You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
John Stuart Mill
April 14, 2024.
The Middle Eastern War.
This was mentioned yesterday, but in North America we're waking up to the news that Iran, the supplier of drones to Russia, used a huge number of drones in an airborne assault on Israel yesterday which was combined with missiles.
Because that's going to serve somebody's interest?
This was retaliatory in nature, of course, but it was also monumentally stupid on the part of Iran.
Almost all the Iranian munitions were shot down. The few that got through caused minor damage. The US participated in the airborne defense.
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine's defense chief warned that its battlefield situation has significantly worsened in recent days.
Mike Johnson, pick up your copy of John Stuart Mill.
Israel has carried out a retaliatory air strke on Iran. The details are sketchy at this time, but drones appear to be involved.
A big difference appears to be that Israel hit its targets, as opposed to Iran, which demonostrated an inability to get theirs through, although the US, UK and France helped Israel in its defense.
China v. US
A hacking campaign by China called Volt Typhoon has gained access to telecommunications, energy, water and 23 pipeline operators targeted, amongst other infrastrucure.
It should be obvious that China is preparing for war against the US, which will come over Taiwan.
April 19, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War/Middle Eastern War/China v. Taiwan.
Massively belatedly, the House of Representatives voted 316-94 to advance military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. A final vote will come on Saturday, as this was procedural.
Isolationist are having a fit and will now take a run at removing Speaker Johnson, the latter having found his courage this week, at long last.
April 20, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War/Middle Eastern War/China v. Taiwan.
About bloody time, and better late than never, assuming it's not too late.
Finally, Mike Johnson, who apparently prayed about the matter, found his courage.
April 22, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
In listing to This Week, I learned that a majority of GOP Congressman voted against aid to Ukraine.
Shameful.
Some of the commentary on the weekend shows suggest that Speaker Johnson may have changed his mind in part because of intelligence briefings. If that's the case, we ought to be truly fearful of Russia winning the war.
MJT tried to insert an amendment into the bill which would have required all those who voted for the bill to become Ukrainian conscripts.
Middle Eastern War
Air strikes in Razah killed 22 people.
The US is imposing sanctions on the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a unit for ultra Orthodox Jews, most of whom do not serve in the Israeli military and who are exempted from universal male conscription that the country generally imposes.
It's difficult to see how attempting to sanction a single unit would work.
April 24, 2024
Middle Eastern War
Pro Palestinian demonstrations are causing havoc across campuses in the US as protesters.
Anti-Semitic elements in these protests have been very notable, including delusional ones such as LGBTQ supporting protesters supporting, effectively, Hamas, even though Hamas would likely put a 9mm to their heads if they were in Palestine.
Stay tuned to see if the Horst Wessel song reappears.
Russo Ukrainian War
The aid bill passed the Senate 79 to 18. Wyoming's two Senators, who normally would have voted yes, voted no, so they can bow down to the Populist Party.
Iran v. Everyone
Four Iranians were arrested for a hacking scheme aimed at Federal agencies.
April 25, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine deployed M57A1 ATACMS ballistic missiles against Russian targets in Crimea. The new missiles vastly increase Ukraine's ability to hit deep into Russian held territory.
The sudden appearance of the missiles suggest that Ukraine was supplied them prior to the recent funding bill, which was only signed into law yesterday, but withheld use of them until the bill was passed.
Russia, regarding the bill, predictably squealed like a stuck pig or like Donald Trump complaining about being on trial for his prurient interest, while it itself has used long range missiles fairly indiscriminately in Ukraine.
Pope Francis in an interview with CBS News declared that a "negotiated peace is better than a war without end", calling on warring parties in Ukraine and the Middle East to negotiate.
Of interset here, perhaps, the Vatican recently released its "Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity”, the same appearing on April 8. While I've noted it elsewhere, I suspect that Catholics in particular, or at least some Catholics, have grown so weary of documents issued by Pope Francis that they're being ignored and dreaded at this point. Indeed, many Catholics are holding their breath on what will come out of the Synod on Snyodality. Anyhow, Dignatas Infinita, which people were holding their breath on before it came out (it had been announced that something was coming out) didn't receive very much attention from the world at large and frankly from Catholics as well, as sure sign that just too darned much is being generated by this Papacy.
What notice it drew from Catholic circles tended to focus on the concept of "infinite dignity", and what that meant. I haven't followed the results of that, and there wasn't that much discussion of it to start with. The Pope, however, drew a lot of flak for his statements on transgenderism, which are perfectly in line with Catholic beliefs. We'll deal with that elsewhere.
What surprisingly didn't receive much attention was his statements on war, which were:
War
38. Another tragedy that denies human dignity, both in the past and today, is war: “War, terrorist attacks, racial or religious persecution, and many other affronts to human dignity […] ‘have become so common as to constitute a real ‘third world war’ fought piecemeal.’”[64] With its trail of destruction and suffering, war attacks human dignity in both the short and long term: “While reaffirming the inalienable right to self-defense and the responsibility to protect those whose lives are threatened, we must acknowledge that war is always a ‘defeat of humanity.’ No war is worth the tears of a mother who has seen her child mutilated or killed; no war is worth the loss of the life of even one human being, a sacred being created in the image and likeness of the Creator; no war is worth the poisoning of our common home; and no war is worth the despair of those who are forced to leave their homeland and are deprived, from one moment to the next, of their home and all the family, friendship, social and cultural ties that have been built up, sometimes over generations.”[65] All wars, by the mere fact that they contradict human dignity, are “conflicts that will not solve problems but only increase them.”[66] This point is even more critical in our time when it has become commonplace for so many innocent civilians to perish beyond the confines of a battlefield.
39. Therefore, even today, the Church cannot but make her own the words of the Pontiffs, repeating with Pope St. Paul VI: “jamais plus la guerre, jamais plus la guerre!” [“never again war, never again war!”].[67] Moreover, together with Pope St. John Paul II, the Church pleas “in the name of God and in the name of man: Do not kill! Do not prepare destruction and extermination for people! Think of your brothers and sisters who are suffering hunger and misery! Respect each one’s dignity and freedom!”[68] As much now as ever, this is the cry of the Church and of all humanity. Pope Francis underscores this by stating, “We can no longer think of war as a solution because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!”[69] Since humanity often falls back into the same mistakes of the past, “in order to make peace a reality, we must move away from the logic of the legitimacy of war.”[70] The intimate relationship between faith and human dignity means it would be contradictory for war to be based on religious convictions: “The one who calls upon God’s name to justify terrorism, violence, and war does not follow God’s path. War in the name of religion becomes a war against religion itself.”[71]
These statements are not really novel, but they certainly call into question the concept of a just war, while not abrogating it completely. This is interesting as well as certainly in the region itself the Ukrainian Catholic Church, if not backing the war openly, seems to be generally.
