T -140: The Long And Winding Road – Part I

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Today is the 136th day from the start of what this blog has designated as the Stealth Sex Synod of 2015™. There has been a lot of new information coming out into the public domain recently, directly related to the afore-mentioned synod, so today we take one step back and incorporate this new material into our analysis. Therefore I will try to incorporate this new information into a series of posts, so as not to run long on any one particular sub-topic and to keep the analysis focused.

Just to demonstrate how drastically the EXPLICIT AGENDA of Francis, his hand-picked team of clerics in charge of the Synod, i.e. TeamFrancis and the German Bishops’ Conference leadership who are promoting this AGENDA has changed since Francis called for the Synod on the Family, we go to the very beginning. It needs to be pointed out that at the outset of this process, the “advertized” end result of this bi-synodal process was to be an apostolic exhortation along the lines of an “updated” Familiaris Consortio.

The first that was heard about this Extraordinary Synod of Bishops was in early October 2013, or 6 months after Francis was enthroned. The purpose of convening this Synod was as follows: (see here)

Today, Pope Francis called for an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops that will be held from October 5-18th, 2014 at the Vatican. The synod will reflect on the theme “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of the Evangelization.”

The original problem identified for which the Synod was convened was described as follows:

It is important that the Church move forward together as a community, in reflection and prayer, and decide on common pastoral orientations dealing with the most important aspects of our life together – particularly on the family – under the guidance of the Pope and the bishops. The convening of this Extraordinary Synod is a clear indication of this direction.

The stated goal of the Synod was as follows:

During that meeting, Pope Francis stated that the matter would be discussed with the Council of Cardinals, which took place last week in the Vatican, as well as in the next Synod of Bishop. “A synodal approach should be taken to study this problem.

Just so we are clear, the “study” of this “problem” related to “important aspects of our life together – particularly on the family”. The result of this bi-synodal PROCESS would be a papal document along the lines of an postsynodal apostolic exhortation along the lines of “updated Familiaris Consortio”.

So this is how the process was billed.

Just to demonstrate how “off the radar” was any issue related to changing Catholic doctrine with respect to “objective intrinsic disorders” collectively knows as aberro-sexuality was at this time, here is how Sandro Magister described the interventions at the Secret Synod of 2014: (see here)

Homosexuality was one of the most controversial questions at the recent extraordinary synod on the family, as proven by the vast difference between the paragraph dedicated to it in the final “Relatio” and the three paragraphs of the previous “Relatio” halfway through the discussion.

And what was the basis for this “vast difference”? It was as follows:

But the prehistory of these paragraphs is also indicative. Two of the three synod fathers who had raised this issue during discussions in the assembly – the only ones out of the almost two hundred present – in fact supported their arguments with statements of pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Archbishop of Kuching John Ha Tiong Hock, president of the episcopal conference of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, referred to the passage of the interview with Francis in “La Civiltà Cattolica” in which the pope urges the Church to mature and reformulate its judgments on the understanding that the man of today has of himself – including on the matter of homosexuality, the archbishop specified – with the same willingness for change that it demonstrated in the past in radically changing its judgments on slavery:

And just to demonstrate the impact that these three individuals had on the mid-term Relatio, here is how Magister described it:

The “Relatio post disceptationem,” in the three paragraphs dedicated to homosexuality, revisited and further developed the things said in the assembly by the Malaysian archbishop, by Fr. Spadaro, and by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the third to speak on the issue.

The inferences that one should extract from the above are as follows:

– Since only 3 of the more than 200 participants even raised the issue, the Synod bishops were not prepared to discuss issues relating to changing Catholic teaching regarding aberro-sexuality,

– Francis had to lay the groundwork for these three interventions since there is NO MAGISTERIAL TEACHING in existence that would support the types of changes that TeamFrancis wanted to institute,

– The Synod bishops recognized that the only supporting “theology” that the three interventions had for their position on aberro-sexuality was from interviews given by Francis to the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica,

– This issue was such a “non-issue” that one of the interventions was by the editor of the above mentioned offending magazine, Fr. Antonio Spadaro. It can be assumed that this issue was not even discussed before the Synod since Fr. Spadaro raised it so that it would at least get raised,

– In the case of the Malaysian archbishop, his intervention was made on the basis of a cognizant belief that it was Francis who wanted this change in Catholic moral teaching and the issue only arose after the La Civiltà Cattolica article.

So this was the state of play in October 2014.

And what is the state of play at present?

For this we go to the Edward Pentin article in the National Catholic Register that was reproduced in the previous post titled So It Was The Homo Agenda All Along. (see here) Here are the salient data points from the “one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.”:

The closed-door meeting, masterminded by the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx. ( It) took place just days after the people of Ireland voted in a referendum in support of same-sex “marriage” and on the same day as the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops met in Rome. Some observers did not see the timing as a coincidence. So secret was the meeting that even prominent Jesuits at the Gregorian were completely unaware of it. Cardinal Marx insisted the study day wasn’t secret. But he became irritated when pressed about why it wasn’t advertised, saying he had simply come to Rome in a “private capacity”.

The cardinal is known to be especially eager to reform the Church’s approach to homosexuals. During his Pentecost homily last Sunday, Cardinal Marx called for a “welcoming culture” in the Church for homosexuals, saying it’s “not the differences that count, but what unites us.”

The key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.

