Headline on the Wall Street Journal.

 

The World Is Likely Sicker Than It Has Been in 100 Years

Omicron has probably made more people ill at the same time than in any period since the flu pandemic, experts say

Blog Mirror: Just Another Day On the Prairie. Thoughts on "Freedom Day" and the spirit of the times.

I really hesitate to post this, as I don't want it to seem to be some sort of an endorsement.  I'm copying it over as a link for another reason.

Freedom Day

This is from the following blog:

Just Another Day On The Prairie

The diary and musings of an Alberta ranch wife.

So, what of it?

I like this blog as the photos on it are beautiful.  

And also, as a Wyomingite, and a rural one, and an agricultural one in one of my three vocations/avocations, Alberta is part of the same region I'm from, different country though it is.

Indeed, I sometimes think Easterners don't really grasp that in a lot of ways, natives of the Rocky Mountain Region and the Prairie states have more in common with the Canadian western provinces than they do with any other region of their own country.  Indeed, they have quite a bit in common with the highly rural ares of northern Mexico as well, but they very much do with western Canada.

Rural Western Canadians are part of the exact same agricultural/livestock/hunting/rural culture that real Western Americans, not imports from other regions, including quite frankly the South, are from.  Indeed, ranching in Alberta has the same roots as ranching in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado do.  At one time ranchers went back and forth across the border as if it wasn't there.  Many of Charles Russell's paintings of ranch life are actually set in Alberta, not Montana.

So not too surprisingly, rural Albertans, and rural Canadians from much of the rest of the Canadian West, have the same views that rural Western Americans do.

This isn't really true, I'd note, of Canadians as a whole. While I don't mention it often, I'm a dual citizen and hold Canadian as well as American citizenship, but my Canadian relatives are all Eastern Canadians by origin, and their views are extremely different on many things than Western Americans' are.

Now, I mean to be careful here, as I do not wish to offer insult.

When I speak of the views of Wyomingites, Montanans, and rural Coloradans, etc., I'm speaking of their views.  I'm not speaking of the views of Texans and Oklahomans.

I'm not slamming Texans and Oklahomans here.

I'm noting this, because we're an oil province here, we have lots of people here, from time to time, who come from the oil provinces of Texas and Oklahoma.  Interestingly, as Alberta and Saskatchewan are also oil provinces, we also have quite a few people from these regions who make an appearance as well, although they don't tend to have much of an influence on local culture and politics.  Indeed, they're pretty quiet on both, and they'd nearly have to be on the latter, as of course they can't vote after being here a year. Texans and Oklahomans can, of course.  I note this as during oil booms the latter groups tend to be somewhat influential in local politics, and often their local views are imported.  Canadians in the US tend to be really quiet if they're not in numbers.

Canadians in Canada are not, and to a fair degree, prior to COVID 19 Canadians were expressing a fair amount of contempt for American culture.  Donald Trump really brought it on.^[1]

Note, I'm still not commenting on any of this.

What I will note is that open contempt tend to inspire contempt back, and people should be careful about that.

Anyhow, what I"m now noting is that Western Canada has had, for a long time, the same relationship with the Canadian East that the Western United States tend to with our East, and this entry really shows that.  Note:

This Convoy is not just for the truckers mandates. It’s for the 30 million people that Trudeaus government approved to allowed to be spied on their cell phones. It’s for the family members banned from visiting family in nursing homes. It’s for the censorship on all social media platforms. It’s for all the people afraid to speak In fear of being called conspiracy theorists. It’s for the people who didn’t want to give up their freedom of choice! It’s for the people who don’t want to give up their right to bear arms. It’s for the people who don’t want to be in debt for the next 100 years. 

Did you just read a Canadian post referencing a "right to bear arms".

Yes you did.

Now, this post also deals with a lot of other things, and as is typically the case, most Americans are going to be completely clueless about what's going on.  We don't tend to follow Canadian news here, and we don't tend to get it.  Both are inexcusable.

I do, or at least I used to. With the news being what it is recently, I've grown a bit numb to it.  Well, really numb.  I was aware, vaguely, that something was going on, but not that aware.  I had to look it up.

I looked it up on the BBC.

