tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60487762024-03-17T20:29:01.630-04:00Ecce HomoMy comments on the theological understanding of the masses. And myself.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.comBlogger5318125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-47497160704786860352024-03-17T20:28:00.001-04:002024-03-17T20:28:03.740-04:00El Dorado West closed in 2017Not exactly breaking news, but I was trying to go there and couldn't find it - I kept finding another El Dorado I had never known existed. Doing a little research, the family owned a mini-diner empire and got pushed out for a Honda service center. Very sad times.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-61582034070494378192024-02-25T12:48:00.000-05:002024-02-25T12:48:14.525-05:00Death of Synodality forcastIn my first look at a website named "The Catholic Thing", we have a question hard to argue with in the context of Synodality
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The super-consultative synodal process will never recover. After all, how will the Holy Father and his advisors respond when, in the first days of the synodal assembly this coming October, someone asks, "What secret projects are the Holy Father and Roman Curia working on right now that take no account of the synod process, contradict its decisions, and undermine its credibility?"
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Also hard to argue with the various recriminations, excommunications, etc that synodality has brought to Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, etc.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-9130543407025721282024-02-14T08:41:00.004-05:002024-02-14T08:41:18.039-05:00Centralized, decentralized, or neither?A very interesting look on the changes in canons and practice since Vatican II that try to restore the ancient role of the bishop as a true governor of his diocese, and the tension between the current preaching of subsidiarity and the fact that bishiops can't even authorized a local religious order without running to Rome anymore.
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Looking forward to a return to election of bishops, but only one candidate on the ballot (this is sarcasm).Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-71948459210612756372024-01-26T11:58:00.000-05:002024-01-26T11:58:09.098-05:00Working as an artist and sharing your faith<blockquote>
Mattie Karr wanted to be an infiltrator. The 28-year-old Kansas native had big dreams of traveling to Hollywood and stealthily planting spiritual seeds in the work she did, smuggling religious themes into mainstream stories and animation.
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"I loved the idea of being incognito with my art. I could be this Catholic evangelizing spy, almost," she said.</blockquote>
That didn't end up happening, but many other good things did. Good read.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-17205797441117648242024-01-22T21:10:00.000-05:002024-01-22T21:10:00.950-05:002024 technology mood"Ask not what your computer can do for you, but what you can do for your computer"Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-82073912824108847362023-12-21T09:17:00.000-05:002023-12-21T09:17:01.830-05:00Ecumenical miracle with Saint Januarius<blockquote>When Patriarch Bartholomew I held the relic, the dried blood within the ampoules unexpectedly liquefied. This miraculous occurrence, which remains unexplained by science, is traditionally believed to happen in response to the dedication and prayers of the local Napolitane faithful.</blockquote>Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-31318339577486327192023-11-05T21:20:00.002-05:002023-11-05T21:20:18.336-05:00Commander X16 available for purchaseLooks amazing, but not sure if I'll buy one, my free time has been zilch for a long time. Still, looks like it could be fun to program.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-18820648900791457432023-11-05T21:13:00.000-05:002023-11-05T21:13:28.743-05:00Calls for an end to civil serviceMore or less, by cutting off the jobs in politics from average people, it cuts of all of politics from average people. On a second point, allowing someone who is supposedly working for a democratically elected position to not do what they want and still keep their job means that you do not have democracy, but some sort of aristocracy.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-14232227413501113492023-11-05T21:10:00.005-05:002023-11-05T21:10:51.226-05:00Pastoral practice and doctrineCalls for being pastoral as an excuse for dodging truth seem to be very limited in their scope
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<blockquote>The great appeal of this is that it makes the purely natural lives of both willful sinners and pastors “more comfortable”. Moreover, any competent observer will have noticed that this distinction arises primarily in relationship with the sins that are culturally thought not to be sins. To put the spotlight on an illuminating example, the Church is typically urged to be “pastoral” when it comes to those guilty of non-marital sexual relationships, but she is not urged to be “pastoral” when it comes to those guilty of environmental pollution or racial prejudice.</blockquote>
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But being "pastoral" as a pastor is more or less if being "medical" as a doctor meant not telling patients when they were sick and needed medicine <br />
<blockquote>It is just here, in fact, that the catastrophe of misguided pastoral practices becomes especially clear. What it means to be “pastoral” is to lovingly care for the flock, and the biggest failure of any authentic pastoral work is the failure to identify the spiritual and moral dangers faced by the flock.</blockquote> <br />
Good read from Dr. Jeff Mirus and worth going through in detail.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-22480248154085731202023-10-15T12:58:00.001-04:002023-10-15T12:58:03.634-04:00Secondhand Smoke found harmlessSeems like the science behind secondhand smoke is about as solid as the nuclear winter science.
