Agitio ter consuli, gemitus britannorum . . .Repellunt barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad barbaros; inter haec duo genera funerum aut iugulamur aut mergimur.

So on this Sunday, 2024, I worked, contrary to God's injunction, like on so many others. As a result, I didn't really catch up with the horrific plight of Appalachia in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

It's awful.

Which makes this the worst, and best, time to note this.

We're headed into a legislative session, and an election season, in which the far right espouses a hatride of the Federal Government.  If you are in Appalachia, and vote for the populists, you are voting to handle this disaster on your own.  If you are in Wyoming, and voting populists, the same is true of the horrible fires we've experienced and are yet to.

If that is your view, don't ask for help, as stupid and cold as not asking for help would be.

We here are distributists, a philosophy that holds things should devolve to the lowest level possible. Here, that level is the Federal government.  Distributism works up, as well as down.

Additionally, how long will we choose to ignore the signs?  We've waited longer than we should have as it is.  There's still time to act, no matter how much it impacts your temrporary pocket books, with you being temporary as it is.

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 7. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? Wouldn't every one be just bored and poor?

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:   

 

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.

Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.

So we've gone through this and lamented on the state of the world.

We looked at how working for largely local businesses, in an economy in which most were local, would work, in terms of economics.

In other words, if you needed an appliance, and went to Wally's Appliance Store, owned and operated by Wally, rather than Walmart, owned and operated by anonymous corporate shareholders, how would that look?

And we looked at something more radical yet, Agrarianism.

So how does this all tie together, and what difference would it really make?

Let's revisit the definition of Agrarianism.

Given the above, isn't Agrarianism simply agricultural distributism?

Well, no.

Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of society

Bradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.

Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.

We also noted that agrarianism as we define it incorporates The Land Ethic, which holds:

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.

The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.  Aldo Leopold.

So what would this mean to society at large, and a distributist society at that?

To start with, it would mean a lot more family farm operations, and no remotely owned and operated ones where the land was held by Bill Gates or the Chinese Communist Party. Combined with Distributism, it would also mean a lot more local processing of agricultural products.  Local packing houses, local flour mills, local bakeries.

It would also mean a society that was focused on local ownership of homes with residents who lived a more local, land ethic focused, lives.

Indeed, the local would matter much more in general.

And with it, humanity.

There would still be the rich and the poor, but not the remote rich and the ignorable poor.

Most people would be in the middle, and most of them, owning their own. They'd be more independent in that sense, and therefore less subject to the whims of remote employers, economic interests, and politicians.

All three major aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, humanity, subsidiarity, and solidarity, coming together.

An agrarian society would be much less focused on "growth", if focused on it at all.  Preservation of agricultural and wild lands would be paramount.  People would derive their social values in part from that, rather than the host of panem et circenses distractions they now do, or at least they could. 

They'd derive their leisure from it as well, and therefore appreciate it more.  If hiking in a local park, or going fishing, or being outdoors in general is what we would do, and we very much would as the big mega entertainment sources of all types are largely corporate in nature, preservation of the wild would be important.  

And this too, combined with what we've noted before, a distributist society and a society that was well-educated, would amount to a radical, and beneficial, reorientation of society.

We won't pretend that such a society would be prefect.  That would be absurd.  Human nature would remain that. All the vices that presently exist, still would, but with no corporate sources to feed them, they'd not grow as prominent.

And we will state that it would cure many of the ills that now confront us.

Such a society would force us to confront our nature and nature itself.  And to do so as a party of a greater community, for our common good.

Which, if we do not end up doing, will destroy us in the end.

Last prior:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

Directly related:

What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 3. Agrarianism.

Finis

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...: 

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

James Monroe.  

And, yes, we're still not on to the Agrarian finale in this series.  That's because we have one more important topic to consider first.

Politics.

If you read distributists' social media, and you probably don't, you'll see that some people have the namby pamby idea that if we all just act locally everything will fall in line.  While people should act locally, that's a bunch of crap.

What these people don't realize is that politically, we're a corporate capitalist society, and we are where we are right now, in large part due to that.  Corporations are a creature of the state, not of nature, and exists as a legal fiction because the state says they do.  This is deemed, in our imaginations, to be necessarily because, . . . well it is.

Or rather, it's deemed to be necessary as we believe we need every more consolidation and economies of scale.  

We really don't, and in the end, it serves just itself.  We do need some large entities, particularly in manufacturing, which would actually bring us back to the original allowance for corporate structure, which was quite limited.  Early in US history, most corporations were banned from being created.

Legally, they would not need to be banned now, but simply not allowed to form except for actual needs.  And when very large, the Theodore Roosevelt proposal that they be treated like public utilities, or alternatively some percentage of their stock or membership would vest in their employees, would result in remedying much of the ills that they've created.

Likewise, eliminating the absurd idea that they can use their money for influence in politics could and should be addressed.

Which would require changes in the law.

And that takes us back to politics.

Nearly every living American, and Canadian for that matter, would agree that a major portion of the problems their nations face today are ones manufactured by politics.  The current economic order, as noted, is politically vested.

