Dizzying Developments

Posted on by charliej373

dizzy

By Charlie Johnston

Late in the colorful baseball career of pitcher Dizzy Dean, a reporter remarked that he wasn’t throwing as hard as he did when he was younger. Dean indignantly responded that he was throwing as hard as he ever did; it just wasn’t getting there as fast.

In normal times, I’m pretty good at turning a vivid phrase. They just pop into my mind as I mentally run along on high, dry ground under sunny, mild skies. When I get a bad cold, suddenly my mind starts mucking through mud. I’m thinking as hard as ever, but the vivid phrases don’t pop. I hate boring prose. This last month, I have had as nasty a cold as ever I have. Finally, yesterday morning, I started to have an appetite again. Then in the afternoon, the clouds cleared off and the ground dried up in my head – and vivid phrases started popping again.

Not to worry…I didn’t have the Coronavirus. As I told my team, I had the Dos Equis virus – the most interesting virus in the world. I don’t always get a virus, but when I do…

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President Trump unveiled a detailed Middle East Peace Plan earlier this week that would give Palestinians their own home state, with twice their current territory and a capitol in East Jerusalem. Astonishingly, as of this writing, 23 nations have endorsed the plan, including Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Of course, one of the entities that has rejected the plan out of hand is the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian leaders will accept no plan that does not wipe Israel off the map and expel all surviving Jews from the Middle East. Even so, this meticulous plan could very well be a game-changer. Arab nations have generally backed the Palestinians since the 60’s, when the failed Arab war of extinction against Israel left so many refugees in the area. They preferred to foment trouble for Israel while refusing repatriation to their own failed countrymen. That so many of the most prominent Arab nations have signed onto this plan sends a signal to the Palestinians that gamesmanship may be over. If they can’t count on Arab support, the Palestinians will have to get serious about peace or find themselves wiped off the Middle Eastern map.

Two other entities that have rejected the plan are Iran and…the Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land area because…Orange Man Bad, I suppose.

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Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary in Los Angeles and a popular Catholic apologist, wants to set up a system to police Catholic laymen on social media, establishing a mandatum to show which sites are approved by the Bishops. There are a host of serious problems with this. I will quickly address just three.

First, under canon law, every baptized Catholic has the right to publicly express his opinion on matters of the faith and current controversies. If he ventures into mystical or theological matters, his Bishop has the right – and sometimes the duty – to correct matters that are contrary to the faith or speculative in a manner that could endanger the faith of others. But a Catholic even has the right to publicly advocate for a dissident interpretation of faith and morals EXCEPT on those matters that are defined. No mandatum can change that. It would be unjust to honorable laymen.

Second, any time you give formal endorsement from a position of authority to a site, you end up sharing in the responsibility for what that site publishes. To give that sort of status to an unsupervised site is a formula for disaster, either intentional or unintentional. I know something about being under obedience. I am neither approved nor condemned by my Bishop – and do not submit anything to the Diocese in advance. I do not pretend to have Diocesan approval and the Diocese does not interfere in my work – except to comment afterward if I have strayed. It has sometimes done that publicly and at other times privately. Only I am responsible for what I write here – and part of that responsibility is to my Bishop, who has authority to make sure I follow the rules under point one above, but does not accept responsibility for mere opinions of mine, even if they are provocative and different than his, provided I respect the boundaries of his authority on faith and morals. Bishop Barron’s proposal would impose responsibility on Bishops for things they do not control. It would be unjust to honorable Bishops.

Third, in a time when few are satisfied with the hierarchy’s response (or lack thereof) to myriad abuse and financial scandals; when many Catholics doubt the hierarchy’s commitment to defending the Magisterium and the Deposit of Faith, setting up a formally approved roster of social media sites is liable to have the opposite effect of what Bishop Barron thinks it will. Everyone can easily determine what the formal position of various Church authorities are by checking their formal sites. Best leave it at that rather than further muddy the waters.

I know many people here take great comfort from the good work Bishop Barron has produced through his Word on Fire Ministries. I particularly am grateful for his orthodox shepherding of the Mundelein Seminary before he was named Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles. Yet I have some serious concerns on some of his pronouncements. First, there is his famous statement that we have a “reasonable hope” that all are saved in the end. He has spent much time trying to explain that, but on the above link to his site, he confirms that that is what he believes. Apokatastasis is the heresy that all men might be saved, denying the eternity of hell. Barron avoids outright heresy by saying that he does not insist that all men actually are saved, but only on the reasonable hope that all men might be. Jesus, on the other hand, insists that there is a hell, that it is eternal, and that it will be well populated. “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” – Luke 13:24

With respect, when I have to choose between what Bishop Barron has to say on the subject or what Jesus Christ has to say, I will stick with Jesus every time.