Among the featured participants was “included Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer, general secretary of the German bishops’ conference and the leading figure behind the recent reform of German Church labor laws to controversially allow remarried divorcees and homosexual couples to work in Church institutions. A prominent critic of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth), as well as a strong supporter of homosexual clergy and those pushing for reform in the area of sexual ethics, Father Schockenhoff. In 2010, he gave an interview in which he praised the permanence and solidarity shown in some same-sex relationships as “ethically valuable.” He urged that any assessment of homosexual acts “must take a back seat” on the grounds that the faithful are becoming “increasingly distant from the Church’s sexual morality,” which appears “unrealistic and hostile to them.”
Father Schockenhoff has also gone on record saying that moral theology must be “liberated from the natural law”. Another suggestion was that “official Church” should be done away with because of a growing gap between the institutional Church and the Church of the faithful. This is widely seen as code words for understanding the Bible differently from Tradition — and the need for a “reflection on a theology of love.”

By replacing the theology of the body with a “theology of love,” it creates an abstract interpretation that separates sex from procreation, thereby allowing forms of extramarital unions and same-sex attractions based simply on emotions rather than biological reality.

At the meeting, conspicuously failed to mention sin, ended by saying that “further discussion on the future of marriage and family is necessary.

And yet…

(At the meeting, among others was discussed the) “importance of the human sex drive,” and the “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”

“Imagine if the Church accepted homosexual relationships,” said one source speaking on condition of anonymity. “Ultimately, that is what these people want.”

Summa summarum, it should become quite obvious reading the above, how the “advertised” purpose for calling the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops was described in early October 2013 and how it mutated into the present state of affairs.

Initially, the Secret Synod of Bishops were caught off guard by a HIDDEN AGENDA that only emerged after the release of the mid-term Relatio. Since this moment however, the Synod bishops have been so effective in blocking this revolutionary HIDDEN AGENDA of TeamFrancis that the Bishops have forced the TeamFrancis subversives to declare what it is that they are after.

And now that the Catholic bishops are aware what it is that TeamFrancis and the promoters of this HIDDEN AGENDA want to force through the Stealth Sex Synod of 2015, they should be in a much better position to not only resist, but to thwart the entire subversion of Catholic moral teaching by Team Francis and its promoters.

But more on this tomorrow.

T -141: So It Was The Homo Agenda All Along.

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FOR THE RECORD:

Below is an article from the National Catholic Register. (see here) The reason that I am reproducing this article in its entirety is that it adds more data points that strongly confirm two themes that this blog has been pursuing.

The first theme is that the two Synod’s were called due to a HIDDEN AGENDA, a HIDDEN AGENDA that this blog identified as “changing Catholic moral teaching on aberro-sexuality”. Reading the below, it becomes obvious that communion for remarried is just a side issue, as was the billing as a Synod about the family. The side issues were needed to create the impression that the HIDDEN AGENDA encompassed more than just the fraction of the 1% of Catholics who may suffer from any of the “objective intrinsic disorders” that collectively comprise aberro-sexuality. We laid out the case for this in a series of post that culminated in our post titled The Three Paragraphs. (see here)

The second theme that we have been pursuing is that of the Soap Bubble Papacy™. We have demonstrated that the entire Francis Effect at its base, is nothing more than a VIRTUAL REALITY, a media created illusion that Francis is “popular”. This aspect of the Francis Effect was very poignantly summed up by Cardinal Brandmuller when he made the following observation: “It is superficial. Were this a religious movement, the churches would be full”. We illustrated this Soap Bubble Papacy™ in posts such as Searching for the “Illusive Francis Effect” (see here) and A Grand Ole Time Had By All (see here).

When reading the below, please keep the above in mind for context. (with emphasis added)

Confidential Meeting Seeks to Sway Synod to Accept Same-Sex Unions

ROME — A one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.

Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, at the invitation of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, Switzerland and France — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Markus Büchel and Archbishop Georges Pontier.

One of the key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.

Participants also spoke of the need to “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”

One Swiss priest discussed the “importance of the human sex drive,” while another participant, talking about holy Communion for remarried divorcees, asked: “How can we deny it, as though it were a punishment for the people who have failed and found a new partner with whom to start a new life?”

Marco Ansaldo, a reporter for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, who was present at the meeting, said the words seemed “revolutionary, uttered by clergymen.”

French Biblicist and Ratzinger Prize-winner Anne-Marie Pelletier praised the dialogue that took place between theologians and bishops as a “real sign of the times.” According to La Stampa, another Italian daily newspaper, Pelletier said the Church needs to enter into “a dynamic of mutual listening,” in which the magisterium continues to guide consciences, but she believes it can only effectively do so if it “echoes the words of the baptized.” 

The meeting took the “risk of the new, in fidelity with Christ,” she claimed. The article also quoted a participant as saying the synod would be a “failure” if it simply continued to affirm what the Church has always taught.

The closed-door meeting, masterminded by the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx, was first proposed at the annual meeting of the heads of the three bishops’ conferences, held in January in Marseille, France.

The study day took place just days after the people of Ireland voted in a referendum in support of same-sex “marriage” and on the same day as the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops met in Rome. Some observers did not see the timing as a coincidence.

The synod council has been drawing up the instrumentum laboris (working document) for the October synod on the family. Integrated into the document will be the responses of a questionnaire sent to laity around the world. Those responses, particularly from Switzerland and Germany, appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of the Church adapting her teachings to the secular world.

 

Why the Lack of Publicity?

No one would say why the study day was held in confidence. So secret was the meeting that even prominent Jesuits at the Gregorian were completely unaware of it. The Register learned about it when Jean-Marie Guénois leaked the information in a story in Le Figaro.

Speaking to the Register as he left the meeting, Cardinal Marx insisted the study day wasn’t secret. But he became irritated when pressed about why it wasn’t advertised, saying he had simply come to Rome in a “private capacity” and that he had every right to do so. Close to Pope Francis and part of his nine-member council of cardinals, the cardinal is known to be especially eager to reform the Church’s approach to homosexuals. During his Pentecost homily last Sunday, Cardinal Marx called for a “welcoming culture” in the Church for homosexuals, saying it’s “not the differences that count, but what unites us.”

