Really worth listening to, but not happy listen:

POWER AND AUTHORITY

Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part III. Spring shoots

Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part III. Spring shoots: May 1, 2023

Perhaps its assuming too much, but it is my assumption that Secretary of State Chuck Gray views his office as a springboard to the Governorship and that he otherwise really isn't interested that much in the workaday role of the SoS Office. Certainly, he's doing a lot to keep his name in the news, or it is i the news anyhow.

Gray spoke at the University of Wyoming in front of a newly organized conservative student organization.  I suppose that makes sense, but what really struck me was the prayer offered by Gabe Saint, a figure in the organization, prior to Gray speaking.  According to the Tribune, it went:

Lord, please be with Chuck tonight. He has been a blessing to Wyoming and fights fervently for righteous change and to bring back American values,  Be with him while he is in office. Give him grace and wisdom. Lord, we ask that you deliver him from his enemies, because he has many. We ask that you protect him as he takes on the Goliath that is the enemy in the form of wokeness.

I'm not sure what to make of that at all.

This is another one of those areas where I find myself between two poles, between extremes on both ends, and wishing it was 1923, and I was riding out to check my sheep on a mule.

On one hand, I do feel that the American left is getting, leftier, if that's a word.  So perhaps doing on this on May 1 makes sense.

Not every proposition of the American left is nuts by any means, and depending upon what thread a person reads here, they might conclude from time to time that I'm a leftist, which I'm not.  But in the social arena, the left has gone completely off the rails and it's absolutely frightening.  That's what the right is referring to when it uses the term "woke".

On the other hand, the populist right has gone full authoritarian scary.

There are days anymore where it feels like Spain in 1935, hoping it doesn't become Spain in 1936.

Where was that mule. . . 

Anyhow, one of the things about the populist right and the far left is that they both live in a fantasy land.  The far left lives in one in which science, religion and reality don't matter. We can all be our own personal gods and everyone has to acknowledge that.  If Robert Reich came out tomorrow demanding that people who think they are polar bears be regarded as polar bears, it wouldn't surprise me a bit.  The far right, on the other hand, lives in a world where Donald Trump is some sort of heroic founding father saint and the election was stolen from him.

Most Americans don't like fighting much, as most people don't.  That's what the "advancements" in social issues actually means, on the left.  It isn't, quite frankly, that people have bought off on a LBGTQ+ agenda, they just want to be left the crap alone.  Of course, living in a society in which things are left alone, if they are corrosive, corrodes.  But that's what that really means, more than anything else.  The thing the right misses is that most Americans are not on the far right.  They're more or less in the middle, and right now I think they're moving to the left in reaction to the Republican Party looking increasingly like it's like the España franquista to be the national model.

Part of that reaction is the baffling adoption of lies by the populist far right. The rank and file really believe them, and by doing so fail to realize that they're a minority and becoming more of one.  That's giving us this goofball 2024 election in which it is increasingly likely that a 177 Donald Trump will be accusing a 180 year old Joe Biden of being old. They're both old.

There's plenty to fault both of them for.  Biden hasn't adhered to his expressed Catholic values, which should disturb voters, as a man who won'd adhere to his deepest values at least raises questions.  But he has done surprisingly well with the situation he was left with, and he isn't Donald Trump, which is why he's likely to win that contest.

Trump is either suffering from some sort of mental issue or a liar, or both, but he's absolutely scary in his contempt for democracy.

Which leads us to the prayer.

Chuck Gray is a Catholic, and the Catholic faith doesn't cut much slack for serious lies.  

Catholics also tend to hold a fairly non compromising view of the world in certain ways, perhaps best summed up in this letter from the Second Century.

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the ChristianÂÂ’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.

 I don't know what faith Saint is, but his prayer strikes me as a sort of old time, classic, Evangelical one.  It actually reminds me a bit, and this isn't the only recent thing that's reminded me of it, of Theodore Roosevelt's 1918 speech in which he stated:

We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

Roosevelt stated that as he took his followers right into oblivion with the Progressive Party.

I'm not saying Gray and Roosevelt are co-political.  Roosevelt was a liberal Republican who became a radical one.  Gray is a far right populist.  I am saying that their branch of the GOP is probably taking it into political oblivious, however.

Anyhow, I'm not one to criticize a prayer as a rule, and I won't do so here.  People should pray for Chuck Gray, and for Governor Gordon.  But as part of that, for their souls and the courage to choose the righteous, honest path over the politically expedient.  Gray got his seat by flaming the flames of a fib, and that was expedient.  If he believes it, he's in serious need of reassessment.  If he doesn't, he should repent.

And as for ambition, and he's clearly ambitions, he should recall what was stated in Papal Coronation ceremonies between 1409 and 1963.

Sic transist gloria mundi.

Lex Anteinternet: The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Lex Anteinternet: The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022: 

The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Catholics, according to the Church, are obligated to vote, and to do so in an informed manner.

And, I'll add to that, those who like to say that religion should stay out of politics are grossly misinformed, at least to the extent they mean that religion should be held personally and not influence a person's vote.  A truly held set of religious beliefs ought to inform everything a person does.

This year is simply agonizing for the well-informed, thoughtful, Catholic voter.

In my area, where I will vote, two women contest for the position of Congressman.

The Republican expresses pro-life views, and views which suggest that she holds traditional views on the definition of marriage, two positions which are taken very seriously, even definitively so, by serious Catholics.

She also holds a mix of conservative views on various other issues, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

The Democrat holds pro abortion and "progressive"  views on the definition of marriage, and a host of other liberal views, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

So, no dilemma, in weighing the voting scale, eh?

Well, the Republican has also expressed the view that the election was stolen, and her entire campaign was basically a stab in the back on the incumbent who stood by principals.  In order to advance her campaign, she went from doubts, to being certain of election theft, and is now expressing views regarding the current administration which might charitably be described as nutty, even going so far as to suggest that inflation is a Democratic plot designed to bring about a liberal "Utopia".  If I'm to take her asserted positions as actually held, it would mean she's believing in wild flights of dangerous fantasy, thereby making her a scary potential office holder.  If I am to assume that they're taken for the purpose of being elected, she's lying and an enemy of democracy.

And there are no viable third party choices, really.  One is from the far right, and the other from the Libertarian Party.