Again, I appreciate the good and consoling work Bishop Barron does. I just pray that he adds docility to Scriptural and Magisterial teaching to his many virtues.

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I have been working on a strategy for this year’s elections. I believe the over-arching electoral desire for this cycle is a return to some semblance of normalcy. This is complicated by what I also believe is the electorate’s growing rejection of the screamers on the left (and the right) and its rejection of the uncertain trumpets on the right who are always suing for peace with activist ideologues who will only accept victory or destruction.

The biggest complication, though, has been the sudden GOP collapse in the suburbs. Three cycles showed that the collapse is real, however much GOP strategists want to dismiss it. I have thought that with the obvious over-reach on impeachment and Democratic refusal to do anything but attack Pres. Trump, along with fanatical extremism in Virginia on both abortion and gun rights after Democrats took legislative control, the left may well be squandering an opportunity to cement the suburbs into their camp. To avoid wishful thinking, though, I like to wait on hard data that supports my theories – especially in such a volatile and shifting time as this. I now have some hard data.

There was a special election in Texas House Dist. 28 last Tuesday (Jan 28, 2020). It is a suburban district just southwest of Houston. Personally, I had rated it an R+3 district (that is, Republicans have a three-point generic advantage). With the ongoing GOP collapse in the suburbs, this district seemed a perfect target for Democrats to show that their dreams of turning Texas blue are more than just fantasies. Houston suburbs have been the first and fastest to turn left, so this was the logical showplace for Democrats to show their stuff. They went all in. Beto O’Rourke made it his top priority, while Democratic Presidential contenders Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg all came in to endorse Democrat Eliz Markowitz AND funneled over a million dollars into this statehouse race. Republican newcomer Gary Gates won by 16 points, 58% to 42%, double the margin of the previous Republican incumbent.

In an object lesson on the corruption of polls as tools of political advocacy rather than honest snapshots of voter sentiment, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee released a poll two days before this blowout election showing that Markowitz and Gates were statistically tied.

I am confident that the shrieking extremism of the left has caused a lot of buyer’s remorse among suburban Republicans who went Democrat. It is a volatile situation, though, and traditional “safe” methods are not going to win the day. I now have the last piece I need for a proposed generic strategy that will win the day for Republican candidates throughout the country, avoiding the shoals and reefs to gain safe harbor. The Democrats have put themselves in position to suffer a transformative and comprehensive defeat if they don’t correct course. Republicans must navigate with a sure hand, though. I will publish this within a week or two.

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Earlier this month Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin shook up the entire Russian government. Most Western observers interpret this as a move to facilitate Putin holding onto power past 2024, when his current term expires. This may be part of his motive, but I have a contrary view.

When Putin took control, Russia was coming apart at the seams under former Pres. Boris Yeltsin. Job number one for Putin was to establish stability – to ensure that Russia would survive. In a nation under sway of ravenous wolves, the west criticized Putin because he was not a fluffy bunny. Had Yeltsin been succeeded by a fluffy bunny of a leader, that leader would have been deposed within a month and Russia’s collapse would have been epic.

Don’t get me wrong. Russia is a serious competitor with and sometime opponent of the United States. What a shock! Russian interests are not identical to American interests. I think the safest, most predictable way to conduct foreign policy is from the perspective of national interest – and diplomacy is best conducted by candidly understanding and acknowledging a foreign power’s legitimate interests (and what its leaders rationally believe those interests to be) and then finding ways to accentuate mutual interests while de-emphasizing and managing divergent interests.

I frankly think that Putin is the most gifted geo-political thinker in top leadership in the world right now. Nothing he has done has seemed irrational to me when examined in detail. Much of it has been spectacularly deft under deeply trying circumstances.

When analyzing these things, I like to posit various alternative explanations to myself to see which fits best. Putin IS a tough and often brutal man. Not what I would like for my national leader, but kind of a prerequisite for holding post-Soviet Russia together. During the Obama years, when widespread persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa went viral, Russia was the nation that did more to defend those Christians than any other, including the U.S.

What if Putin genuinely loves Russia and is genuinely Christian? Well, being a shrewd man, he would first make sure that the nation could survive. Then, dealing with an unreliable America, he would have to manage the uneasy encounter with both China and Islam, potentially hostile forces right on his border. After having achieved stability and managed border rivalries, he would want to establish sufficient reform to give his fellow Russians and their posterity real hope and prosperity.

