Today we continue with the theme that we started in the post titled Fr. Spadaro Wants All To Know That 2+2 Still Equals 5 At The Domus Sanctae Marthae. As we explained in that post, the genesis of this phenomenon, namely, that a member of the “leadership team” of the Francis bishopric of Rome, can make as ridiculous a statement as that, is neither laughable nor accidental. What is most likely the case is that Fr. Spadaro was emitting a signal to the aged neo-Modernists still alive that the post-conciliar revolution is still kicking.
A short digression is in order. If life in fact does imitate art, no better depiction of the Francis’ reign can be found than the farewell tour of the band Spinal Tap in the movie This is Spinal Tap. For those of my loyal readers who recall the movie, the Spadaro quote is very similar in nature to the dialogue between the movie characters Marty Di Bergi, the maker of the “mockumentary” and the band’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel, regarding the loudness dial on the band’s “magic” amp. This dialogue I present in the video above.
The reason that I am bringing this to your attention is that this exchange very succinctly captures the mindset of the TeamFrancis in general and Fr. Spadaro in particular. What is essential to understand is that Fr. Spadaro and Francis, just like Nigel Tufnel do not understand that raising the volume on the “magic” amp to 11 will not in any way affect the “quality” of their product. To be more precise, using the “magic” amp with the 11 volume level setting will not make Spinal Tap any more successful than using the FAILED neo-Modernist “magic” pseudo-philosophical sophisms that produce 2+2=5, in attracting new adherents to Francis’ Junk Theology.
Given the above, today your humble blogger will drill down into the “magical” adjective that has been used in the above paragraphs. The reason being that these two examples, namely expecting to obtain a different (better) result by turning up the sound level by the band Spinal Tap, or suspending the precepts of Natural Law in the case of Francis and the neo-Modernists are both examples of the same underlying phenomenon.
This phenomenon alluded to above is what is known as “Magical Thinking”.
As usual, we begin with a definition. “Magical Thinking” is defined as follows:
In our case, the reason why both Spinal Tap’s and Fr. Spadaro’s “reasoning” fall squarely into the “magical thinking” category is that there is no causal relationship between increasing the volume level to 11 or suspending the precepts of Natural Law and the hoped for increase in new adherents.
With respect to the latter, the magical thinking theory that best explains Fr. Spadaro and Francis is the following:
Bronisław Malinowski‘s Magic, Science and Religion (1954) discusses another type of magical thinking, in which words and sounds are thought to have the ability to directly affect the world.[11]
One negative side effect of magical thinking is the following:
This type of wish fulfillment thinking can result in the avoidance of talking about certain subjects (“speak of the devil and he’ll appear”), the use of euphemisms instead of certain words, or the belief that to know the “true name” of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants, prayers, or mystical phrases will bring about physical changes in the world.
What the above text explains to a very high degree is the post-conciliar penchant for what Louie Verrecchio termed the “pseudosacral homopoetic prose”. Here is how Louie describe the genesis of this phenomenon:
The bishops who authored this sewage (Ed. note: pseudosacral homopoetic prose) are precisely the product of that roguish council (VII) wherein it was deemed expedient for churchmen to focus, not on combating the errors that threaten the citizens of this fallen world redeemed and ruled by Christ the King who reigns victorious over all things, but on entering into consultative dialogue with every miscreant that inhabits the fairytale land they invented wherein “all things should be related to man as its center and crown.” (cf Gaudium et Spes)
Notice the reference to “magical thinking”.
So the inference from Mr. Verrecchio’s assertion is that post-conciliar NUChurch is a part of the magical thinking camp.
This observation has to be considered an OBJECTIVELY CORRECT assertion.
Which leaves one very important question hanging, and that is this: why is Catholicism, as opposed to the neo-Modernist NUChurch not consigned to the magical thinking category?
The answer to this question comes from a substantive difference theory that states the following:
(Robin) Horton describes this as one of the key dissimilarities between traditional (“traditional” meaning primitive in this case) thought and Western science. He suggests that the scientific worldview is distinguished from a magical one by the scientific method and by skepticism, requiring the falsifiability of any scientific hypothesis.
And here, Horton nails the difference between magical though and critical thought.
He could just as easily be speaking about the dissimilarities between Francis’ post-conciliar NUChurch and Cardinal Burke’s Catholic Church.
We read further:
He notes that for native peoples “there is no developed awareness of alternatives to the established body of theoretical texts.”[29] (Ed note: Protestantism, shall we say?) He notes that all further differences between traditional (“traditional” meaning primitive in this case) and Western thought can be understood as a result of this factor. Because there are no alternatives in societies based on magical thought, a theory does not need to be objectively judged to be valid.
Yet on the Catholic side, the situation is diametrically different.
Just as a reminder of what constitutes “organic growth” within Catholic theology, a definition we painstakingly explained in the post titled Settled Stupidity, reads as follows:
Organic Growth:reconciliation of reason with revelation, of science with faith and of philosophy with theology, SUBJECT TO: that source of our Faith that comes from divine Revelation.
It is specifically because of this above, i.e. that the Catholic FAITH alone, is derived from two sources, that separates Catholicism from other forms of magical thinking. Specifically, the key difference that distinguishes Catholicism from any other formal or informal “religious” belief, Protestantism included, is the fact that a part of the Catholic Faith is:
“as known through “natural light of human reason from the things that are made”.
It is this aspect of Catholicism that is responsible for the INHERENT OBJECTIVITY of Catholicism.
If you dear reader recall, what drove the Patristic Fathers to recognize the objective knowledge of the Greeks and Romans as a part of the knowledge coming from God was as follows:
Christian thinkers, from the beginning, were confronted with the question: How are we to reconcile reason with revelation, science with faith, philosophy with theology? The first apologists possessed no philosophy of their own. They had to deal with a pagan world proud of its literature and its philosophy, ready at any moment to flaunt its inheritance of wisdom in the face of ignorantChristians. The apologists met the situation by a theory that was as audacious as it must have been disconcerting to the pagans. They advanced the explanation that all the wisdom of Plato and the other Greeks was due to the inspiration of the Logos; that it was God’struth, and, therefore, could not be in contradiction with the supernatural revelation contained in the Gospels. It was a hypothesis calculated not only to silence a pagan opponent, but also to work constructively.
Concluding, what stands behind Fr. Spadaro’s statement that 2+2 can equal 5 is the notion that there is no such thing as objective truth, i.e. the Logos.
Since the post-conciliar neo-Modernists have abandoned the REALITY that objective truth exists, they have found themselves in the land of magical thinking.
And the problem with creating a “theology” based on magical thinking is that it doesn’t work.
It is this exact thing that can be read in John Lamont’s Attacks on Thomism when he writes the following text:
Neomodernism, however, on a religious level is a purely negative thesis. As a result it has no attractive force of its own, and ecclesiastical structures that fall into its grip eventually die away – a process now visible all over the world.
And it is this lack of substance (Truth) in Francis’ and Spadaro’s Junk Theology that has made the post-conciliar NUChurch just as successful as the band Spinal Tap and Nigel Tufnel “magic amp” with the volume setting of 11.
First, I do not subscribe to this theory that a country needs to fix the value of its currency to a precious metal such as gold, silver, etc. The study of Economics has progressed to the point where we know that there is a very high degree of correlation between the rate of growth of the monetary aggregates (money supply) and the growth of an economy, as measured by the nation’s Gross National Product. The Monetarists have conclusively proven that if the monetary aggregates do not grow at the rate of the economy, economic growth will be retarded. Vice versa, if the monetary aggregates grow too quickly, inflation will ensue. So monetary growth is directly related to economic growth and cannot be tied to the rate (a random variable) at which precious metals are extracted from the ground.
And second, what is at play here is what is known as the Agenda 21 program. This is the program that intends on making mankind live in a Soviet style gulag system where an elite rule the world, or rather control the access to resources for the entirety of humanity. In other words, the next in line attempt to create utopia. And naturally, the ONE WORLD RELIGION is a part of this agenda.
Needless to say, this will never work for various reasons. One of these reasons is that different countries (cultures) will need to acquire resources at different acquisition rates. And if an “egalitarian” group of elites decides to allocate those resources along a different “algorithm” than those that arise from a free market for the transfer of those resources (goods and services), the entire project will start resembling that which existed in the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse. Or in present day FrancisVenezuela or FrancisCuba.
So as we say here on this blog, another proposed EPIC FRANCISFAIL EXPERIMENT is being proposed by a guy whose track record is less than stellar. What Francis is proposing is to do to the global economy, is what he did to the seminary in Buenos Aires.
As the new year dawns, it seems the current occupant of St. Peter’s Chair will take on a new function which is outside the purview of the office that the Divine Founder of his institution had clearly mandated. Besides being a self proclaimed expert on global warming and a vociferous advocate of societal-wrecking mass immigration, it looks as if “Pope” Francis has entered the realm of global economics specifically, international monetary policy.
In an 18-page document issued through the Vatican’s Office of Justice and Peace, Bergoglio has called for, among other repressive and wealth-destructive measures, the establishment of a “supranational [monetary] authority” to oversee international monetary affairs:
“In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of ‘central world bank’ that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks.”
The paper, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” contends that a world central bank is needed because institutions such as the IMF have failed to “stabilize world finance” and have not effectively regulated “the amount of credit risk taken on by the system.”
Naturally, as one of the planet’s preeminent social justice warriors, Bergoglio claims that if a world central bank is not commissioned, than the gap between rich and poor will be exacerbated even further:
“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid.”
Bergoglioacknowledges that if a central monetary authority is established it will mean a loss of sovereignty and independence among nations, but such “costs” are well worth the overall societal and economic gains:
“Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalized world.”
While the document demonstrates that Bergoglio has not a clue of basic monetary theory, it shows again that the “pope” is a radical socialist who has more in common with the loony ideas of Karl Marx than he does with Roman Catholicism.
The ongoing and deepening financial crisis that Bergoglio seeks to address is not because there has been no global central bank to regulate more effectively the money and credit flow of the various nation states, but the crisis is because of the machinations of central banking. Central banking, through the fraudulent practice of fractional-reserve banking, has been the culprit in almost every financial calamity that has beset the Western world since the institution was first created.
If “Pope” Francis was truly interested in solving the financial crisis and alleviating the income gap between rich and poor, he would call for the abolition of this evil institution and advocate the re-establishment of an honest international monetary order based on gold and silver as money. But, as a good neo-Marxist, Francis is more concerned with the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.
Yet, as sound economic theory has shown, this Leftist ideal is a scam. Redistribution of income never enhances the conditions of the poor but instead enriches the politically-connected elites and impoverishes the middle class.
