Catholic social doctrine sheds light on how to combat gun violence

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/catholic-social-doctrine-sheds-light-how-combat-gun-violence
MGB:_Prayer can be used to unify a movement, as long as it is inclusionary. It can build solidarity as long as it is not a bar to membership. We certainly will not pray away the NRA nor should it be cheapened as protest tool, whether at NRA HQ or an abortion clinic.

It is true that subsidiarity has failed us in treating mental health, especially when we give individuals the right to refuse treatment when they are obviously sick. Hierarchical mental hygene, which included eugenics, went too far early in the century and we have overcorrected, which helped decrease spending on healthy but has filled the jails. Kafka rules. We need long term treatment for some before they offend, recognizing that many offenses occur due to lack of shelter and income (petty theft, public urination, lashing out when meds are gone). Disability needs to go to a living wage level, be easier to get and not be dependent on prior earnings, appropriations or the health of a trust fund.

It is not mental illness that causes school shootings, it is social isolation. Shootings at work and school are an extreme form of social protest for people who are tired of ”using their words.”It has become ”a thing” a very lethal fad. You cannot medicate that away.

Having popular students get national attention for trying to ban guns will not stop any school shooter unless they succeed in getting the guns and the ammunition (they tell me with no ammo, guns are useless). That type of ammo should no longer be sold outside of military contracts. Indeed, police should not even be able to get it, since using it on a suspect is death sentence.

Treat assault weapons the same way and use military contracts and mandatory buybacks (as in ATF goes to a gun shop or show and buys it and its contents, which are destroyed, except the collectors pieces).

Will this stop school shootings? As long as it slows them down and makes them less leathal, including for the shooters. Then maybe, instead of burying the shooters, we can ask them what went wrong in their lives. After about 20 years of prison, they will have the words to tell us.

Links for 2/27/18

https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/distinctly-catholic/links-22718
MGB:_Pro-life Democrats are targeted by the Susan B. Anthony Fund in a big way. They are not considered welcome in the movement either. Try running for Maryland’s open seat as a pro-life Democrat and see what I mean. The question I have for the congressman is ”what makes him pro-life?” Is it just a label for him or will he be willing to outlaw abortion at some point or have the Court do it and then, who gets to go to jail?

No manufacturer who sells AR-15s to the public should get a military contract. Any who have who want to keep their contracts should recall them.

Unions violate the reactionary credo that rich people obviously are superior.

Being pro-life is being the GOP at prayer to orange faced god. See comments on Lipinski. Gutting the ACA means the insurance market will collapse and a future Democratic POTUS will use their bankruptcies to impose single-payer in each state, will all premiums and subsidies going to a central fund that funds a single insurance provider who must cover everyone.

Executives and owners send jobs to China because when taxes are low, they get more for doing so than when they are higher (because then the government gets the savings and the cuts are simplyh not made).

Sadly, Billy Graham lived long enough to see the harshness return to his Church. All hopes of universalism are gone in favor of propserity gospel megachurches. Trump is the result.

I am sure Napa writes a nice check. So much for Francis’ idea of a poor church. The Rector probably is not a big fan of meatloaf.

LifeSiteNews does harm with stories like 'Vatican financial scandal'

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/lifesitenews-does-harm-stories-vatican-financial-scandal
MGB:_Don’t call them a Catholic group or a pro-life group. Call them a Republican front group and leave it at that.

Don't let 'Janus' case axe root of American labor

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/dont-let-janus-case-axe-root-american-labor
MGB:_Burke was a libertarian and a reactionary who believed that a society without strong elites ended up like the Jacobins in the French Revolution. That common core goes from Nietzsche to Ayn Rand to Donald Trump. It was resisted by Marx and Engels, the American Labor Movement and the Modern Cooperative Movement (which was created, in part, by Silas Locke Allen, my great-grandfather). The Catholic immigrant labor movement, as well as American craftsmen, joined in, but it was not a Catholic thing by any means. Socialism is not dead, as Bernie Sanders has shown. It has both secularists and Catholic workers and nuts and granola Protestants. As long as the Church behaves better than it did in the 1950s, you can play with us again.

The irony of this case is that if Janus were made to be a member, the could speak out about anything in meetings of the local. If he was persuasive, he would carry the day. If not, he could still keep speaking above the local level and at least be heard. Freedom of speech does-not carry the guarantee that others will agree. Instead, the law has allowed him not to join. He still speaks and has found deep anti-labor pockets to finance his speech. No one has stopped him. Let us hope that even here, only four justices agree (I suspect it will be three with Roberts finding a way to defend congressionnal intent).

The Catholic Church needs people who demand that the Church leave them alone in their marital lives, as their current actions are unjust. It needs someone on the inside to challenge how it deals with abortion, because it has become part of the problem for the unborn. Someone needs to explain to them solidarity with women and the principles of equal law, which are essential to solidarity and make first trimester abortion prohibition impossible. Few advocate abortion, but many understand that Roe is rightly decided and that will not change. In the end, the hierarchism of the Church needs to be blown up and that must come from the inside.

Even if this case goes the wrong way, there are both Democratic Socialist and New Cooperativist movements that are bringing both Marx and Allen back from the brink. We are just getting started providing alternatives to both goverment control and capitalism. Either was, this case is a speed bump, although there is mass organization planned for Saturday. All are welcome, except maybe that Paprocki guy.

Links for 2/22/18

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/links-22218
MGB:_Garrett Epps is the forefost constitutional scholar and historian of this age, maybe the best since Madison. If he says this is not a constitutional case, you have to wonder why it was granted ceriori, and that is scary. He tells us why. Still, I have hopes that Chief Roberts will vote for the intent of the law and not make Court packing by the next Democratic President a necessity to counteract Alito’s partisanship. The necessary fact in this case, proven by this case, is that Mr. Janus can speak all he desires. If his brothers and sisters in the Union agree with him, his voice will be amplified. If not, he can still speak on his own and I am sure some reactionary will provide enough funding for him to be heard. Unless AFSCME is allowed to silence him, his free speech rights are undistrubed.

