This Rant Is Untitleable

     There are days I want to close my eyes and pray that “it will just go away.” For “it,” choose any maddening thing of your preference. I have a bunch of them handy for immediate application.

* * *

1. “Equality.”

     The Left has used “equality” as a shillelagh against the Right for many years. It’s time we took it away from them, considering the massive inequalities in the societies their schemes produce. But it will be a hard job. They don’t have a lot of rhetorical tools with which to hawk their wares. With “racism” dropping off he charts, they’ll keep an iron grip on the ones they still have.

     I read quite recently that in academic year 2024-2025, 68% of the college and university degrees awarded in the United States went to women. That’s quite an imbalance. Nor is the impact of it greatly reduced by the awareness that a large percentage of those degrees were in fields such as “gender studies.”

     Once all the relevant variables have been controlled, it develops that American working women are slightly out-earning American men. Dollars are easy to measure, so at least on the commercial front, it would appear that American women have achieved “equality.”

     Yet young women appear to be less happy, and less satisfied with their life choices, than ever before in American history. I’m no expert on what makes women happy; ask my wife, if you can get close enough. Still, if the studies and surveys that tell us such things can be trusted, it would seem that something is amiss for young American women. Whether their life satisfactions improve over time, I do not know.

     They demanded “equality;” they got commercial equality, plus massive advantages in law, institutional preferences, and social customs. They apparently didn’t get what they wanted. It’s worth a few moments’ thought, especially in light of the plummeting American birthrate.

* * *

2. “Inequality.”

     When I survey the political battlefield of our time, there does appear to be an imbalance that favors the Right. Consider this article from Britain’s Telegraph:

     Not so long ago, the stock image of someone from the far-Right was easily summoned: they’d be male, obviously, and very probably bald, with steel-toe boots and questionable tattoos. Times, however, have moved on: this week, it was reported that the Government had banned seven “far-Right agitators” from entering the country to attend a Tommy Robinson rally on Saturday. Three are strikingly telegenic young women.
     Among the verboten ones is Ada Lluch, an impeccably coiffed 26-year-old Catalan activist who has defended the Franco regime and had told the most recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally last September that western democracies have been “completely invaded”. Valentina Gomez, an influencer from the US, has also been barred, having told last year’s rally that “rapist Muslims” were “taking over” the country (she’s said she’ll still try to come on Saturday, though – via small boat). And Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch political activist and commentator, has been forbidden too, having lamented “the rape, replacement and murder of our people” in London last autumn.
     The face of the far-Right, it seems, is changing – and it’s becoming a good deal prettier. Part of the shift is due to a growing number of young people flooding into politics – many of whom are profoundly disaffected with mainstream parties – and bringing with them a native understanding of the importance of a good Instagram filter. At the same time, there seems to be a rising awareness across the movement that improving its “look” is vital to broadening its appeal, which in recent years has come to rely heavily on a network of highly prominent social media influencers.
     Of course, it suits the far-Right very well to have beautiful young women zhuzhing its image. Their looks, as much as their messaging, promise to draw in more men and open up new audiences altogether in the form of young women who, while once more wary of indulging in politics of this nature, are now turning towards it amid widespread disillusionment with modern life.
     But for many of the individuals involved, there are also considerable rewards to be reaped: fame, the wealth that can flow from success online, perceived “clout” within the community and the satisfaction that can come from speaking out about a subject they care about.

     Of course, given the Telegraph’s editorial proclivities, it must be “the far-Right,” that perpetually under-defined menace, that’s benefiting from the activities of “strikingly telegenic young women.” What, does the Left have no beauties of its own? What about all the Hollywood actresses that regularly express Leftist sentiments and contribute to Leftist causes? I could name quite a number of them. Is it the relative youth of the Right’s lovelies that pains “Leaf Arbuthnot?”

     As a rule, for a First World society, where the beautiful young women are headed is where the society is headed. The reasons “should” be “obvious.” P. J. O’Rourke made note of this in Parliament of Whores. That does bode poorly for the Left. But worse still is the habit unsightly, obese Leftist women have of taking selfies holding placards that say things such as “I WILL NEVER DATE A MAGA MAN.” Someone should talk to them about that.