Cardinal Marx is also not alone, among those attending the meeting, in pushing for radical changes to the Church’s life. The head of the Swiss bishops, Bishop Büchel of St. Gallen, has spoken openly in favor of women’s ordination, saying in 2011 that the Church should “pray that the Holy Spirit enables us to read the signs of the times.” Archbishop Pontier, head of the French bishops, is also known to have heterodox leanings.

The meeting’s organizers were unwilling to disclose the names of everyone who took part, but the Register has obtained a full list of participants. They included Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer, general secretary of the German bishops’ conference and the leading figure behind the recent reform of German Church labor laws to controversially allow remarried divorcees and homosexual couples to work in Church institutions.

 

Father Schockenhoff

Among the specialists present was Father Eberhard Schockenhoff, a moral theologian. Some are particularly disturbed about the rise to prominence of Father Schockenhoff, who is understood to be the “mastermind” behind much of the challenge to settled Church teachings among the German episcopate and, by implication, at the synod on the family itself.

A prominent critic of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth), as well as a strong supporter of homosexual clergy and those pushing for reform in the area of sexual ethics, Father Schockenhoff is known to be the leading adviser of German bishops in the run-up to the synod.

In 2010, he gave an interview in which he praised the permanence and solidarity shown in some same-sex relationships as “ethically valuable.” He urged that any assessment of homosexual acts “must take a back seat” on the grounds that the faithful are becoming “increasingly distant from the Church’s sexual morality,” which appears “unrealistic and hostile to them.” The Pope and the bishops should “take this seriously and not dismiss it as laxity,” he said.

Father Schockenhoff has also gone on record saying that moral theology must be “liberated from the natural law” and that conscience should be based on the “life experience of the faithful.”

He has also insisted that the indissolubility of marriage is “not seriously called into question” by admitting remarried divorcees to holy Communion and that the term the “official Church” should be done away with because of a growing gap between the institutional Church and the Church of the faithful.

Also present was Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Sant’Egidio lay community; Jesuit Father Andreas Batlogg, professor of philosophy and theology and chief editor of the liberal periodical Stimmen der Zeit (Voices of the Time); and Salesian Msgr. Markus Graulich, prelate auditor of the tribunal of the Roman Rota — one of very few Curial officials to attend. Some of those participating, such as Msgr. Graulich, took part in the previous synod.

 

Media Participation

Also noted were the large number of media representatives. Journalists from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German broadcasters ZDF and ARD, the Italian daily La Repubblica and French-Catholic media La Croix and I-Media were also present. Their presence was “striking,” said one observer, who predicted they will be used to promote the agenda of the  subject matter under discussion in the weeks leading up to the synod.

Monday’s meeting is just the latest attempt to subtly steer the upcoming synod in a direction opposed by many faithful Catholics. A statement on the study day released by the German bishops’ conference May 26 said there was a “reflection on biblical hermeneutics” — widely seen as code words for understanding the Bible differently from Tradition — and the need for a “reflection on a theology of love.”

This, too, is seen as undermining Church teaching. By replacing the theology of the body with a “theology of love,” it creates an abstract interpretation that separates sex from procreation, thereby allowing forms of extramarital unions and same-sex attractions based simply on emotions rather than biological reality. Gone, say critics, is the Catholic view of marriage, which should be open to procreation.

The statement, which conspicuously failed to mention sin, ended by saying that “further discussion on the future of marriage and family is necessary and possible” and that it would be “enriched by a further, intensive theological reflection.”

This, too, is code for wanting a change in teaching, giving the impression that the doctrine in these areas is open to change. But for the Catholic Church, it is a settled issue.

“Imagine if the Church accepted homosexual relationships,” said one source speaking on condition of anonymity. “Ultimately, that is what these people want.”

I rest my case!

Concluding, somehow I am not shocked,… shocked that the HIDDEN AGENDA of the Secret Synod of Bishops of 2014 and the upcoming Stealth Sex Synod of Bishops of 2015 was and will be all about “changing Catholic moral teaching on aberro-sexuality”.

T -211: Rise of the Machines – “Small Fry” Revisited

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After publishing yesterday’s post titled Who You Calling “Small Fry”?, a friend of this blog who writes under the nome de plume “Foolishness”, left me the following comment:

You can find objective website traffic rankings through alexa.com and if you register, (you can do that for free), you can do site comparisons and they will provide a convenient little graph so you can see how pewsitter,com, Father Z’s blog, and Cruxnow.com compare. :Last i checked Crux is getting more traffic on the web than either, but far less than the solid pro-life LifeSiteNews.com.

So naturally, since this blog is the Catholic blog of a Catholic blogger, who believes in a Catholic God, triumphalist doctrinal certainty, including but not limited to the Eight Commandant and “objective truth”, a follow-up post was in order.  Therefore, not wanting to spend the rest of eternity in … ahammmm, I quickly went to the alexa.com website, registered and pulled up the websites in question to check out if my initial observations were correct.

And low and behold, it appeared as if some of the initial conclusions posted in the Who You Calling “Small Fry”? (see here) were not correct!

Introduction

The part that appeared to be not correct was the assertion that the “offensive NYT/BG” website had lower visitors/page views than either the Pew Sitter website or the Father Z blog.

So I put up the three websites, side by side using the alexa.com functionality and here is the resulting graph:

In the above graph, the numbers are not “visitor” numbers or “page view” numbers, but rather rankings of this site relative to other sites. Alexa.com does not provide visitor data or page view data to the general public. Here is the explanation:

I put up the above in the spirit of full disclosure.