The BBC's Toronto reporter notes (original font, bold text and mother tongue speallings):

After a week-long drive across Canada, a convoy of big rigs has arrived in the national capital to protest vaccine mandates and Covid-19 measures. Organisers insist it will be peaceful, but police say they're prepared for trouble.

The article goes on:

The movement was sparked by a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border, implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government earlier this month.

Upset with the new measure that would require unvaccinated Canadian truckers crossing the two nations' boundary to quarantine once they've returned home, a loose coalition of truckers and conservative groups began to organise the cross-country drive that began in western Canada.

It picked up steam and gathered support as it drove east. Many supporters, already opposed to Mr Trudeau and his politics, have grown frustrated with pandemic measures they see as political overreach.

Okay, a couple of things.

I've thought about noting it before, but because we're so focused on our own selves in the US, we tend to view the entire COVID 19 mask and vaccine story as exclusively our own.  Heck, for the most part, if the entire population of the globe had died of COVID 19 it probably would have taken most Americans a couple of weeks to actually notice it.

We tend to be rather self-absorbed.

Part of that self-absorption, however, is our failure to note that a lot of big social and political stores around here are actually international ones  and some of those have widespread regional expression.  

There have been huge mask protests in Australia and parts of Europe, including, for example, Germany. Refusals to vaccinate have occurred in at least Australia and across Europe as well.

Now, I'll note that as I'm not hugely familiar with this story, I don't want to go too far in commenting on it.  I was dimly aware of some provisions in Canada as a friend of mine had recently been to British Columbia, and I'd asked him about things, and he noted mask requirements for where he was, stating beyond that bluntly that Canadians "didn't tolerate stupidity".  That's a very blunt comment, but I'd also note that my Canadian contacts also would not be critical of Prime Minster Trudeau's policies here.  Frankly, I don't know that I am, either.

On that, our luck in our small family finally ran out.  My daughter now has COVID 19.  I'm so weary at this point, I'm not angry, and hopefully it'll be mild.  She's away from home and I can't do anything about it, or even to help.

And I've watched COVID 19 rip through places I know and people I know.  I don't understand the reluctance to get vaccinated at all.  A rancher I vaguely knew died of COVID 19 and left a devastated widow.  A bunch of people who were with him at a cattle sale where he surely picked it up got it and were pretty sick.  My daughter got the disease, potentially, from being exposed to a person who didn't get vaccinated and who went here and there before that person finally had to acknowledge the infection.

None of that had to be.

Maybe we couldn't have beat the virus.  But our refusals made it certain that we could not.  It will go on to become endemic now.  Is Trudeau being unreasonable for trying to keep American infections from spreading back across the border?

Without really commenting on it, this may be the one area where I agree with Trudeau.  I haven't followed Canada's response to COVID 19 now for some time (I did at first) but Canada has had a hard time with the disease. The US started off with a bad start, but Canada somehow fell into a bad situation.

I'll also note that at this point Canadian news in the US started to drop off because, well, Canadians were suddenly less condescending towards the United States than they had been for awhile.  As the weirdeness surrounding the Trump lie that he won an election he lost has caused many in the US to wonder about the future of their democracy, and many outside of the country to wonder the same thing, that's returned a bit.

That might drop off again as Trudeau went into hiding yesterday during the protests. . . shades of insurrection. . . 

Anyhow, as noted, I don't know that I'm not sympathetic to Trudeau's response here to COVID 19.  Truckers are entering a country where the Omicron variant is infecting many and the chances of them bringing it home. . . well, they seem pretty high.

Which will make this the one area where I'll ever say that, most likely.  I don't like Justin Trudeau as a politician, and I never have.  Indeed, I've characterized him as a soy boy at one point.  

It used to be pretty clear that Western Canadians took a much different view of a lot of Canadian politics than Easterners did, and obviously that's still the case. But for that matter, our regional political culture used to be a lot clearer here, too.  Things like gun control have always been hugely unpopular in the rural West, but even here that's gone from "don't mess with me taking my pistol and rifle out in the sticks" to the "we need to be prepared to fight Stalingrad" sort of atmosphere.  And, starting with the campaign which pitted our current Governor against Foster Freiss, you'd have thought that some people were running for the Governor of Alabama in the 1970s.  Freiss' campaign even sported lightly clad young women in a state which has winter about nine months out of the year, which inspires a "geez, doesn't somebody have a coat for those poor girls" type of reaction rather than a "whoa. . . look at those Daisy Dukes".  Underlying it all, however, the old views, by us old residents, are still there.

