Brian Williams scandal.

The fact that he lied is one thing - getting caught in the lie - well there's the problem.  Right?

I think that may be a mortal sin in secular terms.

Hillary Clinton lied.  Her husband lied.  Sports stars lie.  Then, when they are caught, they lie to explain their lie.  If they are well enough liked, if they are supported by the right people - they get away with it.  Look at Bill Clinton.  He was impeached but wasn't forced out of office - his reputation was simply tarnished - and he's as popular as ever.

If I remember correctly, not too long ago Brian Williams was on with David Letterman talking about Charlie Hebdo/freedom of the press and all of that.  Letterman was so captivated by him, almost as if he were some sort of oracle with answers to all the problems in the world.   But the guy just makes stuff up.

Isn't that queer?

Song for this post here.

Abbey Roads will return to normal blogging in 1, 2, 3 ...

Please stand by.

Mental Illness and Cultural Change.

Inmates running the asylum...

If you've been reading me you know the subject of mental illness is a recent topic here.  Specifically, are gay people nuts?  Just pushing your buttons - it's really about the former diagnosis of homosexuality as a mental illness and how that is so not the same as bipolar.  The discussion drives people nuts - but I'm sure there is a medication for that.  What?  I don't take it seriously.

That said, I mentioned an article someone sent me about a feminist who was diagnosed schizophrenic and also wrote on gender issues - and I kinda sorta implied she lacked credibility because of the diagnosis - not to mention the irony of writing about gender ideology.  Unfortunately, I had not read the entire article and it turns out it was a sort of obituary on Feminism's Rotting Corpse, by Kathy Shaidle.  The article is from Taki's - a magazine I normally don't read.

Anyway - to add more background to where I was coming from, I will reprint a couple of out takes from that article.  It's quite interesting because it helps us understand the origins of gender ideology.

Shulamith Firestone

"[T]he end goal of feminist revolution must be…not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally."

After learning of the death last week of Shulamith Firestone, author of 1970’s The Dialectic of Sex, I roused myself to search for the book ...

Her first and most important work is still required college reading, but unlike those of her second-wave feminist peers—Greer, Friedman, and Gloria Steinem—Firestone’s is not a familiar face. She never turned up on The Phil Donahue Show or in the gossip pages or on Henry Kissinger’s arm. 

And yet in the photo accompanying her New York Times obituary, Firestone looks exactly like you’d expect. That “look”—the frizzy hair, the Lennon spectacles, the lipstick-free, unsmiling mouth—transcends eras. Firestone eerily resembles one of my old Reagan-era anarcho-peacenik comrades—also crazy, also brilliant—who helped me block consensus when some other chick in our women’s caucus proposed dropping the word “caucus”because “it has the word ‘cock’ in it.”

Firestone published her radical manifesto calling for the liberation of women from childbirth’s unfair burden—and from gender itself—at only 25. That’s around the age when schizophrenia tends to claim its victims, of which she was one. - Read more here.

I suppose the premise of the article may be summed up in this quote: “Yesterday’s mental illness is today’s social policy.”  The irony of which lies in the fact that was pretty much what the bipolar lady I criticized was saying.

I give up.

St. Benedict Joseph, pray for us.

Something Aaron Taylor wrote about chaste gay celibate friends...

It's taken from the US Catholic bishops’ document, Principles to Guide Confessors in Questions of Homosexuality (1973) and it is something I have never come across before.

A homosexual can have an abiding relationship with another homosexual without genital sexual expression. Indeed, the deeper need of any human is for friendship rather than genital sexual expression … If a homosexual person has progressed under the direction of a confessor, but in the effort to develop a stable relationship with a given person has occasionally fallen into a sin of impurity, he should be absolved and instructed to take measures to avoid the elements which lead to sin without breaking off a friendship which has helped him grow as a person. If the relationship, however, has reached a stage where the homosexual person is not able to avoid overt actions, he should be admonished to break off the relationship. (p. 10-11) - US Catholic bishops’ document, Principles to Guide Confessors in Questions of Homosexuality (1973) - Spiritual Friendship blog

Aaron Taylor's essay is well worth the read and our consideration.  Stealing the words of  Eve Tushnet in the SF com box,  Aaron's essay makes it easier for people "to avoid falling into the cultural default in which all important relationships between adults are viewed through the lens of romance". Or, in the words of Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser, avoid the sexualization of friendship - which has proved so detrimental to our contemporary view of BFF same sex friends.