* * *

3. Bad Judgment.

     Some prominent people have been shooting off their mouths – and their feet – in public recently. They’re drawing the wrong kind of attention. That’s not a function of intellect but of judgment. No matter how passionately one holds to a particular conviction, there are times to keep it to oneself. There are also good and bad ways to go about expressing it.

     Not long ago, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson went on a tirade in which he said that imprisoning criminals is “racist.” (See the first segment of this screed for commentary on that rhetorical weapon.) Now, this man is no Einstein, but a public figure should be aware of the implications of his statements. If the public were to become convinced that confining convicted felons is unacceptable, what would the response be?

     I’ve been predicting the return of the vigilance committee for some time. Brandon Johnson appears to favor that outcome as well. If he doesn’t, it would be damned hard to tell from his public utterances.

     On the other side of the fence we have Ben Shapiro. I’ve never had a high opinion of Shapiro as a representative for conservatism, but I was willing to allow that he’s reasonably bright. I don’t think I’ll make that assumption any longer:

Yes. If you are mentally and physically healthy, taxpayers should not pay you to retire at 65. When Social Security was created, life expectancy was 64. Today, it's 78.

Also, people require purpose. If you can retire and find purpose, go for it. For many, that's a bad idea. https://t.co/MrgtO0dEGT

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 12, 2024

     How old is Shapiro? He can’t have yet entered into the stage of life where weariness is a man’s constant companion. He can’t yet be hagridden with the sense that his life is drawing to a close. Yet he decries retirement. This is definitely a candidate for this year’s “What Were You Thinking?” sweepstakes.

     The American Dream includes several goals. One of them is surely a comfortable retirement in which to rest from one’s labors. Shapiro may have a problem with Social Security – I do, myself – but attacking retirement rather than the injustice of the Social Security system is the wrong way to express it. A genuinely bright person would have known better.

     Hm. Maybe it is intellect, after all.

* * *

     I think that’s all for this bright clear Tuesday in May, Gentle Reader. Enjoy the rest of your day. Stop by tomorrow for more effluvia from an overactive writer. And remember always:

• Gentlemen: The stripper isn’t really attracted to you. Faking it is just how she earns her living.
• Ladies: Those dollar bills in your G-string won’t go nearly as far as you’d like. Neither, sadly, will you.

Hard Lines

     I’ve been seeing a lot of propaganda such as the following:

We see this situation every day. It's actually VERY common.
Should a person in this situation be deported? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/G5X57mTtgx

— Gary M (@gman5180) May 17, 2026

     It’s a tug at the heartstrings. The poor child had no idea what was going on when her mother decided to wetback the border. She’s lived 18 years in the comfort and security of the United States, with all its riches and opportunities. In all justice, can we deport her for what her mother did?

     The empathetic response is to say “No, we’ll find another way.” Which is what the propagandist wants you to say. But that has implications. Back the child’s age off a wee bit. What if she’s 14? Or 10? Or 6? Or still in the cradle? The inclination of the empathetic is still not to penalize the child for the sin of her parents. That naturalizes her parents right along with her. You wouldn’t want the poor tyke to be shorn of her parents, would you?

     For that matter, what if Mom didn’t get knocked up until after she’d illegally entered the U.S.? Once again, her daughter is a helpless bystander in the matter. Birthright citizenship makes her a citizen from the instant she emerges from the womb. Add the humanitarian position that a child should not be unnecessarily parted from her parents, and that hauls her parents into legality right along with her.

     The law is supposed to be definite as many human propositions are not. It’s supposed to have a hard line around it, such that any person of ordinary intelligence can always know on which side of that line he stands. That isn’t always the case, of course. Contemporary “law” is filled with ambiguities. They’re often put there by lawmakers deliberately, to expand the powers of the State. Immigration and naturalization law is only one such case.

     The debates about illegal migration may bring about a change in how citizenship and legal residency are determined. But this aspect of the matter will continue to bedevil us. Children are especially vulnerable to the misdeeds of their parents. Americans are second to none in their inclinations to protect children. If we write new immigration and naturalization laws that do have hard lines around them, but preserve the tradition that one born within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen from birth, then in cases such as the above, we’ll be compelled to separate children from their parents. Some of those children will become wards of the State.

