Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Two random items. Andy Griffith and Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift

On "X", fka "Twitter" a man who was the father to a large family of daughters (it was either 7 or 9), and who is very conservative, posted an item expressing relief for Taylor Swift.

His points were really good.

Populist right commentators are all up in arms about Swift right now, for reasons that are darned near impossible to discern.  It seems to stem from her expressing support for Democratic candidates in the past, including Joe Biden in 2016.  Well, guess what, she has a right to do that.  You have a right to ignore it. 

She also expressed support for abortion being legal.  I feel it should be illegal.  That doesn't mean she's part of a double secret left wing conspiracy.

But, and here's the thing, there are real reasons to admire her, or at least her presentation, and the father in question pointed it out.  He'd endured taking his daughters to Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, "Lady Gaga" etc., and found them disturbing.

Indeed, they are.

Miley Cyrus went from a child actress to being a freakish figure posed nude on a ball, looking like she was a meth addict who was working in a strip club.  Ariana Grande has at least one song that's out right graphic about illicit sex.  Lady Gaga has made a career out of being freakish, until she couldn't any longer, and like Madonna is another woman who was the product of Catholic Schools who took to songs that are abhorrent in terms of Christian, let alone Catholic, morals.

Swift, in contrast, can only be criticized a bit for dressing semi provocatively on stage, but only somewhat so. Off-stage, she's always very modestly dressed.  Indeed, she's a throwback, with her ruby red lipstick and classic nearly 1940s appearance.

And in terms of relationships, it's noted that she's dating a football player.

Now, we don't know what their private lives are like, but they're admirably keeping them private.  It's hard to know what Swift's views are on most issues.  And we really don't need to.  But in their visible relationship, made visible to us only because of media fascination, they're quite proper.  As the poster noted, the football star is "courting" her.

It's not that there's nothing to see here.  There's nothing to see here which any conservative in their right mind wouldn't have an absolute freak out about.  They're behaving exactly the way in public that supposedly Christian conservatives want dating couples to do.  No piercings, no weird tattoos, no scanty clothing.

Which would all suggest all the angst is about something else, and what that is probably about is the secret knowledge that huge numbers of real conservatives can't stand Donald Trump and won't vote for him.

The Andy Griffith Show

I was at lunch two days ago at a local Chinese restaurant, and across the way an all adult family was discussing the plot of the prior night's Andy Griffith Show rerun.  It struck me that that may not have happened since the 1960s.

It's interesting. 

The Andy Griffith Show went off the air before the Great Rural Purge in Television, but not my much.  It ran from 1960 to 1968.  It was consistently focused on the rural South, and it felt like it depicted the 1950s, which it never did, save for the fact that what we think of as the 60s really started in about 1955 and ran to about 1964.  Indeed, while the show was in tune with the times in 1960, it really wasn't in 1968.

But that in tune with the times is what strikes me here.  The family was speaking of it as if it was a currently running show, not like it was something from 60 years ago.  That suggests that in some ways people have groped their way back in the dark to idealizing the world as it was depicted then, rural, lower middle class, devoid of an obsession with sex (although it does show up subtly in the show from time to time), and divorce a rarity.

Now, the world wasn't prefect in 1960 by any means.  But the show didn't pretend to depict a perfect world, only one that was sort of a mirror on the world view of its watchers.  To some degree, that world view had returned.

Epilog

The Taylor Swift story also appears on the most recent entries for City Father and Uncle Mike's Musings, both of which are linked in on this site.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 54th Edition. The swift and the not so swift edition.


  • Twitter has banned searches for Taylor Swift.

This tells us something about the danger of AI, as what they were searching for is AI generated faux nudes of the singer.

It also tells us something about entertainers we already knew.  Yes, their art counts, but part of their popularity, quite often, is that they're a form of art themselves. Which leads us to the next thing.

Everything about this is wrong on an existential level.  AI, frankly, is wrong.  

And once again, presented with the time, talent, and money to be sufficiently idle to do great things, we turn to the basest. 

  • There's a creepy fascination going on with Tyler Swift
I don't know anything about Tyler Swift, other than that she's tall, and from the photos I've seen of her, on stage she wears, like many female singers, tight clothing.  She appears to be very tall, and is sort of a classic beauty.

I suppose that's the root of it.

Apparently, right wing media and MAGA people are just freaking out about Tyler Swift.  This has been headline fodder for some time, but I only got around to looking it up now, as I don't follow entertainment at all and don't care that much.

Swift is dating some football player.  I don't follow football either, so that doesn't interest me.  Beautiful female entertainers dating sports figures, or marrying them, isn't news, and it isn't even interesting.  Consider Kate Upton and Marilyn Monroe.  Indeed, under the evolutionary biological precept of hypergyny, most rich women in entertainment would naturally gravitate in this direction, as much as we like to pretend that our DNA does not push us in one direction or another (lesser female entertainers, such as Rachel Ray and Kathy Ireland, tend to marry lawyers).  Billy Joel may have sung about the opposite in Uptown Girl, but that truly is a fantasy.  There's really very little direction from them to otherwise take, whether they are cognizant of it or not.

And so now we have this total weirdness:

Right wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec: 
People who don’t understand why I have been commenting on Taylor Swift and Barbie are completely missing the point and NGMI These are mascots for the establishment. High level ops used as info warfare tools of statecraft for the regime.

Newsmax host Greg Kelly:

They’re elevating her to an idol.

Idolatry. This is a little bit of what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!

Far right activist Laura Loomer:
The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open … It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.
Donald Trump fanboy and poster child for political train derailment, Vivek Ramaswamy:
I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall …

And if all of that isn't weird enough for you, a host on the right wing  OAN claims the Swift football dating is a deep state psy op, because sports brainwash kids when they should be focused on religion. 

This is insane.

Liz Cheney warned us that idiocy had crept into the nation's politics.  What more evidence of this is required than this?
  • Celebrity endorsements.
Some of this stems from a fear that Swift might endorse President Biden.  I read something that claimed she had in 2020.

I don't know if she did or not, and I don't particularly care.

There are a host of celebrities who have endorsed Trump.  Nobody seems to get up in arms about that, or even notice it.  So why the concern.

Probably because Swift is seen as the voice of her generation, and that sure ain't the generation that MAGA is made up of.  I.e, she's young and an independent female.  

Look at it this way, would you rather have her endorsement, or Lauren Boebert's?

I frankly don't get celebrity endorsements anyhow.  I don't know why we care what any actor or singer thinks about anything.  Freaking out about it is just silly.
  • Jay Leno is seeking to be the guardian and conservator for his wife, Mavis, who is 77, and has dementia.
This is a tragedy.

It's also a tragedy in the nation's eye. Most of the time really notable figures endure something like this, it's out of the public eyesight.  We didn't watch Ronald Reagan decline on the news.  Of course, we're unlikely to see Ms. Leno endure this either.

But this serves as a warning.  Old age, we often hear, isn't for wimps.  And one of the things about it is that those who remain mentally fit have to take care of those who do not.  Most families find this out.

But what about when they're running for office?
  • The National Park Service reports a 63-year-old man died on a trail in Zion National Park.  Heart attack.

This headline tells us something, too. 63, we're often told, isn't old. But then we're not too surprised when a 63-year-old dies hiking, are we?

  • A concluding thought.  We're getting scary stupid.
Freaking out about Tyler Swift, letting two octogenarians run to carry the nuclear football, engaging in endless weird conspiracy theories. . . we've really let the dogs of insanity out big time.

Frankly, a lot of the time the "elite", by which we mean the educated elite, the cultural elite, etc., kept a lid on this.  It wasn't as if the opinions of "the people" didn't matter, but they were tempered.

That's not happening in the country now at all.  Swift is part of a left wing conspiracy, efforts to prevent gender mutilation are due to right wing meanness.  This is out of hand.

Last Prior Edition:

The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Sunday, January 27, 1924. Lenin's funeral.

Entertainer Mary Bay driving a miniature car, Janaury 27, 1924.

The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.

Action was pledged on the Teapot Dome scandal


The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.

Representatives of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome, providing that Fiume would be annexed to Italy and Susak to what would become Yugoslavia.

Fiume today is in Croatia, as is the island of Susak.

Monday, December 11, 2023

Saturday, December 11, 1943. Dawn of the drones.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of OKW, ordered that V1 rocket attacks commence on London on January 15, 1944, a remarkable order in that the V1 was not yet in production.


The "buzz bomb" was a jet engined drone in modern terms and frankly a fairly brilliant, if imprecise, and therefore immoral, weapon.

In Italy, the US 5th Army offensive was grinding down ineffectively.

Sylvester and Tweety appeared in a new release:

The meaning of some things has changed over time.

Sinatra on Armed Forces Radio Network in 1944.

