What the heck is WRONG with people?

 When 26 year old Baltimore CEO Pava LePere was found  partially clad, strangled and bludgeoned to death in her own apartment building I noticed that MOST of the comments in both secular news and among men on Catholic Twitter mocked the victim and expressed satisfaction that she was dead.

 Pava supported Black Lives Matter. The irony of her murder by a man whom she would have presumably championed and whom she naively let into her controlled access building  was enough for an explosion of schadenfreude. One Catholic man in particular seemed triumphant and  kept posting on Twitter, "She let him in." The last time I checked, he'd made his statement several times.

Look, I get that men are frustrated. There are many silly young women who flit from one fad to another with no deep thought about their own safety or much of anything else but Pava was murdered. How can you call yourself a Catholic man and revel in her death?  She obviously didn't grow up in a neighborhood like the one I did and unlike mine,  her parents may have never taught her you don't open to the door to anyone you don't know because it's better to be seen as rude than dead. At 26, she was old enough to be my daughter and I look at her photo with sadness. Thank God the killer, who so far, has attacked three women has been caught. 

 

Pray for Frank Walker!

 Please pray for Frank Walker, of Canon 212 and The Stumbling Block.  He has had a stroke.   He's a fine man and has always been very gracious to me. 

and the hits just keep on coming -- random thoughts for a chilly Sunday morning

•  I went for my annual physical and the results weren't all sunshine and giggles. I've been anemic all my life but apparently this time the doctor was concerned that my hemoglobin is too low even for me so I'm off for more tests. I was advised to do this as soon as possible.  I became weirdly angry and answered the doctor with one one word sentences and was pretty curt when I couldn't do that. Sorry about that. I stayed angry for two days and kept Ennio Morricone's music on repeat and now I'm so tired I'm just flat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Francis may be a legitimate pope or not but for practical purposes his bottom is firmly planted on Peter's throne and he is wielding power with glee.  Just as Our Lady said repeatedly in different apparitions good priests, monks, whole convents, the occasional bishop and cardinal are being persecuted. We hear shocking heresy coming out of Rome daily.  Men who pledged allegiance to Sodom  are riding high. People who worship  at a Latin Mass  are  being pushed out of their parishes.  Even people who go to a reverent as possible Novus Ordo where the priest does not face the people while serving Mass are under attack. We have a pope who is mean.  We've had bad popes in the past 2000, years but when was the last time in living memory did we have a pope who was so stunningly nasty and who spewed insults on a daily basis?  Yet and still, we have to cling to the Bark of Peter. If the changes coming out the Synod are as bad as people are saying they will be many of us are going to have to make decisions. Find a decent priest. Go to a true Mass. Go in a basement, a field,  a hotel room or cemetery chapel if you have to.  Our grandparents did this and more when Vatican II landed on them and that is why you and I had the chance to go to a TLM. 
  
  
  
  
  
• 3 Reasons to Not Believe in Aliens....

• This is truly weird. Colm Flynn of EWTN shows Chinese Catholics who traveled to visit Francis in Mongolia. Since the Chinese government forbade this, Flynn is exposing these people to danger for what? A few clicks? A pat on the back in the comments?  It reminds me of the Night Stalker case where then San Francisco mayor, Diane Feinstein blabbed details not known the public which led to the serial killer disposing of his shoes and continuing his reign of terror. Flynn should not have shown these people on camera. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Theodore McCarrick successfully ran down the clock. He's either faking dementia, or he and his protectors kept him going until he genuinely slid into the terrible mental fog of senility.  We do not put people on trial who are too feeble minded to understand what is going on and speak for themselves so the charge of molesting a 16 year old at a wedding reception in 1974 ,was dismissed. This may make some readers angry but I don't think that if the case was tried fairly, there was much chance of conviction. Was there any forensic evidence? Were there any living witnesses to back up the victim's story? But this is besides the point. McCarrick should have been laicized, excommunicated, and tried in civil court DECADES ago. The festering sore of a scandal remains. Bishops and Cardinals knew what Uncle Ted was doing. Seminarians knew what he was doing and whispered about  the New Jersey beach house.
  
  Father Issac Relyea is, to my knowledge the only person who has said with his characteristic bluntness what he thinks about the seminarians who complied with McCarrick's  sexual demands. McCarrick's "nephews" are in high places today. For a long time nobody was appointed to a bishopric  in the United States unless McCarrick vouched for them. Watching Cardinal Kevin Farrell telling an interviewer that he had no idea-- never saw or heard anything that made him raise an eyebrow about what McCarrick was doing in the whole five years he was a  DC diocese bishop and living in the same four bedroom apartment as the cardinal was the icing on a stomach twisting cake for many people.  St. Peter Damian, pray for us!

• Stay Catholic.
  