Globally it seems a lot of the same strains are also at work everywhere.  Populism, something that never had much of an appeal here, has taken over in the state's GOP and across the nation in Republican organizations.  But not just here.  Populism helps explain how Boris Johnson rose to power in the UK.  Populist dominate the Hungarian government, which is strongly right wing.  Populists threaten to take over the Polish government.  Strong populist elements exist in French politics, and you can find populist elements everywhere.

That would seemingly have nothing to do with COVID 19 and it doesn't, but what it does have to do with is politics in the era of COVID, so it gets mixed in. And there's a really strong cultural element at work here that the political left wants to dismiss and even pejoratively label, but it shouldn't.  A big part of what's given rise to right wing populism is a feeling that traditional culture is being attacked.  To some degree, it is being attacked.

That's serious for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that in the US, and elsewhere it would seem, a lot of rank and file people who are of the traditional culture feel that they have nowhere to go democratically.  People who are basically traditionally Western European and Christian in culture are being told that clearly Christian values are obsolete, their inherited European values are wrongheaded if not outright racist, and they just have to lump it, at best.  

A big part of that has been a radical reconstruction of domestic values, which are inherited from a Christian heritage. Christianity has always focused on families as the center of secular life, and took what was the radical view early on that marriage meant one man, one woman, until one of them died.  Pagans didn't believe any of that.

That Christian belief, in part, gave rise to the success of Christianity in spite of huge governmental and cultural repression.  Christian families were solid because of that belief, and Christians cared for their own in times of trouble, even caring for others where they could.  They therefore survived repression, oppression, wars, and plagues in spite of being in cultures that held "don't be stupid, you can abandon the sick. . .don't be stupid, you can kill the infirm. . . don't be stupid, if you are male you can screw who or what you want, and by force if you want."

Now, we're darned near back there in signficant ways, although we certainly didn't arrive at this spot in an instant.  The assault on marriage began as far back, really, as 1534.  It arrived in a flood fashion after World War Two, with that war having damaged so much of Western morality, and achieved legal assistance from, of course, California starting in 1969.

European values, including democratic values, were also inherited from the Church  A body that held that everyone was equal in God's eyes necessarily would spill into the secular world.  Indeed, the poor and common born could and did rise to position in the Church long before that became the case in secular society.^[2]

Western culture is essentially Christian in its values and even non practicing people, and non Christians for that matter, tend to hold Christian philosophical values without realizing it.  One non-Christian friend of mine, but one who lives in the Western world, noted to me once that culturally, "we're all Catholics".  There's a lot of truth to that.

But progressives have been acting for some time now to rip that down and are offering, in its place, a construct based on what individual's "feel", which is not a very solid basis for any sort of larger philosophy.  Reality keeps on keeping on, irrespective of what we feel about it.

And at the same time, progressives have been big on "you must", including what you must think.  It doesn't matter if your moral code holds one thing, if the current progressive view is to the opposite, you must not think that and you must not say that.  Canada has gone a lot further down this road than the U.S.

But that very "feel" and "must" ethos leads us to where we are now, ironically, in regard to the COVID 19 virus and what we feel about it.  While the science is solid as to what it is and how to avoid it, a nearly century long campaign on deconstructing our focus and changing it into one based on what we "feel", as long as we also feel to be consumers, set us up for the current crisis. And that dovetails into the "must".  A group of people who have been told that they "must" think something that is contrary to centuries of their cultural values and their own experiences, because of what we individually feel, is going to lose, at some point, a willingness to accept what its being told, no matter how extremely well founded one particular item may be.

In other words, introducing these same policies in 1950, in a different U.S. and a different Canada, probably wouldn't be provoking this result, as it would have come in the context of little else being under assault.

Whether it's a 500-year attack on our central foundational values, or only a 75-year-long one, at some point we reached a tipping point.  A good case can be made that for the United States that point came in 2015 and I warned at that time that a Supreme Court case in which the Court sought to redefine a traditional view of the world contrary to the long run of human culture would have future dire consequences.  It seems to me that I was proven to be right.  The Court, in its waning liberal days, usurped the legislatures, created a result, and those benefitting from it, as well as those who were on the political left, ran with it far beyond what was predicted, including what its author predicted.  Where as that result only took one more step on a road that had mile markers at 1534, 1953, 1963, 1968, and 1969, it seems to have been a societal bridge too far.  The same movement had already made large impacts across the globe legislatively, making the US somewhat unique in that it was done judicially.

