They need Christ more than ever; instead, they seem to have Simon bar Kokhba come again

Friends, and
To all those defending Israel:

Every time I write one of my essays here, the world is exponentially worse than it was when I wrote the last epistle. I despair of it. God is gonna have to fix it.

• The American government is a disaster; it is totally NOT representing the American people.
• The Catholic Church is a disaster, if you count the official Church as the full Catholic Church, that is. If you think Bergoglio is pope or his regime in remotely CATHOLIC, then I despair for you.
• But I certainly despair of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It's a hopeless mess, and has been that way since the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. For Israel, it would take a King Solomon come again to try to bring either justice or peace to this fiasco, or most importantly of all, they need Jesus. (I'll probably be labeled an "antisemite" for saying that. Imagine my response.)
  

If anyone ever needed Jesus...

If anyone anywhere ever "needed Jesus", it is the Jews and Arabs. But instead of Jesus, the Israelis got Simon bar Kokhba come again.

1. Ok, so who was Simon bar Kokhba? A warrior, the last of the Zealot types Our Lord Christ knew a century earlier. Zealots were those Jews who wanted to fight the Romans with war (or terror, however you want to put it), like the Irish Republican Army wanted to fight the British. They had their big moment in 66 A.D. when the First Jewish War began. Zealots held Jerusalem for four years before the Romans destroyed it – and most of them, along with a million or so other Jews – in 70 A.D.
2. Barabbas was one of these insurrectionists 40 years earlier in Jesus' time. St. Mark, St. Peter's secretary and the composer of St. Mark's gospel, describes Barabbas (in 15:7) as “The man named Barabbas [who] had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection.” That would definitely be a Zealot.
3. Simon bar Kokhba himself was the last and maybe the greatest – in terms of power and cruelty, if not military skill – of all Zealots. He fought the Romans (when they tried to ban circumcision and force Jewish assimilation) and "the greatest rabbi of the time", Akiva ben Yosef, apparently claimed for him Davidic descent and might have given him the name bar Kokhba, which means son of the star, a messianic reference. 

Whatever about all that, when the Romans finally defeated bar Kokhba in 135 A.D., they killed 800,000 of his followers, and probably more than a million Jews died, all told. So, the Jewish people collectively chose Barabbas instead of Jesus, and 40 years later the Zealot leaders of 66 A.D., and in 132 A.D., Simon bar Kokhba. All these Zealots did was lead the Jews to catastrophe. Now they have Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Jewish perspective

From the Jewish perspective, it ought to be a simple calculus. "We want our own nation, and we want it to be a Jewish nation, not a country where 'Jews also live'". After the bar Kokhba revolt, Jews remained scattered for two millennia, basically, and while often persecuted, they also took advantage of what opportunities they could, as well. That in itself caused them to be hated. It was like a curse: they're dispossessed and despoiled, a stateless nation who thereby incur contempt and loathing; yet when they become wealthy bankers and powerful influencers, they're hated all the more. A no-win situation.

Maybe they should not have chosen Barabbas. Or the Zealots of 66 A.D. Or Simon son of the Star, heir of David. Or just maybe Pontius Pilate got the last laugh when he maneuvered them into shouting "Crucify the Peacenik and give us the terrorist!" 

Zionism

Eventually, toward the end of the 19th century, European Jews began the Zionist Movement. The Jews supporting this romantic colonization theory (not all that many did, actually) left Europe and entered the Ottoman lower Syrian desert by hook and crook and began removing – none too gently one can surmise – many of the native inhabitants. (Jews in Europe often bought the land from Turkish absentee landlords living in Istanbul, and then European settlers showed up who told the locals to clear off.)  

1. Again, they wanted their own state – a JEWISH one – and European Jews who embraced Zionism planted European Jews in the southern Levant. 
2. Did the Zionist promoters have a plan about the Arabs? I don't know. Did they suspect the locals would rebel? I don't know.
3. The whole Zionist idea was so quixotic that most everyone probably thought it would fail, I would guess.
   