     I cannot find a compromise position that would deal “fairly” with all cases. But as a departed friend liked to say, “fair” is just a sound that humans make now and then. It has no fixed meaning. Ask any minor child prone to shrieking that “It’s not fair!” Don’t expect an answer you can rely on in all cases.

Othering And Anothering

     Time was, I thought I was a pretty smart guy. I believed that I saw things clearly and reasoned accurately. Lately, I’ve become unsure.

     The human mind seeks categories. It looks for ways to classify people, things, and events into discrete boxes that partition experience into neat clusters with hard edges. That’s not a bad thing, in most cases. But it can run away from you, especially if you forget:

1. That we all reason from premises;
2. That the source of our premises ought to be questioned.

     We don’t acquire our premises by a logical process. A lot of us get them from indoctrination. Some of us are bludgeoned mercilessly for many years, until finally we conclude that the only way to stop the pain is to accept what we’re being told.

     When the pain stops and we’re free to think again, we must be ready to revisit those doctrines and deal with them as rational men.

* * *

     The above is very abstract: as abstract as I could make it. That’s so that it will be maximally useful to any Gentle Reader who thinks he understands it. Among our premises are some that have signs hung about them that scream “DANGER: Do Not Inspect Too Closely” in large block letters. If you recoil from addressing any of your premises, it’s likely that the memory of pain is what repels you. Indoctrination is intended to have that result.

     Robert A. Heinlein wrote a huge novel in which he used a “man from Mars” as his vehicle for examining certain common premises. It’s his most popular, most widely read book, in part because it seems to grant the reader permission to violate certain norms that are near-universal to the First World. Yet anyone who looks closely at the author’s life is struck by how far from the seeming exhortations of Stranger in a Strange Land Heinlein’s own conduct lay.

     Heinlein’s novel has value in that it questions premises and implies that the reader should do likewise. That is not the same as refuting them by an impeccably logical process. Moreover, to the extent that we of the late 20th Century set those premises aside, we only reaffirmed their importance. The consequences have all but shattered our societies. They have spoken in a voice of thunder.

     I could go on about this. On occasions I’ve done so. But I’ve lost the strength for it. More, I don’t think it’s necessary any longer.

* * *

     By now you’re probably wondering about what gave rise to this. As it’s an ugly subject, I’ll try to be brief.

     Tom Kratman, whom I esteem highly, has posted a set of assessments and predictions for the future of the West. His observations, premises, and expectations are much like mine, at least when I’ve had enough wine to be candid within myself. A brief, thematic taste:

     I think, in the first place, that those future saviors have probably added a capital crime, Civilizational Treason, to the books, that looks a lot like our definition of treason, but with an expansive view of "making war upon" and "giving aid and comfort."

     The implications of a crime of “civilizational treason” are endless. The core of the concept of treason is opposition to that to which one’s loyalty was premised. But Tom’s term requires that we ask what it means to be loyal to a civilization… and that compels us to ask what sort of foundation lies beneath the civilizations of the West.

     That’s a study to which men have given whole careers. It cannot be fruitfully approached entirely in the abstract. It requires a great deal of knowledge about the history of Western Civilization. It also requires the courage to be honest about the currents that threaten to sweep them away.

     The threats to any civilization are those ideas that cross-cut its premises, no matter how those premises were arrived at. But ideas don’t hang in the void, Victor Hugo’s notions notwithstanding. They require carriers dedicated to them and willing to invest their lives in propagating them.

     If our civilization is founded on certain premises, it behooves those of us who value it to know what those premises are, and to be prepared to defend them with our lives if necessary. The shortfall of persons who meet those criteria is why the enemies of Western Civilization are currently in the ascendant. Worse, a great many young Americans and Europeans have been trained like circus animals to deride those premises. That puts them in league with our enemies.

     As Thomas Sowell has said, the barbarians are inside the gates. As Marcus Tullius Cicero has told us, there is no greater danger to what we hold dear than the traitor.