I would note here something that's widely misunderstood. Wars today, while they do feature civilian death, and Russia certainly has been indiscriminate in its use of airborne munitions on Ukraine, and Israel has been leveling parts of Gaza, is actually less destructive on civilians that it was some 80 years ago and that is the overall actual trend.
April 26, 2024
Middle Eastern War
Hamas proposed to lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state, which we have a long dormant thread in the hopper on, were to be created.
More specifically, it proposed:
“a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions,”
Israel is unlikely to accept that, but more than that, is such a tiny rump state even viable?
Meanwhile, Hamas and Palestinian groups have shelled the construction area for the humanitarian pier.
In Catholic circles, you could almost hear the groan when it was announced prior to Easter that Pope Francis and Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández were issuing a new writing on something.
"Oh no" went up the collective mental though of millions of Catholics, and the written comment in social media by some.
In the end, it was just the Pope's meditations on the Stations of the Cross for this year, which didn't stop his most ardent critics from launching into them. There's nothing inappropriate with a Pope doing this, however, and there's recent precedent for that matter.
BYU is taking flak for making its incoming students read Jeffrey Holland's "trowel and musket" speech regarding BYU's second century, which he delivered back in 2001.
Holland is a figure in the LDS's governing body. His speech, is copyrighted, but under the fair comment exception I'm setting it out here. It stated:
Someone once told me that the young speak of the future because they have no past, while the elderly speak of the past because they have no future. Although it damages that little aphorism, I who have no future have come to you as the veritable Ancient of Days to speak of the future of BYU, but a future anchored in our distinctive past. If I have worded that just right, it means I can talk about anything I want.
I am grateful that the full university family is gathered today—faculty, staff, and administration. Regardless of your job description, I am going to speak to all of you as teachers, because at BYU that is what all of us are. Thank you for being faithful role models in that regard. We teach at BYU.
I can’t be certain, but I think that it was in the summer of 1948 when I had my first BYU experience. I would have been seven years old. We were driving back to St. George in a 1941 Plymouth from one of our rare trips to Salt Lake City. As we came down old highway 91, I saw high on the side of one of the hills a huge block Y—white and bold and beautiful.
I don’t know how to explain that moment, but it was a true epiphany for a seven-year-old, if a seven-year-old can have an epiphany. If I had already seen that Y on the drive up or at any other time, I couldn’t remember it. That day I probably was seeing it for the first time. I believe I was receiving a revelation from God. I somehow knew that bold letter meant something special—something special to me—and that it would one day play a significant role in my life. When I asked my mother what it meant, she said it was the emblem of a university. I thought about that for a moment, still watching that letter on the side of the hill, and then said quietly to her, “Well, it must be the greatest university in the world.”
My chance to actually get on campus came in June 1952, four years after that first sighting. That summer I accompanied my parents to one of the early leadership weeks—a precursor to what is now the immensely popular BYU Education Week held on campus. That means I came here for my first BYU experience sixty-nine years ago, with a preview of that four years earlier. If anyone in this audience has been coming to this campus longer than that, please come forward and give this talk. Otherwise, sit still and be patient. As Elizabeth Taylor said to her eight husbands, “I won’t be keeping you long.”
My point, dear friends, is simply this: I have loved BYU for nearly three-fourths of a century. Only my service in and testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—which includes and features foremost my marriage and the beautiful children it has given us—have affected me as profoundly as has my decision to attend Brigham Young University. No one in my family had. In so testifying, I represent literally hundreds of thousands of other students who made that decision and say that same thing.
So, for the legions of us over the years, I say: Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for classes taught and meals served and grounds so well kept. Thank you for office hours and lab experiments and testimonies shared—gifts given to little people like me so we could grow up to be big people like you. Thank you for choosing to be at BYU, because your choice affected our choice, and, like Mr. Frost’s poetic path, “that has made all the difference.”
“A Trowel in One Hand and a Musket in the Other”
I asked President Kevin J Worthen for a sample of the good things that have been happening of late, and I was delighted at the sheaf of items he gave me—small type, single-spaced lines, reams, it looked like—everything from academic recognitions and scholarly rankings to athletic successes and the reach of BYUtv. Karl G. Maeser would be as proud as I was.
But President Worthen and I both know those aren’t the real success stories of BYU. These are rather, as some say of ordinances in the Church, “outward signs of an inward grace.”2 The real successes at BYU are the personal experiences that thousands here have had—personal experiences difficult to document or categorize or list. Nevertheless, these are so powerful in their impact on the heart and mind that they have changed us forever.
I run a risk in citing any examples beyond my own, but let me mention just one or two.
One of our colleagues seated here this morning wrote of his first-semester, pre-mission enrollment in my friend C. Wilfred Griggs’s History of Civilization class. But this was going to be civilization seen through a BYU lens. So, as preambles to the course, Wilf had the students read President Spencer W. Kimball’s talk “The Second Century of Brigham Young University”3 and the first chapter of Hugh Nibley’s book Approaching Zion.4
Taken together, our very literate friend said these two readings “forged an indestructible union in my mind and heart between two soaring ideals—that of a consecrated university with that of a holy city. Zion, I came to believe, would be a city with a school [and, I would add, a temple, creating] something of a celestial college town, or perhaps a college kingdom.”
After his mission, our faculty friend returned to Provo, where he fell under the soul-expanding spell of John S. Tanner, “the platonic ideal of a BYU professor—superbly qualified in every secular sense, totally committed to the kingdom, and absolutely effervescing with love for the Savior, his students, and his subject. He moved seamlessly from careful teacher analysis to powerful personal testimony. He knew scores of passages from Milton and other poets by heart, [yet] verses of scripture flowed, if anything, even more freely from the abundance of his consecrated heart: I was unfailingly edified by the passion of his teaching and the eloquence of his example.”
Why would such a one come back to teach at BYU after a truly distinguished postgraduate experience that might well have taken him to virtually any university in America? Because, our colleague said, “in a coming day the citizens of Zion ‘shall come forth with songs of everlasting joy’ [Moses 7:53]. I hope,” he wrote, “to help my students hear that chorus in the distance and to lend their own voices, in time, to its swelling refrain.”