4. Events in Europe under the Nazis and the horrors of the Holocaust sort of eventually proved the Zionist argument, however, or so the non-Muslim world thought. The Catholic Vatican II Church has certainly bent over backwards to apologize to Jews for the Holocaust, that's for sure. But the problem was, the Jews had planted their colony among Muslims (originally the area had numerous Christian Arabs). 
5. And the Muslims had an insane, religiously founded hatred of Jews. That was the kicker. (Why Muslimsfrom their beginning hate Jews more than Christians is the subject for another essay. Suffice it to say "Muslim Judgement Day" is the day they get to kill all the world's remaining Jews.)
   
6. But as the Nazi tide rose, the Jews kept coming and "making the desert bloom", even as the British occupiers of the region after World War I opposed them. 
7. Eventually, when the British "mandate" expired, the Jews declared the State of Israel after WWII. At first and for many decades, it was a Socialist Eastern European-style "state", mirroring the ideas of it settlers, many of whom were from Eastern Europe. Ideological, yes; romantic, maybe, but not the booming economy it has since become.
   

The Return of the Crusader States?

Though the Muslims often enough bring them up, I'm always amazed that Westerners – especially Jews – never mention the Crusader States. That's probably because Israelis don't want to be considered associated with "Crusaders" under any circumstances, and because of the sad fate of those states.

Going on almost 1000 years ago, Western Europeans invaded the Levant in their Crusades. They wanted to free the Holy Land from Turkish Muslims who had recently set up shop. Their success was so-so, but they did capture territory (killing Jews and Muslims in the process, which both Jews and Muslims insist we remember: there's no "forgive and forget" with either) and so they set up a series of Crusader Sates – one was the "Kingdom of Jerusalem". These began to create a Little Europe in the desert heart of Islam. They implanted European law, counties, sheriffs, the whole shebang. The Muslim powers of all stripes could not tolerate that, so they kept attacking the Europeans and over 100 years or so, destroyed them. Every single one of the would-be colonists that weren't killed or didn't flee, were enslaved. Always remember Islam was founded on slavery and was and is essentially, quintessentially a slaver system. 

• Medieval Europe was essentially different than Ancient Europe in that
• A, the Medievals had Christianity and 
• B, they didn't have slavery (except in rare instances, like pre-Norman Gaelic Ireland). On the other hand...
  
• Islam has ALWAYS had slavery and it always will. Why? That's because while Christianity didn't condemn slavery in its beginnings, it became repugnant to own fellow Christians as slaves: we're all parts of the Body of Christ, after all; whereas... 
• Islam's raison d'être was to bestow on the original Arabs – a violent minority in the vast seas of people they conquered – the divine right to steal everything everyone else had: including the people themselves.
• N.B. This violence works for Muslims. It always has. It does now throughout the world (except in China: see Uyghurs, Chinese treatment of and Islam's ignoring of). One example: Muslim immigrants into England have enslaved hundreds of girls, especially; it is a national tragedy and horrific scandal, though you don't hear the mainstream media howling about it because everyone fears Muslim VIOLENCE. Anyway, slavery: that's why Islam was founded, really, to be honest.

Judaism and Islam for Outsiders

While Judaism has always maintained its separateness from surrounding cultures, basing that on its religious identity and beliefs, its special covenant relationship with God, Islam sort of mirrors that in a darker mode. Islam has always been a consensus-driven, self-isolated monocultural civilization living off the theft of entire nations, a herrenvolk taxing Christians and Jews to death, and so of course after the initial seventh-century conquest, Islam turned the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East into desert. (The conquerors were allowed to graze their herds of goats and camels wherever they wanted, you see?) 

In effect, the Muslim powers had destroyed the previous "Europeanized" Levant after their initial Muslim conquest in the 700s. That area was once the HEARTLAND of Christianity, and a rich region on every level: cultural, agricultural, linguistic. The Muslims invaded, conquered, dispersed and enslaved. And monoculturalized. Example: Alexandria on the Egyptian coast was always the second largest city of the ancient Greco-Roman world, vying with Rome or Antioch or later Constantinople. Yet within a generation of the Muslim Conquest, it was a fishing village. That's history.

So the modern-day Jews, seeking a Jewish nation-state "Tackled the Islamic Camel", as it were. In essence, they actually "stole something back" from the Islamic Empire and wow, THAT is NOT allowed. 

