Just. Do. Not. Under. Stand!!! WHHHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

But little by little I got educated as to what money is. Believe it or not, I actually asked on occasion in prayer to be made teachable on this subject. Well, a few things came to click, to fall in place. A few things. I think, a few very important things. You discover there were people devoted to this thing way before and articulated it all for you.

I think I'm going to order Still's new documentary Jekyll Island. People should watch The Secret of Oz.

Don't let the was L. Frank Baum telling us a great big secret sounding bit at the beginning turn you off. It's not what it sounds like. This ain't cult material.





The cyclic history that has gone before us, of which our present is the fruition...it's astonishing.

The Poor

"There’s not one determining moment. If you want an example, I suppose the best one would be his option for the poor. Many times that made his life difficult here in Argentina, both in terms of his relationship with the government and also with some business people who wanted him to shut up about it. He always chose the poor people, no matter what, and frankly in this country it can cost you to speak out in favor of the poor." --Maria Elena Bergoglio on her brother Jorge, Pope Francis


"...Not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked. That part of the church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the side of the people and went to the people's defense. Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the church: the poor." --Archbishop Oscar Romero, Servant of God

The unborn are today the poor. I believe Pope Francis has also mentioned human trafficking. All these inconvenient things that stand in the way of building a new world order. The diseased, the deformed, the rejected: our King is a crucified king who is found in them.

I know! People are all like, oh, he's for the poor, he's for the poor! repeating the mantra of the media.

And by golly, they're right. While the actual depth of what those words may yet prove to mean has yet to strike them, as far as words go, they're right. They're not interested in articulating nuanced positions about the Holy Father, as though that's what we have a pope for. It's not lucrative for them. Besides, finding a position between the extremist factions...that's what you call a false center.

2H, 5B and might be B

Latest Dappled Things

Received the latest Dappled Things in the mail the other day.

I read through it.

The poetry is so good. So good.

No government, no economy

Well ain't that funny.

Without a government, without a national sovereign, any economic system that wishes to be more than jungle bartering - that is to say, any economic system that wishes to use money - will inherently be a pyramid scheme, as with Bitcoin and as with gold metallic standard and as with money-as-debt and as with microchips in the skin (the last being transnational: the destruction of sovereign nations, not to mention the destruction of human dignity and freedom). Or it will inevitably become one if it does not start out as one: ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme, plutocracy.

If an economy does not want to have a national sovereign and also does not want to have a pyramid scheme, it must resort to jungle bartering. Not that that would be a bad thing. But it would not be an economy.

It is a binary situation before us, with the third option of jungle bartering.

All the inflationary and flatulent economic gibberish debates issued by insolvent schools of economic thought today comes to down to what we mean by "money".

Many people can't get past this concept that money is somehow supposed to be magically imbued with "value" if it is to have the name "money". Money in itself is primarily a representation of wealth. Nowhere along the line does it lose this being a representation, no matter how much and how gross the abuse.

Money is the measure by which goods meet with needs in the most efficient way possible. Yes, not all of that talk about how we need to bring morality back into the economy is actually working for us. There is a definite leaving point, or a descending entrance point, by which we must recognize that putting food into one's own mouth is not a moral act. What is moral is to put into effect an economy by which goods meet with needs in the most efficient, non-wasteful, non-exploitative way possible. The first way this is done is through that sterile device for the common good, called, "money".

The money is issued to the good produced. That's the way it comes into existence (or is supposed to, debt-free, but which is not done so today). That's the way it circulates afterwards. You can barter in that system too if you want. You can even use gold if you want. But down the line someone will want money for the gold or bartered item, because he can get all manner of things with money without having to barter as with a barterable item.

Money firstly removes the consumption of time that would otherwise be involved in meeting with the good that one needs. I need coffee (so says my addiction). It's a good thing my boss paid me with money and did not pay me with coconuts. Otherwise I would have to find someone who both has coffee and wants coconuts. Why would a coffee seller who happens to be a tea drinker take money for his coffee? Because then he doesn't have to find someone who both has tea and wants coffee in order to obtain the tea he drinks for breakfast. He can simply find someone who sells tea. And so on, for the tea seller who drinks milkshakes.

So, not only does money remove the consumption of time between the meeting of needs with goods; it means that money also gives one time.

Already right there, you have an easing of activity that opens up a horizon for people, all people. When people's needs are met without convolutedness, they have time for production.