But back to the narrative. From the above graph, it would appear that the following is the case in ranking table form:

1) “Offensive NYT/BG” website -> 

61 345 globally and 15 769 in the US

2) Father Z bolg ->

93 042 globally and 23 187 in the US

3) Pew Sitter ->

312 497 globally and 69 047 in the US

In other words, according to the popularity ranking, i.e. the higher the ranking, the more visited the website, it would appear that the “offensive NYT/BG” website has a much higher visitor rate and a much higher absolute number of page views than either Fr. Z’s blog or Pew Sitter.

Which raise a whole host of questions, which your humble blogger will attempt to answer in the below text.

Questions, questions?

In the previous post, we observed the following:

Here is a table that I mocked up from the screenshots:

What we can easily observe in the above table is that within a span of a day ( actually, it was only a few hours), the Fr. Z  visitors that he directed to the “offensive NYT/BG” website were able of “completely reverse the voting outcome” of the poll at the targeted website.

If the above is correct, i.e. if the “relative popularity” of the “offensive NYT/BG” website is in fact that much greater than the Fr. Z blog (i.e. many more visitors/page views), than how is it possible that the request of Fr.Z for his visitors to go over to the “offensive NYT/BG” website and vote would have had the effect on the order of magnitude that we have observed?

Figuratively speaking, using phraseology one can find in your typical RAP composition, one could say that Fr. Z “owns this “offensive NYT/BG” website like he would own his “female member of the canine family”.

Therefore, what we can clearly identify in the above are issues with the “veracity” of data.

Three issues

From the data above, three issues become readily apparent, issues that need to be addressed.

1) One issue (and a possible explanation) could be a faulty assumption on our part. Under our methodology, we assumed that the behavior patterns of both sets of visitors will be identical. This appeared to be a reasonable assumption at the time.

If this is not the case, the explanation for this different breakdown of poll results between the 18th and 19th of January could be as simple as a difference of the voter profiles between the the visitors to Fr. Z’s blog and the “offensive NYT/BG”website. Or to be more precise, the typical Fr. Z visitor “likes to vote” in website polls while the visitor at the other website “does not”.

However, I find this explanation hard to accept. The subject of the poll was an “emotionally” charged issue, i.e feminization of the Catholic Church. One would expect that both camps, i.e. the Catholics and the Modernists would want to get as favorable a result as possible for their respective positions. Support for this contention is provided by two minor observations, i.e. the issue was so “charged” that it got Fr. Z to ask his visitors to cross over and vote, and 2) the votes cast for the “neither option” (Maybe) was miniscule. In other words, all voters in this poll had an ax to grind. So the “different” voter profile explanation between the two sets of voters can be discarded rather easily.

2) The next explanation that could explain this anomaly is that the majority of visitors on the “offensive NYT/BG” website did not vote. In order to further explain, here is a graph that represents the “relative” popularity of the “offensive NYT/BG” website against its owners, i.e. the NYT website and the Boston Globe website:

What we see in the above graph is that the “offensive NYT/BG” website had a period of “above average” growth between the end of September 2014 and the end of December 2014. A social scientist or a business student would easily recognize the underlying function which depicts the growth stage in a business life-cycle. But what would strike that social scientist or business student as odd, is the time horizon in which this growth phase took place. From the graph above, it would appear that his “offensive NYT/BG” website went through its growth phase in three month, i.e. one quarter. In month 4, the “offensive NYT/BG” website was already in the mature phase of its business life-cycle.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the visitors/page views numbers that are being generated on this website are being generated by… shall we say ” “processes that do not arise from organic growth”. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that the visitors to the “offensive” NYT/BG website that are a part of this “non organic growth” would not care to vote in this poll. More about this in a bit…

3) The third explanation that can be posited here can be seen in the below two screen shots, The first one shows the results after the Fr. Z intervention:

This second one shows the results after three days time from the launch of the poll and two days time after the 1st Intervention from Fr. Z’s visitors:

When comparing these two tables, what we notice is the following: the Fr. Z voters are piling on and pushing the results more in their favor. In this two day time period, the Fr. Z voters were able to take the Yes result from 69.84% up to 75.03%. Please keep in mind that the number of marginal votes needed to move the results by 5% from 75% to 80% is much greater than that needed to move the 5% from 50% to 55%. And this increase in the YES column is being done by stragglers who did not visit Fr. Z’s site on the 18th and whose vote was not part of the original cross over vote. Or to put it another way, this 5+% increase was generated by visitors who clicked into a one day, two day or three day old Fr. Z post. In other, other words, this result is a blow out!

Summa Summarum

Concluding, it would appear as if the initial group of Fr.Z inspired voters that came across and voted, established the distribution of the final poll and that is the way the results stayed.

Furthermore, there was either: 1) no “motivation” for the Modernist camp visitors to the “offensive”NYT/BG website to enter the fray in order to try to change the results or 2) no “new unique” visitors appeared that could participate in the poll and counter the Fr. Z cross over voters.

If the latter is the case, which is highly probable, it would appear as if there is a “set” group of visitors who generate visitor traffic on a daily basis at this “offensive NYT/BG” website. The support for this contention is that once those that could vote in the poll cast there votes on the 18th of January, there were no more unique voters who could participate after the initial round of voting to counter the Fr. Z cross over voting traffic.

Therefore, it is quite obvious that once the original “set”group of voters cast their votes in the beginning of the poll, the overwhelming majority of the remaining voters that cast there votes came across from the Fr.Z blog. This would explain why in the two days from the 19th to the 21st, the results went even further into the Catholic camp than they were after the 1st Intervention by Fr. Z. This could have been caused by straggler visitors to the Fr. Z blog going over in the next two days and casting their vote at in the poll conducted by the “offensive “NYT/BG” HUGE media conglomerate website.

Which brings this blogger back to the “composition of visitor/voter” issue. After the above evidence is examined, it is still highly likely that the original results were accurate, under a slight correction to the definition of our assumption.