And also, in so doing, they revived the ancient rivalry between the brothers Isaac and Ishmael. Religious Jews (a minority of Jews, you know) still claim to be direct descendants of Isaac through his second son, Jacob, whom God renamed "Israel". Arabs claim Ishmael, Abraham's first born, as their ancestor. Both sides base their claim to the land on being heirs of these two sons of Abraham. Of course, the kicker to that is:

• A: Jesus Christ came along and said the "Chosen People" were chosen precisely to be the womb of the Messiah, i.e. to birth the young Jewish girl who said yes to Gabriel. So, their long existence was fulfilled in her Fiat to God.
• B: From a Jewish perspective rejecting such theology, they base their claim to the land on God's giving it to Abraham's descendants through Isaac. The kicker to that is Moses warned them they were to be careful to obey all of God's strict moral laws. They only ever did that for a few generations at a stretch, however; most of the time, they lived as they live in Israel now: it is a modern culture, meaning one with lots of sex behavior against the ancient commandments, like homosexuality, abortion, and so on. That concert that was attacked on October 7 exhibited a huge Buddha statue, for example. That doesn't justify the Hamas attack, but the God of Moses would zap them for it as He did of old. And maybe He is. Or if a modern-thinking person argues God is not concerned about their behavior against His ancient Covenants, then the God of revelation no longer exists. And if He has "evolved" or no longer exists, then what right can they claim to the land? See the conundrum they have? (A no-win situation, again.)

Israel bears the "five minutes of hate" right now...

Right now, it is Israel bearing the "five minutes of hate" of the world's propaganda. It seems the old Jewish war cry of "Antisemitism!" doesn't work as well as it did. Like "racism" in the U.S., it has probably been used once too often. 

Importantly, though, the ultimate source of this madness lies in Muslim culture and xenophobia. Oh, to be sure, the Jews are not blameless, either. They chose to enter an ancient minefield and planted a garden in the midst of it. They planted a tree in salted earth, a rose bush in a corral of hungry goats. They dared challenge the 1700-year-old Islamic Imperialism. Look what that has brought them. 

It has brought them continual or near continual state of war – certainly global political machinations and ceaseless spycraft and behind-the-scenes maneuvering – remains perpetual. It has also affected all the rest of us, all of non-Jews. 

• Terrorism has made life in the West miserable.
• It is the justification for the infamous "Deep State/Intelligence Community" of other nations' control of their people, such as the spying on every American via the vote on this awful FISA-702 law Congress just renewed. And it just never stops because of Arab and Muslim hatred of Jews, traditionally ingrained in that religion, and spreading terrorism far and wide nowadays, giving the "spies" the right to seize control. But also because of Islam's intrinsic xenophobia.

Islam

Muslims hate Christianity & Christian civilization. Not as much as they hate Jews, but still, it is enough. Read John Zmirak on the attack of that bishop in Australia, and why the bishop and his people are in Australia in the first place at The Stream. A most excellent, and depressing, article.

Right now, it is self-evident that Israel is losing the Gaza war (or front or operation or whatever one calls it) – many insist it is genocide, which the Israelis consider a "blood libel", but the claim of genoide is being made, nonetheless. If true, Israel has lost what it cannot regain. Meanwhile, the West Bank is hyper-tense and war is breaking out with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Persians and Israelis are lobbing missiles at each other.

I certainly can't speak to allegations of Israeli genocide in Gaza. Twenty-percent of the Republic of Israel's population isn't Jewish, but Arab (Muslim and Christian). So, they obviously weren't genocidal in the past, though yes, Zionism has always wanted a JEWISH state (Islam merely wants an Islamic world). Many argue right now the new Simon bar Kokhba strives for a "Greater Israel", which would include territory (like Gaza, but much more besides) as a buffer to protect the country.

A Serious Query

What do people hating Israel want? Or what do its critics want it to do? Do they want the Jews to leave? Do they want them to confess: "Yes, we stole your desert land and created an semi-apartheid state in which we made the desert bloom as it once did before you Arabs came because after two thousand years of being robbed, murdered, and treated as pariahs, and finally slaughtered in mass by the Europeans in the Holocaust, we thought we needed a JEWISH homeland. Yet we admit we simply don't have the right to live anywhere." You want them to do that? That seems to be the idea.