Unlike what Bergoglio believes and what is taught in nearly all college and university economics classes, wealth can only be created by real savings (the abstention from consumption) and the investment of those savings into the production of capital goods which, in time, creates consumer goods. To foster such an environment, however, there must be a sound monetary order not open to manipulation via inflation and credit expansion by central banks.
As he has been accused by several of his cardinals for espousing heretical views on re-marriage and the reception of the Sacraments, “Pope” Francis’ position on international money and banking matters is equally erroneous. Jorge Bergoglio’s “pontificate” has been an unmitigated disaster plagued by constant scandal so it would be wise of him before it is too late to remember the ominous words of the Founder of the institution he now heads about the grizzly consequences that are in store for those who bring about scandal.
So I take it all you dear readers seen this already.
Pretty stupid thing to say. Yes?
Here is one explanation for why this is stupid: (see here)
If “2+2” can equal “5” in the realm of theology, then it can also equal “9” and “catfish” and “π” and just about anything you want it to. More than a considered belief that there are exceptions to “the rules”, this is an irrational belief that “the rules” are essentially arbitrary and without objective, transcendent basis. And that is #arecipefordisaster.
Once more: is it stupid?
Of course it is. But Fr. Spadaro doesn’t appear to be stupid. Devious, underhanded, slippery, yes. Stupid? No.
So why did he write something this stupid?
Here is my take.
Two things to note. First is the overt, explicit reminder that the post-conciliar NUChurch is not like the old, hermeneutically continued, “medieval”, rational Church that Our Lord founded in Anno Domini 33. The signaling effect of this humble 20 alphabetic and 4 numeric character TWEET has a much deeper meaning. Drilling down into this meaning, one reaches the philosophical strata. If you dear reader recall, John Lamont in his seminal work Attacks on Thomism, appearing on the Rorate Caeli blog, explains this phenomenon: (emphasis added)
Another article of the postconciliar creed has to do with the character of the Thomism that was promoted by popes from Leo XIII to Pius XII. The substantive accusations made against this Thomism are that it unjustifiably limited theology to a particular philosophical system, that theology was forced to conform to it, and that it was not the true thought of St. Thomas
The reasons given for the neo-Modernist’s rejection of Thomism was because:
These claims play a subordinate role in the criticism of preconciliar Thomism, whose main thrust lies in accusations that Thomism was ‘abstract’, ‘rationalist’, ‘ahistorical’, ‘arid’, ‘frozen’, ‘immobile’, ‘obsessed’, ‘encouraging pure secularity’, ‘sclerotically hardened and furred theologically, spiritually and ecclesially’, ‘causing a rupture between theology and life’, a ‘wax mask’, a ‘straightjacket’ that ‘reduced theological speculation to sterility’.
Hmmm…. Sounds a lot like this here. On an aside, your personal message from Francis can be found here. But I digress… Back to the story.
Just like 2+2=4 is ‘abstract’, ‘rationalist’, ‘ahistorical’, ‘arid’, ‘frozen’, ….
Moving on, here is John Lamont’s take:
Thomism made an easy target for this propaganda, just because it is a highly developed philosophy. Any advanced field of study, such as philosophy, mathematics, or physics, can be convincingly portrayed as ‘arid’ and ‘rigid’. For most people’s tastes, this portrayal will often be true. Precise and rigorous subjects inevitably have arid components.
Yet:
Because it deals with fundamental questions whose answers are true always and everywhere, philosophy will be ‘ahistorical’ and ‘immutable’. It will not meet the desires and expectations of individuals or societies, because these desires and expectations are never geared towards subtle and difficult concepts. It will meet their needs – if it is true.But a demonstration of philosophical truth is a feeble counter to propaganda.
While:
Neomodernism, however, on a religious level is a purely negative thesis. As a result it has no attractive force of its own, and ecclesiastical structures that fall into its grip eventually die away – a process now visible all over the world.
Which:
This is one thing that on the natural level permitted the survival of Thomism, despite the drastic measures taken to uproot it from the Church; unlike neomodernism, it has something positive and substantial to say. Moreover, what it has to say is actually true. This is in no way a guarantee of broad success, but it ensures the continued existence of Thomism in the small constituency of good scholars who are concerned with the truth and in a position to discover it.
And Mr. Lamont concludes this seminal essay with the following:
Whether it will expand much beyond this constituency in the future is unknown, but there is no doubt that its (Thomism) future shows more promise than that of neomodernism.
Well the good news is that Thomism is reasserting itself as the ONE TRUE PHILOSOPHICAL base for Catholicism once again. Its main promoters are the Society of St. Pius X (see here and here), its break away communities like the Fraternity of St. Peter, Institute of the Good Shepherd, etc., the rejuvenating Dominican Order (see here and here), and large swaths of the wider Catholic Church (see here).
As for Fr. Spadaro’s tweet, what it signals is that the revolutionary soviet encamped on the 4th floor of the Domus Sanctae Marthae are not too happy with this development.
Now on to the second issue.
The second issue has to do with the numbers themselves. In Fr. Spadaro’s tweet, we observe a numerical example as opposed to a anecdotal example. Assuming that an anecdotal example would have been much easier to “get past the gullible” twitterati than a mathematical one, it needs to be inferred that it was the numeric characters themselves that were the main point of interest for Fr. Spadaro.
Furthermore, what we are no doubt observing here is an attempt at promoting the logical fallacy of the undistributed middle. For those who might have forgotten, the undistributed middle occurs when “two separate categories are said to be connected because they share a common property”. In Fr. Spadaro’s false construction, the undistributed middle is: Theology.
So how does this work, you may ask?
For the answer, we need to explain the undistributed middle fallacy in this instance. What is most likely at work is that Fr. Spadaro intended to imply that all of “theology” is outside of mathematical logic. Notice the phrasing:
IF: 2+2 in #Theology can make 5.
AND: Theology “has to do with God”
THEN: Everything having to do with “theology” is outside of the laws of mathematics.
In other words, “theology” is outside the natural order and the Natural Law itself, by inference.
This is what on this blog is known as the “theological ghetto”.
Back to Lamont. What we are in fact seeing is a restatement of the neo-Modernist rejection of Aristotelian Truth, namely:
… reviving the philosopher Maurice Blondel’s rejection of the traditional definition of truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’) in favour of an account of truth as bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’).
And since we have come to the point of “into line with LIFE”, a sine qua non of any neo-Modernist ideology, here is the last part of Fr. Spadaro’s tweet:
“Because it has to do with God and the real life of people.”
What Fr. Spadaro is in fact doing is restating the neo-Modernist base ideology with his 125 character tweet, and it is as follows:
What they (neo-Modernists) did explicitly assert was that the truth of past dogmatic pronouncements does not consist in their being an accurate description of reality, and that a theology that was not relevant to the present day (‘actuel’) was untrue.
Got that!
So now we can go on to the numbers and the undistributed middle fallacy.
The implication that Fr. Spadaro wants to leave in the public domain is that since Theology is about God and 2+2 can make 5 in Theology, therefore you cannot OBJECTIVELY MEASURE anything having to do with Theology since is comes from God. And only that “theology” that is “relevant to the present day”, that comes from God – who can make 2+2=5 “is true”.
Which leave one question to be asked and that is this:
what other area of “theology” presently is presently considered ripe for measurement?
Could it be something to do with the seminaries?
Why seminaries you ask dear reader?
Well it just so happens that it is the state of the seminaries that will be the key to the next conclave. According to our “signaling agent” Andrea Gagliarducci at the MondayVatican blog, this is the information that he has received. In a recent post, titled Seminaries: Key To The Next Conclave, we can read the following:
What will be the leading themes of the next Conclave? This question has been circulating for some time in Rome, …
And then we go on to read:
All of those involved in these conversations give a unanimous response: the next election will be about the seminaries.
So far so good.
Furthermore:
The future of the Church is being played out in the field of priestly formation.Vocations, the way that local bishops will manage them, the education of priests and the way this education influences their work with the flock will all be crucial. But also crucial will be the number of seminarians in the future,as proof of how many vocations the new emphasis on pastoral care is able to produce.
Concluding, the decision maker class behind the Sacred Vatican Walls are planning an agenda for the future pontificate. They need to do this since they sense that this one is in its twilight.
No matter how many qualifiers appear which attempt to defuse this observation, this is the objective reality behind the Sacred Vatican Walls.
If we assume that this information comes from Andre Gagliarducci’s sources, which we must, and that he put a passage into his post of this nature, a passage highly critical of a sitting pontiff, it would mean that this sources are not to worried about this information getting out into to public domain.
On the other hand, Francis and his revolutionary soviet are sensing that numbers do in fact count. Therefore, they are going to the tried and tested neo-Modernist well of logical fallacies and faulty syntax to try and remind everyone that there is no such thing as OBJECTIVE TRUTH. And even if there is, it doesn’t matter since the only thing that matters is “accompaniment”.
Which leaves the following question open: will the College of Cardinals and other prelates in positions of decision making authority buy it again.
But just in case, Fr. Spadaro want’s to let everyone know that 2+2 is still equal to 5 on the 4th Floor of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
Would you believe me if I told you that this is what a NARRATIVE looks like?
Your humble blogger recently has been spending a great deal of time on the subject of NARRATIVES. This was done in order to gain insights as to what is in fact transpiring within the post-conciliar church.
One way to understand the mess that is the Francis “bishopric of Rome” is to view it as a conflict between two NARRATIVES. One NARRATIVE can be defined as the Universal Magisterium of the Catholic Church while the other NARRATIVE can be defined as the “magisterium of Francis”. Needless to say, these two NARRATIVES are are not compatible in that one of these NARRATIVES can be reconciled with the Classical Laws of Rational Though, namely identity (ID), non-contradiction (NC), excludedmiddle (EM), while the other one CANNOT. And it is the dissonance between these two battling NARRATIVES that we are seeing playing itself out before our very eyes.
So in order to help you dear reader understand what is in fact the OBJECTIVE REALITY behind the Sacred Vatican Walls, your humble blogger has been writing a lot about NARRATIVES recently. Yet up till now, I have not gone into what constitutes a NARRATIVE. So below, I will do just that.
Below is a republication of a rather long post from the Epsilon Theory blog. The title of the post is The Narrative Machine. Even though it is long, I STRONGLY suggest taking the time to read it and to try and comprehend the information that it contains. This post illustrates (explains) what a NARRATIVE looks like. In other words, this post provides a VISUAL DEPICTION of a NARRATIVE, in three dimensions!