From today’s analysis, it would appear that the “offensive NYT/BG” website has approximately ≈2000 legitimate voting visitors for every ≈2900 visitors to Fr. Z’s blog that vote in his polls.

As far as the rest of the traffic to the “offensive” NYT/BG website, hard to say who or what they are.

Could be robots for all we know.

T -212: Who You Calling “Small Fry”?

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Today, or rather yesterday to be more precise, we were 212 days out from the commencement of what this blog has termed the Stealth Sex Synod 0f 2015. (see here) A busy day caused me to miss publishing the “one per day” post that is allotted to your humble blogger by a “higher power”, in this case by the Mrs. Please accept a big Mea Culpa from my side, since I, unlike these two motivated clerics from this Rorate Caeli post (see here), did not meet yesterday’s editor’s deadline.

Right!

Introduction

Getting back to business, today we will tie up the “alternative reality” theme that has been the subject of our analysis over the last few posts and try to gauge the “scale of the forces” that the evil one has deployed on the field of battle in an attempt to slow down the advance of the forces of the Holy Spirit that are presently “restoring all things in Christ”. And that work is progressing nicely. (see here) Or to put it another way, we will try to get behind the “curtain” and get a peek at the Wizard, hence the video at the top of this post.

But before we do that, one side issue needs to be mentioned. Yesterday a Pew poll came out that shows Francis as being “very popular” in these here United States. Upon closer scrutiny, I found a tidbit of information claiming that JPII is still more popular than Francis, giving me a good chuckle. As I see it, for any Modernist who takes heart from this popularity, please keep in mind that JP II is still more popular than Francis, and this is after Francis has been taking the “promotion of material and formal heresy populism” of the last two years to an entirely new and unprecedented level. As to how the popularity of JPII translated into the spiritual and material state of the Roman Catholic Church in the US, this is visible for all to see. So as I sit here reflecting on his “data point”, the conclusion that I draw is the following: Francis’ popularity will not translate into a commensurate level of mayhem and destruction within the church to that brought on by JPII simply because there really isn’t a whole lot left to destroy. To be more precise and frankly speaking, and to use a business expression, the US Catholic church is in “wind down” mode, where the liquidators “administrator bishops” are just disposing of the company church’s fixed (tangible) assets and living off the proceeds. But this is a theme for a different post for a different day.

Gauging Enemy Strength

So let’s get back to today’s theme; the “peek behind the curtain” that I promised. The reason that I picked this subject matter was due to a passage that appeared in the post titled Losing Control of the Narrative – Crucify Him!, (see here) in a citation written by the cleric author over at the… let’s call it the “offensive NYT/BG” website, a website that I shall not name:

PewSitter is small fry. It’s a tempest in a teapot!” you might protest, but what the furor over the PewSitter headline reveals is that American Catholicism is divided as never before. Some conservatives who feel threatened by Pope Francis have retreated into a right-wing, paranoid enclave from which they broadcast panicked videos, sarcastic blog posts, and uber-orthodox traditionalist jeremiads.

Seeing as how this quote was published on the website of the subsidiary of the HUGE New York Times/Boston Globe MEDIA conglomerate, at first glance it would appear to be a reasonable ascertain.

However, after an exchange in the comment box with “Steveesq” of the excellent EX MAGNA SILENTIUM blog (see here) about blog viewership and visitor numbers at the respective websites, i.e. Pew Sitter website and the “offensive NYT/BG” website, I felt that putting some numbers on the above “small fry” ascertain was more than called for.

However, a problem soon became apparent that whereas the Pew Sitter website has a visitors counter, the “offensive NYT/BG”website does not.

Odd, wouldn’t you say?

So in a situation like this, what is a “quantitatively inclined” blogger to do?

But like the old saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way. And the “way” came by way of another blog, this time the Father Z blog. To be more precise, your humble blogger remembered a post about a poll that appeared on the “offensive NYT/BG”website regarding the “femization of the Catholic Church”. Digging through the Fr. Z archives, the post was located (see here), screen shots and all.

However  another problem arose. It would also appear that not only does the “offensive NYT/BG” website not have visitors counters on it’s pages, it also does not have vote counters of how many of its visitors actually vote in their polls. So it was just another issue that needed to be overcome.

But more odd, wouldn’t you say?

It is as if this “offensive NYT/BG” Huge media conglomerate does not want to provide any information as to how HUGE in fact this media conglomerate is?

Or for that matter, IS NOT?

Now this really piqued my interest. So what is a middle-age, highly motivated, quantitatively inclined blogger to do when faced with this type of a situation?

The answer is simple.

A solution MUST be found.

In other words, a methodology had to be found to overcome this hurdle. 🙂

And here it is.

Methodology

Fortunately for this blogger and by extension you dear reader, Fr. Z has many useful “widgets” (functionality) on his blog that allow for the assessment of visitor (readership) numbers for his blog. Among these are a counter of total page views (40,307,036 page views as of this writing) and an archive where one can extrapolate the time period over which this total page views number was achieved.

Using a linear extrapolation  based on these two data points, i.e. total page views (≈40,000,000) divided by number of days since the beginning of the blog (blog started in Jan 2005 ≈ 3650 days) we get a figure of roughly 11,000 average visits per day over the life of the blog.

Before we go further, it needs to be stated that the above figures should not be understood as exact figures, i.e. “the number of page views that Fr. Z is attaining daily. These figures are linear extrapolations, extrapolations that will provide us with an “objective level” for comparison purposes. In other words, the absolute figures are less important, the relative values are the key.

Back to defining our methodology.