The United States has slid into a political decline of epic proportions, and its noteworthy that this came about after Ronald Reagan attacked and destroyed the post 1932 economic order which provided for an amplified type of American System in which there was, in fact, a great deal of involvement in the economy and the affairs of corporations, as well as a hefty income tax on the wealth following the country's entry into World War Two.  It's never been the case, of course, that there was a trouble free political era although interestingly, there was a political era which is recalled as The Era of Good Feelings due to its lack of political strife.  

That era lasted a mere decade, from 1815 to 1825, but it's instructive.

The Era of Good Feelings came about after the War of 1812, which was a war that not only caused internal strife, but which risked the dissolution of the nation.  Following the war the Federalist Party collapsed thereby ending the bitter disputes that had characterized its fights with the more dominant Democratic-Republican Party.. . . . huh. . . 

Anyhow, President James Monroe downplayed partisan affiliation in his nominations, with the ultimate goal of affecting national unity and eliminating political parties altogether.

Borrowing a line from the Those Were the Days theme song of All In the Family, "Mister we could use a man like James Monroe again".

Political parties have had a long and honorable history in politics. They've also had a long and destructive one.  Much of their role depends upon the era.  In our era, for a variety of reasons, they are now at the hyper destructive level.

They are, we would note, uniquely subject to the influence of money, and the fringe, which itself is savvy to the influence of money.  And money, now matter where it originates from, tends to concentrate uphill if allowed to, and it ultimately tends to disregard the local.

"All politics is local" is the phrase that's famously attached to U.S. politics, but as early as 1968, according to Andrew Gelman, that's declined, and I agree with his observation.  Nowhere is that more evident than Wyoming.

In Wyoming both the Republican and the Democratic Party used to be focused on matters that were very local, which is why both parties embraced in varying degrees, The Land Ethic, and both parties, in varying degrees, embraced agriculture.  It explains why in the politics of the 70s and 80s the major economic driver of the state, the oil and gas industry, actually had much less influence than it does now.

Things were definitely changing by the 1980s, with money, the love of which is the root of all evil, being a primary driver.  Beyond that, however, technology played a role.  The consolidation of industry meant that employers once headquartered in Casper, for instance, moved first to Denver, then to Houston, or were even located in Norway. As the love of money is the root of all evil, and the fear of being poor a major personal motivator, concern for much that was local was increasingly lost.

The increasing broad scope of the economy, moreover, meant that there were economic relocations of people who had very little connection with the land and their state.  Today's local Freedom Caucus in the legislature, heavily represented by those whose formative years were out of state, is a primary example in the state.  Malevolent politics out of the south and the Rust Belt entered the state and are battled out in our legislature even though they have little to do with local culture, lands or ethics.

Moreover, since 1968 the Democratic Party has gone increasingly leftward, driven at first by the impacts of the 1960s and then by its left leaning elements.  It in turn became anti-democratic, relying on the Supreme Court to force upon the nation unwanted social change, until it suddenly couldn't rely on the Court anymore, at which time it rediscovered democracy.  At the same time Southern and Rust Belt Populists, brought into the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan, eventually took it over and are now fanatically devoted to anti-democratic mogul, Donald Trump, whose real values, other than the love of money and a certain sort of female appearance, is unknown, none of which maters to his fanatic base as they apply the Führerprinzip to his imagined wishes and he responds.

We know, accordingly, have a Congress that's completely incapable of doing anything other than banning TikTok.

Distributism by design, and Agrarianism by social reference, both apply Catholic Social Teaching, one intentionally and one essentially as it was already doing that before Catholic Social Teaching was defined.  As we've discussed elsewhere, Catholic Social Teaching applies the doctrines of Human Dignity, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.  Solidarity, as Pope John Paul II describe it In Sollicitudo rei socialis, is not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of others. It is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”.  Subsidiarity provides that that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.

We are a long ways from all of that, right now.

Politically, we're in a national political era that is violently opposed to solidarity and subsidiarity.  Supposed national issues and imagined remote conspiracies, dreamt up by political parties, swamp real local issues.  Global issues, in contract, which require a competent national authority, or even international authority, to deal with, cannot get attention as the masses are distracted by buffoons acting like Howler Monkeys.

Destroying the parties would serve all of this.  And that's a lot easier to do than might be supposed.

And more difficult.

Money makes it quite difficult, in fact.  But it can be done.

The easiest way to attack this problem is to remove political parties as quasi official state agencies, which right now the GOP and Democratic Party are.  Both parties have secured, in many states, state funded elections which masquerade as "primary elections" but which are actually party elections.  There's utterly no reason whatsoever that the State of Wyoming, for example, should fund an internal Republican election, or a Democratic one.

Primary elections are quite useful, but not in the fashion that most state's have them.  A useful example is Alaska's, whose system was recently proposed for Wyoming, but which was not accepted (no surprise).  Interestingly, given as the state's two actual political parties right now are the Trumpites and the Republican remnants, this a particularly good, and perhaps uniquely opportune, time to go to this system.  And that system disregard party affiliations.

Basically, in that type of election, the top two vote getters in the primary go on to the general election irrespective of party.  There doesn't need to be any voter party affiliation. The public just weeds the number of candidates down.

That is in fact how the system works here already, and in many places for local elections. But it should be adopted for all elections.  If it was, the system would be much different.

