Edgerton dodged a bullet.
Some were attended by the famous.
As well as the not so famous.
Georgetown played a Marine Corps football team:
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"Outside the Church there is no salvation"846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Vance can of course hope, and should hope, that Usha converts, as her chances of salvation are heightened. Does that mean that if she doesn't, she's damned to Hell? Well, we can't know the state of anyone's soul, but the fact that she hasn't would suggest that she's not consciously rejecting Christianity, but rather hasn't overcome something.
Vance himself should be worried about the state of his soul. Catholics reject IVF, which he's been backing, and lying on serious matters is a serious sin, which Vance has been doing at an epic level.
At any rate, Vance isn't doing the wrong thing by hoping his wife becomes Catholic. He's completely correct to wish for that, including openly.
This is, however, where the liberal side of American culture, and even the American Civil Religion, and frankly the Evangelical Christians, all come into conflict with Catholics.
At some point in American history and in American culture, and it goes back pretty far it became really common for people to be sort of religious relativist. "It doesn't matter what religion you are, as long as you are a good person." Well, it does in fact matter what religion you are, and of course you should be a good person no matter what religion you are.
Catholicism was an oppressed religion in the United State up until basically the 1960s. Open oppression of it lessened steadily in the century prior to the 60s, and in fact was intense prior to the 1860s. Catholics really kept themselves in a major way as a result, and only really began to enter the wider culture after World War Two. Al Smith's Catholicism is generally regarded as what made it impossible for him to win the Presidency prior to the war. An early Casper politician of Irish extraction was controversial in the town's Catholic community because of the distance he put between himself and his religion. The first Catholic Governor of Wyoming was probably Frank A. Barrett, who was a devout Catholic who went on to become the state's U.S. Senator thereafter. Joe Hickey, another Catholic came after him. Both Barrett and Hickey were Governors in the 1950s. Of course, Kennedy broke the dam in 1960, but in part by pledging basically not to let his Catholicism influence him, which was a despicable pledge.
Vance hasn't pledged that.
The only U.S. Army generals known to be Catholic during World War Two, we might note, were Lieutenant General John E. Hull and Major General Patrick J. Hurley. This fits into the culture of the professional military class at the time and it might be noted that the first Jewish general in the U.S. Army, Maurice Rose, was a practicing Episcopalian. Patton, often noted to be very devout, was an Episcopalian, as was Marshall.
Anyhow, as noted, it's not the case that Catholics feel all non Catholics are going to Hell as they are not Catholic, and Catholics certainly do not believe that all Catholics are going to Heaven as they are Catholic. Rather, Catholics believe that the Catholic Church, which is the oldest and original form of Christianity, is the church Christ founded and the one entrusted with the instruments of salvation. In some ways, everyone who is ultimately saved is saved in some way because of the Catholic Church. As, to use a mistranslation of von Balthasar's statement, we wish "for all men to be saved", we want everyone to be Catholics as that makes it much more assured.
This puts us way outside of the American Civil Religions' views that all religions, or perhaps all Christian religions with Judaism thrown in for good measure, are equal.
One thing it should also do, however, and recent conversions should help cradle Catholics to refocus on this, is to be concerned about people in our immediate orbit. Vance is basically doing that, but frankly he's in a bit of a tough spot because he and his wife married before his conversion.
Simply being in a marriage in which one member is a Catholic and the other is not, if the Catholic is a sincere Catholic, has some real challenges. Catholicism is different and even after decades the non Catholic spouse can be really surprised by the application of the Faith by the Catholic spouse. In "mixed" couples where the non Catholic spouse is a member of one of the churches that's very close to the Catholic Church this is less so, but even here I've known couples who attended Mass faithfully where one was a Catholic and the other a Lutheran, for instance, with the Lutheran never converting in spite of the two churches being so close.
As Yeoman's First Law of Human Behavior is a powerful force, general run of the mill Protestant spouses may attend Mass and support their Catholic spouse early on, but over a period time, simply stop attending as most Protestants aren't under a requirement to attend any service on a Sunday. That's inevitably extremely hard on the Catholic spouse who soldiers on. This has to be even more difficult in a situation such as Vance's in which the other spouse isn't even a member of a Christian religion at all.