The NARRATIVE described below comes from the ECONOMIC sub-set of the Visibilium Omnium, et Invisibilium. Yet as we know from the LEX ARMATICUS, since this sort of PHENOMENON exists in that particular sub-set of human activity, it can be assumed with an extraordinarily high level of certainty that it exists in the other sub-sets, such as the POLITICAL or the ECCLESIATICAL.
The EVENTS that are used as the basis of this post are the events that transpired around BREXIT. Yet through the LEX ARMATICUS, we can infer that this post could have just as easily been written based on the EVENTS around the promulgation of the Amoris Laetitia (“Joy of Sex”).
As to the wider PROCESS in the sub-set that is of interest us, i.e. the ECCLESIASTICAL one, we have been observing a PROCESS taking place behind the Sacred Vatican Walls whereby the infrastructure has been put in place in order to construct such NARRATIVES(NARRATIVE MACHINES). Here and Here is background information from the MondayVatican website. And from the looks of it, this is all that there “is” with respect to the wider Curia reforms of Francis.
I end here and will not post anything more until Monday so as to give you, dear readers the needed time to go through and digest the material in the above links and below.
I will also comment inside the text to provide the ECCLESIASTICALCONTEXT to the various paragraphs. I have also rearranged the order of the original post so as to get to the subject matter quickly. The rest you dear reader can read in the original post.
So here we go… (with emphasis and comments added)
**********
The Narrative Machine
Every successful institution, from a marriage to a superhero to a firm to a nation, needs an origin story.
The origin story of arguably the most successful hedge fund institution of the modern world – Bridgewater Associates – is that of Ray Dalio, working out of a small New York apartment in 1975 and publishing a newsletter of “Daily Observations.” The newsletter came first, not the hedge fund, and it was the compelling strength of Dalio’s writings about markets and what he would later term “the Economic Machine” that convinced a few institutional investors to give him some actual capital to invest. The rest, as they say, is history. (NB: In our case, Our Lord founded His Church on the 12 Apostles and gave them the Great Commission)
In 1975, Dalio struck just the right chord at just the right time with his metaphor of an Economic Machine – the idea that macroeconomic reality across time and place could be understood as a cybernetic system, with rules and principles and behaviors stemming from those rules and principles (essentially, lots and lots of if-then statements and recursive loops, with observable inputs from real-world economic fundamentals). As importantly as being an effective communicator, Dalio was actually right. Bridgewater has translated the metaphor of the Economic Machine into actionable investments for 40 years, with a track record that speaks for itself. (NB: Analogous to the Patristic Fathers and the rise of the early Scholastics, putting in place the structure – both physical and philosophical, of the Institutional Church.)
Today I want to propose a new metaphor for the world as it is – a Narrative Machine – where macroeconomic reality is still understood as a cybernetic system, but where the translation of “reality” (all of those economic fundamentals and if-then statements of the Economic Machine) into actual human behaviors and actual investment outcomes takes place within a larger Machine of strategic communication and game playing. (NB: Analogous to the Universal Magisterium, i.e. Economic Machine and the “francis magisterium” – a false NARRATIVE MACHINE)
The Narrative Machine isn’t a rejection of the Economic Machine (in our case it is, and that is exactly the problem), any more than the theory of relativity rejects Newton’s Laws of Motion. (in our case, Francis rejects the laws of thought) In most places and most times, good old Newtonian physics is all you need to understand the world and take actions to succeed in that world. But there are times and places, like when you’re traveling near the speed of light, where Newtonian physics doesn’t work very well and you need a broader theory – Einsteinian physics – to understand the world and take actions to succeed in that world. A policy-controlled market, like we had in the 1930s and we have again today, is the investment equivalent of traveling near the speed of light. The Economic Machine theory – by which I mean any approach to investing that focuses on tangible macroeconomic fundamentals – just doesn’t work very well in a policy-controlled market. We need an extension of the Economic Machine to succeed in this time and this place, just like the theory of relativity extends Newtonian physics, and that’s what I think the Narrative Machine provides. (NB: In our case, the post-VII Junk Theology created the crisis, just like bad monetary policy in the 1930 created that crisis and housing market regulations created the Lehman crisis.)
Unless you’re an Aristotle or an Einstein, advancement and extension of theory doesn’t just happen by sitting in a room and thinking it up. You need new data. You need better data. You need a new way of looking at the data. (you need empirical data on which to base any actions and the Catholic prelates are finally figuring this out.) Kepler’s idea of elliptical orbits to advance and extend the Copernican theory of a heliocentric solar system couldn’t happen without the new astronomical data provided by Tycho Brahe’s observatory. For a negative example, I think the advancement of germ theory was set back by at least a century because Van Leeuwenhoek refused to share his new technology for looking at microscopic data. But at least astronomy and microbiology have something tangible to look at and measure. How do we SEE the Narrative Machine? How do we observe an invisible network of social interaction? How do we touch the intangible?
For my entire professional career, dating back to my first days as a graduate student and spanning three different vocations and three decades, I’ve been wrestling with that question. I think I caught a small piece of the puzzle with my dissertation and the book that came out of that (Getting to War), and I think that I’ve painted around the edges of the puzzle over the past three years with Epsilon Theory. I was pretty sure that the Narrative Machine was observable if the right Big Data technology could be applied (in the lingo, contextual analysis of affect, meaning, and network connectivity across large pools of unstructured text), but I’ve been involved with Big Data way before anyone called it Big Data, and every time someone claimed to have a solution to this problem it turned out to be far less than meets the eye. On that note, if you enjoy a little dose of schadenfreude (and really, who doesn’t?) do a quick search on Microsoft’s acquisition of Fast Search or, even more shivering, Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy, two companies that claimed solutions here. So it was with some trepidation and certainly a healthy skepticism that I started working with Quid, a private company based in San Francisco that has developed a technology for network visualization of unstructured texts.
I think Quid is onto something, in large part because they’re not trying to answer directly the questions I’m asking. Instead, I think they’ve developed a novel process for seeing the invisible world of contextual connections and networks – something analogous to Van Leeuwenhoek’s novel process for seeing the invisible world of microbes – and I’m using their “microscope” to do my own research and answer my own questions. I like that Quid is a tool provider, not a solution provider, so that the analysis here, for better or worse, is my own. On the next few pages I’ll provide an example of some of the research I’m currently doing with the Quid microscope, and I hope it will give you a sense of why I think that we’re getting glimpses of the Narrative Machine with this new instrument.
I’ve written at some length about Brexit (Amoris Laetitia) and the Narrative that emerged in its immediate aftermath, a Narrative that not only stopped the immediate sell-off in global risk assets in its tracks, but actually reversed the market decline and drove financial asset prices to new highs. To recap, I called Brexit a Bear Stearns (2007 crisis that was a precursor to the 2008 Lehman crisis) event rather than a Lehman event, predicting that creators of Common Knowledge(what game theory calls Missionaries) would successfully characterize the event as an idiosyncratic fluke rather than a systemic risk, exactly as the collapse of Bear Stearns was portrayed in the spring of 2008. In other words, Brexit was NOT a Humpty Dumpty moment, where all the Fed’s horses and all the Fed’s men couldn’t put the egg shell back together again. (NB: Here AL is the NOT the Humpty Dumpty moment, but can lead to the larger catastrophe if not corrected.)
Now I have lots of anecdotal evidence of the sort of Narrative creation that I’m hypothesizing here. One of my favorites is a July 13th Financial Times article titled “Anger at JP Morgan’s ‘Unhelpful’ Brexit Warnings”, where “Senior bankers in London are growing frustrated with JP Morgan Chase’s public warnings that it may cut thousands of jobs in the UK, saying such remarks send an unhelpfully negative message.” (Think – Dubia) Or if I may paraphrase, “The UK government is angry at JP Morgan for not lying about Brexit like they were told to do.” I’ve got a hundred examples like this, examples of a concerted effort by every status quo government and media opinion leader to paint the Brexit vote as a one-off crazy mistake ( Haven’t seen a Dubia in 1000 years!) that will probably be reversed and certainly won’t be repeated anywhere else in Europe. But the plural of anecdote is not data, and until now I haven’t an effective instrument to see whether the media data supports what I think is happening.
On the left is a Quid visualization of the clusters and network relationships between the 2,422 Brexit-mentioning articles published by Bloomberg in the 4 weeks prior to the June 23rd vote. On the right is a Quid visualization of the 4,283 such articles published by Bloomberg in the 4 weeks after the vote. ( The analogy for our purposes could be the posts mentioning AL that appeared at the Catholic news aggregator Canon 212 sight)This is what the formation of a coherent Narrative looks like. These are snapshots of the Narrative Machine.
So what are we looking at here? Each dot (or node) represents a single unique article, and the Quid algorithms group nodes into colored clusters based on shared word choice and similar word positioning. (hint: highlighted, bolded, italicized, tm-ed words) If we magnify any of these clusters, in this case a cluster of articles talking about bond-buying and US Treasuries in the pre-vote data, we see that the nodes themselves differ in size according to their connectivity or centrality to the clustering principle, and that there are varying distances and numbers of connections between the nodes, as well. Each node exerts the equivalent of a gravitational pull on every other node, giving the entire structure both the appearance and the substance of a star map. Nodes can be evaluated and displayed on dimensions such as sentiment (green/positive – red/negative), as shown below, and all of these characteristics (distance, connectivity, centrality, etc.) are generated as a structured data set for further, non-visual analysis.
Here’s what I think we’re seeing in the “coagulation” of the Bloomberg facet of the Narrative Machine.
The pre-vote Bloomberg network structure on the left is what a complacent Narrative looks like. The articles are “about” whatever the clustering principle might be, and Brexit is typically a sideways glance, a throwaway line that’s almost always negative in sentiment. On the other hand, the post-vote network structure on the right is what an engaged Narrative looks like, where the articles are “about” Brexit and its impact on the clustering principle. Not only are we seeing a strong Narrative form on the right, but the density of lines and closeness of clusters shows that a similar tone and meaning has taken root across all these clusters. Importantly, it’s a positive tone and meaning that takes shape in the post-vote Narrative, with sentiment scores significantly higher than in the pre-vote snapshot. The sky-will-fall articles are almost all in the pre-vote sample, while the post-vote sample – as early as the Monday after the vote, which is immediately before the market starts to turn – are almost all focused on the non-systemic nature of Brexit, the likelihood of reversal, and the “mistake” that was made here. (Notice the need for say… coordination between the LEGACY MEDIA and John Podesta (Sick Hillary campaign) or the creation of the Vatican communications office. This was done to “coalesce” the NARRATIVES.)