* * *

     The key to victory in any conflict is knowledge. Sun Tzu said it first:

     If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

     But knowledge doesn’t hang disembodied in the void, either. It requires acceptance: your acceptance. If you reject the knowledge required to win, you’ll lose. Apologies for being so blunt about it.

     The critical knowledge comes from plain answers to these questions:

• Who is my enemy?
• What makes him my enemy?

     Those are precisely the questions we of the West have been most forcibly discouraged from asking.

     It is common among Americans generally that we are reluctant to name our enemies and to take up arms against them. Not our overt military enemies; we’re usually pretty good at identifying those. The enemies of Western Civilization: they who are actively working to smash the pillars of the Western temple. But to identify our enemies demands that we identify the pillars themselves. We’ve been irrationally reluctant to name and defend those.

* * *

     The above requires that we re-examine certain doctrines that have been beaten into us for many decades. Foremost among them is this one: that the greatest of all crimes is making others uncomfortable. To cleave to that commandment, we have restrained ourselves from defending the fundamental canons of the West, even as the Civilizational Traitors now among us have chipped away at them.

     If the West is to survive, we must overcome that doctrine. We must perform an othering. We must say, in a great and terrible voice:

     “You are the enemies of individual rights and responsibilities, of human freedom, and of the imperishable teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On these things our civilization is founded. Therefore you are our enemies. Therefore we will remove you, by whatever means may prove effective. No quarter will be given.”

     I submit that it’s time.

The Assault On Aesthetic Sensibility

     [I’ve had a supremely trying week, and find that I’m “tapped out” of fresh blather. Accordingly, please enjoy – if that’s the right word – the following piece, which first appeared here on December 30, 2016 – FWP]

* * *

     I’m a former – i.e., retired – engineer. These days, engineers come in a multitude of varieties, but there are nevertheless commonalities among us. One of those commonalities, perhaps the most important of them all, is this one:

Form Follows Function

     Aesthetic considerations cannot be permitted to eclipse functional considerations. If the device won’t perform according to its assigned function and specifications, it’s useless no matter how pretty it is. That much, at least, is easy to grasp.

     What’s harder to grasp is this: That which is functionally effective and efficient will also be aesthetically pleasing. Behind the human eye stands the human mind. It qualifies what the eye sees according to its comprehension of what lies within surface form. Thus many an object one would dismiss on purely aesthetic grounds becomes attractive, even beautiful, when one comes to grips with what it’s intended to do.

     An example: Just yesterday, the C.S.O. commented that in every science fiction movie we’ve seen that features a deep-space vessel, the ships have all possessed certain visible characteristic. She couldn’t imagine why that would be so. So I gave her the short course in interstellar vessel design – “Colony Starships 101,” with prerequisites in nuclear fusion and special relativity – proceeding from the absolute requirements of the undertaking:

• Must gather its fuel from space;
• Capable of attaining near-lightspeed velocity;
• Supports living spaces and functions that must not impede one another;
• Must endure continuous bombardment by tiny particles impacting at near-lightspeed.

     I did so as concisely as possible. The C.S.O. being bright, she grasped the requirements and what they mandated at once...and began to see the design of the starship in Passengers as inherently beautiful.

     The late, much lamented Steven Den Beste once wrote of how, once he penetrated to the functional requirements and design of even the most mundane device, it would appear beautiful to him. I submit that this is inherent in the mind’s aesthetic judgments – that an object with an assigned function will impress aesthetically in proportion to its efficacy and efficiency at that function. Inversely, an object without any function must stand on its form alone.

---

     Much of what we call “pop culture” offends me. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Nor ought we to wave the matter aside with a grunt, mutter “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and pass on. Ugliness that pervades a society, displacing what men have cherished for ages as beautiful, isn’t a transient thing but a destructive force: an invasion of our minds and sensibilities.

     So when I happen upon a display such as this, my commentator’s side rears up on its hind legs with the need to emit a denunciation. Were those...persons really clothed? Not by any standard for clothing that I can imagine. For what, after all, are the possible functions of clothing?

• It can keep the wearer warm, or acceptably within the “blue laws;”
• It can conceal his sex characteristics;
• Alternately, it can emphasize those characteristics;
• It can enhance physical attractiveness;
• It can convey an allegiance, an intention, or a desire.