Such are the experiences we hope to provide our students at BYU, though probably not always so poetically expressed. But imagine then the pain that comes with a memo like this one I recently received. These are just a half-dozen lines from a two-page document:
“You should know,” the writer said, “that some people in the extended community are feeling abandoned and betrayed by BYU. It seems that some professors (at least the vocal ones in the media) are supporting ideas that many of us feel are contradictory to gospel principles, making it appear to be about like any other university our sons and daughters could have attended. Several parents have said they no longer want to send their children here or donate to the school.
“Please don’t think I’m opposed to people thinking differently about policies and ideas,” the writer continued. “I’m not. But I would hope that BYU professors would be bridging those gaps between faith and intellect and would be sending out students who are ready to do the same in loving, intelligent, and articulate ways. Yet I fear that some faculty are not supportive of the Church’s doctrines and policies and choose to criticize them publicly. There are consequences to this. After having served a full-time mission and marrying her husband in the temple, a friend of mine recently left the Church. In her graduation statement on a social media post, she credited [such and such a BYU program and its faculty] with the radicalizing of her attitudes and the destruction of her faith.”7
Fortunately we don’t get too many of those letters, but this one isn’t unique. Several of my colleagues get the same kind, with almost all of them ultimately being forwarded to poor President Worthen. Now, most of what happens on this campus is absolutely wonderful. That is why I began as I did, with my own undying love of this place. But every so often we need a reminder of the challenge we constantly face here. Maybe it is in this meeting. I certainly remember my own experiences in these wonderful beginning-of-the-school-year meetings and how much it meant to me to be with you then. Well, it means that again today.
Here is something I said on this subject forty-one years ago, almost to the day. I was young. I was unprepared. I had been president for all of three weeks.
I said then and I say now that if we are an extension of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taking a significant amount of sacred tithes and other precious human resources, all of which might well be expended in other worthy causes, surely our integrity demands that our lives “be absolutely consistent with and characteristic of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.”8 At a university there will always be healthy debate regarding a whole syllabus full of issues. But until “we all come [to] the unity of the faith, and . . . [have grown to] the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,” our next best achievement will be to stay in harmony with the Lord’s anointed, those whom He has designated to declare Church doctrine and to guide Brigham Young University as its trustees.
In 2014, seven years ago, then Elder Russell M. Nelson came to campus for a BYU leadership meeting. His remarks were relatively brief, but, tellingly, he said:
With the Church growing more rapidly in the less prosperous countries, we . . . must conserve sacred funds more carefully than ever before.
At BYU we must ally ourselves even more closely with the work of our Heavenly Father. . . .
A college education for our people is a sacred responsibility, [but] it is not essential for eternal life.
A statement like that gets my attention, particularly because just a short time later President Nelson started to chair our board of trustees, hold our purse strings, and have the final “yea” or “nay” on every proposal we might make—from a new research lab to more undergraduate study space to approving a new pickup truck for the physical facilities staff! Russell M. Nelson is very, very good at listening to us. We who sit with him every day have learned the value of listening carefully to him.
Three years later, in 2017, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, not then but soon to be in the First Presidency, where he would sit only one chair—one heartbeat—away from the same position President Nelson now has, quoted our colleague Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who had said:
In a way scholars at BYU and elsewhere are a little bit like the builders of the temple in Nauvoo, who worked with a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other. Today scholars building the temple of learning must also pause on occasion to defend the kingdom. I personally think this is one of the reasons the Lord established and maintains this university. The dual role of builder and defender is unique and ongoing. I am grateful we have scholars today who can handle, as it were, both trowels and muskets.
To this, Elder Oaks then challengingly responded, “I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning.” He said this in a way that could have applied to a host of topics in various departments, but the one he specifically mentioned was the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Little did he know that while many would hear his appeal, especially the School of Family Life, which moved quickly and visibly to assist, some others fired their muskets all right, but unfortunately they didn’t always aim at those hostile to the Church. We thought a couple of stray rounds even went north of the Point of the Mountain!
My beloved brothers and sisters, “a house . . . divided against itself . . . cannot stand,” and I will go to my grave pleading that this institution not only stands but stands unquestionably committed to its unique academic mission and to the Church that sponsors it. We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus—and a lot of other topics. I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So it is with a little scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid—and hope all will try to avoid—language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children.
If a student commandeers a graduation podium intended to represent everyone getting diplomas that day in order to announce his personal sexual orientation, what might another speaker feel free to announce the next year, until eventually anything goes? What might commencement come to mean—or not mean—if we push individual license over institutional dignity for very long? Do we simply end up with more divisiveness in our culture than we already have? And we already have far too much everywhere.
In that spirit, let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it. Too often the world has been unkind—in many instances crushingly cruel—to these, our brothers and sisters. Like many of you, we have spent hours with them, and we have wept and prayed and wept again in an effort to offer love and hope while keeping the gospel strong and the obedience to commandments evident in every individual life.
But it will assist all of us—it will assist everyone—trying to provide help in this matter if things can be kept in some proportion and balance in the process. For example, we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.” We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.
Musket fire? Yes, we will always need defenders of the faith, but “friendly fire” is a tragedy—and from time to time the Church, its leaders, and some of our colleagues within the university community have taken such fire on this campus. And sometimes it isn’t friendly, wounding students and the parents of students—so many who are confused about what so much recent flag-waving and parade-holding on this issue means. My beloved friends, this kind of confusion and conflict ought not to be. Not here. There are better ways to move toward crucially important goals in these very difficult matters—ways that show empathy and understanding for everyone while maintaining loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine.
My Brethren have made the case for the metaphor of musket fire, which I have endorsed yet again today. There will continue to be those who oppose our teachings—and with that will continue the need to define, document, and defend the faith. But we all look forward to the day when we can “beat [our] swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruninghooks” and, at least on this subject, “learn war [no] more.”16 And while I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked, I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students, our communities, and our Church face in this complex, contemporary world of ours.
But I digress! Back to the blessings of a school in Zion! Do you see the beautiful parallel between the unfolding of the Restoration and the prophetic development of BYU, notwithstanding that both will have their critics along the way? Just as has the Church itself, BYU has grown in spiritual strength, in the number of people it reaches and serves, and in its unique place among other institutions of higher education. It has grown in national and international reputation. More and more of its faculty are distinguishing themselves, and, even more important, so are more and more of its students.
Reinforcing the fact that so many do understand exactly what that unfolding dream of BYU is that President Worthen spoke about, not long ago one of your number wrote to me this marvelous description of what he thought was the “call” to those who serve at BYU: “The Lord’s call [to those of us who serve at BYU] is a . . . call to create learning experiences of unprecedented depth, quality, and impact. . . . As good as BYU is and has been, this is a call to do [better]. It is . . . a call to educate many more students, to more . . . effectively help them become true disciples of Jesus Christ, [and] to prepare them to . . . lead in their families, in the Church, [and] in their [professions] in a world filled with commotion. . . . But [answering this call] . . . cannot be [done successfully] without His . . . help.” The writer, one of you, concluded, “I believe that help will come according to the faith and obedience of the tremendously good people of BYU.”
