Fake Catholics

A few years ago when the term “fake news” began being spread, Donald Trump was quick to use it against his shameless enemies in the media — particularly CNN. The media reacted as you would expect and stopped using the term because it was immediately turned on them and very effectively.

I’ve had conversations with Catholics before about the labels we give ourselves. There are plenty to choose from including: Conservative Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, Traditional Catholics, Devout Catholics and Faithful Catholics. Someone I know responds to such labels with, “why not just Catholic?” They have a point. You see people who accept and endeavour to follow the teachings of the church faithfully don’t need any extra adjectives to describe what they are. They are simply Catholic.

On the other hand there are plenty of other types of Catholics. There are some who view their inherited faith as an ethnicity and identify strongly with it despite having nothing to do with it. There are those who are somewhat more invested but one wonders why as they constantly seek for it to change to suit them and not vice versa. Then there are the lukewarm who have got their children baptised and occasionally attend Mass for Christmas or a wedding but are otherwise not living the Faith in any meaningful way. There are also the wolves within who are actively to hostile to the church but are clothed in enough wool to fool all but the most vigilant sheep. As you could expect, there is a lot of crossover in all the groups mentioned.

Now I want to be clear that while one can easily split the Catholics who are faithful to church teaching into different groups, it is really not necessary in this case. None of these groups are deliberately breaking or rejecting church teaching as are the others so it is not necessary for my purposes in this post to distinguish them.

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Why can’t they just leave us alone?

I used to say that I just wanted to live a simple, unassuming life. I didn’t want to be famous. I didn’t want to do anything heroic or even particularly special. I didn’t want a big house, a high salary or lots of consumer items. I didn’t want to interfere with how anybody else lived and I didn’t want them to interfere with me either. I just wanted to live and let live.

In general, I still don’t think this is unreasonable and you would think that people who seek all of the things I don’t would be happy with my aspirations of mediocrity. In hindsight, I was hopelessly naive to think that I would be allowed to live like this and this has become all the clearer because of the events of this year.

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Sake Doesn’t Age Well

Ōkami was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006 and is probably best known as the best of the games developed during the brief but prolific existence of Capcom’s Clover Studio. Although not selling very well on release, it was praised mostly for its unique and beautiful cel-shaded visuals as well as gameplay influenced by The Legend of Zelda series.  It saw a re-release on the Wii and and a high-definition re-master on the PlayStation 3. I believe it is now available on every major platform including the Nintendo Switch which is the version this review will be based on.

I first played and finished Ōkami in 2008 on the PlayStation 2 just before I left for Japan for the first time. It has been over twelve years since I did and I wanted to see how it held up all these years later.

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Speculation (Short Story)

This is another story I entered into a competition that I didn’t win and am now posting here. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide what merit (if any) it has. I am quite conscious of the fact that early attempts at writing fiction will more than likely be terrible so it is better I get better here without forcing anyone to read it. 

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Thinking and Submitting

One of the most impressive coups the elites have pulled over the last few decades is making people think they’re intelligent simply for submitting to authority. This can be seen in the realms of politics and society but more notably (especially recently), in the realm of science.

The formula itself is quite simple though the methods are much more sophisticated. On any issue, you choose the most extreme position that stands in opposition to what you want and always bring this up in debate or when compelled to mention opposition. In logic, this is quite similar to the “straw man” which is exaggerating your opponents position. So the set-up in basically that you either agree with your reasonable position or you are on the same side as all those crazy guys.

Following this, you ignore all moderate or reasonable people holding a similar position; or failing that, shamelessly lump them in the extreme position without allowing any right of reply. In doing this, enough of the general public believes that by opposing this extreme position that they are being, sensible and intelligent and as a result are also inclined to dismiss the more reasonable voices as well. Many people in opposition are also disinclined to offer more than a lukewarm dissent on the matter.

With media limited to very few powerful corporations and organisations, this has been the practice for a long time though the Internet had started to put an end to this until relatively recently. This was until the same organisations began clamping down and deliberately limiting information available to others as I have documented before.

What follows are multiple examples of this in practice.

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Visit to Marian Valley

I recently visited the Marian Valley in Queensland, Australia. It is within the Archdiocese of Brisbane and run by the Monastic Order of St. Paul the First Hermit. This was my first visit and it is a wonderful place for pilgrimages and retreats. Even if you aren’t Catholic, it is a beautiful place to visit and can be done in a day if you live within a few hours drive. I took many photographs which have been posted below.

There are a great many shrines and sites I did not photograph so this is far from an exhaustive catalogue of the area. I have not put any commentary below but I will add here that I was really moved by the work and love that has gone into each and every shrine. I hope I’m able to one day make some sort of contribution. I hope you enjoy the photographs!

Statue at the entrance of Marian Valley

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A Misleading Title

tsaongafThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
HarperOne, September 13th, 2016

I have an assumption that any books prominently displayed in airport bookstores are not worth reading; let alone buying. The main reason for this is that books like this have to have wide appeal and books I read tend to be older and if not, present ideas or a narrative that is very unlikely to be promoted by the major publishing industry. I’ll admit there is some literary snobbery in this way of thinking but I don’t believe this is unreasonable.

The subject of this review probably ended up in airport displays because of the title but the contents don’t contain anything particularly dangerous or controversial. It is written by Mark Manson who is a very successful blogger and now very successful author too. I did not buy this but was lent it by a sibling who highly recommended it. My prejudices towards these books outlined above almost had me politely decline, but as he has taken my recommendations before, I felt the least I could do was reciprocate.

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Hyborian Thoughts

I have been fascinated by the character Conan since I was a child and it is funny that all this fascination never led me to going to the source as I have done recently. Just this week I finished reading the last of the completed stories by Robert E. Howard. The collection I found had all of them but four which I had to track down online. The images I have included were taken from this collection published by Prion in 2010.

As I read, I was following John C. Wright’s commentary on the stories which he has written over the last few years on his own blog. As of writing, he has only a few more stories to cover before his commentary is complete. Once it is finished, it will make a worthy companion to the series.

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So QAnon is real then.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1285726277719199746?s=20

I’ve followed the QAnon on and off but never obsessively. I occasionally check the extensive coverage on Neon Revolt but I would never say I was on board with it as a whole. Similar with many current goings-on, there are commentators I respect who take it seriously and those who think it is an extremely elaborate LARP. Call me a coward but I am not confident to come to an opinion either way. There just isn’t enough information for me to commit.

Then Twitter went and posted a series tweets starting with the one quoted above.

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Fisking Fletcher on the Latin Mass

I love reading a good fisking but I’ve seldom done one on the blog with only this one coming up in a search. The following article about the Latin Mass appeared in the National Catholic Register in November last year and I can not believe it was published. It is a series of assertions, anecdotes and hearsay with almost no substance to back any of it up. It is worth going through the article as a whole because it really is something else. Sections of the article will be quoted in italics and the rest will be my own.

The full article can be found here.

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