I have predicted often that, ultimately, alliance between America and Russia would be indispensable to establishing a new global stability. Right now, Russia is the most useful potential alliance I see for establishing a new balance of power. China is determined to become a hegemonic power. Israel, Japan, Hungary and Poland are noble allies, but lack the raw power to decisively tip the scales toward liberty. Western Europe is a shell, a paper tiger, incapable of defending its own, much less anyone else’s, interests. With Brexit, England has reclaimed its sovereignty. The fact is, though, that if ISIS were to seriously re-constitute itself, the safest place for it to do so would be in Western Europe, including England. Western Europe has already fecklessly facilitated a massive Jihadist invasion into its borders.

For good or ill, restoration of Western Civilization is dependent upon a vigorous alliance between the United States and Russia.

Of course, the satan attacks most violently what he most fears. It is notable to me that the two leaders treated with the most contempt these days are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. There is more here than meets the eye.

 

 

 

 

405 thoughts on “Dizzying Developments”

    3. MAGGIE, That’s fabulous. I’m sending the link over to the White House Contact for Pres Trump, just in case they do not see it, busy as they are. Love to see this running for Congressional campaigns as well as for President. The Dim Pres candidate are now finally formed into a proper circular firing squad, self destructing, by attacking each others nonsense.

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  2. I highly recommend Mark Mallett’s posting today entitled The Great Transition. There is a growing sense that we are on the verge of sudden and horrific changes. He alerts us to be watchful and prepared. jas

    Liked by 7 people

  3. I would like to propose additional and important factors in assessing Islam that have yet not surfaced. It is true that Islam does not have a central authority or leadership. It is also important to recognize that it is not homogenous at all but is composed of a mixture of vastly different and variable nations, cultures, and ethnicities which color and affect their views and in the carrying out of their duty towards jihad. Even acts of terrorism vary. Somalia seems to focus on piracy against Western shipping. Among the nations where Moslems are in the majority, Somalia is not the same as Egypt which is not the same as Pakistan, or Libya or Afghanistan or Jordan, Indonesia, Iraq, Morocco, Turkey, Ethiopia, Yemen, United Arab Republic, Saudi Arabia, areas of the Philippines, the list goes on and on. Also the variety of ways and degrees Sharia law is exercised in the various nations and how they treat Christians and other infidels. In Pakistan for instance, they file a lot of flimsy blasphemy charges and even execute some Christians caught up in that. I would maintain that such a situation would make it more complicated and difficult for such a divided Islam to evolve in any orderly or controlled fashion. I wouldn’t even be able to suggest how to apply these factors but I can see they would have an effect. Just offered as something to take into consideration. jas

    Liked by 3 people

  4. I expect that all of us are seeing dizzying developments in both the world and our own personal lives. Unfortunately, this may be the new normal for quite a while.

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        1. Oh I don’t think so, Patrick. This man’s death has provoked the ire of the Chinese people. Praying as we see how this develops. One article here (Dear Lord! Check out the video at the bottom of this piece.) and another here.

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          1. I don’t think we can be certain of anything out of China, Beckita, and I wouldn’t put foul play passed them, although you have living at your residence an authority on that country.

            Now I assume Dr. Wenliang was a healthy man, and either his exposure to the virus was extensive and repeated or, worst yet, this is a highly virulent pathogen with a high mortality. The latter possibility is, of course, the most troubling. Gordon Chang says estimates of the infection rates and mortality are exponentially worse.

            Recently, reporters trying to undercover what’s going on are missing, and the government has moved back into “deception/denial” mode. And Dr. Wenliang did acquire the wrath of the government when he first spoke out. I won’t put anything past the Chinese.

            Well, we continue to watch with concern but not panic. I’m getting regular briefings from the CDC and Montana via both print and conference calls, and the Public Health nurse and I are reviewing our preparedness should the infection hit close to home.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Of course, China’s government officials lie and deceive, Patrick, and I certainly suspect they’ve been doing so in reporting stats about the virus because saving face before the nation and the international community is ever priority #1 for those officials. Still, I also perceive they walk a certain tightrope in oppressing the people without instigating the kind of revolt that could get out of control for them – it’s the same kind of line they walk in Hong Kong – and in reading that second link I smell the desire for such a revolt rising. Those government officials are watching, weighing everything, strategizing, and acting with caution in these days while, I think, they are fear-ridden on many fronts so they speak with great bravado and employ barbaric human rights’ violations to terrorize the people into submission. We watch… we pray… it’ll be interesting.

