When Did Smoke of Satan Enter?

Rabbit hole of rabbit holes is the papacy of Francis and the state of the Church. It started when my wife sent this post about some seemingly targeted lightning strikes. “Press releases from Heaven” is a memorable phrase. 

The same author is convinced that Pope Francis is not the legit pope due to Benedict leaving another duress, an “impeded See”. I’m sketchy on the details and terminology but the gist seems to be that Benedict was playing 3d chess (far more believable in his case than The Donald’s). He makes that case here.

Somewhere along the rabbit trail I came across the famous “smoke of Satan” line by Pope Paul VI - which makes credible just about anything with regard to church irregularities, just the rich vein of government lies and censorship suddenly makes conspiracy theories well worth our attention. 

The smoke of Satan line was said on June 29th, 1972 but Malachi Martin places the smoke coming on June 29th, 1963. Which fits neatly into the general theory that 1963 was some sort of inflection point given the deaths of JFK, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. It was also the year when sex was begun in Britain, according to Philip Larkin's best-known poem. Bob Dylan’s "Blowin' in the Wind” was popular and “The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis.

Liturgy is the linchpin of the spiritual world, and thus the world in general, we might wonder if anything smoky came in the immediate aftermath of that June 29th event? 

Well here we read that seminal books of essays were given imprimaturs before the huge game changing December release of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Both Sunday Morning Crisis and The Revival of the Liturgy have imprimaturs dating from the summer of 1963, before the second session of Vatican II had even begun. So these essays interpreted Sacrosanctum Concilium before it was eventually promulgated on December 4, 1963, or even fully discussed at the Council. 

These imprimaturs came just post-smoke of Satan, in July and August.  I report, you decide. 

On Parents Who Did Everything Right

Interesting and frank homily from a local priest on the gospel of Zechariah and Elizabeth having their son John the Baptist despite their advanced age: 

“A question I get from parents a million times is, ‘but we did everything right - what happened?’ Or they frame it as, ‘our kids don’t go to Mass..what did we do wrong?” 

When they say they did everything right they add, ‘we sent them to Catholic schools and a Catholic college’ and I’m always tempted to say - but thank God have always resisted - ‘the answer is implicit in what you said...you sent them to Catholic schools’.  

The gospel says Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous, that they did everything right and still he had no child. Ironically, Zechariah only did something wrong after he received the grace of a child, by his doubting of the angel. 

The core of our faith is ‘grace’, a blessing, an unmerited gift. Grace means that not everything we do, whether right or wrong, matters. God has His plans. It was only after Zechariah gave up his plan for his son and accepted God’s plan for John (by writing, ‘his name is John’ instead of after himself) that he got his speech back. 

Back in the day the church only had masses on Sunday. It was decided that we would add the Saturday vigil since many Catholics who worked on Sundays, like taxi drivers and restaurant workers, would be able to therefore attend mass. The expectation was that mass attendance would go up. But it was immediately shown that there was no increase whatsoever, that some people who previously went on Sundays just changed when they went to mass. The church did the right thing but it bore no fruit, and didn’t achieve the intended result. Zechariah was faithful for many decades but still received no child.  

St Paul wrote that he planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God makes it grow.”

Rep. Mike Carey's Constitutional Bah Humbug

Donald Trump is a famously bad judge of character (Fauci, anyone?) and his endorsement of our local congressman was no exception. Mike Carey has moved easily from Ohio swamp creature to D.C. swamp creature with hardly a ripple. 

He promised he'd vote like Jim Jordan but has voted nothing like him on anything besides "naming a post office" votes. 

It all started with the curious case of his Ukraine funding fetish. This would not seem to be a natural fit for an outside, first term congressman. But he came to D.C. with his Raytheon-issued boots on. He came ready to fill the swamp.  

His latest outrage was to vote for the NDAA (national defense act). As he surely knows, warrantless queries, also known as “backdoor searches,” are inconsistent with a free society and violate our Fourth Amendment rights.  

On paper this would seem to be an easy vote since it's bipartisan. Every fair-minded American wants the FISA process limited since it can be used against Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. It's not an economic or social issue where there can be honest disagreement (if not much on the latter). 

By its own admission, the FBI and CIA are less fearful of foreign terrorists than Trump supporters so why should Carey be so protective of backdoor searches given that foreign terrorists are such a benign threat? 

Carey is in a "purple" district, which means presumably he has to take some tough votes. But NDAA, really? Are Democrats and Independents in his district dying to continue jack up the military industrial complex and continue the war on American citizens? 

Whatever blackmail the deep state has on Carey, it certainly appears to be working. 

Pope Pius on Christ & Politics

About a hundred years ago Pope Pius XI wrote of the feast of Christ the King and it feels as if it could’ve been written yesterday. A few excerpts: 

It would be a grave error to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power.  Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them.

If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What we said at the beginning of our pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. "With God and Jesus Christ," we said, "excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."

Our Lord's regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen's duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not by chance that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. 

If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

It is necessary that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to the end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast. For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year - in fact, forever. The church's teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man's nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God's teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.