Well, one can counter argue: how about we give the Americas back to the Indians. North, South, and Central – just give it back and leave. All Irish Americans can return to Ireland and all Slavic-derived Americans can go back to Russia and so forth and so on. How about that?

One can also ask quite seriously: How can any set of people mentally survive such total war, decade after decade? I don't defend genocide on either side or genocide at all in general: but in such a no-win, Hell-on-earth mess, it's no wonder they've all gone – or are going – mad. And remember that in a Muslim culture, a man can have more than one wife, and thus a LOT of children. Gaza's population explosion growth is phenomenal, and the percentage of young people is astounding. Western cultural norms, especially degenerate modern ones, can't remotely keep up in terms of number of children per father. And just how can a father be a father to 10 or 15 or 20 sons from different women?

Bottom Line
Israel either survives or it doesn't. Islam will certainly survive. Until it doesn't. But Israel? It most certainly will go the way the Crusader States did unless they nuke the Muslims. Maybe even then. It is not hard to imagine "the world" once again slaughtering Jews in rage, this time for starting a nuclear war. Iran could start using nukes and it would be a different story, somehow, wouldn't it? Or maybe the world would finally turn against Islam and decide the heirs of both Isaac and Ishmael need to depart these earthly coils.

One way or the other – unless both sides convert to Christ and forgive each other, which is, of course, very unlikely outside pure miracle and probably the Second Coming – mass slaughter will once again turn the region back into desert, and Simon bar Kokhba's unquiet ghost, and Barabbas's wandering spirit, all of the old Zealots so frustrated by Rome, will drag their chains through the empty kingdoms of Pluto once more.

AnP

Sodom and Gomorrah and Bergoglio: Hell's Triplets; Horror about to be unleashed

Friends,

Spot Quiz

City of Dis 'Low' School

You are a Modernist Catholic if you think:

□ 1. Sex-related sin is sin, but not as bad as spiritual pride, voting conservative, or loving Trump.

□ 2. Sex-related anything isn't sin at all. It's an expression of who you are, and the only "sin" is NOT engaging in your carnal fantasies.

□ 3. Better it would be for the entire world to end tonight than another sin to occur.

Answers

▣ 1. You're a Vatican II Catholic; but you're obviously slipping behind the times.

▣ 2. You're a Bergoglian Synodal Church "Catholic". Just don't tie your shoes anywhere near Cardinal Fernández.

▣ 3. You're a Traditional, orthodox Catholic; you can find your mugshot on "Open Season" hunting posters near any mainstream church.

Amici,

Since The Logos made the world and everything in it, and doubly so since God the Father would not remake the world except through the Blessed Virgin Mary, NEVER has there existed a scope of words that Angels or Men ever conceived which can possibly express the absolute disgust, the utter, utter despisement I have toward that subhuman, that feral, brutish Bergoglio and his subcreatures, imps, incubi, hobs, hellions and gremlins.

Or I should add: EXCEPT for the disgust I feel toward those (i.e., Cardinals Burke and Müller, Bishop Schneider, and so many, many others) who ought to have "outted" and denounced Bergoglio a decade ago. (And cursed him every year since, because he keeps adding evil to evil.) I cannot conceive what their just punishment would be. They're shepherds! Yet they let their lambs be raped, skinned alive, and eaten raw. Bishop Strickland, you abandoned your sheep to a false pope, a "porno-pope anti-pope". You let the Wolf win. Thankfully, God is the the judge of all these men, not me. Other than that they are – not a one of them – St. John Fisher, I have nothing to say to them. Bergoglio serves as their ringmaster, clearly, he's their dominus, their dog collar and chain.

Over at Mundabor's blog, he notes that TWO MORE obscene books Fernández wrote years ago have come to light. Mundabor makes the logical observation that the putrid Fernández used these 'books", what with their small print runs, as "grooming" tools. "I think it is – if possible – even more sinister than that. I think that all these books were written and published in order to help this guy to groom young people, more likely boys."