Frank Sinatra was classified as 4F in the draft ("Registrant not acceptable for military service") due to his perforated eardrum. Army records, however, reveal that Sinatra was actually rejected as "not acceptable material from a psychiatric viewpoint" due this emotional instability, but this was kept private in that more gentle era as to not cause him public distress.

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Monday, October 18, 1943. Jewish Romans transported to Auschwitz.

Germany transported Roman Jews to Auschwitz.   Rome had one of the oldest Jewish populations in Europe.

Japan transferred four provinces of British Malaya to its ally Thailand.

Perry Mason was broadcast on the CBS Radio Network for the first time.  It would run until December 20, 1955.

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 46th Edition. Fatigue.


September 3, 2023.

U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, and articles of impeachment, and issue/culture fatigue

Apparently, Rep. Mills has nothing to actually do.  Perhaps somebody can find something for him, so he has real problems to work on.

I can't help but note that District Attorney Willis in Georgia made a suggestion of that type to Representative Jim Jordan, expressing what is undoubtedly a widely held view that people are really tired of Congress acting like a bunch of children all the time.  

Most people are tired of this.  And by that, I mean a Congress that is monkeying around with bills that aren't going anywhere and are of the nature of throwing gasoline on a fire. We know that this impeachment is going nowhere. We know that a recent bill to do away with the Department of Education isn't either. We know that shutting the government down, which is going to happen soon, just causes the government to lose money.

Some people out in the audience of society may believe that all of this serves to get something done, but it sure isn't obvious.  Most people are simply tired.  Of course, this helps whip up a pre convinced base even though nothing is actually going to happen on a lot of these things.

Relating to fatigue, on another topic I posted on, that being the upcoming Synod on Synodality, I suspect a lot of Catholics are tired of this topic:

Dread and the Synod on Synodality.


At some point, constant change and the search to change things wears people down.  A good argument can be made right now that after Covid, and after a lot of people, would just like things to calm down for a while.  That's part of the reason, I suspect, that younger people are looking back to more traditional times, and maybe that the whole culture is, except in certain quarters.

That may explain why the leaders of the Church, or some of them, are keen on a synod on synodality, as difficult as it is to figure out what that means, while globably, in the pews, only at most 2% of Catholics participated in the survey process.  That alone should give the participants in the synod pause, as it may very well mean that the 2% that responded doesn't reflect anywhere near a statistically signficant number of Catholics.  It may well be that the maybe 5% or whatever of Trads in the parish this morning do.

Of course, part of the reason changed, including unwanted ones, occur is that most people are just busy living their lives. That means people who have what a lot of us do not, surplus time, tend to be reflected in change.  In some instances, that's because of the way that people are employed.  It's ofen noticed by some that institutions are resistant to change, but by the same token, change can be forced on members of an institution simply becuase somebody in charge wants to change things, and everyone else just has their shoulder to the wheel and can't really take note until the change arrives.

On people in different quarters, and obviously wanting things to be different, Saturday I was driving up a really busy city street and saw, on the sidewalk headed towards the center of downtown, which was far away, a young woman riding a bicycle.

She was probably around twenty, fairly thin, had a large tattoo running up her side, and was topless.

It was impossible not to see, and I wonder if she had done it before, as quite frankly she looked nervous.  She probably should have, as she wasn't like the late middle-aged woman, now deceased, who used to ride a Vespa around here topless.  It was always a shock to encounter her, but as impolite as it may be to say it, she wasn't attractive. This young woman was, and for any normal male, she was going to be noticed, an impact added to by the fact that she was well-endowed.

My guess is she was headed to David Street Station, where her breasts were going to be oggled at by many.  And the look on her face belied the fact that she no doubt would maintain that she was there to make some other point.

Another reason we really need to put the brakes on things until we take a look at Chesterton's Fence on all sorts of things.
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Indeed, something of this type, although not quite of this type, lead commentator Amy Otto, in an Op Ed written some years ago, to maintain "Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs".  The caption on the article, which was flippant but which addressed a serious topic, if not idential one, not too surprisingly went viral.

Also not too surprisingly, this is a topic that's been pretty widely studied and the entire observational nature of this is hard-wired into men.  That some don't get this is another defiance of science.

And one putting all the burden, I'd note, on men.  I don't really want to be in the position of taking note of some 20-year-old woman's bare breasts, and I don't want to be seeing something that only a spouse should.  But now I have, and I can't get that back, nor can she, nor can the probably hundreds of men, most with fewer reservations than me, that saw her on Saturday and whose thought went where every they let them go.

US Suicide Rates at all-time high

US suicides hit an all-time high last year

  • Updated 
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About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever. That's according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year. But available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by higher rates of depression or limited availability of mental health services. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says a main driver is the growing availability of guns.

A horrific story, to be sure.

It occured to me for some reason that all things being equal, a record number would likely to be set every year, as the American population continues to grow.  Having said that, the rates are very high, which is referenced in this article.

Predictably, the reporter blames it on the "growing availability of guns", but firearms have been easy to get throughout American history. Availability has grown from the mid 20th Century, which saw a lot of gun control provisions come in which have later faded, in part due to being found unconstitutional, with the 1970s probably the high watermark of that, but if we go back prior to the 1930s, we'd find that things were, in most places, wide open.  Even children could buy firearms in most of the US prior to the 1950s.

What has really changed is a society within any kind of foundation whatsoever.  In the entire Western World, the culture built on Catholicism, but heavily impacted by the Reformation, has seen the foundation attacked and dismantled to be instead one that's now centered on radical individualism.  It's not healthy, and it's killing people.  Added to that, the increasing corporatist culture work in a box life throughout the developed world, that removes people radically from nature, is levying a toll. The combination of both is deadly.

Everyone claims to want to do something about this, which seems to amount to doing something about it sort of clinically, rather than existentially.

Storm Warning

At least 55 people died on Maui. Residents had little warning before wildfires overtook a town

  • Updated 
  • 0

Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames have asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as wildfires raced toward their homes. Officials have confirmed that Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before devastating fires killed at least 55 people and wiped out a historic town. The blaze is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami. The governor warned the death toll will likely rise. Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews that they only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.

I really have to wonder how long a large segment of American society, and the official leaders of the GOP, are going to continue to pretend there's nothing going on climate wise.  It's extremely difficult to grasp why they won't face reality on this, unless of course it's an example of worshiping money as if it was as religion.

People are now dying. Shouldn't this be taken seriously?

Without fail, one of our state's Congressional delegation comes on television or other media to promote fossil fuels and at least two out of the three like to talk about "Biden's radical climate agenda".  Keeping a natural climate isn't a "radical agenda" and simply refusing to discuss this topic is foolish.

Speaking of the Maui fires, some real goofballs are claiming that it was caused by a "direct energy weapons", which they also claim the last devastating California fires were.

It's scary to realize that people who believe something so idiotic have the right to vote.

Lil Tay is not dead.

I'd never heard of Lil Tay, aka Tay Tian, aka Claire Hope, aka Claire Eileen Qi Hope, but this line from her Wikipedia entry says a lot:

Tay's father and manager sought for Tay to become more focused on professionalism, suggesting a music career for her, though her mother and half-brother encouraged her to continue her original boastful character.

Keep in mind, she hit the music scene as a foul-mouthed rapper at age 9.

That's frankly sick, and not "sick" in the good pop culture lexicology way.  Her parents deserve a dope slap for letting that happen in the first place.

Whatever her legitimate name is, her story illustrates the poverty of values in the Western World.  Her parents were simply shacked up over a prolonged time, never married.  At some point, they separated and shared custody of the child.  Somehow, they allowed her to enter into the world of hip hop, which is marked for its celebration of criminal culture and high death rate. That made the stories of her death seem pretty credible.  Hardly a week goes by without some hip hop artist with a made up name dying young, in all the ways that tragic young deaths occur.  Just this week, it might be noted, one such artist was sentenced for shooting another, the victim of the shooting being Megan Thee Stallion (yes, that's a made up name).

When it was revealed she wasn't dead, I wondered if it was a PR stunt.  I'ts being claimed her social medial was hacked.  I see I'm not the only one who was speculating on the stunt possibilities, however.

Regarding Tay, even at age 9 to 14 she's an interesting example of a certain public pseudonym phenomenon.

Entertainers have always affected false names, often due to being required to do so by reporters.  Actors with Jewish names, for example, almost had to take another name early on. Paul Newman, an exception to so many rules in the acting community, is notable here as his real name actually was Paul Newman.