Song for this post here.

BFF's!

Fr. Z has a lot of hits.

I was just reading a post on Fr. Z's blog and noticed his site meter moving.  I watched it for awhile and it was continuously moving, almost faster than a racer's mileage calculator - I didn't time it - but it looked as if he was getting 2 to 4 hits a second.  If he only got 1 hit a second, he could be getting 86400 hits in a 24 hour period.  If he got .05 cents for every hit .. he could make $4320.00 a day.  That's better than his $5000.00 a month.

Fr. Z has to be the most famous priest blogger in the world.

Jordanian Pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh Burned Alive by ISIS

From Huffington Post:

A video circulating on social media on Tuesday appears to show the murder of a Jordanian fighter pilot by militants of the Islamic State group.

Supporters shared a video purporting to show Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh dressed in an orange jumpsuit standing in a cage, before being burned alive. - Finish reading here.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,

 Lord, hear my voice!

O let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my pleading.

*

Rescue me, Lord, from evil men;

from the violent keep me safe,

from those who plan evil in their hearts

and stir up strife every day;

 who sharpen their tongue like an adder's,

with the poison of viper on their lips.

*

To you, Lord God, my eyes are turned:

in you I take refuge; spare my soul!

 From the trap they have laid for me keep me safe:

keep me from the snares of those who do evil.

 Let the wicked fall into the traps they have set

while I pursue my way unharmed.

O my God!  I am heartily sorry ...

A man and his rabbit.

I was looking for photos of Newcomen Bridge in Dublin, when I came across a story about a homeless man and his rabbit.  It's an old story by now, although I only discovered it yesterday.

Meet John Byrne, The Homeless Man Ready To Die Saving His Pet

John Byrne has beeen living on the streets of Dublin since the age of 14. He is one of approximately 5,000 homeless people in Ireland at the moment, and for John, home isn’t measured in square feet or granite countertops. Instead home takes the shape of a small brown rabbit and a Jack Russell Terrier who show him what it means to be a family.

One July morning, John was begging on the O’Connell Bridge when 18-year-old Gary Kearney took him by surprise. Kearney grabbed Barney right out of John’s arms and hurled him over the bridge and into the river below.

Breathless and in shock, John looked over the side of the bridge with dread. He was expecting the worst but was relieved to see that Barney had not died on impact. The bunny was swimming in circles in the water below. Without hesitation, John joined him in the River Liffey.

Around 200 people watched as John struggled to save Barney from being swept away. Read more here.

I wanted to do a post refuting something another blogger wrote, but it seemed to me it would be like taking her pet rabbit from her arms and throwing it in the river.

It's better to lose and leave to others their own opinion ...

MY CHILD, do not be curious. Do not trouble yourself with idle cares. What matters this or that to you? Follow Me. What is it to you if a man is such and such, if another does or says this or that? You will not have to answer for others, but you will have to give an account of yourself. Why, then, do you meddle in their affairs? - Imitation Bk III, Ch. 24

One of the neighborhood child molesters died last week ...

The house where I lived was torn down (foreground) ...

the back of the house in the background was where

the 'love shack' was.

Gumdrop... RIP

Last evening, for some odd reason, I looked up the local obituaries online.  I used to get the newspaper and that was pretty much the only feature I read. I cancelled the newspaper, because I get my news online, and eventually lost interest in the obits.  So it was kind of out of the blue that I decided to read the obituaries last night, only to discover that one of the more well known neighborhood fruitcakes died last week.  I can't use his name because I'm not sure how public his reputation was, he was 76 years old when he died in a nursing facility.  I'll call him Gumdrop - a name the neighborhood girls gave to him.

He never molested me - I think he was more interested in girls.  He was creepy looking, skinny, badly dressed, unfortunate facial features, big eyes, weak chin, a leer rather than a smile, premature balding, and a little hunched over.  I specifically recall seeing him once on the playground when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, and he was selling Catholic religious medals.  He had a salesman's case and everything.  I was so excited and ran over to look at the medals.  My sister ran over, pulled me away and told me never to go near him.  (I have a feeling he was after my sister and maybe used me to bait her.)  Much later, in middle school and in a new neighborhood, my new friends all knew about him too.