The far right candidate, running on the Constitutional Party ticket, is probably every bit as far right as the Republican, but with a very obvious Protestant Evangelical bent to her campaign.  She doesn't say the vile things that the Republican does, and to the extent that her positions sound nutty, they sound nutty in the way that a position expressed by a person with little experience in the world and little education might voice them.  Innocently, in other words.

Maybe I haven't listened enough to her, however.  Frankly, I've disregarded her all along as a candidate that will obviously make no impact in the current election. 

The Libertarian is a Libertarian, and there's no point in even going there.

A person could protest vote for the Constitutional Party candidate, but that's all it would be, a protest.  But then, in order to make that protest, a person ought to know what she really believes.  Perhaps I should go back and listed to her in the recent debate, which the GOP candidate skipped out on.

The only realistic hope of defeating the candidate that's either lying or coming off the rails is to vote for the Democrat, which is voting for a position which is normally gravely morally objectionable.

And then we have the Secretary of State's office, where a co-religious is running unopposed based on a stolen election theory along and is otherwise not a candidate which I'd prefer to consider.  A protest is surely mandated there, but it'll have to be a write-in protest.

And so the state's politics have come to this.  It feels like being a German going to the polls in 1932.

Lex Anteinternet: Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. Getting what you wish for.

Lex Anteinternet: Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of th...: 

Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. Getting what you wish for.

Part Three of this series is brought to you by Giogia Meloni and Clarence Thomas.

Meloni and Thomas.¹

Thomas?

Yes, we'll explain down below, sooner or later.

In the first two parts of this three part series, I've looked at the election of Giorgia Meloni and the reasons for her rise. In the last episode, we tried to sum up the source of her popularity, and how that relates to a now, semi-fawning, American far right.  Italy has now gone down this path.  Others, now more than ever, are urging the United States to do the same.

Which bring up the dread Law of Unintended Consequences.

All of us probably heard our mothers, or somebody, give us the warning "Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!"  Probably, few stop to realize that this warning was delivered by non-other than Aesop as far back as 260BC.  His sage advice has hung around for a good reason.  The danger of getting something more than you asked for, in terms of secondary effects, is always pretty high.  Nobody tends to think much about that, however.

Far right admirers of Meloni, or Orban for that matter, are disgusted with the "woke" drift of American progressivism and goals that it has, some of which have been quite successful, which seem to offer promise to countering that.  These folks, in many instances, are horrified by progressive efforts that seek to remodel every institution of society and even our basic natures, if they can, and they likely really cannot, which doesn't mean that they can't do a lot of damage in the effort.

But others, and indeed most, of the Americans who are on the Trump train are on it only for one or two reasons.  Some are there for economic reasons, upset by the export of American jobs overseas for decades and a rising tide of immigrants.  Others are horrified by the seeming triumph of the woke and the redefinition of marriage.  Probably most have a vague sense that this ain't the way things ought to be.²

And I agree.

This ain't the way things ought to be.

But, I'm a dreaded intellectual Catholic, the very sort of people that the founders of this Great Nation abhorred and dreaded, and which many in the culture still do. 

Some feel that this era has passed, and such distinctions no longer matter, but I wonder, and I'm not the only one.  Ross Douthat, regarding current American Conservatism, has posted the following on his Twitter account within the last few days.

Current American conservatism: a low-church nondenominational Protestant mass movement trying to exert influence via intellectual Catholics strategically placed inside hollowed-out/secularized institutions of high-church denominational Protestantism.

If you dig deeper into this, you'll find that folks like Douthat, and Catholic intellectual circles, are concerned that ultimately they are there to be used, but when the time comes, they'll be dumped.

Now this may be surprising in an era when the real intellectuals on the Supreme Court, for example, are all Catholics.  All of them.  And its no surprise that this is the case.  By their training, both in their Catechism, and in their profession, they have to be, and were probably always inclined in that direction.  It used to be, however, that this was also true of others of different backgrounds, and while saying it is definitely dangerous, as it can be so easily misunderstood, it's still true of observant Jewish individuals, such as the recently departed Justice Ginsberg, which is part of the reason she was so widely, and justifiably, admired.  

It's getting pretty hard, however, to find serious intellects of the same type who are coming out of what's become of mainstream American conservatism.  Yes, they are there, to be sure.  Mitch McConnell is one, no matter what you think of him.  He's a Baptist. John Hickenlooper is a Quaker. Ben Sasse is a Presbyterian who was once a Lutheran.  And I don't mean to suggest a person has to be Catholic, or even religious, to be a heavyweight intellect by any means.

Rather, what I'm suggesting is this.

A lot of those in the Trump populist right are basically adherents to a sort of intellectualism lite, and often participants in the American Civil Religion, which claims Protestant Christianity as its foundation, but which advances it in a very lenient fashion, omitting, in its current form, darned near all of the New Testament list of behaviors between male and female, and indeed between male and male, and female and female, of a certain category, that were listed as sinful.³

So again, if we're turning the clock back, as Chesterton says we can, who will be comfortable with that and who won't?

Let's get back to voting and what you get, in the end.

In the German elections of the early 1930s, some people really did want to elect a radical racist party into power that would kill the Jews and hopefully, in their line of thinking, punish the French and wipe out the Bosheveks whereever they could be found.

But most voters who went to the polls probably didn't really have sending their sons to freeze to death at Stalingrad or being asked to put a bullet into a rabbi's head, or crush the skull of a Jewish infant in with a rifle butt, in mind at the time.

Observant German Lutherans, over half the county's religious community, didn't imagine that they'd have to fight off an attempt to consolidate them into a state approved variant of their faith.  German Catholics didn't imagine they'd be hiding impaired children from thinly disguised euthanasia programs.

Italians, in the 1920s, didn't imagine, for that matter, that some twenty years later they'd be sending their sons to fight one of the best armies in the world in North Africa, and others to fight the Red Army in the East.

Benito Mussolini.  He was the authority.  All you would have to do to verify this would have been to ask him. . .

Oh, I know, some will read this (among the few who do) and dismiss it as wild hyperbole.  And, for that matter, I'm not saying that anyone is going to be freezing in a few years on the Volga.

What I am saying is that a lot of right wing populist truly talk the talk, but don't really walk the walk, and probably don't want to either.

I'm also saying it's hard, when you go shopping for really radical political movements, to buy just part of the pie.  I.e, it's hard to say "I'll have a think slice of immigration reform please" and not get "here's your populist pie, including a complete set of family values you aren't following. . . "

Which takes us back to Clarence Thomas and more particularly his dissent in Dobbs.

