Do we live in confusing times?

What does that even mean? It's such a tired banality piously repeated by the devout. It's right up there with "He/she is in a better place." If you see clearly enough to see that "we live in confusing times" then why do you have constant recourse to repeating the phrase? Why don't you live from the center of your clarity and own it?

I find it interesting how those who say "we live in confusing times", like reality was at their beck and call, have nothing coherent to offer that would actually show the reality of what's occurring in any present situation. They deny development to what is in a present state of slowly or quickly becoming, which is what all time is doing all the time. Their response to crisis is a gnostic cop out; their preemptive crystallization, which is manipulation, is highly annoying. Their premature safeguarding is destructive. This has the effect of both downplaying a crisis (leading to irresponsibility) and exaggerating it (leading to unresponsiveness). Anything that they aren't able to instantly categorize within their false sense of certainty they relegate to the "temporal realm".

Rigidity.

Doctors of Law, Know-it-all Neo-Pharisees - scattered in their inmost thoughts

"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?"

Stacking the Deck

It used to be the Manichean Bogeyman

But that's passe.

"I see Ultramontanists."

Imagine

Can you imagine if it was Pope Francis who headed the installation of the solar panels at the Vatican instead of Pope Benedict?

Oh, the orthodox howling about how eco-socialism is overtaking the hierarchy under Bergoglio! LOL.

Oh, the stats that enterprising know-it-alls would start citing about how solar panels are a high maintenance money-eater and this is all just for show and why isn't that money going to the poor? LOL.

Oh, the profound and prophetic voices declaiming Francis the Underminer as pawning off Holy Mother Church to the carbon-credit depopulation agendas of the ruling elite! Impostor! LOL.

Can you imagine if it was Pope Francis, instead of Pope Benedict, who criticized on a number of occasions the industrial farming of chickens and other animals?

Oh, the orthodox howling about how this ambiguous leader refuses to talk about the issues of abortion and euthanasia! LOL.

And remember how Francis as Cardinal spoke critically about the two top things that western society spends money on?

Cosmetics and pets?

Yes, the good old orthodox crickets.

That's hitting a little too close to home I guess. LOL!

Can you imagine if Pope Francis was asked by some authorities "What should we do?" and he replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely--be content with your pay"?

Oh, the orthodox howling about how he ignored the issue of exposing babies on the Roman steps and how he's a false prophet!

Just imagine!

It's easy if you try!

I wonder if you can!

LOL.

Plug II

Lavazza makes the only good medium roast that I know of. Mostly I drink dark roast, of which there are many kinds, from local roasters, all wonderfully drinkable, but I also bib from the Lavazza medium. One of the worst things is an insipid cup of coffee. It should be a crime. And how did drip machines ever become the norm? All what you need is a kettle or something to boil the water, a grinder to grind the beans (if one does not have a conical burr grinder, then a mortar and pestle I suppose would also work, and work really well, since you are wanting to bust up the beans, or grind by cracking, so that you have grounds that are not uniform, which is what you get with those nasty electric "grinders"), and some kind of metal strainer. I use a french press. "French press" is just a fancy term for what my Uncle Peter called "trapline coffee" (he kept traplines way up north in his homesteading days). There are various methods, and each to his own, but all what it necessitates is pouring the boiled water (having cooled down somewhat from its boiling temperature) into some vessel containing the ground coffee, letting it steep for a minute or two and then stirring the brew (this step is absolutely important and cannot be ignored as the movement being introduced to the liquid releases all the good stuff - hence flavour - from the coffee beans) with a spoon or something and then letting it steep for a few minutes more before straining it off in some way (use a metal strainer of some kind, whatever). Then wrap a tea towel or something around the remaining coffee in the pot or french press glass or what have you. That way you are also being a good steward by not using all that paper for those nasty coffee filters and you can be a little bit more Catholic since Pope Francis is writing an encyclical on the environment, which everyone will be reading, especially those who are more Catholic than the Pope and who heroically and indeed miraculously find the time from their hours of devoted prayer life to engage courageously from behind their computer screens in the greatest fray the world has ever seen since the Arian heresy to save us fantard Ultramontanists from our errors by their authoritative parsing of Francis' words.

Don't be stupid

One of the stupidest things a person can do - and I mean stupidest as in S - T - U - P - I - D, as in there are a hundred other stupid things one could begin with that would look smart beside it - one of the stupidest things a person can do is attempt to "gauge" where the Holy Father stands by who he "demotes" and who he "promotes". It's stupid on so many levels as to be perfectly blind. Not only for what it positively is (the stupidity of presuming an infallible scale of veracity in deciding what makes a promotion a promotion and what makes a demotion a demotion and what makes a position too worthy for such and such a character), but for what it necessarily negates. And what it necessarily negates is that whole, you know, Catholic thing. (Not definitively Catholic thing, but what is assumed in being Catholic thing.) Like, hello creeping Protestantism.

Yet this is what we see the majors and the p.h.d.'s and the widely-read Catholic writers doing. It's amazing. It makes those who should know better into blind guides (like LifeSiteNews). People flock to their favourite oracle Fr. Zuhlsdorf where he drops little nuggets of his seemingly let-slip thoughts for his readers to pick up and they hold on to them like the pearl of great price; with a few off-handed-seeming musing words of his in red he can hold them in throes of sudden despair. It's a sickening disgrace.

How about objectively trusting the Holy Father? He's not there for you to "give him the benefit of the doubt". It's amazing how the know-it-alls are being confounded in their conceit left and right as they attempt to decode Bergoglio.

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

I mean, I'm just really trying to figure out this puzzling Bergoglio! He's such an enigma!

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” --Mt 11:25-30

Anyhow, if a Catholic convert starts casting aspersions on the Holy Father, attempting to illuminate his past as cardinal, bishop, priest and seminarian and earlier as a means of determining what sort of pope we have, then is one allowed to cast aspersions on their former Protestantism as tainting them with a subtly entrenched anti-papist bent?

Whether that writer is a former Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist or otherwise, as one reads their words online is one allowed to say, "Well, no matter how many Catholic t's you cross and Catholic i's you dot, that yeast sure knows how to assimilate it all and come through in the end; for strong and stubborn is the leaven of Protestantism indeed!"

Is one allowed? Don't answer that. LOL.

I need to imbed new code in my template to figure this one out.

My computer crashed! An enigma within an enigma!