     (Note that I omit consideration of costumes, whose function is to evoke a story or story-setting, and of armor, whose function is to prevent or mitigate wounds. Those are quite separate categories and must not be judged according to the requirements of clothing.)

     Do the “garments” in the pictures at the linked site fulfill any of the possible functions for clothing? If your answer is no, then what are they intended to do?

     Take a few moments over it.

---

     I’m a curmudgeon, which is a subspecies of crank. Accordingly, it’s commonplace for me to compare current events and trends that offend me with ones from my experiences that I find more acceptable. That’s also an aspect of the conservative disposition: to prefer that to which one has become accustomed to that which is shriekingly new. When I write about aesthetic matters I try to quell my natural crankiness in favor of objectivity. Sometimes I even succeed.

     This time around, I consider the obligation to run in the opposite direction. For what you saw in the piece linked above illustrates something I’ve grown to regard as insidiously dangerous: the cumulative assault on what Camille Paglia calls “the Western Eye:” the aesthetic sensibility that has accompanied and perfused Western thinking for two centuries at least, and which is inseparable from our convictions about individual worth and dignity. The apostles of our hideously vulgar pop culture hate that sensibility and are engaged in a wide-spectrum effort to destroy it: with ugly, pointless “clothing,” “music,” “art,” “sculpture,” “fiction,” “movies,” and trends in locution.

     Why? Because Western thought supports and is supported by Western aesthetics. Because the ongoing assault on Western precepts:

• the sanctity of human life;
• the rights and dignity of the individual;
• the appropriate constraints on public conduct;
• the suspicion and limitation of power and those who seek it;
• the foundation of all that is truly beautiful on Truth Itself;

     ...cannot succeed unless the Western aesthetic sensibility is destroyed in tandem.

     A dear friend once pointed out to me that among the barbarizations inflicted upon us by contemporary television is a habituation to seeing a human body defiled in some fashion. Perhaps the best example is the regular use of autopsy scenes by shows such as CSI. The reduction of what was once a living, breathing person with rights, ideas, emotions, and aspirations to a bag of battered organs and leaking fluids does harm to our sensibilities in ways we hardly even notice as it occurs. Yet the harm is real. It goes horribly deep.

     Look for the parallels in “music” that lacks melody and harmony but is replete with obscenities and calls for violence; with “art” that depicts nothing and requires no skill to produce; with “fashionable” clothing that’s often obviously torn and otherwise distorted; and with “fiction” that focuses on humiliation, degradation, pain, and the reduction of the human person to something even the lowest of the animals would disdain.

---

     I’ve only scratched the surface here. There’s infinitely more to be said on the subject. However, I trust that my Gentle Readers, being Gentle Readers, will manage to carry the ideas forward for themselves.

     John Keats once wrote that “What seizes the imagination as beauty must be truth.” That statement has had a profound effect on my considerations of aesthetic matters. But its converse has been no less significant: What is true beyond disputation is inherently beautiful, as nothing that lies, distorts, or mocks the truth can possibly be.

     Just some food for thought for your Friday morning.

Book Review: "Mumbai Singularity"

     I’ve just finished one of the best and most daring novels I’ve read in many a year: Nym Coy’s Mumbai Singularity.

     This novel is extraordinary. It’s hugely daring; it speaks of beings and things well beyond the human plane. Writing gods and pseudo-gods into a novel is always tricky, even when they’re really just imitations, such as the “gods” in Roger Zelazny's “Lord of Light.” But “Mumbai Singularity" goes beyond Zelazny's conception, into places no reader would expect.

     Three planes of existence and activity are depicted in this novel:

• The strictly material plane: the grubby reality of 22nd Century Mumbai;
• The “augmented reality” plane of the Mesh, which connects the people of Mumbai, and to which two persons of power and wealth seek to “ascend;”
• The divine plane where dwell the gods of the Hindu pantheon.