That's pretty much stopped as cultural prejudice of that type diminished.  A peculiar modern phenomenon has been people, particularly women, of mixed Asian and Euro-American heritage adopting their Asian mother's surname as a stage name.  It seems clear enough that Chinese American Tay was given the name at birth of Claire Eileen Qi Hope, i.e., Clair Hope, a pretty generic European name, and when she was drop-kicked into hip hop she became Tay Tian, or at least around there somewhere she did, taking her mother's last name. Priscilla Natalie Hartranft, a Korean American, took her mother's name Ahn, becoming Priscialla Ahn for the stage.  The surprising exception is the very successful Michelle Zauner (Michelle Chongmi Zauner) a Korean American born in Korea, who has kept her given name.  Zauner is the front for Japanese Breakfast, which is eclectically named, however, as Koreans are not particularly fond of hte Japanese.

I guess that takes us to Asian Pop, or maybe K Pop.  It's bad, but seems huge.  I don't know why.  Like a lot of Japanese group, K Pop tends to be very Kwaaii

But not all Japanese music actually is:

While I should not note it, by the way, I'm going to note it anyhow.  And what I'm going to note is that the children of European ethnicity people and Asian ethnicity people look very Asian as a rule.

It's simply an observation. But as a genetic observation, the genes that contribute to appearance are obviously dominant for the contributing Asian partner.

When I was in college, I knew a student whose father was British and mother Japanese.  He looked very Japanese.  Zauner looks Korean (and yes, I've been to Korea).  Ahn also looks Korean, and Tay looks Chinese.  This is merely an observation.

Last Edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.

Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.  

Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.

O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon.  I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression".  In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death.  The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.

Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician.  Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States.  That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order.  She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.

A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success.  Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop.  The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.

By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome.  She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs.  The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality.  Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.

She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.

The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.

O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it.  There are a lot of people in that category.  With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered.  But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.

She also stands, however, for something additional.  Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them.  O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years.  Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open.  And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same.  Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.

Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs.  In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered.  Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.

That's the modern way, however.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 

and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May she rest in peace. 

Tuesday, July 4, 2023

Sunday, July 4, 1943. First Broadcast of the Armed Forces Radio Network.


American Armed Forces Radio Network began broadcasting from the United Kingdom. While the organization had been formed in 1942, this was its very first broadcast.

Subhas Chandra Bose became president of the Indian Independence League at its meeting in Singapore.

Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland and former Polish army officer, and the then head of its government in exile, died in a plane crash at Gibraltar.  While the British ruled the crash an accident due to mechanical failure, suspicions remain that it may have been sabotage.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

February 19, 1943. Donets Campaign launched

The Germans went on the offensives in a region of Ukraine which is in the news constantly now, seeking to regain territory recently lost around Kharkov. They were successful in their month-long effort.  Moreover, Soviet casualties were massively outsized compared to the Germans, which were comparatively light.

Members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler stand by a Marder III tank destroyer at the time of this offensive.  The Marker series of tank destroyers used both German and Soviet guns and was built on a Czech 38(t) chassis. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101III-Roth-173-01 / Roth, Franz / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5478279

Amos 'n' Andy appeared for the first time on NBC.  It remains popular with fans of old radio shows, although I've never grasped how that it continues to be, as it suffers, even in the radio format, from the white in blackface situation.  Having said that, by the fall of 1943 black supporting actors were included.

U.S. forces continued to retreat in Tunisia.

Friday, December 30, 2022

Wednesday, December 30, 1942. Sinatra breaks out, and Soviets starting to. And, Bobby Soxers.

Frank Sinatra appeared as a solo act for the first time, appearing before a screaming crowed of bobby soxers of 5,000 at the Paramount Theatre in New York City.

Sinatra on the radio with actress Alida Valli.*

Sinatra in some ways was the first example of a phenomenon that would attach to certain male performers of the mid 20th Century in which they were the subject of gigantic teenage female fascination.  We tend to think of personalities like Elvis in this category, but Sinatra had the same adulation prior to their experiencing it.

His appearance at this point in time raises certain interesting questions.

Sinatra was born into an Italian American family that endured rough circumstances, to some degree, but which also saw his father go from being a boxer to a fire captain, and which featured a dominant, highly driven mother.  The mother supported the son's endeavors.  Sinatra, who always performed under his own name, took an interest in music early and started singing professionally with bands at age 20.  He sang with Tommy Dorsey's band in the late 1930s, with his desire to break free from the band resulting in a legal battle and persistent rumors that Mafia boss Willie Moretti, who was Sinatra's Godfather, had held a gun to Dorsey's ear.  That rumor was incorporated by Mario Puzo in the novel, and later the movie, The Godfather to apply to a very much Sinatra like character.

Sinatra was a huge hit in the early 1940s, but being of conscript age, the logical question is why he wasn't drafted.  He was categorized by the Selective Service as 4-F, which provides the reason, due to a perforated ear drum, but Army files later indicated that he was regarded as psychologically unsuitable for military service due to emotional instability.  He did tour with the USA in the latter portion of the war.  A lack of wartime service did not hurt him, as it did not hurt John Wayne, which says something about the culture of the time.

He campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

Sinatra lived a long, and not uncontroversial, life, dying at age 82. As all that would really be too long to go into, will stop here, with the World War Two story told.

Bobby soxers should be noted.

Bobby soxers have come to be erroneously associated with the 1950s, but in fact were a 1940s phenomenon.  They were teenage girls and women in their very early 20s who were an early example of the emerging youth culture of the United States.  Indeed, they were in some ways its real pioneers.  They were called "bobby soxers" as, at the time, they wore short "bobbed" socks with saddle oxfords.

Saddle oxfords are a dress shoe now, but they've always had the reputation of being a semi casual dress shoe.  At some point they became heavily associated with students and young people.  They were introduced as a mass manufactured shoe in the early 1900s by the Spaulding Company, with the first example introduced in 1906. That's the same company, we'd note, famous for basketballs, etc., which says something, as at first, it was an athletic shoe, not a dress shoe.

Probably that origin as a sporting shoe caused its popularity.  It crossed over pretty quickly to dress wear, anticipating a later trend we have seen the past few decades of basketballs hoes in that use.  

The shoe came on the scene just as there was a real expansion of women in sports, so it was ideally timed  It became hugely popular with cheerleading teams.  By the 1930s it was approaching near universal adoption by schools as mandatory footwear for girls academic uniforms, although it remained popular with men.  They began to become school uniform shoes for boys in the period as well.

The same period saw a shortening of skirts. The combination of the shorter skirts, saddle shoes, and short socks lead to Bobby Soxers being the name for young women affecting the style.  The style endured until the 1950s, when it faded, but the shoes themselves retained widespread academic popularity until the decline of clothing standards started to set in during the late 1960s.

While it may seem odd now, the style was somewhat risqué.

President Roosevelt spent the morning visiting with Naval personnel, including Admirals King and Leahy, and the Secretary of the Navy.  He was in New York City at the time, and had a doctor's visit in the afternoon.

The Red Army was generally gaining ground everywhere to the south of Stalingrad.

Footnotes:

*Not really related to this entry but for this photograph, Alida Valli was an Italian actress coined by Mussolini as "the most beautiful woman in the world."  She truly was lovely.

Born to nobility, her real name and title was Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg.  She was born in a part of Italy that is now in Croatia, and which had once been part of Austria Hungary.  She was of mixed heritage, but considered herself Italian.

The photo must have been taken post 1943 as she was active in Italy at this time.  Married three times, her first husband was an Italian fighter pilot who was killed in action at Tobruk.

She was popular in Western films throughout her career, which again says something about the times.  Unlike hugely popular Italian actresses of a certain appearance, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, Valli had a more normal figure and rose to popularity in the "dirty" Italy period when Italy was regarded as, and truly was, fairly backwards.

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Thursday, August 3, 1922. Things cheesy.

While the LoC information doesn't identify anything more than the title, a K. J. Matheson was an employee of the Department of Agriculture at the time who was an expert on cheese.  He wrote several scholarly treatments on the same. This is likely a device to shave a cheese wheel.  Photograph from this day in 1922.  Note how this would never pass muster in a modern lab or workshop of any kind due to the lack of protective devices.
 

A New York radio station, WGY, introduced a weekly serial series, the first to do so.

Friday, December 24, 2021

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXV. The Disregaders, The Monetizers, The Fatiguers, The Campaigners, The Habituated, The Corruptors, The Peacemaker, The Rock Thrower, and Some Catholic Things.

The Disregarders.

Apparently, 1915 had the same calendar days of the week as 2021.


Usually towards the end of the year I look forward to a little slack. Not that I've intentionally introduced, but that other people who are better about their schedules than me have.  

Not this year.

People and institutions have scheduled events in the last two weeks of December as if it means nothing at all to them.

I don't like that, but it's been a fact of the year.

Supply chain disruption?  It actually might sort of be.  Everyone is now attune to the material disruption to the economy COVID 19 has caused, but it also caused a big backlog in service provisions of certain types.