For example, in the last House Race, Harriet Hageman defeated Lynette Grey Bull, taking 132,206 votes to Gray Bull's 47,250.  Given the nature of the race, FWIW, Gray Bull did much better than people like to imagine, taking 25% of the vote in an overwhelmingly Republican state.  Incumbent Lynn Cheney was knocked out of the race in the primary, being punished for telling the truth about Дональд "The Insurrectionist" Trump.  But an interesting thing happens if you look at the GOP primary.

In that race, Harriet Hageman took 113,079 votes, for 66% of the vote, and Cheney took 49,339, for 29%.  Some hard right candidates took the minor balance. Grey Bull won in the primary with just 4,500 votes, however.

I'd also note here that Distributism in and of itself would have an impact on elections, as it would have a levelling effect on the money aspect of politics.  Consider this article by former Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:

Tom Lubnau: Analyzing The Anonymous Mailers Attacking Chuck Gray

A person could ask, I suppose, of how this is an example, but it is.

Back to the Gray v. Nethercott race, Ms. Nethercott is a lawyer in a regional law firm. That's not distributist as I'd have it, as I'd provide that firms really ought to be local, as I discussed in yesterday's riveting installment.   But it is a regional law firm and depending upon its business model, she's likely responsible for what she brings in individually.  Indeed, the claim made during the race that she wanted the job of Secretary of State for a raise income was likely absurd.

But the thing here is that Nethercott, as explained by Lubnau, raised a total of $369,933, of which $304,503 were from individual donations.  That's a lot to spend for that office, but it was mostly donated by her supporters.

In contrast, Jan Charles Gray, Chuck Gray's father donated a total of $700,000 to Chuck Gray’s campaign, Chuck Gray donated $10,000 to his own campaign and others donated $25,994.

$700,000 is a shocking amount for that office, but beyond that, what it shows is that Nethercott's supporters vastly out contributed Gray's, except for Gray's father.  In a distributist society, it certainly wouldn't be impossible to amass $700,000 in surplus cash for such an endeavor, but it would frankly be much more difficult.

To conclude, no political system is going to convert people into saints.  But it's hard to whip people into a frenzy who are your friends and neighbors than it does people who are remote.  And its harder to serve the interest of money if the money is more widely distributed. Put another way, it's harder to tell 50 small business owners that that Bobo down in Colorado knows what she's talking about, than 50 people who depend on somebody else for a livelihood a myth.

Last prior:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5a. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact. The Professions.

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact.

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:

So, having published this screed over a period of days, and then dropping the topic, we resume with the question.

Why, exactly, do you think this would do a darn thing?

Well, here's why.

A daily example.

When I started this entry on Monday, March 4, I got up, fixed coffee and took the medication I'm now required to as I'm 60 years old, and the decades have caught up with me. The pills are from a locally owned pharmacy, I'd note, not from a national chain, so I did a distributist thing there.  It's only one block away, and I like them. Distributism.

I toasted a bagel, as in my old age the genetic "No" for adults consuming milk has caught up with me.  I got that at Albertson's and I don't know where the bagels are made.  Albertson's is a national chain that's in the process of trying to merge with another national chain. Corporate Capitalism.

The coffee was Boyers, a Colorado outfit. Quasi distributist there.

I put cream cheese on the bagel.  It was the Philadelphia brand. Definitely corporate capitalist there.

I'd already shaved (corporate capitalist, but subsidiarity makes that make sense).

I got dressed and headed to work.  My car was one I bought used, but its make is one that used to be sold by a locally owned car dealer.  No more. The manufacturers really prefer regional dealers, and that's what we have.  All the cars we have come from the dealer when it was locally owned.

I don't have that option anymore.  Corporate Capitalism.

In hitting the highway, I looked up the highway towards property owned by a major real estate developer/landlord.  A type of corporate capitalism.

I drove past some churches and the community college on the way in. Subsidiarity.

I drove past one of the surviving fraternal clubs.  Solidarity.

I drove past the major downtown churches.  Solidarity.

I drove past a collection of small stores, and locally owned restaurants adn bars, and went in the buildings.  Distributism.

I worked the day, occasionally dealing with the invading Colorado or other out of state firms.  Corporate Capitalism.

I reversed my route, and came home.

So, in this fairly average day, in a Western midsized city, I actually encountered a fair number of things that would be absolutely the same in a Distributist society.  But I encountered some that definitely ran very much counter to it.

Broadening this out.

A significant thing was just in how I ate.  And I eat a lot more agrarian than most people do.

The meat in our freezer was either taken by me in the field, or a cow of our own that was culled.  Most people cannot say that. But all the other food was store bought, and it was all bought from a gigantic national chain.  In 1924 Casper had 72 grocers, and it was less than a quarter of its present size.  In 1925, just one year later, it had 99 grocery stores.  The number fell back down to 70 in 1928.

August 1923 list of grocers in Casper that sold Butternut Coffee, which was probably every grocer.

When I was a kid, the greater Casper area had Safeway, Albertson's, Buttreys and an IGA by my recollection, in the national chains.  Locally, however, it had six local grocery stores, including one in the neighboring town of Mills.  One located right downtown, Brattis' was quite large, as was another one located in North Casper.

Now the entire area has one local grocery store and it's a specialty store.