Now, the Dobbs decision is 213 pages long in the original reporter, and we can't expect everyone to have read it.  I haven't read it all, either. But Dobbs, we know, got the abortion topic right.  Roe v. Wade, as most constitutional scholars long ago admitted, just made stuff up that wasn't in the Constitution, and it had long prior become completely unworkable.  Dobbs just sent things back to the states, where they belonged in the first place.

The Dobbs majority was quick to point out, in the text, that it was in no way shape or form seeking to expand the holding in Dobbs beyond the opinion itself, and it in particular it was no threat to Obergefell.

Well, baloney.

That's the same thing Justice Kennedy said in Obergefell. At the time that decision was handed down, the Court indicated it wouldn't expand into anything else, and those advancing the cause that prevailed in Obergefell likewise promised they had nothing else on the agenda.  Obergefell was, as noted, in our opinion on it at the time, a judicial coup, one preceding the attempted January 6, 2021, coup, and one basically fed into the other.

Kennedy was wrong in his declaration, and those 

I write separately to emphasize a second, more fundamental reason why there is no abortion guarantee lurking in the Due Process Clause. Considerable historical evidence indicates that “due process of law” merely required executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. See, e.g., Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. 591, 623 (2015) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Other sources, by contrast, suggest that “due process of law” prohibited legislatures “from authorizing the deprivation of a person’s life, liberty, or property without providing him the customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England.” United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U. S. ___, ____ (2022) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (internal quotation marks omitted). Either way, the Due Process Clause at most guarantees process. It does not, as the Court’s substantive due process cases suppose, “forbi[d] the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided.” Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 302 (1993); see also, e.g., Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992).

As I have previously explained, “substantive due process” is an oxymoron that “lack[s] any basis in the Constitution.” Johnson, 576 U. S., at 607–608 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also, e.g., Vaello Madero, 596 U. S., at ___ (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (“[T]ext and history provide little support for modern substantive due process doctrine”). “The notion that a constitutional provision that guarantees only ‘process’ before a person is deprived of life, liberty, or property could define the substance of those rights strains credulity for even the most casual user of words.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 811 (2010) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); see also United States v. Carlton, 512 U. S. 26, 40 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). The resolution of this case is thus straightforward. Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion. 

The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965) (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives)*; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015) (right to same-sex marriage), are not at issue. The Court’s abortion cases are unique, see ante, at 31–32, 66, 71–72, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Ante, at 66.

For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Amdt.  14, §1; see McDonald, 561 U. S., at 806 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights. See id., at 854. That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach. See ante, at 15, n. 22. 

You get the point.⁴ 

So here's the deal.  Thomas would strike down an entire series of substantive due process cases.  And indeed, his logic on this is infallible.  He's correct.⁵

And that's why I wonder, quite frankly, if rank and file populists have thought this out.

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it goes.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip. 

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it takes you and you can't get off early.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip.  You buy your ticket, and you can't pretend the train doesn't run all the way across the country and just stops, and turns around, in Denver.  You'll go through Denver. . . but the train will keep going.

The string of cases that Thomas mentions are in fact in peril now, and they likely also ought to be.  But Thomas didn't mention Loving v. Virginia.  Now, I think Loving v. Virginia can still be defended, and it undoubtedly can be on Natural Law grounds.

Loving v. Virginia was, you will recall, the case that determined that states couldn't ban interracial marriages.

Now most people, and certainly any decent people, would find that concept horrific.  Of course states can't ban interracial marriages. But they did, in some instances, up until that time.  It was Loving v. Virginia that struck that down.  Not too many people want to go back to that.

As critics of Dobbs have mentioned, as the state's can and have litigated in all of the areas that Thomas mentions, it's odd, sort of, that he omitted this one.  Well maybe not.  There's another way to address this case too, but it's still worth noting that this is the one area that would personally impact Thomas in a very direct way, and which is contrary to his personal worldview.

At the Wyoming State Bar convention, this came up during a speech by a constitutional scholar who also publishes in the Tribune. At some point during the speech, I don't know where, Harriet Hageman left the room, and she was apparently pretty disgruntled with what the speaker was saying, although I don't know that it was this. An email that circulated among Wyoming State Bar members later claimed that Hageman "heckled" the speaker, and the speaker perceived it that way, although many people disagreed with that characterization.  If nothing else, this all goes to show how uncomfortable people on the far populist right are with where this all leads.

The backdoor out of this is, as noted, Natural Law, but most populist really don't want to go there either.  

Natural Law has come up in American law repeatedly over the centuries, although now it is official eschewed. At one time it was not.  We've dealt with both of those themes here before, with the most interesting example of it being the case The Antelope, which we've written about at least twice.  That was the case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that slavery was contrary to the natural law, but allowable under the law of the United States as countries could legislate contrary to the natural law, to wit:

That it is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor is generally admitted, and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will seems to be the necessary result of this admission. But from the earliest times, war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced. Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was that the victor might enslave the vanquished. This, which was the usage of all, could not be pronounced repugnant to the law of nations, which is certainly to be tried by the test of general usage. That which has received the assent of all must be the law of all. 

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produced by general consent cannot be pronounced unlawful. 

Throughout Christendom, this harsh rule has been exploded, and war is no longer considered as giving a right to enslave captives. But this triumph of humanity has not been universal. The parties to the modern law of nations do not propagate their principles by force, and Africa has not yet adopted them. Throughout the whole extent of that immense continent, so far as we know its history, it is still the law of nations that prisoners are slaves. Can those who have themselves renounced this law be permitted to participate in its effects by purchasing the beings who are its victims? 

Now, if somebody is wondering how this gets us out of this mess, it doesn't.  Under the holding in The Antelope, outlawing anything not mentioned in the Constitution, no matter how shocking, would be okay.

But following this, on more than one occasion, the Court referenced Natural Law in order to support a decision. At least as recently as the 1980s, the Court found that laws addressing homosexual conduction were allowable, as homosexuality was contrary to the Natural Law.  A Wyoming jurist found that laws banning adoption by homosexual couples were allowable for the same reason, and more recently than that.

Now, some are going to find that really shocking as well, but once again, if we're on the populist train, this is where that goes, and frankly most of those on the hard populist right, are okay with this.  I.e., that would cure the Loving v. Virginia problem, as banning marriage between heterosexual couples based on race is contrary to the Natural Law.