The Monetizers



Part of this, I'm pretty sure, is because we live in a society which is 100% monetized.  The only thing that has value is money, as money has value and that's the only thing that counts.  So we got to get in that last big of billing by working to the bitter end of the year for more money so we have more money and then we'll have more money.

If we're really lucky, we can go to our lake house in Wisconsin for three days in June, which we'll enjoy, and then we'll be back to making more money. We won't retire ever, as that would cost money.

And then, sooner or later, death arrives and nobody gives a damn about your money, which other people get, and they'll probably spend.

Our society is, at least somewhat, sick.

The fatiguers

I frankly don't know if I captioned that quite right. Weary might be more correct.

I saw a post by Ross Douthat which was well-placed. Douthat just went through a terrible battle with a really horrific case of Chronic Lyme's Disease, according to him.  It's a diagnosis that isn't recognized by medicine.  Part of that is a really deep fatigue.  He's recently written a book on it called The Dark Places, which I haven't read, and I’m not going to, but the message for that is hope.

I saw it in the context of his link to another author who has just reached a point of number resignation to the Covid world.  I read that author's article and I sort of get it, as I sort of feel at this point the same thing that author does.  I'm just numbed to it.

At the same time, that author pissed me off in a way as its another article by a college professor whose in a situation to pretty much wholly avoid the issue, which most of us aren't.  No matter how deeply you feel about what should be done, if you are out there working in the world, unless the government is willing to back you up on mandates and mask restrictions, you are really compromised in your response.  Vaccines are your only real option, and now we have Omicron which is pretty clearly vaccine resistant to some degree

Except that isn't the right way to put it.  It isn't resistant so much as it evades the protection, to some degree.  You have to get the booster, which I have done.  Then you have pretty good protection, so I should be hopeful.

Still, at this point it seems obvious that everyone is going to get a COVID variant at some point, and a lot of this is due to the initial slow responses to things combined with not having reached out to help Africa.  That last one is a big part of this.  The world just didn't do it.  And as part of that people have been pointing at the United States, but it's much like the illegal migrant problem we have in that even in our failure we're doing a lot more than the rest of the world pretty much combined.

Anyhow, the good news is that if you are fully vaccinated and get a break through, you acquire "super immunity".

When I get it, and sooner or later I will, I guess I'll look forward to that, assuming that I survive it. A history of asthma makes me less than optimistic on the latter.

Anyhow, a really frustrated columnist recently wrote a column I read in which he really lashed out at the unvaccinated, terming them "Covidiots".  I'm not endorsing that term, but I'm seeing the rise of huge tensions here. For those who accept the science, and it leads only on one direction, not getting the vaccination seems, in many instances, not only inexcusable but actually a sort of hostile act for which citations to personal freedom and the like are sorry excuses.  I know some unvaccinated individuals and in my experience they don't make the Internet and Twitter profiles for the most part, so that enlarging frustration while understandable is not really fully merited.  I'm noting this, however, as this is going to get worse.

Indeed, in a couple of instances recently I've heard people who have gotten vaccinated express no real regret over the deaths of those who were in the real opposition camp and didn't get the vaccines.  Maybe there's something to that.  Any untimely death is a tragedy in a larger sense, but just opting to go into the Valley of Death unarmed and unprotected. . . yikes.

Indeed right now I know of an instance of a person who is in the hospital and is going to die.  They were in the obstinate camp.  And recently a person I dimly knew died of it. That person was a really decent individual, but sometimes came across as proudly conservative in the flying the flag a little higher than the rest sort of way.  Now that person is dead, and given the community that the individual hailed from, which has largely accepted the vaccines, there's really no excuse for it.  It's hard not to think that.

Beyond that, and creating the counter reaction I think, are the few vaccine opponents who are outright idiots.  I've recently seen two posts by people who claim that 100% of the vaccinated are going to die from the vaccines. That's just flat out stupid, but in an era when the stupidest among us have a public platform, it's pretty distressing.  And those who have accepted the science understandably angry.

The Campaigners

Also making people angry now is the topic of politics, which is as frustrating as COVID.  It's not surprising, as much of what is going on with COVID is in fact political.

I typed out a long missive elsewhere on this topic, but we have right now the oddest denial situation going on ever.  It's really clear that Donald Trump lost the election last year.  And its now really clear that even those pretty close to him and in his orbit, and therefore influence, were fully aware of that.  Nonetheless, the GOP is denying it.

For the Democrats this is of course baffling.  But it also is for the old rank and file generally conservative street level Republican, and for the large unaffiliated.  How can this keep going on?

It raises real questions about whether a democracy can actually survive in the age of the Internet. Some societies have decided the answer to that is no. The Chinese, who weren't democratic to start with, obviously have, but other nations are backsliding in their commitment to it.

The US definitely is and right now the Republican Party leadership at the state level is operating in that direction, but then many of the people in that position seem to be convinced of conspiracy theories and seemingly can't be unconvinced, no matter what.

We'll see.

Anyhow, this is also leading to frustration as it seems anyone with an extreme position is going to be the one who gets an audience right now.  Moreover, if you know that some of the people who are basically backing these theories really don't believe them, it brings you back to something that's frustrating for practitioners of the law.

People lie.

Right now, for people paying attention, we darned well know that a lot of people with a public pulpit are lying.  Last week on Meet the Press the audience got the spectacle of a physician in Congress trying to explain why he's against mandates.  It's really difficult to believe that if he had his druthers, he actually is.

It's not just this, I'll note.  One thing that physicians know is that even if you tell a person to give up a habit that is set to kill him, most won't.  Just looking around, that seems to be the case for society in general, on all sorts of levels.

The Habituated

While I'm posting on the topic of refusing to yield to evidence, I'm going to note retained habit. This is more in the nature of a "peeves" type of post, but I'm going to post it anyway.

I suppose everyone has these, but its interesting how people just won't yield to a current situation in the face of a retained habit from the past.  Most of these are harmless, but everyone once and a while you'll find one that's harmful or, if not harmful, disgusting.  Or aggravating.

Again, I'm sure everyone has some of these.

I do have on in mind that causes me to post here, but I'm not going to actually state what it is, as its' so unique that it'll offend the person if they read it, but to sort of somewhat camouflage it, it's basically in the nature of "when I was a kid we didn't have much food, so at the end of the day we collected all the leftovers and put them in a bowl, as we didn't have refrigeration, and left them on the back stoop overnight.  IN the morning, we brushed off the raccoons and we had a big morning bowl of left over gruel. . . ".

What the crap?

Okay, maybe that was the case, but that doesn't mean you have to do it now.  You aren't that poor and you have a freakin' refrigerator.  Just stop it.

I know it won't be happening.

Anyhow, I've seen this in all sorts of fashion.  People who save endless piles of boxes as when they were a kid they endured the great box shortage of '79.  Who knows.

Another variant of this is the insistence of arguing about something as those the conditions of your youth still prevailed.  As in "dagnabbit, I don't know why we don't demand that things come by mail by noon. . . "
Mail?

Or, "we can't possible computerize that, why back in '72 when we got IBM Selectrics. . "

Uff.

The Corruptors

I think it really destroyed my brain, and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn. I think that I had sleep paralysis and almost night terrors and nightmares because of it. I think that’s how they started because I would watch abusive BDSM and that’s what I thought was attractive. It got to a point where I couldn’t watch anything else—unless it was violent, I didn’t think it was attractive.

Billie Eilish on watching pornography starting at age 11.

Rather unintentionally, and probably as she's constantly on the news as the paparazzi and entertainment media are completely obsessed with her, Billie Eilish ends up on this blog quite a bit, or at least she has in the last couple of years.  This is all the more surprising as: 1) I don't like her music at all, 2) I'm not terribly interested in Eilish in general and 3) she's got major problems of all sorts and probably ought to take a long holiday, go to Taco Bell, and reappraise things.

The press sure is all over her, however.

Anyhow, it's pretty clear that Eilish is a bit messed up, and is trying to come out of it, which would probably be a long haul for somebody with her background.  Look up anything about her, and you'll see why.  She's not exactly the product of a normal upbringing.  She could probably use, frankly, a couple of months off and a few trips to Taco Bell.

Anyhow, she's not a small gal, which is one of the reasons that men and boys have been fascinated with her. Contrary to what women seem to think, and what the fashion industry foists on them, the ideal female form, from the male prospective, isn't toothpick like.  In other words, Eilish is built.  

She's probably been really built for a while, and most teenage girls don't really want men leering at them, let alone men on the internet leering at them, so the baggy clothes, etc., are probably understandable.  She's been shedding those recently, which may be because somebody handling her career realizes that she needs to affect a new image.  Long lasting musical careers that start off in early age have to do that. There's some good examples of that, and some bad ones.  I.e, you probably don't want to board the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus train.