I agree wholeheartedly and enthusiastically with such a sense of calling here and with that reference to and confidence in “the tremendously good people of BYU.” Let me underscore that idea of such a call by returning to President Kimball’s second-century address focused on by President Worthen.
Our bright, budding new commissioner of education, Elder Clark G. Gilbert, is one of my traveling companions today. You may be certain that Elder Gilbert loves this institution—his alma mater—deeply and brings to his assignment a reverence for its mission and its message. As part of his introduction to you, I am asking Elder Gilbert to come on campus on any calendar date he and President Worthen can work out, and whether those visits are formal or casual or both, I hope they can accomplish at least two things:
First of all, I hope you will come to see quickly the remarkable strengths Elder Gilbert brings to his calling, even as he learns more about the flagship of his fleet and why our effort at the Church Educational System would be a failure without the health, success, and participation of BYU.
Second, noting that we are just a few years short of halfway through those second hundred years of which President Kimball spoke, I think it would be fascinating to know if we are, in fact, making any headway on the challenges he laid before us and of which Elder David A. Bednar reminded the BYU leadership team just a few weeks ago.
When you look at President Kimball’s talk again, may I ask you to pay particular attention to that sweet prophet’s effort to ask that we be unique? In his discourse, President Kimball used the word unique eight times and the word special eight times. It seems clear to me in my seventy-three years of loving it that BYU will become an “educational Mt. Everest”19 only to the degree it embraces its uniqueness, its singularity. We could mimic every other university in the world until we got a bloody nose in the effort, and the world would still say, “BYU who?” No, we must have the will to be different and to stand alone, if necessary, being a university second to none in its role primarily as an undergraduate teaching institution that is unequivocally true to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If at a future time that mission means foregoing some professional affiliations and certifications, then so be it. There may come a day when the price we are asked to pay for such association is simply too high and too inconsistent with who we are. No one wants it to come to that, least of all me, but if it does, we will pursue our own destiny, a “destiny [that] is not a matter of chance; . . . a matter of choice; . . . not a thing to be waited for, . . . a thing to be achieved.”
“Mom, what is that big Y on that mountain?”
“Jeff, it stands for the university here in Provo: Brigham Young University.”
“Well, it must be the greatest university in the world.”
And so, for me, it is. To help you pursue that destiny in the only real way I know how to help, I leave an apostolic blessing on every one of you this morning as you start another school year. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with gratitude for His holy priesthood and as if hands were on your head—had we time to do that, we surely would—I bless you personally, each one of you personally. I bless the students who will come under your influence, and I bless the university, including its marvelous president, in its campus-wide endeavor. I bless you that profound personal faith will be your watchword and that unending blessings of personal rectitude will be your eternal reward. I bless your professional work that it will be admired by your peers, and I bless your devotion to gospel truths that it will be the saving grace in some student’s life. I bless your families that those you hope will be faithful in keeping their covenants will be saved at least in part because you have been faithful in keeping yours. Light conquers darkness. Truth triumphs over error. Goodness is victorious over evil in the end, every time.
I bless each one of you with every righteous desire of your heart, and I thank you for giving your love and loyalty to BYU, to students like me and my beloved wife. Please, from one who owes so much to this school and who has loved her so deeply for so long, keep her not only standing but standing for what she uniquely and prophetically was meant to be. And may the rest of higher education “see your good works, and glorify [our] Father which is in heaven,” I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Now, I'm not a Mormon. Far from it. I'm an Apostolic Christian, and more particularly a Latin Rite Catholic. Mormon's believe in a Great Apostasy that conclusively be demonstrated never to have occured. That fact, amongst others, makes the underpinnings of Mormon theology hugely problematic.
But here's the thing. BYU is a Mormon university, and Mr. Holland is basically simply saying a Mormon institution must defend its beliefs.
That is, frankly, correct.
The required reading has provoked the ire of some civil libertarians and more particularly the LGBTQ+ community, which supposedly finds it "dangerous".
Well, whatever. What the reaction really demonstrates is the "cake and eat it too" attitude of modern Westerners, which want all the benefits of believing in something, with no duty or obligation of any kind being imposed by it.
As noted, I'm not a Mormon, and I think the Mormon faith is manifestly incorrect. But that a Mormon institution would defend its faith makes sense. Otherwise, it wouldn't have a point.
Which is a lesson that Catholic higher educational institutions, and post Kennedy Catholicism in the US in general, failed to learn to a large degree.
Missing the point, maybe.
On a somewhat related item, an item I saw in the Trib, in the local advice column:
"Am I getting hung up by this country’s puritanical attitudes toward sex and my Roman Catholic upbringing. . . "
I'll skip the background, which had to do with his daughter, but;
Have you lived in the United States since 1968?
The way this is posed suggests that no matter what is "getting hung up", the author ought to take his "Roman Catholic upbringing" more seriously.
More broadly, while I don't know as I don't know the asker, the broader question is whether this fellow retains some lapsed armchair Catholic concerns but didn't do anything to really be serious about anything, and is now bothered by that, or if he was faithful, in which case this question need not even be asked.
I suspect I know which it is.
More from Pope Francis
No sooner had the Pope been in the news for responding poorly, again, to a press interview than we learn that he's now released a memoir.
Weary.
I'm not going to read it, but one of Pope Francis' problems is that we hear from him too darned much. Every time we turn around, we have to learn about something he's said, and then the reaction to it. It's too much.
Apparently, and with stories about the Pope, he made a comment in his memoir regarding retaining fully the Catholic belief on the gravely sinful nature of sex outside of marriage, including homosexual sex outside of marriage, while also saying he supports civil unions.
There's some logic to that, but only if you don't follow it too far. The logic would be that it would be unjust to deprive a homosexual couple the benefits of the civil law, as it pertains to death, and other things. At first blush, that makes some sense, but once you go down the logic rails, it fails pretty badly.
The same could be said of any sexual union, we'd note, licit and illicit. That's not a reason to sanction them through the law. And the law's goals here in the first place are not supposed to be tied to emotion, let alone love, in any of its forms, but the protection of children and property. You can argue the latter is served by this, but only if you really begin to tinker with the underpinnings of the law to the point you have undermined them.