The pre- and post-vote evolution of the Brexit Narrative structure is robust within individual Bloomberg clusters and across other major media microphones. Here, for example, is the same bond-buying / US Treasuries cluster in the post-vote Bloomberg data set (different color, but same clustering principle), and in the blow-up you can see how much more coherent and connected it is than the pre-vote cluster. (An equivalent cluster for our purposes would be the “potential schism” in the Church post AL)
Below, the top pair of star maps are the 4-week pre-vote and post-vote network visualizations of Brexit-mentioning articles published by Reuters, and the bottom two star maps are samples from all publishers in the Quid database. All of the hypothesized Narrative patterns described above are replicated here.
Okay, Ben, these diagrams and “star maps” are all very pretty. I get your metaphor of the Narrative Machine, and I get that you’re excited about a new technology that lets you see that invisible machine. But so what? How does all this translate into either actionable investment ideas or a process improvement in managing investment ideas? (Our “ends” can be defined as: getting this information out to the Catholic public domain, especially the clerics and prelates in order to give them a better understanding of the field of battle… perhaps?)
When anyone asks this question (and believe me, it’s the question I’ve asked myself in one form or another for 30 years), they’re asking about two things: edge and odds. For anyone who’s trying to beat the dealer (my plug for Edward O. Thorp’s 1962 book that changed everything for me, also retold and expanded in William Poundstone’s brilliant book Fortune’s Formula) … for anyone who’s interested in alpha, this is all that matters: edge and odds. ( In essense, that is all that matters for us likewise.) Edge is private information, an insight into the true nature of reality(YES, YES, YES – you see, it’s all about defining OBJECTIVE REALITY) that other game players don’t have. Odds are the probabilistic relationship between risk and reward at any given moment in time. (For our purposes, the need to get out as much CORRECT ANECDOTAL and EMPIRICAL information that represents OBJECITVE REALITY in order to increase the odds of a normal successor to Francis) If you have either one of these on your side, then you’ll do well in whatever game you’re playing, if you’re dealt enough hands. If you have both on your side … and I think that a rigorous application of the Narrative Machine generates both edge and an improved assessment of odds … hey, now. (It is the quantity and quality of inforation coming from our side that has Rosica and Francis rattled!)
The odds revealed by the Narrative Machine are the odds of a catalyst having a major impact on price (or not). Or in slightly different words, I think that the Narrative Machine can help show us the degree to which future events are “priced-in” by the market. For example, when you’ve got a complacent, all-over-the-place Narrative leading up to a scheduled event like the Brexit vote, then even if my best guess on the voting odds is, say, 60% in favor of “Remain”, I would still place a bet on “Exit” because the Narrative-implied market payoff odds are far better than the breakeven odds of the vote. (For our purposes, the better defined NARRATIVE that our side creates and promulgates, the better the odds that we will achieve a positive result at the next conclave.)
The edge that the Narrative Machine generates is an improved reaction to a catalyst once it occurs. ( :-))))) ) To be clear, I don’t think that the Narrative Machine can predict a market shock or catalyst before it happens. It’s not a crystal ball. But it is a real-time window into how the Common Knowledge Game is being constructed and played after an event occurs.For example, when you have a pervasive, systemic-risk-is-off-the-table Narrative created almost immediately following a market shock like the Brexit vote, then I would get long the market even if I believed in my heart-of-hearts (and I do) that there really IS systemic risk posed by everything that’s behind the Brexit vote. (Our NARRATIVE could be defined as “Return to Tradition = > Vocations”, for example. This would negate a potential “systematic risk” like say: “if we elect Pius XIII, media will not be happy and try to crush the Church”)
I don’t want to over-sell the degree to which the Narrative Machine has been “weaponized” (Notice the term? That’s exactly what we want to do. Weaponize our NARRATIVE.) into an investable alpha source, because there are several critical aspects of network theory that remain to be implemented. Foremost of these is what network theory calls alluvial analysis, or evaluation of how different clusters “flow” into each other and away from each other over time. I’ve included two wonderful illustrations of this concept, both from a 2010 scientific journal article (“Mapping Change in Large Networks” by Martin Rosvall and Carl Bergstrom). I think the Quid technology is pretty good at what network theory calls “significance clustering”, the assignment of individual nodes into similarly colored and positioned groups – essentially a snap shot of the network at a given point in time. What we need now is a map of how those clusters evolve over time, because the meaning or organizing principle of the clusters themselves doesn’t remain constant. (Aside. I don’t have access to Quid technology or the time to even attempt something like this, but… there are a few academics who follow this blog. Nudge, nudge, know what I mean?)
Rosvall and Bergstrom illustrate this beautifully in the second diagram here, where a network analysis of scientific journal articles show how neuroscience has become its own “thing” over time. We need the same alluvial maps for market Narrative clusters. I’m on it.
So, yes … early days for the Narrative Machine. But, yes … a potential alpha source. (And a potential source for providing a rudder for the Barque of St. Peter!)
Which leads to an interesting question. If this is a new alpha source – the most valuable thing in the investment world – why am I talking about it? Isn’t this like announcing that you think you’ve found gold in California or the Yukon before you’ve staked a claim?
Good question. There’s some margin of intellectual property safety here because it’s not an easy alpha source to mine, even with cool new technologies like Quid. The internal logic of the Narrative Machine is the logic of strategic interaction (game theory), (Where have we come across this before? Oh yes, here.) not the logic of stochastic processes (econometric inference). In plain English, I don’t think you can run a regression analysis of historical media network characteristics against historical market characteristics and get much that will be useful, at least not if you’re after edge and odds. The underlying theory here is Information Theory and the underlying math is the mathematics of entropy, and I’m reasonably confident that we’re not going to see an Excel plug-in for either of those anytime soon. (Not anytime soon, unfortunately)
But yes, someone could “steal” this idea and run with it on their own. To which I say … fine. (I second that motion) Better that than being another Van Leeuwenhoek, bogarting his research on his invisible world and setting back the advancement of germ theory and microbiology by a century or more. As in 1648 and 1776 and 1848 and 1917, we live in one of those rare moments in history where ideas are at stake and fundamental theories of the world are in flux. Let’s engage with that, and not hide in the convenient cubbyhole of narrow self-interest or the mentality of an agreeing machine.
We need a new perspective regarding the true nature of our economic and political clockwork (and ECCLESIATICAL), and that’s the real value of the idea of the Narrative Machine.
Today we continue with our Stefan Molyneux theme. In our last post, your humble blogger provided you, dear reader with information pertaining to what can be called a Scholastic revival. This revival is taking place in that part of the Visibilium Omnium that is outside the Ecclesiastical sub-set of human endeavor. Here is how we summed up this apparent Scholastic revival: (emphasis added)
What is of importance to understand in the above is that there is a YUGE demand for information and for analysis of that information. The demand appears to be for analysis that is both systematic and methodical, based on an objective process and rules of evidence.
Given the situation described above, the next logical question that needs to be asked is: what is driving this need for information and for analysis of that information?
In today’s post, your humble blogger will present a HYPOTHESIS that could be the cause driving this need for information and analysis, i.e. the Scholastic revival.
The groundwork for understanding this phenomenon was laid in several post pertaining to the general economic and social situation that is present at the end of 8 years of the Obama presidency. Among these post, two are worth mentioning. The first is Gun Ownership: Addressing Most Basic Needs Of Humanity, while the second is Hidden Electorate: The Underemployed. What is of note is that these two issues, i.e. underemployment and firearm ownership, address the two most basic human needs. These needs, according toAbraham Maslow are termed: Physiological Needs and Safety and Security Needs.
Assuming that these two basic needs drove a sizeable part of the US electorate (Rust Belt States flipping to The Donald, thereby putting him over the 270 needed electoral votes), we can assume two things. The first assumption is that these needs were present long before the US election in November. And second, these needs drove the demand for information about these needs. Or to be more precise, how to remedy any issues that exist in acquiring the basic resources to sustain life and/or that could impinge on the security of the said individual/family unit.
I think these are safe assumptions to make.
Next, the source of information historically, by which individuals would obtain this information, was what is now termed the LEGACY MEDIA. Another safe assumption that can be made is that in years gone by, the LEGACY MEDIA had a monopoly on information that flowed to the general public. This changed when Fox News came along, but for the most part, this monopoly held up until a few years ago.
Before going further, a couple of words about the function that the LEGACY MEDIA historically performed. When looking at what the LEGACY MEDIA do, this can be broken down into three categories, in theory. These three categories are: provision of news, provision of interpretation of the news and subjective opinion pieces.
Yet when one has a monopoly on THE news, then those lines tend to become blurred. Actually, they became so blurred that it was hard to recognize when the LEGACY MEDIA was providing news as opposed to when they were interpreting that news. In essence, what was happening was that the LEGACY MEDIA was in fact providing purely subjective opinion disguised as objective, dispassionate news. This “opinion” disguised as “objective news” created dissonance among the more critical thinking elements within the population, which in turn created a demand for other channels of information.
This demand for alternative channels of information became satisfied with the advent of the alternative social media. To be more exact, the mechanism by which this demand became satisfied is with the rise of TWITTER.
The reason that TWITTER was the game-changer, in the humble opinion of your even humbler blogger is through one function and one function only: the 140 character TWEET limit.
What the 140 character TWEET limit did was eliminated the possibility to include “interpretation of the news” from the actual objective facts presented in the 140 characters.
Now think about this for a second.
Given that the “interpretive function” – read “subjective opinion”, was dismembered from the news flow itself, thanks in large part to TWITTER, a demand arose for tools that would allow the recipient to interpret the news flow by him or her self.
Enter, the need for “analysis that is both systematic and methodical, based on an objective process and rules of evidence” tool!
This above process was reinforced by the rise of the alternative media itself. The key to understand the value of the alternative media is that there is so much of it out there now. The sheer QUANTITIY of news being produced does not allow for the processing of the QUANTITY. This is in essence an issue of limited time and capacity to process the news flow.
Concluding, what we are seeing is a PROCESS whereby an exponential growth in information flow, brought about by the internet and the alternative media, when combined with the limited time that individuals have to acquire and process the information flow, created a demand for a service like TWITTER.
In turn, the nature of the TWITTER functionality, i.e. 140 characters maximum, decapitated the “opinion disguised as interpretation” of news from the actual objective news (what we call DATA POINTS).
These two elements described above, i.e. exponential growth in the quantity of information produced, along with the limit of the individual’s time to read/process information (article, post, TWEET) in turn created a demand for… let’s call them “discernment tools”. These tools are in fact mechanisms by which the individual can interpret the raw data that he is in a position physically take in. And since humans, by their very nature think rationally – for the most part and if only for convenience sake, an analysis that is both systematic and methodical, based on an objective process and rules of evidenceis something that satisfies this demand.