History, in fact, tells us that in the course of ages these festivals have been instituted one after another according as the needs or the advantage of the people of Christ seemed to demand: as when they needed strength to face a common danger, when they were attacked by insidious heresies, when they needed to be urged to the pious consideration of some mystery of faith or of some divine blessing. Thus in the earliest days of the Christian era, when the people of Christ were suffering cruel persecution, the cult of the martyrs was begun in order, says St. Augustine, "that the feasts of the martyrs might incite men to martyrdom." The liturgical honors paid to confessors, virgins and widows produced wonderful results in an increased zest for virtue, necessary even in times of peace. But more fruitful still were the feasts instituted in honor of the Blessed Virgin. As a result of these men grew not only in their devotion to the Mother of God as an ever-present advocate, but also in their love of her as a mother bequeathed to them by their Redeemer.

When reverence and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament had grown cold, the feast of Corpus Christi was instituted, so that by means of solemn processions and prayer of eight days' duration, men might be brought once more to render public homage to Christ. So, too, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was instituted at a time when men were oppressed by the sad and gloomy severity of Jansenism, which had made their hearts grow cold, and shut them out from the love of God and the hope of salvation.

The feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.

Numerical Significance in the Cancelling of Catholic Masses During Covid

I looked back at my journal during the covid period of ten weeks (ten Sundays) of no public masses. It was about 3/16 to 5/31, or 70 days. 

The suppression of public masses across the world seems an epochal event, something I can't imagine has ever happened in church history. 

So I checked out some of the biblical symbolism of 10 and 70. I found this on a non-Catholic site about the number 10: 

“As 10 represented God’s governmental rule, so does the number 10 represent the rule of mankind but also the Evil One behind man’s government (as we see in the 10 toes of Daniel 2 and in Revelation chapter’s 13 and 17 of the beast with the 10 horns). ...Throughout the Bible horns are representative of strength and great power.  In Revelation 2:10 Jesus tells the church as Smyrna, “The Devil will keep on throwing some of you into prison that you may be fully put to the test, and that you may have tribulation ten days.”

There were also ten plagues on the Egyptians, and exactly ten generations that lived up to the flood of Noah’s day when the flood of God’s judgment came. 

On 70, the Egyptians mourned the death of Joseph for 70 days and the years Israel was in exile in Babylon was 70 years. 

Book Review: Naomi Klein's Latest

The intriguing conceit of the book "Doppelgänger" is how the accident of their same first names, ethnic background, occupations and oppositional political positions led Klein to become obsessed with the “other” Naomi: Naomi Wolf. 

Reading Klein is like a voyeur reading a voyeur and it’s interesting to see the funhouse mirror world that Klein inhabits. But what makes it more interesting is she’s not blind to all of her side’s idiocies.  Her mix of credulity (when it comes to the government and Pharma during Covid) and sophisticated self-awareness makes for a compelling read, such as when she writes: “…when something becomes an issue in [conservative world] it automatically ceases to matter everywhere else. This has happened on so many issues that I sometimes feel as if we are tethered to each other as reverse marionettes…” 

Similarly she makes a cogent point about the dangers of what she calls “progressive-cloaked capitalism”, saying it leads to a “war on meaning”, and that what unites the far left and far right is hyper-individualism.

She sees Leftists who have gone to the dark side as unprincipled grifters, but it’s telling she never mentions someone like a Dr Peter Mccullough or a Glenn Greenwald. Klein prefers to “punch down”. 

It’s interesting to see how seriously she takes her legacy and brand and while she’s hardly alone in that it’s a cautionary tale. It's the story of modern journalism in which what elites think of you is far more important than the truth. She seems crushed by Philip Roth’s tarnished legacy, wondering what hope there is for her if his wealth and contrivances failed to protect him. Perhaps that’s the point and lesson: wealth and herculean efforts at self-salvation fail.

The Leftist tendency towards totalitarianism is reflected in her desire for a monopoly on language. She sees, apparently, no debasement in Leftist use of terms like “racist” or “white nationalist” (and, in fact, invokes them spuriously in the book) but also finds it painful when populists use the Left’s proprietary terms like “fake news” and “othering”. She “others” Bannon in this book while accusing him of appropriating the term. (Apparently only leftists are allowed to be among the “other”.)

Her religious bigotry or ignorance is noticeable also in saying that religious people think faith is a defense against disease when actually religious people believe there is an afterlife, which means they aren’t as deathly afraid of disease as she. 

All that said, she is a fine writer and a better one than her doppelgänger. She is wise in saying that the censorship of covid discussion gave fuel to conspiracy theorists and even faults herself for not questioning the narrative, due to not wanting to be conflated with conspiracy theorists. In other words, the truth is not something to be sought for its own sake but strategically deployed which leads to all sorts of negative second order effects.  

One suspects that without the angst over her reputation and legacy she would be freer to seek veracity in directions that do not align with the world’s opinion and may even occasionally align, heaven forfend, with her doppelgänger’s.