And there are vehicles within the law that any person can otherwise use, so the situation which a person is attempting to address can actually always be legally addressed, without the undermining.
Trump as a Godly man
I keep hearing this from his supporters.
Are they dense?
He's a liar on serious matters, which is gravely sinful. He's a serial polygamist, which is gravely sinful.
And he's just not a very decent or nice person.
Misrepresenting wealth.
People have noted that financial statements involving real property are frequently off the mark, as nobody really knows what the values are. Hence, the prosecution of Trump in unjust, they argue.
Maybe what that really means is that taking on fabrications in these things was long overdue. We note, FWIW, that he can't post his bond in spite of supposedly being vastly wealthy. Now, on that, his assets may indeed be vast, but not liquid. Be that as it may, nobody is willing to take on the bond, which suggest that no bonding entity feels they are sufficiently secure, or clear, as to attach them.
We need to force a ceasefire.
This is constantly said about the war in Gaza.
Are these people dense? The US can't decree a cease fire and cause it to happen. We're not in the war.
Civilian casualties.
Levantine casualties in the Hamas Israeli War grossly outnumber the murdered Israeli civilians who were killed, and sometimes raped and then killed, at the onset of the war.
Right from the onset of the there have been protests that the Israeli response was disproportionate. But how do you really deal with Hamas? I have yet to hear anyone suggest anything realistic. Simply stating "we need a ceasefire" is, quite frankly, lame.
Human being need to quit killing each other. That's a given. But seeing as they haven't yet, is a pacifistic response to being attacked going to do anything? Hamas wants to completely eject Jews from Israel.
The problem with voicing suggestions from afar is that you don't really have to expect them to be carried out. But logic occasionally demands that it be pondered. What would happen? What is the proposal?
There is, I'd note, a solution to this. It's one that simply won't be done, however.
The Levantine population has to be moved. More on that in a separate post coming up.
Pope Francis stated in an interview with a Swiss journalist:
In Ucraina c’è chi chiede il coraggio della resa, della bandiera bianca. Ma altri dicono che così si legittimerebbe il più forte. Cosa pensa?
“È un’interpretazione. Ma credo che è più forte chi vede la situazione, chi pensa al popolo, chi ha il coraggio della bandiera bianca, di negoziare. E oggi si può negoziare con l’aiuto delle potenze internazionali. La parola negoziare è una parola coraggiosa. Quando vedi che sei sconfitto, che le cose non vanno, occorre avere il coraggio di negoziare. Hai vergogna, ma con quante morti finirà? Negoziare in tempo, cercare qualche paese che faccia da mediatore. Oggi, per esempio nella guerra in Ucraina, ci sono tanti che vogliono fare da mediatore. La Turchia, si è offerta per questo. E altri. Non abbiate vergogna di negoziare prima che la cosa sia peggiore”.
Anche lei stesso si è proposto per negoziare?
“Io sono qui, punto. Ho inviato una lettera agli ebrei di Israele, per riflettere su questa situazione. Il negoziato non è mai una resa. È il coraggio per non portare il paese al suicidio. Gli ucraini, con la storia che hanno, poveretti, gli ucraini al tempo di Stalin quanto hanno sofferto….”.
Translated:
In Ukraine there are those who ask for the courage of surrender, of the white flag. But others say that this would legitimize the strongest. What do you think?
“It's an interpretation. But I believe that those who see the situation, those who think about the people, those who have the courage to raise the white flag and to negotiate are stronger. And today it can be negotiated with the help of international powers. The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you need to have the courage to negotiate. You are ashamed, but with how many deaths will it end? Negotiate in time, look for some country to act as a mediator. Today, for example in the war in Ukraine, there are many who want to act as mediators. Turkey offered itself for this. And other. Don't be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse.
Have you also offered to negotiate?
“I'm here, period. I sent a letter to the Jews of Israel to reflect on this situation. Negotiation is never a surrender. It is the courage not to lead the country to suicide. The Ukrainians, with the history that they have, poor things, the Ukrainians at Stalin's time, how much they suffered...”.
This has been reported, in accurately, as the Pope calling upon the Ukrainians to surrender, which isn't exactly what he said.
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was in the US, calling up Congress to free up support for Ukraine.
March 11, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
The Pope's comments of yesterday have brought rebuke.
One of the odd aspects of personality is that certain people can be really bad at speaking and not be aware of it, and even enjoy public speaking, while some highly articulate people immensely dislike speaking, publically or even in general, and eschew it.
Our talents are unevenly distributed.
Pope Francis is one of the most confusing people to listen to in regard to speaking that's in the current public eye. We have others, I'd note, that far surpass him in that category, so he's not unique in that way in any fashion. The Pope, additionally, seemingly likes to speak, and so he gives interviews to reporters and says things essentially off the cuff. As he is, of course, the Pope, nearly anything he says will be reported.
More often than not, whatever he says will not only be reported, but reported badly, which compounds any confusion his statements cause. He's not free from responsibility for this, however, as by this point in time he ought to know that will happen. And not only will it happen, it will undercut his ability to convey a message.
Examples of this abound, and not just in the spoken word, but in the written one, and even just in messaging. We just went through, for example, the entire agonizing series of events caused by Fiducia Supplicans. Released just before Christmas, and not penned by the Pope but endorsed by him, it resulted in a series of nearly immediate explanations as to what it was saying and not saying. That situation has semi stabilized, but we're now seeing Bishops act on the followups and basically opt out of the option provided for, which the explanations allow for. As this was occurring Pope Francis made a comment about the African Church which was cultural in nature which even if it was correct, was culturally insensitive and may frankly shed more of a light on what the culture in the dying West holds as opposed to the culture in the remainder of the globe.
All this caused one Catholic commentator to note who many Catholics are by now simply "weary" in regard to things coming from Pope Francis. We wrote on this earlier, and I'd count myself as weary.
Of course, that hasn't stopped Pope Francis from giving interviews.
Now, of course a person could simply state, why should it? Well, the answer is that it's making us all the more weary, and we have a lot to be weary about. We're weary due to trying to understand Fiducia Supplicans, we're wearing due to the vague nature of the Synod on Synodality, which is still ongoing, we're wearing from trying to grasp why Fr. James Martin, S.J., continues to seemingly get a pass while Cardinal Dolan does not, and we're weary from waiting for the Pope to do something about the German Church.
And now we have this.
To be fair, as is often the case, what Pope Francis says is often inaccurately reported, and interestingly the conservative things he says, and there are definitely a set of them, aren't reported on hardly at all. Here, Pope Francis didn't really tell the Ukrainians to surrender, which is how it is being reported.