Anyhow, it was already evident that Eilish was a victim of modern hip WASP culture, but her statement above is really interesting, and she's to be praised for stating it.  Being exposed to that sort of thing at her young age, or any age younger than 127, is no doubt brain destroying and its child abuse too.  Kudos to her for stepping up.

Now, if only somebody would do something about it.  Seems unlikely, "free press" and all, even if the framers likely didn't mean that sort of thing when they passed the First Amendment.

On that, it's interesting that the liberals argue for the widest possible interpretation of this text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Quite a few scholars have theorized that by "speech" and "press" the framers of the Bill of Rights were discussing political speech. The Supreme Court, however, has pretty much said "well, 'political" isn't in there", which gives us the current interpretation, which liberals and progressives praise, but which social conservatives aren't keen on.

Conversely, on this one:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

. . the opposite logic is applied by the respective parties.  Liberals will say "well, obviously some infringing limits are implied. . . and it only means you can join the National Guard", when it doesn't say that.

All of which goes to show people tend to be hypocritical and really mean "the Constitution ought to say what I think it ought to say".

That whole "Oath Keeper" organization is all about that.

Anyhow, the early framers didn't really approve of lewd and solicitous material, and therefore they likely would have not thought that locking somebody up for pornography was contrary to the Constitution.  Indeed, in an era when newspapers didn't have photos and were limited to etchings, they couldn't have imagined what we've ended up now.  

Anyway, if the same people who argue that the framers couldn't have foreseen AR15s would accept the evidence of a more widespread social problem. . . 

Anyhow.

Also sort of related to this is the recent news that an actor from Sex and the City has been accused of rape.

Advertisement for tramps, um. . . Sex In The City that showed up on my Twitter feed. New chapter. . . well it would seem so with the same old vices. . . . in more ways than one.

Now, I'm not going to publish the name in part because these are accusations, he could be innocent.  I'll further note that nothing is easier in the world than accusing a man of this right now.

Having said that, I did read these stories and, unlike the Eilish ones, that takes a little intentional effort.  But I detest Sex and the City and that's why I was curious.  And while the stories may be false, having read the accounts of the first two, they're a bit hard to discount.

They're also something that many of the stories we've otherwise read about in the "Me Too" era are not. They're accusing the actor of flat out rape, not of taking "inappropriate" advantage of a circumstance presented by an actress prostituting her position for a better one, which some of these stories sometimes seem to present.  That's wrong, but not as wrong as this.

In at least one of the stories the accusatrix herself admits she was being dumb.  She relates that she accepted an invitation from a married man which she admits pretty much amounted to stepping out with the individual behind the wife's back.  It's also clear, however, that she naively thought that didn't mean that sex was going to be expected.  Sex shouldn't be expected, of course, but like a lot of deeply immoral acts, once you start heading in one directly chances are that you'll end up going all the way, and by accepting the offer in the first place the train had been boarded.

But not to rape, and her story is pretty credible.  Indeed, two of these stories amount to what's violent rape and the third inappropriate conduct.

So what's my point?

Well, should we be surprised?  If somebody makes it big on a television show that might as well have been called Rampaging Illicit and Stupid Behavior in the Greater Metropolitan Area, and they further make it big as "Mister Big", and no matter what the story may be its clear a double entendre, can a person really live a saintly life otherwise?  Shoot, again, the immortality train had already been boarded.

Which gets back to backing the train up.

And to do that, you have to get back to the root of the evil and pull it up.  Eilish sorts of suggest that.  People releasing the new Sex and the City movie, certainly aren't going to.

On Eilish, her real name, FWIW, is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell.  But for the entertainment rule that you have to adopt some name other than your own, she'd be Billie O'Connell.  

Pirate?

Anyhow, now probably lost to history, Eilish is an Irish Gaelic first name.  It is a female name, and it means "Pledged to God".

Billie, after her trip to Taco Bell, maybe ought to take that month off in a monastery or convent.  I'm completely serious.  Engage that name and see where that leads.

Of interest here, sort of, is that the character in the novel Brooklyn, which the movie is based on, was named Eilis, a variant of the same name.   Like a lot of Irish names, there are multiple spellings, showing the suppressed nature of the language for many years. The film is very good, I'd note (I haven't read the book) but it has some odd failings in it, but which are probably inserted for dramatic tension.  A central one is that the Irish girl and Italian young man meet at a dance at an Irish Catholic parish, but when she returns to Ireland they hastily marry in a civil union. That frankly just wouldn't have occurred.

And there would have been no reason to.  In the New York of the early 1950s, the Irish and Italian populations were huge.  Indeed, up into at least the 1980s the Irish still were the second largest population of illegal immigrants in the United States.  They could have just gone to the Parish Priest and have been married on the spot, no problems.

On odds and ends, if you type "illegal immigrants" into  your blogspot draft text now, it suggests "undocumented migrants" or "irregular migrants".

That's complete crap.

If you migrated into the country illegally, that makes you an illegal alien.  That doesn't mean you are a horrible person in some other fashion.  It does mean that those who can't admit that in print are full of it, however.

Back to the accused for a moment, he flat out denies the accusations, but muddied it by noting that things were "consensual". There would be a big difference between consent and what he's accused of, but he might have missed the point.  Indeed, society at large continues to.  If you act like an alley cat, sooner or later somebody is going to call Animal Control on you, even if you were just laying in the sun at the time.

Also, predictably, the accused's fellow cast members have now turned on him, in support of the accusatrixes, whom they don't know, even though they know him.  This is routine.  Guilty or not, as soon as this happens, the accused is pretty much out in the cold.

The Peacemaker?

Probably not, but it's notable that this past week President Biden gave credit to President Trump for the early vaccine development, and Trump practically fell all over himself thanking Biden, even noting that there needed to be healing and this would help.

A return to saner times? 

We can only hope so.

The Rock Thrower

Joe Manchin is an old time Democrat, but which we mean of the blue dog type of the 70s and 80s.  He's not a Republican, even though Mitch McConnell is now inviting him in.

Manchin has survived the Democratic erosion in a once Democratic state and remained in office.  He's a pro-life moderate Democrat who gave plenty of signals he wasn't going to vote for a big budget social spending bill.  Now, all the Democrats are miffed at him as he isn't a left leaning progressive.

It's odd how this goes.  I've even seen liberal Democrats made that he lives, in D. C., on a giant houseboat.  He never claimed poverty.

Democrats need to be careful. They're pushing Manchin into the GOP.  If they succeed, the Republicans will be in control of the Senate.

Some Catholic Things.

Chinese rendition of the Annunciation.

I went to the 6:30 Mass at the downtown parish on December 8.

Yes, that's early in the morning.  I was up any way.

December 8 is the Feast of the Annunciation, and it's a Catholic Holy Day.  Nonetheless, I would not normally have gone to the early daily Mass.  Rather my normal practice would have been to go to the 5:15 p.m. at the downtown parish, except they no longer have a 5:15 Holy Day Mass.  They changed it to 6:00 p.m, which is what the across town parish also has.  The neighborhood one near my parents house has a 5:30 p.m., and that was my actual plan.  Given my druthers, I'd opt for a noon Mass at the downtown parish, but there isn't a noon Mass.

Priests are actually restricted on the number of Masses they can say in a day, which is usually three on a Sunday and two on a weekday.  Given that, they can only fit in so many even if they wanted to say more.  Most around here are saying about the maximum number on the weekends and all three parishes have daily Masses.  For reasons that aren't very clear to me, which doesn't mean that there isn't one, nobody offers a noon one.  The downtown parish used to, and when it did, I tried to make it to that one fairly regularly.  I miss it, and I could use it, given that I'm a bad person and could use frequent correction.

A better person would avail themselves of a morning Mass, but for reasons I also don't understand only the downtown parish has a really early one.  And 6:30 is really early, suffice it to say.  I'd think, not knowing better, that may a 7:30 or even an 8:00 am Mass would be a good option for one of the three parishes, but the other two have daily Masses at 9:00 a.m.  

Anyhow, in spite of something like five decades of residing here, with a break for residence in Laramie, this the first time I'd ever made the 6:30 a.m. Mass.

Now, I've pretty much given up sleeping most nights anymore, so I could easily make 6:30 almost every day, but most days I just sort of doze around the house at first. Almost every blog entry on this blog is written between 3:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., when not much is otherwise going on.  But on Wednesday, December 8, it was actually my wife who woke me up at 3:00.  The wind was howling, and it woke her up, and she woke me up.

So, the schedule was obvious.