  
  
• Maureen Mullarkey has some thoughts on the appalling Fr. Rupnik. 
  
  
  
  
• Thank you Canon 212 and Harvey Millican. 

 

Random thoughts on a gut punch of a Monday morning.

•  In your charity could you please pray for my oldest male cousin? He had an aneurysm yesterday and was taken off the ventilator today. He was only 57.
  
  
  
  
• I was reading a rant about Parental Alienation a few days ago and sighed.  It reminded me of another man who was a talented writer and who was quite frank and unapologetic about his wild days back in the 70s and early 80s. He changed his life and overcame his addictions but did so too late. He blamed his divorced wife for turning their daughter against him to point where she refused any contact with him. What many Boomers forget is that bad episode in their lives --that hiccup in an otherwise okay life happened during their child's formative years. Your episode was their life. You being the bad guy or gal is the shadow over their childhood and no, despite what you were told by the experts, childhood resilience doesn't mean forgetting.  Your ex may have manipulated the situation and caused every fight but your adult child remembers standing in the door way while you screamed and cursed and perhaps even got physical in your anger.
  
  There are wicked parents who use their children as weapons against their ex but if you gave your child a river of sad memories when they were young then you can't expect them to want your company now that you are old.
  
  
  
  
• World Youth Day has been a cringe worthy occasion probably going back to 1986. These mega Masses and goofy 1970s antics that are supposed to appeal to the young  have to stop. Sacrilege at WYD is so common that people now accuse the pious who are shocked of "pearl clutching," and the sophisticated folks claim it's no big deal. Bishop Strickland pointed something out that actually gave me a  little hope.  If the bishop is correct and this was the lowest attended WYD since 1986, then perhaps parents are wising up.
  
  
  
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Random thoughts on a Wednesday night

•  I've never heard Dr. Smith speak before. She's sharp as a tack. I think she's a bit too soft of JPII but for anyone who still is walking around with rose colored glasses about our bishops she's an excellent dose of reality. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Taylor Marshall has dropped out of the presidential race...of course. 
  
  
  
• I dislike the phrase human trafficking because it's a polite euphemism for pimping and sex slavery; things that should be should not be sugar coated.  Some people comfort themselves with the idea that this only happens in the big city or in poor areas. These snobs are deluding themselves.  A few years ago I read about a young man in his 20s  who took his teen aged girlfriend  to a motel room and would not let her leave. He and his friend placed an online ad and sold her to the degenerates who answered the ad and met them at the motel. This atrocity went on  for weeks. Eventually, the police were notified by someone and she was rescued. Her family thought she was a runaway.  This happened in a cute, historic tiny Virginia town that tourists visit.
  
  
  
  
  
• Covid sent a lot of people over the edge. Rocky and I went to Chesapeake Beach last week and I was fascinated by how many people were dressed like they were in their bedrooms. It was a whole lot of pajamas and lounge wear. I'm not talking about young people either. The worst dressed people with unkempt hair who looked like they had just come out of their dens were in their 40s and 50s. It's like a lot of people just don't have the will or energy to even groom themselves.
  
  In my area violent crime has exploded. People seem to have shorter fuses in general and something odd is happening with the homeless population. Psychotic episodes are becoming more frequent and going to the gas stations has become unnerving. There are so many wild eyed men standing in the parking lots glaring at people or demanding money. Rocky used to get gas before he went to work in the mornings. Now he goes in the afternoon when there are more customers at the station. 

 

When the poisons hatch out

 When Fr. James Jackson was arrested for viewing gigantic amounts of child and infant pornography it set off a bizarre chain reaction throughout certain corners of Catholic social media. For going on three years now I've watched a saga that has no heroes and a lot of people who have been taken for fools, driven mad  or had their private lives exposed. 

I suppose the second step after the arrest was the fundraiser Restoring the Faith Media podcaster, Mike Parrot set up to hire a private investigator to look into the accusations against Fr. Jackson. At the time I thought the effort was a well-meant act of folly, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Fr. Jackson did not have one or two nasty photos saved on a shared computer in the rectory living room. Albino character assassins from the Vatican didn't sneak into his rooms and plant smut on his computer. No lay person with a grudge just waltzed into the rectory, hit the Dark web for what must have been many hours and high stepped out like cartoon villain without a priest, a secretary, the sacristan or a housekeeper noticing and questioning. Maybe things are really loose in Rhode Island but from my childhood to today I've never been to the rectory without having a good reason and my presence was known and expected. Getting into a rectory or a separate parish office without an appointment is close to impossible. 