But the ancient law of humanity also tried to make sure that the same impulses that gave rise to marriage assured them.  Hence, the creation of the Common Law's common law marriage.  How many on the Trump train want to return to the days of the Heart Balm Statutes?

My guess is not many, and certainly not Trump himself, who is a serial polygamist.  

Now, I'm not here to judge people's morals by any means.  But this is a topic worth considering.  In the current political world we live in, we have a Senator who is divorced and remarried and at least one extremely right wing politician entering the legislature has a wife who was married before as well.  You can be guaranteed that some of those now running have openly lived lives involving cohabitation outside of marriage, as it is so common.  Are people really comfortable with a return to the old law on all of this?

Well, sincere Catholics, like me, might be. But this is a Protestant nation.  Here in town, there's a huge Protestant church that I think is "non-denominational" (I'm not completely certain).  Somebody I know who attends it is on their third marriage.  In the American Civil Religion, that seemingly doesn't cause problems, and I don't doubt that person's sincerity in attending.  But in American law, prior to the post World War Two Supreme Court trip that Justice Thomas complained, of, it would have.

Do people have this in mind?

Looking around, I really doubt it.  People seem to believe that the Constitution applies only to other people, not to themselves, or worse yet, they have a false belief about what the history of our laws and the Constitutional law really is.  In reality, at one time marriage was solely the province of the states, and they could allow or ban whatever they chose.  Restricting firearm carrying was pretty common, and the concept of "open carry" around town nonexistent.  Prohibiting members of certain races from certain neighborhoods through restrictive covenants completely allowable and in fact the norm.  The only way around that is the Natural Law, but the Natural Law brings in concerns that most Americans aren't really prepared to deal with, even remotely.

And if you are dabbling with concepts of Natural Law, you sooner or later are going to stray into concepts of Subsidiarity and the like.  Those concepts make most Americans squirm in their seats, at least if they aren't of the left.  Vest the economy entirely downwards, accept a lower standard of living for the middle class and the wealthy in favor of vesting the economy in families and elevating the poor.  Nobody too rich, and nobody too wealthy.  An economy that favors sustainability forever over one that does not.

Chesterton would have been comfortable with all of that.

Jefferson might have been.

Giorgia Meloni is probably comfortable with all of that.

Most Americans now. . . definately not.

Footnotes:

1.  Okay, Meloni's photo here, taken from a Reel, is unfair.  She's an effective speaker and clearly highly intelligent, as is Thomas.  This illustrates, however, how Italian politics isn't American politics, gushing from Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene aside.  Meloni is an intellectual, if perhaps a somewhat scary one, compared to Cruz and Greene, and Thomas is definately an intellectual.  Greene and Cruz certainly dont' seem to be, and frankly some or perhaps a lot of their positions wouldn't square with either Meloni's or Thomas'

Added to that, Meloni is a politician in a  unique Italian environment where things are done, said, or portrayed that definately would never be here.

2.  This is the source, I think, of the lot of election discontent.

It's also the source of a lot of election denialism. The thought is that "people can't have really voted for Biden, as people can't really be for. . . ".  In another form, which isn't the same, its "votes for Biden can't count, as what he stands for is vile, and therefore. . . "

Almost lost in all of this is the fact that Trump lost the popular vote twice.  His first election was only legitimate, and it was legitimate, due to the artifact of the electoral college.  Of course, this causes people to unthinkingly babble "we aren't a democracy" (we are) "but a republic".  I've addressed that elsewhere, but using that as an argument shows that the person advancing a point is largley ignorant of what they're trying to advance.

3.  It might be worth noting here that fully 1/3d of American Evangelical Protestants believe the United States Constitution, which never mentions God, was inspired by God.  The newly appointed interim Wyoming Secretary of State has publicly taken this position in his campaign material.

For reasons that are partially addresssed in this essay, that's a fairly startling and scary proposition.  Traditional Christianity holds that inspired texts cease with the end of the Apostolic Age, at which point there were no more general revalations.

4. It should be noted, and will be later in the text, that even if Thomas' logic is correct on the cases he mentions, he's only commenting in regard to procedural due process. For that reason, his comments have been read to probably mean more than they should be.

I'll address Loving v. Virginia below, but Griswald v. Connecticut is another such example.  Even if Thomas' criticism of the case in a procedural due process context are correct, it doesn't address Federal Supremacy might mean that the Federal Government has completlely dominated the field here to the detriment of indivdual states through the laws pertaining to pharmacueticals.

5.  But see footnote 4.

Prior Related Threads:

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Churches of the West: Pope Francis restricts the use of the Extraordinar...

Churches of the West: Pope Francis restricts the use of the Extraordinar...: Immaculate Conception Church in Rapid City, South Dakota.  This church has been doing a daily and a Sunday Latin Mass for years.  It's a...

Lex Anteinternet: We should have told John F. Kennedy to stuff it. ....

Lex Anteinternet: We should have told John F. Kennedy to stuff it. ....: 

We should have told John F. Kennedy to stuff it. . . and we still can.

In trying to pressure Biden, the Catholic bishops forget the lessons of JFK

So runs an opinion headline in the Washington Post.

Well, as the sage Bart Simpson would have it, au contraire, mon fraire.

Or more accuaratley, I suppose ma soeur, as the author is Karen Tumulty.

The article by Tumulty is completely unoriginal, I'd note, with no brilliant insights whatsoever.  Rather, it follows the standard line of thought on this noting John F. Kennedy's 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, who were all Southern Baptists.  Kennedy, as Tumulty and others have noted, famously stated:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

This speech has been hailed again and again as brilliant strategic move by Kennedy, which it truly was.  But the overall impact, on a really cosmic scale, has rarely been analyzed.  

It may have been good for Kennedy, but it was a disaster for Catholics, and continues to be.  What the US Bishops are doing in some ways is reacting to that disaster, but only at the pint at which they almost have no choice but to do so.

Let's start with Kennedy himself.  He was a Sunday and Holy Day Mass going Catholic and part of an extended Catholic family, but not too surprisingly his own family bore little resemblance to the the Irish Catholics of the Catholic Ghetto who identified with him due to his Irish surname.  The Kennedy's were, and are, extremely wealthy and while as Catholics they were on the periphery of American life, they were on it in the way that wealthy Catholics could be as any member of a minority who was wealthy could be.  I.e., they were part of the in crowed in significant ways.

