The Human Shield Dilemma

I’ve long argued that the Church, and particularly the current pontificate, are derelict in not conducting serious discussions about just war theory and contemporary warfare (including the use of human shields and urban warfare). Failure to address these issues suggests what George Weigel has highlighted: a functional pacificism on the part of some clerics who seem to think nothing is really worth fighting or dying for. I consider it derelict because Catholic public leaders do not have the luxury of neglecting the self-defense of their countries so that some clerics can channel their inner eschatological Isaiahs about beating swords into plowshares.

I recently wrote a short piece (here) on how the Left likes human shields, which they use (and that verb is deliberate) to protect their ideological projects. They use human beings because their priority is their projects; they hope that by putting human shields between them and their projects, their opponents will either relent or cause enough collateral damage to let them score talking points. Either way, they use human beings.

Expect this in conjunction with President-Elect Trump’s promises to deport illegal aliens. Already “sanctuary cities” are suggesting civil disobedience to block such efforts. Those jurisdictions’ leaders should know better than interpose innocent civilians between illegals and law enforcement. It’s called obstruction. Responsible civil officials would tell people to stay out of the way. But could even Diogenes find a responsible official in those places?

I Guess Some Orders Are Going Back

Among Kamala Harris’s staple lines — along with “the significance of the passage of time” and “who doesn’t love a yellow school bus” — was “we’re not going back!” It was usually the refrain to a Kamala psalm on the merits of abortion-on-demand-for-any-reason-through-birth. (Separately, National Review asks whether soon-to-be-unemployed VP Harris is looking for a Planned Parenthood job. See here.)

Today I saw a map of Jesuit provinces in the U.S. We are visual creatures. I knew the Society had long ago folded the New England, New York, and Baltimore Provinces into one “Jesuit East” Province, but seeing it on a map is striking. After 200 years of evangelization, the “renewed” Society of Jesus had “progressed” from three provinces to one, coextensive with the original thirteen colonies of 235 years ago. The “Jesuit East” Province is more or less John Carroll’s original Diocese of Baltimore (not counting the areas beyond the Appalachians). I guess we are going back.

I imagine some still call it “progress.” The Felician Sisters, who were so instrumental in the catechesis and education of the Polish American community, have also “renewed” themselves from eight provinces down to one, with instructions that the last survivor turn out the lights in the retirement home.

What is amazing is the determined refusal to face facts that, as a result of their “renewals,” communities that once flourished (the Jesuits were the largest male order in the Church) have shrunken to shadows of what they once were. In the real world, a management team that managed to winnow the personnel by 2/3rds (back in 1981, there were about 50,000 Jesuits, now they are scratching 15,000) would be fired. Only in the Church do people pretend that suicide missions reflect “the spirit’s working.” We won’t ask which spirit. But we can refer them to 1 Jn 4:1.

Ersatz Religion: Partyism

I’ve maintained that the histrionic reactions to the November 5 election — hysterical crying or weeping, wearing bracelets, tattoos, or Toro-the-Bull nose rings to “identify” those in your tribe, shaving one’s head, and/or the “4B” pledge (no dating, marriage, sex, babies) — is “weird” (to use the word thrown at Vice President-Elect Vance for saying having children is normal and desirable). I’ve also said it’s a cult (a death cult) that fills people’s religion need with an ersatz religion.

Further proof of the latter contention was on display recently in The New York Times. “The Ethicist,” the Gray Lady’s woke Ann Landers, always provides revelatory (and not in a good sense) insight into the workings of the Leftist mind. Dr. Appiah was asked November 22 to adjudicate a dispute likely to occur many times this week: what to do with family members who voted for Donald Trump.

In the specific case, a liberal son is torn. Like his wife, he abhors his mother for having voted for the Orange Man, though he assuages himself that mom moved from a swing to a solidly blue state which minimized her ballot’s impact. Wife and her family are intent on excommunicating mother from the family; son thinks their reaction is “understandable” but, in the end, mom did move to be near grandchildren, she provides valuable childcare, and, well, “she is my mother, after all.”

The “Ethicist” is interesting not just because of the bizarre moral conundrums that weigh on the liberal conscience but the way the columnist resolves them. His answer: Americans don’t like discrimination, e.g., we disapprove of people who oppose interracial marriage. So, to be consistent, shouldn’t we recoil from discrimination based on politics? We can and should register disapproval but not use it as a “cudgel.” And “it helps to remember people are more than the sum of their political views,” so, don’t engage in “partyism.”