Examples like this abound.  We have a statewide sporting goods store and a local one, but we also have a national one.  The locals are holding their own.  When I was young there was a locally owned store that had actually been bought out from a regional chain, and a national hardware store that sold sporting goods.  So this hasn't changed a lot.

And if we go to sporting goods stores that sell athletic equipment, it hasn't either. We have one locally owned one and used to have two. We have one national chain, and used to have none.

In gas stations, we have a locally owned set of gas stations and the regional chains.  At one time, we only had local stores, which were franchises. The local storefronts might be storefronts, in the case of the national chains, as well.

When I was a kid, the only restaurants that were national were the fast food franchises, which had competition from local outfits that had the same sort of fare and setting.  The locals burger joints are largely gone, save for one I've never been to and which is a "sit down" restaurant, and we have national and regional restaurant chains.  We retain local ones as well.  

We don't have any chain bars, which I understand are a thing, and local brewing, killed off by Prohibition, has come roaring back.

We used to have a local meat processing plant that was in fact a regional one, taking in cattle from the area, and packing it and distributing it back out, including locally.  There are no commercial packing plants in Wyoming now.  The closest one, I think, is in Greeley Colorado, and the packing industry is highly concentrated now.

We don't have a local creamery, either.  We had one of those at least into the 1940s, and probably well beyond that.  The milk for that establishment was supplied by a dairy that was on the south side of town.  It's no longer that and hasn't been for my entire life.

We've been invaded by the super huge law firms that are not local.

Our hospital is part of a private chain now, and there's massive discontent. That discontent took one of the county commissioners that was involved in the transfer of that entity out of county hands down in the last election.  But that hasn't arrested the trend.  My doctor, who I really like is part of a regional practice, not his own local one, anymore.  This trend is really strong.

And then there's Walmart, the destroyer of locally owned stores of every variety.

So would distribution make anything different?

The question is asked by a variant of Wendell Berry's "what are people for", but in the form of "what is an economy for?".

It's to serve people, and to serve them in their daily lives, as people.

It's not to make things as cheap as possible.

On all of the retail things I've mentioned, every single one could be served by local retail stores.  If we didn't have Albertson's, Riddleys and Smith's, we'd have a lot of John Albertson & Son's, Bill Riddley & Family, and Emiliano Smith's stores, owned by their families.  If Walmart didn't exist, and moreover couldn't exist, it would be replaced locally, probably by a half dozen family owned retailers. . . or more.

Prices would in fact be higher, although there would be competition, but the higher prices would serve families who operated them, and by extension the entire community.  And this is just one example.  

Much of the old infrastructure in fact remains.  As discussed above, numerous small businesses remain, and according to economic statistics, small business remains the number one employer in the US.  But the fact is that giant chain corporations have made a devastating impact on the country, making all local business imperiled and some practically impossible to conduct.

Reversing that would totally reorient the local economy.  Almost everyone would work for themselves, or for a locally owned business, owned by somebody they knew personally, and who knew them personally.

And with that reorientation, would come a reorientation of society.

We'll look at that a bit later.  Let's turn towards the agrarian element next.

Last Prior:

What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 4. A Well Educated Society.

Tuesday, February 26, 1924. The Beer Hall Putsch Trial commences.

Eight Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, went on trial for the Beer Hall Putsch.

And:

Press Conference, February 26, 1924

There was snow on the ground in Washington that day.

Dorthy Day write about the Thrills of 1924.

The Thrills of 1924 (February 26, 1924)

The City of Houston was photographed from the top of the Keystone Building.

The building still stands

Mid Week At Work: A Christmas Carol.

Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

A Christmas Carol

The Agrarian's Lament: Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.

The Agrarian's Lament: Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.:

Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.

Another reason a distributist economy is more just:

Business as a Calling

Why specific movements on the left always end up being disregarded. Sense and Solidarity. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 51st edition.

As a climate justice movement, we have to listen to the voices of those who are being oppressed and those who are fighting for freedom and for justice. Otherwise, there can be no climate justice without international solidarity.

Greta Thurnberg.

And, now Thurnberg, having sided with murder, has jumped the shark.

There's no connection whatsoever, and even less than that, with the situation in the Middle East and the climate,

But this is typical. In the 20s and 30s the American left came around to supporting Stalin in many instances. Why?  Well, um, solidarity?

And this is why, in the end, that such movements lose their steam.  Here a man joined the stage to protest the diversion of the protest.  His actions were wrong, but his point was correct.

Of course the point will be made that being concerned for the Palestinians as a people, isn't the same as support for Hamas, and at least on an intellectual level, that's true. And as much as possible that can be done should be done to ease the humanitarian crisis that has come about.

But, by the same token, we should note, the East Prussians were not the same thing as the SS.  They were displaced, permanently, in 1945 and nobody, outside the East Prussians, has shed a tear about. Hor's de combat.  

Moreover, you can't really cross over from poster child for a cause, and frankly that's what she did, to left wing general agitator all at once and in this fashion.  It discredits the movement you came from, particularly with the nonsensical effort to link the two.

But, never mind.  The American left (and of course she's not part of that) supported every left wing cause of the 20s and 30s before burying their history of doing that in the late 40s and 50s.  It didn't help them in the end, and they've never been able to really wash the blood off.  