And as a member of that elite group John F. Kennedy carved for himself liberties that the Catholic faith never sanctioned, and he did so promiscuously literally.  Kennedy had a string of affairs that went beyond that which a person might normally be tempted to somewhat trying to excuse away.  He wasn't Franklin Roosevelt with a long time paramour, something inexcusable but at least not libertine.  

Indeed, under modern definitions, at least one of his affairs in the White House started with what moderns would be tempted to regard as a sort of rape.  It's debatable whether this category is truly applicable or not, but it was shockingly disgusting.  His behavior here, however, didn't stop with that, in regard to this individual, who descended pretty quickly into shocking behavior more expansively.  

We'll forgo detailing this more as its not necessary to this entry.  The point is that knowing what we now know about Kennedy, his willingness to make such a statement really ought to be put in a different light.  If he was declaring that he'd never let his religion directly dictate his actions, well, he wasn't in regard to personal behavior in a significant way, already.

This isn't an attempt to judge the state of Kennedy's soul at the time of his death.  We don't know that.  But what we can say is that in regard to his overall character, Kennedy really wasn't whom he seemed to be.  

And frankly, the statement wasn't that bold.  Catholic leaders of numerous nations had been in power in various places (including, we might note, Rome) since before the time of Constantine the Great.  The Church had never laid claim to a right to tell leaders how to rule, which was the real fear that the Southern Baptists at the time had.  Much has changed in regard to how Protestants view Catholics since 1960s, but some evangelical Protestants at the time, and now, held highly erroneous views of how the Pope's relationship to average Catholics, including politicians, worked.  Indeed, the political cartoon with the Pope directly pulling the strings of American Catholic politicians was a common feature of political debate up until the mid 20th Century.

The irony was that in 2020 the average Catholic is a lot more in tune with the Pope's views, in knowing what they are, than in 1960s, even though the way the Church actually works seems to be no more clear now than as opposed to then.  The current example is a good one in this regard. The Pope seems concerned that the US Bishops are going this direction.  The US Bishops are going this direction anyhow.  The Pope hasn't stopped them.  This is pretty typical over the ages.  When the Pope actually acts in regard to local Bishops, something has usually gone wrong on an extreme level.

And so too with politicians, as for the papacy.  And this overall situation is highly instructive.

Since the Second World War there's been a lot of attacks on the Papacy of Pope Pius XII, even though the actual historical record shows him to have done a remarkably good job during the crisis and the attacks against him unmerited and, to some degree, to have originated in a post war Communist smear campaign.  The Pope did speak against the Nazis during, and before, the war, in the form of proclamations on moral matters with the most noted being Mit Brennender Sorge.  Often forgotten is that some of the most direct attacks on the Nazi regime, however, came from the German Catholic Bishops themselves, one such example resulting in the White Rose movement.

What the Church didn't do is to issue a list of instructions to Catholics in power on "do this".  It did provide stout moral guidance, however.  It is of note here that in both the White Rose instance, and the July 20 plot, the prime movers were Catholics and Catholics were heavily represented.

How's this relate to what we're now seeing?

Well, pretty heavily.

In 1960s, when Kennedy gave his speech, the social issues that exist today and which are so much in the forefront, didn't.  No fault divorce didn't exist until 1970.  Abortion was just coming in as a state issue and didn't become the forced law of the land until 1973's Roe v. Wade.  The millennia old definition of marriage was completely unchallenged anywhere.

Things were moving, to be sure, and that should have been a warning.  The Kinsey report started being popularized right after World War Two and was given serious treatment even though the statistical methodology was grossly inaccurate and the conduct used to generate the badly skewed data heavily skewed. This played right into the hands of a new breed of pornographer lead by Hugh Hefner.  Starting in the 1950s an assault on conventional sexual morality commenced that would explode in the 1960s, but this wasn't obvious to most Catholics. The warnings were there, but they were not fully nor naturally appreciated.

Given this, in the enthusiasm that there might be a Catholic President, most Catholics joined the bandwagon and the Church didn't pull Kennedy in and say "be careful". After all, he wasn't really saying anything that generally shocked Catholics in any fashion in the context of the times.  Charles DeGaulle was a sincere and devout Catholic, for example, and nobody had any thought that the Bishops in France or the Pope was running France.

This would have been harmless enough, and still would be, but for the fact that very rapidly Catholics adopted, due to Kennedy and his speech, something that many evangelical Protestants never did, which was the concept of a completely personal separation of Church and State.  Where as everyone agrees that there should be no state church, many in the evangelical Protestant community do believe that a person's faith should fully inform their political conduct.  Many Catholics do as well, with most sincere ones believing that, but Kennedy's massive popularity, combined with the concept of his being an Irish Catholic, caused average American Catholics to believe that a full separation was a okay.  I.e, as long as I don't personally engage in . . . . it doesn't matter what others do.

The Church has never believed that in any form.  The declarations during World War Two show that.  It was never the case that the Church took the view that individual Germans could participate in the atrocities of the Third Reich and have a clean moral conscience as long as they had purity of heart.  Knowing that is what caused some to attempt tyrannicide.  But in the United States, which had no such overarching moral issue at the time, and where Catholics were on the side of liberal civil rights efforts, it was easy for things to became blurred pretty quickly.

By the 1970s there were liberal Catholic religious in political office.  And liberal Catholics began to side with things that seemed to square with at least some aspects of Catholic thought.  Where as some Catholic clerics had urged Catholics to participate in the fighting in Vietnam in the U.S. military early on, as it was a struggle against Communism, some Catholic clerics were openly opposing it by the late 1960s. And you can see how either view can be squared with the Faith.

But what never could be were developments in social issues that attacked marriage and the nature of sexual conduct, and which were contrary to Catholic views on the sanctity of life.  None the less, acclimated by the 1970s to a personal separation of Church and State, and being Catholic only on Sunday, lots of Catholic politicians went right along with these developments.  Pretty soon, in the tumult of the times, and with other developments inside the Church itself in the 1960s, average Catholics also did.

Unexercised muscles atrophy.  But failing to exercise for somebody who has, doesn't come overnight.  Any single man who used to have an exercise routine is probably aware of that.  The pressures of life and busy schedules, and just the thought that you'll stay home and watch TV lead to a situation sooner or later in which the former athlete has put on fifty pounds and is pretty tired just getting through the day.