If you are a sincere orthodox Catholic, or even just Catholic, you'll have lived your entire life with the news being that everything in the Church is disintegrating, and it's all about to fall apart, and a revolution is going on. And in some ways, that's true, because it's always been true.  Heresies, rebellion and dissention have been a feature of Christian life since day one. Theodotus of Byzantium may have been first out of the gate with a heresy in the year 190, the same being condemned by the Synod of Antioch in 268.  By that time, however, there were already others.  In some eras the heresies inside the Church were so strong that they threatened, from an outside observer, to overwhelm it.  Constantine the Great, for example, who is venerated in the Eastern Church as a Saint, was actually baptized by a Gnostic Bishop, which shows how strong that heresy was in the 300s.

That is just noted as the constant theme that everything is falling apart has been a constant them.  Chesterton, in one of his pithy observations, noted that a proof of the Church's Devine mission and support was that nothing so badly run by humans could otherwise survive, and while that's satirical, there's something to it.  The demise of the Church, or the "reform" of it, have been threatened again and again, but it outlasts its enemies and would be reformers pretty readily.

Annyow, to hear critics and commentators, you'd think that a 6:30 a.m. Mass would be attended only by the very elderly.  And as I'd never been to it, but only heard one of my late partners refer to his contemporaries who were "daily communicants" in regard to it, that was my unthinking expectation. 

Well, not so.

And. . . the Synod's logo.  I really dislike it.

I have not posted on the ongoing Synod in the Catholic Church as I don't really understand what is going on, and that's my own fault.  

I don't share the knee-jerk reaction that some conservative Catholics do that it's all a vehicle for left wing progressive Catholics to overhaul the Church.  Even if that were the intent, which I don't think it is at all, that's not going to happen and thinking that it is going to work in making the Catholic Church into the Episcopal Church.  To think that shows a certain lack of faith, really, in the Church.  If we believe, as we Catholics do, that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, then we really don't have to worry about it falling into the errors of those groups that we hold have fallen into things that are "completely null and utterly void",  as we have stated about certain things about our departed brethren.  

Indeed, I suspect that Pope Francis may have in mind for this a process that basically makes the efforts of the German bishops, which really do threaten to throw the German church into schism or worse, pretty much irrelevant.  One thing that's commonly missed by Western focused media, which tends to have tunnel vision on such things, is that Catholicism is growing rapidly in the world, with much of that growth focused on what used to be called the Third World.  And their Catholicism is orthodox and active.  The Church in Africa, therefore, is likely to resume an influence it has not had since the 5th Century, and rightfully so.  It's therefore pretty likely that this Synodal process is likely to give more voice to African and Asian Bishops than German ones.

And as part of that, cultures that are not Western or not exclusively Western are likely to be the ones that really influence things.  Wealthy Americans progressives may want to go to their local meetings and talk about gender and transgenderism, for example, but that's not what African and Asian Catholics who believe that such things are solely part of European culture are going to wish to discuss.  

And this is certainly a valid process, having roots very much in the history of the Church.

So, I'm hopeful.

But also irritated.

Why?

Well, I'll start with the logo.  I hate it.

I'm somewhat relieved to find that I'm not the only one.

With all of that said, it’s worth noting that dioceses around the world have begun releasing materials for the local phase of the synodal process. And many of those dioceses are using the same crayon-block fonts for their materials that the Holy See used for the official logos and guidebooks.

Here’s the main synod logo, courtesy of the Vatican:

Here’s a graphic released by one Canadian diocese, apparently committed to font consistency with the Holy See:

Here’s a clip from another diocesan synod resource:

A friend made a pithy observation this week: “There is a certain incongruity on holding a synod on something as abstract as ‘synodality’ (which is a neologism coined by the pope), that needs a primer in Greek etymology to explain, then using a finger paint font to publicize the whole thing.”

An incongruity, indeed.

I'm totally lost on the reason that an institution that sponsored and is responsible for much of the great art in the world has, since the 1970s, insisted on such childish depictions.

And this one uses the Comic Sans font.

Argggg!!!!

The Comic Sans font was introduced in 1994 with the specific intent to have a computer font that looked childish.  People recognize it as such, and that send the wrong message.  Indeed, the font became so overused that it inspired an entire set of "ban Comic Sans" websites and movements, and yet it's still, unfortunately, around.

The font is so hated that in the 2005 youth model parliament in  Ontario, the New Democratic Party included a clause banning it in the salon's omnibus ban bill.  Cartoonist Dave Gibbons, whose art work inspired it, doesn't like.  A New York Time survey found that use of the font makes the readers slightly more inclined to distrust any statement written in it.

And no wonder, it's supposed to look childish.

One of the things that Comic Sans haters noted early on was its adoption by churches.  

This is a very 1970s thing.  Starting in the 1970s churches became concerned that they were being perceived as being restrictive.  The reaction was naive as it indicates a certain lack of a grasp over their own doctrine.  If they had a bunch of rules that they attributed to the Devine that they had themselves simply made up, and there are examples of that particularly in certain Protestant denominations, that's one thing.  I.e., claiming that drinking any alcohol is a mortal sin is an example of such which is simply wrong. But where rules are based on items of real dogma, to try to make them "less threatening" to an audience that wasn't threatened in the first place misunderstands the purpose of the rules and insults the audience receiving them.

That's not really what we're seeing here.  Rather, this is a throwback to a certain Spirit of Vatican Two type of atmosphere that would suggest that the visual artists is probably a really aging boomer.

Now, I don't know that.  I couldn't figure out who the actual artist is.  The Vatican's website does have an article on it, which states:

A large, majestic tree, full of wisdom and light, reaches for the sky. A sign of deep vitality and hope which expresses the cross of Christ. It carries the Eucharist, which shines like the sun. The horizontal branches, opened like hands or wings, suggest, at the same time, the Holy Spirit.

The people of God are not static: they are on the move, in direct reference to the etymology of the word synod, which means "walking together". The people are united by the same common dynamic that this Tree of Life breathes into them, from which they begin their walk.

These 15 silhouettes sum up our entire humanity in its diversity of life situations of generations and origins. This aspect is reinforced by the multiplicity of bright colours which are themselves signs of joy. There is no hierarchy between these people who are all on the same footing: young, old, men, women, teenagers, children, lay people, religious, parents, couples, singles; the bishop and the nun are not in front of them, but among them. Quite naturally, children and then adolescents open their walk, in reference to these words of Jesus in the Gospel: " I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children”. (Mt 11:25) 

The horizontal baseline: "For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission” runs from left to right in the direction of this march, underlining and strengthening it, to end with the title "Synod 2021 - 2023", the high point that synthesizes the whole.

That attributed the design to Isabelle de Senilhes, sort of.  I actually had to look her up, and then go to her French language Twitter feed to confirm that, forcing me to resort to my dim knowledge of French to confirm that.

Well, I probably ought to exercise my French more, but it was an easy read.  Je me souviens, un peu.

Anyhow, she is not an aging boomer at all, but a French graphic artist.  And I basically like her logo, for the most part.  And I learned from her twitter feed that there's a campaign to stop McDonald's in Florence.

I didn't sign the petition, as I don't live in Florence, but I can understand why that might upset people.

Anyhow, the Comic Sans font really send the wrong message.  It's stuck in the 1970s and will only distract. This is a serious matter, and a childish font detracts from that.

While on matters Catholc, the Pope answered a dubia on the meaning of his recent restrictions on the old form of the Latin Mass.  


Pope Francis earlier ignored a dubia on other topics, but he answered this one very quickly.  Here it is:

ESPONSA AD DUBIA

on certain provisions of the
Apostolic Letter
TRADITIONIS CUSTODES issued “Motu Proprio”

by the Supreme Pontiff
FRANCIS


TO THE PRESIDENTS

OF THE CONFERENCES OF BISHOPS

Your Eminence / Your Excellency,

Following the publication by Pope Francis of the Apostolic Letter “Motu Proprio data” Traditionis custodes on the use of the liturgical books from prior to the reform of the Second Vatican Council, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which exercises the authority of the Apostolic See for material within its competence (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 7), received several requests for clarification on its correct application. Some questions have been raised from several quarters and with greater frequency. Therefore, after having carefully considered them, having informed the Holy Father and having received his assent, the responses to the most recurrent questions are published herewith.

The text of the Motu Proprio and the accompanying Letter to the Bishops of the whole world clearly express the reasons for the decisions taken by Pope Francis. The first aim is to continue “in the constant search for ecclesial communion” (Traditionis custodes, Preamble) which is expressed by recognising in the liturgical books promulgated by the Popes Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 1). This is the direction in which we wish to move, and this is the meaning of the responses we publish here. Every prescribed norm has always the sole purpose of preserving the gift of ecclesial communion by walking together, with conviction of mind and heart, in the direction indicated by the Holy Father.