Solidarity is one thing.  Sense is another.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 50th edition, the Synod Edition.

Hearing what you want to hear, without actually listening and Coffee and Donuts isn't assessing the view of the Parish. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 50th edition, the Synod Edition.

Steve Millies 

The theme I see in a lot of clerical #Catholic comment on the #synod is—'Who are all these laypeople and why do they think they get a voice in *my* church?'

Oh, bull.  I haven't been hearing that at all.

Quite the contrary, in facdt.

Apparently, I'd note, I’m not the only one either:

Fr. Joseph Krupp@Joeinblack

So weird. I follow almost 800 priests, and not one of them has said anything remotely like that.

Mostly, we worry about how to deal with the increasingly large piles of demands on us.

We worry because everyone is an expert on our job, but most are only willing to help if they…

Show more

In six decades now of attending Mass, I can't think of a single instance in which I've personally heard a priest openly criticize a Bishop or the Pope, although I'm sure they didn't always agree with them.  They simply obeyed and did their duties.  This would include not only the Pope Francis era, but the real "spirit of Vatican II" disruption of the 70s.  

All of the criticism of Bishops and Popes I've heard have come from the laity, and it tended as a rule to object to reforms.  Even the mantillas I am now seeing for the first time in sizable numbers being worn by young women are a form of protest in a way.  The point is that a lot of "the voice of the laity is being ignored" doesn't come from the class under age 40, really, whose, but from the Western middle-aged and old.

Mr. Millies is, I'd note, a Professor of Public theology who was born in 1972.  That makes him nine years younger than me, or 51 years of age.  He's not a Baby Boomer, the generation that's most frequently picked on here, but he's not a kid either.

The young church might not really be the voice that people 50 years old and up really want to hear, as it might look like a voice that actually is more from the lost past that the dying post Boomer present.

On assessing the voice of  the parish, moreover, every parish I've ever been to worked desperately to do that, usually unsuccessfully, in trying to get the rank and file of the parish to express their voice and to come to thins other than Mass.  As I've noted, this has been, in my experience, uniformly unsuccessful.

Which takes us to this.

Also on Twitter, one Canadian Catholic commentator, D.W. Lafferty replied to another person's credulity regarding assessing the views at the parish level in an interesting fashion. That post noted:

Apparently, "synodality" is just a euphemism for "a discussion group in the church basement." Huh. twitter.com/rightscholar/s…

Lafferty replied:

That's where it can start, for sure. It's the simplest thing in the world to have people in a parish get together to talk and listen. Might cost a few bucks for coffee and donuts. If we can't pull that off, what are we even doing?

And, similarly:

How much does it cost to have a discussion group in the church basement? Or to have a volunteer take notes and produce a synthesis? Cost is not the problem. Lack of interest and motivation on the part of many pastors is the problem.

And here we meet the academic in academia, rather than the regular person in the pews.

I've served on a parish council.  I didn't ask to run for the position, but received anonymous nominations three times.  I rejected the first two, as I’m not a joiner, and I'm busy.  Finally, the third time, I felt compelled and served for several years.

I've also been on a professional board. Same thing.  I didn't volunteer, I was asked to serve.

And I once served in a professional role that was, well professional, the same way. Asked to serve.

The point?

Well, I’m an introvert. I have opinions on everything, but only very rarely will I cause myself to attend something.  I will, but it's rare.  Most of the time I've had public roles in anything, I was volunteered, and at least some of the time, I declined.

When the Synod got up and rolling, I didn't attend the parish meetings, and looking at the various parish reports on the number of people who attended, attendance was generally low.  I regret that now, but I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt I would have been the odd man out at the meeting. . . if not necessarily in the pews.

A brief diversion.

My old parish had breakfasts after the early Sunday Mass every week.  They had excellent sweet rolls.  We would occasionally eat there, but more often than not I'd pick up a tray of sweet rolls and take them home.  Why?

Well, that says a lot about my personality.  It often surprises people who know me professionally if I mention that I'm introverted, but I am.  I feel massively uncomfortable sitting with people I don't know or barely know in a setting I'm not anticipating.  It's one thing to sit with a group of lawyers, or clients, etc.  Quite another to be sitting there after Mass.

Additionally, while I work most days in the white collar legal world, I'm very much a rural Irishman at heart.  Mentally, I've never acclimated to being able to not look out on a golf course and not think that it would look good with sheep on it.  People don't treat me that way as a rule, however.  On off hours, I'll sit and ponder how hard it would be to put a 4bt Cummins in a 1953 NAPCO truck, or that I wish I was hunting.  On Sundays, I don't ponder the Rule Against Perpetuates.

Like a lot of Wyomingites, I work six days out of seven, if not seven out of seven.

The point? 

I'm not likely to sit down in a basement to discuss anything with anyone, and having coffee and donuts available doesn't sweeten the deal whatsoever.  In my entire life, I've never gone to a basement to have coffee and donuts. I've never been to the Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast either.

And again, I'm not alone.  I know lots of people just like me.  They're loyal Catholics in the pews, to be sure.