In Ukraine there are those who ask for the courage of surrender, of the white flag. But others say that this would legitimize the strongest. What do you think?
“It's an interpretation. But I believe that those who see the situation, those who think about the people, those who have the courage to raise the white flag and to negotiate are stronger. And today it can be negotiated with the help of international powers. The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you need to have the courage to negotiate. You are ashamed, but with how many deaths will it end? Negotiate in time, look for some country to act as a mediator. Today, for example in the war in Ukraine, there are many who want to act as mediators. Turkey offered itself for this. And other. Don't be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse.
Have you also offered to negotiate?
“I'm here, period. I sent a letter to the Jews of Israel to reflect on this situation. Negotiation is never a surrender. It is the courage not to lead the country to suicide. The Ukrainians, with the history that they have, poor things, the Ukrainians at Stalin's time, how much they suffered...”.
I don't know what the Swiss journalist's intent was, but Pope Francis really walked into it. The journalist asked if the Ukrainians should surrender. The Pope didn't say "yes," he said that they should negotiate a peace. Lots of people have said that who support Ukraine and back-channel, where people speak their honest opinions, no serious person believes that Ukraine can achieve something like an unconditional surrender from Russia. There's going to have to be some sort of negotiation. The question is what does that look like. Finland in 1944? Russia would regard that as a defeat, and Ukraine ought to regard that as a victory.
So what he said wasn't really "Surrender", and it isn't really all that different from what many Ukrainian supporters have said. But the reporter used the term "white flag" and he picked right up on it.
Pastoral scene, pre Soviet Ukrainian village. Not a lot of homsexuality, transgenderism, etc. going on there.
Those who protest vehemently belong to small ideological groups," Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa. "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it".
"But in general, I trust that gradually everyone will be reassured by the spirit of the 'Fiducia Supplicans' declaration by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: it aims to include, not divide," the pope said.
We all see things through thick lenses of our cultures, and the history of our cultures. This was true even of the authors of the Gospels, which sometimes come through on certain items in their writings.
I think Fiducia Supplicans demonstrates this.
For that matter, to use a bad secular example, I think Justice Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges did as well, which is not to say that the documents are analagous. They are not.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy seems to have generally believed that the Obergefell decision overturning tens of thousands of years of understanding on the nature of marriage would be met with rapid universal acceptance, rather than turning out to be the metaphorical shot heard around the world that gave us Donald Trump in short order.1
The Supreme Court, in Obergefells, and the Papacy, in Fiducia Supplicans, are reacting to the same development seem to have made the assumption of thinking that what happens in European cultures is what happens, or what even really is of major concern, all over the world. That just isn't the case in this instance.
A pretty good case can be made that "homosexuality", as Western Society regards it, doesn't even exist, although certainly same sex attraction and sexual conduct does. They are not the same thing. Therefore, when the Pope says "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it" it might in fact be the case that the opposite is true. That is, the "special case" is Western Europeans, for whom homosexuality exists, and is not a "something 'bad'", or at least a significant number of Western Europeans, of which North and South Americans are (once again) part, have now been schooled or accepted that it isn't bad.
In most, of the world, homosexuality is regarded as a European thing. Again, the conduct occurs, but not the gender characterization. And in no society, does it occur with the frequency it does in Western Society, which is also the society which as become the most libertine, albeit only in the last seventy years, particularly in regard to sex and manifestations of sex, including outward manifestations of sex.
We've dealt with that before, but now that It's come back up in this fashion, it's worth looking at again. Pretty much everywhere this conduct occurs, it's strongly associated with a variety of factors, one of which, in its broad manifestation we now see, is a wealthy society that has lots of idle time. Put another way, it's a factor of resources and availability to them.
This is true of a lot of human disorders that are closely related to elemental needs and what we tend to universally see is that when we have a society that is heavily deprived of an elemental needs, a disordered desire for it, combined with disorder conduct, pops up in a minority (never a majority) of the population.
Food is a good example.
Scarcity of food will result in a massively strong desire to eat. In some people, that leads to desperate acts under desperate situations. Cannibalism, for example, comes to mind in regard to the Donner Party, or the residents of Leningrad. People took measures they normally wouldn't.
Not everyone did, however.
At least in the Soviet examples, which repeated in various fashions from 1917 through early 1944, most people didn't. People would starve instead.
Conversely, in food situations where there's a surplus of food, the entire population will tend to gain weight, but not everyone tends to become excessively overweight. Modern dieticians will yell in horror at this, but overweight, and truly grossly obese are not the same things. Grossly obese happens for a number of reasons, including people having a makeup which is extremely efficient in order to avoid famine, but it's only in an unnatural situation of surplus calories that it manifest itself.
As a scene in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee presents it:
Sergeant Chillum: Don't look to me like them gut-eaters has been feeding them very good.
Wiley: Did you ever see a fat Apache?
Sergeant Chillum: I ain't yet.
This scene depicts the pick up cavalry formation taking the kidnapped children and feeding them, but the point raised, accidentally, is a good one. Native Americans lived in a state of nature, and in that state, they were in good shape and not packing around extra weight. No culture in a state of nature does.
When things become disordered, such as in famine, some people will do something that can be argued to be disordered, eat other people. When there's too much food and no real need to work too hard, physically, to obtain calories, everyone puts on weight, but some will very much to their detriment.
So what's this have to do with homosexuality, let alone Fiducia Supplicans? Well, quite a lot, really.
Just as, in a balanced state of nature, or close to one, people don't get fat, and don't turn to cannibalism, in a balanced state of nature, they don't turn to the range of sexual deviations that they do in an unbalanced one.
Edgar Paxon's Custer's Last Stand. While it might seem odd to see this posted here, the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors who won this battle, and one just days before it at Rosebud, were never more than a day's ride from their families. Women were of course present in the Native camp at Little Big Horn, as the battle was brought on by the 7th Cavalry's attack on the village, but at least one native woman had been present at Rosebud as well. Native raiding parties might separate from their families for a period of days, but not months.
In a state of nature, people live in pretty small communities and there's pretty much a 1 to 1 sex ratio. Men would only be separated from women for very brief periods of time. A war party, for example, might separate for several days, but not months. The Great Raid of 1840, for example, which is regarded as the largest Native American raid every conducted, just lasted two days. Add in travel, and the warrior bands were gone longer, but it probably wasn't much more than a week, if that long.
Hunting parties are also often cited for periods of separation, but in a healthy native state, the separation was often just a matter of hours. Women were usually close enough to a really large hunting party that they could partake in the processing of the game. There were undoubtedly exceptions, but by and large, this was the rule.