Stop right there. Appreciate what kind of a gift money is, which man has devised by his God-given intelligence.

Money in its proper, original, non-abused, non-debt sense, is the republicization of transaction. The littlest transaction has some kind of commonality with a huge transaction. It means that each transaction, without being an inherently moral act, but in merely being a transaction, helps to benefit the widest amount of people. It does not mean you are being charitable with your every transaction. It is a provision made by a nation's government. This is the very definition and aim of economic thought: how transaction can be made most efficient so that, while merely remaining transaction, it benefits the common good. This is what money does, or is supposed to do, when it is not issued as debt or constrained to an artificial standard and when its quantity is controlled.

That's right. By a government.

2H, 5B and might be B

The Tiny Sanhedrosphere

"This is why I have a hard time buying when people tell me that the Urine and Vinegar crowd “love the Mass”. No they don’t. Like you, they frequently express their hatred and blasphemy for the Mass. What they love is a particular aesthetic. And they love it more than Jesus Christ himself, fully present in the Eucharist at the OF. They also frequently express, as you do, their intense hatred of most of the Church and of the Holy Father. HI, it is you and those who talk like you who are the greatest enemies of the EF in the world. And you seem to have absolutely no awareness of the deep evil you advocate. Repent." --Mark Shea responding to a reader

Dawn Eden has a post up about how the source for one of the smears circulated on Rorate Caeli comes from an anti-semite.


One of the most arrogant statements to have come from one of the writers of the team at that blog was a comment saying, in the midst of post after post duct-taping the new Pope into left-liberal boxes, "We report. You decide."

Oh yeah? More like, "We decide what to report in order to influence a certain type of decision."

They do not love the truth. If they did, they would have substantiated in extremis all reports before publishing them right on the heels of the election of a new pontiff.

Will they be forthcoming in publishing corrections and substantiations to those unreliable stories they published? You know, like the one that put to rest the absolutely ridiculous story about "circus time being over"? Do they love the truth?

They lay claim to tradition as the way to God and only set it up as an obstruction and political label and turn it into petty gnostic bullshit (the cool/smart/knowledgeable-we-took-the-red-pill club). They claim to be truth-seekers and are only propagaters of calumnious and unreliable sources. They fumble, bumble, tarnish and turn upside down that which they so self-righteously claim to uphold - in they very same breath they claim to be upholders and keepers.


They have had their reward.

And even that which they have will be taken away from them.


UPDATE: Fr. Angelo has a post up: Antisemitism Cloaked in Lace and Brocade

Bill on Bitcoin

After Bitcoin was explained to him in an interview, Still said:

"So, it's a technocratic plutocracy."

UPDATE: Or a technocratic pyramid scheme:

"That means that if you were one of the early adopters you get paid through the difficulty of those who attempt to mine coins later!  That is, your value increases because the later person's expenditure of energy increases rather than through your own expenditure of energy.  If that sounds kind of like a pyramid scheme, it's because it is very similar to to how the "early adopters" in all pyramid schemes get a return -- your later and ever-increasing effort for each subsequent unit of return accrues far more to the early adopter than it does to you!" --Karl Denninger

 Read this excellently sane and knowledgeable article by Karl Denninger: BitCon: Don't

B

Growing in Sannich

Bob Duncan has been doing for twenty five years what I've been dreaming for about five.




 



 




Not so much the citrus, but everything else - the "hardy subtropicals": pomegranates, persimmons, loquats, feijoa, jujubes, olives, etc. Some articles on him and what he does: here, here, here.

Beard Comments

"Paul Bunyan." --Male


"It's looking wicked." --Male


"That beard is gorgeous." --Male


"That beard is looking fantastic." --Male


"You look like that guy, you know on that football commercial?" --Male (priest)


"You look wild." --Male (priest)


"Wook at dat big haywee guy." --Male (little kid to his older brother)


"Man, that is one hell of a beard." --Male (Passerby. I think he was stoned.)


"You're more than trying it. I would say you're going all Jewish or all Amish!" --Male


"You've exceeded St. Paul's." --Male


"Remember to keep the food out of it!" --Male


"You look like a priest." --Female


"That's quite the beard." --Female (Scottish)


"What's with all this?" --Female


"Paul...Paul...get real!" --Female (Italian)


"Ugh! That feels so weird!" --Female (sister, upon being hugged)


"You look like St. Francis de Sales." --Female

5B and B

5B