     The interaction among those planes is intense. Each resident of the teeming city of Mumbai is equipped with a spinal antenna that connects him to the Mesh continuously. But when the Mesh is married to Hindu piety, prayer, and the “distributed processing” of the minds of millions of Hindus, something unexpected arises: consciousnesses abstracted from other material expressions. Some of those were once human; others never were.

     Wounded first-person protagonist Krishna Mehta is genuinely attractive and affecting. His mother’s love for him comes through without distortion. The irony of her repeatedly nudging him toward piety and to find a wife is capped perfectly by his situation at the book’s end.

     The novel's Supporting Cast is more substantial than is usual for a speculative tale. Rahul is especially sympathetic. Captain of industry Arjun Malhotra and fading actress Aishwarya Kapoor make for good antagonists. Dr. Iyer, whose determination to hold onto her dead daughter Aanya kicks off the action, deserves mention as well.

     The gods depicted are just ambiguous enough. Are they “real?” One of them takes umbrage at the suggestion that they aren’t. But is their reality human-contrived, sustained solely by the beliefs and prayers of worshippers? Unclear! And what of still higher gods? Without the prayers of millions of Hindu faithful, would they exist at all?

     The resolution will stun anyone, regardless of which theocosmogony he was reared in. Yet it is entirely appropriate.

     I can’t praise this book highly enough. It’s the best tale I’ve read in years. If it faces an obstacle for achieving a wide and admiring readership, it would only be the profusion of Hindi terms. An American reader who wants full value for the experience would be advised to read it at his computer, so that he can Google the unfamiliar terms as he encounters them.

     Yet this is the author's first novel! What on Earth -- or off it -- could she do in a second one?

     Highly and unreservedly recommended!

The Aliens Are Coming To Your Church

     This business about the Pentagon making its “UFO files” public has a lot of Christians in a lather. What will become of our Faith? What will it imply for the Nicene Creed? If there really are sentient aliens, will they have their own tentacled pentapodal Redeemers, or will they demand to share ours? If the latter, will depictions of Him as a standard human upset them or exalt them?

     I don’t get it. I especially don’t get the fears that the discovery of sentient aliens might invalidate Christian doctrine. But there appear to be a lot of people who fear exactly that.

     Some of the more militant atheists are strutting around, preening themselves over Christians’ fears and doubts. Never mind that as far as I’ve seen, nothing in the “UFO files” can be taken as strong evidence of alien visitations. Still, I must admit that I get a little amusement out of the panic over it, myself.

     Why the jitters? Why wouldn’t sentient aliens just be more of God’s children? And why insist that the existence of such aliens would throw the core story of Christianity, the ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, into dispute?

     I don’t get it, but I must admit that there’s a lot I don’t get, these days.

     Look, my brothers and sisters in Christ: God’s ways are not ours. In particular, He can do a lot of things we can’t. He created our universe: every scrap of matter-energy in it. In doing so, He created time itself. For time will only exist and have relevance in a matter-filled cosmos.

     It’s possible that we are His only sentient children. But it’s also possible that we’re not. We’re fallen, and needed to be Redeemed, so maybe other, nonhuman civilizations needed – or need – that too. But maybe, as in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, those other civilizations are un-fallen. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the head to learn that humans are the “black sheep” among God’s children?

     If our contemporary understanding of physics remains as it is, we’re unlikely ever to encounter another sentient race. Science-fictional speculations aside, we’re about as unlikely ever to be sure we’ve heard from one. Those speculations can be fun, but unless and until the highly improbable happens and we receive a delegation from Ophiuchus or Aldebaran, we shouldn’t trouble ourselves over them.

     But you know what would be maximally disturbing, something that would floor even your humble Curmudgeon? Being visited or contacted by humans in another solar system. Humans exactly like ourselves, who could interbreed with us. Add this to the pot: They already know about the Passion and Resurrection. No, Christ didn’t come to their world as He did to ours. We of Terra revolving around Sol are the lucky ones who had Him visit in human flesh. But it was the greatest Event of all history, and all sentients everywhere know about it.

     Which implication would weigh heavier: that only Terra was privileged to have the Son of God walk among us, or that of all the humans in the universe, only we of Terra fell so far from grace that we needed Him and His Sacrifice of Himself?