Taking the war example again, consider this from Ethiopia's mobilization order of 1935 when Italy invaded:
Everyone will now be mobilized, and all boys old enough to carry a spear will be sent to Addis Ababa. Married men will take their wives to carry food and cook. Those without wives will take any woman without a husband. Anyone found at home after the receipt of this order will be hanged.
Emperor Haile Selassie
Married men, take your wives. Not married? Find a woman who isn't married and taker her.
It's only once you begin to mess with the basic human living patters that the opposite is true. Industrialization, which we'll get to in a moment, really brought in a major disruption from the normal living patter, but there are preindustrial examples that are notable. War provides a pretty good example again.
Major military campaigns in antiquity relied on theft of food, which is not ordered, and which is well known. If the fighters were separated from women, they also rapidly descended to disorder. Early military campaigns (and some recent ones) are famously associated with "rape and pillage", and by men who would not ordinarily do that.
Another example of adjusting to desperate times might be taken in Muhammed authoring his troops, who were ready to go home as they were tired of being without their wives, to have sex with their female saves taken in war. This is widely denied by Muslim scholars today, but it seems to be fairly well established and in fact the practice has been resumed by Islamic fundamentalist armed bands and its the origin of Muslim sex slave trading, which is an historical fact. That this is basically an example of licensed rape can't really be denied.
Conversely, in Christian societies the "marital debt" was taken very seriously up until recently, and it was taken so seriously in the Middle Ages that a wife of a man who wished to go on crusade could veto it simply by citing the marital debt. That's fairly extraordinary, but telling, in that she could simply declare that if her husband departed her needs in this category might cause her to fall into sin, and therefore, he couldn't go. Moderns like to look down on such things today, but in reality that was a very natural and realistic view of human sexuality.
Same gender attractions play in here too, but within bands of men kept away from women for long periods of time. The most famous example of that may be the Spartans, who were fierce warriors trained from young adulthood, in the case of men, to be soldiers. However, the warehousing of men, and boys, away from women brought about widespread homosexual conduct as the living conditions were, rather obviously, completely abnormal.
So too are much of our current living patters.
Industrialization separated men from women and parent from child in a major way, recreating the abnormality of living conditions noted above on a society wide level.
And that's deeply unnatural.
It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that men left their homes every day, working long hours, and were separated from their wives and children for what amounts to well over half of their adult waking hours. And this was not only true of industrial laborers, but also of their white collar bosses. In many industrial societies, moreover, this was amplified by the fact that men further segregated themselves, or were segregated by society, even on off hours.
It was essayist Henry Fairlie who noted:
Work still gives meaning to rural life, the family and churches. But in the city today, work and home, family and church, are seperated. What the office workers do for a living is not part of thier home life. AT the same time they maintain the pointless frenzy of hteir work hours on thier off hours. They rush form the office to jog, to the gym or the YMCA pool to work at their play with the same joylessness.
Fairlie wrote this in 1986, well after the most aggressors conditions of the Industrial Revolution had slackened, but he did note in The Idiocy of Urban Life what that had been like. Men left early in the morning and walked, on average, seven miles to work. They worked their all day, and then returned home after twelve hours of labor. Well over half their day had been spent away from their family.
By the 20th Century that had, in many heavily industrial regions, created a new pattern of living he didn't address, and one which lasted well into the 1970s. Men left for work in blue collar jobs, worked all day with other men, and at quitting time, they hit the bars. Men in the American Rust Belt, for instance, commonly hit a bar every night on the way home, spending a couple of hours drinking beer in an all male company, save for the barmaids whose tips went up as the beer flowed. Rough and tumble places, these were not the equivalent of charming English or Irish pubs of the same period. The maleness, if you will, of their work was all the more amplified by the nearly universal membership of men in organizations that excluded women.
Not surprisingly, this all encouraged conventional sexual vice. Some men, a minority but nonetheless an appreciable nature, took the jousting with bar maid and waitresses further, with some of the women reciprocating. When Hank Thompson and Kitty Wells sang about the "wild side of life" it's easy to wonder why they were hanging out in bars, not really appreciating that a lot of men in particular simply did. Indeed, the term "family man", conversely, had real meaning.
Not to dump this exclusively on blue collar workers by any means, philandering conduct was common in the white collar world as well, to such an extent that it became instantly recognizable to people who went to see 1960's The Apartment, the entire theme of which plays out through the vehicle of cheating married executives using their younger colleagues' apartment.
Indeed, when I was young, I can recall my parents openly talking about professionals in town who had affairs and mistresses. This certainly didn't include anyone in my family, which was 100% Catholic and meant it. That conduct was clearly not approved of, but my point is that it occured. While never discussed in this fashion, in the context of what we're discussing here, the mistresses were sometimes targets of opportunity, so to speak. Secretaries and assistants. Indeed, I heard a lawyer of the generation prior to mine, once relate of the generation of lawyers two generations older than hers, that quite a few of the paralegals of that old, now largely dead or very old, were effectively mistresses. One such assistant had mysteriously had a child out of wedlock when that was pretty rare, and it was widely known who teh employer father was.
There's a lot more that could be explored here, but the point is that the contra natural working conditions give rise to departures from morality and nature. Even now, or particularly now, you'll hear a close female colleague of a male be referred to as his "work wife". I've even heard a person refer to herself that way. Work wives have no marital debt, but hidden by the statement is the vague suggestion or fear that they might be providing such a service, illicit thought it would be.
Homosexuality, in large part, comes about, I strongly suspect, due to something similar.
In an earlier thread, we noted that there are in fact cultures that not only have low incidents of homosexual conduct, but none. As we earlier posted:
Somewhat related to this, interestingly enough, I also came upon an article by accident on the Aka and Ngandu people of central Africa, who are branches of the Bushmen, or what some people still call "pygmies". They've been remarkably resilient in staying close to nature.
A hunter-gatherer people, they naturally fascinate Western urbanites, and have been studied for many years by Barry and Bonnie Hewlett, a husband and wife anthropologist team. Starting off with something else, after a period of time the Washington State University pair "decided to systematically study sexual behavior after several campfire discussions with married middle-aged Aka men who mentioned in passing that they had sex three or four times during the night. At first [they] thought it was just men telling their stories, but we talked to women, and they verified the men's assertions."
The study revealed some interesting things, besides that, which included that they regarded such interaction as a species of work, designed for procreation. Perhaps more surprising to our genital focused society, they had no concept of homosexuality at all, no practice of that at all, and additional had no practice or concept of, um. . . well . . .self gratification. You'll have to read between the lines on that one.