Given that we are now able to establish a “figure” that represents an average number of page views (i.e. visitors) on Fr. Z’s blog, the second critical piece of information (data point) that Fr. Z’s blog provides us with is an objective measure (correlation coefficient, if you will) of the number of his visitors relative to the number of visitors of the “offensive NYT/BG” website. Here is how we derived this relative value.

On the 18th of January 2015, the “offensive NYT/BG” website ran the above mentioned poll. Fr. Z in turn re-produced a screen shot of this poll, and asked the visitors of his blog to go over to the “offensive NYT/BG” website and vote. Here is the screenshot:

And here is what Fr. Z wrote:

And here is what the results looked line after the Fr. Z intervention and his visitors gave the “offensive” website a hand:

Yes indeed.

Looks like a “broader base for their poll” provided to the “offensive”website by Fr. Z was able to completely reverse the findings of the poll. What’s more, it was just the ticket that we needed to extrapolate the number of visitors to the “offensive NYT/BG website based on the “functionality” present on Fr. Z’s blog.

Here is a table that I mocked up from the screenshots:

What we can easily observe in the above table is that within a span of a day ( actually, it was only a few hours), the Fr. Z  visitors that he directed to the “offensive NYT/BG” website were able of “completely reverse the voting outcome” of the poll at the targeted website.

Let this sink in for a minute or two.

If you think about it for a minute or two, what should become clearly evident is that we are dealing with two websites whose visitor numbers are of completely different orders of magnitude. When one website can instruct its readers to go to another website and completely “invert” the results of their poll in a matter of hours, if not minutes, it necessarily follows that we are dealing with an initial small sample size at the website doing the poll. But more on this below.

Next, we need to establish the number of visitors that went over from the Fr. Z blog and voted in the “offensive NYT/BG” website. If we can get an idea of this figure, we should be able to extract how may visitors of the “offensive NYT/BG” website voted in the original poll.

This piece of information, i.e. how many visitors could have gone over from Fr. Z’s blog to the targeted website, is also provided to us by another post on Fr.Z blog. If we go to the post from the 17 of February 2015, (see here) we see a poll that Fr. Z ran asking which Eucharistic Prayer his visitors hear when they attend the liturgical service commonly referred to as the Novus Ordo of Paul VI. In this poll, we see that the number of respondents (participants) is ≈2900. Here is the screen shot.

Also notice that Fr. Z provides the voter totals to allow the viewer to get an idea about the veracity of the poll. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the results. And ≈2900 is a nice sample size. But I digress…

Given that we have a firm figure that is representative of the number of voters that Fr. Z can muster in a given 24 hour time period, we can easily make the very safe assumption that this is the number that went over to the “offensive” NYT/BG website and cast their vote at Fr. Z’s request.

And lastly, we are provided with the difference of the distribution of voting between the initial results and the post intervention results, as per above table.

Given these two data points, we can try to solve for the figurative “X” as the old algebraic expression goes. The table below shows my first iteration.

The Results

Here is one “iteration” of “solving for the proverbial X” given the above data points and using 2000 to represent the total number of visitors who voted in the “offensive NYT/BG” website poll before Fr. Z’s intervention:

In the table above, I made the following assumptions:

1. I assumed that the original number of votes cast on the “offensive NYT/BG” website was 2000. I then distributed those votes according to the percentages given in the voting results page before Fr. Z mobilized his visitors to cross over and vote.

2. I then made the assumption that Fr. Z was able to mobilize the same number of visitors to those he had voting in the EP poll, and all those went across to the “offensive NYT/BG” website and votes. (≈2900)

3. The third assumption that I made was that all those voters that came across from Fr. Z’s blog, voted exclusively “YES”

And as far as the results are concerned, the line that should be of interest is the one labeled 1st Iteration. We see that just by adding the 2900 votes to the original totals in the YES column, we obtained a result that is almost an ideal fit in percentage terms to the results of the actual results post the Fr. Z intervention. Once again, here is the relevant cross section of the above table:

So what are the implications of the above table and information?

By far the largest implication is that we have discerned, with a high degree of probability, the number of visitors to the “offensive NYT/BG” website that cast a vote in their poll. That number is roughly approximately 2000 lost… make that very, very lost voting souls.

Now obviously the accuracy of this figure rests on the assumption that it was 2900 votes that went across from the Fr. Z blog to vote. But it looks very very likely that this was in fact the case. It also fits very nicely with the “objective voting totals” from Fr. Z’s other polls (the EP II poll). Furthermore, it would also fit nicely with the implicit assumption that Fr. Z has a steady number of visitors daily to his blog, and that the number of those visitors that then go on to cast votes in his polls is likewise steady. I think that these are very safe assumption to make.

I don’t want to belabor this point since the above is by no mean an exhaustive analysis, however, for the reasons given above, I feel very confident that the above number is very close to the actual number that voted at the “offensive NYT/BG” website, i.e. ≈2000

Given the above extrapolated figure of 2000 voters at the “offensive NYT/BG” website, a further assumption can be made, i.e. that the number of visitors to the website that cast a vote in their polls is roughly the same proportion that visit Fr. Z’s blog ( ≈11 000 page views) and cast a vote in his polls ( ≈2900). If this is the case, than we can solve for the total number of unique visitors to the “offensive NYT/BG” website as follows:

(2000/2900) x 11,000 ≈7586

In other words, it would appear that the “offensive NYT/BG) website has approximately 7586 unique visitors per day. Therefore, the largest number of visitors that can cast a vote on this website which is operated by a subsidiary of the New York Times and the Boston Globe is ≈7586.

Summa Summarum

The reason that your humble blogger went through this process was to ascertain the accuracy of the statement made by the cleric author as cited above. Once again, here is a reminder of the statement in question:

PewSitter is small fry. It’s a tempest in a teapot!” you might protest,

This statement implies that the author cleric should not even be bothering to address the issue of what appears on the Pew Sitter website. He is also making a suggestion that the website that he writes on is much larger in terms of visits and importance. After all, he is writing on a website whose ultimate owner is the “self billed newspaper of record’. So reading the above, one could naturally assume that this “offensive website” would have a much larger readership (unique visitors and page views) than the other website that the cleric author labeled as “small fry”.