Indeed, at one time Catholics were very much discouraged from marrying non Catholics, although its always occurred, and it was often a stipulation by the Catholic spouse that the other convert. I've known several Catholic couples where this was what happened, although I think it much less common now. The religion where this frequently occurs is the Mormon religion, which is not a Christian religion and which isn't compatible with any. Of note there, usually fallen away Mormons simply become intensely anti religious, rather than some other religion.
Catholics only marrying Catholics was a lot easier when Catholics pretty much were associated, culturally, only with other Catholics. That day is long gone, but there's still some wisdom to the old custom here. As with many things, the Catholic viewpoint on something like marriage is much different than the cultures, if taken seriously. Catholics married to non Catholics are adding weight to their cross, no matter what. And part of that weight is the hope the other spouse become Catholic.
It occurs to me that something is really odd about Trump rushing to start his vandalization project on the White House, and then expanding it to destroy the entire East Wing. . . . it's almost like he fears not being around to enjoy it.
Maybe he knows he's not going to be.
Maybe he fears that if he's not around the ugly garden shed won't be built.
Maybe he fears that's going to be so soon, he had to actually take steps that try to force its completion.
Why would that be?
Maybe Trump knows that he's on death's door, or maybe its something else. Let's look at the possibilities.
Trump knows he's not long for the world.
There's been some speculation on this for other reasons.
One could say he's acting weird, but he acted weird in his first term too. He's been acting extra weird. He's been talking a fair amount and expressing fears that he's going to Hell. And well he should fear it. For one thing:
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”
He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.* If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.
He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
Based on the difficulty that implies, and it is not intended to be metaphorical, Trump should fear Hell. He's been far from perfect. He's a serial polygamist for one thing, and genuinely a bad person. It appears to some extent he's trying to buy his way into Heaven with the thought that if he can secure peace in some war somewhere God will credit that and allow him to otherwise get a pass on his sins. He keep seeking reassurance from those around him that will work.
That obsession suggests that he knows he's running out of time.
Trump wants to be remembered for amount to something. He knows that much of his Presidency will be regarded as a fart in a windstorm. So he's building his own monumental mausoleum, maybe.
And in doing so, time is short. Either he'll be out of office in three years, and this is a project that for American construction would take longer than that, or he'll die before its built He well knows that if a Democrat comes into office after him, under the original plan, no ballroom would be built. He's taking steps, by destroying the entire wing, to make sure it has to be.
But even that won't. It'll just assure that something has to be done.
Trump knows that there's next to no chance of getting this monstrosity done in time.
I touched on that above, but there's every chance in the world that Trump leaves office, either at the expiration of his term, or being lead out while babbling in full dementia, and this project stops. As he departs his last glimpse of the ballroom will be of a construction project with workmen likely picking up debris.
There's a good chance that the week thereafter the construction company has cleared out and the trackhoe is back with the same operator demolishing this worthless monument.
It's a natural instinct in most people to complete a project.
And it's a natural instinct to keep and use something, once it's built. . . except for Americans.
Trump's spent a lot of time in the orbit of the high and the mighty his whole life. Since his first legitimate term in office, and now in his second illegitimate one, he's had the opportunity to see monumental public buildings that are really old, quite frankly frequently gaudy. He's not that smart of guy and he probably doesn't realize that the regimes that built such structures aren't always admired in later years, but he probably does appreciate that things Louis XIV built, or the Czars, are still being used.
The American track record isn't quite so good. We take down buildings all the time, including our athletic civil temples that were constructed at great expense. We usually get around to morning them long after they're gone.
Trump probably feels that if he can get this built, particular if the East Wing gets destroyed with it, it'll have to be built, and it'll have to stay when its built. Like Justice Kennedy, he probably naively assumes that after he's out of office, and after he's dead and gone, people will forget that he was a putz, and love him.