And it just isn't Wyoming natives wondering how the state's politics have been disrupted by out-of-state imports who are mad at the world.  You aren't going to get the Mexican father who comes every week dressed in his Chihuahua formal clothes along with his wife and three kids to go to a meeting dominated by a bunch of super friendly handshaking Anglos.  Nor are you going to get the 23-year-old mantilla wearing girl.  Nor are young to get the Rad Trad that vaguely suspects that everyone else is in some sort of Novus Ordo conspiracy.  No, you aren't.

But you really need to.  Indeed, in an average parish, there's probably a lot more of those people, combined, than whom every will be drawn to the basement for "fellowship".

You'll have to conscript them.

You can do it, however.

It'd actually require a near demand from the pastor along the lines of "thank you for coming to the 8:00 Mass. .. the 10:00 has been cancelled this week as we are all meeting. . . I'm not dismissing the Mass until we all talk so if you leave now, your Sunday Obligation is not fulfilled.  Welcome to a Synod meeting."

And you would actually have to bring up the uncomfortable topics yourself, as people uncomfortably shifted in their seats?

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Montana Quits American Library Association Over Marxist President, Wyoming Noncommittal

Oh heck, Wyoming, go ahead and pull out.

Here's the Tweet:

An actual Marxist woman. . . who probably has little use for the head of the American Library Association and its head.

I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity! 

And my mom is SO PROUD I love you mom.

First of all, I don't know if she's a Marxist, or a lesbian, but anyone dense enough to claim an association with British Library butt sitter Karl "look at the massively screwed up mess my children were" Marx is a twit.

And screaming "I'm a lesbian" right now is the functional equivalent of screaming "I'm whatever seems to be edgy and unpopular but really isn't". If Tucker Carlson came out with a blistering rebuke of Cocker Spaniels tomorrow, about half the people in the Progressive camp would come out as Cocker Spaniels.

Maybe she's a lesbian, which maybe is a social construct, or maybe not, but it doesn't have much to do with this role.

Or maybe right now it actually does, if her claim to be a "lesbian" is much more of a social construct of identification, rather than a weird declaration of sexual attraction orientation.  One of the things that is truly gross and disgusting has been the insertion into public school library of books that basically amount to homosexual sex manuals.  Efforts to remove them, and they should be removed, meet with "only the Nazi's burn books", which we have to assume would mean that if Public School No. 9 purchased a subscription to Playboy, it'd be okay.

That ties in with the Marxist claim, as even though actual Communist regimes quickly abandoned it in their own administrations, revolutionary Marxism, following Marx's written lead, had the personal sexual morality of alley cats.  The association of Marxism with radical sexual views isn't simply an item of right wing condemnation, but a feature of actual revolutionary Marxism, if not of actual governing Marxism.

And what does Marxism really have to do with "collective power".  Marxism was based on the theory that library butt sitters and smelly café debaters had a right to tell workers what to think, organize them, and then tell them what to do or have a bullet put in their head.  If you really want Marxism, there's a place left espousing it, and the Kim's may love a visit from you, although I doubt that Yo-jong, who is the Marxist functionary she'd probably draw, would really approve of her attraction declarations.

And Solidarity is an anti-Marxist position.  It comes from Catholic Social Teaching.

Why does everything have to involve screaming politics and gender raging in Western Society anymore?

Truly, Radical Self Centeredness and Narcissism is the Zeitgeist of our times.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Eh?

Hypocrisy?

Hypocrisy? Or just not really thinking things through?

As noted here before, although it might not always be very obvious, I'm conservative.

I do, however, think things through.

What about our legislators?  I wonder.

The bill to extend Medicaid, which only aids the poor, to mothers past 60 days to a year passed its committee, but barely.  

It was supported by Governor Gordon.

It was supported by physicians.

Deacon Mike Lehman, lobbyist for the Diocese of Wyoming, spoke in favor of it.

None of which kept some of the legislative guardians of public morals from speaking against it.  Jeanette Ward of Illinois spoke against it as an "entitlement program".

Eh?

Not hardly.

Deacon Lehman noted:“that not every government program is an inevitable slide into the fiery pit of Socialism.”  He further noted, according to the Cowboy State Daily: “We’re talking about a segment of the population that qualifies for Medicaid coverage while pregnant, then, when the mother and child are still extremely vulnerable, they no longer qualify.”

The physicians noted they were supporting it even though the program really doesn't pay them very well at all, just barely, in fact.

I don't know, I'd note, Ward's religious affiliation, but I’m sure she's some sort of Christian.  Prior to coming to Wyoming, she was very active in Illinois politics, where she was predictably controversial.  An example of that is as follows:

Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?

My 6th-grader came home with this assignment today. She was supposed to read the article and answer the questions. (She will not be completing this assignment). The full text of the article is below. Quiz questions are depicted in the pictures. This article is utterly incorrect and false on many levels. This is one of the many reasons I voted no on this curriculum resource.

Well, Christians, Muslims and Jews do in fact all worship the same God.  Their understanding of God's nature if quite different from each other, but they all worship the same God.

Are we really willing to deny this small class of women and their infants medical help?  Seems really mean.

It's also the sort of thing that causes some people to slam the Pro Life folks on the basis that they don't care at all once people are born.  That's actually completely false, and indeed many of the more dedicated pro lifers do indeed support helping mother and infant post birth.