It is not what a person thinks of that movement per se, but rather what occurs when a very large percentage of the population gets the sense, even just vaguely, that it's being attacked and has no place to go.  In the case of the US, a large, formerly Democratic demographic, has had its economic foundation stripped away and exported, and its traditional values eroded.  Much of that is a rust belt sort of thing, which is where the epicenter of discontent can be found.  But it spreads out elsewhere in areas of economic distress, including the rural West, where what we're essentially told is that we ought to get computer jobs and become urban cubicle dwellers.  Even our own governments aid in this process by eroding, on occasion, what local business there is.

As massive as the change is here, the post-war change is even more dramatic for Canadians.  Canada was a fundamentally conservative country founded in agriculture with a strong tie to the United Kingdom. Going into World War Two, most of Canada, outside of Quebec, was extremely rural and extremely British.  Quebec was divided, but the bulk of the Francophone population was not only very conservative, but rural and agrarian, the only thing that had kept it from being absorbed into the larger Canadian whole.

War, we've noted here, changes anything, and the Canada that came out of World War Two started to change pretty rapidly.  Not all at once, to be sure.  As late as the late 1950s, people moving to Toronto could expect to be moving to an essentially English city that closed up on Sundays entirely.  

Much of that has now been swept away. Canada is an urban country, like Australia is, with urban values.  The US is actually much more rural, by and large, than Canada, in spite of its much larger population.  But the rural areas do remain, and the strong East/West divide does as well.  What's also occurred, however, is a huge cultural shift in which Canada has become a very liberal country.

Or it makes pretense to being so.

In the homes, out on the farms and ranches, you'll get rumblings of another view.  Many I know, and again I know more in the East than the West, are certainly very "progressive" in outlook.  Nonetheless, I could never get a straight answer from anyone why people were enthralled with Justin Trudeau.  And in individual news I see the photos of people visiting the traditional Canada, including Canadians, not the side streets of the Second City.  

And out in the West, Western Canadians often seem distressed about how a society that isn't and wasn't that much different than the Western US has become so controlled in a fashion.  The comment on the Canadian right to bear arms, which in Canadian law doesn't exist, is telling on that.

A lot of these same factors are playing out in every country in the Western world simultaneously.  This helps explain, I think, a lot of the reaction to masks and the like.  People have actually been upset with the direction of things dating back to the 1980s, or even the 1970s.  They're reacting now. What probably pushed them over the edge, however, happened before COVID 19.

These are dangerous times.  The assumption that democracy is an inevitably victorious force is an assumption, not an historical fact.  History teaches us that when a large minority feels it can get no voice, it puts a country at risk.  In those times, the people who tend to pick up the voice are: 1) demagogues (Huey Long, Donald Trump, 2) Caudillos (Franco, Petain) and would be Caesars (Hitler, Putin).

Of course, in such times others can rise to save the day, and that's more often the case.

It's clear that the United States is a lot more down this disastrous path than Canada is, but the protests show that it isn't the case that everyone in Canada is thrilled with the path its been on since, really, 1945.  The same forces are at work in nearly every Western democracy right now.

The solution?  

That may be for true conservatives to offer.  Finding uncompromised ones who haven't sold out partially to populist and demagogues is pretty tough in the US right now, however.  Canada's politics are different, so perhaps they have a different path forward.

Footnotes

1.  Anyone who is a dual citizen or who has Canadian relatives probably speant some time trying to explain Donald Trump and often being embarrased for the country by having to explain Trump.

At the same time, we also would occasionally get unsolicited emails and comments from Canadian friends who were big Trump fans, but had to keep their opinions more or less silent themselves, which is also embarassing as they would tend to assume that any American they knew probably held the same view.  Indeed, the assumption that everyone you know personally holds the same views you do is probably a default human assumption.

2.  Indeed, the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church's prohibition on clergymen marrying came about in order to prevent the priesthood from becoming an inherited position.  After the seperation of the English Church from the Catholic Church in 1534 this was changed in in the UK and in the UK itself the priesthood did become somewhat of an inherited position.

