Unsought Thoughts

Yesterday and today I have two rare days off. My calendar is completely empty. There is nothing that demands my presence -- no meetings, no parish demands, no social events, no projects that can't wait, even the items on Dear Diane's honey-do list can be deferred until tomorrow. It's a wonderful feeling, and one I had hoped to experience more frequently during this so-called retirement of mine.

Of course I bring it all on myself because I seem incapable of saying "No" when asked to do something. I'm not bragging and trying to paint myself in some saintly light, because, believe me, this inability is far more fault than virtue. If I allotted my time and effort more carefully I would do a much better job on the truly important tasks, and would also have more time to devote to the personal relationships that matter, especially my relationship with my spouse of 48 years. And so I have vowed to set some limits in the hope that good things will result. We'll see.

My clear calendar has also given me some time to think. The busyness of my life has made thinking an increasingly rare luxury, and so usually I just plod along doing things and thinking only about practical matters, about the hows of those things I must do. Now, I'm no great thinker, and certainly no philosopher, but the journey of life demands thought or it will ultimately be a journey to nowhere.

Josef Pieper

Indeed this little thought calls to mind that wonderful book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, by a true philosopher, Josef Pieper (1904-1997). In it Pieper instructs us on the critical role leisure plays in the very act of being human. Too many of us today seem to think that just because we're busy, we're also being creative and productive. And yet, so much of what we do, the daily busyness of our lives, is just about making a living. Or it's directed toward ideological ends such as materialism. This modern obsession with keeping busy prevents us from focusing on that which is truly and eternally important. To do this we need leisure. If you disagree, read Pieper's book and then rethink your life and the busyness that fills so much of it.

Another thought that struck me this morning originated from an interview I watched on some local TV station late last night. The person being interviewed, a writer and self-proclaimed atheist, stated that he was turned off by all religions because most believers seemed to ignore what their religions taught. I'll paraphrase his comment: Their actions show me they really don't believe what they preach, so why should I? Anyhow, most religious people seem very grim. He especially noted Christians as the most hypocritical. The interviewer nodded knowingly and moved on to another topic.

I found myself agreeing with the atheist's premise, at least as it relates to Christianity, but coming to exactly the opposite conclusion. The fact that most Christians are abject failures when it comes to following the teachings of Jesus Christ -- i.e., we are all sinners -- actually confirms rather than denies that which we profess to believe. If we were perfect we wouldn't need a Savior. If our first parents hadn't fallen in Eden we wouldn't have to cope with original sin or need to be redeemed by God Himself. It's the very fact of our sinfulness and our continued struggle to live the Gospel that convinces me of the truth of Christianity. 

Pope Francis Sharing the Good News

As for all those grim Christians out there, I'll concede the atheist's point. Often enough, as I stand at the ambo and proclaim the Gospel at Mass, I can't help but notice that most of the faces in the congregation don't look very happy. Sometimes I want to scream, "Hey, Christians! This is the Good News you're hearing, not the bad news. You've been redeemed by Jesus Christ. God loves you as no one else has or ever will. Put a smile on your face and show God how thankful you are."

Other unbidden thoughts popped into my aging brain when I assisted at the funeral of a friend's mother on Saturday. Her name was Ruth Stafford and she died just six days after her 100th birthday! Fr. John, the homilist, mentioned how much she had witnessed during a long life that began in 1916. Yes, although the world has changed much since then, human nature has remained the same. But in addition to Ruth's birthday, we mark some interesting anniversaries in 2016 and 2017.

Flanders Field

Next year, for example, is the 100th anniversary of our nation's entry into the World War I, a war which began in August 1914 and brought devastation to Europe for four deadly years. Ironically, this "war to end all wars" did exactly the opposite. Not only did it set the stage for the even greater devastation of World War II, but it also brought us the horrors of Hitler's Nazism and Stalin's Communism, deadly ideologies that were forced onto the people of dozens of nations.

The Blessed Mother Appears at Fatima

In the midst of that war, during the spring and summer of 1916, near Fatima in Portugal, three young children were visited by an angelic being. His mission was to prepare them for something far greater the following year. And on May 13, 1917 the children saw a woman, "brighter than the sun," who told them to pray the Rosary daily. This, she promised, would bring peace to the world and an end to the war. The apparitions of Mary, which continued monthly for six months, have been repeatedly confirmed by the Church as supernatural in origin. Along with a series of predictions and warnings, the Blessed Mother told the world that the only effective antidote to sin is prayer and repentance.