Among comments there were those, of course, ready to put mom in the pillory. A few — very few — invoked the primacy of kinship. Most simply observed that (a) voting in a democracy means you can vote for whomever you want and (b) “if politics is the center of your life, you need a better life.”

You really do, because you are worshipping false idols. Jesus warns that families might be divided over Him three against two and two against three (Lk 12:52) and that unless one is ready to forego father and mother, one is unworthy of Him (Mt 19:29). That kind of division is fitting for one’s stance about the Son of God and one’s eternal salvation. It’s not fitting for something like politics. To paraphrase Thomas More to Richard Rich in A Man for All Seasons: “Why Richard, it profit[s] a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Kamala Harris?”

Thanksgiving Turkeys

In the November 25 New York Times, Princeton “bioethicist” Peter Singer opines about Thanksgiving turkeys. Discussing the tradition of the White House turkey, he claims that the first gobbler was presented to Harry Truman for their Thanksgiving table… where he ended up. According to Singer, it was JFK who started the practice of sparing a bird, from which originated the legend of the “presidential pardon.”

Singer uses the story as a segue into how Joe Biden should use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to denounce non-free range turkey breeding, get Americans to understand that modern poultry farming is opposed to “individual birds capable of enjoying their lives” and, ultimately, get people to forego the turkey tradition. He also objects to the typical Thanksgiving bird being the product of artificial insemination, “which, especially for the females, is a procedure they resist” Perhaps turkeys do have a leg up on humans). All this from a man who, in his philosophical musings, says whether you rescue a human baby or a baby rat from a house on fire is ultimately an arbitrary choice probably driven by speciesism.

Of course, last week ex-Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin took to social media to denounce Republicans as slayers of children because Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for his cabinet. Kennedy — in leftists’ caricatures — would ban vaccination, leaving a world where kids who didn’t succumb to smallpox would hack their lungs out with whooping cough. Of course, Democrats aren’t called “killers” of children for their absolutist defense of abortion-on-demand-for-any-reason-through-birth or the “right” to render your kid sterile.

First leftists lectured others at the Thanksgiving table about “Thanks-taking” of “unceded lands,” then engaged in performative displays over whom you voted for, using talking points from Planned Parenthood, and now they’ve taken to denouncing the main course. Which suggests that there are more turkeys at the Thanksgiving table than the one that was roasted.

Finally, on the subject of lame duck Thanksgiving turkeys, Joe Biden issued his last Thanksgiving proclamation November 27 (here) in which he scrupulously avoided any mention of God or to whom we are supposed to give thanks. This from the man that rode on the cachet of being America’s second Catholic President. After four years of his incumbency, all I can say is he was Catholic Americans’ disgrace.

Don’t Get Your Christmas Tree Yet

As I asked of readers last year (here), please don’t let Thanksgiving weekend — already reconsecrated to various kinds of “buying” — turn into Christmas tree buying weekend. This weekend should not move seamlessly from gluttony to avarice. Granted, Thanksgiving is very late this year and so the time to Christmas is compressed. But let Advent be Advent, not a “little Christmas,” a “pre-Christmas,” or some anticipation of Christmas. The purpose of Advent is to make Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the beginning of the Christmas season, not its end. Unfortunately, the latter generally happens when we frontload celebration into what should be a time of preparation.

A St. Andrew’s Surprise?

November 30 is the feast of St. Andrew. Given that Andrew brought Peter to Christ, it’s become a day for various kinds of ecumenical gestures and deeds by Pope and Patriarch in the cause of Catholic-Orthodox relations. I point that out because — without any insider information but just considering (a) the noise previously generated; (b) the Pope’s age; and (c) the imminence of 2025 — I would not be totally surprised if there is some attempt to tamper with a “fixed” common Easter as a way of marking the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. If it doesn’t happen in November — not strictly necessary since Catholic and Orthodox Easter actually coincide in 2025 — it could happen next May/June, now that Francis has said he’s going with Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew to Turkiye to mark the Conciliar anniversary. I’ve argued (see here and here) that such an approach ultimately makes no sense, but that’s generally not an impediment to doing things in the current Vatican. Keep an eye open!