The Aerodrome: 2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition

The Aerodrome: 2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition:   

2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition

 

We don't tend to post original commentary on this blog, but on our others, but given the topics, it's appropriate here.

And this will be a dual post, appearing on both Railhead and The Aerodrome simultaneously.

Like some, as in all, of our reflection posts that have gone up on our companion blogs, this entry is impacted by COVID 19, as everything is. 

It's also heavily impacted by politics.

And of course, COVID 19 itself has become strangely political.

The onset of the terrible pandemic shut down nearly every economy in the world, save for those in areas with economies so underdeveloped that they couldn't shut down.  That impacted the world's transportation networks in a major way, and it still is.  COVID 19 also became a factor in the last election, with a large section of the American public becoming extremely unhappy with the Trump Administration's response to the pandemic.  Added to the mix, heightened concerns over global warming have finally started to accelerate an American response to the threat.

All of which gets us to transportation, the topic of these blogs in some ways.

For at least a decade, it's been obvious that electric automobile are going to replace fossil fuel powered ones. There are, of course, deniers, but the die is cast and that's where things will go.  

It's also become obvious that technology is going to take truck driver out of their seats, and put a few, albeit a very few, in automated offices elsewhere where they'll monitor remote fleets of trucks.  Or at least that's the thought.

The Biden Administration, moreover, included money for railroads in is large infrastructure bill.  This has developed in various ways, but the big emphasis has been on expanding Amtrak.

Amtrak Expansion. Cheyenne to Denver, and beyond!?

I have real problems, I'll admit, with the scope of the proposed infrastructure spending proposals that President Biden is looking at, but if they go forward, I really hope we do see rail service restored (and that's what it would be) between Cheyenne and Denver.

The plan proposes to invest $80B in Amtrak.  Yes, $80B.  Most of that will go to repairs, believe it or not, as the Amtrak has never been a favorite of the Republican Party, which in its heard of hearts feels that the quasi public rail line is simply a way of preserving an obsolete mode of transportation at the Government's expense.  But rail has been receiving a lot of attention recently for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that in a now carbon conscious era, it's the greenest mode of transportation taht we have, something the commercial rail lines have been emphasizing.

Indeed, if the American public wasn't afraid of a nuclear power the same way that four year olds are afraid of monsters that live under their beds, it could be greener yet, and there's some talk of now supporting nuclear power among serious informed environmentalists.  A campaign to push that, called the Solutionary Rail, is now active.  We'll deal with that some other time.

Here we're noting that we're hopeful that if this does go through, and as noted we have real reservations about this level of expenditure, that Amtrak does put in a passenger line from Cheyenne to Pueblo.  

A line connecting Ft. Collins to Denver has been a proposal in Colorado for quite a while and has some backing there.  The same line of thought has already included Cheyenne.  This has a lot to do with trying to ease the burgeoning traffic problem this area experiences due to the massive population growth in Colorado.  Wyomingites, I suppose, should therefore approach this with some caution as it would tie us into the Front Range communities in a way that we might not want to be.  Still, it's an interesting idea.

It's one that for some reason I think will fall through, and I also suspect it'll receive no support in Wyoming. Still, it's interesting.

During  the past year, locally, flights to Casper were put in jeopardy. This was a byproduct of COVID 19, as air travel dropped off to nearly nothing, nationwide, and that made short flights economically iffy.

Before the pandemic, Delta had cut back its flight schedule to Salt Lake, which is a major Delta hub. This caused its bookings to drop down anyway.  I used to fly to Salt Lake in the morning, pre COVID, do business, and then fly back that evening.  Once Delta cuts its flights back, however, that became impossible.

That meant that Delta, at that point, had aced itself out of the day trip business market, which it seemingly remains unaware of for some reason.  COVID hurt things further.  At that point it threatened to abandon its service unless it could receive some assistance.  The county and the local municipalities rose to the occasion.

Delta receives a subsidty to continue serving the Natrona County International Airport

 I'm really not too certain what my view on this is.  Overall, I suppose it's a good thing.

Delta is one of the two carriers, relying on regional contractors, serving the Natrona County International Airport, and hence all of Central Wyoming.  It flies to and from Salt Lake, while United flies to and from Denver.  