Were I such a one to have any standing in the world, secular or ecclesiastical, I'd be begging the Italian government of the Republic of Italy to invade Vatican City and arrest all these perverts and rapists of children and nuns. More has come out recently about what the rapist Rupnik did to a nun, breaking her fingers and telling her it was a Jesuit ritual. (Again, words just fail.) Go through their computer files, oh Officers of the Republic, expose every last criminal among them, then lock them up and melt down their Vatican keys. For surely, these wretches have melted down the Keys of the Kingdom.

See also Anthony Stine's new podcast: "Francis Just Inflamed The Scandal He Caused With Satanic Blessings" Please give it a thorough review. Anthony Stine updates daily with a steady flow of information.

As for the rest of us, it is past time to take the gloves off:

Psalm 68 Douay-Rheims (69 in Protestant Bibles)

Verse 20ff: Thou knowest my reproach, and my confusion, and my shame.

21 In thy sight are all they that afflict me; my heart hath expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.

22 And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

23 Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumblingblock.

24 Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always.

25 Pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.

26 Let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles.

27 Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds.

28 Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice.

29 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written.

30 But I am poor and sorrowful: thy salvation, O God, hath set me up.

31 I will praise the name of God with a canticle: and I will magnify him with praise.

In short: "In the lips of the wise is wisdom found: and a rod on the back of him that wanteth sense." Proverbs 10:13

   An Préacán

Fully Pagan Bergoglio: Perils of his Environmentalism apparent at last

Amici,

At The Federalist, Maureen Mullarky (great Irish name) has an article on the radical environmentalism of Pagan Pope Francis, and any Catholic, or indeed Christian of whatever group, or Jew, should read it because Maureen reveals the end game of Modernism and all the ecological claptrap of the Bergoglian Church: The New Paganism. 

First, some background:

Christianity versus Paganism

Christianity

Christianity is a completely anthropomorphic religion in that God became Man to save Mankind from its fallen nature. One enters into this salvation only by physically partaking of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, through the Covenantal Most Holy Eucharist (i.e. the Covenantal meal of the Seventh Covenant as Passover was of the Fifth Covenant). Failure to do so means you do not have the Life of Christ within you, as St. John explains at length in the 6th chapter of his gospel. (He wrote his gospel last of the gospels and after St. Paul's letters, and he clearly thought it necessary to compose this 6th chapter stressing the Eucharistic source of "being a new creation in Christ", as St. Paul so often phrases it.)

But then again, as the ancient Hebrew revelation itself made clear in the beginning, God made Man in God's own "image" (it is the only time "image" is used positively in Genesis, if I recall correctly). God didn't have a physical human form, but He gave Man free will, intellect, rationality, and the soul's immortality. Then, with the Incarnation, made a necessity by Adam and Eve's Fall, God sanctified and elevated the human form by Incarnating Himself in it. Because He took on Human nature, humans can now via divine grace take on God's nature and indeed, literally be "new creations in Christ". 

• So this part of God's creation – the physical universe resulting from the Big Bang (as is now generally thought in physics) – is doubly blessed, both in its beginnings when God declared it good and made his Covenant with it (first couple of verses in Genesis Chapter 2) and now in God's Incarnation into it (New Testament). It belongs to God who created it, and to mankind whom God made within it and tasked with protecting it. We're here to govern it, "keep" it/maintain and cultivate it. Aside from loving and serving God, it's our foundational job in mortal life, and indeed, we love and serve God in our assigned acts of cultivating and "keeping it clean". And it is widely known that working outdoors, keeping a garden, long walks in the countryside, etc., all promote mental health for everyone. However, none of this means we ought to worship it. 

Paganism

But paganism is quite different. Firstly, it has no knowledge of a personal God, whether the Unity of Jews and Muslims or the Most Holy Trinity: "...holy Lord, Father almighty, eternal God: Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord: not in the Oneness of single person, but in the Trinity one Substance...without difference or separation...unity in Essence, and equality in Majesty." (from the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity)

Instead of all that, Paganism's deities are generated by nature, and exist wholly within it. Secondly, in Paganism you don't care for or cultivate nature – you worship it because Paganism is about worshiping the life force. It is our mistress, not our servant or ward. That's why stone phalluses were so often made and worshiped in most cultures around the world, from Ancient Greece to modern-day Japan, where one can see devotees praying to them. These images were of that which was essential to generating new life. 