Which leaves us with just one more comparison. Here is the screen shot of the Visitor Statistics on the Pew Sitter website as of this writing:

Oh my!

Looks like the visitor levels that the Pew Sitter website attains are at least two and one half that which we extrapolated for the “offensive NYT/BG” owned website.

Hmmmm….

Now this is very, very odd.

And the reason it is very odd is because of this one observation and this one observation alone, namely:

If the above calculations are a true reflection of the daily readership of this website that is owned by the New York Times and Boston Globe HUGE media conglomerate, and if this website is generating the above extrapolated level of traffic, than we are not dealing here with an artificially created “alternative reality” but rather with an entirely different animal; what we are dealing with in this case is nothing short of a…

VIRTUAL REALITY

Let his sink in dear reader.

This is an issue that we will be revisiting in an upcoming post.

But before we sing off, the following question needs to be asked for the record: “who you calling a “small fry”, father?”

On a P.S., isn’t it a good idea to peek behind the curtain every now and then?

T -213: Losing Control of the Narrative – Crucify Him!

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Over the last few days, this blog has tackled the subject matter of “corrupt information” and how this “corrupt information” is used to produce “alternative realities” in the media environment. The relevant point that this blogger tried to make is just how extensive this phenomenon of the “corruption of information” is in the wider media environment, from the financial sector through to the Catholic Church media operations. The example that we analyzed pertained to  “supposedly” objective information vendors such as Reuters, information vendors who “purportedly” supply “objective information” to the financial markets. The point was that even these types of news organizations fall prey to these unscrupulous purveyors of “corrupted information” who write for these services. The two posts, Alternative Realities – Polar Bear Hunting (see here) and And the Walls, Come Tumbling Down (see here) should serve as a good jump off point for today’s subject matter.

Introduction

Before we get to the subject at hand of “crucifying Pew Sitter”, it needs to be stated for the record that this blog post is not addressing the issue of editorial license. I have no problem with any publication that has an “explicit” editorial policy that is either left wing or left leaning or progressive or any other euphemism used to describe any “point of view” that is detached from objective reality. I am all for diversity of opinion, regardless of how detached or even devoid it might be of any “sensibility or reason based underpinnings” . In other words, I am for true and real diversity of opinion. Given the a fore mentioned, I have no problem with these sorts of publications or electronic media venues since I know what to expect when I open the cover or turn to that channel. This concept that I am describing in this paragraph is commonly referred to as “truth in advertising”, and it is an honest policy under which some publications operate. Let’s call this the “explicit editorial line – truth in advertizing” camp.

Now what I do have a problem with, is the “purported” news agencies that have a biased editorial policy that is implicit in the reporting that they produce. Actually, where I have a HUGE problem is with “purported” news agencies that have an obvious editorial bias while claiming that they are “objective” news agencies. And I think most honest people also have a problem with this. A good examples of entities that exhibit this implicit editorial bias are such publications as the New York Times, the Boston Globe and any subsidiary of the a fore mentioned. In the electronic media, perfect examples are the leftist news monopolies of ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/ CNN. With these entities, not only I have a problem, but any honest person who has any semblance of respect for “objective truth” should have one also. And this goes especially for any person who maintains that he is a Christian or Catholic. Let’s call this the “hidden editorial bias-dishonestly advertized” camp.

So now that we have the stage set, let’s get cracking and really crucify Pew Sitter.

Crucify Him!

A couple of days ago, an article appeared written by a cleric that was highly critical of the Pew Sitter website and especially of its editorial policy. (see here)

Now from what I have observed, Pew Sitter would fall squarely in the camp of a news aggregator who has an “explicit” point of view and operates under a “truth in advertizing” editorial line. In other words, the editorial policy of Pew Sitter would squarely fall in the “explicit editorial line – truth in advertizing ” camp.

Now, the publication in which this above mentioned cleric published his screed article against Pew Sitter, appeared in a publication that would not fall into either the “explicit editorial policy or the “truth in advertizing” camp, but rather into the “hidden editorial bias-dishonestly advertized” camp. And this is a perfectly supportable assumption since said publication is a subsidiary of the New York Times – Boston Glove corporate entity.

I think we can all agree on this one.

As to the offending article, here is the passage that this humble blogger finds most relevant:

“PewSitter is small fry. It’s a tempest in a teapot!” you might protest, but what the furor over the PewSitter headline reveals is that American Catholicism is divided as never before. Some conservatives who feel threatened by Pope Francis have retreated into a right-wing, paranoid enclave from which they broadcast panicked videos, sarcastic blog posts, and uber-orthodox traditionalist jeremiads.

Notice the appeal to emotion, i.e. “Paranoid enclave, right wing, feels threatened, broadcasting paranoid videos, and uber-orthodox traditional jerimiads. No rational argument what so ever. Without formally listing all the logical fallacies contained in this paragraph, (for reference please see the side bar Logical Fallacies list) it is important to notice the following:

If Pew Sitter is such a “small fry”, why is this subsidiary of a HUGE media conglomerate and the its contributors so interested with what appears on its website?

Next question, if the Pew Sitter is such a “small fry”, how can any “sample of the population that visit its website and read its headlines” reveal anything of value about the wider “American Catholicism”?

I will leave these two obvious questions open for now, but they will need to be addressed.

A further question that needs to be posed here is this: If Pew Sitter is such a “small- fry” what is behind the urgent need to “Crucify Him”!