Perhaps the Synod on Synodality ought to take note of the reality of the monotheist Aka's and Ngandu's as that's exactly what the Catholic faith has always taught.1 And so it turns out in a society that's actually focused that way, what Catholics theology traditionally has termed disordered, just doesn't occur. It's also worth noting that the rise of homosexuality really comes about after men were dragged out of the household's on a daily basis by social and economic causes, and the rise of . . . um., well, anyhow, recently is heavily tied to the pornificaiton of the culture that was launched circa 1953.
In other words, those like Fr. James Martin who seek a broader acceptane of of sexual disorder, might actually be urging the acceptance of a byproduct of our overall economic and social disorder, which itself should be fixed.
But what would be the conditions that bring it about in our culture?
We're not even supposed to ask that now, but for most people who have same sex attraction, it's a pretty heavy cross to bear. We should be looking at how it comes about.
Well, what we know is that if we separate men from women, particularly in their formative years, we'll get it at a higher rate than when that doesn't occur.
Going back to war, that fountain of all problematic things, we can look back as far as the Spartans to find this. Spartans, faced with a constant threat of war, took up separating men from women large-scale and raising boys in barracks. It also had a notable degree of homosexual conduct.
Hmmm. . . separate young men and keep them separates just as things begin, for lack of a better way to put it, turn on, and . . . .
The Spartans were a notable early example of this, which in turn tends to be exaggerated. It's not likely that every single Spartan male was a homosexual. It's also not the case, as is sometimes suggested, that Ancient Greece was wildly homosexual. Indeed, Plato abhorred it and regarded it as contrary to nature and proposed the Athenian assembly ban homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate sex in general.
Going forward in time, when we really start to see references to the acts (but not a claimed "homosexual" status) comes with the first semi modern navies. It was a constant concern, for instance, of the Royal Navy, which perhaps might be regarded as the first modern navy. A great navy, it was not necessarily recruited in the most charming way and many sailors were simply press-ganged, a type of conscription, into it against their will. As press gangs favored hitting bars in ports, many of the men conscripted into the Royal Navy already lacked a strong attachment to home and family, and ports were notoriously associated with prostitution. Anyhow, a lot of men away from sea for months, or years, at a time, and a lot of them being fairly young. . . well the problem rose again.
It replicated itself in large modern armies as well, interestingly often among the officer class. In European armies where the officer class was made up of minor nobility as a rule, the men in it had entered as the only other real employment option, if they were not set to inherit the estate, was the clergy. In some European armies officers were strongly discouraged from marrying, which in part reflected the fact that their pay was very bad, as their countries knew that they could rely on family money. While it didn't occur universally in every such army, in some, such as the pre World War One German Army, there was a strong streak of hidden homosexuality.
English private schools, which were widely used by the upper class, were notorious for homosexuality for the same reason. Homosexual conduct became so common in them that homosexuality used to be referred to elsewhere as "the English Disease". Private schools were segregated effectively by class, and very much by gender. Unlike the charming portrayal in the Harry Potter series of works, boys went to boys schools and girls to girls school. Quite often, over time, parents enrolled their children in the same schools they'd gone to. Overtime, a closeted institutional homosexuality, or at least its common occurrence, crept in.
It could be legitimately asked how on earth any of this relates to our current era, but it does in more ways than we might imagine.
In most Western societies today, we make no effort, for the most part, to separate men and women in anything, formally. But as we've already detailed, we do send men, and now women, out of their families and into an unnatural environment on a daily basis. People often meet their future spouses in periods of time when young people are constantly together, such as in school or university, but as soon as they are established, we pull them apart.
Starting during World War Two, moreover, a false academia combined with the corruption and destruction of the war, gave rise to the Sexual Revolution. We commonly think of that as arriving in the 60s, but in reality it probably really started in the 1940s with the publication of Kinsey's false academic narratives. That was the first shot, so to speak, and the publication of Playboy the second one. While Playboy was opposed in some localities into the 1980s, by the 1950s it was so well established, in spite of completely rejecting conventional morality, and in spite, moreover, of publishing photos of women younger than 18, that the ground had been massively lost. The pill followed in the early 60s, work patterns changed due to the introduction of domestic machinery, and sexual morality took a beating. Once its natural purpose was obscured, and then lost, which really basically took all the way into the 1990s, the widespread acceptance of homosexual sex was inevitable.
None of which means that a large number of people will take it up.
But what does mean, that some people, in some circumstances, will. And the unnatural conditions that we live in, amplified by societal moorings having been cut by the Sexual Revolution, help bring that about. And as society has chosen to simply embrace everything that deviates from the norm, and natural, as it applies to ourselves, those afflicted have almost no place to go, but deeper in, no matter how destructive that may be.
All of which is a good reason that people in this circumstance need blessings, if blessing are properly understood.
And which would, therefore, support Fiducia Supplicans.
But none of which suggests that the Church's view on sex is what is causing a decline in attendance in Europe, and that a wider acceptance of homosexuality as normal, as some would urge, would actually do anything. This all is a problem in the West, to be sure, but the underlying evolution of thought that some have, that this is all natural, is not supported by the evidence.
The evidence supports the contrary.
Which gets us back to our original point. African and Asia, for all of their problems, have lived closer to nature, longer, than we have. But that is rapidly changing, and in much of Asia in particular it already has. People who like to imagine that there is such a thing as broad progress, for which there is no good evidence, would argue that this is all progress, so that everything we have noted as a byproduct of the evolution of industry in the West will necessarily happen everywhere else. But that's not necessarily the case at all.
And indeed, in the West itself there seem to be an awakening of tradition, and a desire to return to a more rooted lifestyle. Ironically, evolutions in technology may bring that about. We know that populations are declining everywhere in the Western Northern Hemisphere, which is seen as a disaster but which in fact may emphasize this sort of return to the village.
Footnotes:
1. Obergefell is an incredibly weak decision which, if it were to reappear in front of the United States Supreme Court today, would be reversed. My prediction is that it will be within the next decade as it devoid of solid legal reasoning.
When it was handed down, it was my prediction here that it would cause massive social disruption and resistance, which in fact it has. Pollsters like to point out that the views on same gender unions have moved greatly since it was handed down, which is true, but what they seem to miss is that it was basically the last straw on the part of traditional social conservatives, as well as (Southern type) populists on forced social change. The latter group had long ago accommodated itself to divorce, to people shacking up, and begrudgingly to homosexual conduct but it wasn't about to be told that homosexual unions equated with marriage. In very real terms, Anthony Kennedy, whether he realizes it or not, has always been Donald Trump's running mate.