Satan, of course, takes no days off and one can only assume that, even as he relished the desolation of World War I, he perceived the message of Fatima as a threat. Yes, indeed, Satan was very busy back in 1916.

On October 16 of this year Planned Parenthood celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. Margaret Sanger, who founded this organization devoted to death, opened its first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, NY in 1916. Sanger, who believed that certain people should not procreate, focused her attention on those races she believed to be unfit for life. Most Americans, and certainly most minorities, don't realize this, but Planned Parenthood really hasn't changed. The vast majority of its clinics are located in the nation's inner cities where they can more easily "serve" minority clients. Under the Obama administration, Planned Parenthood has received over $1.5 billion of federal funds in just the past three years and performed over one million abortions during this same period. This will only increase if Hillary Clinton is elected.

It is no coincidence that God sent the Blessed Mother to remind the world that sin has its consequences. Will the world listen?

A Younger Professor Ratzinger

All these thoughts about the past caused me to think about the future and what it holds for the world and for the Church. This brought to mind something Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) wrote back in 1969, long before he was pope, or even a bishop. It's a quote from a book entitled, Faith and the Future. The book's five chapters were actually first delivered as radio addresses during 1969 and 1970. In the last chapter, Fr. Ratzinger, then a 42-year-old theolgian, offers his vision of what the Church will be like as it encounters the changing world in the years to come. The quote is quite long, but well worth reading.

"What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death...

"From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge -- a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly, she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess. the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

"The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eve of the French Revolution -- when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain -- to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret."

And so my generation has its work cut out for it: to prepare our children and our grandchildren for what is to come. The Church will face some serious hard times, but it will remain the only beacon of hope in a hostile world. I suppose the question for all of us is, are we ready to do what God expects of us? But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? [Lk 18:8]


Enough thinking. As I typed the above words, my PC crashed and confronted me with that deadly blue screen. I have tried every remedy I can think of, along with all those recommended by HP and Microsoft, but the problem persists.The desktop PC has therefore been removed from the desk and been replaced by my handy laptop. We'll see what data has disappeared, but I trust my precautions have prevented serious loss.

God's peace.

Hilary and Classified Material

Back in my Navy days I held several positions that demanded daily, indeed almost constant, access and use of highly classified material. Most of it was classified either "Secret" or "Top Secret" and some, because it related to special circumstances that I still cannot discuss, was given a special classification. That said, I have no doubt that if I, or any of my colleagues in similar circumstances, had done what Hilary Clinton did, I would have spent many years in Leavenworth or another similar federal facility. At best, if my superiors and others were especially kind, my naval career would have come to a rather abrupt end without future access to classified material. This, in fact, is what happened to an acquaintance who neglected to lock both his office door and a safe containing Top Secret material before he left for lunch. Unfortunately for him, his Executive Officer happened to stop by his empty office and noticed the unlocked safe. To make matters worse, several civilian workers were in the area doing electrical work. Borrowing the words of FBI Director James Comey, this officer was "extremely careless in...handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." and paid a dear price for it.

FBI Director James Comey, looking concerned

When it comes to the handling of such material, carelessness, therefore, is never an excuse (at least it hasn't been until now). In other words, it shouldn't matter that the individual (whether he or she is a naval officer or a Secretary of State) didn't intend to share classified material with the bad guys. What matters is that carelessness (i.e., incompetence) created a situation in which those same bad guys could gain access to the material.

In my day, before the internet and email and web sites, security concerns were primarily physical; i.e., locked doors and safes, encrypted radio transmissions, basic computer security, etc. The internet changed everything. Back in the mid-seventies, when I taught a course in computer security at the U. S. Naval Academy, I would show my students how easy it was to gain access to a variety of computer systems via a network called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the foundational network from which today's worldwide internet evolved. In my 1975 classroom, using a regular commercial phone line, portable terminal, and acoustic coupler, I could easily enter this network and peek into many different computer systems. These included systems at military sites, DOD corporate contractors, and educational and research institutions. My point was that we needed more than mere physical security to keep the bad guys out.

Today, virtually every computer, including every smart phone and tablet, is connected to the internet. Of course the federal government maintains a few closed systems, but just about every other machine is vulnerable to cyber attack by either independent hackers or agencies of foreign governments. For this reason the federal government takes serious steps to safeguard the information stored on its systems and to ensure the safe transmission of classified material. For a Secretary of State to bypass these safeguards and completely ignore the real dangers of using a private server for her emails is almost beyond comprehension.