Indeed, while often missed, there's a strong streak of liberalism in at least the Catholic pro-life crowd, which is not only opposed to abortion, but opposed to the death penalty as well.  It's not actually easy to politically pigeonhole it.

Which unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case for Ms. Ward.  She's pretty predictable.

So, frankly, this doesn't surprise me very much.

Without knowing more, I sort of guess that Ms. Ward is a fundamentalist of some type.  I don't want to pick on fundamentalist too much, as they are highly varied, and the term is one that is put on them, rather than one they adopt, but fundamentalist of any type, and there are Islamic Fundamentalist, Hindu fundamentalist, etc., risk reducing their religion to a set of sort of Pharisaic type rules and becoming mean thereafter.  Abortion is wrong because it is, premarital sex is wrong, aborting the results of premarital sex is wrong, but after that you are your own and if you get sick and die, well that's your problem.

I'm not saying that all fundamentalist of any type hold that view, but the fundamentalist of any stripe, and I'd note that for the Apostolic religions as well, run that risk.

Note, orthodox, and fundamentalist, are not the same thing.

There's a real element of solidarity and subsidiarity missing in that thinking.  Yes, just the other day I criticized free school breakfast and lunches, on the basis that it encouraged parents in irresponsibility, but here a different concern exists, which is helping the most helpless in the most efficient fashion.  I.e, both solidarity and subsidiarity apply here, and they argue strongly for extending Medicaid here.  To argue against it as an unwanted "entitlement" really misses the boat.

And then there's the gun them down bill on trespassing.

One of the sponsors of that bill is a devout member of my parish.  

Would Jesus really suggest that you can violently toss people off of land.

And it came to pass on the second first sabbath that, as he went through the corn fields, his disciples plucked the ears and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. And some of the Pharisees said to them: Why do you that which is not lawful on the sabbath days? And Jesus answering them, said: Have you not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was hungry and they that were with him: How he went into the house of God and took and ate the bread of proposition and gave to them that were with him, which is not lawful to eat but only for the priests? And he said to them: The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Luke, 6.

Would the legislators have suggested that Jesus and the Apostles be roughed up for violating the law.

Probably.

Pope Francis in the New York Times and the Fatigued Audience.

In the past here, up until this past year, when a Pope made a major statement I usually commented on it.  I've pretty much given up doing that with Pope Francis.  Indeed, I've come to the point where I dread his new proclamations as all too often they're followed by clarifications and explanations, and the like, and generate confusion.

Indeed, I find the Catholic Answers responses to this interesting.  I tend to find that the apologist who comments there that I like the most, Jimmy Akin, simply doesn't comment on them as they come up in general, an overall wise approach in my view.  Others take to trying to explain them which can be difficult not because they aren't explainable, but because the Holy Father simply isn't a good writer, at least in so far as the English translations of his works would have it, and he tends to speak without really internally vetting what he's saying.  Tim Staples, whom I normally don't listen to, was simply gushing in his praise of the Pope's most recent encyclical declaring it absolutely brilliant, for example, which probably was really only persuasive to those who were already convinced, and pretty much turned off by those who were.

The entire recent "Pope approves of civil unions" matter was such an example.  Put in context the Pope was in fact not declaring that the Church now approves of civil unions nor was it modifying its positions on marriage in general. But his remarks frankly were hard to explain and caused at least one really orthodox but not rad trad apologist, Matt Fradd, to react with despair.  Indeed, the Pope allowing his comments to end up in a public medium being misconstrued yet again, even if they predate his Papacy (which they seem to have) was pretty much the tipping point for a lot of orthodox Catholics who are not rad trads.  If he couldn't have prevented his comments from being used, which he very well might not have been able to do, and if they predated his Papacy, there should have been some quicker response than there ultimately was so that there wasn't a widespread press declaration confusing the rank and file in the pews and causing figures like Fr. James Martin to declare them to be "first steps", which they were not.  I.e., I think orthodox Catholics have sort of turned Pope Francis off, and "liberal" or "progressive" Catholics are an aging declining demographic whose views, frankly, really don't matter.  The support, therefore, by Fr. James Martin, SJ, really matters only to the Press, not so much the people in the pews.

Compounding this, while the Pope isn't a good writer, he's a proficient one, and its gotten so a person can hardly turn around without a new Papal writing appearing.  Just in the last couple of months he issued a new encyclical that was an extremely lengthy text which appeared to a be a summation of all of his prior encyclicals.  Indeed, this was so much the case I wondered if it was some sort of final compilation prior to a resignation.  It doesn't appear to be, but its hard to figure out why he issued an encyclical which is a lengthy summation of his prior encyclicals.

That wasn't his only writing, however, this year.  Just a few weeks ago the Pope issued Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, which I have not read and which I'm very unlikely to.  This book was apparently written during a Coronavirus lockdown and comments on a lot of contemporary social matters, including protests in the United States.  And now, over the past few days, he has an op ed in The New York Times.

I'll note here that I don't expect the Pope to really be familiar with the Times, and I'll give the Times credit for running it.  The Times does have one highly orthodox Catholic columnist on its staff who writers very Catholic themed articles.  Having said that, the Times isn't what it once was, so to a degree choosing the Times is an interesting choice by whomever made it.