Moral authority works the same way.  Things that should have been said decades ago weren't, and after awhile an entire body of Catholics convinces themselves that they're really good and observant Catholics even while omitting anything the Faith that's personally difficult.  Any Catholic with Catholic associates knows this.

At some point, however, there's a point at which you reach that you have no choice.  A person has a heart attack and is sent home with doctor's instructions.  People who smoke are told to knock it off.  You get the point.

And with moral authority, you reach some point where you have to exercise it as you have no other moral choice. That's where we are, and that's what I noted the other day in this entry:

Lex Anteinternet: A Corrective Warning.: We started off to comment on a couple of newsworthy items from the Catholic news sphere the other day but like a lot of things here, we only...

The Pope is saying be careful.  He isn't saying don't.  That's up to the Catholic Bishops in the United States. And looking at where we are now, they really have no choice but to act.

Individual Catholics, of course, also have individual free will.  The history of the world shows that people make difficult choices only when somebody is backing them up, and only when others are obviously doing the same.  There are exceptions, but those exceptions are heroic for that very reason, they're exceptions against the tide.  Observant orthodox Catholics have nearly been that exception for some time now, but things seem to swinging around to them.

Standing in their way, really, is the generation that came up in the 1960s, or just behind them. A lot of them have had nice lives riding the high point of American economic exceptualism, an era that's now really over, and are really not in tune with the world as it is. They're comfortable with the American Civil Religion, which is basically Christian as long as it isn't too hard, and which still, in spite of the Trump assault on democracy, holds that God basically listens to our vote on thing where we find it too hard.  As Catholics, they've acclimated themselves to the erroneous belief that they can omit big chunks of the Faith, as they have for so long.

That isn't Catholic, however.

The Church never acts very quickly.  So what the US Bishops will do, they won't do until fall.  That gives Joe Biden, who attends Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days, and who is openly Catholic, lots of time to comport his conduct to the tenants of the Faith.  But like men who go home from the hospital with instructions not to smoke, not to drink and exercise, that won't be easy.  Physicians state that most people don't actually clean up their personal health issues, but simply carry on.  And that doesn't involve the issue of pride that comes with decades of going down a certain political path that now needs to be corrected.

A path that John F. Kennedy started us out on.

Lex Anteinternet: Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.

Lex Anteinternet: Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.: 

Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.

This is Easter on the Latin Rite liturgical calendar for 2021, thereby being the date that almost everyone who observes it will observe it on.  Orthodox Easter this year is nearly a month away, on May 2.

It's a second sad Easter in a row.

For the second time we're facing an Easter in which the gloom of the Coronavirus Pandemic lingers overhead.  Perhaps, in that way, we're looking at an Easter that actually fits historical times, i.e., most of human history, more than our own times, and therefore should give us more to look forward to with the oncoming advance of Spring.

Still, it probably doesn't, and in no small part due to the really odd and unsettled times we're generally in.  

For those in the Diocese of  Cheyenne, such as myself, we still have a dispensation in place if we feel we should use it.  I've noted myself earlier in this blog that I wasn't really happy about Mass's being suspended in the first place, although I'd perhaps now reluctantly concede that it was necessary. As also earlier noted, when they opened back up I resumed going, but when infections started to climb and the vaccine was on the horizon, I dropped back out and made use of the dispensation.

Throughout this entire pandemic, my wife has really been the one who managed our approach to it, being diligent and careful and making me the same.  I take the pandemic very seriously and frankly I'm at the point where those who casually deny its anything anger me.  It truly is.  I've known, as we all do by now, a host of people who have had it and a couple of them are dead.  People who give the flippant "it's no worth than the flu" don't seem to realize that the flu isn't a cold either and that its a real killer.  The reason we tolerate the flu like we do is that we have no choice.  Here we do, but we're rapidly losing out on that choice in part because people who want to believe that it amounts to nothing or wild theories about its original or the vaccine are being slow to get vaccinated.  And in our modern society, in which we've elevated the individual and his rights and beliefs to a near religion we aren't willing to use any form of compulsion in order to make sure the appropriate number of vaccinations are accomplished.

That day may never have been possible in any event. We may have lost out on that opportunity from the very first instance, in which case SARS-CoV-2 will be an endemic disease and go on killing.  

At least one person I know who takes the disease very seriously, but who is younger and therefore able to bear more risks, has just become numb to it.  That is, it's real, they got vaccinated, but they're otherwise too fatigued to observe much in the way of any other precaution.  As noted, some people never took any as they refused to believe it was real.  Others, and I find this approach the oddest, accepted it was real and took some precautions, unless they were personally inconvenient.  

The level of precautions a person took and wear tends to reflect a person's beliefs. The Catholic Church in Wyoming obviously took it very seriously in shutting things down, but I frankly think the Church really dropped the ball in regard to outreach to parishioners.  Even on my end, as a former lector and a former council member, I received very little contact during the pandemic from my diocese.  If I've received this litter, and have been a faithful and loyal Catholic my entire life, I have to think that marginal Catholics are in no better position than I am.  One thing the Church is really going to have to answer for, and I mean in this realm and the next, is the complete and utter failure, it seems to me, to try to reach out during the pandemic.  A parish priest is actually responsible for all of the souls in his diocese.  If the Catholic souls aren't getting any contact. . . well. . . there's going to be questions that will have to be answered.

Anyhow, at Mass I noticed that almost everyone was very observant about wearing masks, which were required, although there's always the few who will pull them down below their nose at which point they're pointless.  Sometimes that's ignorance and in others its a form of protest.  Be that as it may, they were there.

I'm told, but don't know, that in some Protestant churches following the COVID guidelines were simply suspended completely.

In a civil context, in some places I've been too that's very much the case.  One local sporting goods store had signs about wearing masks but few on the staff did. A few men who work in the store do and have, but the huge army of 20 something girls that loiters near the cash registers grossly overmanning them never did.  Sporting goods stores here are almost a center of civil protest/COVID denial.

Circling back around, during the pandemic my wife has lead the charge and we've both been very good about doing what we should. We haven't been to a restaurant in a year, with one noon meal that was a work invitation, and two for out of town depositions, being the exception.  I've been invited to "go get a beer" after work, but I declined, something made easy by the fact I decline that invitation usually anyway.  