It is sad to see how the deepest bond of unity, the sharing in the one Bread broken which is His Body offered so that all may be one (cf. Jhn 17:21), becomes a cause for division. It is the duty of the Bishops, cum Petro et sub Petro, to safeguard communion, which, as the Apostle Paul reminds us (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-34), is a necessary condition for being able to participate at the Eucharistic table.

One fact is undeniable: The Council Fathers perceived the urgent need for a reform so that the truth of the faith as celebrated might appear ever more in all its beauty, and the People of God might grow in full, active, conscious participation in the liturgical celebration (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 14), which is the present moment in the history of salvation, the memorial of the Lord’s Passover, our one and only hope.

As pastors we must not lend ourselves to sterile polemics, capable only of creating division, in which the ritual itself is often exploited by ideological viewpoints. Rather, we are all called to rediscover the value of the liturgical reform by preserving the truth and beauty of the Rite that it has given us. For this to happen, we are aware that a renewed and continuous liturgical formation is necessary both for Priests and for the lay faithful.

At the solemn closing of the second session of the Council (4 December 1963), St Paul VI said (n. 11):

“The difficult, complex debates have had rich results. They have brought one topic to a conclusion, the sacred liturgy. Treated before all others, in a sense it has priority over all others for its intrinsic dignity and importance to the life of the Church and today we will solemnly promulgate the document on the liturgy. Our spirit, therefore, exults with true joy, for in the way things have gone we note respect for a right scale of values and duties. God must hold first place; prayer to him is our first duty. The liturgy is the first source of the divine communion in which God shares his own life with us. It is also the first school of the spiritual life. The liturgy is the first gift we must make to the Christian people united to us by faith and the fervour of their prayers. It is also a primary invitation to the human race, so that all may lift their now mute voices in blessed and genuine prayer and thus may experience that indescribable, regenerative power to be found when they join us in proclaiming the praises of God and the hopes of the human heart through Christ and the Holy Spirit”.

When Pope Francis (Address to the participants in the 68th National Liturgical Week, Rome, 24 August 2017) reminds us that “after this magisterium, after this long journey, We can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible” he wants to point us to the only direction in which we are joyfully called to turn our commitment as pastors.

Let us entrust our service “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4,3), to Mary, Mother of the Church.

From the offices of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 4 December 2021, on the 58th anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution on the Scared Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium.

✠ Arthur Roche
Prefect

 

 The Supreme Pontiff Francis, in the course of an Audience granted to the Prefect of this Congregation on 18 November 2021, was informed of and gave his consent to the publication of these RESPONSA AD DUBIA with attached EXPLANATORY NOTES.          

 

 Traditionis custodes

Art. 3. Episcopus, in dioecesibus ubi adhuc unus vel plures coetus celebrant secundum Missale antecedens instaurationem anni 1970:

[…]

§ 2. statuat unum vel plures locos ubi fideles, qui his coetibus adhaerent, convenire possint ad Eucharistiam celebrandam (nec autem in ecclesiis paroecialibus nec novas paroecias personales erigens);       

To the proposed question:

When it is not possible to find a church, oratory or chapel which is available to accommodate the faithful who celebrate using the Missale Romanum (Editio typica 1962), can the diocesan Bishop ask the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for a dispensation from the provision of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes (Art. 3 § 2), and thus allow such a celebration in the parish church?

The answer is:

Affirmative.

Explanatory note.

The Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes in art. 3 § 2 requests that the Bishop, in dioceses where up to now there has been the presence of one or more groups celebrating according to the Missal prior to the reform of 1970, “designate one or more locations where the faithful adherents of these groups may gather for the Eucharistic celebration (not however in the parochial churches and without the erection of new personal parishes)”. The exclusion of the parish church is intended to affirm that the celebration of the Eucharist according to the previous rite, being a concession limited to these groups, is not part of the ordinary life of the parish community.

This Congregation, exercising the authority of the Holy See in matters within its competence (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 7), can grant, at the request of the diocesan Bishop, that the parish church be used to celebrate according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 only if it is established that it is impossible to use another church, oratory or chapel. The assessment of this impossibility must be made with the utmost care.

Moreover, such a celebration should not be included in the parish Mass schedule, since it is attended only by the faithful who are members of the said group. Finally, it should not be held at the same time as the pastoral activities of the parish community. It is to be understood that when another venue becomes available, this permission will be withdrawn.

There is no intention in these provisions to marginalise the faithful who are rooted in the previous form of celebration: they are only meant to remind them that this is a concession to provide for their good (in view of the common use of the one lex orandi of the Roman Rite) and not an opportunity to promote the previous rite.

 Traditionis custodes

Art. 1. Libri liturgici a sanctis Pontificibus Paulo VI et Ioanne Paulo II promulgati, iuxta decreta Concilii Vaticani II, unica expressio “legis orandi” Ritus Romani sunt.

Art. 8. Normae, dispositiones, concessiones et consuetudines antecedentes, quae conformes non sint cum harum Litterarum Apostolicarum Motu Proprio datarum praescriptis, abrogantur.        

To the proposed question:

Is it possible, according to the provisions of the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, to celebrate the sacraments with the Rituale Romanum and the Pontificale Romanum which predate the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council?

The answer is:

Negative.

The diocesan Bishop is authorised to grant permission to use only the Rituale Romanum (last editio typica 1952) and not the Pontificale Romanum which predate the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council. He may grant this permission only to those canonically erected personal parishes which, according to the provisions of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962.

Explanatory note.

The Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes intends to re-establish in the whole Church of the Roman Rite a single and identical prayer expressing its unity, according to the liturgical books promulgated by the Popes Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council and in line with the tradition of the Church.

The diocesan Bishop, as the moderator, promoter and guardian of all liturgical life, must work to ensure that his diocese returns to a unitary form of celebration (cf. Pope Francis, Letter to the Bishops of the whole world that accompanies the Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio data Traditionis custodes).

This Congregation, exercising the authority of the Holy See in matters within its competence (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 7), affirms that, in order to make progress in the direction indicated by the Motu Proprio, it should not grant permission to use the Rituale Romanum and the Pontificale Romanum which predate the liturgical reform, these are liturgical books which, like all previous norms, instructions, concessions and customs, have been abrogated (cf. Traditionis Custodes, n. 8).

After discernment the diocesan Bishop is authorised to grant permission to use only the Rituale Romanum (last editio typica 1952) and not the Pontificale Romanum which predate the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council. This permission is to be granted only to canonically erected personal parishes which, according to the provisions of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962. It should be remembered that the formula for the Sacrament of Confirmation was changed for the entire Latin Church by Saint Paul VI with the Apostolic Constitution Divinæ consortium naturæ (15 August 1971).

This provision is intended to underline the need to clearly affirm the direction indicated by the Motu Proprio which sees in the liturgical books promulgated by the Saints Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 1).

In implementing these provisions, care should be taken to accompany all those rooted in the previous form of celebration towards a full understanding of the value of the celebration in the ritual form given to us by the reform of the Second Vatican Council. This should take place through an appropriate formation that makes it possible to discover how the reformed liturgy is the witness to an unchanged faith, the expression of a renewed ecclesiology, and the primary source of spirituality for Christian life.

Traditionis custodes

Art. 3. Episcopus, in dioecesibus ubi adhuc unus vel plures coetus celebrant secundum Missale antecedens instaurationem anni 1970:

§ 1. certior fiat coetus illos auctoritatem ac legitimam naturam instaurationis liturgicae, normarum Concilii Vaticani II Magisteriique Summorum Pontificum non excludere;          

To the proposed question:

If a Priest who has been granted the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962 does not recognise the validity and legitimacy of concelebration – refusing to concelebrate, in particular, at the Chrism Mass – can he continue to benefit from this concession?

The answer is:

Negative.

However, before revoking the concession to use the Missale Romanum of 1962, the Bishop should take care to establish a fraternal dialogue with the Priest, to ascertain that this attitude does not exclude the validity and legitimacy of the liturgical reform, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs, and to accompany him towards an understanding of the value of concelebration, particularly at the Chrism Mass.

Explanatory note.

Art. 3 § 1 of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes requires the diocesan Bishop to ascertain that the groups requesting to celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962 “do not deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform, dictated by Vatican Council II and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs”.

St Paul forcefully reminds the community of Corinth to live in unity as a necessary condition to be able to participate at the Eucharistic table (cf. 1 Cor 11,17-34).

In the Letter sent to the Bishops of the whole world to accompany the text of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, the Holy Father says: “Because ‘liturgical celebrations are not private actions, but celebrations of the Church, which is the sacrament of unity’ (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 26), they must be carried out in communion with the Church. Vatican Council II, while it reaffirmed the external bonds of incorporation in the Church — the profession of faith, the sacraments, of communion — affirmed with St. Augustine that to remain in the Church not only ‘with the body’ but also ‘with the heart’ is a condition for salvation (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 14)”.