It used to have great connections.  A businessman in Casper could take the red eye to Salt Lake and then catch the late flight back. That's no longer possible  Frankly, depending upon what you're doing, it's nearly as easy to drive to Salt Lake now.

And perhaps that's cutting into their passenger list, along with COVID 19, although I'm told that flights have been full recently.

Anyhow, losing Delta would be a disaster. We'd be down to just United.  Not only would that mean that there was no competition, it'd place us in a shaky position, maybe, as the overall viability of air travel starts to reduce once a carrier pulls out.

A couple of legislatures ago there was an effort to subsidize intrastate air travel, and I think it passed.  While Wyomingites howl about "socialism", as we loosely and fairly inaccurately describe it, we're hugely okay with transportation being subsidized.  We likely need to be, or it'll cut us off from the rest of everything more than we already are, and that has a certain domino effect.

I don't know what the overall solution to this problem is, assuming there is one, but whatever it is, subsidies appear likely to be part of it for the immediate future . . . and maybe there are some avenues open there we aren't pursuing and should be.

At the same time, infrastructure money became available for the state's airports as well.

Wyoming's Airports to receive $15.1M in Infrastructure Money

The Federal funds can be used for terminals, runways and parking lots and the like.

Of Wyoming airports, Jackson's will get the most, receiving $3.38M.  Natrona County International Airport gets the second-largest amount at $1.34M.  Natrona  County's airport will use the funds for electrical work.

So flights were kept and improvements will be made.

Recently, pilot pay has been tripled, albeit only for one month.

United Airlines Triples Pilot Pay for January.

This due to an ongoing pilot shortage, which has been heightened by the Omicron variant of COVID 19.

I.e, United is trying to fill the pilot seats this month.

So, that's what happened.

Now, what might we hope will happen?

1.  Electric Avenue

Everything always seem really difficult until its done, and then not so much.

Which doesn't discount difficulty. 

The Transcontinental Railraod was created in the US through the American System, something that's been largely forgotten.  Private railroads didn't leap at the chance to put in thousands of miles of rail line across uninhabited territory.  No, the Federal Government caused the rail line to come about by providing thousands of acres of valuable land to two start up companies and then guarding the workers with the Army, at taxpayer expense.

We note that as, right now, railroad are already the "greenest" means of transportation in the US.  They could be made more so by electrifying them, just as the Trans Siberian Railway is.  At the same time, if a program to rapidly convert energy production in the US to nuclear was engaged in, the US transportation system could be made basically "green" in very little time.  Probably five years or less.

If we intend to "build back better", we ought to do that.

This would, I'd note, largely shift long transportation back to its pre 1960s state.  Mostly by rail.  Trucking came in because the US decided, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, to subsidize massive coast to coast highways.  

For the most part, we no longer really need them.

Oh, we need highways, but with advances in technology of all sorts, we need them a lot less than we once did.  And frankly, we never really needed them way that the Federal Government maintained we did.  It's been a huge financial burden on the taxpayers, and its subsidized one industry over another.

Yes, this is radical, but we should do it.

Now, before a person either get too romantic, or too weepy, over this, a couple of things.

One is that we already have an 80,000 teamster shortage for trucking.  I.e., yes, this plan would put a lot of drivers out of work, but its a dying occupation anyway.  Indeed, in recent years its become on that is oddly increasingly filled with Eastern Europeans who seemingly take it up as its a job they can occupy with little training.  The age of the old burly American double shifting teamster is long over.  

And to the extent it isn't, automated trucks are about to make it that way for everyone.

The trains, we'd note, will be automated too.  It's inevitable. They'll be operated like giant train sets from a central location. Something that's frankly easier, and safer, to do, than it would be for semi tractors.

2.  Subsidized local air travel

It's going to take longer to electrify aircraft, particularly those that haul people, but electrification of light aircraft is already being worked on.  The Air Force has, moreover, been working on alternative jet fuels.

Anyhow, if we must subsidize something in long distance transportation, that should be local air travel.  Its safe, effective and vital for local economies.  I don't care if that is quasi socialist.  It should be done.

3. The abandoned runways.

Locally, I'd like to see some of that infrastructure money go to the extra runway or runways at the NatCo airport being repaired.  I know that they were little used, but they're there.

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 68^th 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 58^th 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.