People aren't going to love him. He'll be remembered as the worst human being to ever occupy the Oval Office, and the building will come down. A future Democratic President will take it down to make a point, if not out of spite.
Trump is banking on nobody tearing it down (which I suspect is a pretty bad bet).
See above.
Another view of the hideous monstrosity.
An interesting aspect of this is the NatCon one that was circulating before this piece of shit project started to advance.
As we've noted before, Trump's real backers are members of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, but within the NatCons are Catholic and Orthodox intellectuals who have become Illiberal Democrats. Not too surprisingly, this same group has pretty strong architectural views.
They like architect James McCrery.
Some of these folks hang out at website called Rorate Caeli, which is actually a type of Mass, but which means "drop down, ye Heavens." They really like James McCrery, and for good reason. Here's their post on his getting the job of being garden shed architect:
McCrery, Architects of Catholic Beauty, chosen to renovate the White House
McCrery Architects, New Carmel, Wyoming Those familiar with the architectural work of James McCrery know he is among the greats of the 20th and 21st centuries.
McCrery Architects, St. Mary Help of Christians, North Carolina Based on the Senate side of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, he has designed, restored and enhanced numerous churches, schools, homes and other buildings — all in a classical style where the average man, woman and child responds “beautiful” upon seeing his work.
Now, Jim McCrery has designed what will be his legacy for generations of Americans: a new White House ballroom. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday $200 million in private funding (including Trump’s own money) will fund a ballroom next to the east wing of the White House that can accommodate 650 guests. This is needed, as the East Room of the White House (the largest for gatherings) seats around 200 people, so the custom has been to put up tents outside when a large dinner or event is hosted.
See the designs for yourself to appreciate them.
McCrery, who is celebrating his 60th birthday, completed a restoration and enhancement of Saint Mary Mother of God church near his DC studio, where the TLM existed from the mid-1980s until its suppression three years ago. From the cathedrals in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina, to Corpus Christi in the Diocese of Arlington, to the Newman Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, to the Carmelite monastery in Wyoming, the churches he designed are spectacular — no easy task in an age of modern codes, budget limitations and senior officials often advocating bland over beauty. McCrery’s name is synonymous with beauty.
Rorate congratulates Jim McCrery on this achievement and looks forward to the next three years of his project’s construction. And we commend President Trump for choosing traditional architecture, and developing a great relationship with such a fine architect. Who knows what others would have chosen to dump on the White House lawn! It is a time to be thankful for the partnership of McCrery and Trump on this project that will stand tall long after all of us depart this earth.
Rorate Caeli.
This is, quite frankly, part of what upsets me. This thing is ugly and stupid.
It'd be ugly and stupid anywhere, but it'd make more sense in some places. In Georgian England, for example, or in 18th Century France. If you went back, an were honest with yourself, you'd think "well. . . this is ugly and stupid, but looks like belongs here" and then you'd go on to tell everyone, "wow, that's impressive.
The top two buildings are in fact impressive. Why did they take this assignment?
Well, . . . on this, I'll be frank that I"m not so sure about the top building.
Wyoming isn't Medieval France or pre King Henry VIII the Vandal England, and I'm not really too sure that this fits the state too well. There's been a fair amount of murmuring about it, which is slightly embarrassing for Wyoming Catholics. We know we don't live in Medieval France.
I guess, however, that this is religious architecture and they are free to build what they wish.
Monumental public architecture belongs to the public, however. The public doesn't want a gigantic gilded garden shed.
Worthless Democrats
One thing this has served to do is to illustrate how completely worthless the Democratic Party is.
If this was the party of 1975, or 1985, it would have rushed out on day one and filed an action for an injunction, which would have included a request for a TRO. They would have gotten it.
More particularly, what they would have asked for is an injunction returning the White House to the status quo ante until the architectural commission in charge of these things had a chance to consider the matter. That would have meant that Donny would have had to stop the construction and the structure repaired, on his dime, until the body could meet and make a ruling.