NB: In the video at the top of this page, we are a witness to what happens when a “typical product of the current educational system”, armed with his narratives and supporting talking points meets an adversary that is armed with a classical education using a Scholastic methodology. It ain’t pretty folks but it is enjoyable to watch. But I digress…
With respect to the video, it is this above described PROCESS that becomes self evident when watching this Stefan Molyneux videos. And it is this PROCESS that is generating the exponential growth for programs generated by Stefan Molyneux and his circle of acquaintances that we described in our previous post here.
In other words, what we are seeing is nothing short of a revival of Scholasticism and a growing movement of secular quasi-Scholastic thinkers.
And it is safe to say that we have in large part TWITTER to thank for this situation.
Greetings in the New Year! Hope all my loyal readers had a very pleasant New Year, spent some quality time with the family and loved ones. Especially you guys, because as we all know, you can’t be a real man if you don’t spend time with your family. (see here)
Today your humble blogger sets out to document a discovery, of sorts. My regular readers already know that as the Restoration of the Catholic Church has been documented on the pages of this blog, evidence of a wider “restoration” has also appeared. This wider restoration is taking hold in society at large. One piece of supporting evidence for this supposition is the “against all odds” Trump victory in the last US Presidential Election. I have laid out some of this evidence in the 5th section of the post titled Deux Ex Machina’s Top 5 Themes of 2016.
Given all the evidence indicating to the “realness” of this secular restoration, I have been unable to identify a SOURCE from which this wider secular restoration could be emanating. That is not until now. Below I will set out a theory as to why this is happening now.
Before we get into the subject hand, in good Thomist tradition, a definition is in order. When I write “secular restoration”, what I am referring to is a situation in which segments of the general population are aligning themselves with the precepts of the LEX ARMATICUS. To be more precise, the following is the case:
Those individuals and institutions that conform to the et Invisibilium, will remain a part of the Visibisium Omnium. Those that do not, will be consigned to the trash heap of history.
Where the following definitions hold:
Visibisium Omnium – all the material “things” that we can identify with our senses (touch, sight, feel, smell, taste)
et Invisibilium – all the non-material laws and processes that regulate the visibilium omnium (e.g. the laws of physics – classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, laws of mathematics, rules of logic, etc.)
Now as to the source, over the Holiday’s, your humble blogger spent some time on the internet. And as you dear readers who follow this blog know, I have recently been introduced to… let’s call it… the world of alternative internet media.
My introduction came through the Fr. Z. blog who put up a link to Stefan Molyneux’s video dealing with the subject of Western Civilization. I in turn used this video in a post titledSecularists Debunk Francis’ JunkTheology™ – The Primer. After transcribing a good chunk of this 1 hour and 10 minute video, I decided to use it at the top of my page titled Why Thomism? Reason being that it is such a great introduction to Scholasticism in general and Thomism specifically, that not including it on that page would be a sin. A cardinal sin at that.
Fast forward to this Christmas and New Years Holiday season, during which I actually found some time to view some of the various videos put out by Mr. Molyneux. After watching a number of his videos, I can now honestly say that I have identified a SOURCE. Mr. Molyneux and this group of internet personalities clustered around Stefan have become quite popular of late. What appears to be the case is that they share one very important characteristic, namely a strong quasi-Scholastic “common denominator”, for the lack of a better term. Some of these folks even admit that they are practicing Catholics.
My discovery of this group coalescing around Stefan and their listeners, explain in large part this secular quasi-Scholastic undercurrent I am observing in the information flow that has been coming through my news filters. It would appear that this group and their listeners represent a much wider phenomenon taking place in society in general.
Given the information above, I watched the Stefan Molyneux 2016 review video (at top of the page). I was quite amazed by the figures (statistics) of his viewership. And being a guy that likes numbers, I will put them in a table below:
Podcasts
Youtube
Download
% Change
Views
% Change
2014
19,000,000
23,500,000
2015
21,000,000
10.53%
29,000,000
23.40%
2016
61,000,000
190.48%
65,000,000
124.14%
Pretty impressive numbers!
With respect to the YUGE jump from 2015 to 2016, it goes without saying that this was due to two major events, namely Brexit and the US Presidential Election.
What is of significance behind these YUGE increases in viewership and downloads is that the assumption that people in the general population were seeking information about these two events. To be more precise, these people were seeking information that they were not receiving from the usual media outlets. It can also be assumed that they were seeking more detailed information about these two events and the mainstream media was not satisfying this demand.
Which raises the question, what was it about the information that Stefan was providing that was of interest (met the needs) of his new listeners? Here is how Stefan answers this question: (emphasisadded)
“That’s one of the benefits that really digging into an election cycle can help give the show. It’s to expose more people to philosophy, because philosophy is embedded in everything that we do here. So if we’re doing something on current events, there is a philosophical element. I mean, that’s what we do. We always talk about doing shows, we say well what can we bring that’s different? What we bring of course is core philosophical values and a methodologyand a process of reason and evidence. So everywhere that we reach, everyone we reach with whatever show that we are doing is an introduction to philosophy and draws them into the sticky web of Socratic methods.”
I will conclude here – partly due to my New Year’s resolution to keep my posts to approximately 1000 words.
What is of importance to understand in the above is that there is a YUGE demand for information and for analysis of that information. The demand appears to be for analysis that is both systematic and methodical, based on an objective process and rules of evidence.
It can also be inferred that the quality of information and analysis provided by the conventional sources, i.e. the Legacy Media, is creating a YUGE opening for the alternative media to fill this market void. From the looks of it, that segment of the alternative media that is filling this market void at present, is media that conforms to the precepts that we defined in the LEX ARMATICUS.
And this holds not only for the ecclesiastical sub-set of human activity of the Visibilium Omnium, but for the secular sub-sets as well. And if only one conclusion can be drawn from the above text, it is this:
We are looking at the future… and it’s Scholasticism!
As Francis, the bishop of Rome is ending another annus horribilis, with his pontificate descending into complete and utter chaos, your humble blogger has compiled 10 5 of the major themes running through the ecclesiastical sub-set of human activity of the Visibilium Omnium, et Invisibilium, i.e. the Institutional Catholic Church in Anno Domini 2016.
(1) Continued disintegration of the post-conciliar NUChurch.
The disintegration of NUChurch has continues unabated in the countries that comprise what is commonly referred to as Western Civilization. The news coming from the post-conciliar church in Spain (see here), Germany (see here) and the US (see here) is simply atrocious. It is these developed world countries where most of the funding revenue comes from, revenue that feeds the Holy See’s coffers.
Of note is the situation in Germany. The reason being that the German Church Tax, i.e. the notorious Kirchensteuer is the main funding mechanism for NUChurch globally. It is this funding mechanism that your humble blogger outlined in the post titled: Fully Funding FrancisEpicFail™. This unsustainable situation, when combined with the issues that will no doubt arise due to the Eurozone crisis (as gauged by our proxy – Deutsche Bank stock price) will be the shock that will ultimately kill off the evil “spirit of Vatican II” and will put an end to another Failed Neo-Moderist Experiment, like that which we are observing in the FrancisEconomy of Venezuela.
What is of major importance is the table provided in the above mentioned “Fully Funding” post. We see that the growing revenue collected under the dastardly Kirchensteuer is increasing, yet from a rapidly disintegrating tax base. This situation implies that as goes the German economy (not to mention the death rate – since most payers into the tax pool are older folks), so goes the ability to increase the rate that those payers are willing to pay. And given the size of the payroll of the German Church (between 700,000 and 1.4 million depending on who is counted), any hiccup in the German economy will generate serious downstream effects to the total amount of Kirchensteuer that can be collected. And as we know, it is this revenue that not only funds the German Bishops’ Conference’s heretical operations in the third world (see here), but likewise directly feeds the Holy See’s contributions made pursuant to Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law.
Given the above, your humble blogger will be watching two statistical indicators in 2017, namely: number of people leaving the Kirchensteuer payer pool in 2016 and the price of Deutsche Bank stock – a canary in the coal mine indicator for the economic performance of Germany.
(2) Francis holed up in the Domus Sanctae Marthae Bunker.
Over the life of this blog, one aspect of the current “bishopric” of Francis that your humble blogger has been chronically and quite accurately at that, if I may say so myself, is the OBJECTIVE REALITY behind the Sacred Vatican Walls. Your humble blogger has identified the correct situation inside the TeamFrancis Headquarters in the Synod of the Three Paragraphson the 18th of December, 2014 as follows:
The Synod was controlled and manipulated by a group of clerics who were taking their directives from Francis himself. The way in which the Manipulators wanted to change church teaching was first by discarding the Church’s existing Magisterium and the foundations for the Church teaching on homosexuality, replace this body of teaching with something new, only grounded in the speeches, newspaper interviews, musings at the Domus Sanctae Marthae and off-the cuff remarks the magisterium of Francis. They tried to find the magic formula,i.e. Modernist Magic Words that would allow for this change in teaching to slip past the Synod bishops.
And that same “group of clerics” who has … what can colloquially be called “skin in the game”, had their hidden agenda exposed in the post titled So It Was The Homo Agenda All Along. Edward Pentin in an interview given to Raymond Arroyo of ETWN had the following exchange (see here):
Arroyo: And what was that other agenda?
Pentin: That other agenda basically centered on validating same-sex unions within the Church, changing the Church’s views on human sexuality, the Church’s doctrine in a sense, so the Church’s pastoral practice, which in turn… they argue affects doctrine. So in loosening of the teaching on cohabitation for example, and so forth…
The Trojan Horse post appeared on 7th of September, 2015. This same cabal of intrinsically disordered Marxist revolutionaries identified in that post, i.e. TeamFrancis has been active this year likewise. We put up a page on this blog titled What’s In The BOX? to provided proper CONTEXT. But I digress… Here is how this group, and the atmosphere on the 4th floor of the Domus Sanctae Marthae was presented on the OnePeterFive blog a few days ago by Der Speigal’s Rome correspondent Walter Mayr via Maike Hickson:
In Mayr’s eyes, as well, “much is at stake.” For him, “Francis seems to be increasingly isolated” and also “worn down.” A confidant of the pope tells Mayr: “Many do not recognize any more in the Francis of the year 2016 the man whom they elected in 2013.” The journalist also describes how the Year of Mercy “has kept everything open” and it “did not at all fulfill the expectations.”The curial reform does not advance, either; and, “from some dicasteries, there now come reports of ‘total chaos’.” According to Mayr, Francis’ “volubility causes additional problems”; his comments about the media and their tendency toward “coprophagy” have even caused indignation among his own sympathetic followers.