Human beings by definition have no special place in Paganism; indeed, the gods who made mankind were themselves generated by the life force. Death, then, was no absolute cut off from this world, but a portal back into it, eventually. Again, that's because we are merely an element to it. This was as true of Druidism as it is today of Hinduism. "T'is all one," as Shakespeare would say.

Now, with all that backgroun in mind, consider what Maureen Mullarky writes in her article:

Francis rails against the West’s “tyrannical anthropomorphism.” His accusation borrows from Boff’s many restatements of historian Lynn White’s influential charge published in Science in 1967. Lynn attributed “ecologic crisis” to the Christian/biblical tradition. He indicted Christianity as “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” because it teaches that only man is made in the image and likeness of God. (Boff scoffed at the teaching as “an androcentric archaism.”)

Francis anticipated this month’s campaign by anthropomorphizing nature. Creation has a “voice.” A suffering earth “cries”; it issues “an anguished plea” that “laments our mistreatment.” The “grandiose cosmic choir” sings reminders that “we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion.”

[However] Only conscious beings can commune with each other. Promises — such as God’s to Noah and Abraham — can only be made to persons. Francis’ call for “a covenant between human beings and the environment” attributes sentience to the environment.

AnP again:

The entirety of Christianity, as with Judaism before it, is built on the Covenants God made with certain people for the sake of, eventually, all peoples. (Islam rejects, and damns, the Covenant system entirely.) But Bergoglio and Modernism stand all that on its collective head and crashes it completely for the sake of what is a narcissistic fad: "Oh, look at me! I am environmentally conscious!" or a thanatos "death wish", i.e. "We humans must go extinct in order to save the planet". (Christianity is at pains to assert the immortal worth of human beings; paganism isn't that interested.) Bergoglio would break ALL that and the entire Covenant system by insisting God makes covenants with the environment, an insane notion that necessitates elevating the environment into a conscious being. Whatever else that is, it is a rejection of Divine Revlation.

Clearly, Jorge Mario Bergoglio cannot be considered to be pope in any sense whatsoever with him not merely thinking along these lines, but promoting them! He constitutes as much a danger to the Church as Biden (meaning whoever is pulling his strings) does to the American republic or the WEF does to Europe, etc.

Beware. And be warned.

  An Préachán

Psalm 146 of the Douay-Rheims: verse 9:

Who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon Him. (This verse delightfully indicates the natural world's true relation with God.)

What Is Science? Something that needs a specific metaphysical underpinning...

Science, science, science.

As we used to hear with Global Warming, "It's the science! The science is settled!"

Is that true? Currently, lots of fighting going on about "science" being bandied about, as here about Oregon: 

Oregon's governor, Kate Brown, said, "From the beginning of this crisis, I have worked within my authority, using science and data as my guide, heeding the advice of medical experts.'' 

Ah, but first off, the guv'ner had a 28-day window on how long she could impose restrictions, and she's exceeded that. The Oregon legislature has not extended that 28 days, but Oregon Supreme Court says, "Oh, no you don't." So chaos ensues, legally and morally.

(Personally, I suspect such issues will probably be decided by open rebellion. People are fed up with these Democrat Party Napoleons and things are going to get ugly. Or "government" may just wilt under the pressure. A good essay on the limits of government is here at the Conservative Treehouse.)

But the "science"...? Truth is, medical "experts" don't agree, neither do a lot of scientists in related fields, and debate rages. Heated debate. And it is clear that "the science" is being politicized. Massively so. The mainstream media clamps down on all this, but the debate is real. And I suspect the damage to "science" is real. Politicize anything and you pretty much ruin it.

Yet what is Science? I think a little background is needed.
First off, science is something that needs a specific metaphysical underpinning...

In most people's minds, "science" means the "scientific method." So, can we define "science" as a particular set of methods to study reality?