Anyhow, I've now had both of my COVID 19 vaccinations.  My wife has had her first.  My kids have both had theirs.  Only my son and my wife are in the window of non protection, as they're either waiting for their second shot or have just had theirs.

I was going to resume Mass attendance last week, but my daughter pointed out that my wife had been so good about her observation of the rules and just had her shot, so we should probably abstain.  She didn't come home for Easter due to school and work and will make Mass where she is.  Here we debated it last night and ultimately decided, for the same reason, to wait one more week.

Locally it turns out that of the three parishes two were requiring reservations, but once again due to the phenomenally bad outreach the Church's have, that wasn't apparent at the one we were going to go to until this morning when I happened to find that was on their video feed.  For goodness sakes, is there any excuse for not getting this out in some other fashion?  So we likely would have been turned away.  That would have lead us to the parish across town which is not requiring reservations, but which was anticipating putting overflow in the poorly ventilated basement so that those there could watch it on television.

Next year, for those of us still in the temporal realm, Mass in the normal fashion will have resumed as life in the normal fashion will have had to.  The country can't keep being shut down forever and the entire population, save for those who really have the resources to do nothing at all, has to get moving again and patience has worn thing.  My guess is that we will not reach the "herd immunity" threshold as there will be those who steadfastly refuse to believe that the disease is serious or who will continue to believe myths about vaccines which are allowed to circulate in the post Cold War scientific age.  Those who are vaccinated will get yearly boosters which will be more or less effective. Some will get sick and some of them will die and for some people that will come as a surprise.  But life will return to normal, with normal in this instance begin an unfortunate blend of the 1970s inflationary era, brought on by profligate government spending, and 2010/20s moral sinkage.

On that latter item, there were those who hoped that the pandemic might refocus society and cause some reflection on where we were going and what we were doing.  Perhaps some of that did occur, but there does not seem to be much evidence of it now. And to the extent it did, a lot of that was swept away by political forces that refused to acknowledge defeat and countervailing ones that accordingly came into power seeking to bring in every "progressive" item on that laundry list that's been thought of since the late 1890s.  Things are really not looking that good, and in a lot of ways.

But next year, at least there will be Mass.

Jews traditionally end the Passover Sedar with "Next Year in Jerusalem", signaling an obvious deep religious hope.

Next year in Jerusalem. ^[1].

__________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1.  I don't think this is incapable of being misunderstood, but just in case, and because I'm occasionally asked, this is meant symbolically here.  I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in visiting Jerusalem.  I.e., none.  This isn't mean to be rude, but I know it baffles people, and as I have a friend whose been once and who is planning to return again, I know I'll be asked that along these lines; "I'm going on the church trip to Jerusalem. .  . wouldn't you like to go?" followed by all the things that a person could see in Jerusalem.

That's great for people who want to see it, but I don't.  I don't have any interest in going anywhere in the Holy Land, which may be odd for a Christian, but I don't.  None.  Indeed, if I were to go to anywhere in the Middle East the locations would be limited to certain big desert areas as I like big deserts.  I'm not keen on cities in general, and particularly not large crowded ones.

FWIW, I often give the same reaction to other venues that feature lots of people.  "Wouldn't you like to go to China?".  No, I would not.  "London?".  M'eh.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church, Denver, Colorado.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy ...: 

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church, Denver, Colorado.

Churches of the West: Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church, Denver ...: 

Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church, Denver Colorado

This is Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church in Denver Colorado.

Many people, when they hear the word "Catholic", immediately have what, in the English speaking world, are frequently referred to as "Roman Catholics" in mind.  In fact, however, "Roman" Catholics are Latin Rite Catholics whose churches use the Roman Rite.  Roman Catholics make up the overwhelming majority of Catholics, and indeed the majority of Catholics, on earth.

They aren't the only Catholics however.   The Roman Rite itself is just one of several Latin, or Western, Rites.  There are also several Eastern Rites, of which the Byzantine Rite is one.

The Byzantine Catholic Church, which is also called the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church, uses the same liturgical rite as the Greek Orthodox Church and shares the same calendar.  It dates back to the conversion of the Rusyn people in the Carpathians to Christianity in the 9th Century.  That work, done by St. Cyril and St. Methodius brought to the Rusyn people the form of worship in the Eastern Rite.  They Rusyn church initially followed the Orthodox Churches following  the schism of 1054, but in 1645 the Ruthenian Church started to return to communion with Rome, resulting in the Rutenian Byzantine Catholic Church, which is normally called the Byzantine Catholic Church in the United States.

Immigration from Eastern Europe brought the Church into the United States. Originally a strongly ethnic church, in recent decades it has become multi ethnic and its strongly traditional character has caused it to obtain new members from both very conservative Latin Rite Catholics as well as very conservative former Protestants.  Indeed, while this church is very small, it has been growing and now has a Byzantine Catholic outreach to Ft. Collins, Colorado, where it holds services in Roman Catholic Churches.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” ...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” ...: 

Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

From the always excellent A Hundred Years Ago blog, a Meatless item from a cookbook of the period which included Lenten recipes.

“A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

As will be noted, the recipe included "drippings", which caused some confusion in the secular sense.  How could that be "meatless".  My comments on the same:

“I assume that “drippings” refer to the fat created when cooking beef or pork – though I am a bit foggy why meat drippings would be called for in a recipe for a meatless dish. Maybe a hundred years ago “meatless” just meant that there were no chunks of meat.”

It wasn’t because of that so much so as that vegetarianism was relatively rare a century ago and it remains distinctly different from “meatless” in the Roman Catholic sense. In the latter, for example, fish and seafood is not included as “meat” either, where as quite a few vegetarians would regard it as meat, although some do eat fish.

A person would have to delve into the topic, but generally you’ll find that broths are “technically” not classified as meat for Roman Catholics, and some animal derived foods, such as gelatins, are not. Probably the author of this recipe didn’t regard drippings as in the meat category and at the time perhaps they weren’t either, form this prospective. In more recent years, as the number of Catholic meatless days had declined in some regions and is limited to Lent, in those regions, people have tended to define meatless more strictly and expanding on the meatless category has been discouraged.

Of note, people often associate this with “Catholics”, by which they usually mean Roman Catholics, but the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics also observe days of fast and abstinence and their practice is much more broad. It progresses in time over Great Lent and ultimately they abstain from not only meat, but dairy products, fats, and alcohol as well.