     In this connection, there’s a delightful novel: Space Princess, by Jon Mollison. Give it a look. Among other things, it establishes beyond doubt that I’m not the only crazy Catholic writing fiction today.

     Well, as much fun as such imaginings are, what ought to matter to a Christian, alive here and now on Terra, is the state of his own soul. We can confidently leave the souls and salvations of sentients elsewhere in the cosmos to God, don’t you think?

The Sacred And The State

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. As you know, I’m a Catholic Christian, so the statements and deeds of prominent Catholic clerics are of concern to me. Of course the highest of those clerics, the Supreme Pontiff of the Church, gets a lot of attention for his statements. After all, no one can claim to have more “followers,” or more influence, than the Pope. Even Protestants pay attention when he speaks.

     That suggests that a Pope should be extremely circumspect in his emissions. A casual remark from him can sway the opinions and decisions of a billion-plus people. Yet the late Pope Francis seemed to disagree. He’d opine on any subject, as if he were just another neighborhood boozer holding forth at the corner pub.

     Dare I say that the world is riven by sufficient strife that we do not need the greatest religious leader on Earth to add to it?

     No one is suggesting that papal infallibility should be held to apply to papal political opinions. Nevertheless, the Pope’s opinions have power. His words can sway elections and topple regimes. Granted that some regimes deserve a good toppling, that is not a course of action to be lightly undertaken.

     Pope Leo XIV, our current Supreme Pontiff, appears to be following in the late Pope Francis’s train. He’s emitted opinions about American foreign and immigration policy that, to me at least, seem unwise. They’ve put American Catholics in quite a dither. (Incredibly, he’s also suggested that Christians and Muslims can “get along” and “be friends.” On that last count, let it suffice to say that both history and current events disfavor that prospect.)

     Why is he saying such things? He hardly needs more attention than he gets in the usual course of things. He may feel strongly about his opinions, but men with strong opinions have restrained themselves before this, when it struck them as prudent. As his office guarantees that he’ll listened to by billions, I’d have hoped he’d be similarly guarded. The more influence you have, the more careful you should be about using it.

     But dare to say that on a social medium, and you’ll get a lot of unpleasant attention. You can’t criticize the Pope! He’s the head of your Church! He’s infallible! I’ve had other Catholics – and I shan’t name them nor criticize them for it – people who don’t know me at all, tell me I should go to Confession at once.

     That sort of discord within the body of the Church is enough to say to me, at least, that for the Pope to declaim on politics and foreign policy is a dangerous business. But there’s more to say than that. Some of it strikes me as imperative.

     Christianity is not like other faiths. Its Founder emphasized that each of us is responsible for his own moral-ethical stature. Saying “I was misled” at the Particular Judgment will not save you from Hell. Our individual decisions to speak or not, to act or not, are what matter, and they are solely ours.

     Politics and the decisions of governments are quite different things. God will hold the masters of the State responsible for their words and deeds in their turn, but the actions of a State are collective actions. They are undertaken on behalf of a nation – and in all cases, there will be some who benefit and others who are harmed. We must hope, often against the odds, that those decisions and actions will do net good rather than net harm.

     The decision to use military force is only the most dramatic such case. Nearly all military actions involve death and destruction. But a head of State sets out on such a course on the basis of the information available to him, which isn’t always available to anyone else. He acts in the belief that it serves a greater good. At least, that’s what we hope – and let’s be candid: we may be fools to hope so. The history of warfare among States is not kind to our hopes.

     A Pope who condemns a military action probably won’t be equipped with all the information that head of State had before him. The Pontiff may be right that an invasion or aggression is condemnable. But even in egregious cases, for him to say so openly can have unforeseeable costs. Some of those costs may be paid in blood.

     Many Catholics will disagree, but the matter is too fraught with peril not to speak my mind. The proper role of any Christian cleric, high or low, is to conserve and promulgate the Gospels, to counsel individuals on their decisions and actions, and to administer the Sacraments at need and upon request. He must not insert himself into the world of statecraft. Christ Himself said so:

     Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
     But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
     And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
     They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

     [Matthew 22:15-21]

     A Christian cleric must not go against the plain words of the Son of God.