Enter Church Militant. That crew seem to take great personal glee whenever they can report on a juicy nasty story especially if it involves sex or anyone whose considered to be in Traditional Catholic circles. For reasons that have never been clear CM's leadership seemed to take a personal offense toward the fundraiser. A phone call was made to the RTF guy and he was told that he ought to stop the fundraiser and return the donor money. Both CM and RTF agree on this point but after that the story turns into a wildfire.  RTF says that CM threatened and attempted to blackmail him. CM says that RTF was told that if the fundraiser was not stopped the public would be informed  that the whole thing was unsound. RTF released a video declaring that he was being attacked and then the armies of supporters for CM and RTF formed. 

 On RTF's side were old friends who had blogs or Twitter accounts of their own, and many new people who were disgusted by CM in general and were naturally sympathetic to anyone who spoke back to them. On CMs side were their fans, Catholic media owners who had positive relations with CM and enemies of RTF.

CM advised a person who is described as a long-time friend to the organization that a story was going to be run on the RTF guy and hoped it wouldn't cause any trouble for the friend. The long-term friend ended his business relationship with RTF, who was naturally furious. RTF cried out that CM had gotten him fired from his job. Many people, myself included were appalled.  CM fired back with grass burning fury. Rather than a naive young man whose family was in danger of going without due to his job loss, CM portrayed him in a much different light. A statement of a former business partner was published and a number of things were posted about his property and his relationship with the Oblates of St Augustine. 

At some point a lawsuit for defamation was filed and the whole saga moved to the sewer. Sordid things were posted daily. Accusations of grave sins by the leading parties  were exposed to the public. In addition, there were accusations of hacking, invasion of privacy in regards to people's addresses and photos of homes, harassment and tale telling about people who weren't even part of the story but happened to be friendly with either side. 

Finally the legal proceedings concerning the defamation claim  concluded and the drama shifted to an administrative proceeding of the Marines. Fr. Jackson plead guilty.  The formal part of the saga is at an end.  Neither side can let the revolting matter drop and neither side can resist in schadenfreude. Everyone involved with this thing looks horrible and it's one more example of what bad, really bad things can occur when lay people make their money and fame off the Faith. Please, instead look to the saints and pre-Vatican II catechisms for clarity, instruction and advice. 

Fr. Jackson gives his plea

•  Father James Jackson plead guilty, The reaction has been quite muted in Catholic circles. I think everyone with any shred of sense knew after the Kansas arrest that he must be guilty. By this point even the people who donated to both his legal defense fund and the Mike Parrott private investigation now realize  this. Of course there is sorrow but the idea that he was set up by someone who had access to both the rectory computer in Rhode Island and was able to follow him to Kansas is dead. The man who claimed repeatedly in public that he could  barely check his e-mail was deep into one the most nasty and demonic corridors of the Dark Web. Are there innocent priests who have been falsely accused? Yes and St. Gerard could tell you all about it  but the technological nature and precise  locations of  what  Fr. Jackson was accused of made it almost impossible to be anything but guilty.
  
  My father-in-law refused for many years to have Internet access because he was afraid of seeing random  sinful content. Attempts to  tell him that the Internet isn't like a Monty Python sketch and he wasn't going to see a disembodied nude bosom float by while he was browsing on AOL were ignored and the family either sighed or chuckled.  I think everyone knows by now that you have to go search for hardcore pornography. Sometimes you can see immodesty by accident, for example a lewd woman is photographed almost naked as she goes to an awards show and you see the photo on your news site, but to see carnal acts with underage  probably kidnapped and enslaved victims you have to go on an deliberate hunt. You and I usually do our  browsing on the surface Web and  frequently do business and serious research on the Deep Web; sites that require registration, IDs and passwords and sometimes payment  to obtain the information therein. Then there's the Dark Web where you can engage in criminal activity. I've met or read about people who have to go to the Dark Web to test their company's security or as part of criminal investigations and they all say that you can't just accidentally find it like Alice falling down the rabbit's hole. 
  
  When the authorities allowed Fr. Jackson to go to his sister's house while waiting for trial they did so on several conditions. He was told to stay away from computers but they found one with internet access hidden on the premises. That's why he was removed from Kansas and taken into custody. Clearly this is a man who lied about being an Internet Luddite. 
  
  What can we learn about this tragedy?  Kipling would be shaking his head and adding a stanza to "The Gods of the Copybook Headings", if he were alive. It's the same old lesson: Perverts go where the object of their perversion is. 
  
  As many Mormons, Boy Scout parents, public school parents, and Protestants can tell you, a pervert will go to school and get credentialed and even marry some poor woman as part of his cover in order to be around his chosen victims. The ones who aren't as smart as they thought they were get caught after a few years but the really clever ones, especially the ones who join rings of like-minded monsters get away with it until they die and face the awesome and inescapable justice of  God. Fr. James Jackson was not the man, many people thought he was but remember that Judas was not the man the Apostles thought he was either. 
  
  
  
  Our Lady of La Salette, who said there would be priests like Fr. Jackson, pray for us. 
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