Erroneous Autonomy was a good series. I wish I had been able to attend and participate. We must always remember that without Solidarity, Subsidiarity it just a surrender to power. Any time we can put ideologies that would forget this under a microscope is worthy, including when it is social liberty rather than economically liberty being discussed. My comments on these events are at:
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2014/06/rcs-vs-libertarianism-part-i-national.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2014/06/rcs-vs-libertarianism-part-ii-national.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2015/06/erroneous-autonomy-conversation-on 9.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2015/06/erroneous-autonomy-conversation-on.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-catholic-vs-libertarian-debate.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2016/12/erroneous-autonomy-third-edition.html
http://heymsw.blogspot.com/2017/01/lack-of-just-wages-benefits-threat-to.html

Every President should have one person he trusts who will stop him from doing stupid things. This President doesn’t have that person and even goes to the extent of hiring someone who Tweets like he does to further confuse things.

In the world of wisdom there is ethics, which is derived from truth and therefore absolute and aesthetics, which is beauty and emotion and individual with no right answers, which is why everyone can be a critic and all be right. Ocassionally, Truth can invoke wonder as well and beauty can involke truth. I am glad the President likes his portrait. If I am ever in his shoes, I would prefer the standard standing portrait in the Oval. As for the First Lady’s portrait, I see the arms but not the face, which is too bad because her face outshines that of her portrait. As for the voice rehersal, music is about feeling. Even if you aren’t feeling the performance in the second, you had better pretend you are really quickly, because singing is a form of acting and the emotions to be evoked are not accidental.

Ed Whelan uncertain about facts of labor union case

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/ed-whelan-uncertain-about-facts-labor-union-case
MGB:_Reading National Review under its current publishers is always the begining of a mistake. Reading Ed is worse. Still, marriage and abortion are basede on 14th Amendment law regulating the powers of the states in private matters. Dealing with Unions is not a private matter but it is a federal one. Like other employers, states cannot union bust at will, but it is federal labor law, not the Constitution, that protects the rights of workers.

Christian prudential judgment does not enter into the outcome of either kind of case. Dignitas Humanae gives the Church no authority but to compel an outcome, although it can certainly argue if it knows the law, which it misunderstands on Roe.

Roe is good law, even if you don’t like the outcome. Abortion cannot be regulated but when you decide at what point abortion becomes infanticide andwhen  you are willing to punish mothers, you can grant legal recognition to the child, aain uder the 14th Amendment. Catholics cannot have or encourage abortion. Their opinion on what others do is irrelavant because this is not an issue until someone makes a realistic proposal. (And OMB Circulars provide for accouting audit standards to oveturn the argument that PPUSA funds are in any way fungible).

The Church’s AFSCME legal argument would be more compelling if it allowed the NEA a place at the table in Catholic Schools. Whelan is just crying foul because his fellow reactionaries seem to be going off book.  Ed is defending the Republican machine, not the unborn. It is why most regard the pro-life movement as a scam. If the Church dropped out of the scam and allowed the unions in, the public funds would follow. It is the kind of compromise the GOP would never stand for.

The die is probably cast on any AFSCME case if this Court treats it like it treated affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. It is probably also cast on the fate of the GOP, having hooked its wagon to the mean clown, it will meet the mean clown’s fate, unless it is smart enough to get rid of him before November. This union, because it cannot strike, relies on politics, including influencing who it deals with. Not even hobbling it will save the Republicans from a well-deserved fate. Paprocki is quite obviously also a partisan Republican hiding behind his purple robes to baptize his and their reactionary views. He needs to findn a new job. Maybe baking cakes for gay weddings as a penance.

Links for 2/20/18

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/links-22018
MGB: The lawyers often write along the lines that the staff and chairs of a committee indicate.  Often, those people are such true believers in the Reactionary ideal that they do not reflect the rest of the bishops or the Church (save some of the hard-liners in the Curia).  That the Church has been ill-served by its lawyers is clear, whether the topic is religious freedom, abortion or child sexual abuse by priests.  Sometimes, it is more important to lose doing justice than get a victory for the client.  Good lawyers tell their clients when they have no case.  The Church often does not have good lawyers.

Connor Lamb seems to be able to pander with the best of him.  What he really believes is deliberately unclear, which is true of the entire pro-life movement.  One would hope that most members of Congress, at least those who went to law school, are educated enough to know why Roe won and that it is not going anywhere, nor should it.  Let us hope Lamb is an outlier in the movement and proposes what is really needed to reduce abortion, much higher child tax credits paid with wages and deducted from a high enough subtraction value added tax to do the job.

All you need to be on FoxNews is to look pretty and say exactly what they tell you.  Jocks can do that. So can Laura.

As usual, Cardinal Cupich brings less heat and more like to Amoris, as well as a humble spirit. The last is why the right-wing hates him so.

I was just talking with a friend last night about Senator Warren's heritage.  She does need to address the controversy head on, including the notion that all Indigenous people look the same way. I don't look Romany unless I grow the required mustache, but Romany I am (and if you call me a gypsy without permission I may slap you, just in case you think PC is out of date or some liberal invention).

At least it is not the Year of the Cat. The tweets and postings are even more insufferable. As for bishops having dogs, as long as they walk and clean up after them themselves.  That may be a bridge to far for some of their egos.

How do you Tweet Casti Connubii #120-122 in sufficient detail to call out right to lifers who are only pro-birth? I rarely Tweet. Real men rarely do. Enough said.