In this last paragraph, as related by Maike Hickson from the Walter Myar article (see here), we see 4 themes that your humble blogger has identified and chronicled. Just to review:
Year of Mercy “did not fulfill expectations” disaster, (Expected 33million. On June 10, total was 9,100,935. Final figure was given as 21,292,926. NB: I am very skeptical of this figure and the “did not fulfill expectations” suggests that the numbers are not correct).
Complete chaos in the dicasteries,
“Volubility” causes indignation even among Francis sycophants in “Fake News” Legacy Media.
NB: Remember where you read all this first, dear readers. And as you can see, we have a very good bead on these subversive revolutionaries holed up on the 4th floor of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
(3) Soap Bubble Effects – Exposing “Fake News” before exposing “fake news” was cool.
When your humble blogger put up the first post and simultaneously coined (and ™-ed it) the term “Soap Bubble Papacy™“, what lied underneath this complete fraud was the following NARRATIVE:
IF Francis is popular in the Legacy Media,
THEN this is a positive development for the Universal Church.
Now, being the quantitatively inclined and empirically oriented type of a guy that your humble blogger is, yours truly set out to find and document the EVIDENCE to support this HYPOTHESIS. This HYOTHESIS became known as the Real FrancisEffect.
Needless to say, there was no evidence of any Real FrancisEffect.
What turned out to be the case though, was that the observation made by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller as early as on the 26th of August 2014, was spot on (see here). That observation is as follows:
“It is superficial. Were this a religious movement, the churches would be full.”
The result for the search for the Real Francis Effect and the sizeable number of accumulated posts led to yours truly putting up an entire page dedicated to the Real FrancisEffect, or rather the lack there of, titled The Soap Bubble Papacy™.
But there is more to the story. It would appear that as your humble blogger was chronicling and evidencing one FALSE NARRATIVE, namely the Real FrancisEffect, another FALSE NARRATIVE came across the radar screen. This false narrative was later dubbed the Soap Bubble Candidacy™ and referred a situation pertaining to another neo-Modernist, namely Sick, Crooked, Unelectable Hillary Clinton. What became self evident in July of this year was that this Soap Bubble Effect was likewise common in this other areas of human endeavor, i.e. the candidacy of Sick Hillary in the 2016 US Presidential election. And since this Soap Bubble Candidacy™ was so glaringly obvious and becoming so well documented (WikiLeaks), your humble blogger turned his attention to the 2016 Presidential Election and chronicled this FRAUDULANT NARRATIVE , i.e. “Hillary can’t lose”, in real time. (see here) Here is how OBJECTIVE REALITY met with a VIRTUAL REALITY created by that cabal of neo-Modernists: The Election Results: Donald J Trump WINS!
False Narrative established => Talking Points supporting False Narrative defined => a Virtual Reality created by promulgation of Talking Points in conjunction with dissemination operations y “Fake News” Legacy Media => this Gas-Lighting process is executed to convince rational people that Virtual Reality is correct.
Any dissonance introduced by external objective evidence that may arise is countered with “fake news” label.
The best example of how this False Narrative operation was executed was viewed in real time through the daily WikiLeaks reports. These reports contained information of how a large group of Legacy Media “journalists” were continuously meeting with the Sick, Crooked, Unelectable Hillary camp (John Podesta). The simplest and most likely explanation for why no less than 65 “MainStream Media” “journalists”, or as we called them, Presstitutes had to continuously meet with Mr. Podesta was to coordinate the False Narratives in order to keep them consistent (see here).
(4) Words – Highlighted, Bolded, Italicized and ™-ed Words.
One aspect of this humble blogging effort of your most humble blogger that came in for a bit of… let’s call it “fraternal correction”, was the appearance of “words” that were highlighted, bolded, italicized and ™-ed. I must admit that I might have gone a bit overboard in this respect. Yet there were some of you dear readers, who follow this blog on a regular basis, grasped why I presented these certain words in the manner in which I did.
Quickly, what is key to understand my excessive highlighting is that the neo-Modernists have no underlying philosophical (reasoned, objective) basis for believing or propagating that which they believe and propagate. They cannot win a logical, reason based argument since their basis for that which they believe and propagate is IDEOLOGICAL, i.e. devoid of reason and logic. And when one has a belief system based on a TRANSRATIONAL IDEOLOGY, the only manner in which that person can argue and sustain this position is to change the meaning of the underlying words that he uses, or to completely ignore the common laws of thought (SYNTAX) altogether. But when the neo-Modernist is called out on his rather devil-may-care disregard for the OBJECTIVE MEANING OF WORDS AND THEIR COMMON USAGE, their faulty SYNTAX (sentence structure) becomes readily apparent. A great example of this was the recently identified numerous violations of the second (non-contradiction – NC) and third (excluded middle – EM) laws of “coherent” thought made in support of the FrancisDocument “Joy of Sex” by Francis’ sycophantic supporters. (see here and here) So highlighting the words was done to make the reader think about their proper definition and the correct context.
But back to the “words” themselves. The other reason that your humble blogger has been highlighting words is due to their underlying signaling effect. (see here) What is in fact the case is that each word (or phrase) that is capitalized, bolded and highlighted contains an attached and underlying signaling component. A good example of this is the word “IDEOLOGY”. On our blog, much time is spent defining and identifying that which is IDEOLOGICAL as opposed to that which is non-IDEOLOGICAL, i.e. philosophical. In the post titled Everyone Has A Plan, the difference is laid out and explained in painstaking detail.
Yet the word IDEOLOGICAL would not have the same amount of importance if not for the signaling effect that comes when that word is used in certain situations and is used by individuals in high level decision making positions. Here’s what I mean.
Your humble blogger has established hypothesis that neo-Modernism is an IDEOLOGY, as opposed to a rational belief system based on an objective body of knowledge learned through a scientific process (philosophical). An example of the later is scientifically determined belief system isScholasticism. Aside, please keep in mind that the meaning of philosophy is the “study of acquiring knowledge”. Now if neo-Modernism is an IDEOLOGY, this means that it has no grounding in objective reality. To be more precise, an IDEOLOGY is not a systematic methodology for the study of that which God has made. In other words, the neo-Modernist IDEOLOGY is a human construct imaged in the mind of the neo-Modernist, due to his God given capacity of abstract thought. The common term for this phenomenon is what is known as “magical thinking”(see here).
Given the above, it is with no small interest that your humble blogger came across a passage attributed to Cardinal Gerhard Mueller on the MondayVatican blog, in a post titled Pope Francis: What If It Is Just A Matter Of Language?, that reads as follows:
This spirit of false renewal – he insists – is marked by ideology. Ideology is “always the arrogant attempt to subject the Word of God and the doctrine of the Church to the prejudice of its thought, with the goal of achieving a manipulative power over the faithful and their lives.” While theology – Cardinal Mueller continues – “is the humble reflection of faith that raises us up after the listening to the Word of God.”
Notice how something that your humble blogger has been identifying, documenting and chronicling for at least the last two years, i.e. IDEOLOGY, is now being recognized and condemned by no less of a authority than the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith!
But it gets better. Your humble blogger has also been making a case for the introduction of a system of OBJECTIVE SYSTEM OF MEASURES when assessing the qualifications for advancement within the Church’s clerical ranks.
Your humble blogger has been focusing on SEMINARY VOCATIONS since this blog was established. The reason being is that these figures (statistics) appear regularly. We have highlighted this “really” REAL FrancisEffect, i.e. the neo-Modernist ordinary’s dearth of vocations, contrasting it the Catholic bishop’s VOCATIONS overabundance. A few of these posts can be found here and here and here and here and here and here.
Of note are two post. The first is titledA Final Rendezvous With Destiny and With Death, explaining how the neo-Modernist’s behavior is very similar to that of the lemming. The similarity can be described as follows: just like the lemming entering into the water and swimming away from shore, wherein it meets its final rendezvous with destiny and death, the neo-Modernist engages in a behavior pattern that is likewise suicidal. The difference of course being that the neo-Modernist is cognizant of the fact that his behavior is suicidal, while the lemming acts out of inherent instinct. And just to drive this point home, your humble blogger produced a post titled: Raging, Raging Against The Coming Of The Lightwhich highlights a an analogous situation where a neo-Modernist, dying religious order would rather give away their convent to an Indian tribe than to sell it to a prospering Catholic religious order.
And then there is the situation in Spain (see here)!
Back to our themes of “vocations” and “words”. It is with no amount of amazement that your humble blogger read another MondayVatican post, this time titled: Seminaries: Key To The Next Conclave. And in this post by Andrea Gagliarducci, we learn from his sources embedded behind the Sacred Vatican Walls, that the next conclave will be all about the seminaries. Here is how he explains it:
The future of the Church is being played out in the field of priestly formation. Vocations, the way that local bishops will manage them, the education of priests and the way this education influences their work with the flock will all be crucial. But also crucial will be the number of seminarians in the future, as proof of how many vocations the new emphasis on pastoral care is able to produce.
Yes, it’s all about the numbers, because… numbers don’t lie!
We summed up this point in our post titled: Revenge Of The Saturno: Death Of The “spirit of VII” Is At Hand. As you can see, it would appear that the future of the Universal Church will be based on an OBJECTIVE SYSTEM OF MEASURES with respect to promotions within the clerical class. And numbers of vocations will be a YUGE, if not the KEY component of that measure.
(5) The Restoration: It’s much bigger than anyone suspects!
And finally, what would a 2016 yearly review be without a summary of the progress of the Restoration. What I would like to stress today is that the Restoration appears to be a lot wider than anything that we identified even one year earlier.
If you dear reader recall, a good post to summarize what we considered the Restoration, in a very narrow sense of that term, can be gauged from the post titled: Summorum Pontificum’s ABUNDANT “Good Fruit”. In this post, we took a random period (one month) and catalogued the various news stories that appeared regarding the Restoration that is taking place in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. It turned out the be the longest post (word count) of the entire year.
What is also of note, is that this Restoration is taking place quietly and in an environment that can be described as very “unfriendly”, if not outright hostile. The “unfriendly” nature of this environment we described in one of our posts titled: SOAP BUBBLE PAPACY ™ – Ungrateful plebs!. In that article we mentioned a passage that read as follows:
The day is March 13, 2013 [Ed note: Francis elevation to Throne of St. Peter]– its remains could be seen in this striking picture of St. Peter’s Square in the General Audience of December 2, 2015, now a recurring sight, as mentioned by Camillo Langone in his article for Il Foglio just published by us below. How fickle are the multitudes, how untrustworthy are the crowds!… Even when one does everything to please them! Ungrateful plebs!