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              1. Yeah, they sure did skirt a fine line with Hong Kong. I was waiting for that communist hammer to fall hard, yet it never quite did. Guess it wasn’t quite the right time with the unrelenting protests (praise God!) and the entire world watching. Watching and praying…..

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            1. This report is an isolated one, Maggie. No other news sites are relaying even suspected murder of this doctor and I cannot find any info concerning who owns “City News” – a news source I have never heard of. The only certain thing is that lies and deception abound in China.

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  7. I almost missed this from Marianne Mooney Rhoads
    February 6, 2020 at 7:01 pm from the previous page. https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/02/24/pope-francis-wayward-shepherd/#slide-1
    The article is a “must-read”. It totally explains Pope Francis’s misguided perception of reality.
    “As Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong once noted, Francis could see Communists as merely the victims of Latin American military dictatorship and lovers of the poor and thus more Christian than Christians in decisive respects.”
    … “The head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Argentine bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a close friend and acolyte of the pope, has surrealistically declared the People’s Republic of China the country that best embodies Catholic social teaching in action. “

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    1. Passion,  This is one of the most well written articles I have seen describing the current pontificate.  I double down to pray for the church as it is God’s church and he will send the right saint at the right time.—- Sent from Doug’s Back Pack

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    2. It really does not matter how Francis became “misguided”. He is the head of a Church and should be a pillar of the teachings of Christ. He should not invent new teachings (which he seems to issue via the media and interviews, not by papal papers) when it suits his worldly agenda which I believe will lead us straight to totalitarian control and suppression of faith, all differing opinion, discussion, real sold scientific observations, and anything else that collides with Francis’ world view. Christ said that the poor would always be with us. While we should always do what we can for the least among us (in poverty, illness, war zones, etc), does Francis really think that he can change what Christ said cannot be changed? Francis has embraced the revolutionary theology of Latin American which agrees that religion is the opiate of the people. He also seems to have placed a type of Gaia worship along side that of worship of Christ (given the indigenous worship service we recently saw at the Vatican)….And there is so much more. The recent call for redistribution of wealth via a worldwide tax would lead to further empowerment of the U N, which is most definitely not a Christian organization. Satan has been very cunning. He has attacked and is degrading the Catholic Church. I believe that there is totally deceptive cabal which has carefully been placed over the years, and Francis is not pushing back against it. No, it does not matter how Francis arrived at this place of confusion. It matters that he does not place his faith fully in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As head of the Catholic Church which is presently in an awful turmoil, he is not leading us out of the abyss. He is leading us straight toward it……Francis wishes to force us to do certain things of which he approves as a part of his own politics and cultural views. He wants to remove the choice that Christ gives us as children of God, made in His image. That in itself is a horrible and deadly mistake. I believe that this desire for this type of control is a very serious sin. Of course, only Christ can judge for sure. However, Francis is very, very misguided, to say the least. Yes, he needs prayers.
      ….

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      1. Unfortunately for the RCC and those who hold it in esteem, what you wrote strikes me as true on all counts. I would have added to his list of bad objectives the merger of all religions, specifically to those that do not honor Christ as God’s Son, and Christ’s teachings, such as applying the Golden Rule to all, regardless of their religion or status..

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        1. That last one Jack is actually a tenant of freemasonry where all religions are held in equal esteem.  What that actually does is render all religions irrelevant.  It is the dictator of relativism at work.—- Sent from Doug’s Back Pack

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    1. I wasn’t familiar with her bio, so found a few unique quotes:

      A young student once asked Bakhita: “What would you do, if you were to meet your captors?” She responded:
      “If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today. We must be compassionate.”…

      “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying 2 big suitcases. one of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of Jesus. When I reach heaven I will open the suitcases and say to God”: ‘Eternal Father, now you can judge’ And to St. Peter: ‘Close the door, because I’m staying.’

      Liked by 4 people

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Published by charliej373

Charlie Johnston is a former newspaper editor, radio talk show host and political consultant. From Feb. 11, 2011 to Aug. 21, 2012, he walked 3,200 miles across the country, sleeping in the woods, meeting people and praying as he went. He writes on cultural, global and political issues from an orthodox Catholic perspective. He emphasizes that we find God most surely through the ordinary, doing the little things we should with faith and fidelity. His constant refrain is that, to live real joy, we must acknowledge God, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around us. He lives in the Archdiocese of Denver in the United States.