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<blockquote>After several years of work, our paper was published by the BMJ on May 17th, 2003, addressing the same question Takeshi Hirayama had posed 22 years earlier in the same journal: whether living with a spouse who smokes increases the mortality risk of a spouse who never smoked. Based on our analysis of the American Cancer Society’s data on over 100,000 California residents, we concluded that non-smokers who lived with a smoker did not have elevated mortality and, therefore, the data did “not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality.</blockquote>Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-8144688367526212362023-10-05T22:34:00.003-04:002023-10-05T22:34:45.456-04:00Rupnik coverup continues?<blockquote>But we do know that there are dozens of such complaints, that a preliminary inquiry by the Jesuit order found them credible, that the order placed restrictions on his ministry, and that in May 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree of excommunication against Rupnik for absolving an accomplice in an immoral act.
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But then the excommunication was lifted almost immediately, which could not have happened without the approval of Pope Francis, who had chosen Father Rupnik to preach one of the Lenten Sermons that year. Notwithstanding orders from his Jesuit superiors that he should not lead spiritual exercises, Rupnik continued to do exactly that, preaching and leading retreats in and around Rome. His artwork was prominently displayed at Vatican events. None of the charges against Rupnik, and of course none of the disciplinary restrictions placed on him, were made public.</blockquote>
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I'm reminded of Caesar calling for mercy for Cataline, not because he had a merciful orientation towards criminal justice, but becuase he was planning on making his own attempt to overthrow the Republic and wanted a backup plan.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-29814888992781133572023-08-23T10:20:00.003-04:002023-08-23T10:20:47.746-04:00Culture Wars are fought in the space of ideas<blockquote>
Key to Hayek’s campaign was the conviction that policy flowed from the general attitudes, beliefs, and worldview of what he terms “secondhand dealers in ideas.”1 What these people believe today, Hayek maintains, will determine policy in 10-20 years. Secondhand dealers in ideas are not experts in the ideas they peddle; they care less about particulars than the grand sweep of things. Libertarians failed to make way against the midcentury socialist tide, Hayek maintains, because they had nothing to offer these people. They offered stale orthodoxies of an earlier age and saw politics mostly as a wonkish scheme of adjustment at the edges.
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<blockquote> instead of plowing profits back into their business, have plowed $200 billion into paper—its stock. In so doing, they have fractured the stakeholder foundation of one of the strongest corporations in the United States of America. Their actions have set a standard despised by Henry Ford and most every industrialist who built this country.</blockquote>
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A microcosom of so many others who destroyed the businesses entrusted to them.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-74767471964467430452023-08-10T09:46:00.002-04:002023-08-10T09:46:15.994-04:00Council of Trent in EnglishIf you need to read the acts of the council and your Latin isn't so bonumSquachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-32469231893764823842023-07-05T10:04:00.002-04:002023-07-05T10:04:23.066-04:00Manufacturing and forgettingIt is easy to forget how to do something, and very hard to figure it out again
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One Tapeheads contributor notes that while vinyl and turntables remained diminished but alive over the decades—meaning that lots of factory equipment and accumulated know-how remained—cassettes fell off a cliff. Vital intellectual property around the technicalities of cassette-deck manufacturing was discarded or forgotten. Companies folded or decisively moved on. The industrial ecosystem in which exemplary equipment could be made evaporated. And it’s virtually impossible to bring that back, especially with only a small hobbyist market remaining today.
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<blockquote>When you tell them that they can’t be Democrat and pro-life, just like when you tell people they can’t be atheist and pro-life or feminist and pro-life or whatever other lines you’re drawing, you’re weakening our numbers. You’re weakening our ambassadors. You’re weakening our reach into groups that are not already prone to opposing abortion.</blockquote>Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-1014868127697259602023-03-21T10:45:00.001-04:002023-03-21T10:45:14.033-04:00New mutual bank for NE/NY argicultureAlways wanted to be part of a mutual.
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If it opens its doors as planned in January 2022, Walden Mutual Bank will be the first new mutual bank charter in New Hampshire in a century and the country’s first new mutual charter in five decades.
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A mutual is a company owned by its customers, depositors in this case. They'll be focusing on supporting farmers, etc in the local area.Squachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14999767608769753757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6048776.post-79919520132381292552023-03-20T09:51:00.001-04:002023-03-20T09:51:28.357-04:00Acid Rain a scam?Apparently the whole thing wasn't real, it was a side effect of the end of slash and burn farming?
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According to Krug and other researchers, the reason that many lakes went from hosting aquatic life to becoming relatively sterile was not the advent of acidic precipitation, but rather the way that people had used land in the lake watersheds over the centuries. During eras when land use involved slash-and-burn agriculture, the soil runoff was relatively alkaline, thus allowing the lakes to support life.
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