As an side, during World War One the U.S. government declared there to be an entire series of “meatless” days and while it didn’t enforce it through a law, it pretty heavily pressured Americans to observe them. If I recall correctly one such day was basically beefless and an other was porkless. None of these days was on a Friday, so I’ve always thought that if you were a Catholic that must have been a bummer as you would end up with three meatless weekdays during Lent rater than one.

I should note that the thought of using broth in a "meatless" meal bothers me from a Catholic prospective, and I suspect it does quite a few others as well.  I'm not completely certain how most modern Catholic apologists would look at this today, but I think they'd at least discourage it.

Anyhow, some of what I've noted there, I've noted before, that being the situation that existed during the Great War which would have caused Catholics to be eating meatless about half the week during the war.  One day of the week (Monday if I recall correctly) was meatless, which apparently meant beefless (it's somewhat difficult to tell). Tuesday was porkless.  Another day was wheatless  For Catholics, every Friday at the time was meatless, excluding only seafood, which was difficult to obtain for many people at the time, and for the Orthodox the rules were even stricter.  It's interesting to note that the government never, at any time, proposed "hey, let's just adopt the Catholic rule and make Fridays meatless. . . "  Indeed, in 1917-18, they wouldn't have as the obvious reference to Catholicism wouldn't have gone down well with American society at large at the time.  It probably sill really wouldn't.

I'm publishing this, it might be noted, on a Friday, which remains meatless during Lent for Catholics all over the globe (not all of whom are otherwise, like American Catholics, lacking in that obligation in the rest of the globe).  Oddly enough, today isn't meatless.

That's because today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the day dedicated to Jesus' temporal adoptive father.  As Canon Lawyer Edward Peters has pointed out regarding this day, as a solemnity:

This year, the solemnity of my Confirmation saint quashes not only one’s personal Lenten penances but the canonical obligation of abstinence on Friday. Canon 1251.

Canon 1251 provides:

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

This is so such days can be celebrated.

I have to admit again, I'm a bit squeamish about it.  However, noting that this is in fact the Canon Law, and for a good reason, I had corned beef has made with leftover corned beef this morning.  This is in part because I didn't want to waste it, but I also take the suspension of the obligation for celebratory reasons seriously.

At any rate, I've pointed out elsewhere on this blog, from time to time, the interesting interaction of fasting and abstinence in out largely Protestant society.  Even Catholics often don't understand the nature of these penitential observances and Protestants, to include the large number of secularized Protestants in American society, clearly don't.  But none the less some of the very people who will mock the Catholic observances impose extremely strict similar dietary practices upon themselves.  As recently noted, I've watched people I know go through an endless number of "cleanses" which supposedly are health based, but which are generally based on bogus pop "science" and which really serve as a way of self deprivation by people who feel they need it.  People are atoning for something, even if they don't know what.^[1].

Vegetarianism and even more so veganism are extreme examples of this.  Like societies of Medieval Monks that undertook similar dietary regimens as a way of penance and sacrifice for the entire world, such people often really imagine themselves doing the same somehow, although without the science or logic to back it up, and not grounded in any metaphysical footing, they're mostly making themselves suffer, simply figuring, deep down, that suffering must be good for something in and of itself, rather thank linked to something.  

This really comes across in the occasional lecturing the proponents of such diets make along the lines of quit eating meat in order to save the planet, as cows are directly responsible for global warming.  Large ungulates have been a feature of the planet since day one so they're certainly not responsible for global warming in and of themselves. To the extent that is true at all, and I'm pretty skeptic of a bovine role in that, it would be due to feeding practices, not the cows themselves or their consumption.  Indeed some types of crop farming (in particular rice farming) directly contributes to CO2 in the air as well and frankly meat free diets contribute a lot of CO2 in a secondary fashions, and are otherwise pretty environmentally iffy in some instances so a vegetable based diet is at least as environmentally harmful, potentially more so, than one that isn't.  If a person really wanted a to have a diet that was as environmentally benign as possible, they'd plant their own garden, hunt, and fish.

Of course part of all of that is based on the American belief that there must be something that an individual can do so that they can personally live forever, or if not that, personally escape the ravages of old age.  Suffering from the lack of logic noted in Fairlie's The Cow's Revenge, here too we see some interesting things at work.  To a surprising degree preserving ourselves at all cost for old age, at least right now, preserves ourselves for the torment of dementia. That's not an argument at all for taking up smoking cigarettes, drinking a quart of whiskey per day, and wrestling bears, but it is simply a fact. The common cheerful view that if I "cleanse" for a month and then go on the all Kiwi fruit diet I'll live to 100 with the body of a 20 year old is, frankly, baloney.  The traditional Catholic acknowledgment of the terminal nature of life is something not too many secular self sufferers engage in.  Lots of people hitting the gym every day and running marathons may well extend their lives a bit, and I hope that they do.  They may well be fitter in old age as well, and I hope that they are.  And they may stave off dementia, which exercise and a good diet will help do.  Or they may be sliding into a world of mental torment by age 60 irrespective of all of that.

Nor, for that matter, is imposing the more difficult, perhaps, aspects of traditional morality that goes along with Lenten observations.  Abstaining from meat on Fridays is a pretty minor deal, rather obviously, and for secular abstainers, abstaining from meat in general or going on a cleanse may involve self suffering, but I rarely hear of anyone determining to abstain from conduct that everyone knows is existentially destructive.  People don't do that, and indeed I imagine that some people imagine themselves preserved in good condition in order to be able to engage in their vices until very old age.  Not too many who are wrapped up in an accepting a Big Bang Theory or Friends concept of personal morality, for example, are going to abstain from that sort of conduct for forty days.  Giving up carbs, going on high carbs, abstaining from meat, easting all meat, abstaining from alcohol, or whatever, for a few weeks is one thing.  Society approves. Abstaining from courser conduct? Well society says you can't.

Anyhow, all of this amounts to simple observation, much strayed from where it was originally going.  It's interesting, however.  As noted once before, secularized America isn't a society of self restraint in any fashion, which interestingly causes people, at least as to diet, to self restrain.  But often, they don't really know why.

Footnotes

1. This argument can obviously be taken too far, and it isn't meant to be an eat everything you want, and in as big of quantities as you want, argument.

Indeed, it's clearly the case that Americans eat too much processed food  and food with way too much sugar.  American bread alone is really cake, as a rule.