Additionally, the Times has a "pay wall" and that means people who regularly read it will probably not be able to unless they're a subscriber, which there's no point in being.  Be that as it may, I did read it.

I was frankly prepared to dislike it as I'm frankly very tired of the Pope saying things that have to be explained as they creep up on falling outside of orthodoxy.  I'm like Matt Fradd and a lot of other loyal orthodox Catholics that way in which there's been so much, I'm just tired of it and probably have the volume on pretty low at this point.  A lot of us, rightly or wrongly, are at this point just marking time until the Boomer generation ages out of high Church offices and a new age of orthodoxy resumes, which it will.  It's not that we're not respectful or loyal to the Pope, but we're probably resuming the mental attitude of Catholics of the 18th Century or 19th Century who didn't really expect to hear from the Pope much and are accordingly sort of tuning out now.  Or maybe more accurately we may have the view of Eastern Rite Catholics who are fully Catholic in every sense but are more insular and traditional in ways that don't allow the outside world to impact them to the same degree.  Indeed, quite a few orthodox Catholics were headed in that direction anyhow. 

Well, at any rate, the Pope has published in the Times with an op ed entitled:

A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts

To come out of this pandemic better than we went in, we must let ourselves be touched by others’ pain.

We should note that headline writers, and not the authors, write headlines for papers like the times.  If that seems sort of an un Francis like headline and subheading, it probably is.  It was no doubt written by the Times.

Anyhow, I read the entire op ed and didn't find anything unorthodox or shocking, although it may be signaling an intended effort, which I'll address below. So as is frequently the case, I was a bit pleasantly surprised.  So far on Francis' encyclicals, I've found them that way.  I also find their views often uniquely foreign in a way, but then he isn't an American, after all.

A lot of the Pope's article is personal about the events leading up to his lung removal many years ago, and the experience of pain and illness.  A lot of it is, in fact, deeply personal and an homage to two sisters who were nurses when he was ill, noting as he ties it back in:

Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching.

My conservative friends, I'm afraid, aren't going to like it. There's pretty clearly a swipe at Americans, and perhaps the Trump Administration, and a common view in the United States, where he states:

With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.

Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.

It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.

This gets into an interesting Catholic belief which is that governments, all governments, derive their authority from God and therefore are charged, accordingly, with responsibilities.  That belief is the one that causes people to misconstrue the old "Devine right" of kings, which isn't what it means, so much as it means that all authority is ultimately God's and any legitimate exercise of authority, whatever it is, is only to the extent that God permits it, and therefore must be used accordingly.

Of course, this is also a lecture aimed at individualist who value personal freedom or collective safety in this context, which is something that has been seen all over the globe.  The Pope clearly disapproves.

And that's where the op ed then takes a big turn, returning to common Francis themes.

God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.

The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being.

To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

In doing this its interesting to see the references to the Catholic Social Teaching of Solidarity.  Solidarity and Subsidiarity are old Catholic themes, prominent in the writings of Pope Leo XVIII and best recalled from Rarem Novarum.  A really well schooled Catholic will recognize the references to Solidarity right away, but Protestants, and frankly most Catholics for that matter, won't.

The editorial also recalls themes that Pope Francis has had throughout his papacy in regard to economics, and which seemingly have evolved towards a certain type of internationalism in a way more recently, but it's not specific on them.  Criticism of capitalism, however are nothing new in Catholic circles and indeed Rarem Novarum criticized both capitalism and socialism, giving rise to the development of distributism.  Interestingly, that latter fact is hardly noticed anywhere, and hasn't been by Pope Francis himself, perhaps because capitalism has come to so dominate free market economies that the free market concept of distributism is hardly known to even exist outside of the small population of (somewhat gadfly) distributists.

At any rate, it's not a bad editorial.  I doubt it'll be very impactful, however.  Pope Francis has spoken too much, and too vaguely, and written too much, and too vaguely, to really be noticed very much now outside of Catholic circles, and the orthodox, who would be most likely to normally listen and try to heed what he says, have assumed a sort of fatigued state of indifference.  There's some sort of lesson in all of that. 

And part of that lesson has to deal with his intent.  If you read all of his works that touch upon the economy, and there's a bunch, what you are left with is a pretty clear impression that Pope Francis is arguing for a overhauling of the entire global economy in a way that reflects his writings.  This would emphasize a certain sort of international Solidarity (in Catholic social teaching terms) acknowledging everyone as our brothers and sisters, with a certain sort of regionalism reflecting, vaguely, Subsidiarity, while also stress the need to aid the poor and not fall into the vices of consumerism.  Here too, however, the problem is that those themes have been intertwined with numerous other ones and never clarified, so they're lost, irrespective of whether we agree with them or not.

Popes, contrary to what some Rad Trads tend to believe, have never decreed anyone system of anything, including economics, to be "the" Catholic ideal.  And they're not going to.  So Pope Francis isn't straying off the well paved road in that respect.  But Pope's have been a lot more direct and succinct.  As Pope Francis hasn't been, it'd take a clear, limited and precise encyclical or writing to do that.  If that's coming, it's coming late in the day and after so much has already been written that getting everyone to turn the volume back up to listen will be difficult.