Gumdrop was one of many molesters on the East side of St. Paul.  One heard stories of men pulling over to expose themselves to girls, invite them into the car to pet his puppy, and so on.  We knew some girls were molested, but no one ever seemed to report it.  Some of the boys occasionally hitchhiked from one end of town to the other, and bragged about the blow-jobs.  They weren't gay either - several were the tough-hood types, the ones the more slutty-girls often chased.

Everyone knew who the fruitcakes were, and parents warned kids to stay away from them.  Some were 'queers' others were simply referred to as 'fruity'.  My parents warned me and my brother and sister to stay away from this or that creepy guy.  Why?  As my dad once said, 'he's a g-d d-n fruit, that's why!'

It seems incomprehensible to modern ears that the police weren't always called, or suspicious fruitcakes weren't at least taken in for questioning.  I don't know why that was.  No one mentioned these things except to warn.  It may explain why we today accuse the Church of cover up when it came to fruitcake priests.  Yet that is how things were back then.  That was in the day when it was still shameful for unmarried girls to get pregnant, and when they did - they were mysteriously sent away - to have the baby or do something about it - only to return as if nothing happened.  Another interesting note is that girls were said to have gotten themselves pregnant:  "She went and got herself pregnant."  People today would never accept such language.  Imagine a girl being responsible for an unwanted pregnancy?  Or an abortion?

Anyway - so all of these memories came flooding back last night.  I prayed for Gumdrop and the others.  But it didn't get rid of the haunted feelings, the flood of memories.  I still couldn't go to sleep.

I once looked up another neighborhood molester - the creepy guy next door, whom my parents actually befriended afterwards!  I know!  This guy now lives at the same exact address my family did when we first moved to St. Paul.  It was a different neighborhood, and it was there that I was first molested by another neighbor - and now, that other perpetrator lives there.  That just seems so strangely ironic to me.

Laying awake, I went through all of those mental archives, spilled out like files all over the room, and I spent the entire sleepless night trying to put them all back in order, noting things I hadn't paid much attention to before, praying.  I counted almost half a dozen pervs in my one neighborhood - the last neighborhood I lived with my parents - before I ran away.  Gumdrop never lived there, he just wandered through - roaming the territory.  As for resident-pervs, there was one guy who had a corner store - a lot of guys hung out there - not many knew he was gay.  Then there was the florist - as well as a counselor at the community center - few knew they were gay.  Then of course, the guy(s) next door.  One of the guys just demonstrated masturbation for the boys.  Another exposed himself in the 'picture window' - to women passers-by.  The most well known perv had a 'love shack' shed which he used as an art studio - he also supplied booze and cigarettes, and of course, fellatio.

Overall, last night was a very creepy night.

I have nothing edifying or spiritual to say about it.

Song for this post here.

Going beyond ...

I've been reading some thoughts expressed by other writers online.  Some write about moving beyond Jesus, beyond the Church, beyond the concept of sin.

I suppose one can do that.

Yet I don't want to.

I don't want to ever go beyond Jesus ... I don't want to go beyond the Church.

Anyway, even if I wanted to ... I'm not strong enough on my own.  I'm weak.

As St. Therese would say, I'm too little ...

"How happy I am to realize that I am little and weak, how happy I am to see myself so imperfect". 

"It is needful to remain little before God and to remain little is to recognize one's nothingness, expect all things from the good God just as a little child expects all things from its father; it is not to be troubled by anything, not to try to make a fortune. Even among poor people, a child is given all it needs, as long as it is very little, but as soon as it has grown up, the father does not want to support it any longer and says: "Work, now you are able to take care of yourself". Because I never want to hear these words I do not want to grow up, feeling that I can never earn my living, that is, eternal life in heaven. So I have stayed little, and have no other occupation than of gathering flowers of love and sacrifice and of offering them to the good God to please Him.

To be little also means not to attribute to one's self the virtues that one practices, believing that one can do something, but to acknowledge that the good God has placed these treasures in the hands of His little child so that the child can make use of them as needed, but always as the treasures of the good God.

Finally, it means not be to discouraged by one's faults because children often fall but they are too little to hurt themselves badly." - St. Therese of Lisieux