The explicit refusal not to take part in concelebration, particularly at the Chrism Mass, seems to express a lack of acceptance of the liturgical reform and a lack of ecclesial communion with the Bishop, both of which are necessary requirements in order to benefit from the concession to celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962.

However, before revoking the concession to use the Missale Romanum of 1962, the Bishop should offer the Priest the necessary time for a sincere discussion on the deeper motivations that lead him not to recognise the value of concelebration, in particular in the Mass presided over by the Bishop. He should invite him to express, in the eloquent gesture of concelebration, that ecclesial communion which is a necessary condition for being able to participate at the table of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Traditionis custodes

Art. 3. Episcopus, in dioecesibus ubi adhuc unus vel plures coetus celebrant secundum Missale antecedens instaurationem anni 1970:

[…]

§ 3. constituat, in loco statuto, dies quibus celebrationes eucharisticae secundum Missale Romanum a sancto Ioanne XXIII anno 1962 promulgatum permittuntur. His in celebrationibus, lectiones proclamentur lingua vernacula, adhibitis Sacrae Scripturae translationibus ad usum liturgicum ab unaquaque Conferentia Episcoporum approbatis;              

To the proposed question:

In Eucharistic celebrations using the Missale Romanum of 1962, is it possible to use the full text of the Bible for the readings, choosing the pericopes indicated in the Missal??

The answer is:

Affirmative.

 

Explanatory note.

Art. 3 § 3 of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes states that the readings are to be proclaimed in the vernacular language, using translations of Sacred Scripture for liturgical use, approved by the respective Episcopal Conferences.

Since the texts of the readings are contained in the Missal itself, and therefore there is no separate Lectionary, and in order to observe the provisions of the Motu Proprio, one must necessarily resort to the translation of the Bible approved by the individual Bishops’ Conferences for liturgical use, choosing the pericopes indicated in the Missale Romanum of 1962.

No vernacular lectionaries may be published that reproduce the cycle of readings of the previous rite.

It should be remembered that the present Lectionary is one of the most precious fruits of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council. The publication of the Lectionary, in addition to overcoming the “plenary” form of the Missale Romanum of 1962 and returning to the ancient tradition of individual books corresponding to individual ministries, fulfils the wish of Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 51: “The treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s word. In this way a more representative portion of the holy scriptures will be read to the people in the course of a prescribed number of years”.

 Traditionis custodes

Art. 4. Presbyteri ordinati post has Litteras Apostolicas Motu Proprio datas promulgatas, celebrare volentes iuxta Missale Romanum anno 1962 editum, petitionem formalem Episcopo dioecesano mittere debent, qui, ante concessionem, a Sede Apostolica licentiam rogabit.            

To the proposed question:

Does the diocesan Bishop have to be authorised by the Apostolic See to allow priests ordained after the publication of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes to celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962 (cf. Traditionis custodies, n. 4)?

The answer is:

Affirmative.

Explanatory note.

Article 4 of the Latin text (which is the official text to be referenced) reads as follows: «Presbyteri ordinati post has Litteras Apostolicas Motu Proprio datas promulgatas, celebrare volentes iuxta Missale Romanum anno 1962 editum, petitionem formalem Episcopo dioecesano mittere debent, qui, ante concessionem, a Sede Apostolica licentiam rogabit».

This is not merely a consultative opinion, but a necessary authorisation given to the diocesan Bishop by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which exercises the authority of the Holy See over matters within its competence. (cf. Traditionis custodes, n. 7).

Only after receiving this permission will the diocesan Bishop be able to authorise Priests ordained after the publication of the Motu Proprio (16 July 2021) to celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962.

This rule is intended to assist the diocesan Bishop in evaluating such a request: his discernment will be duly taken into account by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The Motu Proprio clearly expresses the desire that what is contained in the liturgical books promulgated by Popes Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, be recognised as the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite: it is therefore absolutely essential that Priests ordained after the publication of the Motu Proprio share this desire of the Holy Father.

All seminary formators, seeking to walk with solicitude in the direction indicated by Pope Francis, are encouraged to accompany future Deacons and Priests to an understanding and experience of the richness of the liturgical reform called for by the Second Vatican Council. This reform has enhanced every element of the Roman Rite and has fostered - as hoped for by the Council Fathers - the full, conscious and active participation of the entire People of God in the liturgy (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium no. 14), the primary source of authentic Christian spirituality.

Traditionis custodes

Art. 5. Presbyteri, qui iam secundum Missale Romanum anno 1962 editum celebrant, ab Episcopo dioecesano licentiam rogabunt ad hanc facultatem servandam.

To the proposed question:

Can the faculty to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962 be granted ad tempus?

The answer is:

Affirmative.

Explanatory note.

The possibility of granting the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962 for a defined period of time - the duration of which the diocesan Bishop will consider appropriate - is not only possible but also recommended: the end of the defined period offers the possibility of ascertaining that everything is in harmony with the direction established by the Motu Proprio. The outcome of this assessment can provide grounds for prolonging or suspending the permission.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To the proposed question:

Does the faculty granted by the diocesan Bishop to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962 only apply to the territory of his own diocese?

The answer is:

Affirmative.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To the proposed question:

If the authorised Priest is absent or unable to attend, must the person replacing him also have formal authorisation?

The answer is:

Affirmative.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To the proposed question:

Do Deacons and instituted ministers participating in celebrations using the Missale Romanum of 1962 have to be authorised by the diocesan Bishop?

The answer is:

Affermative.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To the proposed question:

Can a Priest who is authorised to celebrate with the Missale Romanum of 1962 and who, because of his office (Parish Priest, chaplain, etc.), also celebrates on weekdays with the Missale Romanum of the reform of the Second Vatican Council, binate using the Missale Romanum of 1962?

The answer is:

Negative.

Explanatory note.

The Parish Priest or chaplain who - in the fulfilment of his office - celebrates on weekdays with the current Missale Romanum, which is the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, cannot binate by celebrating with the Missale Romanum of 1962, either with a group or privately.

It is not possible to grant bination on the grounds that there is no “just cause” or “pastoral necessity” as required by canon 905 §2: the right of the faithful to the celebration of the Eucharist is in no way denied, since they are offered the possibility of participating in the Eucharist in its current ritual form.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To the proposed question:

Can a Priest who is authorised to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962 celebrate on the same day with the same Missal for another group of faithful who have received authorisation?

The answer is:

Negative.

Explanatory note.

It is not possible to grant bination on the grounds that there is no “just cause” or “pastoral necessity” as required by canon 905 §2: the right of the faithful to the celebration of the Eucharist is in no way denied, since they are offered the possibility of participating in the Eucharist in its current ritual form.

Predictably, this has resulted in all sorts of complaints.  Even before that, for that matter, the hardcore rad trads were really acting up about all of this.


A couple of things on this.

First of all, based on what I understand, the current form of the Mass, the "Novus Ordo", can be said in Latin.  What can't be done except under the provisions of that Pope Francis has set out, is the old form of the Mass, which was in Latin.

There's a difference.

I'm a traditionalist in lots of ways, but let's be clear. The new form the Mass really is better. Moreover, most people don't speak Latin.

And that's a problem.

When the Mass was first written in Latin, it was being said to parishioners who spoke Latin.  And the Mass wasn't first said in Latin at all.

The very first Mass was said in Aramaic.  Shortly after that, it was said in Greek, and then somewhat later in Latin.  If a person wants to be a hyper-traditionalist, they probably ought to demand that the Mass be said in one of the two prior languages, both of which still exist.  Indeed, the  Chaldean Catholic Church says its Mass in Aramaic.

Now, you probably don't speak Aramaic as not too many people outside of Iraq due, and most Iraqis don't speak it either. And that would be a problem.  And hence the problem with Latin.

Now, by all accounts the old Latin High Mass was beautiful, and that's the thing that attracted some people to it. And it did in a way express the universality of the Church.  But it also covered less of the overall Canon of Scripture than the current Mass and most people couldn't understand much of it in later times.  If everyone was taught Latin in school, as was still the case when my parents were children, that would be one thing, sort of, but at least locally I don't think our schools even have a single Latin language class anymore.

And even when Latin was taught, a lot of people didn't learn it that well.

And frankly, Pope Francis, who is coming down hard on this, is right to do so.  Rad Trads became so invested in attacking his Papacy that they invited a counter, and it came. The counter, perhaps somewhat ironically, invites them back into the larger fold, which, if they seek to be influential, is where they ought to be anyhow.

Well, so much for 2021.  Off to 2022. Let's hope and pray its better than the past year has been.