one of the worst things someone can do imo is to dress themselves in Catholic piety while displaying nothing but open vindictiveness and malice in their outward conduct

all this does is sow seeds of doubt that maybe the sacramental life of the Church you love to flaunt so much doesn’t actually dispense the grace we think it does

while obviously a false conclusion, many can understandably fall prey to it and God will hold you accountable for those you culpably scandalize

In both cases, Smiley and Lance were willing to go along flirting with Ali (to varying degrees) without any protest because they thought it would advance their political careers. If you are flirting with adult gay men because you think it’s going to land you a job, you know full well what you’re doing and it’s gross. Sorry but even at 15, I would have never sent nudes to an adult gay man. There’s something wrong there.

Both of them also have in common that they remained in contact with Ali for years after the fact, well into adulthood. Why was Smiley asking Ali if he would be at AFPAC or Atlanta Stop the Steal? Why is Lance inviting Ali to after parties at a bar in Fort Worth after CPAC in 2021? Why is he playing “let’s make a deal” with Ali as recently as December?

In both cases it was also gross for Ali to flirt with or solicit pictures from teenage boys. It goes without saying that as an adult you shouldn’t be gay and you also shouldn’t be engaging in quid pro quo with teenagers. And an adult has more responsibility than a teenager. That behavior is wrong, obviously.

Now the poor decisions of accuser and accused— opportunists on both sides are being used by the ultimate dirtbag Milo to try to impugn my reputation in this ongoing vendetta against me. If Lance or Smiley or Milo or anybody had these concerns about predation, they surely wouldn’t have waited years to come forward with their evidence.

For outside observers this is about ethical conduct but for the actors involved, it’s all about politics.

NJFG4L (again)

given some recent discussion on twitter about Catholicism and race, I’m once again forwarding this PDF of Fr. Bonaventura Hinwood’s treatise which, in my opinion, offers the most reasonable, comprehensive and theologically sound Catholic approaches to this issue to date

from the standpoint of man, law exists in order to foster and delimit the just pursuit of human perfection; from the standpoint of God, His law and our perfection are simply indistinguishable

what people fail to realize about political incrementalism is that the leap from being a liberal to being a “right wing” populist is much, much smaller than the leap from being a right wing populist to being, say, a Catholic reactionary (for lack of a better term)

in the former case, the difference is almost entirely a matter of degree or minor modification

in the latter case, foundational building blocks of your world view have to be entirely overhauled and rebuilt from the ground up before you can even start knowing how to think like a Catholic reactionary, let alone become one yourself

“a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles”

Pray for Nick!

I got in a bad car accident so probably no show until Monday at least. I’m okay!

the hierarchy of being is measured by the degree to which a thing’s activity is received from within itself

from rocks to animals to men and to angels, perfective activity arises more and more from within their own being

in God, however, being and activity are one, given and received eternally among Three Divine Persons, consubstantial with each other and with the Divinity itself

the Coronation was in many ways beautiful and even otherworldly in some parts, but tainted by the fact that most of the “clergy” involved in the ceremony (down to the “Archbishop” himself) don’t even really believe in about half of what was prayed for in the Coronation liturgical texts

only Catholicism (by virtue of its doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Mystical Body, and the Eucharist) sufficiently terminates the regress of potential answers to the question “what more could God offer of Himself to man?”

one of the most important Christological dogmas is that Jesus is not a human Person, but is a Divine Person with a human nature

the reason for this is that if He were a human Person, then His human nature’s union with Divinity would not be able to be participated in by us in any metaphysically meaningful sense because this would already be occupied by a separate human Personality

instead, precisely because He is a Divine Person with a human nature, that human nature can be participated in by us who also share this nature, for the sake of uniting us all the more intimately with the Divine Person of the Logos Who fashioned our Nature out of the wellspring of His infinite love

it does not honor the sovereignty and majesty of God to deny the Incarnation, it actually has the opposite effect

only a limited, finite God would have His majesty diminished by taking upon human flesh

It is precisely because God is infinite in power and majesty that He can take upon human flesh while still abiding fully in His transcendent splendor

since the State derives its accidental being from the substantial being of human persons, the end of the State must be one with the end of the human person, which is none other than union with God

this is why any non-integralist vision of politics is foundationally absurd

I will (finally) be launching a series on cozy.tv starting May 31st where I’ll be going through the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Faith

For each teaching, I’ll offer deeper explanation, philosophical justification, spiritual implications, and answering stock objections or audience questions pertaining to that teaching

See you there!

cozy.tv/classicaltheist

pope francis is right that the Church cannot go backwards, and that going backwards is not the work of the Spirit, Who always moves the Church forward

but in order for the Church to move forward, She must transcend the zeitgeist of the current secular age, which he doesn’t want to do

to do that, She must look back, and in looking back, properly discern what is truly perennial among Her accumulated treasures so that She can restore and preserve them in order to move forward in fidelity to Christ and to what the right hand of the Lord has planted in His vineyard throughout the ages

the progressive stages of the spiritual life (purgative, illuminative, and unitive) are each reflected in the stages of the Mass itself, whereby sin is forgiven and purged through the penitential rites, knowledge and love of Christ is increased through our meditative participation in the Liturgy of the Word, and a direct non-discursive union with the Lord Himself is achieved through our participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Holy Communion

the finer points of intra-catholic disputes regarding sexuality and marital chastity are best dealt with in seminaries and confessionals, not social media

besides the fact that he’s theologically incorrect about Vatican II, Taylor Marshall’s credibility as a pre-Vatican II traditionalist is undermined by the fact that he conspicuously refuses to touch one of few issues that most decidedly marks the starkest contrast between the Church hierarchy of the past vs the current Church hierarchy, namely, the Church’s relationship to Judaism