Controlling the Narrative

Which leads to another article that appeared today on the Deadline Hollywood website regarding another “tempest in the teapot” that is being waged against Bill O’Reilly by mainstream leftist propagandists “journalists” at present. For those not familiar with the story, Bill O’Reilly and Fox News are coming under attack for news reports that O’Reilly produced in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s while at CBS.

It would appear that this scrutiny is the result of the Brian Williams affair at NBC News. (see here) The skinny is that due to one of the main leftist mainstream news anchors being completely compromised by false statements that he made repeatedly and recently, one Brian Williams, the leftist media establishment has taken it upon themselves to change the narrative, attacking the most highly watched news anchor in the cable industry, Fox New’s Bill O’Reilly.

Without getting into too many details, it appears that the “leftist media tempest in a tea pot” has been a complete and utter disaster. How do we know this? Well, since the launch of the attacks on the credibility of O’Reilly, his rating and viewership have soared. (see here) Here is the relevant text:

O’Reilly’s ratings appears to be inversely related to the pelting he’s undergone about claims he made regarding his involvement covering major news events in the past.

So why am I bringing the situation with Mr. O’Reilly into the picture, you may ask dear reader?

The answer is quite simple.

If you recall, there was a rather large scandal exposed by the Daily Caller in 2009 and 2010 that was commonly known as the JournoList scandal. (see here) In this scandal, up to 400 leftist “left leaning” journalists “conspired” in an attempt to “control” the wider mainstream media narrative during the 2008 presidential election. The conspirators even went as far as trying to get the federal government to shut down one of their main competitors, i.e. Fox News. Now, the JournoList members came from exactly these same types of organizations as the New York Times and Boston Globe.

Therefore, is it really that farfetched to suspect that maybe the editors of the New York Times/Boston Globe subsidiary are engaged in this same type of operation in the narrower Catholic Church “news space” that is the target market of their subsidiary publication?

Now, I can’t say for certain, but the above “assumption” about the true intent behind the cleric’s article would definitely go a long way to provide the answers to the two question posed above. Just a reminder, the two questions are:

If Pew Sitter is such a “small fry”, why is this subsidiary of a HUGE media conglomerate and the its contributors so obsessed with what appears on its website?

Next question, if the Pew Sitter is such a “small fry”, how can any “sample of the population that is reading its headlines” reveal anything of value about the wider “American Catholicism”?

And if the above is the case, then it would also go a long way in answering this bizarre “suggestion” that was posed by the cleric author in his last sentence of the below cited paragraph, namely:

Not content to pillory the pope and mock the “FrancisChurch,” the editors at PewSitter dish their scorn on fellow conservative Catholics who dare to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt. For many, their cruel and ignorant headline on Willy Herteleer’s burial is the last straw.

Pro Multis?

Where have I heard that one before? But I digress…

So let’s wrap this up since this post is running long.

Summa Summarum

From this last sentence, I would suggest that maybe the side that is a “Paranoid enclave, right left wing, feels threatened, broadcasting paranoid videos articles, and uber-orthodox traditional “pseudo moderate” jerimiads” is the side represented by this cleric.

Come to think, a ton of money must have went into the creation and keeping afloat of this New York Times/Boston Globe subsidiary. One can also easily make the assumption that if this type of a “news” organization feels threatened by a website like Pew Sitter, it does not bode well for its investors. But I digress…

But the above still does not provide a comprehensive answer to the two questions posed above. The essence of the questions pertains to why a large news conglomerate feels the the need to “go after” a small website like Pew Sitter. For that matter, why does a large media operator like Fr. Rosica need to go after an independent blogger like Vox Cantoris?

The answer to both this occurrences might just lie in what the Radical Catholic observed in his highly prescient post titled On PewSitter, Priests and Catholic Divisiveness: (see here)

The reason why the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are to be rejected as applying to groups within the Catholic Church is the very same reason why those who defend the Catholic faith must take such a clear and uncompromising position. There is a spectrum of political positions, but there is no spectrum of truth. A proposition is either true or false, a conclusion either correct or incorrect. Either you accept it or you do not. If Fr. Longenecker can’t see that the motivation of faithful Catholics is comprised of something far nobler than “tribalism” or “partisan bickering,” I’m afraid he’s missed the point entirely. We do not take this position simply to counteract the progressive forces in the Church. We take this position because our faith and our fidelity to Christ’s Church demand it.

The most likely answer to the above two questions is in the fact that the “alternative realities” created by these “purported” news organizations, are by definition based on “corrupted information”, cannot coexist with “objective reality”, i.e. with the TRUTH. And when any of these organizations who “create and promote” these “alternative realities” are confronted with “objective reality”, whether by Vox Cantoris or by the editorial staff at Pew Sitter, their only recourse is to react emotionally and violently. We see this phenomenon in the “brutal and violent” Francis Christmas message to the Curia, the Fr. Rosica legal action against Vox Cantoris and now we are seeing this same mechanism in play with the NYT/Boston Globe’s subsidiary against Pew Sitter.

Which brings to mind a verse from Matthew 7:26-29 that succinctly sums up the above situation that Francis the bishop of Rome, Fr. Rosica and the NYT/BG published cleric find themselves in: (see here – from the Deuy-Reims Bible, the official bible of the Deus Ex Machina blog)

And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof. And it came to pass when Jesus had fully ended these words, the people were in admiration at his doctrine. For he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes and Pharisees.

Couldn’t have summed it up better myself.

On an aside, I found an interesting comment underneath the article, whose subject was the many different variations one can use the “Who am I to judge” line. I would suggest to the cleric the following accentuation:

Not so much WHO am I to judge, but rather Who am I to judge.

Isn’t FrancisChurch fun?

Post Scriptum

I re-used the Hitler finds out about Williams parody since it is so fitting in this case.