Stumbling back into blogging, though I wish I could blame it on the whiskey; instead, I must blame it on the vaguely self-satisfied notion that I may have something to say. Whatever meager vocation I have is one that necessarily involves putting ink on paper or pixels on the screen.

Jumping into the pool (I have not the faintest idea where my Marian [“Josephite” for the men?] standards of modesty have gone) just as everybody is about to leave, especially that one really hot chick, I am a little late to the party and have probably missed most of the fun. Well, at least now I can get one of those flotation lounge-chair thingies.

–Rachel  Dolezal: she is a former school mate of mine–Belhaven University (nee College), not Howard. I met her only a few times, but recall her as a a painter of some talent (though I do remember that she had a penchant for semi-nude black men as subject material..). On one occasion, I remember her saying, though I cannot remember if was to me or another person, that she did not care for happy-clappy art because such art did not fly with her dark look on life. Indeed. Oh, back then she still was white.

I think that her case shows that God is the Supreme Ironist (I am sure that St. Thomas Aquinas speaks to this somewhere in his Summa.), and, thus, more Catholics (especially in Trad camps) should not fear to sprinkle zestfully dashes of irony and other forms of rhetorical garnish on their frequently bland writing–writing often composed only of syllogism after syllogism, looking as appetizing as a plate of dried parsley. If a person of one sex can proclaim himself by media fiat to be a person of another sex, why should a person of one race not be able to declare herself a person of another race? Hell, I have been presenting myself as a competent person for years now…But, seriously, folks…

–Charleston shooting: Let us not equivocate here: what that goomba-looking jackass did was evil. He admitted in his manifesto that he lacked the capabilities, i.e., balls, to carry out violence against scum in the ‘hood, so his next best plan of action: shoot up a bunch of people in a church. Regardless of the liberal nature of most black churches (perhaps we should say “most American churches”), the black church is one of the few remaining institutions in the black community that ostensibly still teaches discipline, self-control, and the value of the traditional family–qualities that Dylann Roof argued were lacking from the black community by-and-large. Irony again.

This noted, the Confederate flag played as much a role in these murders as did the scissors that rarely came in contact with his bowl cut. The irony continues: Louis Farrakhan (whose father is white–back when my dad worked in LA, he visited a soul food joint that had a picture of both Farrakhan and his white father together) wants to see the American flag come down. Really, people, you cannot write richer irony than this. His argument: black people have suffered under the Stars and Stripes, so why not remove this symbol of oppression? If we are keeping a tally, he has a point: not under the Stars and Bars but rather under the Stars and Stripes did the following happen: Sherman’s march to the sea, the firebombing of Dresden, the nuking of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans (who, it should be noted, neither concocted a lucrative victim narrative nor demanded reparation$ upon their release), the bombing of Serbia in order to detract attention from Prez. Clinton’s oral indiscretion with Ms. Lewinsky, the murderous sanctions imposed upon the Iraqi people after the Iraqi War 1, our entrance into the greatest foreign policy blunder, well, possibly ever–the Iraqi War 2, etc. Yet, this is not the point. What is the point?  As Dr. Thomas Fleming points out at his relatively new blog, the people who are warring against the Confederate flag are those who “hate the South because it was— and to some small extent is—a remnant of the Christian civilization they have been taught from infancy to destroy.”

Of course, we all know that the Confederate flag has been appropriated by miserable groups, and, in all honestly, I do not fly the Confederate flag for cowardly reasons, I suppose. Yet, removal of this flag will not help race relations–as if that were even a job of the government. Also, where does the removal of offending, not “offensive,” symbols stop? If Muslims become a majority in Dearborn, Michigan (maybe they are?), on what grounds, if one still strives after consistency, could one then object to their objection of public displays of the cross or crucifix?

–SCROTUM, err, SCOTUS: as I look at the fucking rainbow banner across the top of WordPress draft page, I admit that no one who has not been living in a WiFi-less cave can truly be surprised at the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday. (Prez. Reagan, here’s looking at you and your appointment: Justice Kennedy.) While “gay marriage” is as much a metaphysical impossibility as a “squared circle,” it has become a legal reality. What does this mean for America? For the Church? For people who value tradition? None of us really know, but we deceive ourselves if we still believe that we live in a nation that is anything but hostile to God, His Church, and the natural order. Pope emeritus (still, a weird thought…) Benedict XVI predicted a smaller, albeit more faithful, Church in the coming years. Perhaps the culling has begun. As a bad Catholic, I would like for nothing more than to live in a society that was still culturally Christian. Even if everybody were a hypocrite, I would still rather live in society that did not tolerate the open flaunting of Christianity or the culture it produced: a society that realized the importance of censorship, a society that realized, for all its inherent problems, the man and woman combination is the best one for children, a society were sexual sins–though still present–were kept discrete, a society were people at least went through the motions of keeping Sunday as a day set apart. Yes, I know that in Trad circles this is known as “50s-ism” and is seen as that which laid the foundation for a vapid faith that allowed the destructive changes that followed in the wake of Vatican II, yada, yada, yada. However, given that we are never going to live in a society composed only of saints who spend all their free time praying the rosary and reading St. Alphonsus Ligiori and meditating upon the fewness of the saved (contrary to the sanctified wet dream of some Trads who actually think that reading the Baltimore Catechism Three or Four makes for an exciting date), better to have a society of sinners with the cultural veneer of holiness than flagrant moral chaos. 

However, what we have now is flagrant moral chaos. Any denial of that is sheer lunacy. Those of us who still have some measure of faith (and I often wonder if I can still include myself in that category) need to take off the secular-humanist-anti-Christian-civilization-pleasing kiddie gloves and throw down. I am a lover, not a fighter, so, naturally, this is not how I want to live my life. Yet. Yet, God has placed us in this monumental time for a reason. Perhaps that talents that many of us will be given are not so much gifts in the obvious sense but gifts along the lines of a willingness to stand alone, a willingness to stand against a society that has rotted from the inside out and has gone mad, a willingness to remain faithful to a Church that has, by-and-large, left its adherents afloat with pusillanimous bishops and clueless priests, a willingness to live without the cultural consolations that previous Christians had, a willingness to become Saints of which the world has never seen.