Ah, first, before any such method is developed, one has to have a philosophy — and it is not merely a "belief" or opinion, but an organized system of thought founded on logic — that objective reality itself is real, objectively real; i.e. that we're not mad, or trapped in a Matrix, etc. This is the great revolution in thought that produced the modern world, for most humans have followed religions (and philosophies) that taught that reality wasn't real, but a dream of some deity ("We are all a dream of Brahma, and some day Brahma will awake") or as in Islam, wherein reality is real enough for the moment, but a capricious Allah might change the basic laws of physics (or morality or anything else) from one second to the next — because Allah's will is supreme: this is called "Islamic Volunteerism". 

Only in the West did we have a religion that insisted Reality was Real, that God blessed it as a good in itself, and made a covenant with it (first verses in Genesis 2). It was in defense of that First Covenant that God set out to rescue His Creation, to undo and repair and make anew the world He had blessed in that First Covenant when Adam and Eve marred His Creation by their Fall.

Reality was thus understood to be good in itself, inherently good, and worthy of study, for of course we humans were there (in the unFallen Adam and Eve) when the Lord of Hosts "rested" on the Seventh Day and blessed it. This idea is foreign to so many religions and philosophies that it is remarkable that it came into existence in the first place. Indeed, its mere existence is a proof of the Existence of the God who made it. 

Then the early Church took that theology and melded with the Greek philosophical inheritance from Socrates through Plato and especially Aristotle — helped mightily by Boethius — cemented the idea in the West that reality was real and we could study it; i.e., that unlike in Islam, where the study of the physical sciences is blasphemy, we in the West were free and encouraged — in fact, we were made to study and interact with the world, rather than merely endure world -- to use our minds to explore the creation we are a part of. Western empirical science is founded on this ancient metaphysics.

Of course, the ancient competing idea that reality isn't really real, somehow or other, or that the physical world is evil and the spiritual world an escape from this evil (Manichean doctrine/Catharism, etc.) or that we can make reality by willpower, manifests itself today in many, many ways. Marxism/Leftism insists — against all evidence — that an earthly Utopia can be made by sheer willpower (and killing enough of those who don't agree). One of many current examples is that sex-change operations produce sex change: that one can change one's sex, via gruesome surgery and hormones. Or of course that homosexual can marry, that their phyical intimacy, a mere tribadism, is the equal to the transmission of life between male and female. 

This impulse — to demand that reality is malleable and conformable to our will, is a form of the ancient "reality is a dream" belief; it is what lies behind these malicious (or deeply foolish) people wrecking modern Western empirical science in the name of following some bizarre contemporary fetish or other that motivates them, that gives meaning to their otherwise metaphysically empty lives. (Walker Percy, the great novelist, used to say that the Sexual Revolution was in part about modern people secretly suspecting that they were mere ghosts, and needed "hooking up" to try to convince themselves they weren't disembodied nothings.

Global Warming is obviously a classic example, and now the "Let's kill ourselves to preserve ourselves from contagion" incoherence fits in the same genre. It's a great crusade, a jihad, to "save the planet" and thus, of course, give substance to ghosts.

An Préachan

Wny Relativism Is Feminism

A friend wrote me the other day:

All together , God makes it clear in the bible that He does not expressly sanction any religion and facilitates a multitude of religions (that are, de facto, human made).

I can’t agree with this, of course. It is neither Biblical teaching (Old Testament) nor New Testament/Catholic-Orthodox Church (the Historical Church) teaching. 

It’s Relativism, of course, and really essentially Masonic. It is also decidedly feministic, an integral aspect of this “femmed” culture we live in, i.e. in the sense that “feminism” wants to make no judgments, no ruling about who’s right and who’s wrong – such judgement is something essentially masculine – fathers have this burden whereas mothers “mother”. This feminized culture rather would mother us all (to death, really) by telling us we’re all good and everybody is nice, and so on.

An example of this: I was introducing my kids to the old Irish Rovers song The Unicorn, how they played games instead of getting on the Ark, and all drowned, and my wife interjected with how horrible that was to teach to 10-year-olds (and 9 and 7-year-olds) and that somehow the Unicorns were saved. The mother wanted to "mother" her kids and protect them from the harsh realities of life, whereas the father sat in judgment and wanted his children to face reality. 

A perfect example. 

An Préachan