So what we have is a situation where our South American populist bishop of Rome, (see here) despite all his efforts, can’t seem to fill up either St. Peter’s Square or the Paul VI Hall with crowds, yet new proper Masses (TLM’s) are appearing in the Universal Church continuously. We summed up this REAL FRANCISEFFECT in the post titled:Francis’ “Money for Nothing, Chicks for Free” “c”atholicism Rejected!
Yet at the same time that Francis’ “money for nothing, chicks for free” “c”atholicism was being rejected by the “ungrateful plebs”, a simpler form of Catholicism was reasserting itself. This Catholicism was reasserting itself in the sub-sets of human endeavor not only inside the Church, but also outside of the ECCLESIASTICAL sphere.
In the POLITICAL area of the Visibilium Omnium, we saw a NORMALIZATION PROCESS taking place in Poland (see here), United Kingdom (see here), Austria (see here), the United States (see here) and in Italy (see here). In all these cases, including the upcoming French Presidential Election (see here), a strong sense of Catholicism was present. To be more precise, it was the reemergence of that dormant part of Catholicism that comes to usas known through “natural light of human reason from the things that are made”.
But it gets even better. Another area of the Visibislium Omnium where the Restoration has started to take hold is in the secular areas of sociology, clinical psychology and philosophy. Over the past year, your humble blogger has introduced you dear reader to personalities such as Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Dr. Duke Pesta and Gavin McInnes.
If you listen closely to what these individuals have to say, you will hear that which is nothing short of Catholicism. To prove my point, please take 25 minutes of your time and listen to the discussion between Stefan Molyneux and Gavin McInnes in the video at the top of this page.
Closing and on an aside, a gentle reminder to always, always remember the 1st Principle of the LEX ARMATICUS. It is this 1st Principle that allows us to understand the “disconnectedness” of God’s creation and our proper place in it!
1nd Principle:
Those individuals and institutions that comply to the et Invisibilium, will remain a part of the Visibisium Omnium. Those that do not, will be consigned to the trash heap of history.
Where the following definitions hold:
Visibisium Omnium – all the material “things” that we can identify with our senses (touch, sight, feel, smell, taste)
et Invisibilium – all the non-material laws and processes that regulate thevisibilium omnium (e.g. the laws of physics – classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, laws of mathematics, rules of logic, etc.)
Nuff said…
I will end this very long post here.
Closing I would like to wish all my readers a Very Happy New Year and see you in Anno Domini 2017 where we will pick right back up with the “chronicling of the Restoration to all things in Christ”
UPDATE : 15:40 30 December 2016
A Christmas bonus!
Still don’t believer point (5)?
It gets really, really, really,…. really good at about the 50:00 minute mark.
Hint: This is the explanation of the “exact point” where reason meets faith. Once properly understood, the only question is then: why are you still not Catholic?
As Cardinal Burke and the other 3 signatories of the Dubia, along with the remaining 25 or 30 princes of the Church who presently support them, but have not been officially named yet, set out on the PROCESS of correcting a materially heretical pope, I think it is only fitting to remind all my loyal and dear readers about the genesis of this process itself. This process was initiated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on the 21st of November, 1974.
The argumentation for the above observation falls into the category of making a counter-factual case. Yet it must be presented since no better context can be provided, given that neither official nor personal archives of the individuals responsible for the destruction of the Sacred Liturgy or the institutional Church in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s have yet to appear.
Therefore, the argument for the genesis of the current process of correcting a pope and its abbreviated timeline are as follows:
Without the foundation of the Society of St. Pius X in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, there would have been no need for the suppression of the SSPX in 1975.
Without the 1974 Declaration of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, (which led to the suppression of the SSPX in 1975) the Catholic Church as an institution would most likely not be in this position where a “de-hereticization” process could have actually commenced.
Without the suppression of the SSPX in 1975 and Modernist Rome’s continuous attempts to eliminate them, the Indult Mass would not have been provided to the Faithful in 1984.
Without the Indult Mass, the proper liturgy whose origin was the Last Supper of Christ and His Apostles, would have been completely eliminated from the post-conciliar Church in less than 15 years.
Without the rise of the demand for the proper liturgy and proper Catholic Faith as a result of the activities of the SSPX and subsequent Indult Mass, there would not have been a need to consecrate 4 bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988.
Without the consecration of the 4 bishops by Archbishops Lefebvre and de Castro Mayer and their resulting “excommunication”, there would not have been the Moto Proprio Ecclesia Dei, a splitting off of the Society of St. Peter from the SSPX and the establishment of the Ecclesia Dei Commission in 1988.
Without the establishment of the Ecclesia Dei Commission there would not have been a reduction on the restrictions of offering the Indult Masses. Please keep in mind, the lifting of the restrictions on offering the Indult Masses was a direct consequence of Modernist Rome’s strategy to lure the SSPX faithful away from the SSPX.
Without the establishment of the Ecclesia Dei Commission and the anti-SSPX strategy, there would not have been other offshoot communities, namely the Institute of the Good Shepherd, the Institute for Christ the King Sovereign Priest and the many others, that are dynamically expanding presently and establishing the foundation for the complete Restoration.
Without the dynamic expansion of the demand for the proper Holy Mass, there would not have been either the pontificate of Benedict XVI – who was very Tradition friendly, nor his subsequent ending of the Indult Mass with the Moto Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
Without the complete (limited in practice) freeing of the proper Holy Mass, its rapid expansion throughout the Universal Church would not have been possible.
Without the Benedict abdication, (and him still being alive) there has been no suppression of the Summorum Pontificum as of yet.
If not for the continuous and glorious expansion of the proper Holy Mass under the ruinous current bishop of Rome, the attention focused on its spread and on the prelates, clergy and faithful that are responsible for this spread, would not have elicited such a violent reaction from Francis and his minions.
If not for the violent rhetoric and continuous focus, if not outright obsession of TeamFrancis with the Restoration, the rank and file clerics and prelates in the middle and upper management would not have been alerted to the possibility, that the Restoration could be the “way forward” in which most, if not all the institutional churches problems could be resolved.
If not for the “beachhead” and subsequent liberation of the “space” deep inside the disintegrating post-conciliar church, a battlefield environment in which the spread of the proper Holy Mass and its Restoration of the ONE TRUE FAITH is facing little resistance presently with the Catholic Faithful, faithful Catholic cardinals like Cardinal Burke would not have a base from which to resist the remnant of the “1968 hippie church”. (Waring, entering this link could cause a “triggering” effect!)
If not for this ever expanding base of solid, Traditional Catholicism, the non-ideological rank and file prelates would not be in a position to see the Restoration as the answer to all their current problems, therefore supporting the actions of the 4 Cardinals.
And finally, if the 4 Cardinals did not have this “sizable” support from the rank and file inside the Sacred Vatican Walls, they “might’ not have continued the process started by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1974, the process that will result in the correction of a Roman Pontiff.
Aside, with respect to point number 13, here is the supporting evidence presented by Bishop Fellay:
The Congregation for the Faith has to deal with these problems and they give the impression to put aside our problem. When in fact, already three years ago, Cardinal Muller told us in a meeting ‘ Your are occupying the Congregation of the Faith, you are obliging us to dedicate (?) to you such precious time while there are enormous problems in the Church’ So he was very unhappy to be dealing with us while there were enormous problems in the Church. At the time, I was not very happy about these things but with the time, with reflecting, yes they are facing enormous problems and suddenly what appeared to be the problem that is us (Ed note: Tradition) , maybe it looks like a solution.
Below is a republication of the 1974 Declaration of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Declaration which is most like the genesis of the current process that Cardinals Walter Brandmuller, a German and former president of the Pontifical Commission for Historical Sciences; Raymond L. Burke, a U.S. cardinal and patron of the Knights of Malta; Carlo Caffarra, retired archbishop of Bologna, Italy; and Joachim Meisner, retired archbishop of Cologne, Germany have engaged in.
The famous “1974 Declaration” of Archbishop Lefebvre was an affirmation of the Catholic Faith in response to the Modernist crisis afflicting the post-conciliar Church.
On November 21, 1974 Archbishop Lefebvre, scandalized by the opinions expressed by the two Apostolic Visitors, drew up for his seminarians “in a spirit of doubtlessly excessive indignation” this famous declaration as his stand against Modernism.
Ten days before, two Apostolic Visitors from Rome arrived at the St. Pius X Seminary in Econe. During their brief stay, they spoke to the seminarians and professors, maintaining scandalous opinions such as, the ordination of married men will soon be a normal thing, truth changes with the times, and the traditional conception of the Resurrection of Our Lord is open to discussion.
We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth.
We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.
All these reforms, indeed, have contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life, to a naturalist and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries and catechectics; a teaching derived from Liberalism and Protestantism, many times condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.
No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, so clearly expressed and professed by the Church’s Magisterium for nineteen centuries.
“But though we,” says St. Paul, “or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:8).
Is it not this that the Holy Father is repeating to us today? And if we can discern a certain contradiction in his words and deeds, as well as in those of the dicasteries, well we choose what was always taught and we turn a deaf ear to the novelties destroying the Church.
It is impossible to modify profoundly the lex orandi without modifying the lex credendi. To the Novus Ordo Missae correspond a new catechism, a new priesthood, new seminaries, a charismatic Pentecostal Church—all things opposed to orthodoxy and the perennial teaching of the Church.
This Reformation, born of Liberalism and Modernism, is poisoned through and through; it derives from heresy and ends in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this Reformation or to submit to it in any way whatsoever.
The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.
That is why, without any spirit of rebellion, bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of forming priests, with the timeless Magisterium as our guide. We are persuaded that we can render no greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff and to posterity.
That is why we hold fast to all that has been believed and practiced in the faith, morals, liturgy, teaching of the catechism, formation of the priest and institution of the Church, by the Church of all time; to all these things as codified in those books which saw day before the Modernist influence of the Council. This we shall do until such time that the true light of Tradition dissipates the darkness obscuring the sky of Eternal Rome.
By doing this, with the grace of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that of St. Joseph and St. Pius X, we are assured of remaining faithful to the Roman Catholic Church and to all the successors of Peter, and of being the fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Spiritu Sancto. Amen.
H/t: Video above comes by way of a regular reader Cold Standing.
One for the “How on earth could I have possibly missed this” category.
Over on the OnePeterFive blog (see here), we get this via a h/t from Rorate Caeli. The title of the post is: Bishop Schneider: SSPX Personal Prelature Would Redress “Unjust” Suppression.
One CANNOT understate the SIGNIFICANCE of a bishop of the Catholic Church making a claim that the SSPX has been suppressed UNJUSTLY in 1975 by the HOLY SEE.
This EVENT is the first of its kind, if my memory serves me correctly. (Any readers who disagree, please provide source and I will amend.)
This no doubt is an UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE of the bizarre activities of Francis, the bishop of Rome where the SANE (rationality and healthiness of the human mind, like the ability to recognize objective truth) are being forced to recognize OBJECTIVE REALITY, no matter how much it must hurt.
An intercession of the TRUE God of surprises, I would add.
I will go even further and suggest that this is only the beginning of a trend that will have other prelates going public with statement confirming this above identified OBJECTIVE REALITY.
We’ve been told that at the last meeting of the Congregation of the Faith, where they all meet together, all the cardinals and bishops which are members, we call that a plenaria, this is the full meeting, there was only one cardinal who said, ‘no, no. no, the Society must absolutely accept the whole council’. And other voices who said ‘these people do only one thing, (that is) to repeat what the Church has always taught’. So you see, there is something on the move…
Please read the above and please remember, this BATTLE IS BEING FOUGHT IN OUR MINDS. The OBJECTIVE REALITY on the ground and behind the Sacred Vatican Walls as at which is presented by Bishops Fellay and Schneider in the above text.
And since we are on the subject of OBJECTIVE REALITY, one “mark” of something being OBJECTIVE is that it exists in and of itself (outside of ones mind). Therefore, individuals who are engaged in different sub-sets of the Visibilium Omnium are able to identify this OBJECTIVE “thing” (regardless of whether or not this “thing” is in a dematerialized state), independently of other areas of human endeavor.
An example of just this above is contained in the video at the top of this page. In that video, a clinical psychologist, Jordan B. Peterson provides you dear reader, with one of the best “homilies” that I have heard… outside of an SSPX chapel. Please take 10 minutes out of your time and view the video. It is worth every second.
Bishop Schneider: SSPX Personal Prelature Would Redress “Unjust” Suppression
Bishop Athanasius Schneider has given another interview of importance, this time to a French traditional Catholic journal, Présent. In this new interview, Bishop Schneider makes some politely discerning remarks about the currently considered, formal re-integration of the Society of St. Pius X, and then says that the recognition of the SSPX is an act of “rendering justice – belatedly – for the injustice done to the Society [of St. Pius X] in 1975 on the part of the Holy See.”
In the following, I present a translation from these especially important parts of that French interview – as it has been posted by the website Le Forum Catholique – along with the questions posed to Schneider, which are now placed in italics:
The Sovereign Pontiff has now extended the possibility [for the faithful] to confess [in sacramental penance] with priests of the Society of St. Pius X beyond the limits of the Year of Mercy. Does this seem to you to be an important decision?
Yes, of course, and I am very happy about it! This is a very pastoral gesture, very merciful, and in my eyes one of the most important gestures of the pontificate of Pope Francis which helps the process of canonical re-integration of this ecclesiastical reality which has existed for 50 years and which is producing obvious spiritual fruits. Many young families assembled around the Society of St. Pius X love the Church, pray for the pope, as their forebearers have done before them. The Church contains different houses, different spiritualities. Only those ecclesiastics who are hostile toward the Society present it with exaggerated demands. John XXIII as well as Paul VI always insisted upon the pastoral character of the [Second Vatican] Council. If the Society has difficulties in accepting certain documents of Vatican II, one has to place that into the context of the pastoral objective of the Council. The Dogma has not changed. We have the same Faith. Thus, there is no problem to integrate canonically the Society of St. Pius X.
You have been one of the Churchmen sent by the Vatican to visit the seminaries and priories of the Society. Which solution do you think is possible for resolving its controversial position?
The personal prelature is a position that is very fitting for the reality of the Society of St. Pius X and its mission. I am convinced that Monsignor Lefebvre would have accepted voluntarily and with gratitude this proposed official ecclesiastical structure, the recognition of this apostolate by the Church. This would only be an act of rendering justice – quite belatedly – to the unjust suppression of the Society in 1975 on the part of the Holy See. At that time, Monsignor Lefebvre had also presented a [canonical] recourse. The establishment now of a prelature would in some way accept this canonical recourse after a delay of some 40 years. On the other side, the Society must not demand guarantees of 100% which would be entirely unrealistic. We are still on earth, not in Heaven! It [such an inordinate demand] would be a gesture that would reveal a certain lack of confidence in Divine Providence.
Today we pick up where we left off in yesterday’s post. If you dear reader recall, yesterday we pinned down the definition for what constitutes FAKE NEWS and FrancisCoprophagia. As we demonstrated, these two terms are interchangeable. And just to remind everyone how we have defined FrancisCoprophagia, here is the definition in Francis’ own words: (see here)
the sickness of coprophilia, that is, always wanting to cover scandals, covering nasty things, even if they are true,” he said.
And just to provide a “fuller” definition of FrancisCoprophagia, we can insert the definition of FAKE NEWS provided us by the Urban Dictionary:
fake news often covers actual public figures when they are caught making comments that reveal their utter stupidity and/or hypocrisy.
As we see, and what is the most important takeaway from the above definitions is the following:
FAKE NEWS ≠ FALSE NEWS
Given the above, the next question that needs to be asked is: what is the ROOT CAUSE behind the inception of FAKE NEWS?
The answer to this question is as follows: FAKE NEWS is used to create FAKE NARRATIVES.
A good example of this Modeus Operendi can be seen in the following three screen grabs from our favorite catholic website ZeroHedge:
As we can read, in the initial post, no EVIDENCE is provided that Russia “sought to influence Presidential Election”. 43 hours later (second screengrab), the FBI weighed in and confirmed that there is NO EVIDENCE. Next, 3 1/2 hours later, another US Spy Agency also confirmed that there is NO EVIDENCE that Russia “sought to influence Presidential Election”.
Yet, it would appear that the Republican Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, also a Republican would rather “believe” the UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS of a “CIA” operative over the official FBI and ODNI assertions that those claims are UNSUBSTANTIATED. (seehere – upper left hand corner, second story from the top)
So how is it possible that a TRANSRATIONAL situation like this can come into existence?
Over the last few years, a term has crept into the English language that defines just this type of a situation. That term is:
G. A. S. L. I. G. H. T. I. N. G.
Here is a definition provided by Wikipedia and it reads as follows: (see here)
Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory, perception, and sanity.[1][2] Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to Gas Light, a 1938 play and 1944 film, and has been used in clinical and research literature.[3][4]
Just to sum up what we have defined above, what we are dealing with is information that is injected into the public domain that is CORRUPTED (FAKE NEWS / FrancisCoprophagia). The CORRUPTION is intended to create a FAKE NARRATIVE (Gas-lighting). The most likely explanation for why this FAKE NARRATIVE is created is to allow individuals/entities to act on this FAKE NARRATIVE. In other words, this FAKE NARRATIVE allows these individuals to act when they otherwise would not be able to act. I.e. it provides them with justification.
And now that we have identified the mechanism, let’s see how this plays out in the ECCLESIASTICAL sub-set of human endeavor.
In the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew 5:32, we can read the following:
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.
In a letter reportedly leaked by a priest in Argentina, Pope Francis writes that there is “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion in some cases.
So what we are OBJECTIVELY seeing is the contraction between what Our Lord taught (St. Matthew) and what Francis, the bishop of Rome is teaching.
And given our detailed knowledge (at least my regular readers) of the second law of logic, i.e. the law of non-contradiction, both these above two teachings can not be correct.
Given that there has been no meritorious argumentation coming from the bishop of Rome, or his supporters for that matter, and given that he has refused to answer the Dubia of the 4 Cardinals that would clear up this VIOLATION OF THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION, we are left to OBSERVE the manner in which Francis, the bishop of Rome is going about answering the Faithful who are requesting a clarification.
One OBSERVATION that we can make is that Francis, the bishop of Rome is either IGNORANT in terms of the Catholic Faith, or is manipulating that part of the Catholic Faith that comes from DIVINE REVELATION.
A good example of his manipulation was a “homily” that Francis gave in April of this year. In this “homily” Francis made these strange quotes: (see here) (emphasis added)
Pope Francis said: “It hurts when I read that small passage from the Gospel of Matthew, when Judas, who has repented, goes to the priests and says: ‘I have sinned’ and wants to give … and gives them the coins. ‘Who cares! – they say to him: it’s none of our business!’ They closed their hearts before this poor, repentant man, who did not know what to do. And he went and hanged himself.
And what did they do when Judas hanged himself? They spoke amongst themselves and said: ‘Is he a poor man? No! These coins are the price of blood, they must not enter the temple… and they referred to this rule and to that… The doctors of the letter. “
The life of a person did not matter to them, the Pope observed, they did not care about Judas’ repentance.
The Gospel, he continued, says that Judas came back repentant. But all that mattered to them “were the laws, so many words and things they had built”.
What we are seeing above, in terms of this post, is Francis, bishop of Rome building a FAKE NARRATIVE. The OBJECT of Francis’ FAKE NARRATIVE is the “priests”. To be more precise, it is the “priestly class”. He claims that it was on account of the “priestly class” that Judas hung himself. In other words, he introduces a CAUSAL relationship between the “priestly class” not taking the “coins” and the act of suicide.
Aside for the obvious and clumsy deconstructivist fallacy that Francis entertains in his “homily”, what is OBVIOUS is that Francis is building a FAKE NARRATIVE to justify an action that he has taken and future action that he will take. Needless to say, Francis needs the JUSTIFICATION that a FAKE NARRATIVE provides to take action that Francis would not otherwise be able to take.
That in itself could be understood, or at least in a POLITICAL sense. What can’t be understood… or rather JUSTIFIED is the CAUSAL LINKAGE between the action of the “priests” and the suicide of Judas. This is nothing short of the technique of GASLIGHTING.
What we are a witness to is Francis, the bishop of Rome engaging in a form of PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE whereby he is manipulating the Faithful “priests” into doubting their understanding of the meaning of the passage contained in Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew 5:32, among others, thereby trying to get them to doubt not only the OBJECTIVE TRUTH that the Catholic Church has taught for two millennia, but also their own memory, perception and sanity (rationality and healthiness of the human mind, like the ability to recognize objective truth).
Fast forward to today, what we have seen since the promulgation of the Joy of Adultery by Francis, is his engaging in is a series of attacks against certain sectors of the INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH, on the basis of FAKE NARRATIVES that he has developed, in order to JUSTIFY his MATERIAL HERESY contained in the “Amoris Laetitia” document.
The intensity of Francis attacks provide PROOF POSITIVE that Francis is engaging in the psychological abuse that has come to be defined as…