Director Comey, during today's televised monologue, seemed to realize all this as he laid out an almost perfect case for prosecuting Secretary Clinton for gross negligence in her handling of classified material. And then he tossed his case into the waste basket and recommended, well, nothing at all.

Bill and Hilary

I find it incredible that a Secretary of State would be this careless in her handling of highly classified material. But I find it even more incredible that there will be no legal consequences. Does this mean that other government employees can be equally lax in such matters and not worry about prosecution? Or perhaps Secretary Clinton is a "special case."

It's also evident, based on the FBI's investigation, that Secretary Clinton was less than honest when addressing such issues as the classification of her emails. A family trait, perhaps? Her husband, after all, to avoid a perjury conviction accepted a plea agreement, paid a $90,000 fine, and gave up his law license for five years. Today his wife was far more fortunate.

Alice, it's for you. Wonderland's calling.

Reading the morning newspaper or listening to the news in the evening, I sometimes think I've fallen down the rabbit hole and joined Alice in Wonderland. Here are just a few examples of some of the strangeness I've culled from news reports...

UN brings cholera to Haiti. There's something about internationalist bureaucrats that causes them to leave chaos in their wake. In this instance, although they are purportedly in Haiti to help, it seems the United Nations peacekeepers either from Bangladesh or Nepal are apparently responsible for introducing the cholera epidemic that has left over 1,000 Haitians dead. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, genetic analysis of the strain of cholera currently causing so many deaths in Haiti indicates it originated in South Asia. (You can read the results of the study here: Origins of Haitian Cholera.) Don't get me wrong. I'm not against providing aid to people suffering from devastating natural disasters. Far form it. I simply think we shouldn't send incompetent and corrupt organizations like the United Nations to do the job.

Planned Parenthood "Christmas" Card. This primary provider of abortions has sent out a "Christmas" card that calls for "Choice on Earth" and wishes recipients a "happy and healthy holiday season." It makes one wonder how healthy it will be for the thousands of unborn human beings Planned Parenthood will murder over the next few weeks.

Junk Science and Moon Goddesses. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was recently held in Cancun, Mexico. Attended by a large number of surprisingly apathetic delegates from 192 countries, the convention yielded the usual crazy predictions that the world is doomed and universal destruction is right around the corner unless we revert to stone-age technology and return to the caves our ancient ancestors deserted.

The tenor of the convention was set right from the beginning when the Convention's Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, kicked off the proceedings by praying to the Mayan goddess Ixchel (depicted at left) whom she described as "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving." In her prayer to Ixchel, Figueres said, "May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools...Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful [sic] interlacing of many threads.  I am convinced that twenty years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel."

Makes you just want to run away from home and join the Mayan priesthood, doesn't it? Of course, the Mayans and the Aztecs weren't particularly "green" in their day, but could more properly be labeled "red" since their one area of expertise was human sacrifice. The Aztecs, for example, sacrificed upwards of 80,000 people in one four-day period. They remind me a bit of one of my environmentalist friends who once told me over a third glass of wine, "What the world needs is a major war or a devastating plague, so we can get rid of most of the people. We're the ones who are killing the earth." He would have fit right in with the Ixchel worshipers.

I suspect that Figueres' prayer, along with the Climate-gate fiasco, just might cause some people to question whether real "science" is behind the claims of human-caused global warming.

Experts Surprised by Higher Unemployment Figures. Speaking of experts, a few weeks ago when the latest figures on unemployment were released, we were told the unemployment rate had increased from 9.6% to 9.8%. We were also informed that this took the experts completely by surprise. The experts, we are told, were expecting a decrease rather than an increase in the rate. It seems to me that the designated experts are being taken by surprise more and more frequently these days, and not just on unemployment rates, but on a whole range of political, economic and social issues. My question is, why do we keep calling them "experts" when they obviously don't have a clue?

It calls to mind William F. Buckley's famous comment: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

Department of Defense Fastest Computer: PlayStation. If you are concerned about the size of the federal budget and the growing deficit, here's one to make you weep.The Air Force has constructed the Defense Department's fastest supercomputer by linking together 1,760 PlayStation 3 gaming systems. It's capable of performing 500 trillion (that's 500,000,000,000,000) floating point mathematical operations per second. For those of you who are technically challenged, that's a very fast computer. The Air Force, of course, couldn't call their system "PlayStation Group" and so they named it "Condor Cluster." The total cost was $2 million, a pretty reasonable cost for something so capable and certainly far less than it would have cost had the Air Force used their usual procurement process. Makes you wonder what else the government could buy off the shelf at BestBuy.

Ah, well, enough of these secular musings...

Pray that God's will be done in our world.