Yes, that body is going to say "go ahead", but that would have burned through about $10M of the vandalization money in advance, and delayed the project by at least a year. Mobilization costs would have gone up, and Democrats would likely be back in power. The thing would never have been built.
Instead they sat around and did nothing.
This all points to an existential crisis within the Democratic Party. Most Democrats are actually center left, politically, but over the last fifteen or so years the party has been captured by its hardcore left wingers that will not compromise on anything, and so the party has glaciated. The left wingers in the Democratic Party are every bit as nutty, if not more so, than the hard right of the Republican Party.
We need new parties.
McCrery
I noted earlier that I had placed some home in the design in that James McCrery was responsible for it.
I've lost that hope.
The more I look at it, it's just flat out gaudy and ugly. It's interesting to note that McCrery, who was one of the people that Donny did the roof top tour with recently, has been taking some flak.
Apparently McCrery wasn't always a classicist. And people interviewed about him recently haven't been all that kind. For example, Robert Livesey, who was chair of the Ohio State architecture department from 1983 to 1991 when McCrery was a student wrote recently in an email that “to be honest, I do not have a real memory of Jim. My sense was that he was a good design student which is why Eisenman hired him, Unfortunately, his work does not have the presence of real classical architecture, or even of people who were also after the classical, like Palladio, or later Hawksmoor.”
Eisenman refers to Peter Eisenman, who was a professor at Ohio State and who took McCrery under his wing and later employed him. Eisenman is not a classicist and has called his former underlings design "bonkers", adding "putting a portico at the end of a long facade and not in the center is what one might say is untutored.”
Pretty harsh. In fairness, Eisenman and McCrery seem to have had a falling out some time ago, and McCrery seems to have become very identified with his Faith in regard to his architectural projects, which leads a person to wonder why he'd want to take on a giant civil structure like this. Frankly, Eisenman's criticism seems pretty valid to me.
Rats
One potentially good thing about this is that it might make a lot of rats homeless. Apparently the White House is full of them, in the walls.
No big surprise.
Rats being rats, however, they're probably just moving into the house itself.
What should reconstruction look like?
One thing that this brings up is what should reconstruction look like. The White House grounds are already pretty crowded without this monstrosity. Frankly, a pretty good argument can be made that the East and West Wings detract from the original appearance of the structure. Maybe this presents an opportunity just to take them out, although apparently that would create an office space problem.
The donors
Here's who is paying for this abomination:
Altria Group, Inc.
Amazon
Apple
Booz Allen Hamilton
Caterpillar, Inc.
Coinbase
Comcast Corporation
J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
Hard Rock International
HP Inc.
Lockheed Martin
Meta Platforms
Micron Technology
Microsoft
NextEra Energy, Inc.
Palantir Technologies Inc.
Ripple
Reynolds American
T-Mobile
Tether America
Union Pacific Railroad
Adelson Family Foundation
Stefan E. Brodie
Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
Edward and Shari Glazer
Harold Hamm
Benjamin Leon Jr.
The Lutnick Family
The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Konstantin Sokolov
Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
Paolo Tiramani
Cameron Winklevoss
Tyler Winklevoss
Some of these you know, and some of their products you use everyday. Microsoft, for example, is pretty hard to avoid.
Some can be easily avoided. I'll never eat in another Hard Rock Cafe again, ever, which of course will be an easy thing for me to do.
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This item contains an interesting one one regarding modification of the wedding vows in the Episcopal service.
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Having seen dementia up close, I keep wondering the same thing. Trump is increasingly demented.
Have you ever been in the house of a demented person? It's demented. And that's what's occurring to our entire government right now.
Again: Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior can no longer be attributed to a calculated “strategy.”
Behind the stage on which Hegseth and Trump were expected to speak was a large American flag, with banners showing the words "strength, service, America" and the various flags of the armed services on either side.
Oh geez, now Donald Babbler is making an appearance and the stage is seemingly decked out like the opener of the movie Patton.
This just piles absurdity upon absurdity.
My prediction is the Trump speech will sound something like this:
And Hegseth's? It'll be rah rah, but when it falls flat, the next speech will be:
