The Mongolian "Department of Women's Development" was formed as Mongolia slipped into Communist repression.
Oil and the GOP was in the headlines.
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
The Mongolian "Department of Women's Development" was formed as Mongolia slipped into Communist repression.
Oil and the GOP was in the headlines.
Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.
Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/
January 2, 2024
The Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook Report states that combined generation from wind and solar will overtake generation from coal by more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours this year.
US coal production will drop to its lowest amount since the 1960s, with it taking more miners per ton to produce in the 60s than it does now.
Pennsylvania's Flying Fish Brewing Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
January 11, 2024
January 17, 2024
From the Trib:
According to a report put out by the Wyoming State Geological Survey this month, the state’s oil production has not yet surpassed its 2019 high, while nationwide oil production has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
More than 95 million barrels of oil are expected to be produced in Wyoming in 2023, which is about 3 million more barrels than in 2022. The drilling of new oil wells has helped greatly.
In the first half of 2023, a total of 110 newly drilled oil wells were completed, most of them in the Powder River Basin. This is in line with the first half of 2022, when 118 oil wells were completed.
January 22, 2024
Flying Fish Brewing has declared bankruptcy.
January 23, 2024
U.S. oil production has been holding at or near record highs since October, topping the previous peak from 2020, even though the number of active domestic oil drilling rigs is down by nearly 30% from four years ago.
New technology is the reason why there is higher production with fewer rigs.
And also:
The U.S. set a new annual oil production record on December 15, based on data from the Energy Information Administration. Although the official monthly numbers from the EIA won’t be released for a couple of months, we can calculate that a new record has been set based on the following analysis.
Prices at the pump have been declining.
January 25, 2024
In spite of repeated Republican declarations about how bad the economy is doing, the economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023, for which the latest figures are out. This grossly exceeds expectations.
This is interesting for a lot of reasons, one of which the "bad economy" is a consistent theme of Republicans in the current election cycle, when in fact this is a classic "good economy". It's frankly bizarre.
Some of that might reflect, however, an ongoing retention of a return to the 1945-1975 economy by Rust Belt voters, and anxiety over an inevitable decline in the fossil fuel economy in the West. The post-war economy is of course never returning, and the change in the direction in the energy economy cannot be arrested, although it too is doing well right now.
January 28, 2024
The Administration plans on providing billions for microchip subsidies for US producers to assure production can be made in the US.
It's worth noting that with war looming with China, there's more than one reason to do this.
The Biden Administration has paused all pending export licenses for liquified national gas (LNG) to consider the climate impacts.
February 8, 2024
February 10, 2024
US Credit Card debt is at an all-time high.
February 11, 2024
Wyoming Gets a Big Win in Court for Coal
CHEYENNE, Wyo. –Wyoming’s coal industry’s earned a
long-awaited legal win today, as three Ninth Circuit judges unanimously sided
with Wyoming’s arguments in support of the continuation of the federal
coal-leasing program. The decision vacated a lower court order that reinstated
Obama-era coal-leasing restrictions and required federal officials to perform
duplicative National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis.
“This ruling is an unequivocal win for our coal industry and a
reminder that the Biden Administration has to follow the law,” Governor Mark
Gordon said. “The Department of Interior now has one less excuse to thwart its
federal coal leasing responsibilities. I appreciate the Attorney General and
her staff for their excellent work on this case.”
The complicated case spanned seven years and involved conflicting
orders issued by former Interior Secretaries, in which Secretary Jewel issued
an order to cease federal coal leasing and conduct a Programmatic Environmental
Statement on the entire coal leasing program. Before that review was complete,
Secretary Zinke rescinded the Jewel Order so coal leasing could resume; lastly
Secretary Haaland rescinded the Zinke order. The district court ruled that the
Department of the Interior needed to conduct additional NEPA analysis before
resuming coal leasing under its existing authorities. Wyoming argued that
the case was moot, because the Zinke order was rescinded by Secretary Haaland.
Litigation costs for Wyoming were covered by the Federal Natural
Resource Policy Account as directed by Governor Gordon.
-END-
March 15, 2024
Nippon Steel proposes to take over U.S. Steel.
March 17, 2024
Tyson, the giant chicken corporation, announced that it's closing a plant in Iowa in June which will result in 1200 people, 15% of the entire town, losing their jobs. Simultaneously, the company is working with an asylum advocate group to hire 2,500 asylum seekers who are cleared to work elsewhere.
Um. . . we've been running a series on our companion blog entitled An Agrarian Manifesto. . . might be worth reading, perhaps particularly these:
Last Prior Edition:
On oil, the issue had an Autocar Truck advertisement advertising gas and electric trucks. . . the latter being something that locals now insist just can't happen.
Secretary of the Navy Fall was so struck by the Teapot Dome Scandal, which took place, of course, on the Naval Petroleum Reserve, that he had fallen ill.
Representatives of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome, providing that Fiume would be annexed to Italy and Susak to what would become Yugoslavia.
Fiume today is in Croatia, as is the island of Susak.
Oilman Edward L. Doheny testified that he had loaned Senator Albert B. Fall $100,000, when Fall was Secretary of the Interior under Harding, breaking open the Teapot Dome Scandal.
The other day Robert Reich, whose writing I have a love/hate relationship with, wrote this article:
I'll admit that I was prepared to dismiss it when I started reading it, but I can't. It's a well reasoned article.
I don't think it sums up everything that's "wrong" with Iowa, but it gets some things right. This could just as easily be said, about Wyoming, however:
I saw it happen. When I was helping Fritz Mondale in 1984, I noticed Iowa beginning to shift from family farms to corporate agriculture, and from industrialized manufacturing to knowledge-intensive jobs.
The challenge was to create a new economy for Iowa and for much of the Midwest.
I didn’t have any good ideas for creating that new economy, though — and neither did Mondale, who won Iowa’s Democratic caucuses that year but lost the general election to Ronald Reagan in Iowa and every other state, except his own Minnesota.
Yet not until George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 did a Republican presidential candidate win Iowa again.
When Tom Vilsack was governor of Iowa in the early 2000s and flirting with the idea of a presidential run, he told me he worried that Iowa’s high school valedictorians used to want to attend the University of Iowa or Iowa State, but now wanted the Ivy League or Stanford or NYU. Even Iowa’s own college graduates were leaving for Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and New York.
Vilsack wanted to know how to keep Iowa’s talent in Iowa — a variant of the question I couldn’t answer for Mondale. By this time I had a few ideas — setting up high-tech hubs around major universities, blanketing parts of the state with free wi-fi, having community colleges supply the talent local industries needed — but they all cost money that Iowa didn’t have.
As The New York Times’s Jonathan Weisman noted recently, Iowa continues to lose more than 34 percent of its college graduates each year. Illinois, by contrast, gains 20 percent more college graduates than it produces. Minnesota has about 8 percent more college grads than it produces.
This talent migration has hastened America’s split into two cultures, not just in Iowa and the Midwest but across the nation.
But not entirely.
The thing people like Reich don't get is that much of the country doesn't want to become an upper middle class urban cesspool. Places that people like Reich worship are largely abhorrent in living terms. There's a reason that people look to rural areas and an idealized past.
But people also lash themselves to a dead economy as if it'll come back, even if it means losing track of reality at some point, or even if it means becoming something they claim to detest, welfare recipients. This has happened all over the US.
Something needs to be done to revitalize the main street economy, and people like Reich don't have the answers because at the end of the day, all American economists see things the same way. Everything is corporate, the only question is how much, if any, restraint you put on corporations.
Distributism would cure a lot of this.
If we had a more Distributist economy, we'd have a more local one. For rural areas, that'd mean much more local processing of locally produced goods. There's no reason for the concentration of the meat packing industry, for example. Beef could be packed locally. At one time, my family did just that. And that's only one example.
If the economy was reoriented in that fashion, local industry would expand a great deal. The thing is, of course, not all of those jobs would be the glass and steel mind-numbing cubicle jobs that all economists love.
But here's the other thing. As long as the economy is oriented the way it is, rural states are going to be colonies of urban areas, just as much as, let's say, French Indochina was a colony of France, or Kenya a colony of the United Kingdom. Exploitative, in another word. It's not intentionally so, it is an economic reality.
The problem there is that in those sorts of economies everything is produced for export alone, and everything is precarious. That gets back to my Distributist argument above.
But it also gets to a certain cultural thing in which those deeply aligned with the economy, which includes most people, can't see anything thing else. As long as the economy keeps working, that's okay. But when changes come, that can be a disaster.
Wyoming's very first economy was the fur trade, if we discount the native economy (which is a real economy, and accordingly should not be discounted). Contrary to the popular belief, the fur trade was not displaced, it just was never really very large, and therefore it diminished in importance when other things came in.
The other things were 1) agriculture, which came first, followed by the 2) extractive industries. Both are still with us. Agriculture has suffered to a degree as the naturally distributist industries that support it have been sacrificed on the altar of corporate economics and consolidation. The state, for its part, did nothing to arrest that trend and simply let it happen. In part, that's because the state has always deeply worshiped the thought that the extractive industries will make us all rich and nothing is to be interfered with, including losing local production of the raw resources that are first produced here. I.e., we don't refine the oil as much as we used to, we don't pack the meat, we don't process the wool. . . .
And the extractive industries certainly have made a lot of people and entire communities rich, there's no question of it.
But the handwriting is on the wall. Coal is declining and will continue to do so. And a massive shift in petroleum use is occurring, which Wyoming cannot stop. Petroleum will still be produced far into the future, but its use as a fuel is disappearing. Petrochemicals, on the other hand, are not.
We seemingly like to think we can stop those things from changing in any form. We've tried to through lawsuits and legislation. And yet it turns out that people buying EV's don't listen to our litigation or legislation, any more than they do to Nebraska's Senator Deb Fischer's whining about recharging station funding. Like some who can't face death due to illness, we'll grasp at what we can, rather than adjust.
Part of that is listening to people who tell us what we want to hear. A lot of politicians have tried to gently tell us the truth of what we're facing. Governor Gordon did just recently. When they do that, they're castigated for it.
In 1962's The Days of Wine and Roses the plot follows a man who is a social drinker and introduces alcohol to his girlfriend. They marry, and over time they become heavy drinkers. He finally stops drinking, his wife having left him, and finds her in an apartment, where she is now a hardcore alcoholic. He resumes drinking then and there, in order to be with her.
In the end, however, he reforms and quits. She doesn't. We know how that will end.
That's a lot like Wyomingites in general. We've received the hard knocks and blows. Some of us are going to put the bottle down and face the day, some are not going to under any circumstances.
For some, it's easier to believe that a "dictator for a day" can order the old economy restored and reverse fifty years of demographic change, while reversing supply, demand, and technology to sort of 1970s status. In other words, go ahead and have another drink, it won't hurt you.
But in reality, it might, and probably will.
The Cohn-Brandt-Cohn film company (CBC) changed its name to Columbia Pictures.
France imposed a curfew on the Rhineland and closed its borders, save for railroads and food transportation. The move was due to the murder of Franz Josef Heinz the prior day. The French were so strict on the matter that they refused to let British officials in to investigate separatist movements connected with the incident.
Related Threads:
OPEC voted to freeze oil prices for three months. Saudi Arabia had been willing to reduce them, but Algeria, Iraq, and Iran, had not been.
Actor turned politician Ronald Reagan delivered California's State of the State address, noting the oil crisis but asserting it was an opportunity to develop resources, freeing the US from foreign petroleum.
Oil.
The market capitalization of Ford Motor Company exceeded $1 billion for the first time.
Palatine seperatist Franz Josef Heinz was murdered by member sof the Viking League with the permission of the Bavarian government.
The Bishop of Speyer, Ludwig Sebastian, would refuse to give Heinz a church burial.
Gas rationing began in Sweden, the first Western nation to do so in response to the ongoign crisis caused by the Arab Oil Embargo.
The four-year-long Gombe Chimpanzee War broke out in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park.
Margaret Queen Adams, née Margaret Queen Phillips, the first female deputy sheriff in the United States died at age 99. She had served in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department from 1912 to 1947. She worked in the evidence department.
The Catholic Church in France was allowed to reoccupy former Church property under the "diocesan associations" system.
On the same day, the flood of the Seine peaked at over 7 meters.
The National Maximum Speed Law reduced the speed limit on the nation's highways to 55 mph.
While ultimately hated, the law had an immediate impact in reducing highway deaths, which of course was not its actual intent. Reducing the consumption of petroleum was.
The first Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks were mailed in a program designed to address those disabled but unable to qualify for Social Security. The law allowing for this to occur had come into effect the prior day.
The People's Republic of China announced that eight senior military figures were being reassigned in an apparent attempt to disrupt their ability to form a base of power.
Early country music pioneer and actor Tex Ritter died at age 68 of what was believed to be a heart attack. His son, John Ritter, would die in 2003 at age 54 of aortic dissection and its likely that this was actually the cause of his father's death.
Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.
Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Fifty oil companies representing nearly half of global production pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks said Saturday, a move environmental groups called a “smokescreen.”
Smokescreen it doesn't seem to be. That's a major commitment. But not as big as this one:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that's a huge factor in global warming.U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.
None of this should be a surprise. This is where we've been heading for some time, and it's inevitable. Indeed, I touched on this back in 2017 here:
And I cautiously dipped my toe in the water, wondering if Wyoming should ponder a fossil fuel free future here:
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science."
accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power" and for "tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
This is a major action, if the committing countries are able to stick to it. Environmentalist will complain that it is too little, too late, but as economists have shown in the past once efforts are made to really commit to a goal, it tends to be reached much more rapidly than anticipated.
In Wyoming, where the Governor has been taking flak by noting that Wyoming will have to transition away from a carbon based economy, this is going to result in howls of derision, including claims that its part of a "radical green agenda" and "impossible". It's neither.
December 14, 2023
We can’t reverse market trends, but we can be prepared. Blaming OSMRE — or, more ridiculously, President Biden — only provides another distraction as Wyoming politicians continue to whistle past the graveyard, averting our attention from planning for our future — a new lower-carbon economy that is coming whether we like it or not.
Bob LeResche former Alaska Commissioner, former Executive Director of the Alaska Energy Authority, in the Casper Star Tribune, December 14, 2023.
I used the same phrase, "whistling past the graveyard" here recently at least twice.
But some, it would appear, are not:
Fremont County does have an interesting mix of residents, people who have retired there, people who have moved there (which includes everywhere else in Wyoming now), people who work in oil and gas (and live mostly in Riverton), people involved in outdoor industries, and residents of the Reservation. Lander is the county seat, and borders the Reservation, but it is not an oil town. The same resolution would likely pass easily in Jackson, maybe Pinedale, and Laramie. Cheyenne? It might.
What about Evanston?
Well, probably, maybe, not, but Evanston is mad at the Wyoming Department of Transportation's plan to put in a semi tractor/trailer parking lot that will hold over 350 trucks and trailers during emergencies. They don't like it, even though not all that long ago, almost any Wyoming Interstate highway town would have just shrugged their shoulders and figured that some of those truckers would at least order pizzas while stranded.
December 15, 2023
Global coal demand, on the other hand, was at an all-time high last year, due to use in developing countries.
General Motors is closing two plants and laying off 1,300 workers.
Closer to home, it's clear that Governor Gordon, who will not be running for office again (too bad) feels himself free to speak what he really believes.
This is of course going to get him a lot of criticism, including the class "he's a RINO" by people not realizing that they're the ones who are departing from the traditional Republican mindset.
December 18, 2023
All new cars in Canada must be zero emissions starting in 2035.
December 27, 2023
10,000,000 Americans will receive raises with boosted state minimum wages on January 1. The new rates apply in 22 states.
December 28, 2023
From the AP:
MEXICO CITY — Mexico launched its army-run airline Tuesday when the first Mexicana airlines flight took off from Mexico City bound for the Caribbean resort of Tulum.
Also, from the AP:
So far in 2023, Americans have bought a record 1 million-plus hybrids — up 76% from the same period last year, according to Edmunds.com. As recently as last year, purchases had fallen below 2021’s total. This year’s figures don’t even include sales of 148,000 plug-in hybrids, which drive a short distance on battery power before a gas-electric system kicks in.
Last Prior Edition:
Bill Donovan, age 47, a former major league baseball player, was killed in a train accident in New York.
The Convention and Statute on the International Régime of Maritime Ports is a 1923 was signed in Geneva providing for open ports. It's still in effect.
Pope Francis released this statement yesterday:
Mr President,
Mr Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Distinguished Heads of State and Government,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Sadly, I am unable to be present with you, as I had greatly desired. Even so, I am with you, because time is short. I am with you because now more than ever, the future of us all depends on the present that we now choose. I am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations. I am with you because climate change is “a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life” (Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum, 3). I am with you to raise the question which we must answer now: Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death? To all of you I make this heartfelt appeal: Let us choose life! Let us choose the future! May we be attentive to the cry of the earth, may we hear the plea of the poor, may we be sensitive to the hopes of the young and the dreams of children! We have a grave responsibility: to ensure that they not be denied their future.
It has now become clear that the climate change presently taking place stems from the overheating of the planet, caused chiefly by the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity, which in recent decades has proved unsustainable for the ecosystem. The drive to produce and possess has become an obsession, resulting in an inordinate greed that has made the environment the object of unbridled exploitation. The climate, run amok, is crying out to us to halt this illusion of omnipotence. Let us once more recognize our limits, with humility and courage, as the sole path to a life of authentic fulfilment.
What stands in the way of this? The divisions that presently exist among us. Yet a world completely connected, like ours today, should not be un-connected by those who govern it, with international negotiations that “cannot make significant progress due to positions taken by countries which place their national interests above the global common good” (Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, 169). We find ourselves facing firm and even inflexible positions calculated to protect income and business interests, at times justifying this on the basis of what was done in the past, and periodically shifting the responsibility to others. Yet the task to which we are called today is not about yesterday, but about tomorrow: a tomorrow that, whether we like it or not, will belong to everyone or else to no one.
Particularly striking in this regard are the attempts made to shift the blame onto the poor and high birth rates. These are falsities that must be firmly dispelled. It is not the fault of the poor, since the almost half of our world that is more needy is responsible for scarcely 10% of toxic emissions, while the gap between the opulent few and the masses of the poor has never been so abysmal. The poor are the real victims of what is happening: we need think only of the plight of indigenous peoples, deforestation, the tragedies of hunger, water and food insecurity, and forced migration. Births are not a problem, but a resource: they are not opposed to life, but for life, whereas certain ideological and utilitarian models now being imposed with a velvet glove on families and peoples constitute real forms of colonization. The development of many countries, already burdened by grave economic debt, should not be penalized; instead, we should consider the footprint of a few nations responsible for a deeply troubling “ecological debt” towards many others (cf. ibid., 51-52). It would only be fair to find suitable means of remitting the financial debts that burden different peoples, not least in light of the ecological debt that they are owed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to speak to you, as brothers and sisters, in the name of the common home in which we live, and to ask this question: What is the way out of this? It is the one that you are pursuing in these days: the way of togetherness, multilateralism. Indeed, “our world has become so multipolar and at the same time so complex that a different framework for effective cooperation is required. It is not enough to think only of balances of power… It is a matter of establishing global and effective rules (Laudate Deum, 42). In this regard, it is disturbing that global warming has been accompanied by a general cooling of multilateralism, a growing lack of trust within the international community, and a loss of the “shared awareness of being… a family of nations” (SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to the United Nations Organization for the Fiftieth Anniversary of its Establishment, New York, 5 October 1995, 14). It is essential to rebuild trust, which is the foundation of multilateralism.
This is true in the case of care for creation, but also that of peace. These are the most urgent issues and they are closely linked. How much energy is humanity wasting on the numerous wars presently in course, such as those in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and in many parts of the world: conflicts that will not solve problems but only increase them! How many resources are being squandered on weaponry that destroys lives and devastates our common home! Once more I present this proposal: “With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger” (Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 262; cf. SAINT PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, 51) and carry out works for the sustainable development of the poorer countries and for combating climate change.
It is up to this generation to heed the cry of peoples, the young and children, and to lay the foundations of a new multilateralism. Why not begin precisely from our common home? Climate change signals the need for political change. Let us emerge from the narrowness of self-interest and nationalism; these are approaches belonging to the past. Let us join in embracing an alternative vision: this will help to bring about an ecological conversion, for “there are no lasting changes without cultural changes” (Laudate Deum, 70). In this regard, I would assure you of the commitment and support of the Catholic Church, which is deeply engaged in the work of education and of encouraging participation by all, as well as in promoting sound lifestyles, since all are responsible and the contribution of each is fundamental.
Brothers and sisters, it is essential that there be a breakthrough that is not a partial change of course, but rather a new way of making progress together. The fight against climate change began in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the 2015 Paris Agreement represented “a new beginning” (ibid., 47). Now there is a need to set out anew. May this COP prove to be a turning point, demonstrating a clear and tangible political will that can lead to a decisive acceleration of ecological transition through means that meet three requirements: they must be “efficient, obligatory and readily monitored” (ibid., 59). And achieved in four sectors: energy efficiency; renewable sources; the elimination of fossil fuels; and education in lifestyles that are less dependent on the latter.
Please, let us move forward and not turn back. It is well-known that various agreements and commitments “have been poorly implemented, due to the lack of suitable mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of non-compliance” (Laudato i’, 167). Now is the time no longer to postpone, but to ensure, and not merely to talk about the welfare of your children, your citizens, your countries and our world. You are responsible for crafting policies that can provide concrete and cohesive responses, and in this way demonstrate the nobility of your role and the dignity of the service that you carry out. In the end, the purpose of power is to serve. It is useless to cling to an authority that will one day be remembered for its inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so (cf. ibid., 57). History will be grateful to you. As will the societies in which you live, which are sadly divided into “fan bases”, between prophets of doom and indifferent bystanders, radical environmentalists and climate change deniers… It is useless to join the fray; in this case, as in the case of peace, it does not help to remedy the situation. The remedy is good politics: if an example of concreteness and cohesiveness comes from the top, this will benefit the base, where many people, especially the young, are already dedicated to caring for our common home.
May the year 2024 mark this breakthrough. I like to think that a good omen can be found in an event that took place in 1224. In that year, Francis of Assisi composed his “Canticle of the Creatures”. By then Francis was completely blind, and after a night of physical suffering, his spirits were elevated by a mystical experience. He then turned to praise the Most High for all those creatures that he could no longer see, but knew that they were his brothers and sisters, since they came forth from the same Father and were shared with other men and women. An inspired sense of fraternity thus led him to turn his pain into praise and his weariness into renewed commitment. Shortly thereafter, Francis added a stanza in which he praised God for those who forgive; he did this in order to settle – successfully – an unbecoming conflict between the civil authorities and the local bishop. I too, who bear the name Francis, with the heartfelt urgency of a prayer, want to leave you with this message: Let us leave behind our divisions and unite our forces! And with God’s help, let us emerge from the dark night of wars and environmental devastation in order to turn our common future into the dawn of a new and radiant day.
Thank you.
I'll be frank that I've gone from being cautious about Pope Francis to being in the "non fan" category. I do not, however, by that mean that I'm in the flirting with sedevacantism category like Patrick Coffin and the like. He's the Pope. I tend to think, however, that as the Pope he represents his generation of Westerner to a very large degree, which has retained a view it formed in its youth that things need to change in a "progressive" direction and be more "inclusive". The better evidence is that this is in error and we see a strong trend in the young Church in the other direction. The ultimate irony of that is that the mantilla wearing young women at Mass may be much more representative of the future than the young man this state sent to the Synod.
And it's been hard to ignore that while the Pope struggles with his racing into oblivion and potentially apostasy European contingent and some of their American allies, he hasn't suppressed them. He's done just that with his critics on the right. The recent actions against Cardinal Dolan are shocking, particularly while the leadership of a German church with lots of Euros but emptying pews are given verbal warnings but are not otherwise checked.
But he continues to surprise in ways. Contrary to what people assert, he's never endorsed things long regarded as sins, even though he seems increasingly willing to tolerate them. And on greater issues, he certainly remains both catholic and Catholic.
This is one of them.
The Pope here is indeed acting both very catholic and Catholic. This is going to receive howls of protests in some quarters, including in those quarters of the West where populists assert they are acting on Christian principles.
Some of those howling will be Catholics, but as noted here earlier, in the United States, Catholics are often heavily Protestantized. Not all Protestants will object to this statement, of course, and I'd be surprised if any serious "main line" Protestant body does. But people like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will, and others will object to it along similar lines as he's likely to, assuming he says anything (which he's not likely to, as 1) taking on the Pope is a bad idea, and 2) it's definitely a bad idea if you are from a state with a lot of Catholics). Other politicians will of course oppose this, and will do so openly if they're in a place that's safe to do it.
And as noted, some rank and file Catholics in the U.S., and I imagine in the increasingly MAGAized Canadian West, will as well.